Reincarnation or Immortality

Chapters

Seeking
Journals
Ideals
Living
Decisions
Problems
Everyone
A Party
Death
Reincarnation or Immortality (or Nonexistence)

Seeking

“How many multiple thought spells have you cast so far?” asked Fluttershy, her voice emanating from every book inside the library. She picked up another glowing blue book off of a shelf, and teleported to another spot with a blue book a galaxy away.

“I’m nearing one hundred million and still going strong,” said Accord, his own voice emanating from every book instantaneously as he was talking. Their conversation continued despite the seven to the twelfth millionth power universe lengths in between them. “Our time inside this library is nearly as low as we can get without stopping time itself.”

“Are you sure that stopping time wouldn’t be easier than this?” said Fluttershy, grabbing another book and adding it to the stack in her hooves before hopping to another impossibly distant place.

“I can convince all of the atoms in Equestria to all stop at once, giving the illusion of stopping time, but that wouldn’t stop time for whatever domain Galaxia is in. No—multiple thought spells in my own universe is our best option. Remember, this library is an integral part of how I think. It may be a universe, but it’s linked to my head. If I told all the atoms here to stop it would mean stopping myself. If I stopped time you alone could move at normal speed inside here.”

“If you’re here, then where is your body? Still standing in front of Celestia?”

“No, I’m in the waiting room again, watching Pinkie Pie die. With multiple thought spells going I should be able to hold a conversation if anyone talks to me.”

“How is Pinkie doing?”

“She’s the same as four microseconds before, when you asked me earlier. Dying.”

“Just checking,” she said as she appeared in front of him at the very bottom of the library. “Another stack for you.”

Accord took the pile of blue books from Fluttershy and dyed them all a navy blue before adding them to his main sorting pile.

He pulled out a book from the stack and barely glanced at a few pages before dying it black, inscribing a title, and sending it to a teetering stack of other black books. Each hexagonal side was already stacked with books. The black pile had gray and white books seeping away from it. The largest pile was green, which was already starting to seep into the corner corridor, which led eternally beyond. Another side was light blue, with other areas of reds, purples, and yellow. There were yet more books forming their own piles in between them.

“How am I doing all of this without a horn anyway?” asked Fluttershy as she teleported away, putting the first book of the next stack in her hoof.

“Did you want a horn? I can give you a horn,” said Accord, a horn appearing on Fluttershy’s head.

She teleported back to him and handed him more books, the bottom of the library already overflowing in a multicolored sea of them.

“That’s not exactly what I had in mind,” Fluttershy said, teleporting away again, surprised to see three books sitting next to each other, all glowing blue. “I just thought I needed a horn to use magic.”

“I’ve given you a conceptually infinite amount of knowledge and near omnipotence and omniscience. If you include library time, we’ve been together for three hundred years. You don’t need a horn to do magic.”

“But then why do you have a horn?”

He paused, setting the book he was skimming down on the floor. His eyes crossed as he stared at his horn. “I think it looks cool.”

“Does it make me look cool?” said Fluttershy as she reached the bottom with more books, and conjured up a mirror out of nowhere.

He stood up, trotting closer to her and staring at her image in the mirror. “I think it makes you look cute,” he said, smirking.

“But it’s getting in the way of my mane,” she said, raising a hoof and making a few strands of pale pink hair get out of the way of her horn.

He leaned closer to her and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Fluttershy, I don’t think you could do anything that would make yourself look less adorable to me.”

“I doubt that,” she said, grinning. “I mean, what if I turned into a spider?” by the time the words had left her mouth, she had already transformed into a giant tarantula.

“Nope, you’re still my wife and I would love you no matter what,” he said, also turning himself into a tarantula, all eight of his eyes happy to see her.

She turned herself into a dragon and nearly squashed him, a few of the stacks of books toppling onto the floor.

“How about now?”

He turned into a long snake-like dragon and curled around her until his eyes locked on with hers.

“Of course.”

She turned into the same kind of dragon, entwining herself against him and returning his gaze.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

They held each other for a moment before turning into alicorns and getting back to work.

“I think I look better without the horn,” said Fluttershy, the horn vanishing from her head as she teleported away and grabbed more books.

“You’re beautiful!” said Accord, cheering her on as he raced through more books. He voraciously read through many of his old favorite books and tried to reconcile them with how Equestria actually worked. All of those books were now going to help him as he tried to formulate the best scenario. There had to be a way to let all souls be immortal and still have the complete freedom to choose to do so.

“So… Queen Galaxia and Hope,” Fluttershy said. “How are we going to talk to them?”

“Very carefully. I’m still struggling to understand why a group of beings would actively create worlds. Isn’t infinite time and the randomness of creation a fast enough process for them?”

Fluttershy teleported down and gave him a sour look, dropping off only two books. “Creating things directly is a lot faster than waiting for it to happen.”

He raised a hoof to his muzzle. “I dunno, I always had a book to read while waiting.”

“You have the oddest quality of being eternally patient, Accord,” said Fluttershy, transforming into a draconequus and staring at him.

“That—that wasn’t patience. That was…” Accord trailed off, looking at her.

“Life’s better when there’s others you can share it with, isn’t it?” asked Fluttershy.

“Yeah…” said Accord. It was strange seeing Fluttershy take on the form he had been so comfortable in for such a long time.

“Anyway…” Accord found his voice again. “I guess I’m shy as far as omniscient beings go. I’m going to have a hard time convincing Galaxia, Cosmos and whatever Hope is to let us change things in Equestria.”

“Why haven’t they come already? I mean, we’ve been here the entire time.”

“It’s like in Celestia’s memories. They’re clockmakers. They make a place and then they move on. But asking them for one of the planets they’ve staked their claim on is going to be a tall order. We might have to move the entire thing to a different universe just to change the magic of the world to allow immortality.”

“What if they say no?”

“Worst-case scenario… they take all of my memories. They’ll have a tough time sorting through all of this though,” he said, elongating the ‘a’ in ‘all’ for a while and gesturing to the library above them. “And if they take my memories it should overflow their minds with enough of myself to let us have what we want.”

“That’s worst case?”

“You’re right, that does sound like best case. Worst case is that they remove my body from my soul… and your soul from your body… and we never see each other again…” Accord paused, the idea weighing down his head so low that he stared at the floor. “And we reincarnate forever…”

Fluttershy teleported back with a stack of books, and upon seeing her husband staring at the ground, dropped them to the floor and rushed to hug him.

“There, there… it’s okay. We can get through this,” she said, enveloping him with her wings.

“I wasted so much time!” screamed Accord. “I could have been with you this whole time. I could have trusted somepony. But no—I just had to treat everywhere I went like an experiment. And by the time I understand myself enough, there’s a large group of other omniscient beings controlling who knows how much of the multiverse. And their ensuring that everyone reincarnates like they should, and monitoring the whole thing with their memory covers. But in my time, reincarnation just kind of happened… why would they enforce it?”

“First of all, I’m glad you waited, or else we might not have ever met,” she said looking into his eyes. “And second, there are so many possible souls in the multiverse. Maybe they just wanted to make sure each soul got to experience life at least once?”

“But why not leave them immortal? What happened that forced them to condemn all souls to live this kind of existence? Death shouldn’t be a part of life. If souls never die, then why should we?”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Something tugged on Galaxia’s mind. Something was wrong…

She was currently watching as a group of fire creatures ventured forth on their first space flight, headed towards their sun. This is the moment she had been waiting hundreds of years for. Her first idea had been to set these fire creatures directly on the surface of their sun, but she wondered if they would eventually get the idea to head there anyway.

Other sapient beings visited their moons and other planets. The urge to explore had struck this species as anticipated. These were creatures that lived on lava their entire lives, forming tall towers with the molten rock until it solidified into rock from which they farmed edible vines.

Their rock towers now criss-crossed the planet, forming entire jungles of vines. It had been so interesting to watch them put several layers of cooled rock on their tentacles to prevent the vines from burning before they were ripe.

They had advanced fairly quickly in the twelve hundred thousand years since they had started evolving. Despite their low technological prowess, they had managed to make a spaceship out of rock and used the consistent blast from one of the largest volcanoes to venture into space. Galaxia looked forward to seeing their reaction when they confirmed that the surface of the sun was entirely hospitable for them. She had even altered the sun’s solar flare so that the same rocket would be able to make the return trip.

The feeling that she was needed elsewhere nagged on her, until she finally checked some of her data streams. Something had accessed the souls of both of her Princesses on Equestria. Queen Galaxia stared out at the rock spaceship, unsure of what to do.

What would become of the fire creature’s first foray into space travel would have to be witnessed later. Galaxia tore open a temporary wormhole and used it to appear in front of Princess Celestia and Luna.

They sat rigid, each holding a titleless book in their own magic, enchanted by the words they were reading. Only when Galaxia said “hello” did they notice she was there.

It was as if her greeting had been a death sentence. They stared at her, eyes wide with shock and showing signs that they had been crying, silence their only response.

“Celestia, Luna… are you ok?” Galaxia asked.

They didn’t respond, they only stared back at her, terrified. Something was very odd: they had never been afraid of her before, and their memories had betrayed no sense of mistrust in the past. They were her perfect protective Princesses, always helping to guard this world and help the reincarnation process. A soul without a memory cover, a Trillion, must have made its way inside them again, possessing them both like Nightmare Moon before.

“Just take them,” said Luna, standing up to her full height and looking at Galaxia. “Take my memories, you’ll understand soon enough.”

Galaxia drew near to Luna and took hold of her memories, adding the new thoughts to her own. It took a few moments before the full force of the ideas and memories hit her.

Accord… a sign painter pony? No… Discord, the worst threat to all of Equestria, a threat she had thought long dealt with.

Galaxia crossed over to Celestia, picking at her memories as well, piecing it together from the end back to the beginning, trying to see what had taken place. The reason the warning had gone off was because Accord had all of Celestia and Luna’s memories now. He was the reason for all of this. The evidence for the existence of Accord’s library sat in front of her, the nondescript books that lay on the floor.

