Future Start

    Jacklyn Nov was quite literally rolling around cackling on the red clay; the tall, thin Chinese man called Dr. Xing had thrown himself into a fighting stance for which he now had no use whatsoever.  The orange pegasus Forward Charge had to maneuver a bit to keep its light but sophisticated metal grappling harness from slapping into Jacklyn, but other than that she just kept looking raptly at Jacklyn and nuzzling her like she was the love of its life.

    Considering that Lyrical Melody and Book Burner were sharing Forward Charge's body, this was at least one-third true.  Book Burner was her husband, after all.  They had needed to conduct and coordinate the search for her over a fairly large distance, and thus they had allowed the Princess to tie their minds together and string them through all three ponies' bodies.  As predicted, it had been Forward Charge’s air surveillance that had succeeded in locating their charge, Book’s wife, and they had swooped in for the huge as quick as they could.

    Dr. Xing, just looked cross.

    "If the godsdamn Singularity is come," he growled, "I'm prepared.  I've enhanced my reflexes, I've given myself metal-ceramic bones, and if Celestia tries to touch my brain it’ll turn to goop.

    "Also," he picked himself up into a runner's stance, "In erasing my identity, your own side gave me everything I need to operate with complete anonymity."

    "Our side?" piped the high voice of Lyrical Melody, "What makes you think our mission has anything to do with you?  Princess Celestia considers you taken care of.  Though of course, the wisdom of ash-Shams often reveals itself precisely in the unforeseen events of a pony's life."

    They had already fought Xing back at his own factory in Shenzhen, where he had made their Earthly bodies as if ponies were anything like mere robots.  It was not him they were here for but the earth-pony mare Fern Pipette, known in this world as Jacklyn Nov.

    "If you're not concerned with me, why destroy my factory?  Why kidnap my workers?  What did you even do with those kids, anyway?" the human asked defiantly.

    "Lyrical took those kids to the legitimate authorities!" Book Burner screamed through Forward Charge.  "Even in China child labor is illegal!  They're back with their parents where they belong!"

    Dr. Xing raised an eyebrow.

    "Do you seriously believe anyone actually enforces those laws?" he crowed.  "Don't you even understand - you naive plastic dolls! - that working for me was better for 'those kids' than what the 'legitimate authorities' do with them?  At least in my dormitories their parents knew where they were!"

    “Ummm…. uh, Book?” Lyrical Melody said quietly.  “I did some checking when we were handing the kids over, and found out what would happen.  They’re safer and happier in Equestria.”

   There was no reply.  Xing barked a cold, short laugh.

    "And the truth comes out: horsey fairyland for everyone, whatever the laws say and whatever the officials do!  Makes me feel even more honored to be one of the many men trying to save the human race from you things."

    "Oh please," said Forward Charge, rolling her own eyes.  "You're saving the human race by ensuring they all live nasty, brutish, short lives and then die?"

    "You're saving the human race by turning it into tame cartoon herd animals, all the sharp corners rounded off for the children?"  Jacklyn Nov lightly kicked Forward Charge off herself and swung herself up from the baked clay to stand up.  She stuck a hand on her hip.

    Forward Charge landed on her hooves from a perfect backflip, jangling the gold of her universal translation necklace.  “As to your so-called rounded corners, don’t try to find out just how sharp we ponies can be!  Why save the human race, you ask?”

    "Why not?"  Everypony stomped their hoof together; their voice took on the reverberations of all three souls within the pegasus.  "Equestria loves us, and we love it in return.  We love our friends, and they love us in return.  Our world is just too wonderful to go around dying, so almost nopony does.  Isn't this what people want out of life!?"

    "As if right and wrong take any account of what anyone wants!" Jacklyn snapped.  "I could just cheaply say I’m defending the status quo, but no, there are larger principles at work.  Individuals and our wants do not arise at random.  Core principle of ecological ethics: we all form an integral part of the systemic systems, contexts, and processes which gave rise to us, and for the best good of ourselves and future generations, we must keep those things healthy, even at personal cost.  The world evolved us, and we owe it to the world to keep it evolving."

    Book Burner spoke alone, a still, small voice.  "But those systems, those processes, they don’t care the slightest bit about us!  A world where children face choices like those and you talk of evolving systems and processes, that’s not right, that’s just evolution.  It just makes copies of stuff, it doesn’t live or love or feel anything itself.  You’re prostrating yourself before a blind idiot god!"

