Everypony deserves oneView OnlineMomentsEverypony deserves oneMy fur bristles, charged with magic. The bright colors of the ponies before me blur and shift toward the red; my own lavender appears sky-blue, while the blue sky thickens into a green-yellow haze. I swallow reflexively, bracing my eardrums against the sudden increase in air pressure as I appear at the far end of Cartwheel Lane in Ponyville with an audible pop, completely drained of magic. A moment ago, an age ago, I was in Canterlot. An earth pony filly stands at the edge of the street not ten paces away and looks up at me, her head low to the ground. Her name is May Flower. She loves balloon animals and coloring books, but I haven’t got either. “Well, hello there,” I say, flashing my best princess smile. “What are you up to?” “I’m looking for four-leaf clovers,” she tells me, and pokes at the weeds that have sprung up around the edges of somepony’s house. “The south side of the street is the lucky side,” I tell her. I point to a patch of weeds on the other side of the street where I know there is a clonal colony of four-leaf clovers. “Really?” I nod. She hesitates, crosses the street. Unexpected teleportation, I always find, lends one credibility. Or maybe it’s the crown. I head off down the street. Before I reach the corner I hear her cry of delight behind me, and I feel the thrill of knowing I made her little moment of joy possible. It’s a beautiful day, and I’m grateful for that. It makes my task easier. I stroll down the street, smiling and greeting ponies as I pass, with a carefully chosen question or lie for each. “Afternoon, Holly Copter. I heard your daughter was brilliant in the school play yesterday! Good to see you, Chatter Box. May I call on you this evening after dinner? I want to ask your opinion about something. Derpy! I saw your poem in the Gazette and read it to Luna, and she loved it!” Head up, chin in, remember to smile. Celestia made it look so easy. I banter with Old Times while I browse his selection of antique watches. “This one,” I say, “is my favorite. Look at the quality of the engraving on the back.” His eyes brighten. “I did that inscription, I did. Spent all day at it. The customer never picked it up.” I buy it, telling him I’ll treasure it forever. When I leave he’s still smiling. Years of close-up work have made him nearsighted. He can’t see me give the watch to a young colt who’s been standing outside all along, looking through the window at the display case. It’s a difficult optimization problem because the objective function can’t be defined without resolving some long-standing philosophical questions about utility and utility distributions. Measuring my impact is hard enough—how should I compare Old Times’ quiet smile to the colt’s squeal of glee? Is enjoyment proportional to brain capacity? Does it diminish with old age? You see the difficulty. I stop in at Sugarcube Corner and examine the bear claws and eclairs carefully, ooh-ing and ah-ing while Mrs. Cake watches proudly. I buy a dozen of each and leave. I work my way over to Beech Avenue, handing out pastries to everypony I meet. I’m not hungry. The distribution of pastries can be an analogy for the distribution of happiness. Suppose that Pinkie Pie enjoys pastries twice as much as any other pony—a reasonable supposition. Should I maximize happiness by giving her all of the pastries? This, on a larger scale, is the problem I face. Some ponies are far out of my way, in less-densely populated areas. Were I to visit them, I could visit fewer total ponies in twenty-three minutes. Does that mean I should never visit them? I don’t visit Pinkie Pie. I can’t make her happier than she already is. Fluttershy is too far out on the edge of town. Rarity takes the news badly. Applejack doesn’t approve of my methods. Sometimes friendship means keeping your burdens to yourself. Celestia should see me now. I know where everypony is and just what each of them needs to hear to give them one moment of happiness. For these twenty-three minutes, I am all-knowing. At no point do I mention or look at the new star dangling above us, sparkling like a sword point even at midday, slicing a gash in the eastern sky. There are ponies standing in the street, staring at it. When they see my lack of concern, they shrug their shoulders and go about their business. If the sky were falling, surely I of all ponies would be shouting. Nopony asks about the princesses. The other princesses, I mean. I avoid the ones who would. But there’s one I can't avoid. “Twi!” Rainbow shouts from above, and I step to the left. An instant later her hooves slam to the ground to my right. She’s in my face immediately. “What’s up? What happened? We got a plan?” I shrug. “I’m working on one.” “What about Celestia and Luna? What’d they do?” I breathe in. I breathe out. “They tried,” I say. Rainbow stares at me. “Rainbow,” I say, and now I finally look at the star. It glistens white against the blue sky, like a pustule seeping through the skin of the firmament. “Remember when I told you there was no point flying out to meet it?” “Yeah?” “I was wrong.” “I’m on it!” she says, and moments later she’s disappeared into the sky, camouflaged by her own fur. She has no way of knowing that it’s still further away than the moon. But it isn’t pointless. It’ll give her something to do. That’s her kind of happiness. There’s one lie in particular that I’d always wanted to tell, and I see the little orange filly I need to tell it to racing towards me on her scooter, right on time. I flag her down with an eclair and she skids to a stop in a cloud of dust. “How’s your practicing going?” I ask her as she begins ravaging the eclair. She stops chewing. She’s wondering how I knew about her secret wing-exercises outside town. She swallows. “Dunno,” she says, looking down. I lean over and touch her with one wing. “Scootaloo”, I tell her in my most serious voice, without blinking once, “you will fly someday. I promise.” Her cheeks redden. “Aw, heck,” she says, kicking the dirt, “I’m not worried about it.” But I know that determined look in her eyes. She kicks the scooter around and heads back towards the edge of town, even faster than she came. Up ahead is the eastern market, on the edge of town. Applejack is at her stall. I can smell her granny’s pies from here. I turn left on Oak and bypass the market. I don’t want to see Applejack today. But that means going past Apple Bloom, who begged her to come to the market with her today but got bored and is now wandering the adjacent streets. “Twilight,” she says, rushing up to me with a frown on her face. “What’s goin’ on? You run off to Canterlot last week to fix up this here stranger star. Now it’s bigger’n ever, and you’re walking around town, jabberin’ and gabbin’ like you were on holiday!” “Apple Bloom,” I tell her, “you worry too much.” “You said it was a hunk of rock bigger than the Everfree Forest!” “Well,” I say, “I was wrong! Good thing, huh?” The corners of my mouth feel heavy. “But what is it? And what’re you gonna do about it?” I bend over and ruffle her mane. “Let me tell you something I only learned recently. I used to be afraid of all kinds of things going wrong. I’d sit up late reading books about history, then lie awake in bed worrying about