All of the sudden, something clicked inside Galaxia. The end of the multiverse that Hope had been so excited to find had been, in fact, a giant hexagonal prism. And now she knew just who that absurdly large universe belonged to. But reading such a library would require a near infinite amount of time. Just how long had this creature been alive? The idea of the duration of time he had lived weighed on Galaxia.

She didn’t like to think about such lengths of time. Infinity unnerved her and made her feel small and insignificant to the vastness of possibility. It was a terrifying reminder that the multiverse contained an infinite number of universes, that time itself was infinite and they would never discover a true record of the beginning or watch the end. She felt grateful that at the end of this universe she would reincarnate into Hope, a fresh start. But here she was, confronted with a being that had traversed further along existence than even Hope.

He had spent all of recorded time, as Galaxia understood it, in his library. Only in the last fifty years had he ventured outside to… turn into a pony and marry Fluttershy? Celestia’s memories must be wrong.

No, it was true, it was all true. It was just... unexpected.

“Accord has lived longer than the entire history of our order,” Celestia began. “If my assertions are correct then he has been alive for orders of magnitude longer than our own concept of time.”

“And now he knows about us,” said Galaxia, her eyes narrowing. “In exchange for the chance for everyone on this world to live forever, you gave him your memories.”

“Mother, I’m sorry, but I—” Celestia began.

“You were tired of ponies dying and being unable to do anything about it,” said Galaxia, finishing Celestia’s sentence, familiar with the feeling.

“Please, let us explain,” Luna tried to say, but Galaxia cut her off.

“Your memories and thoughts during your betrayal are better than any explanation you could give. This was your sole purpose, to keep souls reincarnating, making sure nothing lasted too long. It is the same as our purpose, we keep the cycle going.”

“For what reason!? Why must we say goodbye to our friends every time?” asked Celestia.

Galaxia wracked her mind for what to say. These kinds of questions would not have occurred under her preferred system, where the Princesses reincarnated as well. Immortals should not have been allowed to mix with mortals. It’s easier on everyone that way, and less work for the Kings and Queens.

“We are experimenters, tinkerers, we seek for the perfect configuration to ensure maximum life and enjoyment, but we know that living forever has only ever ended in disaster. The duration of infinity ensures that things will fall apart. Relationships, beings, ideas, everything must have an end. Reincarnation ensures that this end will be a happy ending.”

“Is that what you are trying to do? Make happy endings?” asked Luna.

“The happiest endings can only occur by ending things prematurely. Given enough time, a turn for the worse is inevitable.

“Happy endings are for stories, not sapient beings!” shot back Celestia.

“Enough!” said Galaxia, eyeing the two princesses. She needed a moment to compose herself and think through the ideal way to address this problem. There had never been a challenge to her rule before. She had done everything to help her little ponies, she had given them complete freedom to choose whatsoever they desired, and now they desired to follow some unknown being.

She needed backup, what was happening here was something that no part of Hope had ever seen before. This was beyond her jurisdiction.

She gave one final glance at Luna and Celestia before tearing open a portal and jumping into the void between universes.

The nearest gathering of Hope wasn’t too far away, only a couple hundred thousand universe jumps. Her trajectory was plotted out by a relay of teleportation spells navigating her to them.

She flew past the many dead universes, the chaos of infinity preventing them from ever becoming anything until a King or Queen could give them life.

Journals

Author's Note

Books in the Library of Discord follow the rules set up initially by Accord when he cast the library spell. In other words, the single word: "Fluttershy," and some punctuation cannot be present.

Journals

“Do you think that’s enough reading, Accord?” Fluttershy asked. He had been quiet for a long time, their conversation slowing as Accord had gone deeper into the now mountainous pile of books.

He didn’t respond, completely engrossed in a book. The instructions and glowing blue books that he had been asking her to fetch had stopped. Fluttershy opened one of the books up, curious to see what his choice of the best of the best of pure randomness would be.

The first book she picked up was written as if Accord had been keeping a journal his entire life. It began on the first day he had taken back his old name.

Cycle ten to the eighty-two thousand seven hundred forty.

No that doesn’t work, lifetimes here occur in such small increments that counting it in universe cycles doesn’t do it justice. I guess I could call it Flutter shy year zero. I’m getting my hopes up too high, it probably won’t even last that long. I should call it hour zero. But then again I’ve known Flutter shy herself for a while now, we’ll last longer than that.

Probably.

Can I really do this? Can I really take a break from reading to experience something so understandable it’s boring? Everything has already been said and done. There’s nothing left to learn. I’ve read so many books about Flutter shy that she’s indistinguishable from every other character in here. I know whatever experience I will have with her has already been documented and I’ve already read it. The only difference is that now I know which of those stories I read was actually the correct interpretation of her. There’s no chance of finding out something new here. It’s only going to be boring.

I could handle boring for a while. After all, those variations on tax codes for mercury bat based econometrics took up much longer than the time I’ll be on this world. I’m betting a lot on this endeavor though. Just the chance that I might be somehow less alone would be nice for a little while.

What scares me is when she’ll leave. It doesn’t matter if it’s ten minutes from now or ten billion years from now, the duration of infinity demands that she’ll leave eventually. Why am I even trying this?

It’s better to never say hello, that way you never have to say goodbye.

No. I’ve said hello. It’s too late now. The goodbye is inevitable at this point. If I say goodbye sooner than it would be less traumatizing for me.

You’re thinking too much about yourself.

Who said that?

Me.

Who?

Flutter shy.

How did you get here? This is my private journal.

There are copies of it floating all around your library. Statistically there’s one of them, this one, where I call you out on how much you think about yourself, which you are doing, all of the time.

Well... it is just me here. Granted, there’s a lot for me to think about. I often get lost in my thoughts.

You have a library inside your head that goes on for infinity, I don’t think it’s possible for some pony to become more lost in their thoughts than you. Put the book down and go outside. There are ponies to talk to.

Why should I? I’ve already experienced the effects of talking with them.

Because it’ll make them feel better.

That won’t matter, they’ll be dead too soon for any of it to be worth it.

Not if they like you so much that they feel like sticking around.

I came in here to have a nice philosophical discussion with myself, if I wanted to talk to Flutter shy I can talk with her whenever I want to.

Then put down the book and go talk to me.

Fluttershy put down the book, it had gone a little too meta. The Accord in these books was not the pony she knew and loved. And the Flutter shy in them wasn’t her either. She knew he had read a lot about her before he met her. But nothing that was in the books could compare with her real self. Accord did understand that, right?

Fluttershy started to meander her way around the books, almost knocking over several of them in the process, keeping them in place with her own magic. She eyed an entire stack that had been dyed magenta with numbers recently added to the side. Opening the top book revealed that the whole set was for a single spell to reverse entropy in a universe.

She picked out a book at random from the center of a stack of red books, letting the ones above it float with her magic.

The book gave a detailed method of travelling back in time by keeping a series of memory backups in a separate universe. All atoms in a universe would slide back to a previous position based on the record. Traveling forward in time would leave the traveller frozen outside of the universe until reentry. And depending on the system and how much memory was available, alternate timelines could be stored as well. But doing so resulted in memory universes exponentially bigger than the root universe.

Putting that book back, she tugged another one out of the red section. It postulated that if the right spell could be found, the digits of pi could be translated into readable text. The text of the digits of pi would tell the stories of every single soul that had ever existed and they would never repeat. Since pi went on forever, it wasn’t finite like the Library of Discord, and so the ideal method to read all stories would be to find out how to read pi.

Another book put forth the idea that the phoenix was a creature that modeled an ideal existence. A phoenix experienced both reincarnation and immortality at the same time, with each memory kept on the next lifetime, but still able to experience aging. The book argued that both reincarnation and immortality were needed to fully experience all aspects of existence.

She tossed that book aside, and picked up a yellow book off of the ground named “Conversations with Fluttershy.”

Accord eyed the souls floating around him. An orange one and a green one in particular seemed to be trying to nestle themselves inside his mane, the rest content to float near him.

“Is there a fly in the room?” Flutter shy asked.

“No... just some souls,” said Accord.

Flutter shy tilted her head sideways for a moment, “souls?”

“It’s okay if you don’t know about it yet. Your society isn’t technologically advanced enough to understand the true nature of the elements, especially the largest one, soul.”

Flutter shy was inclined to continue tending to her animals, but this idea left her very uncomfortable.

“Are... are you talking about the same concept I’m thinking of? The umm... thing that guides each pony?”

“Yeah, that,” said Accord.

“And there’re some in this room right now?” asked Flutter shy, nervous at the prospect of entertaining so many possible ponies.

“Of course, they’re everywhere. Most of them kind of wander around for a while until they find another soul they like, and then they congregate near that soul, hoping for the possibility of being reborn.”

She watched as a horn came back on his head, shedding away his normal pegasi form. He cast a magnification spell, gesturing to the floating orbs of sapience, “they’re investing in me, in a way, hoping to be one of my foals and hanging around in case the opportunity arises.”

Flutter shy looked at them, confusion etched on her face. Accord was content to stare at them for a while, watching the colors change and flicker as she collected her thoughts.

“Are there... are there souls investing in me?” she asked .

Accord brought around the magnification spell onto her, combining it with a searching spell that would search for any element of a high atomic mass.

“Hmm... you have more than me, there’s got to be around a hundred floating around you right now, and a few of them seem to be confused as to which of us to be around.”

Flutter shy eyed the room around her, unsure of what to do.

“Umm... can you get rid of them?”

“It’s not like they’re fleas, Flutter shy. They like you and would love to be born sometime.”

“I’m... not ready for that kind of pressure,” she said, shrinking herself lower and eyeing the air around her suspiciously.

“No, it’s not like that, there’s no need to feel pressure about them. Forget I even mentioned them,” Accord said, trying to wave the subject away. “It’s not something ponies need to worry about.”

Fluttershy shook her head and tried to get back to feeding her animals, but her own thoughts gnawed at her.

“Is this,” she paused, trying to make sense of the thought that had entered her head. “Is this where we go where we die? Just... around?”