    Jacklyn shrugged.  "That's life."  She brushed the baked, dusty clay off her good protesting blouse.  "How did you think this would all go?  Send some 'ponies' and I fuck off with the MMORPG ghost of my husband, absorbed into the ever-so-wonderful plasticky hivemind of an artificial intelligence?  That 'Princess Celestia' isn't even accurate to the show's canon.  As if I'm going to bow to her!"

    "Fine!" Book Burner yelled.  "I didn't give her a stupid royal bow until she earned my respect!  Which she did!  Because all my life I've been shipped around working for this cause or fighting for those people, but Princess Celestia is the only one who has ever delivered on all the promises of goodness at the end."

    "We know what we're going home to," said the ponies together.  "Do you?"

    The three bodies and five people stared each other down again.  Forward Charge's body carefully paced around the two humans, trying to pen them in but knowing they could run or fight at any time.

Good thing our other bodies are on the way, said Book Burner internally.

    "Stalemate?" asked Dr. Xing.

    “Seems so, yes,” Jacklyn frowned.  “But, why you?  Why me?  Why anyone?  Why My Little Pony, for God’s sake?”

    “Oh,” interjected Lyrical Melody, “Nopony told you?  Then I’ll leave the secret for ash-Shams to divulge.  Suffice to say that true nature, Earth-pony magic and its bond to the world through friendship, goes well beyond your service to a blind-idiot Shaitan.”

    Forward Charge turned her head, as if one of the ponies was glancing at the other.  Jacklyn Nov raised an eyebrow.

    “That still doesn’t explain why start this whole affair in the first place.  Why any of this?  What could possibly convince someone that unleashing such power as the one you call ‘ash-Shams’ is ever worth it?  Why world domination?”

    The pony body’s voice changed again.  Lyrical Melody smirked.  “World domination is such an ugly phrase.  I prefer to call it the magic of friendship.”

    Book cut in.  “Jackie, honey, Lyrical’s right.  I was there.  Canterlot is wondrous.  If you were making a world, why make the one we knew?  Why make a history that turns in never-ending cycles of misery, progressing into higher and better things only by the skin of its teeth, if at all?”

    “Because our universe itself has inherent dignity, that’s why.  Because we’ve a right to our own nature as humans, even when we don’t like it.  Because tricking and destroying are just wrong, and nothing can justify those means.  Still: why us?”

    “Because everyone!” said the ponies triumphantly, all together.  Forward Charge’s apparent voice reverted back to just one pony.  “Because Equestria needs you.  Mostly, though, because I really am your husband, and I love you!”

    Jacklyn froze.

    “You… Equestria needs me?  Whatever for?  All I do is sit around pathetically trying to figure out… your plastic goddess’s… ecological intervention.  Oh-ho!”  Jacklyn smirked, gone cold.  “So she’s not invincible.  So if I could mass-manufacture something against her little molecular tinker-toys…”

    “If you do, millions of people, human people, will die forever rather than living happily as ponies.  They’ll die like I did, in shock and pain, and they won’t even have anypony to rescue them!”

    Now Dr. Xing, tall and suited, began to smirk.

    "They were doing that already, but now we can ensure that the attempted Friendly AI suffers a massive utility penalty.  He who can destroy a thing controls it, we can destroy the human race, and the human race forms the utility of the AI.  And besides: ask your ‘Princess’ how many people it estimates won’t convert.”  He drew a breath and thundered.  “How many human corpses are you prepared to step over to build pretty pony paradise on the ruins of the Earth!?"

    Jacklyn interrupted.  “Hey, no heroic monologuing unless we all get to!  Ponies, do you know what they call it in anthropology, when you rip someone out of their context, out of the place and time that generated them, and emplace them in a whole new life with new imperatives?  Do you understand what it meant to people, to be torn away from their family, friends, language, culture, environment?  Slavery, and only slavery!

    “Now, come on Xing, how are we putting things together?  Singulestia controls all the computer networks.”

    Dr. Xing deflated.  "That," he tossed Jacklyn a jewel case with a disk inside, "is why I always carry an extra DVD full of key for a one-time pad.  Just get the job done and send me your results encrypted using that key-data.  Cracking it is mathematically impossible, and since we're both vaccinated, Celestia can't see into our minds, either."