famines and plagues and wars and all kinds of things, yes, even asteroids. And you know what?” She waits. Smart kid. Knows the question is rhetorical. “The most dangerous thing, Apple Bloom—the thing you have to worry about the most—is being unhappy right at this moment.” She frowns, and waits some more. “A famous philosopher once said that you should live your life as if you would be forced to re-live it again and again, for all eternity. Every moment spent in unhappiness is a little death, Apple Bloom. A wolf or an asteroid can only kill you once, but a worrisome mind kills you a little bit every moment of your life. So let me worry about the star.” She seems unconvinced, but I’m out of time and hurry on. I don’t think my talk with Apple Bloom ever helps, yet I keep trying. She’s a smart kid. She should see the logic of it. I’ve done a perfect job, again. I’ve flattered sixty-two ponies, relieved forty-seven anxieties and twenty-four deep-seated fears, and given out one hundred ninety-seven smiles, two dozen pastries, and seventeen small thrills of satsifaction. I move faster now; there are no crowds out here. I hurry around the curve of Pinwheel Way and turn right on Orchard. Moss grows in the darkness under the oaks by the side of the road. In ten seconds Big Macintosh will come by, pulling a wagonload of hay back from town. The star is burning through the sky like a hot bulb through an old celluloid film that’s been paused. Nopony else is in view. I stand in the road and stop him, knowing already how badly this will go. “Big Macintosh,” I say, half-commanding, half-pleading. “I need your help.” I’ve unhitched the traces from him before he realizes what I’m saying. “Sure, Princess,” he says. “Please call me Twilight,” I say. I hop over the roadside ditch, landing on moss. “Come here.” He flicks an ear, then follows. He lopes over the ditch like a cat, muscles rippling. I waste seconds just staring at him. My Macintosh. I know his scent like my own. I’ve re-learned anatomy just from leaning my head against him and feeling his muscles move against it. He stands and tilts his head at a pony he knows only as his princess and his sister’s friend. This will sound terrible, but I’ve never tried to give Big Mac his one moment, except in clumsy and selfish ways. He seems… above that. I read a book by an ancient Eastern philosopher who said, finally, that true wisdom is to neither delight in this or that thing, nor despair at this or that other thing, but to take what comes and say only, “Yes.” Or “Yup,” as the case may be. In the end, Equestria’s greatest philosopher was this quiet hulk of a farmer. Who would’ve thought it? I draw myself up to my new, improved full height and try not to shiver. “I need a hug,” I say. He blinks, and over his shoulder the star surges four point five miles nearer. “Please, Big Mac. Please. I’m so tired.” He chews his lip and says nothing, but I know now I can come close and lay my head on his shoulder. He reaches out automatically and wraps one tree-limb of a foreleg around me. I lean back and sigh, letting all my weight fall back on his chest, and now I finally begin to shake. He nickers and softly stamps one leg, but stays put. He recognizes an animal in distress. Knows better than to try to talk me out of it. He shushes me, though I’m hardly crying at all, and pulls me closer. I’m letting him down. It’s a terrible thing when your gods fall to pieces before your eyes. But I’m so tired. I don’t want to be a god anymore. They should’ve chosen somepony else. Somepony who could be a god for a full twenty-three minutes. I shudder, and he strokes my mane. His body folds over me, bigger than the star, bigger than the sky. I breathe in musk and sweat and hay and feel the warmth of his body, his chest rising and falling, alive, still alive. I’ve saved him one more time. I nestle under his chin and try to form happy pictures in my head: Leaning out over the rails of the bridge into Ponyville, watching fish leap upstream over the riffling shallows where generations of foals have dropped stones to watch them splash. Lying back on the musty cotton cushions of my favorite chair, reading by the light of my horn and the pulsing glow from the library fireplace, a mug of hot cider on the end table, low rasping dragon-snores drifting down from upstairs. Instead I hear again a ringing in my ears. I smell the ozone wake of powerful magics, gag on the vapors of burnt hair and boiled fat. I see charred hunks of flesh spattered across ancient oak benches. Something dark drips patiently from the crystal chandelier high above. In the center of the chamber, acrid smoke drifts from eight blackened hooves, still hissing steam, fused to the cracked marble tile like burnt-out candle stubs. Glossy rivulets, frozen now, run from their ridgelines to pool on the floor. They look soft, like wax. “Hush, now,” Big Mac whispers. His voice rumbles like a wagon, so deep I can feel his ribcage vibrate, and it stills my trembling. I breathe in the cool confidence of his voice. I hold my breath, blink the tears away, then exhale deliberately. I feel the steady bass thumping of his heart, and try to slow my own racing heart to match it. I fit perfectly in the hollow of his embrace. It feels like the earth itself has risen up and drawn me into its bosom. Nothing can hurt me. I close my eyes. For a full minute I breathe in and breathe out and think of nothing. In the distance I hear the clop of hooves. I look up. His eyes have turned to the star. In a second he’ll notice that it’s growing visibly now, and I’ll lose him. I can already hear shouts from the direction of the village. I lift my muzzle towards his. It’s a million miles away. He hasn’t noticed yet. My neck angles upwards, pointing my mouth towards his. His eyes look down at me and widen as I reach the halfway point. His neck muscles tighten and begin pulling back, but I’m almost there, don’t hesitate now, Princess, push onward, push those technically virgin lips up against the soft, surprised “O” of his mouth. Take a tiny breath. Now push just a little more. Now it’s him who shivers, jerking his neck back, but I stay with him, matching his trajectory and speed precisely, our lips locked, seal unbroken. There—there! Just for a moment, suspended between surprise and shock, he stops, and pushes his lips and tongue back against mine. For one moment he is mine. I’m not imagining it. This is my moment. And it’s gone. He falls away from me, catching himself with a quick sidestep. His mouth hangs open. I smile hopelessly as he backs away. I’ve kissed his lips a thousand times. I’ve never been kissed. I never learn how long he would have stood there, what would have happened. At my feet, a patch of road fades into a second shadow, dim and hazy. The star is as large as the sun now, swallowing up the sky. We can feel its heat. Somewhere far above, Rainbow is streaking out to meet it. My heart swells with pride to be her friend, to have given her this moment. I wonder what it will look like. I know exactly what it will look like. I computed the time of impact and the exact spot where it will strike in the brushlands southeast of Appaloosa. I've plotted its altitude, azimuth, absolute magnitude, and angular diameter for up to 1/1000th of a