Rainbow Dash banged her hoof three more times on the Golden Oak Library’s door. “Twilight? You gonna unlock this door or what?”

Rainbow crossed her arms. Yesterday, Twilight had asked her to come clean the library. If she wasn’t already her friend, Rainbow would’ve used a locked door as an excuse to turn around and go home, but Twilight had said ‘please’ at least twenty times.

Rainbow noticed a half-open window above the door. She flew up to it, peering in. “Twilight? Spike? Hello? You guys home?” She squirmed her way inside and landed on the floor.

Rainbow looked around, searching for any sign that either the unicorn or the dragon was home. The library was empty, aside from the regular books and junk on the shelves. However, there was a large board on wheels on the far end of the room, accompanied by a stiff silence.

Rainbow trotted up to the centre of the room and checked under the Troan bust. “Twilight, everypony’s been wishing me luck today. It was really weird,” Rainbow said. “Just how hard is it going to be? We better not be wiping all the books page by page again.”

Twilight held her breath as she hid upstairs behind the door to the loft. Careful not to make a sound, she debated whether or not to keep her friend in the dark for just a little longer or to betray her experiment. She chose science and stayed hidden.

Rainbow started to wonder if this was a setup for one of Pinkie Pie’s surprise parties. She rolled her eyes as she trotted behind the large board on wheels and pulled it out, inspecting the other side. She didn’t find Pinkie or Twilight or the rest of the town hiding behind there, but what she did find was peculiar.

It was a humble chalkboard, four feet high and eight feet wide. A simple equation was written neatly on the top left corner, followed by lines upon lines of formulas and work scrawled wherever they would fit. At the end of all this, in the lower right corner, was a long blank with three question marks drawn after it.

This wasn’t unusual. Typical egghead Twilight had probably pored over some nerdy thing like math or science or whatever subject of the week it was. There was something weird about all of this, though; to Rainbow, Twilight had started with such a simple equation.

Rainbow hesitated. She knew how finicky Twilight could be about her work. One time, when hanging out in Twilight’s study, Rainbow accidentally nudged one of her telescopes, and Twilight almost burst a blood vessel in trying not to yell at her for knocking it out of alignment. However, since Rainbow felt like she could actually help this time (and also make up for the telescope incident), she decided to help out her friend.

Out of the several nubs of chalk strewn by the board, Rainbow chose the longest piece and picked it up in her mouth. After rubbing out the question marks to give her more board space, she wrote two more lines, rearranging the equation and then substituting in Neighton’s second and fourth laws. She wrote the final answer on the blank and spat out the chalk, gagging from the taste. There, done.

“YES!” said Twilight, leaping out from the loft entrance. “Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant!”

Rainbow jumped, startled as Twilight teleported beside her, her gleeful eyes scanning the chalkboard. She then danced like a hyperventilating monkey, with just as much grace.

“Twilight? What in Tartarus is going on here?” Rainbow asked.

“You solved it!” Twilight said, her mouth agape as she marvelled at the board. “I never would have thought to use both Neighton’s fourth law and second law like that.” She bit her lip in intense admiration. “So simple, so elegant.”

Rainbow looked at the same equation but failed to experience the same lip-biting level of awe. “I don’t get it.”

Twilight grabbed Rainbow by the shoulders and hugged her. “This is fantastic! Not only have I replicated the experiment, but you just solved gravity!”

“Experiment? Solved gravity?” Rainbow pushed herself away from the hug, eyeing her friend. “Twilight, hey, buddy. Slow the heck down and tell me what’s going on.”

Twilight nodded, taking a deep breath in, rubbing her hooves, and preparing to defend her hypothesis. “You remember when you were studying for your Wonderbolts exam, right?”

“Yeah, and you got pretty much the whole town to… help you…” Rainbow squinted, afraid of where this was going.

Twilight confirmed her fears. “So I did it again with as many fundamental physics laws and equations as I could find. I gave everypony in town a law and told them to talk about it whenever you flew overhead.”

Rainbow shook her head, a pit forming in her stomach. “Meaning you taught me all this complicated math garbage—”

“On a subconscious level!”

