Dr. Strangehoof: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Barn
The Manehattan Project
Dr. Strangehoof: Or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Barn
Bronio Kröger
"And as we know," said Twilight while gesturing to her chalkboard, "the laws of motion indicate that a Traveling Wilbury will continue to travel, while a Wilbury at rest will tend to remain at rest, unless an external force acts upon it. That's where the particle accelerator comes in."
Applebloom nodded enthusiastically, gesturing to her fellow Crusaders. "Great Uncle Apple Newton came up with that law!"
Twilight continued. "By smashing together anions and cations at high velocity, they fuse to form a Pettion. The Pettion, so named because it has a petavolt of mass, is unstable, and decays into two hadrons: an Orbison and a Harrison. The path formed by this radioactive decay will allow us to measure the fundamental forces of the universe. Isn't that amazing?"
Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle nodded, smiling blankly. They had no idea what Twilight was talking about, but if they were to be Cutie Mark Crusaders Superconducting Supercollider Data Collators, they'd be willing to endure any lecture.
Twilight pointed to a few black-and-white pictures of an older unicorn stallion. In some of them, his cutie mark was a dead cat; in others, it was a living cat. It was all very confusing to the Crusaders. "This," said Twilight, "is Robert Cloppenheimer, who pioneered quantum physics. In addition to creating the Hay-bomb, he discovered some very interesting properties about the universe: namely that it doesn't make any sense."
"Ah ha!" said Sweetie Belle. "Wait, does this explain why you're not making any sense, Twilight?" she asked.
"No, no, my little ponies," answered Twilight. "I don't make any sense because I've been diagnosed with Autism." Nailed it! Twilight thought to herself.
"Ohhhhhhhh," the Cutie Mark Crusaders Superconducting Supercollider Data Collators answered in unison. "That makes sense!" they continued. "Even though it shouldn't!" added a beaming Sweetie Belle.
Such a sweet filly, thought Twilight to herself. What she lacks in sense she makes up for in adorableness. Maybe that's from the extra chromosome.
"So, my little ponies, are we ready to start measuring some data?" an excited Twilight asked, clapping her hooves together in anticipation.
"CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS SUPERCONDUCTING SUPERCOLLIDER DATA COLLATORS ARE READY!" the three fillies shouted, so loudly that the library shook.
"Here we go!" Twilight concentrated for a moment and her horn began to glow. Suddenly, a flash an an explosion and a burst of light --
-- and the four ponies were instantly teleported to an empty barn on Sweet Apple Acres, that had been reappropriated for use as a particle accelerator. Applejack, though not much of a physicist, approved of something that would keep the Cutie Mark Crusaders out of her mane. When Twilight suggested "having them monitor surges of radiation created by nuclear interactions," Applejack jumped at the chance for the fillies to have some wholesome fun and to give her free time to buck apples.
"Wow!" exclaimed Applebloom, amazed beyond belief at how the old barn could be turned into a giant laboratory. Every square inch of the rafters was covered in pipes and wires. Control panels and readouts were everywhere. A series of giant metal cylinders and spirals covered most of the floors, a twisted helix in a shoe shape. "How did ... how did you afford all this?" the flabbergasted filly asked.
"Why, with your tax dollars, of course!" Twilight giggled. The purple scientist trotted over to the control panel, where Spike was standing. Spike wore a white lab coat and was looking at a clipboard.
"Are you ready, Dr. Strangehoof?" asked Spike in a thick German accent.
"What?" asked Scootaloo.
"Oh," blushed Twilight. "That's sort of my ... science name for myself. I gave it to myself in Science Camp, when I swore revenge upon all the other fillies that teased me." Twilight smiled from ear to ear. "Vengeance will be mine. With SCIENCE!"
"No, I meant the German accent," asked Scootaloo.
"Don't judge me," snarled Spike. "I did what I was told. I was just following orders."
"Speaking of blindly obeying authority, does everyone have their safety gear on?" asked Twilight Sparkle. The Cutie Mark Crusaders nodded. Spike, on the other hand, asked indignantly, "Hey! Why don't I have any protective gear?"
"Silly Spike," Twilight laughed dismissively. "Because you're the control group, of course! You can't have science without a control group!"
As Spike grumbled, Twilight motioned for the fillies to put on their gear, which she had laid out for them beforehand. The Cutie Mark Crusaders put on their radiation safety gear; full suits, goggles and helmets. "Hey, why don't I have a helmet?" asked Sweetie Belle.
"The damage has already been done," responded Twilight sadly. But she doesn't want to be left out, Twilight thought to herself. Suddenly, with a flash of insight, she grabbed a burlap sack and threw it on Sweetie Belle's head. "Safety first! Alley oop!" said Twilight.
"Yay!" Sweetie Belle shouted, hopping to and fro and glad she was being treated as an equal to the other fillies. I'm a helper. I helped! Twilight Sparkle autistically thought to herself.
The Cutie Mark Crusaders jumped and clapped as Twilight pushed a lever. A giant set of tubes began to glow, and a strange buzzing noise filled the barn. Giant arcs of electricity moved from tower to tower, and pistons began to move to and fro within sealed cylinders.