second before impact (logarithmic in time to impact). But I wonder what it will look like. Bottle Cap and Ginger Gold gallop by, eyes on the star. “The orchard!” Macintosh says, all awkwardness forgotten. He jumps to his feet and rushes back towards his farm, as though he could save his trees from a million billion tons of nickel and iron by throwing burlap over them. I understand completely. If only I’d said something to him before, yesterday, now a hundred years ago. Twenty-three minutes is not enough, not with him. Believe me. I’ve tried all of the techniques recommended in six different books on dating and seduction. I can’t let him die like that, running panicked, eyes white, head thrown back staring at the sky, braying like a frightened animal. So I stand and summon what little magic I’ve gathered since I arrived, pulling it into my horn. I wrap it around space and time and twist, until I’m looking back at all the Twilight Sparkles I’ve been, trailing out behind me in time like a thousand-legged centipede. There is nothing ahead of me. I reach back as far as I can, to the Twilight Sparkle at the bottom of that cliff of magical energy I fell down when I teleported to Ponyville, which rises like a dam and bars me from every-me further back. I unleash the spell that will save everypony, the only way that I can. My fur bristles, charged with magic. The bright colors of the ponies before me blur and shift red; the blue sky thickens into a green-yellow haze. I swallow reflexively, bracing my eardrums against the sudden air pressure as I appear at the far end of Cartwheel Lane in Ponyville with an audible pop, completely drained of magic. A moment ago, an age and twenty-three minutes ago, I was in Canterlot. An earth pony filly stares up at me. She is looking for four-leaf clovers among the patches of weeds that spring up next to the houses. I point her to a patch on the other side of the street and head off down the street. Before I reach the corner I hear her cry of delight behind me, and I feel the thrill of knowing I made her little moment of joy possible. It’s a beautiful day. I stroll down the street, greeting ponies as I pass. They smile, they talk, they still breathe, their hearts still pump blood. In just under twenty-one minutes I’ll close my eyes and rest in Big Mac’s embrace. Until then, I have work to do. Someday I’ll find the right words. Maybe some especially clever lie. Or, maybe, the truth. Someday he’ll stay, and hold me, and I’ll fall asleep in the nest of his legs and chest, smiling. I don't know what will happen then. Author's Note I entered chapter 1 as a complete story in the January 2014 write-off, where it won second place. You can still read it as a complete, very dark story, but I wrote more chapters that take it in a different direction. Thanks to GhostOfHeraclitus, Aquillo, Pav Feira, Bradel, PoweredByTea, & Nettle for a lot of analysis of this little story! Cover art by Jiaya, used with permission. Thanks!
The von Neighmann-Maregenstern theoremView OnlineMomentsThe von Neighmann-Maregenstern theoremIt’s a beautiful day, if you like that kind of thing. Again I congratulate Holly Copter. Again I flatter Chatter Box. Again Derpy bobs her head up and down in excitement at my news. The lies flow smoothly off my tongue now. My smile lies soft and guiltless over my face. I disgust myself. Again I buy the watch from Old Times. Again he stands in the corner and smiles absently. Again I give the watch to the colt, and he brushes his whiskers over the silver case’s scrollwork in awe. Across the street, a middle-aged stallion runs a hoof absent-mindedly over the ragged hem of his shabby tweed jacket as he pauses to watch his princess pass by. For twenty years he’s fact-checked the mayor’s monthly reports before they’re sent on to Canterlot. For the past five years these reports have come directly to me. They’re accurate and reliable. Until today, nopony has ever thanked him. I hurry away down the street without making eye contact. I never speak to him anymore. He’s tired, so his gratitude on being given the watch is slightly less than the colt’s. He wastes precious seconds stuttering when he speaks, which he always insists on doing. I’d rather give the watch to the colt most of the time, and to the stallion across the street the rest of the time. But the von Neighmann-Maregenstern theorem proves that, given four reasonable assumptions, the right policy is to always give the watch to the colt. The mare with the glasses and bobbed mane hurries up to me as I hand out pastries. She does this every time, shamelessly, not caring that some ponies here have never gotten one. In the grip of my magic, the pastries are the size and shape of grenades. I toss her one and smile. Again I send Rainbow on her fool’s errand. She’d kick my purple butt good if she found out. Again I let my friends trot to their last moments in happy ignorance instead of treating them with the dignity I’d expect myself. Again I avoid Applejack. Again I try to persuade Apple Bloom, my charge and my unsuspecting confessor, of the rightness of my actions. The fourth assumption of the von Neighmann-Maregenstern theorem is that if M is better than L, then a fifty percent chance of M and a fifty percent chance of N is better than a fifty percent chance of L and a fifty percent chance of N, no matter what N is. Seems obvious, doesn’t it? Say M is giving a pastry to Pinkie Pie, L is giving it to Rainbow Dash, and N is kissing Big Mac on the lips. Toss a gold bit in the air. If giving a pastry to Pinkie is better than giving one to Rainbow, then giving a pastry to Pinkie if it comes up Celestia or kissing Big Mac if it comes up Luna is better than giving a pastry to Rainbow if it comes up Celestia or kissing Big Mac if it comes up Luna, regardless of how you feel about Big Mac. But what if N is also giving a pastry to Pinkie? The fourth assumption then says that giving the pastry to Pinkie Pie all the time is preferable to giving it sometimes to Pinkie and sometimes to Rainbow. But that’s the question I used the theorem to answer! The theorem doesn’t prove that always giving the watch to the colt is the best thing. It assumes it. “And what’re you gonna do about it?” Apple Bloom asks. Nothing, ever. By the time I realized, it was too late. I don’t think Apple Bloom knows about the circularity in the von Neighmann-Maregenstern theorem. But her eyes say that I’m hiding something. I wonder what it is. “I need a hug,” I tell Big Mac. He shelters me, and shushes my crying, while I prepare to force myself on him, again, knowing I’ll never have to face the consequences. I should just let him die. Let him finally die, not play out my games and my fantasy for eternity. He deserves to be allowed to die. We kiss. He pulls away and stares, not angry, just confused, as if I were a pig trying to fly. I look away, and wish the asteroid would hurry. I deserve to die. So why don’t I? Why don’t I just collapse here in the road and cry, until the sky glows white and the treetops and my fur ignites and then nothing— Oh, I remember. Because I can’t. Each time I cast the spell it hurls my memories back in time, forcing them onto the earlier Twilight Sparkle. By the time I realized the flaw in the von Neighmann-Maregenstern theorem, it was too late. I had changed nothing, learned nothing, in so many cycles that my brain’s neural connections had already provably converged to a steady state. I am physically and mentally identical now each time I begin again, and so is the rest of the world. I’ll continue to give the colt the watch, and lie to my friends, and use Big Mac, for all eternity. That’s science. I’m as stuck as a fly in amber. I can’t change a thing. But still… what if I could? Something in the back of my head rises up and casts a black fog of panic over the thought. As I look up at the sky and cast the spell, I suddenly realize what I’m hiding, and—
