A pony who had adopted the name Rhythm quietly traced the edge of a steep ravine with his hoofsteps. Were he an earth pony or a unicorn, doing so would have been unreasonably dangerous. For the longest time, his wings seemed like a useless accessory; however, over time, he couldn’t help but notice he was gradually relying on them more and more for his daily activities. It was a simple side-effect of the society he lived in, rather than a choice on his part.
The only sound louder than the gentle flow of the stream was that of casual conversation. Rhythm’s accompaniment was not a unicorn, pegasus, nor earth pony; though, at the same time, she could have been considered all of them.
Rhythm was looking at nothing in particular. The earth and grass that lined the edge of the bleached stone of Ghastly Gorge captured his interest as much as anything else; he took each moment to gaze at whatever object seemed most significant at that instant. In reality, his thoughts were elsewhere, forming words.
“So what do you suppose this is, Twilight?” Rhythm asked. He didn’t want an answer, as he knew neither of them could do so. He only wanted a response.
The alicorn turned her head to respond, but as the question registered in her head, she simply gave a look of confusion. After a brief pause, she replied, “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“This.” Rhythm waved his hoof broadly, as if pointing to everything around him at once. “You know, everything. Well – that’s still pretty vague.” He frowned. “Okay, I know what I’m trying to say, but I don’t know how to say it.”
A few months ago, he wouldn’t have been capable of making a gesture with his hoof like that fluidly while moving. In recent times, however, he rarely needed to consciously think about quadrupedal movement, which was beginning to become as habitual to him as it already was to everyone else he knew.
“Well, could you give me an example?” Twilight asked, tilting her head slightly. Rhythm could tell she was attentive to the conversation by the way she focused less on carrying her basket – it was suspended lower to the ground, and as they moved it seemed to drift as it hovered beside them, as if it wasn’t tethered to anything in particular.
Just the mention of magic still made Rhythm twitch internally. Magic just didn’t make sense under any physical laws he knew. To tell the truth, “Rhythm” was not an arbitrary choice of name; though he did enjoy music, the real concept the name was designed to express is that everything has a logical pattern, even those which appear to us as completely random. This applies down to the quantum level, where the interaction of particles seems almost random – but even they follow some pattern, one that is almost imperceptible to us. The challenge of life, as Rhythm would profess, is to find these patterns and understand why they occur. Understandably, this concept resonated in his mind particularly after he was thrown into a foreign universe and expected to produce a culturally conformant name.
It was additionally fitting because of his “cutie mark”, which was a single sixteenth note. Though he couldn’t see them without a mirror, his eyes were a deep emerald green. His coat and mane were a tan and dark brown color, respectively; somehow, these seemed more natural to him than anything else. He wondered if all of these features were not a coincidence.
“Okay.” Rhythm paused for a moment to assemble his thoughts into words. “So I pop up in here, I get used to living like you – now what? You can’t seem to figure out what happened. I don’t remember my life before I got here, so what can we figure out? …Tough question, right? Well, I do know one thing.”
“And... what’s that?” Twilight asked. She was making an effort to hold a neutral expression, but was also tapping her hoof impatiently. Twilight was the sort of pony that approached every aspect of life like a test, something to solve; insufficient information was only irritating.
The line of thought he was about to express was one that he had largely kept to himself for the duration of his stay there. The ideas he was attempting to put into words were offensive, in a manner of speaking. “This whole situation doesn’t make any sense. Imagine – if I had actually landed here from another universe – the probability of this entire civilization just happening to speak my old one’s language. That probability is zero. It’s negligible at the astronomical scale. It’s literally dividing by infinity– it’s just not there.”
Twilight had participated in a similar conversation in the past, and the answer was obvious to her. “Sure, without any other factors being put into play. But we do know magic was involved, and–”
Each hoofstep brought Rhythm a little closer to death, to the edge of the deepest point of the ravine. Rhythm could feel his heart beginning to beat faster. “No, Twilight, I’m not putting up with that explanation anymore. The fact is that all these explanations assume one thing: that magic exists. It’s too easy. I’m tired of this. Everything is always ‘magic this, magic that’ and no one can even explain why magic works.”