"What's that?" asked Applebloom.
"Oh, that's just the cyclotron creating particles to smash into each other at high speeds. If my calculations are correct, we should see some interesting data, right about .... now." Twilight looked at the readout, clearly pleased by the stream of numbers. The Cutie Mark Crusaders Superconducting Supercollider Data Collators were diligently writing down all the numbers, plotting them on a giant chart.
"And now I am become Death, Destroyer of worlds!" chuckled Twilight Sparkle to herself, her ear twitching slightly.
"Is that why you're wearing a necklace of skulls?" asked Sweetie Belle innocently.
"No, Sweetie Belle; Rarity made this for me as a gift because skulls are 'in' this season," replied Twilight.
The little unicorn nodded. My sister is the best! thought Sweetie Belle to herself. This was generally her default thought.
"Uh oh... what's this?" asked Spike. "Look at these numbers." Twilight walked over, the Cutie Mark Crusaders following.
"Very odd, hmmm...." mused Twilight. "I've never seen anything like this before." Twilight powered down the collider and turned to the three fillies. "Okay, girls, I'm going to need you to take a look at this data and see if you can explain these strange data points. Can you do that?"
"Absolutely!" said Applebloom. "You bet!" said Scootaloo. "My sister is the best!" said Sweetie Belle.
And so it was that the fillies went off to examine spreadsheets and determine statistical trends based on empirical data.
End of Chapter
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynmane!
The Manehattan Project
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynmane!
Bronio Kröger
For days, the Cutie Mark Crusaders Superconducting Supercolllider Data Collators had been poring over numerical readouts from Twilight's particle accelerator. Simply put, the numbers did not make any sense; the calculations showed that a supermassive particle briefly appeared and then immediately decayed into a number of smaller, lighter particles in a spectacular flash. While obviously not scientists themselves, Twilight trusted them to be a second set of eyes and asked the Crusaders to corroborate the instrument readings between the different sensors. And indeed, after four days, it appeared that every sensory instrument in the barn-turned-Supercollider registered this strange particle simultaneously. The Crusaders even asked the power source of the particle accelerator, an especially magical sea serpent whose helical undulations were the source of energy for the Steven Magnetron supercollider. "Oh yes, it was marvelous, I saw those fabulous particle decay trails... how they looped and curled just like my moustache! Isn't science fabulous?"
Based on this, the Crusaders realized: whatever Twilight and Spike measured, really existed. "But what is it?" a flustered Sweetie Belle asked. "I dunno, but it seemed cool! We should smash more particles together until we figure out what it is!" Scootaloo responded, smashing two pebbles together with her hooves for emphasis.
"Now now, my little ponies," Twilight chided, "while I normally agree that repetitive destruction is good sense and the fundamental basis of science, in this case we need to talk to a theoretical physicist."
"What's a theoretical physicist?" Applebloom asked. "Mah great-uncle Apple Newton was a physicist, but he wasn't theoretical, he was real!"
You're so adorable when you're ignorant, thought Twilight Sparkle to herself.
"Hey! I heard that!" shouted an angry Applebloom.
"Sorry, Applebloom, I keep forgetting which is my interior and which is my exterior monologue," said Twilight. "Anyway, a theoretical physicist is a physicist that is so bad with people that Princess Celestia locks them up in an ivory tower in Canterlot. There, they aren't allowed access to other ponies, and slowly drive themselves insane, becoming friends with imaginary concepts and desperately seeking tenure. No one ever hears from them. They are the most solitary, ill-paid academics in all of Equestria. Well, except for pure mathematicians. " Twilight sighed and got a distant yearning look in her eyes and mouthed the phrase category theory silently.
"That sounds ... terrible," Sweetie Belle said, a tear forming in her eyes.
"Huh? What?" Twilight Sparkle was snapped out of her reverie by the innocent filly's words. "Sure ... yeah ... yeah ... terrible, that's right," she said, looking shiftily from side to side. "Anyway, I'm going to need to recalibrate this machine and rerun the tests a few more times to see if the figures are right, but are you guys able to head over to the Los Palominos Nuclear Research Laboratory and talk to their head scientist, Dr. Richard Feynmane? He might be able to make heads or tails of this."
"CAN we?" the fillies responded. "CUTIE MARK CRUSADERS SUPERCONDUCTING SUPERCOLLIDER DATA COLLATORS ARE GO!" they shouted at the top of their lungs.
A groan met them in response, as Spike shambled from behind the reactor core. His normally thick scales had begun to fall out, with strange growths and tumors peppering his small frame. "Are you sure you want to run this again, Twilight? And can I have a radiation suit this time? Please?" Spike appeared to be begging, though his eyes were nearly swollen shut and it was impossible to tell for sure.
