Time of Death: Last Week, Next Teusday

Phase Nine

“He's becoming more abusive too. Not in any physical way, but he blames me and little Gummy for everything going wrong for him. I think he knows.” The white unicorn across the tea set griped. I nodded for her to continue, but I wasn't paying much attention.

I'm Twilight Sparkle, best pony across all of time and space. Admittedly future me is a bit needy and callous, and past me was a pinch naive, but I'm just right. I'm so great, that needy future me comes and bothers me all the time. What an annoyance.

Well, ok, it's a laborious chore, but I can take it. She doesn't bother me much anyway. She's just here for my friends. I'm fortunately privileged to have such great friends, so why not share them? And so she's been here for about ten months now.

We didn't tell them at first. Princess Twilight is an even more talented magician than I am, so she effortlessly morphs herself into my shape. Sometimes, when was my turn she would turn into other ponies, and watch as we went on adventures or other such things.

I must admit, all that is a lie. Princess Twilight is a threat to everything I hold dear.

Recently, she gotten bolder, more aggressive. A month ago, she revealed her true form to the gang. Now every time I'm with them I can't help but analyze their ever glance, to see if they think I'm inadequate. Are my feelings her fault or mine.

It's been mentally exhausting for me, but I've just made a deal with the princess which will keep her out of my time stream forever.

“Or it might be jealousy. Juggling a baby and my work has me stressed beyond measure. His incessant questions are just too much.” Gamma continued to speak despite my disinterest. Yes, and then there was this business.

Sometimes I forgot why I put of with this whining and presumptuous journalist. It was for her whining and presumptuous daughter, who had possessed her body ten months ago. This anachronistic event represented a magnificent opportunity to study how paradoxes are resolved in nature, but alas Gumwia had not returned to the host yet. Initially I had hoped to find a way to combat the princess with this temporal phenomenon, but that possibility had grown faint and now I have resorted to bargaining.

Gamma Tales was the worst of the Canterot pseudo-intelligentsia in microcosm. Self-certain, obnoxious, cutthroat, cowardly. I couldn't see what any upstanding colt would see in her. But then again, her relationships where built on manipulation.

“Thats why I like you, Twilight. Your an ever so willing listener.” Gamma said. Oh, if only she knew. The things I do for science.

“Your tea is getting cold.” I pointed out. Gamma tittered and took the cup in question. I continued. “My advice is to keep away from him as long and as often as possible. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all.”

I was giving terrible advice to Gamma and I knew it. Her best course of action for her would be to spend as much time as possible with baby Gummwia and her husband, but maintain the lie of her fidelity. So far as I could gather, her husband was a ponderous sort, so he would let go to his suspicions should Gamma stop doing suspicious little trips.

Gamma had dumped Boaris ages ago. Once she discovered he was unwilling to provide any insider police information that could further her journalistic carrier, Gamma had cut off the affair. Instead, her every dubious foray was to Ponyville to see me. What she hoped to gain at first I was unsure. She might have know I was Celestia's student, and hoped to glean some gossip.

Over the course of the months, her life had deteriorated. Her secretly illegitimate child had been born, she had been demoted at her job, and now her husband was getting savvy to his wife's antics.

For my part, I had encouraged she come to Ponyville as often as possible, incase Gumwia returned. It had become easier to manipulate the mare as her persona began to fall apart. I suppose, in a way, I enjoyed it, having authority over another pony when the control I have over my own life has been gradually stripped away.

I tell myself so many lies now, to keep things strait in my head. Princess Twilight is NOT watching my every move and planning to replace me. My friends have NOT grown more distant as the maintenance of two completely different Twilight's wears on them. Gumwia WAS going to shift back into her mother's body eventually, and miraculously provide me with the key to my continued sanity. I am NOT like Princess Twilight.

“This may be a rough patch,” I told Gamma. “But as long as you keep doing things the same way, your situation will improve.”

She did not respond. Her teacup crashed to the floor. Her eyes widened in recognition.

“Gamma, are you alright?” I asked. Could it be that my dreams had come true?

“Twilight!” Gamma rose from her sitting position. The change in her intonation betrayed that she was familiar with a different vocal range. Thank the bucking stars, Gumwia had returned.

That was step one done.

I had endlessly pondered just what, exactly, could do with Gumwia once she was here. She honestly had little value but as a novelty, for all the data on temporal phenomena I could extract from her. So, I opted to follow a... slightly unconventional approach.

I would:

One. Put her at odds with Princess Twilight. For most of this plan to work, I needed her to hate the princess as much as I did. Considering her capacity for hate, this should be an easy task. However, the princess had made quite the frightening impression on the little pony. I had prepared a devious story, of how the princess was personally to blame for her predicament. This was not entirely untruthful, but I flavored it a bit with half truths and deceptions.