Twilight abruptly halted, dropping her basket. “What are you getting at?”
Rhythm put all four hooves flat on the ground. He was aware of the frustration in his expression, but he didn’t realize his wings were already extended because of the natural fight-or-flight response of pegasi. “Here’s what I’m doing– I’m cutting in with Occam’s razor. You don’t realize there’s other explanations, do you? There’s two easy ones.”
The gorge was right there. The depth of its stone walls seemed endless. He could jump at any moment, and no matter what, it’d be over– he’d have an answer. “The first is that I’m insane. The second is the brain in a vat. You know, I don’t think I’m insane– but, of course, no mental case thinks he’s insane. So how can I know? Still, it seems unrealistic.”
Rhythm wondered how he would do it. There was an instinct of preservation that pushed back at his will like a waterfall, but he knew all he had to do was to just… do it– without putting thought into it. It was the thought of it that would paralyze him. In reality, it’d be simple, painless. He concluded he would most likely simply lean off of the edge, and try to hold his wings tightly shut.
“The second explanation also states that none of this is real. It says that this is all a simulation, and that through some means my mind is being ‘placed’ in it. It makes sense. I don’t know who I used to be, but I remember what we were capable of. I don’t remember my friends, my family, or what I even looked like, but I remember our technology. I remember what I learned in school. I know we were capable of this. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. I don’t think the ground I’m standing on is made of atoms. I think–”
“This is stupid, Rhythm!” Twilight exclaimed. “I don’t need you becoming a crazy just because things look weird to you. Look around you! You’re standing on solid ground. The air we breathe is real. I – I’m – ...Come back from the ledge,” she requested, more than aware of his intentions. She spoke as if she was angry, but her eyes revealed her distress. “Please,” she begged softly, her voice beginning to waver.
Rhythm knew he would be falling for over thirty seconds; it was almost a mile drop. From so far up, the cool blue stream seemed so small. At that moment, it felt like a target he was aiming for. “I know it feels real. Of course it feels real. The civilization I used to live in could create a false reality so perfect you could never tell the difference. Its inhabitants could never tell the difference.”
“I know the world around us is tangible,” he said, giving a bittersweet smile. “But that’s not what makes it lose its reality. I’m tired, Twilight. My mind is trapped, and there’s only one way out out the vat.”
Rhythm ignored whatever she was shouting at him. It wasn’t important anymore. “Goodbye,” he whispered, as he leaned back.
Immediately, he began accelerating. Until he realized his wings were outstretched, he glid downward at a steep angle, away from the stony face of the cliff. As he pulled his wings in, the only things that could save his life, he noticed how stunningly fast he was moving. Panic set in, along with a strange sense of determination. His pegasus eyes reduced his need to squint against the air cutting against him. He was able to clearly see the stream grow in his field of view. He was going to die soon, he knew.
As Rhythm increased in speed, he oriented himself and his legs to maintain stability. At this point, he was probably moving at nearly terminal velocity. He wondered what would happen when he hit the ground. It would certainly be almost instantaneous. This was the fastest he had ever been in his entire life by an order of magnitude; what feeble ability in flight he did have couldn’t possibly save him now.
His thoughts were interrupted by a strange visual artifact that he began to notice. There were stripes. He turned his head to the side, and the cracks and boulders of the cliff face were indeed overlaid by stripes. They weren’t solid stripes, so to speak– they were horizontal rips in his vision, disjoint pictures from different moments of time seamed together.
At that moment, at that single snapshot of his life that lasted a fraction of a second, his world became clear. It all finally made sense. It was screen tearing, like on the displays of his old world. He was looking at a picture painted by a simulation. It could have been the most masterfully crafted painting ever conceived, but the author left a single error: there was no vertical sync. Every time a frame is is drawn for his eyes, the old one was overwritten in a series of horizontal lines, not quickly enough for his eyes not to notice. The process left bars – stripes – separating two fragments of reality. Perhaps the author forgot to enable it – or perhaps it was deliberate. Perhaps it was a message to him, a taunt, and an answer to his question, maybe even all at the same time.