Worst ponyView OnlineMomentsWorst pony“I’m looking for four-leaf clovers,” she tells me, and pokes at the weeds that have sprung up around the edges of somepony’s house. “The south side of the street is the lucky side.” Is my smile quite as bright? Is it my imagination, or does it strain at the corners? When I finally saw the flaw in using the theorem, and the single optimized routine I’d painstakingly constructed exploded into an infinity of possibilities for me to choose from, I concluded almost immediately that I wouldn’t be able to. That was quick of me. Suspiciously quick. A scientist tests her beliefs. I’ve never tried. I’ve never tried. “One dozen each of those irresistible bear claws and eclairs, please!” I tell Mrs. Cake with a smile. My rationalization falls apart like rotten lace when I hold it up to the sun. Each cycle is not the same. Each time through, some different detail catches my eye—the perfect reflective smoothness of the glaze on the eclairs, the subtle expansion of Derpy’s flight feathers when I mention Luna. I wanted to believe I’d lost the freedom to choose. Just like I’d wanted to believe the theorem could tell me what to do. Better to keep on doing what I’d been doing, until the repetition blurred the pain of all my mistakes and all the wrong I’d done into a dull mindless ache. I tried to twist science into absolving me of everything. But science doesn’t twist. It’s a ray of light, bright and inflexible. You can’t turn it to go wherever you want to go, prove whatever you want to prove. You can follow it, or wander in darkness. “Scootaloo”, I say, “you will fly someday. I promise.” I know I’m free, I’m almost sure I’m free, yet I repeat the lie one more time, exactly as before. Or did I just blink? When I began the lies, it seemed like kindness. Like giving a foal a storybook where the friendless colt saves the town on the third page from the end, and everypony loves him. But you can only read that story so many times. The best lives, like the best books, are ones you could repeat over and over without shame. I know that now. Or at least, that’s how I feel. My mind’s a consequentialist, but my conscience remains a stubborn deontologist. “And what’re you gonna do about it?” Apple Bloom asks. Please stop asking me, Apple Bloom. If I’m not free, then I’m just a cog in a wheel, turning in an endless circle, helpless, blameless. Innocent. “I need a hug,” I tell Big Mac. But if I am—if I’ve freely chosen to lie to my friends and treat them like children, and push myself on Big Mac, over and over and over again— “Hush, now,” Big Mac whispers, as he strokes my mane. In the distance I hear the clop of hooves. I look up. Big Mac’s eyes have turned to the star. I can already hear shouts from the village. I lift my muzzle towards his. “Big Mac,” I hear my own strangled voice say, “we’re all going to die.” He stumbles back in slow motion, his jaw swings slowly open, as I think: I’ve done it! I’ve broken free! A shiver of joy sweeps from my head to my hindquarters in a wave, one second before the icy horror of knowing who and what I truly am crashes over me. Big Mac whinnies and turns, galloping down the path towards Fluttershy’s cottage. Another shiver passes over me, but not one of joy. I stand and stretch my neck out after him. “You’ll never reach her in time!” I shriek, through lips drawn back as tight as a bow. Damn him. Damn him to Tartarus. I should let him die. All die. Bury my humiliation under a million billion tons of rock. But, I learned something: I'm free. And another thing: I’m a monster. Also, Big Mac apparently has a thing for Fluttershy. It really is the quiet ones you have to watch out for. My fur bristles, charged with magic. The bright colors before me blur; the sky thickens to a sickly haze, and— Author's Note . Reverted back to the "immature" version, probably temporarily.
Death and chocolateView OnlineMomentsDeath and chocolate“May Flower,” I say, “run home to your parents.” She backs away, startled, then stands there up against the house’s stucco wall with wide-open eyes. I hurry towards town. Things will be different this time. No more lies. I’ll show my hand and let the cards fall where they may. Or is that a mixed metaphor? I mean, they both involve cards, so it’s a re-use of the same metaphor, but I can’t both hold the cards and let them fall. There should be a term for an incompatible conjunction of statements using the same metaphor. Anyway. Brutal honesty. I’ll finally respect everypony as the mature, intelligent ponies that they are. I halt every pony I come across and tell them to meet at Town Hall. Most continue on their way. “Mrs. Cake,” I say, dashing into Sugarcube corner, “would you tell Pinkie to please meet me at Town Hall? You come, too. Bring everyone. And bring everything chocolate.” Mrs. Cake nods and pops a flat cardboard box open, then pauses, one hoof on the display case. “Baked goods, or…” “All the chocolate,” I say grimly. “We’re going to need it.” Pinkie herself bounds down the stairs. “Oh, Twilight! I’m so glad you finally decided to say something!” I shut my gaping mouth and shake my mane. I’d stop to talk, but the look in her eyes says she already knows. I hurry outside to meet Rainbow. “Twi!” she shouts from above. “Rainbow!” I shout back. “Get Fluttershy, and Applejack, and Spike, and… get everypony you can to come to Town Hall right now!” “I’m on it!” she says, and moments later she’s disappeared into the sky. On the second floor of Town Hall, sitting behind her desk, the Mayor nods and says, “I’ll be down in a minute, Princess. I just have to fill in some signatures on this contract.” I smile, and lower my head. There’s a flash, and desk and papers collapse into a pile of ash. As I head back down the stairs, I hear the Mayor gasp and a pen hitting the floor behind me. A crowd has gathered by the time I drag the podium out onto the little stage. The Cakes are off to one side with the portable stand they use at festivals, looking bewildered behind a stack of melting eclairs. “Mares and gentlecolts,” I say, but the star is very bright now, and the milling crowd’s rumbling and mumbling drowns me out. Mayor Mare stumbles out onto the stage behind me and blinks in the light of two suns, one bright, one dim but waxing. “Mares and gentlecolts,” I try again. A shrill, piercing wolf-whistle shrieks down on us from above. Silence. “Thanks, Rainbow!” I say. “No problem!” she says with a wink, and settles on the roof of the dry-goods store across the street. I clear my throat. “Mares and gentlecolts. I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.” My words hit the crowd, and I see heads turn toward each other as the ripples spread. The murmuring begins again. “What’s Celestia doing about that star?” a voice calls out. “Celestia and Luna are dead,” I tell them. “But that’s not the bad news.” Well. That got their attention. What’s the right way to tell an anxious crowd that they’re all about to die? “We’re all going to die!” another voice shouts. “Yes,” I say gratefully, “that’s it, precisely. We are all going to die, in about fifteen minutes. I suggest you get together with your friends and loved ones, and… and have some of this delicious chocolate from the Cakes, it’s got phenylethylamine...” My words are lost in the dust and roar of a hundred ponies galloping off in different directions. “Somepony help me!” I hear Pinkie call. “I can’t eat all these cupcakes by myself in just fifteen minutes!!” I don’t even wait for the end. I wrap my magic around space and time and twist. My fur bristles, charged with magic, and—
