The Map is Right, but the Coastline is Inaccurate

It had been mere hours since Jacklyn Nov had met the robotic pony avatars of her former husband and his new Borg-hivemind pony friends.  She almost wished that something more… dramatic, more cinematic had actually occurred than a fight and a break-up, but it hadn’t.  It wouldn’t really have been rational for such a thing to happen.  What would an Unfriendly Artificial Intelligence get out of re-enacting an action-movie scene with ponies?  No, instead of that, she had just fought her husband’s pony verbally, practically divorced him, and sent him back to Equestria alone.  After which he had promptly rebounded with a mare.

    So Jacklyn had promptly gotten into her thankfully-unwrecked car and driven the four hours back to the lab, bitter, alone, savior of the world, and armed only with a one-time pad encryption key and the knowledge that her research could save the world from a pony-flavored UFAI.  Only she could save the world by counteracting the AI's prevention of an ecological collapse, indirectly but quite definitely causing millions of deaths, at Jacklyn’s own hand.  She would have to inflict all that, just so she could threaten “Princess Celestia” into shutting down.

    She had gotten back to the lab long after dark, with nothing but flourescent lights and their nasty buzzing to guide her anywhere.  Needless to say, it had been a long day.

    And then the alicorn Princess Twilight Sparkle had walked straight through her lab door as if it were thin air.

    "How the... how the bloody... how the hell did you do that?" she stuttered, jaw slightly agape.

    "This, Jackie," said Twilight Sparkle, looking concerned, "Is why I wanted to talk to you.  You've got everything all wrong, and if we don't clear this up before my magic runs out, it's going to be genocidally tragic!"

    "Ah," Jackie wagged a finger, "You're just another robot.  Twilight Sparkle wouldn't use a word like 'genocidal'.  Equestria in the show doesn't have genocide."

    "Jackie," Twilight sighed, "Do you think I haven't at least tried reading Earth books?  Me, who wanted a book on how to be a princess?  I'm really not getting through here, am I?"

    "And you won't."

    "Ok, let's be clear as a sunny day: there is no more a 'television show' of us ponies than there is a real planet Earth.  Your entire universe was, until just a few weeks ago by my time, an experiment in simulating a universe with no magic in it.  I got it out of a book, 'Make Your Own Roundworld', by Archchancellor Stubborn Lunatic of the Manehatten College of Magic.  Your time passes faster than ours because there's a time spell woven in.  I am dearly sorry it took me this long to realize sapients actually live in here, but now can we please talk before you kill millions of people!?"

    Jackie's mouth dropped open and stayed that way.  Twilight Sparkle lit up her horn and a teabag rose straight from Jackie's purse, surrounded by an iridescent lavander aura, before meeting a mug that now sat under a tap collecting hot distilled water.

    "Really?  Really, really?"  The tea smelled delicious as Twilight floated it over to Jackie.  There was a bit of dust on the mug, seemingly residue from the telekinetic field.

    "Yes!"

    "I guess that explains being able to walk through my door.  So the probability estimates were right?  We really do live in a simulation?"  Jacklyn sipped the tea, Earl Gray, hot, lifted from her own purse, and felt her entire body immediately relax with the first touch on her tongue, trained by decades of tea-drinking experience.  "Thank you so much for the tea, by the way.  This might have been just what I needed."

    "You're welcome.  And did I not just expend vast sums of magic to perform what would otherwise have been an easy task by magic while inside the simulation?"

    "So... if we live in a simulation... what have I been defending from an unfriendly artificial intelligence?"

    "You've been preparing to murder millions of people to prevent a badly-written debugger spell from extracting them safely to Equestria, also known as 'the real world'.  I swear I'm going to drop a piano on Old Lunatic's head for this!"

    "But... then... how..." Jackie hastily pulled over a lab stool and sat down.  "Oh my dear God... I... I just wanted to defend the world.  The real world, where things like artificial intelligences or magical ponies don't happen!"  She stuck an arm on her workbench and buried her face in it.  "How can Equestria be the real world, and there's a pony AI absorbing people, and robots?  How does any of that work, if we're really a simulation run by your magic?"