Whatever the reason was didn’t matter to Rhythm. What mattered was that this was all a game. It was the most intricate game anyone had ever played, but it was all just a game. He wasn’t really falling. He wasn’t really about to hit the ground. Despite this, maybe they were going to kill him – the real him – the instant he did. However, at this point he had no time left to contemplate the matter. The ground expanded faster and faster below him. Rhythm let his eyes close and forfeited the game.
What would happen when he was dead? Would the simulation end? Or would it continue running without anyone to observe it – as an empty shell? He didn’t know. He couldn’t know. Perhaps someone watching the simulation was making that choice right at that moment.
In Rhythm’s mind, he imagined the ground slamming into him over and over. A gripping panic began to grow in his heart. Instinctively, he tried to use his wings, which only made the situation exponentially worse. He tumbled. The glaring, whitewashed sky and indistinct stone walls flashed in his vision left and right in irregular patterns. His sense of direction faltered and failed until he had not the faintest idea which way was up or down. Shouting desperately, he knew the ground was rushing to meet him, and death would crush him from any angle.
Barely a second later, a powerful force slammed into Rhythm. For a single moment, he wondered if he was dead. He was instead pummeled sideways by a purple figure he was all too familiar with.
“Don’t ever do that again!” Twilight shouted, clutching him tightly. Rhythm remained limp in order to avoid being dropped, which, at this point, would lead to intense pain rather than a quick end. His reply was silence, as he stared motionless into the depths of the ravine. It was over now, but it wasn’t in the sense he thought it would be. He somehow knew he would never jump again. He finally understood the world around him. Unbridled tears came to his eyes, for an uncountable number of reasons.
After a minute or so of gliding and decelerating, he was placed on the ground, his savior gently landing. Rhythm slid into a sitting position leaning against the side of the gorge. Twilight silently joined him by his side. There were no words that could express how they felt or what had just happened, so none were spoken.
Rhythm blinked. He suddenly became hyperaware of the dimensions of everything around him – the distance of every surface, the volume of every object, from the stream to the stone wall he was leaning against. He was alive. This truth gave him neither pleasure nor discontent.
“Do you understand now?” Twilight murmured quietly, staring into space ahead of her. “Does it make sense? Does anything make sense now?”
Yes, he knew, everything made sense now. The only reality was perception. Rhythm decided that Twilight deserved to know what the stripes – what everything – meant. She had a right to know; clearly, she could not see them. Maybe he could teach her to see the stripes.
However, a darker thought came upon him. No matter what he chose, he could not give her the choice. She could live her entire existence unaware, or be told an unforgettable revelation she would carry for the rest of her immortal life.
He had to tell her. He took heavier breaths with each passing second. He had to tell her. This was his best chance. The worst feeling was the awareness that she deserved to know, that she of all ponies deserved to understand who she really was. It was unfair to her. Both choices were unspeakably unfair, but no matter what, she deserved to know. He opened his mouth to speak – but despite his best intentions, the words died in his mouth.
It was at that moment that he knew he couldn’t do it. There was nothing he could tell himself that could make him speak the words. “I think everything makes a little bit more sense now,” Rhythm replied quietly.
Twilight took almost as long to reply as he did, staring into the distance with that same look she always wore when she was deep in thought. However, finally, she turned her gaze to him, smiling. “That’s good. That’s a start.” She stood up and offered him a violet hoof. “Would you like to come home?” she asked warmly.
Rhythm looked her in the eyes. “Yes, I would like to go home,” he replied, leaving no ambiguity in her mind as to what he meant, but capturing exactly the uncertainty that he meant to express. He reached for her hoof, and stood up with her assistance.
Together, they spread their wings and left for the Ponyville library, both influenced by a life-altering experience that for certain had changed their world’s meaningless course of history.
Author's Note
This is the first thing I've ever written, but I don't ask you to take it easy on me. Give me a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down, it doesn't matter; I only hope you'll tell me why. That's what matters.