The othersView OnlineMomentsThe others“When did you say this thing is gonna hit us?” Rainbow asks. “In about ten minutes,” I say. It took extra time to gather everyone in the library, but I’m hoping they’ll find the familiar surroundings comforting. They all look at me expectantly, except Rarity, who’s staring off into space with her mouth slightly open. Even in shock she looks graceful, as if she were about to take a dainty morsel from a tiny silver fork. “Relax,” I say. “We’re not going to do anything this time. I just want your opinions.” “This time?” Rainbow asks. “It’s complicated,” I say. “But we’ll have twenty-three minutes to do whatever you come up with, starting from thirteen minutes ago.” They look at each other, then back at me. “Okay,” Applejack says, “I believe you. I’ve seen crazier than that.” “But… didn’t you say we’re all going to… die?” Rarity asks. “I distinctly recall you saying something to that effect.” “Flaming mountains will fall from the sky. The air will burn. Lakes will boil away. There'll be earthquakes, floods, and tsunamis. Ash will fill the sky, and after the planet stops burning it will be winter for a hundred years. So, yes.” “Oh.” She holds the “O” after the breath is gone. “So… what, exactly, do you want our opinions on?” “On how Ponyville should spend those last twenty-three minutes,” I tell them all. They look at each other again, then back at me. Except Pinkie. "Well, duh!" she says to us all. "Don't you know the phrase, 'party like it's the end of the world'? Only now it'll actually be the end of the world!" She's got a point. “Um,” Fluttershy begins. She's taking it surprisingly well. "So, maybe ponies won’t survive. But what about the others?” “The others?” I ask. She nods. “Like… fish. Little fishies deep down in the ocean. Or oysters. Or ants.” “Oh… Fluttershy, I’d never even thought of that.” I hang my head. I’m not just a Princess of Ponies. I’m supposed to be a Princess of Equestria. All of it. All of them, I correct myself. I do some quick mental calculations. Oysters? No; they’re coastal. Deep-water fishes? Possibly, but they’re not adapted to temperature changes. Will shellfish extinction change the water’s acidity? Oxygen content will diminish. Salinity will increase after the geologic upheaval. Ants? Only if they eat fungi, and have a ready supply. But what will the fungi eat? My mind goes into overdrive, and I start over, running through the taxonomic possibilities in chronological order. Bacteria? Algae? Mold? Rotifers? Angiosperms? “What about dragons?” Spike asks. Twelve pony eyes stare at him, including my own. He looks down and drags one clawed foot across the floor. “Well… we’re pretty tough. Fire can’t hurt us. If it gets too cold, we just slow down, or hibernate. And we don’t need plants. We eat gems.” I hadn’t even thought of that. A moments’ reflection says it’s not possible: In fifteen minutes, Ponyville will be under three miles of rock, and the winds above it will be twenty-thousand miles an hour and burning hotter than the sun. But until now, I hadn’t even thought about it. Thousands of cycles, and I never thought of anything but ponies. I’m not just a terrible Princess of Equestria. I’m a terrible friend. I wrap a wing around Spike and pull him to me, more to comfort me than him. “Oh, Spike. I’m sorry, Spike. But there won’t… there won’t even be oxygen, Spike. Not for years.” He lets out a breath. “That’s kind of a relief,” he says with a weak grin. “What about trees?” Applejack asks grimly. “Can ya save my trees?” Mouth set, eyes sharp. I’ve seen her look at an aphid infestation with that expression. I hear shouting in the streets outside. The others hurry to the windows. “Time’s up,” I say. “Thank you all. I think this has been a very productive meeting. I’ll see you again in fifteen minutes.” I stand and summon what magic I’ve gathered since I arrived, pulling it into my horn—
A Princess of EquestriaView OnlineMomentsA Princess of Equestria“May Flower,” I say, in a new voice, my own in timbre and yet entirely different in tone, “run home to your parents. And apologize to your brother.” She stops and stares for a moment, but my new voice brooks no delay. She scurries off. It’s a beautiful day. My mental checklist is memorized. My schedule is tight, but I’ve rehearsed every step. I’ll need almost every pony in Ponyville, and they’ll help gladly, because they’ll take one look at me and see that I know what I’m doing and why. This is what I was born to do. Curtains up. I hold my head up and my chin in. There’s a spring in my step as I head for Town Hall, halting every pony I meet and ordering them to assemble there. Some stop to argue, some to laugh, but I look in their eyes and they forget what they were going to say. I smile, and point with my horn in the direction they are to go, and they go. Celestia should see me now. Outside Town Hall, I speak to the crowd assembled in the square: “My dear ponies. A wise pony once said that you should live each moment of your life as if you would be forced to re-live it again and again, for all eternity.” They scratch their heads and stare. “How horrible it would be,” I say, “to live through an endless cycle of panic and terror, braying at the sky over and over. So let us not panic.” My voice sings, clear and untroubled. Some ponies listen to my words; some listen to my voice. They relax their worry-stretched necks and slow their restless milling. “How horrible it would be,” I say, “to spend an eternity in blissful ignorance of your fate, always denied the chance to face it with dignity. And how terrible for me, to watch. So I will not lie to you.” I turn and point my nose at the star. “That bright light in the sky is a rock, smaller than the moon but bigger than a mountain, and it is falling on us. Celestia and Luna gave their lives to turn it aside, but it didn’t turn." A chorus of babbling voices arises, but I raise my hoof, and they are stilled. “We can’t save ourselves,” I tell them, “but we will try to save some small part of Equestria. Grass. Moss. Trees. So that someday, someone will come out of the oceans and crawl over that moss and eat that grass under the shade of those trees.” Some ponies flick their ears and wrinkle their noses in confusion, but I know to move on rather than try to explain. “If you would spend your