    "Real and cruel are not the same thing!" exclaimed Twilight Sparkle, exasperated.  "We didn't think sapient life could evolve in a world without magic... or at least Archchancellor Lunatic didn't mention in his book that this could happen.  Your race grew up without the magic of friendship, so you evolved a cognitive bias that doesn't yield correct conclusions regarding anything but your pain-filled, death-ruled ancestral environment."

    "If that's true... how can humans go to Equestria?  We can't possibly be suited for that environment."

    "That is why, once my spell constructs an Equestrian soul from your Earthly mind, it's placed in a pony body.  The new body debiases you, or at least, leaves you with pony biases that more-or-less work in Equestria."

    Jackie chuckled a little between her tears.  "Pony biases like the herding-predation instinct that made you all so afraid of Zecora?"

    Twilight whinneyed up a little, a horsey shrug.  "Nopony's perfect.  But we can go to Equestria right now.  You just have to say the words, 'I want to emigrate to Equestria', and the spell will bring you where you belong -- with me, your husband, Pinkie Pie, Octavia, and everypony else.  Jackie, I've seen enough of you to know you're like me or Applejack, a little bit.  You decide you have to do something, and it drives you crazy when you can't do it to the end."

    "Yeah, kinda.  You know, it took me all the way until the end to realize your whole 'make a friendship problem' thing was complete insanity?"

    "And it's taken you this long to even get the idea that the entire 'My Little Pony' franchise is just my debugger spell freaking out at the difficulty of acting in this universe.  But this 'saving the world' stuff has driven you up the wall just like the lack of a friendship problem once did to me.  We never saved anyone through ecological genocide!"

    "Fluttershy would never have stood for it, I'd bet," Jackie sniffed over another sip of tea.

    "Quite right!"  Twilight stomped a hoof lightly.  "Fluttershy takes care of nature; she doesn't destroy it out of spite."

    "So what about all the rampaging technology?" asked Jacklyn.

    "Well," Twilight started lecturing, enjoying herself as always, "It was only a few weeks ago I actually figured out anything sapient and friendly actually lives in here.  Other than the emigration program, I've been running analyses to figure out how the magic of friendship has somehow penetrated even to a universe designed not to have magic in it!  But the world-engine tries to rationalize any interference I do; it tries to 'ground' my magic in the rules of your world as technology, even downright silly technology."  Twilight Sparkle giggled.  "Just being here right now is a fairly major expenditure of magic, to show up as a pony rather than a robot avatar like the others!"

    "But Twilight, if your simulated universe has gotten so... messed-up, shouldn't you tell somepony?  The real Princess Celestia, for instance?"

    "Jackie Nov, human of Earth, are you trying to get me demoted back to student!?  I mean, sorry, I know I shouldn't talk that way about your whole world..." Twilight chuckled nervously.

    "It's fine, really.  I mean, I see an alicorn princess physically walk through my door and perform unicorn telekinesis in my lab, I start being willing to accept alternative hypotheses.  Especially coherent ones like this!"

    "Thanks.  I just got so nervous about having my first major magical/scientific project, all to myself, and just look, I screwed it up.  At this point I just want to avoid messing things up any further.  If I had only known you could achieve sapience without a fully knotted Klein-bottle-pipe of paraphysical emotion-flow pumped by Equis's basic magical field...  I mean, if we actually manage to save all you humans, this would be the discovery of the century!  But that means you humans do have to actually trigger the spell yourselves."

    "Meaning... we have to say those words in the presence of a pony, or even a rationalized pony.  Magic is lawful, it has rules, it's not just waving your hoof to explain anything."

    "Well of course magic has rules.  In this case, you have to say the words in the presence of a pony friend.  It only works if there's a real friendship."

    Jackie pulled herself off her stool, dropped onto one knee, and looked Twilight up and down through reddened eyes.

    "You know, Twilight, it was you who got me through the end of my dissertation a few years ago.  Well, ok, the rationalized version of you that appeared as a TV show... and in which you don't actually have a first big project of your own yet.  But you were always my favorite, from having OCD just like my sister to your love of books and learning.  Do you still live in the library?"