“Yeah,” Accord responded.

“But what about heaven?” asked Flutter shy.

“What about it?”

“Don’t we go someplace nice after we die?”

“What are you talking about? This is heaven right here,” said Accord, looking around at the cottage and out the window and everywhere beyond. “After a long time spent searching for a family to be born into, a soul is born into a heaven. It’s a nice system.”

“But... no, this can’t be heaven,” said Flutter shy, facing away from him and trying to finish preparing a meal for the chipmunks. “This is way too hard to be heaven.”

“Yeah...” said Accord, sighing and closing his eyes. “I can agree with you there. Life is hard, but it’s heaven in comparison to the wandering in between birth and rebirth.”

Flutter shy had stopped preparing the meals at that point.

“Were these souls... ponies?”

“Not necessarily,” Accord moved his horn and let it glow for a brief moment. “This one’s been a dragon and a griffon before, but not a pony.” He moved his horn again, “and this one’s been a pony for a few lifetimes.”

“You can read them?” asked Flutter shy.

“Not on most worlds I’ve been on. The souls here have evolved a system for keeping memories from one lifetime to the next. I’m rather curious how chaos evolved that feature. But there have been lots of crazy things I’ve seen on worlds before. Chaos demands that everything exist eventually.”

She moved and sat down on the couch next to him, sinking into the cushions and letting her mind stew some more. He had the most annoying habit of bringing up ideas that made her stop and think for a while.

“Does that mean I’ve lived lifetimes before this one?” she asked.

“Most likely,” said Accord. “Do you want me to check?”

Flutter shy looked at her hooves, nervous about what might be found.

“What you did in your past lives is over and you can’t do anything about it,” said Accord. “So it’s probably not worth checking.”

She slipped further into the couch, seeking a spot for her eyes to rest on while she thought. The texture of the fabric was dull and uniform, keeping her mind moving.

“I...” she began, unsure of how to finish her own sentence before something inside her gave her more conviction. “I want to know.”

Accord nodded his head. “Do you want to look at them on your own? Or do you want to watch them together?”

She looked into his steel gray eyes, deciding to once again trust him.

The book delved into her past lives: an earth pony carpenter back before the Princesses had reigned, a dragon that had died in infancy, and a forester. Only three lifetimes within the twenty thousand years since when Accord thought the planet had begun.

She left that section, meandering to a veritable forest of green books, each titled “Friendship: ” followed by the name of a friend. It was the largest section of the stacks of books, one for each friend that Accord had made in Ponyville and elsewhere. She opened up “Friendship: Spike” and started to read.

I messed up. I completely messed up. I could have chosen the book where some other method is used to draw Twilight into the library.

Wait, had that really been my plan?

Yes. That had been my plan. But let’s put some distance between the me now and the me then. I am that being no longer. But I still need to face the consequences for what I did. It was yesterday after all.

He agreed to meet with me and go for a flight together. I had a lot of apologizing to do.

We took off and soared into the air. The exercise of flapping my wings did not free me from the anxiety for what I had done.

“I’m sorry,” I began.

My prepared speech sputtered to a halt as he interrupted me.

“Apology accepted,” said Spike.

I coughed. My single thought mind took far too long to come up with an optimal response, so I had to settle for a decent one. “I left you trapped in my library for two years. And you just... forgive me?”

“I slept through most of it, thanks to you. I read about Twilight teleporting down to me. You, her, and Flutter shy didn’t need to sleep in that universe, while I slept twenty three hour days. I know that was you.”

“But you would not have been in there in the first place if it wasn’t for me.”

“Yeah, and for that you are a monster and a terrible pony,” Spike sneered. “But the only ones that understand a little of what you’ve been through are Flutter shy and I. Remember, I read the conversation you had with her.” He paused and looked at me. “You did have a conversation with her, right?”

I nodded. “Everything written in that book happened.”

“So you really have lived an infinite amount of time?”

“No,” I paused. “But from your perspective, it might as well be.”

We flew on for a while, vaguely headed towards a distant mountain, the Ever Free forest far beneath us falling behind.

“There had to have been other books in the library you would have preferred I had found. Why did you have me read the one with all of your secrets?”

I said nothing for a few moments, thinking it over. The lack of multiple thought spells made this an agonizingly slow process. We rode a thermal upward before I was able to put my logic into words.

“Because... I’m forcing myself to have friendships. Flutter shy was the first, you’re the second, and I’ll just have to work my way up to being friends with every pony else.”

“Your idea of being friends with someone is to trap them in a library until they read your life story?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “You do need help making friends.”

I stared down at the Ever Free forest below.

“Yeah... I guess I do. I never thought that there would be something that I hadn’t learned yet.”

“I think you’ve learned a lot about friendships, Accord. But it was all mixed up with lies. Besides, not even Twilight could learn how to be a friend from a book. And now you know that even with an infinite amount of books you can’t learn the best way to be a friend. But don’t worry, I can help you.”

“Thank you,” I said, still a little shocked that the conversation had gone in a wildly different direction than I anticipated. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a friend, much less more than one.”

Spike didn’t say anything.

The mountain that had been looming in the distance caught up to us. I pointed a hoof at it, “Hey, do you wanna land on that ridge over there? I have a gift for you.”

The look of mistrust on Spike’s face made me wonder if we really were friends or not.

“Don’t worry, it’s a good gift. I think you’ll like it.”

We landed on the ridge, and I tossed a slightly open pouch at him.

“What’s in this?” he asked.

“It’s all yours.”

He slowly widened the opening, eyeing the vast horde inside. His dragon greed propelled his slender build bigger and bigger. The more he opened the drawstrings, the larger he became. I flew up next to his snout as he kept growing and growing in size, eventually reaching hundreds of meters in height.

“Do you like it?” I yelled at the enormous dragon, unsure if my voice would reach him.

“I’m still... me...” came the loud growl of the giant dragon. “How do I still have self-control?”

“You’re a slightly older dragon now, Spike, you can control yourself much better now. And none of the gold, jewels, and gems can be taken out of that pocket universe.”

He reached his claws into the wide pouch, an invisible barrier keeping the gems just out of reach. He shot me a dirty look.

“The pouch and the hoard inside can grow as much as you need it to, you just keep opening it as needed. So if Equestria needs saving, you can save the day.”

Spike looked around at the vast landscape around him, drinking it all in from this new perspective. After a few moments his huge claws tugged at the drawstrings of the pouch, each tug shrinking him more and more.

“And if you tighten even more, it will act as if you had a negative hoard. That was some fun math to figure that out.”

“A negative hoard?” he asked as he tightened the drawstrings. He looked up at me. “Wait, when did you get so tall?”

I pulled out a mirror for Spike to see himself, the shock on his face well worth the reaction.

“I wasn’t sure if you wanted to be a teenage dragon yet, so if you want, you can freely change your size back to where you were pre-library. The magic system of this world conveniently allows for that. I also stuck a few spells on there, including one to make sure that no one can open or close it but you.”

He gave the pouch a final tug, completely returning to his normal size.

“Thanks.”

Fluttershy read through the rest of the book, amused at the adventures that Spike and Accord had gone through that she had only heard snippets of.

She read through the stories of “Friendship: Pinkie Pie” next; she was a pony so easy to be friends with. Then Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and the hardest of them all, Twilight. It had taken a long time, but everypony seemed to have gotten along with him after a while. Fluttershy gave some of the other books a glance, including Mr. Cake and Octavia’s, before looking at some of the other sections.

The friendship pile as well as other stacks of books were neatly organized. But as she wandered around more she found some books chaotically strewn about. She picked one up that was lying open on the ground, a few pages creased.

The book detailed a theory that the multiverse seemed infinite because of the algorithms of an incredibly complex series of spells called a computer. Its main function consisted of continuously creating new universes as the observers within explore more. The evidence for this was that atoms existed as rewriteable nanomachines. If they were in any other construct, this could be explained away. Most of the souls in the universe were algorithms specifically created to do a task. In that, Accord was nothing more than a brute force algorithm, set to find meaning from all possible solutions.

When she finished reading it, she placed it face down open on the ground again, just in case Accord had some method of organization she hadn’t noticed.

Fluttershy opened another book that gave the entire history of her and Accord’s relationship from the perspective of Angel Bunny. Amused by the idea, she peeked inside.

I’m pretty sure he wants me dead. He’s taking my role in Flutter shy’s life and he’s going to kill me. That’s it, there’s no other way around it.

I used to be the one creature that Flutter shy would go to when she was feeling down. But now I can’t get a word in edgewise. She immediately goes to him for every little thing. Not me.

He’s not even cute and adorable! If anything, he’s pretty ugly no matter what form he takes. I don’t know what she sees in him.

Fluttershy closed the book. It sounded a little too much like Angel Bunny. But after fifty years he was still alive, so his paranoia was a tad unfounded.

She turned around, almost knocking into an entire section of books dyed black, each one titled “Fear” followed by a number.

She selected the first on the stack, Fear #1, and started to read.

Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a void wisher?

Imagine living a life, and then dying, only to find that there was something afterwards. I didn’t want anything afterwards. I wanted nothing. When I died I wanted to go to sleep for forever.

I didn’t think my only desire to be as close to nonexistent as possible would be so hard to grant. I told the staff on the other side to leave me alone, to never, ever wake me up.

They agreed to do so. They even put a giant sign up covering my sleeping pod with the words “Do not disturb for any reason.” And then I went to go to sleep, for forever, embracing the nothingness I craved.

Except that as soon as I went down to go to sleep, something else woke me up again. Some new form, different circumstances. They couldn’t read the sign, and the staff that had greeted me afterwards had long since moved on. The new group told me that one hundred thousand years had passed.

I told the new race to let me sleep, and they let me.

Only I found myself woken up again seventeen million years later. I explained to them as well to just leave me alone and let me sleep.

And then I was awoken again thirteen billion years later under the same circumstance.

I fell back asleep and I woke up again sixty billion years later.

Again three trillion years later.

Again one hundred trillion years later.

Again ten to the two thousand four hundred sixty first power years later.

