The Trouble with Wormholesby Mr Long WindedChaptersDon't Panic.Don't Ever Panic.Keep Calm.Don't Panic.When your town or city is in a situation of extreme peril, the first thing you must never ever do is look up. The second thing you must never ever do is panic. The reason that this is, by far, the worst thing you could ever do is because it enables a little tiny lizard part of the brain that is well known for making poor decisions in times like these. For example, it thinks that screaming and running is the best way to deal with a disaster that you could neither scream or run from. The denizens of Ponyville looked up and panicked; their inner lizards went wild. Normally this wouldn't be a problem for Ponyville given their frequent history of disasters, but this particular disaster was different from the occasional bugbear attack. They weren't dealing with something organic here. This was especially apparent to Twilight Sparkle, as well as her friends as they tried to convince Ponyville that having a fear-driven herd mentality was not the way to cope. "Everypony calm down! We have things under control!" Twilight's shouting was drowned by the cacophony of screaming. She couldn't help but feel annoyed. She was the princess, gosh darn it. Why does nobody ever believe her when she says everything's going to be okay? "What in tarnation is going on?" Applejack inquired. She looked up, her jaw dropping immediately. She would've joined the crowds in flailing around too had Twilight not pinned her to the ground. Fluttershy tried to understand what was putting everypony on edge. She looked up as well, her breathing went breakneck. "Twilight?!" Twilight forced her to look away. "Stop that!" The remaining three turned their gaze towards the sky. "Girls!" yelled Twilight rather sharply. The three turned away before they could get a good glimpse. "We need to be able to think things through logically." "How the hay are we supposed to do that if we can't even see what's going on?!" Rainbow Dash screamed over the crowd. Rainbow had a point. If Twilight couldn't see the disaster, she wouldn't know how to deal with it. At the same time, looking at it would make her go hysterical. She hated when she couldn't win. "We need to evacuate! Try to move as many ponies as you can to the safe zone!" The suggestion was nothing more than organized screaming and running, but unfortunately Twilight had no other choice. The group dispersed and tried herding ponies to the best to their abilities. Twilight went to evacuate stallions on the east side of Ponyville. She zapped them one by one with a teleportation beam that led straight to the safe zone. It was very time consuming. Very, very, very consuming. In retrospect, Twilight thought, it would've been much easier to learn how to teleport the whole town at once instead. Slowly, but surely, the town was evacuated. At first it seemed that Twilight's work was finished, but perhaps not. She caught eye of a stallion standing out in the midst of the streets with an unseemly calm stance. He was staring straight at the sky and did nothing else. In fact, it looked as if he was observing. Twilight could've zapped him with a teleportation spell, but she didn't. Why wasn't he freaking out? She went over to ask him. Without announcing herself, the stranger turned to look at her as if she was always beside him. "Lovely weather we're having?" he said ironically. He pointed to the sky, "Sorry about that." Twilight blinked at him quite cluelessly. "Sorry for what?" The stallion didn't answer, his focus was geared more towards the large gash in the sky. He turned to Twilight once more. "Ever wanted to know the meaning of life?" he asked. "You'd better start searching now because very soon there might not be one." With that he ran off. Somewhere in the vicinity, a small green alligator cried in anguish. * * * Don't Ever Panic.It was a beautiful day in Canterlot, but when was it never? The sun still shined, the birds still sung, and frankly there had been twelve days drought... Yawn. In fact, this day was as picture perfect as a particularly bad fanfic writer could describe it. Well almost... Sunset Shimmer sat at a booth with Pinkie Pie at the local creamery, her eyes drooping and face in her hand. She felt incredibly off: like she never really got out of bed that day. "Plopped" out of bed would be more like it. "...And then we're going to have chocolate fountains! And streamers! And cakes!" "Mhm," Sunset replied weakly. Pinkie continued chattering ad infititum. She must've been in a really good mood this morning. Morning... Was there even a morning today? Sunset brushed off the strange thought. She must still be in a sleepy daze. Sunset started to see a trend in Pinkie's speech: a liberal use of the word "party." That seemed to be all Pinkie has been talking about as of late; throwing them to be precise. I wonder what the occasion is, Sunset thought. Surely she would've known by now why Pinkie was so enthusiastic about throwing parties this week as she was fairly open about that sort of thing, but Sunset couldn't for the life of her she recall the reason as it kept slipping from her fingers. The reason she searched for so desperately in her head was but a bar of soap in the shower bath. The ground beneath the two friends violently shifted, as if the planet they stood on flinched. Sunset banged her head on the table. The blow to her head did not help her splitting head ache. "Oh not again!" said Sunset rubbing her forehead. The quake made a nice mess of Pinkie and Sunset's drinks. The janitor in the corner tore up his newspaper and left the building. "I'm really sorry about the drinks, Pinkie." "It's okay," Pinkie smiled. She produced a sheet of obnoxiously pink paper. On it was an address, a time, and a place. "Remember to bring a gift!" Was