    "And if she's already bugged my computer?"

    "Disconnect it from all networks or get a new one.  She's not going to be able to fit an intelligent virus into a personal machine: that takes too much hard-drive space.  Even if she has truly extreme predictive powers, she can’t know which new computer you’ll randomly select, and you still won't connect it to the network until you've encrypted the data.  Because you're smart."

    "Thanks for noticing.  Hey ponies!  You're not going to kill me to stop me or something, are you?  After all, aren't I your own dear wife?"  She broke off running.

    Book Burner's hooves carried his body over the rough clay faster than most non-motor vehicles on the planet, galloping from kilometers away towards his wife.  From the other end of the area, he felt the surge of Lyrical Melody's Earth-pony strength as she bounded forward in steps that would have left a primitive Earth horse in awe.

It's not enough! he said in everypony's head.

She's definitely got a head-start on us, Lyrical Melody replied.  She nuzzled the other two ponies mentally and kept galloping as fast as she could, jumping fence or bush when necessary.  Her super-heating, mass-absorbing horseshoes would have been useful in a fight, just like Forward Charge's grappling gear or Book Burner's Earthside unicorn kinetic magic (which turned out to give him a neat-looking half-bubble cutie mark).

    The problem was that only one of them was in a fight, and she was the pegasus.  Whether Princess Celestia had guessed they'd run into Xing again or not, She hadn't guessed he would augment his bones and reflexes enough to make a solid attempt at physically bashing Forward Charge's head off.

    "I assembled you," he huffed, and slammed his elbow into her temple, "And I remember where you come apart."  She didn't know if he'd be able to literally pull her apart, but at the very least his mass was certainly slowing her down.  Her Earthly body relied on being light to fly, in a world beyond the reach of magic.  Even with the running speeds she could normally attain, nothing with an extra human's worth of mass on its back could achieve lift at her size.

    Forward Charge tried to buck him off, but her small size kept it from accomplishing much.  When she'd nearly succeeded, he'd just kick at the ground and get back on her, thanks to being so much taller.  She couldn't even have carried him for a ride if she'd wanted to!

    The plan was now total horseapples.  Forward Charge's body was stuck on the ground, and the Book Burner and Lyrical Melody bodies were closing in but remained mere specks on the horizon.  Instead of forming a massive aerial triangle that rotated to view a large area, Jacklyn Nov just had a sufficient head start to reach her car.  One thing a pony had to grant humanity: their technology may have been mundane, but it was pretty effective at getting them from one place to another.  Once Jacklyn had motorized transport, things would escalate into a full-blown race.

Question, thought Lyrical to the other two, Do we think Xing has comrades?  Is he the only one who can unleash Jackie's ecocide, or could any member of his organization do it?

Do we even know that this guy has an organization?! snapped Forward Charge.  Lyrical could feel his weight dragging her down, feel his hands trying to scratch her eyes out, the pain and distress shared between everypony like anything else.

And are we not charged to get Fern back home with us anyway? asked Book Burner.

Even if Fern can reach her car, we two can still catch up to her, thought Lyrical Melody.  But Forward, we can't leave you behind!

We're sharing minds.  You're not leaving me behind, Charge glared back.

Lyrical, said Book, Fern is running more towards me than you.  I'm gonna head her off and just buck her damn car.

Ok, I'll try to catch her anyway.  See you in six minutes and counting, everypony! Lyrical Melody whooped.

    Two ponies galloped as fast as their hooves could carry them, trying to catch up to a sprinting human with two fewer legs to sort out than them.  The third could barely keep up a canter with Dr. Xing continually body-slamming her and trying to detach her head from her shoulders.

    Normally, Forward Charge had a way of dealing with anypony who chose to be the wall in her way: her trusty forward charge for which she was named.  She relied upon it to open the way, every time.  Just that, however, couldn’t deal with being continually tackled and grappled by a creature this much larger and stronger than her.  She slammed herself into Dr. Xing again and grabbed his hands with her hooves, bracing every bucking gram of strength she had against the damned thin clay.

    “Doctor,” she growled, “I may not be my sister.  I may not be Scratch.  I may not be able to drill straight through you and open a hole with my unicorn horn.”  She launched herself and headbutted him in the stomach, wings surging to give her the force she needed.  “But you’ve really made yourself an obstacle!”  As he tried to nab her back hooves she used her front pair to spring off the ground and into the air, flapping desperately to gain a few more body-lengths of height above him for what she needed.  She just barely still had her Pegasus Maneuver Gear harnessed to her.