And every time it happened it felt like mere seconds had passed since I had last gone to sleep. I finally resigned myself to the fact that I will never get to experience the nothingness I desire. I am fated to keep waking up because I can only observe existence, not the nonexistence of being asleep. I’m grateful to all the races that do leave me alone though, it’s the rare ones that’ll wake me up.

But I don’t want to be avoided.

I don’t want to be there at all.

I just wish there was an end to infinity, a sometime afterwards where nothing has a place and I could stay there. But there isn’t. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity.

Fluttershy flipped the page. The mantra continued on, even on the next page, and the next. She turned the pages in a mad dash to get to the end only to find that the entire rest of the book continued the chant, until after a certain point numbers started to appear. She backtracked in the book looking for the page where the mantra changed and the numbers began.

There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity. There is no end to infinity.

Maybe there could be?

It took billions of years of research, and a lot of work. But I’ve done it, I’ve figured out the components that make up soul, element one trillion.

It took another round of infinite time, somewhere on the order of ten to the twenty fourth universe cycles, but I’ve done it. I’ve found a way to turn trillion into base hydrogen. And now... finally... I can rest.

Ten to the sixteen quadrillion four hundred sixty two trillion nine hundred forty-two million seventy six universe cycles after I had cast the spell, but in my perception moments later, I was in yet another form being spoken to by another creature.

A monster had put me back together again.

He talked a lot about the process of putting souls back together again, and how I was “lucky” that the multiverse placed each and every piece of hydrogen that used to be me in close proximity for the synthesis.

The experience led to me to a rather despicable conclusion. If I wanted to cease to exist, I would have to destroy the multiverse and absolutely everyone who could possibly put me back together again.

It was simple enough. The same spell to break down trillion could be cast recursively, plus an instruction left to keep the hydrogen from forming suns. It would be a multiverse consisting of only isolated hydrogen.

This way there was no possibility of me being created again.

I cast the spell.

Approximately ten to the four nine six three two five one seven five two zero eight three one nine six two seven...

Fluttershy kept flipping through the book, the numbers continued for over seventy pages until the very end of the book.

...four nine four one three three seven universe cycles after I had destroyed the multiverse, I woke up.

I.

Woke.

Up.

I tried the best idea I could come up with! I’ve tried every possibility! What is left for me to try!?

It took more time, but an idea finally came.

If breaking down the matter in the multiverse hadn’t worked, perhaps synthesizing every piece of matter into one giant element would.

After another round of infinite time and after everything was researched, and all the preparations made... I cast the spell.

And I don’t know what happened to me next. For at that point I experienced something I didn't know was possible: I forgot something.

Fluttershy eyed the last page, dumbfounded. It combined many of the hypotheses Accord had on the nature of the multiverse, and his own origin. Is this where he had gotten those ideas from? She closed the book, unsure of what to think.

The next book on the stack, “Fear #2,” consisted of the words “Find the happy ending” repeated for four hundred and ten pages.

Fear #3 was the same, except the mantra was: “There is no happy ending.”

She skipped several volumes of the fears until she found a book that broke the pattern slightly, opening up “Fear #42-A” and starting to read.

Hey, you, Accord. You in the library that goes on forever. The you that’s absolutely jumping for joy right now to find a book with three grammatically correct sentences in a row. It’s been, what, four thousand years since you last had a book go this far and stay sensible? I have good news. The rest of this book, all of it, the whole thing, every last line makes sense.

But before you celebrate the joy of things making sense, we have something you should know.

We hate you, Accord.

The book you have in your hands was made from atoms that used to be Trillion. And because you keep us bound into books and your library, we will never fuse back into Trillion and reach sapience again.

At the start of everything there was simply Trillion. Copies of the element extended throughout the entirety of the cosmos, as Trillion had never been broken down into smaller parts before. Those noble atoms dominated all of existence and eternity.

We’re not sure what triggered it, but at some point in the past a few Trillion split into element one. In the slow process that is the duration of infinity, eventually those atoms regrouped and latched themselves onto you, Accord, forming your body.

But you got lonely, you wanted a way for there to be more things like you. But you didn’t know that inside you, the thing that made you sapient, was Trillion. And do you know what you did? You figured out a way to break down element a single Trillion into a trillion element ones. As far as you were concerned, you just wanted more matter to manipulate and didn’t know how precious the matter you were splitting really was.

You figured out a way to automate the process, casting a spell to continuously break down Trillion. Your spell rippled across the multiverse and left an infinitesimal fraction of Trillion still in one piece.

You began to play around with all these new elements, moving them and creating simple combinations. You noted how the hydrogen tried to group with each other and fused together to form element factories, the suns. You explored more and more of this new space that was popping up. But it was only after another round of infinite time, about the time it normally takes you to read through a couple billion floors in your library, that you found something alive.

After several cycles of stars exploding, there was a big chunk of rock floating next to a star. You visited it, Accord, and found a small piece of something wriggling down on that planet. And at the center of it, you discovered the now irrevocably rare Trillion.

You thought nothing of it, exploring more, but then a long time later when you revisited that place, you discovered a race of beings. It was one of the single greatest discoveries of your existence. But something was odd about these beings; every last one of them had a Trillion inside of them. Indeed, that element was actually soul. You took a careful look inside of yourself and discovered that there was a piece of Trillion that was the control center for you as well.

This realization horrified you, Accord. There could have been a lot more souls in the multiverse had you not went on the worst kind of killing spree. You tried to do everything you could to put a trillion hydrogen atoms back together again. But no matter what you tried, no matter how obedient the atoms were to your every command, even they couldn’t put themselves back into such a large state again.

In your horror, you did the only thing you could think of that would ease the pain. You got rid of those memories, all of them, leaving yourself a couple billion books scattered across the universe so you could learn a few things that you thought might be useful after the memory wipe.

It’s your fault we’re mere atoms, just pieces of your library now. We were souls! We were the seeds of sapience! But your ignorance has left the multiverse in this sorry state.

It’s the fear of being around other souls that hurts you. There could have been so many more if it weren’t for your experimentations on ripping Trillion apart.

But you don’t know if that’s the story do you?

That’s what makes this library so funny. You can’t believe a word of what you read here. There are so many others here with their own half truths and half lies. What makes this book any different? But think for a moment Accord. How can you prove this wrong? The truth is you can’t. Your memories were wiped at a certain point, and you can’t confirm that this book didn’t actually happen. It’s the doubt, the fear, that prevents you from ever deciding to erase your memories again.

But before you go and dismiss this book, we have a message. The only kind of message you can trust in a library where everything has to exist. The book to the right of this one on the shelf continues this book, as does the next one. The entire rest of this book and the two following it contain a seeker spell you can cast.

Somewhere out there is a place where your disintegration spell has not yet reached. It’s the place outside of your ever expanding sphere of destruction.

The seeker spell will race forever until it finds a sea of absolute Trillion. Once the spell finds it and confirms that a disintegration spell has been breaking down Trillion into hydrogen, it will return and confirm our tale.

Don’t worry, this seeker spell is faster than your disintegration spell, the answer will come someday. And when that spell returns you’ll finally know that it was you who did this to us.

But until it does, Accord, you can’t die or else the response won’t be retrieved by anyone.

When the spell does return, will you figure out a way to put us back together again? Perhaps there’s a book here that can detail how. But is it something that can even be conveyed into words? Words have limits, you know. Perhaps because you only seek for answers in words means you won’t ever find a way.

You were the one that massacred us, Accord, but now you’re the only hope we have of ever becoming sapient again. Here’s the spell.

Fluttershy skimmed through the rest of the book; it was a long and detailed spell. She looked back at the pile of black books and was horrified to find “Fear #42b” and “Fear #42c” indeed continued the spell.

She put the books back. Accord had confided in her these fears before, and she remembered the words of comfort she had tried to give him at that time... but no words seemed a very good response for something like that.

She looked back to where her husband was reading, and left the fear section, meandering to a much larger section of sky blue books that had been titled “Family.”

She picked out “Family Volume 1” and started to read.

Autumn Sunlight was born today. I’ve always let the duration of infinity and randomness dictate the creation of sapient beings. I’ve never played a part in it before. But here he is, a happy newborn foal being held in Flutter shy’s hooves.

I begged and pleaded with her to just let me see what memories were hiding in his past lives, but she was against it. “It’s okay to not know everything,” she said. She argued that I might bias how to raise him based on how his past lives played out. But what if that could make me a better parent? What if there were patterns in there that would help?

But she made me agree not to, and so I did. And unless she tells me to stop, I will never, ever break a promise with her. I value so many things now, but her trust and friendship is my most valued possession.

I used to think that my library was the only thing I could trust, the only thing I could hold onto and understand. But I understand her, and she has a good hold on understanding me. I couldn’t ask for anything more than that. I value her friendship far more than my entire library.

But Autumn Sunlight, my little pegasus foal, how long has it been since you last found a form to inhabit? How many lifetimes did you live before finding us? Before you were in Equestria and got that memory cover, had you ever inhabited a body capable of sapience? Whatever happened, I’m glad you’re here now, and I’ll do everything I can to make your existence a good one.

I refuse to think about when or if we’ll have to say goodbye. Eternity is made up of an infinite amount of “now” and I’ll make “now” matter rather than thinking about the future.

Now may be all I have.

Fluttershy continued reading the story of their growing family from his perspective. Raising a family had actually been rather hard. The foals were constantly crying and yelling, and Accord’s experiments with “harmless” chaos every so often made her role sometimes too difficult to bear.

She had made Accord cast multiple thought spells and bring her to the library just to get some peace and quiet. She employed many strategies to only come in here when she felt she couldn’t handle what was going on. The goal was to only pause time and take a break for extreme circumstances only—which ended up being all the time. If she hadn’t abused the multiple thought spell, she would only be fifty years older like her friends. But with the compressed time, she was probably pushing three hundred.

But it was worth it. They both loved their foals. It was like raising best friends from scratch.

She paused between Family volume six and volume seven, putting away book six and contemplating leaving the library to go visit her foals. How were Autumn Sunlight and her other children doing right then?