Rainbow gasped and brought her hooves up to her cheeks, her knees buckling as she sank to the floor. “Oh, sweet Celestia, I’m learning!” Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. “Make it stop, Twilight, make it stop!”

Twilight rolled her eyes, giving her friend a consoling pat on the back. “I’m sure you’ll live.”

Rainbow got up to a sitting position and rubbed her face with her hooves. Her shoulders drooped as she tried to back out of this however she could. “Look, Twilight, I’m no expert on morals or anything—”

“Well, not yet.”

Rainbow blinked. “Huh?”

Twilight used her magic to teleport a calendar from her room into her hooves. She flipped it open and reviewed it. “I’ve got September down for ethical and political philosophy.”

Rainbow Dash snatched the calendar from her and flipped through it. The next seven months had notes on an array of subjects, from differential calculus to metaphysics to linguistics to underwater basket weaving.

Wrinkling her nose, Rainbow looked at Twilight and pointed at the calendar. “Twilight, what is this?”

“Rainbow Dash,” Twilight said, “you have such a unique way of learning. I don’t think you realize the implications. Together, we could make you the smartest pony alive.” Twilight hopped in place as her eyes sparkled with wonder. “Oh, this is the most exciting research project I’ve ever done!”

Rainbow Dash looked from the chalkboard and all of Twilight’s scrawlings to the calendar in her hooves filled with words she couldn’t risk trying to pronounce. Her skin tingled as she imagined her future, slaving away at chalkboards ten times that size for hours at a time, holed up in a windowless room at some university somewhere, every day, for the remainder of her life, and all the while having to hold that disgusting piece of chalk in her mouth.

She belonged outside, doing barrel rolls and bell tailslides and triple eights and 360 backside frontflips in front of anypony who wished to marvel at her awesomeness (which was everypony, of course). That was what made her happy, not learning, and certainly not learning without her own permission.

Rainbow relayed all this to Twilight, but Twilight was persistent in her argument. “It’s all subconscious. You didn’t realize you were learning Wonderbolts history when we taught you, right?” Nervous she would lose Rainbow Dash on this, Twilight felt the need to restate this as much as possible. “You won’t notice at all. Your day-to-day life won’t change one bit. Please? Please please pleeease? For science!”

Rainbow found it hard to look at the unicorn. Twilight tended to get all nerdy about things, sure, but not this nerdy. Rainbow was afraid to think it, but Twilight was being persistent to the point of obsession, and everypony was aware of how well Twilight’s obsessions ended. Perhaps foregoing this project would be better for the both of them.

Noticing Rainbow look away, Twilight fumbled for another reason. “For me. Do it for your best friend Twilight. Pretty please?” She put on her cutest pouty face.

Rainbow smirked. Cuteness was hard to turn down. “Fine, fine, I’ll do your dumb project.” Then, raising her voice to make herself heard over Twilight’s ensuing squee, Rainbow said, “But like you said, my life won’t change. Promise?”

Twilight nodded vigorously. “I promise.”

From that day on, Rainbow Dash’s life changed forever.

---

The facilities at Hayvard University echoed with academic reverence and absurdly high standards. The marble flooring, stained oak walls, and high ceilings instilled a sense of both awe and inherent inferiority.

Twilight sat in one such hall. The room branched out into two hallways, both prestigiously higher than they were wide. This was a waiting room, complete with stiff wooden chairs and a secretary seemingly keeping herself busy even when speaking with other ponies. Almost everything was made of wood, either mahogany or balsa stained until it looked like mahogany.

Twilight rocked back and forth on her chair, eyes on a door next to the secretary’s desk. Four hours was almost up, so Rainbow was sure to be done her six-hour test by now. The secretary would have been irritated from four hours of Twilight’s chair-squeaking, but she had learned to drown out annoying applicants.

Sure enough, the door creaked open, and a hunched-over Rainbow Dash trudged out. She was aiming for one of the chairs next to Twilight, but along the way, she collapsed on the floor and moaned.

Twilight got up from her chair, inspecting her friend to make sure she was still alive. “Rainbow? How’d it go?”