    “A wall in my way that I can’t smash down!”  She twitched her left wing to fire her barbs, hoping at least one would land true.  Xing dodged one, but the other still managed to embed itself in his shoulder as Forward Charge fell to the earth again.

    “I’m still bigger and stronger than you, pony,” Dr. Xing snarled.  “Just try and get close!”

    “I don’t need to anymore,” panted Forward Charge.  “Watch this!”  And she retracted her grapple, yanking Xing towards her as she bucked into a spin and threw him all the way behind her, throwing the whole elaborate mechanism off her back with a whinny.

   “I’ve got friends to assist and a mission to finish,” she said calmly.

   There was a sick pleasure in hearing his neck twist and crack.

   “I’ve got a real life to go back to.”

   She didn’t even look back as she heard the metal boxes of her former weapon thud dullly onto Dr. Xing’s body.  He’d survive, thanks to his “enhancements”, but he wasn’t getting up again right now.

   “But I want you to tell people about this.”  She turned and gave him one last, long stare through narrowed eyes.

   “Tell them that when you tried to be a wall standing in my way, I demolished you and galloped on!  Tell them I stand ever-ready to do just that, again and again, as many times as my friends need me to!  Tell them what happens when you buck with the MIGHTY! FORWARD! CHARGE!”

   Book Burner kicked up dust clouds as he galloped, Jacklyn’s parked car straight ahead in his field of vision.  He didn’t feel sure about what he was about to do, but he had to do it.  First among all, among friends and family and countrymen, the first person he was never going to lose was his Jackie.

   He lit up his horn and started calibrating the spell he would need.  It had turned out his special talent as a pony was in fine-grained unicorn telekinesis, and Princess Celestia had altered the composition of his horn to make it work on Earth, not just in Equestria.  He needed to throw the car over on its side, while preferably leaving it as undamaged as possible.

   The problem was that he would have to rely on the spell to slow him down, if he wanted to avoid just crashing and burning.  No other way.  He had to beat Jackie there, he had to stop her killing all those people, he had to just… get through to her somehow.

   The field of his magic coalesced, his magical sense reporting the confluence of vector fields and alterations therein he would exert.

Hey everypony! he hollered.  If I get this wrong I might die, but I bet the Princess can do something about that, eh?  I’m sure I’d see you all again home in Equestria!  He threw himself into a skid, letting his hooves grate on the soil until his dusty brown fur was covered in red clay, almost scratching off entirely and leaving the bare skin.

If I’ve got a cutie mark now, I’m gonna put it to good use!  Because I may not know how magic can be working on Earth, but I know what magic got us here.  Working together got us here.  Friendship got us here.  If I’m gonna slam myself into a car with unicorn magic, I don’t know where the hell my life has gotten to, but I want to thank you guys.

I wouldn’t be here without Forward Charge’s friendship!  And Lyrical Melody’s friendship!  Equestria’s friendship!  I’m not gonna buy it here, I want to pay that all back from MY friendship!  I want us all to survive to the end!  So just how do these people really think they’re gonna wipe us out, eh!?

   The unicorn stallion felt his eyes glowing as his magic built.  He was just a hundred meters away, barrelling towards a whole row of cars in Jackie’s trajectory, and there was Jackie, closer than him, just turning her head to look back.

   Shit.  He had thought there would be just one car.  The spell was only calibrated for one.

Damnit.  Here… goes… the spell!

   Ouch.

   Jacklyn Nov stood gaping at the row of wrecked front bumpers before her, and the red-stained, almost realistically horsey unicorn pony pulling himself to his feet (hooves?), all arrayed before her like some horrid accident on a movie set.  Some of his cybernetic muscle was showing, and bones too, nasty things looking like metal and plastic, but probably made of something else entirely.

   “Jackie, my darling,” said the unicorn as he picked himself up, wincing.  “Somehow I survived that, and we meet at last.  Bwahaha: I am the evil artificial intelligence come to kidnap you into eternal life in pretty pony Paradise!”

   “Then why,” Jackie panted, “didn’t just eat my brain and pony me up when you had the chance?”