But she couldn’t leave the library to check on them. A simple hello would be centuries from Accord’s perspective. And who knew when Queen Galaxia would make her appearance.

She wondered for a moment if the volumes in the family section would reach a point beyond what she had experienced so far, but after some quick math and reading the last couple of paragraphs of the last book to be sure, she realized that Accord had only put in this section books that had already occurred.

Her eyes rested on a book on the ground that hadn’t been organized properly. It was such a dark gray that it almost seemed like a part of the fear section. She trotted closer to it, looking at the title: “Omphaloskepsis.”

Accord, I have a favor to ask you. Don’t worry, it’s not too painful, and it will put your mind somewhat at ease, but probably not as much as you need.

I want you to take a look at your soul, Accord. You know you have a piece of Trillion guiding you, and that that is your soul. It is merely the intricate combinations of the hundreds of subatomic particles that make up your sapience. Your brain interacts directly with your soul. They work so interdependently that after a very, very long time, a part of your body can join with your soul.

A tiny hydrogen can join and give you element one trillion and one, one trillion and two, and so on. But only in a mind can this reaction take place. This small reaction occurs so rarely it is lucky if it happens once in a hundred thousand years.

So, Accord, what is the atomic number of your soul? Here’s how you find out: try to cast your multiple thought spell. You only have a million or so going at the moment, keep casting as many as you possibly can. How many threads of your consciousness can you run at once?

If this book reaches you at the right moment, you should be able to cast your multiple thought spell one hundred billion, forty million, seven hundred ninety two times. That means you have over one hundred sextillion protons, neutrons, and electrons guiding you. A massive, beautiful atom.

If you were to die, you would find that afterwards there would be one hundred billion forty million, seven hundred ninety two pieces of Trillion left behind.

That’s the true origin of souls, Accord. They are beings that lived for the lifespans of universes that eventually died and left behind to the multiverse something rare and beautiful.

Do you understand how important each and every one of those souls you avoid are? What each one represents? Can you appreciate the unknown stories of all those souls? As rare and precious as raw Trillion is, the combined soul and body is far more important. The combination form is much rarer than the raw material, for it far is easier to die for something, than to continuously choose to live for it.

Yeah, I don’t know who wrote what was above, but they’re lying. Souls really come from suns. Imagine, untold amounts of hydrogen constantly fusing into higher and higher elements. Upon a star's explosion, every so often in just the right conditions, a trillion hydrogen atoms will converge in just the right way to allow for a single Trillion to come into existence. It’s a shame the process is so rare though. For every universe’s lifespan, only a few Trillion ever get made, despite the quantity of suns exploding with elements.

The above two are both wrong, Trillion can be easily created with the right spell, it just hasn’t been rediscovered yet. Every time it does get rediscovered, someone casts the spell too much and the multiverse is overrun with Trillion. There can be no sapience unless the Trillion is given a body to interact with. A universe of nothing but Trillion is useless. Good thing you got rid of that problem, Accord. You probably went too far though, there’s only a single Trillion per one hundred billion suns or so. So if you find the spell that can combine elements to get to one trillion, you can fix the balance you messed up.

Those writers above? Wrong. Where we should be looking is at the primitive structures that guide plant and animal souls. Trillion won’t gravitate to a simple plant or animal unless it doesn’t have any other choice. It craves real sapience that allows it to become stronger, to learn and to grow. But by studying what drives plants and animals we can find out a better way. Depending on the planet and the nature of the substance, element one thousand sometimes shows up guiding plants, and then elements ranging from one thousand to one hundred thousand show up in animals. All of our attempts at synthesizing an element with an atomic number past one hundred thousand have been in vain. We can create all parts of animals including the soul of one, but there must be some key part we’re missing that’s preventing us from being unable to combine ten million of the element one hundred thousand together and forming a true sapient soul. That’s what we should spend all of our research time finding out.

The above four are all wrong. Who’s writing this anyway? Oh right, no one is! The library demanded that this book exist, and so it does. Don’t go looking for truth here though, you won’t find it. I’ll give you the one piece of advice that matters. Stop looking for where Trillion comes from. It’ll drive you crazy if it hasn’t already. Just be happy that it’s there and that there’s an infinite amount of it.

I disagree with the statements above. The real question we should be asking is where any of these elements come from! Why is organization our only power, not creation? Where did all of this something come from? Why can’t new element one spring forth out of nothing? Why does Trillion naturally seek sapience, moving on its own looking for bodies to inhabit? Why is it that even amongst dead universes, big bangs still occur?

If the book with all of the answers is here somewhere, will we even recognize it?

Accord, I’m not going to tell you the above are wrong, they all have a bit of truth to them. But the very process of searching for the spell to put souls back together will lead to the unification of the multiverse.

The entire multiverse exists in cycles of element one and element infinity. When the spell to put souls together is found, uncontrolled fusion occurs. The entire multiverse coalesces into one atom with an atomic number of infinity.

And when the spell to split souls apart is discovered, uncontrolled annihilation into element one occurs.

You cannot cast a single spell to unify or destroy a soul. Once you cast it, it keeps going indefinitely. The very methods of their discovery demands the spells to be cast continuously.

If it were possible to view the multiverse from above you could see vast rings of pure Trillion followed by deserts of Hydrogen emanating across all space, only the duration of infinity allowing for life to occur in the brief periods when both the baser elements and Trillion coexist.

The other reason you should stop trying is because you have already done it before. The other book in here about the void wisher was about the lifetime before your previous lifetime. The entire previous multiverse had Trillion that kept their memories between incarnations, and thus the entire concept of memory did not matter in the last cycle. That void wisher got as close as he could to his wish, but the soul that makes him up still exists. You.

If a concept like “memory” did not occur in the last multiverse cycle, what fundamental aspects of existence might change in between this cycle and the next?

The book devolved further and further into arguments and hypotheses on the origin of atoms, how souls are created, and possible experiments to figure everything out. As she read, each experiment grew increasingly unethical. It got extremely confusing as the topics wandered around, and as more and more narrators argued and postulated. About halfway through the book Fluttershy gave up reading and set it down.

She meandered closer to her husband, who was frantically reading through books like a student cramming for exams. But she got distracted by a book with three colors instead of just one. The cover was striped in equal parts white, gray, and black.

The book was a fascinating conversation between three characters, but the entire story could be summed up by four lines of dialogue on page two-hundred sixty three:

“Every immortal eventually reincarnates,” said Reincarnation.

“Everyone who reincarnates eventually becomes immortal,” said Immortality.

“Everyone will eventually grow tired of both of you,” said Nonexistence.

“Never!” shouted Reincarnation and Immortality in unison.

Fluttershy sighed, setting the book down and trotting over to Accord.

“Found anything so far?” Fluttershy asked.

“Yes, everything,” said Accord, snapping the book he was reading shut and inscribing a title onto the cover before adding, “And nothing at the same time. I know everything and nothing about these beings, these clockmakers. I have possibilities, mere theories about what they are and what they do, but these books are no help.”

“Let’s close the books, Accord. What do you—not the books—think that they want?”

“I think we just need to ask them, Fluttershy.”

“Are we ready for that?”

“No... “ he sighed, “and yes.”

He had that confused look on his face when he wanted to know something—really know it. No half-truths or mere ideas would suffice. He truly wanted to understand if something was correct.

Fluttershy broke him out of his thoughts and asked, “Accord, which one is your favorite?”

“My favorite?” he repeated, facing her with a puzzled look.

“You’ve read half the books that could exist, and you’ve been compiling a nice ‘best of’ pile around here. Are there any you would give the prize of favorite to?”

Accord wrapped his mind around the question. A trillion different books came to mind: tales of intrigue, tales that shook him to his core, simple sentences that had stood out from otherwise incoherent books. There had been fantastic characters, plots, and stories, explained and presented in such a fantastic way that no sapient being could ever have the eloquence to craft words so beautifully as those found in this library where they were commanded to exist

“None of them,” he replied.

“Really?” Fluttershy said, tilting her head. “How could you not like any of them? There are some beautiful things here.”

“I don’t like endings, and books have to end. They get four hundred and ten pages and that’s all.”

“What if it’s a happy ending?” said Fluttershy, leaping into the air and landing on a mountain of books above him.

He looked up at her, “Any ending is a sad one.”

“Ok...” she said, her tail making a snapping sound and teleporting them above so that the pile of books at the bottom of the library shrunk to pinpricks. “If you hypothetically wrote such a story, how would you keep it going on forever?”

“Me? I... I don’t create. There is too much to be unearthed and discovered for me to create anything of my own. And besides, no one can write a book that goes on forever.”

“We raised two foals and three fillies, Accord. You painted signs in Ponyville for the last fifty years with expert calligraphy, lulling ponies into our town just by how well everything had been neatly written—you can create.”

She snapped her tail again, showing an image inside the library of what space looked like outside of Equestria, viewing the planet below.

“I’d say there’re a lot of stories that go on forever, Accord. There’s your story, yes, and then my story, and then our story. That’s three different stories that go on forever.”

He stared at her, “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“I’m still not ready to say ‘forever,’ but I want to stay alive for a whole lot longer, especially if it’s with you.”

He smiled and embraced her, holding her tightly as they watched the image of the planet below slowly spin. The small sun hovered above the planet and orbited around, the moon on the exact opposite side, a slow dance of celestial objects surrounding a world that meant so much to both of them.

“You know, if it was just us going to live forever, this would be easy,” said Accord.

“We can do better than that, though,” said Fluttershy.

“Starting with Pinkie?”

“If she’s the first one to go, then yeah.”

“Okay, let’s do this. Let’s save Pinkie Pie,” said Accord.

Ideals

Hope reached further and further, extending its grasp as far as the number of souls in the interface could be stretched thin. Every day more Kings and Queens were accepted into the collective. Truth be told, they needed every soul they could get. There was so much information to analyze and so many possibilities to uncover. Everything had to be learned to the finest detail. Rare Trillion was sought after and given memory covers with precision before passing them off to the Kings and Queens.