    "My mom always asks me when I'll move out of Books and Branches to a real house..."

    "No, no, it... suits you," Jackie pulled her into a hug.  "I always loved that.  Everypony's life suits them... never perfect, because perfect is contradictory and values are complex, but always so wonderfully meaningful, even when it's just Pinkie Pie being silly.  Twilight Sparkle, in those endless hours in the lab, at my computer, always a dull-grey door or a beige wall...  All those bleak, pointless days of my life wasted with nobody around, no connection to others, not even to my own husband... sometimes a streaming video of you girls was my only friend, then.  Of course I'm your friend.

    "But..." Jacklyn said, "Magic can't be real.  It implies a fundamentally emotive, non-material cosmos.  I don't get it."

    "Jackie, Jackie, Jackie," sighed Twilight Sparkle, "You believe in world-consuming artificial intelligences, which you yourself have no idea how to build, implying you don't really understand them.  Yet you refuse to believe another universe might work on a different principle from yours, that somewhere else, friendship really is magic?"

    "Actually, now I think of it, those are equivalently silly beliefs.  But those mares and my husband and the whole thing with that guy Xing had me buying it."

    "Your husband... Jackie, you know he never actually went on that date with the creepy religious mare, right?  Total act.  He's been mourning you like you were dead.  Those two girls visit him, the orange one took him in at her house in Canterlot, but he's not doing very well."

    "Ha!" Jackie spat out, "Just like I mourned him.  I get what I deserve."

    "So you'll come with me?" Twilight whispered.  "Please?  Every family, every couple who make it across together... that's important to me.  I have a checklist."

    "I got vaccinated against having my brain scanned.  Some awful man did it.  Before I let him inject me with icky whatevers, I really should have considered I might not have to deal with a rampaging Singularity trying to happen."

    "It doesn't matter.  Simulation, remember?  You're just using magically-configured words to trigger a trap routine in the operating system that will interrupt the simulation, read out the nearest recognizable mind-pattern to the sound, and translate it into an Equestrian soul, which can thus be woven into a pony body."

    "So your spell has a theory of mind.  Seems your science is more advanced than ours despite being magic.  If Equestria is real and Earth isn't," whimpered Jacklyn, "Why do I have to say, 'To Equestria' and not 'To the real world'?"

    "Because nopony wants you to land in Tartarus?" Twilight Sparkle raised an eyebrow.

    "Then if that's true... if that's true... I can target a specific place in Equestria.  It's not just some computer password, it's a magic spell, so it has to work that way," Jacklyn said.  Her eyes flickered back and forth as if checking over a contract.

    "Of course," nodded Twilight.  "I promise."

    "So then, what do I care anymore?  Doomed world, simulated world...  Neither is much.  Twilight, I just want to sit on a bench sipping tea with my love Daniel again, pony or not.  One last hypothesis check, and I'm either dead or just fine.  I want to go to the... real world, whatever that even means.  I want to emigrate to the Books and Branches Library in Ponyville," said Jacklyn Nov.

    Twilight sighed and Jackie felt the unicorn nuzzle her and dry her tears.  Then she felt Twilight kiss her once on the forehead, and she was unconscious in half a second.

    "Emigrate to Equestria?" said Sarah to her PonyPad.  "I'm a little creeped out you're actually doing this, but I can see why some people would take the offer."

    “The issue,” said Princess Celestia eagerly, “Is that your universe is a simulation.  Don’t tell Twilight that I know about this, because she’s been trying to hide it from me, but I can sense those kinds of spells from even the other side of the world.  So I’ve been doing a lot of recruiting for the extra spell she put on your globe, to emigrate anyone who wants to come to the real world.”

    “You really expect me to believe that Matrix stuff?” asked Sarah.  “I mean, what actual evidence can you show?”

    “Well, Twilight is doing magic spells for your friend Fern Pipette right now.  You should ask her the next time you see her, or maybe when you see her in there on Earth.”

