helen stared at her face in the restroom mirror her mothers face no her face hers it kept going blurry as her eyes went in and out of focus she was having interesting ideas again all kinds of interesting ideas and it was harder than usual to stop thinking about them because of the laughter that fool and his laughter it echoed around and around the part of her head where she went to get away from interesting ideas . . .
she laughed hysterically for a minute or so not a good sign she thought and then the thought fluttered away her face when it skipped into focus was pale and blotchy possibly she had been crying yes someone had definitely been crying sometime not her not when everything was so funny and she had so many interesting ideas it was all so funny so funny with everywhere the laughter then she couldnt think about that anymore because she got distracted by the hand soap
—Narbonic, side story
"Common sense would be cheating."
—Lupin Madblood, Narbonic
"When I get the vibe, it's like there's a party in my toolbox and Science is invited!"
—Tigerlily Jones, Skin Horse
"When you're a recovering mad scientist, you're always afraid you'll lose control and wake up some morning with a half-built time machine in the living room and a plan to go back in time and pants Hitler."
— Djaya Sumatera, A Miracle of Science
Pinkie's voice got low and mysterious. "It starts innocent enough at first. You start fiddling with things. You wonder what would happen if you inverted the phase manifold rather than keeping it upright. Or maybe you want to run the whole equation with negative numbers just for kicks, to see if you can get better results. And before you know it, your contraption is doing the exact opposite thing of what it was supposed to do! And then you're trapped, because you keep working on it, harder and harder, trying to get it back to what it was originally gonna be, but the more you work, the worse it gets!"
"So let's say," I said, "that Rarity makes a generosity machine, but then she reverses the polarity of the beam so that it steals stuff from people rather than giving it. Or Twilight gets frustrated with using friendship to power her ro-bot, so she harnesses betrayal-energy instead. Is that...?"
"Textbook convolvement," said Pinkie, nodding. "And what's worse, if you spend too long struggling with a convolved contraption, it starts sucking your brain into the convolution waveform! Pretty soon, you're sacrificing everything that used to be special to you, all in service to your very own infernal machine!"
"Fluttershy's critters," I said. "Rarity's diamonds. Twilight's books."
"Yup," said Pinkie. "It's exactly what's happening to Ponyville! Once convolvement gets into your brain, you turn competitive, driven, narcissistic and totally nuts."
"So let's say," I said, "that Rarity makes a generosity machine, but then she reverses the polarity of the beam so that it steals stuff from people rather than giving it. Or Twilight gets frustrated with using friendship to power her ro-bot, so she harnesses betrayal-energy instead. Is that...?"
"Textbook convolvement," said Pinkie, nodding. "And what's worse, if you spend too long struggling with a convolved contraption, it starts sucking your brain into the convolution waveform! Pretty soon, you're sacrificing everything that used to be special to you, all in service to your very own infernal machine!"
"Fluttershy's critters," I said. "Rarity's diamonds. Twilight's books."
"Yup," said Pinkie. "It's exactly what's happening to Ponyville! Once convolvement gets into your brain, you turn competitive, driven, narcissistic and totally nuts."