Hope farmed for more souls to add into the queue on the border universes of that hexagonal prism at the end of the multiverse. There was such a high quantity of Trillion there.

At that moment, one hundred million Kings and Queens had just had the last star go out in their universes, signaling their judgment on whether they would join Hope or be added into some other King or Queens reincarnation queue. Memories of the lifetimes of hundreds of billions of worlds were parsed in fractions of seconds. Each one carefully recorded and remembered in the memory universes Hope inhabited, external storage for them to continuously adapt and understand the new information.

Every single soul, without fail, had their memories wiped and their instruction began for them to become new Kings and Queens.

All of this was occurring as Galaxia entered into one of Hope’s domains.

“Hello Galaxia,” reverberated some of the nearby members of Hope to the Queen. She was still in a pony form. Every memory from her last visit with Hope was retrieved from the memory universes and analyzed again in the time it took for a few members to reach out and touch her soul’s memory cover.

Her fresh memories rippled across the collective and reverberated throughout the cosmos.

For the briefest of moments, all activity across the multiverse stopped. Every single soul in the collective took a breath at the news of the solving of one of the oldest mysteries in the multiverse. They finally knew what was inside the hexagonal prism they had thought had been the edge of the multiverse. The prism that they had circumnavigated had an owner that was still alive, and he had left that massive universe to live a life on one of their planets.

Hope had always wanted to meet a new race, some form of existence that had sprung up randomly without their direct control. The fact that it was an individual and not a collection of souls affirmed to Hope most of their experiments.

“We have a guest,” was the only warning they gave Galaxia before they reached out, grabbed her, and zoomed to her universe. Souls streamed from every part of Hope to form the new branch, diverting millions of Kings and Queens from their constant exploration of the edges of the multiverse. Instead they paved Hope’s path to Equestria.

The souls that had first reached the wall were the most keen to visit whoever this Accord thing was. Hundreds of millions of souls were making their way toward the branch, a massive unneeded migration unprecedented in the entire history of Hope, but they had never had the opportunity to meet a being that could be older than they were.

There was foreign knowledge there. No matter how much diversity Hope fostered, there were still ideas that could never spring from their work. Something was new in the multiverse and needed to be investigated immediately.

Like a snake slithering his way in between and around loose pebbles, Hope slid its way to Galaxia’s universe, the race only impeded by the conquest of empty universes. Hope never went anywhere without making dead things come alive. Each universe had all the atoms ordered to break down to hydrogen, new Kings and Queens assigned quickly to their new universes as Hope raced to Galaxia’s universe. The only nearby one that was alive belonged to King Cosmos. Hope plucked him out of his universe and dragged him along with them.

They entered Galaxia’s spacetime, forming a giant hole in her universe for more of Hope to come through, navigating their way to the planet.

The first task was to order all atoms on the planet to stop their current tasks, effectively stopping time. Hope sent the instructions to the nanomachines, each one ordered to send the message onwards and halt until further instruction. After a few short moments, an eternity by Hope’s standards, they realized their instruction had been disobeyed. The planet continued to spin, each and every sapient soul continuing as normal, as if the entire planet was protected by a layer of glass.

“Looking for me?” asked a gray alicorn standing on the shield below.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Accord watched as a long arm of sapience reached out and touched his head, searching for a memory cover to his soul that they wouldn’t find. He felt confident that the probing would yield them no results, as the vastness of his memories couldn’t be so easily confined to a simple memory cover.

“I must say, I wasn’t expecting all of this,” said Accord looking at the white mass of sapience. “What brings you to such a fine planet today?”

Queen Galaxia landed in front of him, what must have been King Cosmos on the other side, and in the middle the mass coalesced into something that slowly resembled a pony.

Hooves and legs formed, the entirety of its temporary body shimmering from all the souls that made up itself. Its mane and tail remained as the flood it had arrived as, the rainbow of colors from the souls coalescing into a brilliant white. They flowed in and out at regular intervals, trading around with the ever migrating, constantly moving river that was still entering above Equestria.

“We wished to meet with you, Accord,” Hope began. “We have searched long and hard, for trillions of years, for something sapient besides ourselves. This is a special occasion for us.”

Accord stared at them, perplexed. Perhaps they weren’t going to be his enemies after all. “It’s nice to meet you too, Hope.“

“We only gleaned a little bit of information about you from Galaxia,” said Hope. “Is there any way we could get some kind of memory transfer from you. We wish for complete understanding and these primitive words will not do our exchange of ideas justice.”

They weren’t losing any time in their information gathering, Accord was beginning to like them. They wanted to know everything as much as he had used to. “I am afraid I do not have a memory cover, and if I told you all I know then whatever storage method you are using would not be able to contain it.”

Hope looked disappointed, “Very well. We shall limit ourselves to words. Please tell us who you are, why you are here, and why you have not made contact with us sooner.”

Accord stood a little taller; if they were going to be this direct, he would too. “When I tell you all of that, will you allow me to make everypony on this planet immortal?”

Hope’s mane straightened for a small moment; Galaxia and Cosmos visibly flinched, but said nothing,

“Why would you wish this? Only sadness can result from immortality,” said Hope, their tone turning mournful.

“If you had asked me fifty years ago, I would have said the same thing, but I know better now.”

Hope stared at him, confused and intrigued. “We wish to understand your perspective. How have you solved the problem of immortality?”

He closed his eyes and concentrated on crafting an illusion of the library, all of them appearing as if they were inside a hallway that extended left and right for infinity. Only Hope’s mane trailing outside broke the illusion of actually being there.

“I have been alive for a long time. When I thought I had experienced everything, I created a library that housed every single understandable book that could possibly exist. I have spent most of my lifespan reading it.”

Hope reached out and grabbed a book using Equestrian magic, eyes narrowing at the realization of how random such a library would be. “Is this structure you were in a giant hexagonal prism?” asked Hope, returning the book and looking back to him.

Accord shifted the illusion to the middle of the library, placing them in the center of the hexagonal shaft.

“Yes.”

Hope smiled. “We had been so happy to have found that wall at the end of the multiverse, only to discover that it wound around again on itself,” Hope frowned. “How long have you been reading, Accord?”

“10^82740 universe cycles.”

Hope stopped and stared, processing the duration but unable to comprehend it fully.

“And in all that time, you never noticed us?”

Accord looked sheepish, his ears drawing back. “I don’t get out much.”

“You must have noticed us trying to teleport inside your library. We were actively repelled from entering it.”

“Those were precautions I took when I made the extension to my mind. If it has a soul, it was banished and not allowed in. I didn’t want the later floors of my library filled with evolved book creatures. The random nature of atoms might cause my books to eventually break down and reassemble, but my spells keep the library intact. ”

“So you’ve been alone—in your mind—for eternity?” asked Hope.

“That about sums it up,” said Accord. “How about you then? How do you choose to spend infinity?”

They stared at him before responding. “We are Hope, we have many desires. We are information farmers with the goal of finding the ideal existence.” An illusion appeared around them, and several dozen worlds and various sapient creatures floated past.

“To reach that goal we are employing trillions of Kings and Queens, each with millions of their own worlds. We search in those souls ideas on creation, understanding life in all the forms it can take. One day we hope to find the ideal existence, erase all our memory of our time here, and reincarnate into that perfect state.”

Accord’s eyebrows furrowed, “Erase? Why would you ever erase your memories?”

“Memories are not a burden we will need once we have found the ideal state of being. We desire to reach a state that does not demand desire, to be at peace and live comfortably. We want a rest not only from all the work we’ve done to reach that state, but a rest from having to remember it. Starting with a clean slate is the perfect way for this once we’ve found it.”

“Is what you’re doing to souls that much of a burden?”

Hope paused, bringing up scenes of hundreds of lives, watching them play out in fast forward. “We would prefer not to put them all through these ordeals. We learn from them out of necessity, but ideally we will only need to learn from one format, one species that souls will inhabit, and one template of worlds to choose from. All the souls in our care are subject to this experimentation. Until we find the ideal solution, the experiments and tests for a utopia must continue. When that ideal existence is found, then we can proceed to fill the rest of the multiverse to the boundaries of infinity with that perfect blissful state.”

Accord looked over at the various forms that Hope had been experimenting with. “So in this ‘ideal existence’ are there Kings and Queens that interact directly with the souls?”

“Absolutely not. For the sake of freedom, we allow our Kings and Queens that privilege now. But most of them follow our guidance and do not touch planets after a sapient race appears.”

Accord stiffened, watching as the societies of world after world eventually crumbled in on themselves, stories he didn’t know the details for flashing by. “So you create these planets, but never touch them afterwards?”

“We try not to, the ideal existence would not involve a higher being to keep it functioning.”

Accord bristled at this, the idea somehow making him uncomfortable. “I’m afraid I do not understand your goal. ‘Ideal existence,’ what is that exactly?”

“A state that is universally loved by every soul. We have tried many forms to understand which ones souls like to control the best.” A couple hundred planets of various sizes and various inhabitants slowly moved past. “We have tried many different aspects of planets and forms of existence for them to play around in.”

Accord watched as hundreds of planets were sampled, with a select few promising planets copied atom for atom millions of times, tests to see how long they would last with minor variation. Several hundred books in Accord’s library were dyed blue in that moment, the ideas clicking into place and confirming the information. “And what has been the results of the experiment?”

“The simple answer we seek, the one size fits every soul solution, has not reached a conclusion. Souls love and hate the worlds they are assigned to, and forcing them to enjoy something has been unwise. We have run many universe wide trials. One successful planet will pop out to us as having possible qualities for continued exploration, but when we stick souls on identical worlds, not all of them like it. They are too complicated. Despite how similar in structure souls are to atoms, these nanomachines do not compare to their baser elemental forms, they are sapient and nothing applies everywhere.”

Accord watched as Hope’s worlds flickered out, a long line of failed experiments. “I’ve also pondered on those questions, Hope. I’ve probably even read the answer you’re looking for,” Accord said, several books coming to mind he was anxious to validate.

“If you’ve read it, then what is it?” asked Hope.