Rainbow let her jaw relax, but it was so cramped from writing, it didn’t open past halfway. She licked her lips and mumbled, “It was super boring.”

“Good!” Twilight said, smiling until Rainbow shot her a look. “Well, that means it was easy, right?”

Rainbow shrugged.

“Then you’ll pass for sure!” Twilight beamed.

Rainbow rolled onto her back and gazed at the ceiling. “Twilight, I told you, like, 3.7 times ten to the fourth power times already, I don’t wanna go here. I wanna be a Wonderbolt.”

“And like I said, it’s just a placement exam,” Twilight said, helping her friend back up on her hooves. “I just want to see if you would make it in or not.”

Rainbow sighed. Learning over the past two years had been a breeze, just as Twilight said. Without hesitation, knowledge on pretty much any subject could just pour out of her. Twilight insisted that she was more intelligent now, but she didn’t feel any smarter. It was like all the knowledge in her head had a mind of its own, despite technically not being neurologically correct.

Rainbow Dash didn’t like feeling out of control of her own brain. She rubbed her face and looked down. “I’m not cut out for all this fancy-shmancy postsecondary education stuff, Twilight. I’m just not.”

They were interrupted by the telephone’s chattering ring. As the secretary picked it up to answer, Twilight glowered at her friend. “Rainbow, you should set higher standards for yourself.”

“And I do!” Rainbow said. “But I don’t want to master chemistry and tribology. I want to excel in flight dynamics and aerobatic maneuvers and—Gah!” Rainbow slapped herself. “See? I can’t not be an egghead anymore!”

“Relax, Rainbow. You’re on the way to becoming the biggest contribution to the scientific community in nearly a century.” Twilight jabbed a hoof at Rainbow Dash’s chest. “Don’t wuss out on me.”

Rainbow was taken aback. Twilight wasn’t usually this aggressive. Sitting down, Rainbow nodded, planning on putting an end to this ordeal by moving far away from Ponyville once the test results came through.

They had turned to leave when the secretary hung up her phone. “Ms. Dash, we have the results of your test back.”

Rainbow’s eyebrows shot up. “That was fast.”

“And?” Twilight leaned forward on the front edges of her hooves.

“You passed with, uh,” the secretary said, taking note of the candidate’s colour scheme. “You passed. Highest score we’ve ever seen, actually.” She rummaged through a drawer and pulled out three slips of paper. “Here are your degrees in medicine, law, and physics.”

Rainbow took a double take at the papers before her jaw dropped. “No, wait. Hold on. There must be some mistake, here.”

“Nope.” The secretary shook her head, and Twilight shook hers harder.

Rainbow couldn’t find the words to say, though that was a lie because she was an expert in linguistics by now. “Twilight, forty seconds ago you said this was just a placement exam.”

“Yes!” Twilight said, clapping as she looked over the doctoral parchments. “Look how well you did!”

The secretary picked up the telephone and dialed. “Hello, could I get one academic robe and the marching band please?”

“No no no,” Rainbow said. “Cancel that, please.” She turned to Twilight. “I don’t want to go to school here. I don’t know how many times I have to say it.”

Twilight frowned. “You don’t understand, Rainbow—”

“I fully understand what you mean, Twilight. You were the one who made me a genius, after all.” Rainbow sighed, her shoulders square with finality. “For the last time, no. This is your dream, not—Hey!”

Rainbow felt a chair being pushed under her from behind, forcing her to sit down. Somepony stretched a large blanket over her, subsequently placing something on her head. Dizzy from the rush, Rainbow tried to find her bearings, examining the objects she was covered with. A long black gown, a felt hat with a square brim, a golden tassel on top.

Rainbow realized with paralyzing horror that she was being graduated.

“Twilight!” Rainbow yelped. She tried to fly away, but the graduation gown held her wings tight against her body. The pony holding her chair also held her forehooves back, preventing her from running away. She strained against the fabric as much as she could, her heart rate increasing with every unsuccessful tug.

Rainbow’s chair spun to face a hallway lined with band members on either side, proudly displaying their shiny brass instruments and crimson uniforms, playing like a pony wasn’t being forced into higher education against their will. This was the manifestation of Rainbow’s worst nightmares—both higher education and upbeat marching band music.