last minutes to help me build a world for someone, someday far away, who will never dream that you existed, stay. If not, go in peace.” Below me, a hundred manes toss, two hundred ears flick back and forth, a hundred final decisions are made. Before the spell is broken and the babbling begins anew, I order, “Farmers and earth ponies, meet Applejack on the porch of the dry goods store. Pegasi, see Rainbow, over there, in the middle of the town square. Unicorns, come to me. Fillies and colts, Pinkie Pie over there by the fountain has something for you to do. And you, Mr. Bags,” I add, catching the eye of a stout, dappled earth pony with streaks of gray peeking out from under his top hat. “Unlock the vault. I need every safe deposit box in the bank emptied. Bring them to me here. We’re going to fill them with treasure.” Ponies begin moving in different directions, spilling out from the town square as if a giant had just emptied a box of brightly-colored marbles over it. Some leave. Most do not. They bump and eddy around each other but eventually coalesce into four different swarms descending on four different ponies. I keep an eye on each group, checking Old Time’s pocket-watch each time I see their hooves halt and their heads and ears raise attentively. We’re right on schedule. I turn to instruct my unicorns. A herd of unicorns, I remember, is called a “blessing”. A stream of earth ponies rolls wheelbarrows and carts from the door of the dry goods store to dump their contents at my feet: burlap bags of corn, beans, and grass and carrot seeds. The bank staff ponies work quickly, forming a line and passing safety deposit boxes up from the vault to drop them onto the dirt in front of me. A clerk grasps the handle of one in her mouth and swings it upside down, grinning; hundreds of bits scatter and roll across the hard-packed dirt. I set my unicorns to work filling the empty boxes with a new kind of treasure: bright platinum flax seeds, silver grains of wheat, polished golden kernels of corn. No; not treasure—treasure is worth nothing until someone finds it. I will save these tiny ones, my littlest Equestrians, even if their quiet lives inspire no thoughts more complex than brief disorientation in an ant that had found its path clear the day before. I don’t need them to remember or pity me. I just need them to live. Life. I’ve saved lives before. I never thought I’d have to save Life itself. If we fail, the universe will still have an abundance of seconds, but be empty of moments. “Let’s get dirty!” I hear Pinkie say in the distance, followed by a high-pitched cheer. The unicorns mix the different kinds of seeds thoroughly in each box. When the boxes are full, they close and lock them. Those of us who know any kind of drying, freezing, locking, sealing, or protective spell bind them more tightly shut against the years to come. I estimate the locked steel boxes by themselves will last ten years in water, up to thousands on dry land, before they rust away and spill their huddled refugees out onto a world more hospitable than ours is about to become. More earth ponies come back from their farms with bushel baskets full of grains, fruits, and seeds of every type. Big Mac comes pulling the same wagon I have huddled under so many times, brimming with an improbable number of baskets full of apple seeds. He comes to a stop before me and hesitates before passing them down. “Take good care of ‘em,” he says. I take a basket of his seeds down from the wagon. He peers over my shoulder, trembling with masculine concern and helplessness, as I tuck them gently into place in a row of open boxes, nestled among walnuts and pea-pods. It's not what I wanted, yet I can’t help but smile. Here come the fillies and colts, with little red wagons, boxes, and bags full of dirt. Fine, rich soil from the fields. Hard clay from the town square. Sandy dirt from the school’s playground. Oozy smelly mud from the bog (by special request). Each ounce has billions of bacteria. If they have an earthworm cocoon or a cicada larva hidden inside, so much the better. Others come bringing leaves torn from weeds, with beetle and butterfly eggs glued to their underside. We dump any jewelry and gold coins still hiding in the corners of safety deposit boxes onto the ground, and pack them to the rim with dirt or leaves. “Not both,” I tell them. “Keep the eggs clean.” The ants will have to fend for themselves. Their queens are buried too deep, too well-protected for my foragers. I reach out and gently grasp a cockroach as it scuttles for the darkness under my hoof. I lift it back into its box and shut the lid. “Eeugh!” Applejack groans as she passes, pushing an empty cart back to the store. “Twilight, don’t save them things!” “They’re hardy,” I say firmly. “And they’re important. That’s what all the books were for, Applejack. Seeing the big picture, knowing the importance of the biggest things and the smallest—that’s my job. It’s what princesses do.” I flash her a smile, a little wider than a proper princess should. “At least, when our friends remind us to.” “Got those books you asked for,” Spike says on my left, groaning under the weight of a stack of them. A heavy load for Spike, but still pathetically few. I spent a dozen cycles just choosing which to save. “Oh, thank goodness, Spike. You don’t—you know how much they mean to me.” We stack them inside rubberized mailbags that I’ve brought for that purpose, and I pull the drawstrings tight and then cast a sealing spell, making the bags waterproof and airtight. “Now, please, Spike, put them in the bank vault,” I tell him. More for my ease of mind than any good they’ll do, I suppose. My initial plans had ponies trucking cartloads in from the library. But a princess must look after the living, and the yet-to-live, not the dead. He raises an eyebrow, and I answer his question before he can ask it: “The bags are to protect them from the banker, not from the elements.” That’s not a complete explanation, but it’s all he’s going to get. I try to stay focused, but can’t help but watch over my shoulder as Big Mac wraps his forelegs around Fluttershy and begins to cry. She strokes his mane and hushes him, then gently but firmly tells him that it’s time for her to go. Soon the last of the pegasi have taken off, in all different directions, each bearing an enchanted metal box full of the magic of life. The remaining boxes have gone back down into the vault, tucked into bed for their long sleep, cradled in the rows of drawers lining each wall. I hear the crash of the bank vault’s doors. I told Money Bags that there’s only half an hour’s air in there, and that it’s important to keep the interior dry, but he always shuts himself inside anyway. I hope he doesn’t damage the books. It’s a very small vault. My unicorns stand with their heads down and their sides heaving, sweat on their brows, spent with spellcasting. My power, too, is spent. No more turning back. I stand up and look at the star. The star is very bright now. I bear it no enmity. It's a piteous thing, falling alone through the emptiness of space, rushing blindly toward its own oblivion. I ponder again: Would it have been a mercy to let my ponies finish like the comet, in ignorant bliss? I look around me and see them standing side by side, muzzles and flanks brushing each other. Some look at the star; some look at each other. Most are crying. Big Mac breathes in and out heavily, raising his head high and taking it all in, the way I've often seen him do at the end of a good day's work. No, I decide, with certainty this time. “Will it hurt?” Sweetie Belle asks me as she huddles against her sister. I long to tell her it won't, but I don't want, after all this, to end on a lie. “Only for a moment,” I say finally. I also weep. It’s fitting to cry for my people. But I will not look away. I will stand with my head high and watch it come. In this moment, I am a Princess of Equestria.