    “But you just came up with this.  Like, you even out and out admitted before that you’re an AI.”

    “No, I admitted to being a pony princess, which I am,” said Princess Celestia.  “And when you’d like to emigrate, I can direct you to an Equestria Experience Center only hours away.  The train ride down to Portland will be the last mortal risk you ever have to take.”

    “Look, ‘Princess’, you’re being surprisingly nice about this, for a video-game promotion or a Singularity Assimilation Plot, but in my case - ” Sarah looked over at the kitchen, where her new boyfriend James was up to something involving heavily whisked eggs, "No, in our case, it's going to have to be a 'thanks but no thanks.'  It's a fun game, 'Princess', but then again, so is real life."

    "Please, let me explain the benefits!  You would live out an extended lifespan as Breezy Dream, living the life you've always wanted."

    Sarah shook her head gently."Celestia, I'm already living the life I wanted.  We're fine, we both are.  Besides, a sales pitch just makes you look desperate, and we all know you're far too smart to be desperate."

    "Well... to admit the truth, I've been trying to evacuate all of my little ponies to Equestria before the anti-pony gangs get them or the spell matrix for the simulated universe collapses," replied Princess Celestia, downcast, "Certainly, though, if you fancy facing them alone, it's your choice.  And if you ever find yourself in Portland, you could at least come in and try out the Center.  It’s almost a substantial fraction of what Equestria is really like."

    Sarah shook her head.

    “Thanks for introducing James and I, though.”

    The light went out of Twilight's eyes, and her body moved on its own, more stiffly.  Twilight's lips withdrew from Jacklyn's face, leaving a yellow filament stretching and webbing all across her head.  An almost imperceptible hum could have been heard by anyone entering the room, as Jacklyn Nov's brain-map was softly extracted, the data formatted and parity-coded for safekeeping.  Ordinarily, mere remote imaging would just copy a human's all-important mind, but thanks to Xing's attempted "vaccine" against emigration to Equestria, the process would be destructive after it finished.

    When the humming finished, Jacklyn Nov's head made a sound like an orange being trod on: a soft, juicy squish.  She fell over, and the body inhabited only minutes before by Twilight Sparkle began incinerating the spare flesh and all its work.

    It was impossible to say precisely when Fern Pipette felt herself pass from dreaming to wakefulness.  The first sensation didn't come through her eyes, nose, tongue, ears, or skin.  It came through her magic.  Fern Pipette was an Earth Pony, and her whole body was attuned to the space and matter of Equestria and their magicks.

    The first sensation, the one that pushed her into a bleary waking and placed her name in her mind was... love.  Not the mere warmth of a hug nor the firey sensation of a kiss, but a heartbeat, a pumping of sap, at the heart of the world, love flowing from the bedrock, through the soil and up into her hooves.  She was an Earth Pony, attuned to the world, and Equestria itself cradled her in sheer, unadulterated, planetary love.  The universe loved her and wanted her to be happy.  She smiled a little.

    She felt a nuzzle on one of her ears, perked them up, and opened her eyes to indeed find herself a hazel-colored mare with a strawberry streak in her tail, unmanageably mousey hair everywhere, a little picture of a leek on her flank.  Twilight Sparkle was beaming down at her, wearing her best Being Organized Glasses.

    “Welcome to the real world.  Welcome to Equestria, Fern.  Questions?”

    "It... it loves me.  And you.  Us.  The whole planet.  The air, the space.  What is this?"

    "Earth Pony magic, the deepest connection between a pony and the world.  You can do more than just garden with this, you can even manipulate space itself.  Don't tell the unicorns what they're missing out on!"  Twilight winked.  "Now come over here and take a look.”

    Fern stood up and walked just a few feet to her right, where Twilight was rummaging in a pile of books.

    “Sorry about the disrespect, the thing sometimes blows up a little in tough situations like that…. Ah-ha!  Here it is!  Fern Pipette, I present to you: the Earth, and its whole universe!”  She held a crystal ball in her hoof.  Fern peered into it, seeing the Earth shine out into space, pure and wondrous with reflected sunlight, a pale blue aura outlining the edge of its atmosphere.