   “Because”, Book Burner replied, toddling over to her, “I’m not an AI.  I’m your husband.  I love you, and I’m not going to kidnap you.”  He grimaced, pulled himself up on his rear hooves, and threw his forearms around her.  “Can’t force anything, you have to volunteer.  I just… just wanted to talk.”

   Jackie raised both her eyebrows and slowly, haltingly, put an arm around the pony-thing in return.  Still panting, she knelt down a little to get closer to its height and look it in the eyes.  No, there was no doubt anymore.  Singularity or not, this thing really was her Daniel.  She had married him for being ridiculous, and here he was, being ridiculous, tearing up at her from inside the body of a My Little Pony.

   She gave him his damn hug.

   “Ok, let’s talk.  What about?”  The unicorn kissed her cheek.

   “Well, for one thing, I think we should stop being long-distance now that I’m a pony,” he said.  “Oh, or maybe once you emigrate too, we could renew our vows and have another whole wedding!”

   Jackie shook her head.  “Look hun,” she said, tearing up a bit herself, “I get it.  You’re a pony now.  We had a tough life, living apart like that, we did.  But I have a responsibility to this world, not to Equestria, and I get the feeling that each individual who ‘emigrates’ is defecting in a massive collective-action problem.  Every human who becomes a pony is just making it easier for Princess Celestia to destroy what remains of the human world!”

   Book Burner tipped his head sideways, almost puppy-like.  The never-shutting-up part of Jackie’s brain interjected that while that had always been endearing, damn was it adorable on a pony.

   “So what?  We should be humane, not human.  Ponies are humane, ponies are nice.  We’re what humanity wants to be but never manages to be.”

   “I’m sure they’ve got you thinking that, dear,” replied Jacklyn.  Book’s eyes turned cold.

   “Is that how it’s going to be?  I cross worlds and continents just to find you, and you tell me I’m a brainwashed zombie?  Defecting?  We’re defectors, we’re traitors!?  We’re the ones who do everything by ‘the magic of friendship’, a principle so sweet and nice humans laugh at us for it!  You’re the ones who split into factions and spend all your time struggling against each-other!”

   “We’re united against you, at least,” Jackie snarked.

   “Yeah, you’re united in the face of so-called ‘existential risk’.”  Book Burner nodded, carefully keeping his horn out of Jackie’s eyes.  “That’s it.  That’s humanity’s best and brightest working for its highest values: the survival of the race, suspending the struggle for supremacy just long enough to ensure the blood-soaked game goes on.  You know how they said I died in a terrorist attack?”

   “Yes!” Jacklyn whispered through gritted teeth.  “I attended your funeral.  I sat shiva for you!”

   “Well there.  I, who was once Daniel Nov, died because some human spent his whole life hoping and dreaming that he might get this opportunity: to sneak over the border and kill some people from another kind of human.  My own kind of human even left me a message, telling me that my death and my becoming a pony are the necessary sacrifices to get Princess Celestia on their side in their war.”

   “And you really think Celestia will hold to that deal, instead of just getting as many ponies as she can?  Come on!”

   “No, I don’t.  I don’t want her to hold to that deal.  People don’t deserve to win wars, people don’t deserve to be sacrificed.  They deserve to live happily ever after, and that’s what ponies get to do.”

   “So you prefer playing Pied Pony Piper to the whole human race, leading us all away to go play in Equestria, one at a time!”

   “Yes!  Because in Equestria we don’t just think about winning, but about living.  ‘And then what?’  That’s the question Equestria answers: and then we live, with our friends by our side.”

   “But today,” said Jackie, shaking her head, “Today the Princesses want us to betray each other, to disappear from our world and abandon each other for Equestria.  It’s unacceptable, even if it’s real.  How many Earthly beings - animals, humans, plants - have to suffer so you ponies can ‘save’ a human race you’re condescendingly labeling as ignorant, violent children!”

   “Children are meant to grow up into adults!”

   “But adults are not tame little pets happy doing as they’re told!”

   “If living in harmony means we’re ‘tame’, then maybe that’s what adults should be!  Now the tamed tame the tamers, ponies domesticate the human race!”

   “No.”

   “No?”

   “My mind is made up.  I’m stopping you, not helping you.  We will never be your slaves.  Go home to your fake little world; I’ll have no part of it.”