EchoesView OnlineMomentsEchoesGöschenen, the Swiss Alps, 1876. Henri knelt in the mud, feeling his knees press against the sharp edges of freshly-cracked rock, and leaned forward until the light from his oil-wick cap-lamp crept over the prone man's face. Antonio. He was definitely dead. Bare-chested, covered from head to toe in rock dust the same dirt-gray as the tunnel floor, he lay staring into space with unblinking eyes. Even the eyeballs, Henri saw, now had a thin layer of gray dust. If it weren't for the blood outlining his head in a black halo, he'd look like a gargoyle that had fallen from the roof of a cathedral. He cursed quietly. Why Antonio? He was the only one who'd understood, at least a little, what they were doing here—how important it was, to Switzerland, to the world. The ten miles of rock between Switzerland and Italy were Nature's last barrier to Man's dominion over her. Something glinted on the tunnel floor near the body. Henri bent closer, and saw the flashing reflection again. Acting on instinct, he tilted his headlamp away from it, drawing away the attention of the watching men. Meanwhile he reached out beside himself in the dark to where the glint had been. After a few seconds of feeling around, he found something hard and flat stuck in the mud and gravel. He silently palmed it, then stood up. "What in blazes happened?" he asked the anonymous lamp-flames that bobbed around him in the darkness. He'd come up to find out why the next blast hadn't gone off, and found the miners clustered around the body. "Him and Marco were shouting at each other!" Stefano's voice said. "Sounded like a fight," Paolo added. It was hard enough fighting a mountain; it always amazed Henri how much energy the men had left to fight each other. Especially in this heat. He wiped his forehead and began taking off his jacket. "Did anybody see?" No one answered. "Where's Marco?" Francesco asked. "Don't let him get away!" "I'm right here," Marco called, nearby enough in the dark that Henri startled at the sound. He sounded tired. His light had gone out. The other lights quickly converged around Marco, shouting anger and accusations. "Madonna santa!" "Why?" "Killer!" Henri stepped into the circle of men standing around Marco, and they quieted. "I didn't kill him," Marco insisted. "What for would I kill him? Was just an argument, is all. I couldn't even see him. He tripped and fell." Henri turned to face him. "Have a light, Marco," he said quietly, tipping his head forward. His headlamp illuminated the wrinkles that sloped down the sides of Marco's face. They glistened with tears. Marco leaned forward until their noses nearly touched, and Marco's lamp sputtered into life. "I didn't," Marco whispered. They stared silently at each other, not moving, until the rumble of an air car rolled down the tunnel and they both automatically looked down around their feet, checking for railroad tracks. Each took a step back to a more private distance before looking up again. "Why were you fighting with Antonio?" Marco's face quickly turned hard. "Niente. Nothing." He threw up his arms in a gesture of helplessness. "I don't remember." "Nothing?" "It was about a coin!" Stefano said. "A gold coin!" "A coin?" Henri turned back to Marco. "Is this true?" As the headlamps turned towards Marco, Henri lowered his hand into the darkness at his waist and rubbed a thumb over the hard thing in his palm. Yes, a coin. He slipped it into a trouser pocket. Marco sighed, then looked down and nodded. "Tell me about it," Henri said. "We were loading the rubble from the last blast into the hopper, me on this side, him on that side," Marco said, pointing. "He called me over to show me. A gold coin. He said it was a big deal, he was going to take it to the big school in Zurich." "The university," Henri said. "Yes. That. I told him he was crazy, we gotta keep it secret. It's bad enough, doing this work for the wages we get. If the men thought there was gold? The blasting, the tunnel, it would be"—he chopped the air to his sides with both hands—"finito." "Hmm," Henri said. "Did you happen to say anything about sharing the coin?" "Mr. Boucher, on my mother's grave, God rest her soul, that was the farthest thing from my mind. You say every day how important this tunnel is. For the future." Henri nodded. "I do. It is." "So we shouted at each other a little," Marco said. "But I didn't touch him! I swear to God he tripped, Mr. Boucher." "Mm-hmm. So where's this coin now?" "There," Marco said, pointing at Antonio's body. "Somewhere there." "What did it look like?" Marco shrugged. "Shiny and yellow." "So you didn't actually get a close look at it." "Like I said, I didn't touch him." "So you didn't actually touch the coin, either." "No." "Or see anything but something shiny and yellow." Marco threw up his hands, defeated by Henri's logic. "Paolo," Henri said. He nodded towards Marco. "Search him." Paolo stepped forward and went brusquely through Marco's pockets, even taking off the man's shoes and checking under his cap, before stepping back and shaking his head. "Nothing." The other men were already scanning the tunnel floor for the glint of gold. "Thirty francs to anyone who finds me a gold coin," Henri said. They were going to search for it anyway; better they should do it while he was there, pretending to be in control. He hoped there weren't any more coins. He didn't have thirty francs. If there were, whoever found them decided they were worth more than thirty francs, for after listening to the scuttling sounds of men scrambling about the tunnel floor for several minutes, Henri saw their headlamps rise one by one and drift back over to where he still stood. "Now listen up," he said. "There are no gold coins here. We're half a mile—a kilometer below the surface. The first men who've ever been here. The first anything but rock and dust that's ever been here. Not even one God-forsaken breath of air has squeezed its way down here in a million years before today." Paolo's lamp waved slowly back-and-forth, showing that the miner was shaking his head. "That's impossible, boss," he said. "What? Why?" "The Earth, she's only six thousand years old." Henri frowned. The old Italian knew nothing of Hutton, Lyell, and geological time. He probably didn't even know what the fossils were that he shoveled into the air car's rock hopper every day. All he knew about rocks and strata was which kind were hardest to drill through. "The point is," he said, "there's nothing down here but rocks and mud and sweat and dust. You can have as much of any of those as you want. But if I hear one word after