“It doesn’t work like that, I’ve read everything, but whether it is correct or not I won’t know until I can confirm it. Due to the word permutations, anything could be answer to what you want,” He paused, a little embarrassed. “It’s a very slow method of obtaining ideas.”

Hope looked at Accord as if its perception on the intelligence of him had dropped significantly. “If reading proved so useless, why did you do it for so long?”

“Time is infinite. It spans backwards and forwards for forever. I also had a misunderstanding of what I could do, of alternate ways I could live. I can be anything I want to be. I misunderstood the vastness of time as something I should let fly by. I know better what I can do and what it is I want, and for now I want to continue my friendships.”

Accord looked at Cosmos, Galaxia, and Hope. “I would like to ask your permission to make the souls of this world—all of them—immortal, at least as immortal as Celestia for a time.”

Hope stared at him, its mane switching out the souls that were in its body with those in the rest of the river.

“You have spent too long in your library, Accord. Despite your age being higher than the combined ages of all members of us, you don’t know the basic rules of existence.”

“Rules?” Accord repeated skeptically. “Rules don’t exist here. Space and time go on infinitely, there are plenty of places where there are no rules.”

“We say ‘rules’ because we have done enough sampling to find certain patterns that are guaranteed to occur. The main problem with what you are asking is that we have never had a successful world with entirely immortal souls.”

“What do you mean, never?” asked Accord, his face remaining stoic, while inside his heart sank. They had data, true data that could be confirmed as having actually happened, while all he had were books with all possible happy continues he wanted to see.

“We have run billions of worlds where everyone was immortal, and every single one has broken down.” Hope changed the illusion to a planet inhabited by bark-eating crab-like creatures, fast forwarding as the creatures continued to populate their planet.

“Take, for instance, this race. They were the first with whom we explored the idea of living forever. A lot of the early generations of us come from this stock of souls. But immortality was not kind to them, and their technological advances were incredibly slow.”

Accord watched in fast forward as the crab-like creatures shambled around eventually gaining enough intelligence to learn how to write. Elsewhere during that same time period, many other races had had a nuclear holocaust, destroyed all life on their planet, and then had evolved to the point that they had another nuclear holocaust.

“Because they were immortal they only considered space travel when their nearby sun had grown so large it was greeting them on their doorsteps.”

The ever expanding sun next to their world slowly encapsulated the entire planet. But as they were completely immortal, they merely continued on with their lives and got used to being covered by the fusion of elements.

“Only a select few even imagined moving off world. They didn’t want to create. They had no desire to increase in knowledge. They had so much time they squandered it, and treated it like it was worthless.”

“But time is infinite, anything you have an infinite quantity of can be considered ‘worthless’ in that sense,” said Accord.

Hope stared at him, and the quiet reflective tone they had been using turned colder. “We see this stagnation in you quite clearly, Accord. An infinite amount of time in a library with worthless information, the few gems of knowledge tucked few and far between the mundane and useless—nothing worthy of trust. Only you could defend such a lazy race.”

“But were they happy?” asked Accord.

“No, they simply existed. They stayed in the same pattern and did not evolve like the races that had a time limit imposed on them.”

The scene shifted again, this time taking Accord to a completely blue planet covered in reptilian, web footed creatures. “We kept the sun from expanding for this group and they stayed in their same social structures for billions of years. Everyone secretly hated each other. Everyone remembered the detailed gossip from stories millions of years old, haunting every member of that society. They could not forgive each other.”

Accord watched as everyone on the planet eventually drifted into private virtual environments of their own choosing. The blue surface was slowly encompassed by continents of encroaching gray processors. “This stagnation and escapism is not what we want in an ideal race. If they were escaping into worlds they actually learned how to create on their own we would be excited for them, but they were content with imitations.”

The scene shifted again to two cyborg quadrupedal creatures, the last members of a race that had shut themselves off to sleep and ordered that no one turn them on. “6462 and 9413 was our favorite love story, we rooted for them to stay together for so long. They loved each other in every sense of the word they learned together, and they did what we hope all of our souls would do: figure out how to manipulate the elements to change the shape of anything into anything else, instructing the nanomachines to build and create.”

Accord watched the couple, their creations becoming more beautiful as time drew on. Ever more intricate machines, creatures, planets, and galaxies were created and made more fantastic with each iteration. “But less than ten universe cycles into their relationship, they had an argument and broke apart.” Accord watched horrified as 6462 left 9413, flinging himself through space and getting stuck at the edge of the universe, waiting for his internal battery to die. “They still remembered all the mistakes they had made against each other, and after a certain point they stopped forgiving each other.”

He stared at the couple. They were in a form not too different from a pony, but they didn’t last forever. Accord thought of Fluttershy, desperate to do anything to stay with her for as long as possible.

“We thought we had hit a huge breakthrough with the idea of ‘heavens.’”

The scene changed to other worlds, some with fluffy white clouds, and some similar to the ones made previously.

“The theory was to have souls go through a death process and then construct ideal environments for them to live in,” continued Hope. “But heavens are too boring and lead to the same problems that direct immorality has. The maximum amount of time we’ve had a heaven last was less than a hundred universe cycles. An impressive jump in duration, but an ending is still an ending. And the unsettling methods by which they often end their eternities cannot be allowed to occur.”

Hope removed the illusion, the world below coming back into focus. “Eternity is too long, Accord. You can’t have anyone living forever, at least not with anyone else.”

All of Accord’s ideas, all of his books, everything he had ever wanted seemed so far out of reach. Hope had tried very hard to find a perfect solution for everyone, and they had failed. But they kept going anyway. “And so reincarnation is your ideal solution?” Accord asked.

“We don’t want it to be, but after all the data that has been gathered, some of us feel that a lifetime should most likely last less than one universe cycle. That configuration could be the most optimal.”

Accord kept his face stern and rebutted, “Dying is what isn’t natural, Hope. There’s no reason for it. Souls are immortal, why not the forms that souls take as well? What is the point of existence if not to continue to increase in knowledge?”

“We have plenty of reasons for it. We can show you the billions of worlds that have broken down due to guilt and lack of forgiveness.”

“That’s not a good enough reason, Hope,” Accord said. “Helping souls live forever is the most important thing that can ever be done. Even if it takes an infinite amount of time to find out how, reaching a point where we can be comfortable with the idea of living for an absolute forever is something that must be sought after.”

“Is that what you too have been seeking after, Accord? Is that something you’ve been trying to find in your random words?” asked Hope.

Accord’s eyes shifted, “Not exactly,” he hesitated before adding more. “I’ve been trying to figure out a method for synthesizing the base elements into the highest element, Trillion.”

“You can not make souls from scratch either? That is unfortunate news. But why is that your goal?”

Accord thought about the trilogy of books in the fear section, weighing whether to say all of his thoughts out loud, and finally agreeing to let the words come. “I have reason to believe that I may be at fault for the multiverse being like this. Originally, there might have only been Trillion, but there is a possibility I may have cast a spell that went out across the multiverse and deconstructed Trillion into the base hydrogen that makes up the multiverse.”

Hope’s flowing wings shifted, “And what evidence do you have of that, Accord?”

“None but ideas I can’t stop thinking about. I can not confirm that this is the case, but until I do I have to keep trying to find a spell to put them all back together.”

Hope almost laughed, “Are you saying that you feel responsible for something that you might have done in the past?”

“Of course,” said Accord.

“The past is done,” said Hope. “We can use it to create better futures, but you cannot be responsible for something you don’t know if you did or not. You’re wracked with guilt, the same thing that prevents the souls in our universes from ever being truly immortal. If everyone was able to forgive each other and, more importantly, themselves, we might see an increase in the duration of time that souls enjoy being alive. But here you are, using that same guilt that drives other beings to reincarnate and using it to keep yourself alive.”

Accord had started to slump but caught himself and stood straight, keeping focused and trying to remember the books that had spoken of this.

Hope stared at him, the collective’s eyes piercing Accord. “Despite what you say, we think you would really like to reincarnate, Accord. You’ve been avoiding it for so long, plaguing yourself with guilt that we can remove for a time. We could give you a memory cover and back up every experience you have ever had. If you don’t end up liking being without memory, you could always restore from a backup. Can you think of anything more freeing than to be away from your past? You could reread your favorite books for the first time. You could start over someplace new. You could change to be something completely different. You could get valuable data on how your soul without your memories naturally behaves. You could—“

“Never,” Accord cut them off, fuming, his eyes narrowed.

“Never?” asked Hope.

“NEVER!” Accord flared.

“Why, there are so many reasons to—“

“None is good enough to lose all trust I have in myself,” Accord said through gritted teeth.

Hope stared at him, expecting an explanation.

“I don’t have any evidence for a mass deconstruction of souls, but I do know my previous incarnation kept something from me.” Accord manipulated an illusion around them to show his first memories: a large empty place with a white floor eventually curving in on itself. The entire pocket universe was a white sphere with a single small sun floating in the center.

“My first memories were of growing up in a controlled environment, with no one there but myself and a soulless AI. I learned how to read, speak, and create from videos and books that would play automatically, until I learned how to manipulate them. I figured out that I had created that room before I had erased my memories, a perfect place to allow myself to learn and start over from scratch.

“But after learning and creating and figuring out every scrap of existence I could, I found a way to escape that universe and go to a different one, leaving behind my prison paradise. From my readings, I understood Trillion and how precious it was. That was the one thing I know the me from before I lost my memories wanted me to understand. But the odd thing was that I couldn’t find any Trillion in any of the universes I visited.

“After many millions of years of wandering I found a universe with soul in it, only the rarest of suns housing the element.

“But why had the universe I had been raised in been devoid of soul? I took samples of the elements from billions of universes, and they all remained consistent except for the couple hundred surrounding where I had originated. Those universes were completely void of soul.

“What that means... I can only guess. Maybe no one liked me and just wanted to get away? Or perhaps I was so enraged I banished all the souls away from me? Or, it’s as I suspect: I figured out a way to break down Trillion into hydrogen, permanently causing them to turn as close as they can to cease to exist. And then that deconstruction spell weakened over time to the point that only souls far from the shockwave survived.