Two. Bring Gummwia and the princess together. I was uncharacteristically lucky today for this part, as the princess was coming to see me very soon. Once rilled up, Gumwia will not be able to keep herself off the other pony's throat.

Three. Bind Princess Twilight's consciousness to Gumwia's. When the next shift happens, they both will leave, hopefully forever. More likely, they would disappear from my life until whenever Gumia's next shift takes her. For casting the binding, all I needed to do was keep a level head.

Gumwia's soul tag now indicated we would meet twice more in my future, so I suppose that meant I survive tonight at least. If she was oscillating towards a point between now and the time at which I cast the tag, I must survive any subsequent encounters with the princess as well.

I almost smiled I was so pleased. This victory was preordained.

“The princess is coming to kill you!” Gumwia in Gamma's body exclaimed. Her words tore me from the heights of my ecstasy, into feeling numb once more.

“That's not good.” I said, brow furrowing. Now why would the princess kill me? Certainly she realizes that would kill her as well.

“Don't ask me how I know, but she's gonna come in a paint the wall with you!” Gumwia hurried to speak. Well, I wasn't going to ask, since time shifting is an adequate explanation by itself.

“Ok.” I said slowly, hoping to sooth the agitated unicorn. “Why don't you explain everything.”

The facts were against her claim of my death. According to her soul tag, she had last been marked by a future me at a point in my time stream before I had first tagged her. How I could have done so if I died right now was beyond me.

Unless... Perhaps if I marked her before I died, and then she came back to this point after witnessing my death. Wait, but then a past her would have been gotten the first tag at a later point, and seen the death as well.

What if I mimicked a future me right now, and then she goes back to a minute ago to warn me of my death? Along the same line, what if a past me mimicked a future me when attaching the tag and then also the other future tag, and then died, and then resurrected without her memories of doing that, and was now me? But then, was I the one about to die and be resurrected without my memories?

I shook my head to clear them of the stupid thoughts. Time travel makes fools of us all. I might as well let Gumwia explain.

“I saw you die.” She said. “I've been here before, shifted to this exact moment. Everything is the same, except I remember.”

Bingo, alternate or parallel universe. My death HAD created a paradox, and the solution was an breakage in the time stream where I did not die. It seems as though my hypothesis of Gumwia as the universe's time medicine wasn't as completely improbable as I first thought.

I stood up and began walking to my room. “Very interesting.” I spoke back to Gumwia. “If you'll excuse me for a moment...”

I darted into my closet. I would need a disguise. I rummaged through the stacks of clothes  and wondered what weather I could expect. I glanced out the bedroom window. I was stormy.

Well, if global cooling is true, I should dress heavily. Winter clothes also make for reasonable disguises. I trotted back down to the library in a heavy skirt, jacket, and boots. Gumwia's mouth was agape.

“You look like the first time I saw you.” She whispered. Now that was curious, but not unexpected. Gumwia was from this time stream where I live (or so I hope), and not the one where I die. Or maybe they where the same time stream, and my death had necessitated a rewrite of history.

“So here's the deal. I'm going to trigger a premature shift in you, and ride that shift forward in time.” I explained. “Then I can deal with the Princess before she even comes back in time. Thus all the paradox's will be resolved.”

I blinked. “Except for the one where I'll be trapped in the future, and therefore never become the princess, and therefor never go back and torment myself enough to provoke my own death.” Damn time travel.

“Buck it! Let's ride!” I seized Gumwia in my magic. And began casting a time destabilization spell. Usually, all you would get from such a spell is a bowl of petunia's and the odd sperm whale, but I anticipated that it would provoke a shift.

“Wait wait!” Gumwia squirmed in my grip. “Can't we kill the princess right now? We can prepare an ambush!”

“No, she needs to be stopped before she ruins my life.” I said confidently.

Magic rolled off my horn as the spell charged up. I cast it, and the whole universe seemed to wobble as if it where jello being poked. As things began to settle, three different things happened.

One. The petunia's came into existence, just as expected.

Two. My front door was atomized by a beam of purple and black energy from the outside. A frenzied and enraged alicorn tore the entry wider with her own body as she erupted into the room.

Three. The air between Gumwia and I coalesced into ethereal tendrils, which waved and wrapped about us. I could feel the time energies surrounding us, and I began to feel flashes from beyond the temporal plain.

I gave Princess Twilight a smile and a wave as Gumwia and I departed.

Gamma's body would probably remain behind. It would be preferable that the princess not destroy her, but I suppose it wouldn't cause too many paradoxes.