this—one word from anyone, anywhere, about gold coins in the tunnel—I swear to God I'll fire every man here today." He gave that time to sink in. "Paolo, Francesco, Stefano, Udo. Find Antonio's jacket and get him back to the surface. Leave him with the priest. Mind his boots stay on him. We don't bury men barefoot. The rest of you, back to work." "What about him?" Stefano asked. "Marco?" Henri looked back over toward the hazy outline he thought was Marco. It seemed to sag. "He goes back to work, too." "Bless you, Mr. Boucher!" Marco said. "I knew you'd believe me." "I don't know what I believe," Henri said quietly. "But I don't want the police involved any more than you do. Keep your stories to yourself and keep working. Good day, gentlemen." He turned and hurried off back down the tunnel, his jacket over one shoulder. He ought to stay and supervise, keep the talk controlled. Marco was right—the men would revolt again if word spread that there was gold in the tunnel. Ten francs a month more than they could make in Lucerne wasn't worth the danger and the hellish conditions. The mountain had literally decimated them; one man in ten who'd worked for him here was now dead. But first and foremost, the coin had to go. Somewhere no one would find it. Favre would agree, Henri was sure. He had to get rid of it before the police got involved. And, he admitted to himself, he urgently wanted to see it. The long, slow walk back down toward the surface—the tunnel sloped down, not up, so water would run out—had never seemed so long, the air never so thick and choking. He smelled the entrance before he saw it. Or rather, he began to smell again, to become aware of the stink of his own body, when the weak breeze from the surface brought enough real air that his nose had different intensities of funk to distinguish. When he finally broke into the sunlight, blinking, he paused to take a few great gulps of air and look down on the little Alpine village below. It had been beautiful until two years ago, when a thousand miners had washed over it like a tidal wave of sewage. He'd often wondered since which smelled worse, the dust and hot sweat of the tunnel, or the shit-strewn mud streets of the overburdened village. He put his jacket back on and buttoned it up, turned in the opposite direction, and climbed a rocky trail, up the side of the stubborn mountain his men were drilling through. Finally, he came to the small high pasture where he and the few others from the village who weren't too lazy to climb this high grazed their horses during the day. It was freezing cold after coming out of the steamy tunnel, but he wouldn't be long. "Here, Dynamite," he called. He pulled a few small, shriveled, precious carrots out of a jacket pocket and dangled them in the air. A bay stallion raised its ears and trotted over. "Good boy," he said, stroking the horse's muzzle as it chomped on the carrots. He was too tired to mount, but he had only a short distance to go anyway. He walked out to the end of the pasture, a small hillock held in place above the valley below by the roots of the edelweiss as much as by the unstable rock beneath. Only then did he stop and take the coin out of his pocket. He spit into his palms and rubbed the remaining dirt off of the coin. Gold? Probably. It wasn't tarnished, anyway. He tilted the coin this way and that in the sunlight. A stamped image of a six-pointed star—not the Star of David; its points were sharper—was still faintly visible. In the center was a single line, the universal symbol for "1". He turned it over and squinted. A face looked back at him, a man wearing a crown bearing that same star. It took him a few seconds to recognize; the man's features were so distorted that at first he thought the coin was damaged. The eyes were too big and too far apart, the nose too long, the ears much too high on the head. Oddest of all, the man was smiling, a thing ancient monarchs were seldom known for. Dynamite had followed him over, still munching the last carrot. Two mares trotted over curiously. "Sorry, ladies," Henri said. "I've got nothing for you." He raised the hand holding the coin. "Just an old hunk of metal." All three horses pricked their ears up. They followed the coin with their eyes as Henri brought his hand down again. "Who are you?" Henri asked the face on the coin. "And how did you get in my tunnel?" Henri hadn't studied history, but he knew there was nothing like this in any of the museums in Zurich or Geneva. The coin might really be, as poor Antonio had said, a big deal. That only made it worse, of course. The most-powerful people in Zurich were tired of cost overruns, and looking for any excuse to shut the digs down. This coin was that excuse. But this was the only place anyone could tunnel through the Alps, and Favre was the only man who could do it. No tunnel, and the two halves of western Europe would stay divided. Mankind would march into the future as it had marched through the past: wearing jackboots and waving flags. "I'm sorry," he said. "Your one chance to be remembered, and you had to show up here." The coin did not reply. "But men died for this tunnel," Henri went on. "Antonio died for this tunnel. So I'll be damned if I can't throw away a coin for it." He walked up to the edge, pulled his arm back, and flung the coin far out into space. He watched it flash three times as it fell silently into the scree on the cliffs below, followed by three pings that echoed back from the opposite promontory like tolling chimes. He thought maybe he should say a prayer for the smiling king he had condemned to be forgotten by the human race. But it had been too long since he'd prayed. "You were a leader of men," Henri muttered as he turned back toward the horses. "You'd do the same if it were my coin and your–" He stopped, mouth open. All three horses stood in a row. Bent low, one foreleg tucked up beneath each chest, their muzzles nearly touched the dirt in a sort of bow. They stood as still as the mountain itself. “Now where,” Henri asked, “did they learn to do that?” Author's Note Surprise! I didn't write this chapter. Grand_Moff_Pony did, in May 2015. He was going to publish it in horizon's collection of continuations, Never the Final Word, but I liked it so much I wanted it here. Being me, I kept feeling something was wrong, and over the next 4 years we went through 5 major version of the chapter. Not 5 revisions; 4 complete rewrites, with different people, events, and POVs. The most-difficult problem was always that it was hard to pack all of the different ideas that needed to go into this chapter into 2500 words. I felt that anything longer might begin to overshadow the short story that it's an epilogue to. I included it in The Worst of Bad Horse at Bronycon 2019, but didn't post it here because I was planning to add more chapters in order to address some issues Equestria Daily said must be addressed before they would post it. But... I'll probably never do that. So here it is. The last two paragraphs, which are nearly the same as they were in GMP's first draft, were what sold it to me. The concept, choice of historic event, plot, ending, & most of the themes are all Grand_Moff_Pony's. I wrote this text, but we authored it jointly, and he approved this version.