At the end of the hallway lay a door, which somepony opened wide. Rainbow, with her above-average eyesight, grew terrified of what lay inside: a research laboratory. The tables were littered with microscopes and three-inch-thick textbooks and papers, papers everywhere. And behind those… chalkboards. Chalkboards twenty feet high, chalkboards that had clearly been written on and erased thousands of times over. And where there were chalkboards, there was sure to be chalk. So much chalk.

Rainbow was overwhelmed as her previous academic nightmares materialized before her eyes. Turning her head, she had to yell to be heard over the blaring instruments. “Twilight, please, I don’t wanna die!”

“Don’t be so melodramatic, Rainbow,” Twilight said, waving her friend away. “It’s for the betterment of all ponykind! This should be the proudest moment of your life!”

Rainbow backpedaled as hard as she could. Ponykind was doing just fine as it was. They didn’t need any more contributions to science, much less from Rainbow Dash. Ponykind probably wouldn’t care if she was a woodpeckerologist or a Wonderbolt. Heck, they’d probably like a Wonderbolt more. Rainbow attacked the gown with her teeth, tearing away, but made barely any progress on the fabric.

Ponies to her left and right marched in place as they played, the wind section spinning their trumpets and trombones around in practiced coordination. Rainbow could’ve sworn they were marching forward, closing in on her like the Venus fly trap before digesting its prey through the mechanism of oxidative protein modification. Rainbow cringed at the thought of her proteins being modified.

The research laboratory loomed at the end of the hall, the door wide open like a maw ready to devour all aspirations and wonderment tied to learning. Pure, unadulterated terror rushed through Rainbow as the door got closer and closer, the squeal of the chair and the piercing throb in her chest punctuated by the lively drone of Pomp and Circumstance.

Sweat trickled down her trembling body as she let out one last agonizing scream before the door slammed shut behind her, sealing her fate for decades to come as a university professor haunted by overbearing bureaucracies, the perilous quest for tenure, and broken dreams.

---

Soul Searcher exhaled in relief. After seeing nothing but snow and clouds for days, he had finally stumbled upon a door lodged in the mountainside. This had to be it. With barely enough energy left to raise a hoof, he knocked on the door.

He had come in pursuit of the wisest pony alive, rumored to live somewhere in these mountains. Her illustrious career was marked by revolutionary innovations in the fields of mathematics, politics, psychology, and underwater basket weavery. She retired early and disappeared, but after years of searching, he had stumbled upon a very plausible lead, and was closer than ever to finding this legendary fount of infinite wisdom.

Soul had traversed through the frigid weather for a week and a half. His journey wouldn’t have been so arduous if he had opted for Rainbow Dash’s revolutionary race change surgery and become a pegasus, but that was too expensive and morally questionable.

The door swung open, and there stood the sage herself. Rainbow Dash looked old, tired, and wise, but mostly old and tired. Her striking blue fur and luminous multicoloured mane had faded, but she still retained an air of tremendous intelligence and grace.

Rainbow knew almost instantly why this hiker was here, and she groaned. Fifth one this month. “Come in,” she said, stepping back to give the hiker a chance to shed his backpack and several layers of clothing.

Soul Searcher surveyed the sage’s humble abode. He was expecting a lavish palace, ornately decorated and displaying artifacts of all her technological innovations—television, airplanes, pocket-sized black holes, maybe even a slip of paper congratulating her when she cured all the cancers. However, this was just a simple, one-room cottage burrowed into the mountain face, complete with a kitchenette, a bed, a few candles, and a purple throw rug in the middle of the room.

“Hey, kid, you want tea or something?” Rainbow Dash tended a steaming kettle on the stovetop.

Soul Searcher put his hooves together and bowed. “That would be gracious of you, Master.”

Rainbow groaned. Master, sensei, oh wise and infallible, oh keen and venerable... One of these days, she’d like to be insulted or something, just to shake things up. “Uh, Rainbow Dash will do just fine.”

“As you say, Master Rainbow Dash.” Soul Searcher accepted the tea cup and took a sip. He found a spot on one end of the purple rug and sat down.