-

Phase ?

On my temporal journey I had been little more that a passenger, watching as I was dragged along by Gumwia's consciousness hurtling through the vortex and void. It was a different prospective than when I had been casting the time travel spell, a very deterministically and straightforward jump through time.

Somewhere between the library and wherever it was Gumwia was going, I lost my grip on her consciousness. I didn't have time to panic, as immediately there after I was punted back into reality. Where this reality was I had no idea, but I was overdressed for it.

Sure it was slightly colder, but that could easily be explained by the cloudy sunless sky. When I got back to my proper time stream, I had some words for the climate scientists.

I was on a high vantage point, the roof of some building I could not recognize. I had a reasonable view of the countryside around me, and soon found Ponyville to the east, looking much the same. In my own time, where I was standing would have been where the hospital was.

I teleported down to ground level and turned to discover the building I had been standing on was indeed the hospital, only a much larger and modern version. It lacked the curves and pleasant facade of the old one, it's flat rectangular shape looking for all the world like a cinder block.

I considered the task at hand. I needed to kill Princess Twilight as soon as possible, lest she escape back to my time. I listed my doppelganger's possible locations, first of which was the library.

I teleported myself into the library with practiced precision. Remarkably, it was much the way I had left it. I had expected a throne or menacing purple banners to adorn it's sides. The princess was not here it seemed, and I was about to leave when I saw a note on the desk.

Gone out to the hospital. Direct any emergencies to my adjunct at ton hall. P.T.S.

The hospital, where I had just been. Sighing, I teleported back.

I entered. The entrance was small and utilitarian, containing a row of chairs and a help desk.

“Pinkie's in room one-oh-one.” The mare at the desk called over to me. Unquestioning, I nodded my thanks and proceeded to the halls. Room 101 was, illogically, at the far end.

I entered the dark room. I'm not sure what I expected, anything but an aged and decrepit princess strapped to the hospital bed. Princess Twilight was a withered husk, only sustained by the medical apparatuses connecting to her form every angle.

“You must be Twilight who went back and failed to kill me.” The one I just escaped. I looked on in horror. This mare was 35 years older than she should be, but it was not the years which had done this to her. She looked as if she had been drained, deprived of most of her life force.

“So I must be the one who succeeds.” A whisper at my shoulder said. I shuddered, but did not turn to face the princess who had snuck up behind me.

“What have you done to her.” I asked, still facing forward.

“Nothing she hadn't done to herself.” Twilight's voice was silky and smooth, far more so than I had ever heard. “She was already dead on the inside. Seeing her friends die twice was too much for her.”

Her words sunk in. I had known that all my friends would be dead as the princess had told me, but the words had no impact until that moment.

“Pinkie too?” I struggled to get the question out.

“Oh, she's been dead for YEARS. Old Twilie here has been masquerading as her ever since. But, now she's outlived her usefulness.” Twilight snaked around me now, coming into my view. Her horn glowed, and the withered patient glamoured into a cadaverous Pinkie Pie.

“What changed?” I asked. “Is it Gumwia, or me arriving, or something you've done?”

“Your arrival and little Gummy's time adventure are side effects of an imperfect time loop that I create when I go back.” Twilight said, patting her comatose alternate self. “I try to bring the entire library, friends included, back to the future. But the task it too much for me and I land a day or so short. Things start getting loco.” Twilight snorted in amusement.

That must mean that there was another alicorn Twilight Sparkle out there, the one who killed me and came forward to this time, or the future version of this princess if she was to be believed. This universe was starting to get crowded.

“My friends are with her?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, I've hidden my friends. Probably so I can't just kill myself and save the journey.” The princess snorted. “If you're looking for your friends the best place to start would be the graveyard.”

I steeled my expression. “I came looking for you.”

She laughed. “Come by my place in an hour's time. I'll treat myself to killing you before I go back and kill you again.”

“I hope you have a will written.” I said, turning and heading out the door. It closed behind me.

In the hallway I stopped to think. I'd be a fool to rush into her trap, but I had no other choice. I though about how I should have ended it right then and there. I sighed.

Two voices carried down the hall, growing louder. I cast an invisibility spell and waited for them to pass.

The first pony was a pegasus stallion whom I recognized. Boaris Burns had aged surprisingly well, considering he must be nearing seventy by this point. At his side was a white unicorn with saffron hair, Gumwia Star. I'd never seen her body before. She was much messier looking than her mother, with a disheveled mane and a coat weighed down by an over abundance of guns.

They passed, talking about some murder business, and I snuck out of the hospital. I thought about all the places I could go, but something the princess had said resonated in my mind. I decided on the graveyard.