"Now, magic is an odd thing. Its exact characteristics are so difficult to pin down that scholars and scientists have tried and failed for centuries to explain precisely what it is and how it works. There is, however, a general consensus on a few key points which have been developed over the years. First: magic is a unique phenomenon that cannot be explained by current knowledge of gravity, energy, electromagnetism, or nuclear forces. I, for one, am convinced it's related to an interaction on an even smaller, most likely subatomic level, but I have yet to find definitive proof of this. Second: magic alters probability, or more specifically, works solely by allowing events to occur that are very unlikely but not strictly impossible. The accumulation of these (usually very small) unlikely events creates a larger, more noticeable effect.
Allow me to present a simple example. It's a known fact that the molecules in solids vibrate. This vibration occurs in mostly random directions, and is often referred to as thermal energy, or heat. If we were to simply tweak the probability so that most of the vibrations go in the same direction, the object starts to move. That's what we call basic telekinesis. Any questions so far?"
Rainbow Dash, as it turned out, did not have any questions, mostly because she wasn't listening to a single word I said. She blinked suddenly, snapping out of her half-awake daze she had apparently entered the moment I had begun my lecture. She almost fell off the chair, her head narrowly avoiding the bookcase, but luckily managing to prevent a collision which would have resulted in some very tedious reshelving.
"W-what?" She replied with a confused stare that I could not help but find absolutely adorable. How she always managed to act so naive and innocent yet so blatantly narcissistic at the same time was beyond me.
"You weren't even listening, were you, Dash?" I rolled my eyes, but an amused smirk managed to sneak onto my face despite my best efforts. "How can you appreciate what I'm about to do here if you can't even grasp basic magic theory?"
"Maybe if you explained it in plain Equestrian..." Dash began with a grin which quite surprisingly mirrored my own.
"Fine, fine." I conceded with a chuckle. "So, the basic idea is that no one knows exactly how magic works..."
Dash, to her credit, seemed to in fact grasp magic theory rather well; as she had implied, I was simply explaining it somewhat verbosely (Dash would say it was just confusing, but at least it made sense to me). With a few changes in wording, the comprehension skyrocketed.
"So, where exactly are you going with this?" Dash asked, seeming a bit perplexed by the situation. "I mean, I get all that stuff about the vibrating molecules, but..."
I decided to take the route Celestia often did, and answer her question with a question. "How do teleportation spells work?"
"Why are you asking me?" Dash frowned. "You're the magic expert here."
“Because I need to know what you know before I can tell you what I know so that you know what I know.”
She frowned in confusion.
"Nevermind." I sighed, waving my hoof dismissively. Okay, so answering a question with a question doesn't work in all situations. Noted. Back to lecture mode, I suppose. "So, it goes something like this." I grabbed some parchment from my desk and set it down on the table, bringing my quill and ink along with it. "This is where I am," I marked the paper with a T near one corner. "And this is where I want to go." I put an X in the opposite corner of the page. "Now, I could just walk all the way there," I continued, demonstrating by drawing a straight line between the two letters. "and that would be fine. But sometimes I want to get there a bit faster. That's where teleportation comes in. Remember how I said molecules in solids vibrate?" Dash nodded uncertainly, clearly still a bit confused about the purpose of the lesson. "Well, they also have a tiny, tiny chance of going from one place to another more or less instantly. It's known as quantum tunneling, but the name isn't as important as the concept itself. The point is, since magic can tweak probability, we can take advantage of the fact that there's a tiny, tiny chance that all my molecules move all the way from here--" I pointed at the T. "--over to here--" I tapped the X. "--in an immeasurably small amount of time, in the exact same arrangement they were in before."
"But how do the molecules move from one place to another like that?" Dash inquired, squinting at the page as if it held the answer.
"An excellent question! One that is in fact the focus of my recent research, and which has lead me to a startling discovery." I replied, grinning. "And this is the really weird part, so try to bear with me here...