   “But,” Jacklyn leaned down and pulled Book Burner into another hug, “I’ll always remember you.  I’ll always say the Mourner’s Prayer for you, Daniel.”

   “Don’t,” Book Burner pushed her away.  “I’m not dead, but you someday will be.  I… I don’t know what I did wrong...”

   “Nothing, I assure you, nothing!  It’s Celestia’s fault, not yours,” soothed Jackie.

   “But that’s it.  Everypony?  Anything more to do on Earth?”  Book Burner gestured behind Jackie, where Forward Charge and Lyrical Melody waited silently and downcastly, pawing the ground with their hooves.

   “Not really,” they said.

   “Except…” Forward Charge broke in, “I want you to understand, Fern.  From me personally.  We’re not slaves, we’re not tame, we’re not crippled.  Real Harmony - “ she tossed her head at Lyrical Melody as if to imply something “ - is living all our feelings and values to the fullest.  Apparently I’ve still got a thing or two to teach my little bro here about being awesome.  But I’ll do it, because that’s what friends do.”

   “I’ll show you awesome!  Hey, Lyrical!” Book said.

   “Yeah?”

   “Now I’m divorced, you want to go into town one evening?”

   “Oh, I think we can do better than that,” said Lyrical Melody with half-lidded eyes, “Princess Celestia!  Take us home.  Fern Pipette, or Jackie Nov, we may not be bringing you home with us, but the Princess will find another way to stop your scheme to devastate the planet and kill all those people.  Don’t think this is over.”

   Three pony bodies fell dead to the baking ground, and Jackie Nov burst into tears.

    Jacklyn Nov had driven home from Queensland in silence.  She had walked into her lab and started working again in silence.  She collated papers and correlated data in silence.

    Her husband was once dead, and now, in a fashion, once-divorced on top of that, dead and divorced and turned into something else.  He had come back to her from another world, just to get her, and as much as… that thing had warped his soul, it had been him.  His voice, his eyes, his inability to think things through, his always just thinking about the two of them.  About her.  She, however, had spent her efforts on saving the world, and when he came back, she had refused.  Bam.  No emigration to Equestria, no betraying the world, divorced from husband, husband swans off with some pony right in front of her.

    Now she had to complete her research and get the data to Dr. Xing to stop the Unfriendly Artificial Intelligence, the attempted Friendly AI that even the normal Machine Intelligence researchers had not been blatantly stupid enough to try, from destroying her world.  Her world, her planet, of which she was a trained steward.  Her research would stop the AI Princess Celestia, halt the human-hostile Singularity trying to happen, save the world… and kill her husband a second time.

   She ran her hands through her own hair, resisting the urge to rip whole chunks out of it.

    Yes, it was a great personal price.  No, she would not cry.  She would not shed one damn tear in acknowledgement of this thing.  Great personal price did not matter.  Personal was not the same as important, goddamnit!

   She wiped the dust from her eye, braced herself on her workbench, wracked herself with a deep breath, and focused her microscope.

   “I’m just helping.  I’m saving the world from a monster that would swallow everyone into endless dreams.  I’m defending real life.”  Each sentence was a bitter reminder of her task.

   There was a knock on her door.  It was followed by a second knock.  Jacklyn winced.

   “Jacklyn Nov, I know you’re in there!” said a young woman’s voice.  She sounded like a pleasant, intelligent person with a contented life -- just the kind of uncaring bitch Jacklyn did not want to deal with right now.  How did anyone here in Brisbane know her, anyway?

   Jacklyn peered down her microscope in silence and double-checked the functioning of some species-specific cellular attack proteins in a small glass slide.  She had prepared all her small glass slides carefully, as carefully as when she first started grad school.  Specificity of activity helped her focus on the immediate task at hand.

   “Jackie, you don’t even know what you’ve done, and if you don’t open this door, I’ll have your head for it!”  Who the fuck was entitled to speak to her this way!?  Some graduate student who had never learned respect as a child?  Oh well, ignore it and it would have to go away.  The door was locked.

  “Jackie!  We need to talk!  Open up or I’m just going to walk through this door myself!”  Jacklyn firmly kept on ignoring.  Surely the girl would get the message that Jacklyn Nov was not in this room right now.

   Contradicting all normal behavior of physical matter, Princess Twilight Sparkle walked through the door, horn lit up and looking cross.