this a birthday party? Sunset was even more worried. The invitation didn't say anything about who it was for. It amazed her how bad Pinkie was at making informative invitations for her extravagant social gatherings. Oh well, maybe a quick trip to the store can- Much like an awkward neighbor coming over uninvited, another tremor shook the ground. This time Sunset nearly fell into a manhole. "Gosh dang it!" Sunset swore in a kid friendly tongue. "Can this day get any weirder?" Saying such a thing was very nearly a death wish. Asking the universe if it could get any weirder was like asking a cabdriver if he could drive any slower. The answer is yes, they can, and they'll do so just to piss you off. Sunset spotted a young man in a long coat staring attentively at the sky. Upon closer inspection, he was peering through a telescope being held exactly the way that it shouldn't. Sunset approached the man and joined him in staring at the sky. She saw nothing worth note but a couple of wispy cirrus clouds. "What are you doing?" Sunset finally asked. The man frowned as if he'd been asked that same question many times within the course of a minute. "Don't mind me," he said. "Just star gazing." Sunset never really knew how stargazing worked, so she didn't comment on that. Instead she commented on this: "I don't think that's how you hold a telescope." The man gave her this puzzled look like she was Adolf Hitler on a pogo stick. He continued his stargazing. "I should really get to fixing that wormhole." Keep Calm.According to The Great Dictionary for Intergalactic Questions and/or Concerns, a wormhole is by definition a tunnel burrowed by worms. Now the definition given here is very important for a reason: it's saying that burrowing holes, aka creating wormholes, is an activity reserved for worms and worms only. Why? Because worms know how to do it without killing anyone. Trying to create a wormhole as a non-worm creature is just as absurd (and dangerous) as a chimpanzee trying to diffuse a bomb: it simply cannot occur without great error. A foolish man would say "Bah, those are just names! I can diffuse bombs and dig wormholes all I like, and I'm not even a bombworm expert!" Oh how dire the consequences of such thought. When you open up a wormhole, especially on accident, you also (no pun intended) open up a pretty big can of worms: you open one up without knowledge of how strong and unstable that wormhole is, and occasionally it carries the capacity to create temporal anomalies. For example, whole days or even a few hours in a week can be nullified. In more severe cases, it can result in the shattering of an individual throughout time and space. Usually this kind of thing kills the original person, but that's not to say that the pieces are not still "them." In fact, a particularly stupid person would try to use this to their advantage. Two heads are better than one, after all, but one head would be much easier to manage.
Don't Panic.When your town or city is in a situation of extreme peril, the first thing you must never ever do is look up. The second thing you must never ever do is panic. The reason that this is, by far, the worst thing you could ever do is because it enables a little tiny lizard part of the brain that is well known for making poor decisions in times like these. For example, it thinks that screaming and running is the best way to deal with a disaster that you could neither scream or run from. The denizens of Ponyville looked up and panicked; their inner lizards went wild. Normally this wouldn't be a problem for Ponyville given their frequent history of disasters, but this particular disaster was different from the occasional bugbear attack. They weren't dealing with something organic here. This was especially apparent to Twilight Sparkle, as well as her friends as they tried to convince Ponyville that having a fear-driven herd mentality was not the way to cope. "Everypony calm down! We have things under control!" Twilight's shouting was drowned by the cacophony of screaming. She couldn't help but feel annoyed. She was the princess, gosh darn it. Why does nobody ever believe her when she says everything's going to be okay? "What in tarnation is going on?" Applejack inquired. She looked up, her jaw dropping immediately. She would've joined the crowds in flailing around too had Twilight not pinned her to the ground. Fluttershy tried to understand what was putting everypony on edge. She looked up as well, her breathing went breakneck. "Twilight?!" Twilight forced her to look away. "Stop that!" The remaining three turned their gaze towards the sky. "Girls!" yelled Twilight rather sharply. The three turned away before they could get a good glimpse. "We need to be able to think things through logically." "How the hay are we supposed to do that if we can't even see what's going on?!" Rainbow Dash screamed over the crowd. Rainbow had a point. If Twilight couldn't see the disaster, she wouldn't know how to deal with it. At the same time, looking at it would make her go hysterical. She hated when she couldn't win. "We need to evacuate! Try to move as many ponies as you can to the safe zone!" The suggestion was nothing more than organized screaming and running, but unfortunately Twilight had no other choice. The group dispersed and tried herding ponies to the best to their abilities. Twilight went to evacuate stallions on the east side of Ponyville. She zapped them one by one with a teleportation beam that led straight to the safe zone. It was very time consuming. Very, very, very consuming. In retrospect, Twilight thought, it would've been much easier to learn how to teleport the whole town at once instead. Slowly, but surely, the town was evacuated. At first it seemed that Twilight's work was finished, but perhaps not. She caught eye