"So, I've been sudying how energy works on an atomic level, and it's very strange. As I've mentioned, particles move from one place to another instantly with no explanation, and they seem to have inherent limitations to where they can be at any given time that don't make much sense. But through a lot of really complicated math and a bit of wild guessing, I've come up with an explanation: ten-dimensional spacetime."
"Wait, what?" Dash blinked. "How does that even work?"
"Imagine for a moment that the space we live in is two-dimensional, like this paper." I said, gesturing to the sheet I'd used to demonstrate basic teleportation. "Now, imagine that there actually is a third spatial dimension, but it's so knotted up we can't percieve it." I put a few random creases in the paper and unfolded it so that some of it was lifted slightly off of the table. "So, theoretically, you could 'jump' across a crease like this one." I pointed at a crease which left a little valley in the paper. "The distance here is smaller than it would be if you just went along the paper, right?"
"Oh, I think I get it!" Dash said, her face lighting up. "That's how the particles go between the two places like that! Because of the extra dimension!"
"Exactly." Dash may not be the intellectual type, at least not conventionally, but she was an amazingly fast learner. "But there's not just one extra dimension, there's six. Which makes it possible to go even farther. And if you do this," I folded the paper in half. "You can go pretty much wherever you want, with no distance limitations. That's what I've been working on. A long-range teleportation spell. Traditional teleportation is limited to a few hundred hooves, but I've developed a way to, theoretically, go anywhere in the world. This is revolutionary! Up until now, even the princesses couldn't do something like this; it's just too far of a jump. But with a simple change in perspective, even a unicorn, me for example, could go around the world in mere seconds!" I was grinning madly now, my eyes dilated with excitement.
"Not every unicorn has the kind of magical aptitude you do, Twi." Rainbow pointed out with a wink.
"But that's the best part! They don't have to!" I squealed. "The amount of magical energy required is only slightly more than that for a regular teleportation spell. It's mostly a matter of executing the spell properly, which is something pretty much anyone could learn! Granted, I still need to fine-tune some details and find a way to simplify it a bit, but I'm sure it's possible. I could demonstrate it right now!"
"I thought you said it wasn't done." Rainbow interjected cautiously.
"I said it needed fine-tuning." I replied, with a wave of my hoof. "It'll still work fine. A few miles should be trivial. Meet me at..." I thought for a moment. "Applejack's front porch!"
I walked over to the center of the room, where I'd cleared out some space to perform my spell. Spike, who was sitting in the corner and had refused to participate in the discussion, glanced up from his comic book, seeming mildly concerned.
"Twilight, if you hurt yourself--"
"It'll be fine, Spike. You can go with Rainbow to Sweet Apple Acres if you're really worried."
"And what if you don't end up at Sweet Apple Acres?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Spike, I know what I'm doing."
I began the spell before he could make any further protests. I felt the tingle of energy in my horn, the power of infinite possibilities flowing through me. Even after years of using it on a regular basis, use of this sort of magic never ceased to be exhilarating.
I felt space and time twist around me as I shifted my viewpoint. My view distorted, Spike and Rainbow turning to dots in my vision as all of reality compressed itself into my field of view like a cosmic kaleidoscope. My spell was working just as planned. I was drifting out of reality, into extradimensional space.
But I was going too fast. I'd underestimated just how powerful the spell would be. I felt the world pulled out from under me, and I stumbled, desperately trying to keep my balance, trying to do something, anything, to slow it down. I pulled myself back, felt the distortion reverse itself, but I couldn't see my home planet anywhere. I glanced around, and aimed myself toward the nearest planet with the faint hope that maybe, just maybe, it was home.
The surface rushed toward me and bent around like a bow wrapped on a present. Everything spun around, and I felt a wave of nausea wash over me. Why wouldn't it just stop?
And then it did. It stopped, suddenly, and everything snapped into place.
I caught only a glimpse of a red, barren landscape around me before my vision faded to black.