"For the last time," Twilight hissed through her teeth, "You're the control group. So why don't you be a good control group and control your whining!" As Spike dejectedly shambled off to his doom in the radiation chamber, he turned back to the Crusaders and imparted one last piece of wisdom that has since become a proverb in Equestria:
The good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one. -- Spike
Meanwhile, Twilight's countenance changed once again to that of excitement and joy. "So yes, go talk to Dr. Feynmane, and tell him what you've seen. Show him these figures, and tell him I'll have a separate set by the time you come back!"
"Yay!" the fillies said in unison, as young ones are wont to do, and they headed off to the Los Palominos lab on the edge of town.
Los Palominos, at first glance, seemed very jejune. A series of small, low-story, square buildings, the entire complex seemed rather nondescript. Only the grim-faced guards and the multiple levels of barbed wire gave a sense of foreboding, and even then, Los Palominos seemed no different from the average Equestrian military base. The history behind Los Palominos, however, added a palpable sense of dread to the entire complex. It was here that the Hay-Bomb was developed and the war between Celestia and Discord was finally won.
However, rumors persisted about the complex and its role in development of weapons of war. It was here, legend said, that Dr. Manegele performed his unspeakable experiments under the codename of Operation Centaur. That name was spoken in hushed tones, if at all; the Cutie Mark Crusaders had only heard it from Lyra's conspiracy theories. Still, the complex had a checkered reputation. Only Area Filly-One had a more ominous past.
As the fillies approached the gate, two gruff guards stopped them. "HALT!" one said. "Who goes there?"
"Uh, we're the Cutie Mark Crusaders Superconducting Supercollider Data Collators, and Twilight Sparkle sent us to speak with Dr. Feynmane!" Apple Bloom confidently said, pulling a government-issued ID from her saddlebag. The guards examined it closely, eyeing the fillies carefully, and after verifying that it was in fact a valid CAC (Celestia Access Card), they were allowed into the receiving area of the base, where they were seated in a featureless and windowless room for what seemed like hours.
"I'm so bored, Scootaloo whined, while Sweetie Belle rolled around on the floor. Clearly, the fillies were strangers to government bureaucracy and access protocols; also, as youngsters, waiting more than thirty minutes was an unbearable torture for them. Suddenly, the sound of... bongo drums was heard in the distance. Bongo drums? Apple Bloom thought to herself. What ... drums? Scootaloo thought. My sister is the best! Sweetie Belle thought.
Slowly, the door opened, and a thin, nondescript-looking unicorn stallion entered the room, flanked by armed guards. With a nod, as the guards stood as still as statues, the stallion eyed the fillies. The fillies eyed the stallion in return; he was thin, and smiling, with a cutie mark that resembled a model of an atom. "My name is Richard Feynmane, and I hear Twilight Sparkle sent you."
"You know Twilight?" Sweetie Belle asked. "Why, yes, we've been corresponding regularly for years, and peer reviewing each other's work," Feynmane answered. "Plus, I dated one of her showmare friends... Pinkie Pie, was it?"
"Pinkie Pie was a showmare?" an incredulous Scootaloo asked. "Yep ... till she, uh," Feynmane nervously tried to figure out how to phrase the sensitive concept for fillies, "she, uh ... cracked an O-Ring in a burleseque number, and decided to become a baker instead, Nice gal. Always up for a joke."
The fillies eyed Feynmane warily. "Anyway, changing the subjects, let's take a look at these numbers, shall we?" Levitating the results, Feynmane skimmed through them, his face becoming graver and graver with each turned page. "No... No.... No... oh this is ... this can't be ..." he mumbled to himself.
"What is it?" Applebloom asked, nervously. "Is it bad?"
"Not so much bad as ... unexpected. And really, really big. Incredibly important to science big," Feynmane responded.
The Cutie Mark Crusaders Superconducting Supercollider Data Collators beamed in unison, about to cheer and check for their cutie marks, when Feynmane continued. "It looks like Twilight has discovered the Higgs Boson, which is something science has spent years searching for. But ..."
The but put an end to the grins and dancing by the fillies, as their ears perked up. "But -- these other readings indicate that Twilight Sparkle may have found a way to create a black hole. This can be a very bad thing if in the wrong hands."
"Oh no!" Sweetie Belle said. "My sister said black is out this season."
So this must be the 'special' one Twilight mentioned, Feynmane thought to himself. It's a pity no one did an amniotic test. Forcing a smile, Feynmane added, "A black hole is an inescapable point in space, where gravity is so strong not even light can escape. Some even theorize it is a hole in space and time itself, and can lead to other places. Of course, most of those people are slightly loony. Feynmane glanced sidelong at one of the guards, an earth pony with an hourglass for a cutie mark. The earth pony smiled sheepishly. "Too much science fiction, I'm telling you," Feynmane said, shaking his head.
"You're kidding, right?" Scootaloo said, in denial. "I've heard you're a prankster, this is a joke, right? right?"
"Sadly, this isn't a joke, although a black hole destroying all of Equestria would be pretty hilarious," Feynmane said, his ear twitching somewhat. Still, we need to get to the particle accelerator, fillies! If Twilight is running another test, in the same spot ... she could open up the black hole!"
End of Chapter