Rainbow Dash sat across from him and took a sip of her own tea, which only launched her into a fit of coughing and sputtering. Soul Searcher reached out a hoof. “Are you all right, Master Rainbow Dash?”

“Course not, kid,” she said, gagging as she swallowed another mouthful. “I hate tea. It tastes like bath water, epigallocatechin esters, and dimeric proanthocyanidins.” She set her cup down and sighed. “I drink it because it reassures me that death is inevitable. What brings you here?”

“I’ve come a long way, Master,” Soul Searcher said, holding the teacup close to his body to warm him up. “I’ve travelled all around the world, seeking your immense wisdom and knowledge.”

Rainbow chortled. “Well, since you came looking for me, you obviously don’t have any."

Soul looked down and sighed, embarrassed. He rubbed his neck, realizing for the first time since he had arrived that he was tired.

“Geez, kid, that was a joke. Lighten up.” She took another sip of her tea, cringing as she did so. “Whatcha want wisdom on?”

Soul Searcher looked up into Rainbow Dash’s tired old eyes, hopeful he’d finally find what he was looking for. “What is our purpose in life?”

There it was. Everypony always asked the same question. If only these travellers and truth-seekers could share her answer with each other. Rainbow took a deep breath in and began her spiel. “First we must ask ourselves: what is being?” she said, picking at a chip on her teacup. “Being is but a state of existence. What does it mean to be? When do we graduate from being to living? What is living, and what is our purpose? To be, to live, or to ask more questions?”

Soul Searcher nodded, setting his cup of tea down to fully appreciate the unfolding of undiluted wisdom before him.

“But then the question becomes, what is a question? A collection of words in search of truth.” Rainbow yawned. “But how are questions answered when truth is not absolute? What distinguishes my truth from your truth? When do we live the truth, and when do we become it?”

“Yes,” Soul Searcher mumbled, nodding as he entered into a state of hippie nirvana. “So true.”

“But what is true in this world? It is said that the only things certain in this world are death and taxes. What do taxes tax, though, and what does death tax? What does tax death, for that matter? What does matter tax and, more importantly, what tax does certain death matter?” Rainbow almost nodded off, but forced herself awake to continue. “But then the argument becomes ‘questions death certain tax matters’ as opposed to ‘death questions certain matters truth’.”

Soul Searcher refused to question if these words were forming proper sentences, because they resonated with him. Questions death certain does tax matters. His knees shook in anticipation.

Rainbow rubbed and stretched her neck. “But what truth in questions does death offer besides matters of which are certain? Which brings us back to the original question—what is being?”

“Yes, yes!” Soul Searcher exclaimed, holding those words close to his chest, feeling them warm his heart. Gears clicked in his mind as he attained full enlightenment. “I see it now! I see truth!”

Rainbow shrugged. “Really? Well, I’m glad somepony could make sense of it.”

“Oh, thank you,” Soul said, leaning back until he was lying down, still bathing in the euphoria. “Thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Rainbow said, putting Soul’s coats and things back on him while he lay there in his revelatory stupor. “Glad I could help. Thanks for coming, don’t come back. Watch your step on the way down, mountainside’s slippery.”

Soul smiled, a tear forming in his eye as Rainbow Dash pushed him out the door. “Thank you, Master Rainbow Dash.” He dipped in a deep bow. “Your wisdom is a blessing to all ponykind.”

Right. All ponykind. As Twilight and so many others said, it was always for all ponykind. Rainbow had given all ponykind every drop of sweat, every hour of every day, every accidentally swallowed bit of chalk, every inkling of knowledge she could fit in her head, and all ponykind gave her in return was a demand for more, more, more, until all that was left in her head was a mental skeleton. And even when she moved away, far away where she thought no one would find her, ponykind kept coming for more.

Rainbow Dash looked Soul Searcher in the eye and gave him exactly what she thought all ponykind deserved. She refilled his cup of tea and followed that up with a swift kick to the jaw, sending him reeling and tumbling down the mountainside.

Satisfied, Rainbow Dash smiled, closed the door, and took another sip of her tea.