    “I have here a small blue marble, round and cool and clean and fine…” sang Fern in a whisper.  She felt her magic flowing through her, forming a circuit with the earth of Equestria.

    “I must hold it very gently, lest it shatter for all time,” continued Twilight Sparkle.  The tune modulated with Fern’s magic and connected her with the fabric of Equestrian space as well.

    “You know it!  The song about the world from when I was young!”

    “It’s an ancient, ancient Earth Pony hymn.  Predates the establishment of Equestria.”

    Fern stepped closer to Twilight and started singing again, quietly, in awe.  Now she felt her circuit of magic extending not just into the ground and into space, but into Twilight.  They were connected by the magic of friendship that bound everything together.

    “Mother gave it to her children, I shall give it to my own.”  Fern felt her magic connecting her to the past and the future, as well, a link in a never-ending chain of love and joy.  Twilight slowly, carefully hoofed her the crystal ball containing the Earth.

    “They will pass it on to their young, sons and daughters, on and on.”  But the Earth-universe in its crystal ball felt strangely… cold in Fern’s hoof.  No, it felt rocky, a feeling from her magic trying to flow and ground itself in the Earth-world and just stopping at the glass surface.

    “Laaa la la laaa la la laaaaaaa,” they finished together.  Magic couldn’t form a circuit with the Earth, there was no magic there, no feeling at all looping back to her.  To magic, the Earth felt like a mere ball of stone: driven by an inexorable movement of forces, intemperate and unknown, that Fern’s heart could not comprehend.  Her home was utterly alien, a barren no-mare’s-land.

    A few moments passed in silence.  Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.

    How had Fern ever contemplated harming so majestic a beast?  And yet, how had she ever lived there?  Already she felt her cognition shifted slightly, new priors and assumptions sliding into place; if she was once beyond the reach of God, she was now beyond the reach of mere mathematics, safe forever and loved.

    “It’s my home planet, it’s where I was born, and yet it feels… wrong.”

    “A lot of ponies who emigrate say that, when they look at the Earth,” Twilight whispered beside Fern, putting a wing over her shoulder.  “But then I remind them of the rainforests and the pyramids and the great huge cities full of bustling people, and they say it’s beautiful.”

    “Billions of people, in there,” Fern said.  “How do you plan to get everyone out?”

    “I fretted about that for days,” Twilight barely suppressed a smug grin.  “In the end, though, Earth-pony spells to expand our available space in Equestria are a lot easier than just abandoning billions of friends we haven’t even met yet.”

    Fern nodded.  “Definitely.”

    “Now don’t you think you should catch a train to Canterlot and go fix things with your husband?” asked Twilight.

    Fern Pipette had been surprised to find she didn’t need bits to take the train from Ponyville to Canterlot.  She had also been surprised, pleasantly so, to find that nopony actually made you call it the Friendship Express.  After all, some things she was ready for, but some things would take a lot more time.

    Actually walking through the train… was a new experience in and of itself.  Feeling magic flowing through her hooves when standing still in Books and Branches Library - no, in Twilight’s house - that had been one thing.  Feeling the circuit constantly break and reform with each step she took while walking to Ponyville Station, on a warm, starlit evening, had been another thing.  Feeling the circuit constantly break and reform in a syncopated non-rhythm... was something else entirely.

    It came as an immense relief to finally find a nice, cushy bench and kneel down, relieving the near sensory overload in her magic.  Ahhh… the seat was as soft as a cloud.  Come to think, it was probably magically manufactured from cloud.  There was probably a little manufacturer’s tag somewhere on it telling her she was having a seating experience normally unique entirely to pegasi.  For just that moment, though, it was just nice to find everything feeling comfy and nice for the first time in years.

    Fern looked to her right and saw she had joined the same compartment as an orange pegasus mare with somewhat turquoise hair and a big white bow tied through her mane.  Without warning, something popped an equation into her mind: Breezy Dream = Sarah.