of a stallion standing out in the midst of the streets with an unseemly calm stance. He was staring straight at the sky and did nothing else. In fact, it looked as if he was observing. Twilight could've zapped him with a teleportation spell, but she didn't. Why wasn't he freaking out? She went over to ask him. Without announcing herself, the stranger turned to look at her as if she was always beside him. "Lovely weather we're having?" he said ironically. He pointed to the sky, "Sorry about that." Twilight blinked at him quite cluelessly. "Sorry for what?" The stallion didn't answer, his focus was geared more towards the large gash in the sky. He turned to Twilight once more. "Ever wanted to know the meaning of life?" he asked. "You'd better start searching now because very soon there might not be one." With that he ran off. Somewhere in the vicinity, a small green alligator cried in anguish. * * *
Don't Ever Panic.It was a beautiful day in Canterlot, but when was it never? The sun still shined, the birds still sung, and frankly there had been twelve days drought... Yawn. In fact, this day was as picture perfect as a particularly bad fanfic writer could describe it. Well almost... Sunset Shimmer sat at a booth with Pinkie Pie at the local creamery, her eyes drooping and face in her hand. She felt incredibly off: like she never really got out of bed that day. "Plopped" out of bed would be more like it. "...And then we're going to have chocolate fountains! And streamers! And cakes!" "Mhm," Sunset replied weakly. Pinkie continued chattering ad infititum. She must've been in a really good mood this morning. Morning... Was there even a morning today? Sunset brushed off the strange thought. She must still be in a sleepy daze. Sunset started to see a trend in Pinkie's speech: a liberal use of the word "party." That seemed to be all Pinkie has been talking about as of late; throwing them to be precise. I wonder what the occasion is, Sunset thought. Surely she would've known by now why Pinkie was so enthusiastic about throwing parties this week as she was fairly open about that sort of thing, but Sunset couldn't for the life of her she recall the reason as it kept slipping from her fingers. The reason she searched for so desperately in her head was but a bar of soap in the shower bath. The ground beneath the two friends violently shifted, as if the planet they stood on flinched. Sunset banged her head on the table. The blow to her head did not help her splitting head ache. "Oh not again!" said Sunset rubbing her forehead. The quake made a nice mess of Pinkie and Sunset's drinks. The janitor in the corner tore up his newspaper and left the building. "I'm really sorry about the drinks, Pinkie." "It's okay," Pinkie smiled. She produced a sheet of obnoxiously pink paper. On it was an address, a time, and a place. "Remember to bring a gift!" Was this a birthday party? Sunset was even more worried. The invitation didn't say anything about who it was for. It amazed her how bad Pinkie was at making informative invitations for her extravagant social gatherings. Oh well, maybe a quick trip to the store can- Much like an awkward neighbor coming over uninvited, another tremor shook the ground. This time Sunset nearly fell into a manhole. "Gosh dang it!" Sunset swore in a kid friendly tongue. "Can this day get any weirder?" Saying such a thing was very nearly a death wish. Asking the universe if it could get any weirder was like asking a cabdriver if he could drive any slower. The answer is yes, they can, and they'll do so just to piss you off. Sunset spotted a young man in a long coat staring attentively at the sky. Upon closer inspection, he was peering through a telescope being held exactly the way that it shouldn't. Sunset approached the man and joined him in staring at the sky. She saw nothing worth note but a couple of wispy cirrus clouds. "What are you doing?" Sunset finally asked. The man frowned as if he'd been asked that same question many times within the course of a minute. "Don't mind me," he said. "Just star gazing." Sunset never really knew how stargazing worked, so she didn't comment on that. Instead she commented on this: "I don't think that's how you hold a telescope." The man gave her this puzzled look like she was Adolf Hitler on a pogo stick. He continued his stargazing. "I should really get to fixing that wormhole."
Keep Calm.According to The Great Dictionary for Intergalactic Questions and/or Concerns, a wormhole is by definition a tunnel burrowed by worms. Now the definition given here is very important for a reason: it's saying that burrowing holes, aka creating wormholes, is an activity reserved for worms and worms only. Why? Because worms know how to do it without killing anyone. Trying to create a wormhole as a non-worm creature is just as absurd (and dangerous) as a chimpanzee trying to diffuse a bomb: it simply cannot occur without great error. A foolish man would say "Bah, those are just names! I can diffuse bombs and dig wormholes all I like, and I'm not even a bombworm expert!" Oh how dire the consequences of such thought. When you open up a wormhole, especially on accident, you also (no pun intended) open up a pretty big can of worms: you open one up without knowledge of how strong and unstable that wormhole is, and occasionally it carries the capacity to create temporal anomalies. For example, whole days or even a few hours in a week can be nullified. In more severe cases, it can result in the shattering of an individual throughout time and space. Usually this kind of thing kills the original person, but that's not to say that the pieces are not still "them." In fact, a particularly stupid person would try to use this to their advantage. Two heads are better than one, after all, but one head would be much easier to manage.
