A Day in Stalliongrad

You figured out that the apartment complex has a communal laundry room. It is small, but currently only used by you. The laundry is stuffed by means of force. The witchery of correctly cleaning your dirty bedding needs figuring. This infernal machine has too many settings and you don’t want to ruin your bedding, or the machine.

Most garments have laundry symbols on the care tags.

Pulling out your bedding, you try to search for the tag. It’s gone. Deeply taking a breath in frustration, you put the laundry back in. Looking at the levers, knobs and buttons you feel overwhelmed. Rounds per minute, temperature, rinse, pre-wash, degausser, dry time, decurser – for cursed clothing. User friendliness is a foreign term. Brain, give you another idea!

The neighbors should know.

That sounds embarrassing. There should be another way. If only there was a device with which you could easily access vast amounts of knowledge. You could go down to the library, then there would be no witnesses to your incompetence. There should be a book about laundry for dummies. The only you would bother are faceless books that can’t talk back, the author won’t know of your unknowledge.

No, that would take too much time. Do you really want to bother other creatures?

Is there another choice?

Wait! You should stop caring whatever creatures think about you.

Or maybe that is important?

They probably wouldn’t be bothered that much. If they say no or even laugh that is the worst that could happen.

Ok, you got it. Squash your adrenalin hormones. You can do it.

You walk towards a door. Behind it, the unknown social being, the bane of introverts, lives.

You knock.

A scrawny teenager earth pony opens the door.

It’s Saturday, she doesn’t need to go anywhere today.

“Need something?” It just got worse. “You’re the new guy.” She quickly figures out.

Quick, you have to show the youth that you’re one of them. Show them that you’re *cool*.

You don’t need to act on every thought.

“Yo, yes I’m the new bloke, I’m Lost, and I am in a pickle, it would be very groovy and rad if you could help me out.”

“What?” You already failed in your mission of not being embarrassing.

“Uhm, I meant to say, hi, I’m Lost Thread, I just have a quick question…” you look at her flank “…s.”

“Sure, I can help. I’m Double Helix” as expected there is a double helix on her flank “What is it?”

“Do you know how the washing machine works?”

“You don’t know? Okay? You just turn the knob.”

“I know that, but I wanna know to what I should do.”

“How do you not know how to clean your things? You’re old enough be my father, you should know that.” She is telling the truth.

Show to her that you’re the *cool* kind of old. Like an old person that can take a joke.

“Hey, I am not an old-timer, you whippersnapper.” You say in obviously joking manner.

She received the joke well, a small smile “Whatever, oldster. I have time, I’ll just show you.”

“Thanks.”

With that you two go to the laundry room.

“Have you already put in the powder?” you nod, “What do you want to wash?”

“My bedstuff.”

She looks at you confusedly “There is already a setting for bedclothes.”

Indeed, now you see it too: the knob has a setting for ‘bedclothes’.

This is worse than your worst-case scenario. Honestly, now is the perfect moment to disappear from the face of the planet. “This is so embarrassing.”

“It happens to everycreature, don’t think about it.” She is trying to be polite. Internally, she is laughing “Well, that’s my part done. Bye, mister Thread.”

You nonetheless collect your bearings, “Double, wait, I still have some questions.”

“Mmm?”

“You are a science pony, aren’t you?”

“You could say that. I am making my doctorate.” She says with proudness in her voice.

As she should.

“Okay, cool, so, I have some sciencey questions for.”

“Shoot.”

“There is the magic of friendship, love, and, you know, stuff.”

“Yeah, what about it? I don’t think I can help you much in that. Magic isn’t my field.”

“I’m coming to it. What even is magic? How can vague concepts like harmony become magic? Or does magic become harmony?”

She ponders for a moment to find the right words, “That isn’t something anycreature knows. What magic even consist of is an eternally ongoing debate. Maybe the magic of harmony came into being by itself, and then created harmony. Or maybe creatures became harmonious and created the magic of harmony. I personally stay scientific about it, there isn’t enough evidence to support either theory.”

This isn’t satisfactory. You want answers now. “Some of those magics have representations, don’t they?”

“Yes, they have. Though even that is debated. We don’t know if they only subsist of it or are it. Twilight for example became the princess of friendship. We don’t know if friendship chose her, if it even can do that, or if she simply assumed the title and uses the magic.”

“Okay, let’s assume that different kinds of magics started to exist because we started to believe in them. Could then something like communism also become a magic, and therefore have an alicorn? And if the other theory is correct, wouldn’t that mean that an alicorn of communism would be needed first for communism to even to exist?”

Thankfully, she doesn’t laugh at your crazed ideas, and thinks about it. After a short while she responds, “I have no idea.” She shortly looks into empty space, “I’m interested. I’ll research about it, maybe I’ll come up with some sort of an answer.” She finished, “It was nice talking to you, I still have some studying to do.”

Say thank you.

“Thanks for your time.”

“No problem.”