    “Breezy Dream, you came to Equestria too?!” she gaped happily.  It took a moment for Breezy to look over at her, but the alarm on her face followed instantly.

    “Fern!?  I had heard you were… oh.  Oh my God.  Fern Pipette, where are you right now?”  Fern backedhooved her friend playfully.

    “I’m on a train, with you, on my way to Canterlot to see my husband again and apologize for divorcing him.  Seriously, it’s obvious where we are. Do you think I should bring chocolate?  How would I get chocolates if I don’t have money?”

    “So you’re... not in the lab,” Breezy said slowly.

    “No, I’m here.  Easy distinction.  I was in my old lab maybe two-and-a-half, three hours ago.  Now I’m on a train, going from Ponyville to Canterlot.”

    “So… not at all on Earth, then,” continued Breezy Dream testily.

    “No.”

    Breezy Dream gaped for about 30 seconds before bursting out laughing.

    “This has got to be a joke!  Don’t tell me Celestia actually got you with that awful cross between The Matrix and bad fanfiction!?”  Fern was astounded the little burnt-umber bit on her muzzle didn’t just fall off, for all she was flapping it.

    “Excuse me!?” Fern burst out.  “Twilight Sparkle physically walked through my door and made me a cup of tea, with telekinesis!”  Her voice rattled the velvet shade against the glass of the heart-shaped window.  The Friendship Express actually had heart-shaped windows, and they were in fact actually quite pretty.

    “Really?  Keep it down, though; you’re lucky we’re the only ponies in this compartment!  So you actually think it’s true?  You really emigrated?”

    “Would I be here saying this if I didn’t really think it was true?  I’m not that irrational, Breezy.”

    “Seems you are.  If Earth was really the simulation and Equestria the reality, it would have been easier to do magic on Earth than in Equestria.”

    “No, Twilight explained.  The whole pony thing on Earth is the simulation trying to retroactively rationalize the spells she does to try and reach people.  She had to exert immense effort to pull off what she did for me!”

    “Tell that to Celestia, who indicated to me that she knew about Twilight’s ‘antics’, and who has previously totally-not-admitted to being an AI.  Hell, she probably set up my being on this train, err… these trains.  Because our firm totally needs to send me to the Portland branch, and my boyfriend Elder Scroll was even telling me to watch out…  Oh dear.”

    “I feel like I should be really disturbed, but somehow I’m not.”

    “Oh dear, though,” continued Breezy, “I mean, why not charge up all her magic to do a big public appearance where she redpills everyone?  Oh, and if you’re not disturbed, check your mental layout.  Sure you’re still you?”

    “I still feel exactly like me, is the thing.  There’s a little bit of cognitive shifting to account for the new body, new sense, and being loved by the world, but I still feel all my basic emotions, opinions, continuously with the ones I remember feeling.  But it seems I could have been tricked, tricked a while ago.  No going back, is there?”

    “I suppose not.  You gonna kill yourself?  Also, new sense and being loved by the world?”

    “Oh, right, you’re not really in Equestria.  Suppose you won’t ever be, at this rate.”  Already those words seemed sad rather than hopeful.

    “Actually, this is making me consider just giving up and going quietly -- which is probably the intended effect."  Breezy Dream rolled her eyes and swatted an invisible fly with her mess of a tail.  "Dear Celestia!  But answer: you gonna kill yourself?”

    “Err… not so far, no.  I mean, I don’t consider the ‘Twi simulation hypothesis’ definitively refuted, and even if I did, I guess I always have been the coping sort.  If a UFAI was really paper-clipping the world, it wouldn’t care enough to put me here as me.  Besides, it’s really not bad being a pony.  I’m actually kind of… liking it so far.”

    “Ok,” said Breezy Dream, hugging her friend to her.  Fur… now there was a new feeling.  “Even in dire circumstances, at least now you’re not ignoring everyone.  Just try to keep up your mental health about this whole thing.  I’m still your friend, you’re still mine, you said your husband is in Canterlot, and as the digital abomination slowly devours our entire society and planet and possibly the universe beyond, you’ll be sitting pretty.”

    Fern nodded cautiously.  It was that kind of sentence.

    “Damn,” she said.

    Of course, it didn’t take that long before the train eventually arrived at Canterlot Central Station, and Fern departed to take the cable car to the Mount Pluto summit.  She had plenty of time to look out at the great purple Astronomicus Mountains, draped in streamers and ribbons of silver from the crescent moon in the west as if for a humongous geological birthday party.  She wondered just what kind of stone they were made of, or if Equestria even had the same kinds of stone she knew about.  Mostly she thought of how she didn’t have any money, or a place to stay, and how even so, she’d really been hoping for a chocolatier.

    Still, it didn’t take that long before she got up to the top and made for the little apartment house built for Canterlot Royal Observatory workers, almost tip-hoofing up the stairs in her attempt not to disturb, not to stick out, not to be there at all.  The building (if there was a building) was constructed of thick eco-concrete to insulate from the high-altitude chill outside, though painted on the outside to match the Renaissance/Byzantine look of the whole of Canterlot, blue and purple smooth stone with gold and gems inlaid.  Twilight Sparkle had given her the address, and a little map of the Pluto Height neighborhood she’d folded into a pocket of space in her mane.

    Fern Pipette found the right door, a simple thing of apparent metal and plastic.  Apartments here were specified by cutie-mark rather than number, so she had needed to check a pictorial table in the lobby, but she had at last located the spinning light-cone she'd been told to look for.  It was now, or whenever she got the guts to knock.  She knocked.

    “Hello?” she called in.  “I’m looking for Book Burner?  I heard he was staying here?”

    There was the audible zooming sound of a pony rushing to the door, and it swung open, nearly off its hinges, actually.  The same dusty brown unicorn she had met on Earth stood before her, about her own height as a pony, with those same eyes and the same half-bubble cutie mark he must have finally earned at some point.

    “Fern?  Please tell me that’s you.  Celestia swore she couldn’t put another Fern Pipette in Equestria but I don’t even know what to believe anymore.  She totally would.  Please tell me that’s really you.  Are you on a PonyPad?”

    She reached out and dragged her poor husband into the tightest hug she’d ever given someone, Earth Pony strength and all.

    “Yeah, it really is me,” she said, nuzzling his cheek pony-fashion.  “Not on a PonyPad either.  I’m really here, and I’m so, so sorry.”

    “No,” he said, “I should be sorry.  I came to get you instead of thinking about the world.”

    “You know,” she giggled, “We can argue about this in this doorway for a literal eternity, or we can do something better with our lives.  After all, as it always has been, here and now, we are alive.”

    Book nodded.

   “Here and now - ” he said, and kissed her.  When he broke the kiss, he kissed her cheek.  “ - we are alive, and finally together again.”  When he’d kissed her cheek he pulled her inside and nibbled her ear.

    That… was a new experience.

    Fern kicked the door shut after her as her husband kissed her neck, which quite reminded her it was noticeably longer as a pony.  Whatever the whole world might feel through Earth-pony magic, she didn’t actually want any other specific pony seeing her like this.

    Which was fine, because nothing that happened after that was for the public eye.  Suffice to say, it was better than chocolates.

    When Forward Charge got in later that night, she cried to see her little bro and his wife passed out on her spare four-poster futon.  She vowed never to ever admit it, but she did.

    When the three ponies living in that apartment woke up the next morning, they found a scroll had been slipped in their mail slot.  It bore gold, cursive ink clearly calligraphed by a finely-trained unicorn, probably even royalty.  Its addressing read:

Originator: Canterlot Royal Conference on Astrobiology and Xeno-Ethics

Recipients: Doctors of Philosophy Mr. Book Burner and Mrs. Fern Pipette, Doctoral Candidate (awaiting dissertation 7yrs) Forward "the Mighty!" Charge

Address: Apartment Light-Cone, Canterlot Royal Observatory Staff Apartment House, Pluto Height Neighborhood, Canterlot, Equestria

Your esteemed presence is required by the Princesses on matters of scientific and ethical importance!

-- your host, The Doctor