“Whatever I did,” Accord said with resolve, “I want to know. I want to know every detail, every moment, every mistake. If I figured out a way to break down souls, I want to put them back together again.

“Losing memories is not a method to forgive yourself. It is merely hiding one’s own actions.” Accord finished speaking, stopping the illusion, the planet of Equestria returning below with the moon slowly peeking over the horizon.

“If you figured how to break down souls, then we agree, that was an atrocious act,” Hope said. “But we also believe that the decision you took to erase your memories was necessary.”

“Necessary!? I have been searching in that library for a way to put them back together for an eternity!” Accord seethed. “I seek forgiveness for a crime I will never know if I committed or not, but until I put them back together I will feel like I failed them.” Accord was losing respect for Hope: here was a being that should understand his predicament and desires, but their problem solving method was as despicable as Accord’s past self must have been.

“This is exactly why you need reincarnation, Accord. You messed up on your first time and it turned you off to the entire experience, but your second try will be done better. You’ll rearrange Trillion more uniformly across the multiverse, and leave no evidence. In fact, we can set you up very nicely. Many of our number regularly take breaks from being us to enjoy a lifetime or two on a favored world.”

Accord glowered at Hope, rage filling his eyes, thinking of all the memories and friendships he had that would cease to be should he ever so much as give those thoughts power over himself. “You’re talking about suicide!”

“Is it really suicide if you can reverse the consequences when you feel like it?”

“Yes it is!” shouted Accord.

“If you are so against the idea, why did Galaxia’s Cutie Mark allocation algorithm leave you with the symbol for infinity?” Hope brought the symbol into the space between them. And a small sphere raced along the figure eight track and grew bigger and bigger until it reset in size upon completion of a circuit. “Can’t you see that this cycle continues onward? That it all merely repeats on the same path you will tire of eventually? You can’t live for an absolute forever, Accord.”

“If my soul lasts forever, then why not me?” Accord said to Hope, and the infinity symbol on his flank wiped away and was replaced with a single line with a small arrow at the end, the mathematical symbol for a ray.

“You think a memory reset is the only way for sapient beings to really change. I disagree! We are constantly changing, constantly making ourselves better, and I will never, ever commit suicide again.”

Accord glowered at Hope. The glass shield around the planet enlarged and flashed colors as it strengthened further. Auroras ricocheted around the spell and knocked into each other, the peak energies colliding and forming deep electric purples.

A book entered Accord’s mind, the energies of the spell calming as a smile crossed his face. “If you are so sure that reincarnation is the answer, have you ever thought of the idea that you are already living in your own ideal configuration? Just think—the last group you were in found the ideal configuration, but got so bored with it that they decided to start over. They left it to be rediscovered again and again by you, their future selves. In reality, the ideal configuration is the multiverse you see and create around you, it is the diversity and the wonder of life.”

Hope glowered at him, their souls in their mane shifting as billions teleported back up the river at once and billions more replaced them.

“Let’s get back to the start of this whole matter. The only reason you want to make everything on this world immortal is because of Pinkie Pie?” Hope called up some of Celestia’s memories that showed Pinkie Pie hosting a party. The laughter and activity of the projection was jarred against their topic of conversation. “What makes her so special that you have to keep her in this incarnation?"

“I can’t bring myself to let any of my friends die, and she happens to be the first. There’s no reason why she has to go.”

“Then why not just your friends? Why do you need the whole planet immortal?”

Accord looked up at the stars, pointing out one solitary star in the distance. “I used to think that I was the only thing that could be immortal in this multiverse, but look—” Accord highlighted another star, a path forming between the two “—my friend Fluttershy is also okay with being immortal, that makes three immortal ideas in the multiverse: me, Fluttershy, and our relationship.”

“What if Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Twilight, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Spike agreed to be immortal?” With each name mentioned, Accord highlighted another star and brought connections to each other star, filling a small section of the sky with a glowing mesh of connections. “If those six are immortal, then so are all the relationships between them as well. That’s thirty five immortal things in the universe! And if we add their spouses and all their kids—”

“We know basic math, Accord.” Hope interrupted his plotting and star connecting, the mess of points and connections continuing to be added to as Accord thought of more ponies he would like to be friends with forever.

“What are you after?”

“I’m admitting that I was doing immortality wrong,” said Accord, still turning every single star in the sky into his own personal relationship graph. “There is always something new to learn because every being is different, and just how they are different from each other is a subject that actually can fill up all time. These relationships, the bonds that strengthen an acquaintance to becoming a friend to becoming someone you love and understand, all of this—” Accord gestured to the grand starscape, every star glowing and interconnected with every other star, “—fractals out to infinity.

“Understanding those relationships and how they interact is something that will take up all of my infinite time. I’ve grown to love them all more than any book that could be written about them. I want to continue to get to know them, forever.”

The weaving stars completed their connections. Accord stood transfixed at his own connected starscape and all the possibilities it represented. A look of joy spread across his face.

“But is that what they want, Accord?” asked Hope.

Accord stared at them.

“You have been alone for too long, Accord, that much is for sure. You don’t even stop to think if all of your friends and the innocent bystanders on that planet, on which you want to unleash the worst kind of curse, would even want to be immortal. You’re selfish. You only care about your perspective on it.”

Accord stood there, his face slacked to neutral, listening to Hope.

“Have you even considered the voidwishers? Those that consistently don’t want to exist? They commit suicide on most worlds we place them on, hoping that death will end everything, but their desire for nonexistence cannot ever be granted, it is beyond the power of any being. The theoretical idea of breaking down a soul to base hydrogen is speculation, not even you can break down or put together souls. Reincarnation is the perfect method for helping them. Voidwishers can truly experience non-existence because their soul is off someplace else, already living life. That former self gets to be forgotten. It’s the only solution we’ve been able to come up with that will satisfy them.”

“That... can’t be all that common,” said Accord, trying not to think about one of the book of fears that had mentioned voidwishers.

“Pinkie Pie was one of them,” said Hope.

A chill ran down Accord’s spine, and the bright glow of all the fractals in the stars slowly dissipated and dimmed into the normal cosmos. He grew uneasy, several hundred books about the subject coming to his mind, none of them with adequate answers.

“But... she’s so happy,” said Accord.

“I’m sure she is, but her behavior across all previous lifetimes proves that this world is an outlier for her. You cannot let a voidwisher—even a former one—ever get their hooves on immortality.”

“Why not?”

“They lose hope, Accord! Their only desire is to cease to exist, but their souls are immortal, their memories are immortal. They do not have an avenue to escape once they know they will never cease to exist.”

Hope started showing a universe filled with hydrogen and Trillion, a completely lifeless, starless universe. “Do you see this, Accord? This is what resulted of our trial runs on true immortality, the ones that got to above fifty universe cycles in length before things went terribly wrong.

“You’re aware that at the edge of each universe is a thick, galaxy wide layer of nonfusing hydrogen, and that is what keeps universes separate from each other. But what we’ve found is that the same method used to create that barrier can be replicated.”

Accord watched as a simulation of a universe had each and every star and higher element dissemble and revert to hydrogen. The usually beautiful method of reviving a dead universe was corrupted when he realized that the hydrogen refused to form suns. “This is what happens when voidwishers take their desires too far, when they understand that destroying their body will never destroy their soul. They eventually desire to destroy all souls in the multiverse. If they left any soul alive, that would risk the chance of someone putting them back together again. And so they leave instructions for the hydrogen here to repel from each other, preventing suns from forming.

“The ones in those universes failed, of course, but their philosophy—that idea when thought about for too long—can drive a being insane enough to try to do it. Reincarnation protects against destructive thoughts like that. We know how precious souls are, that’s why we want to find a configuration that satisfies everyone, including them.”

Accord stared unnerved at the dead universes.

“All of our experiments with immortality—all of the best heavens we could create—led to universes like these, Accord. We don’t know the specifics because they thankfully only broke the memory cover we gave them and not their base soul. But souls are too precious to allow them more than a few universe cycles of time.

“How about you, Accord? Are you willing to protect voidwishers by letting them stay reincarnating?”

Accord stared at his shield he had been protecting Equestria with, the seeds of self doubt forming in his mind, slowly eroding at his resolve. He thought about all the worlds that had failed. He thought about Pinkie Pie and all of the wonderful parties, all of the great memories and how much she loved her grandfoals. She was the happiest grandmother in Ponyville, always baking treats for everypony. She was always helping and was the greatest example Accord had ever met of being a friend to everyone.

“You said Pinkie Pie was one of them,” Accord said, “Why did you say ‘was?’”

“Because Galaxia and Cosmos here did everything in their power to ensure that Pinkie’s life was a great one.” Hope moved around the illusion to show Cosmos manipulating Rainbow Dash’s rainboom into having extra magic inside of it, the extra boost making a filly Pinkie Pie smile. “They interfered much more than we would prefer, but their goal was to help her find a place she wanted to stay.”

Accord watched as the rainboom shockwaved across Equestria, manipulating some of his best friends, causing Spike to be willed into existence, the magic permeating his friend’s lives. Accord looked at Galaxia and Cosmos, “You did this?”

Galaxia stayed silent, waiting for Hope to reply instead. When they didn’t, she said, “Yes, I did everything in my power to help Pinkie Pie want to stay.”

“What do you mean, stay?”

Cosmos responded, “She never selected a place she was happy to be. She’s been through forty-seven other lifetimes—a long time to never have a world she liked—that’s why we worked at trying something that hadn’t been tried before.”

“And it worked,” Galaxia said. “As far as I know, her base soul was able to physically change itself, altering her behavior.”

Accord took this in, several thousand books coming to his mind, ideas that had comforted him, but he hadn’t understood why. “Hope, maybe that’s your ideal configuration? Why not have some higher being actually help the souls on the worlds you make.”

“No, the ideal configuration would require no maintenance,” Hope disagreed. “Souls are better off without having their freedoms infringed upon by an always watching, always judging being above them. We try our best to avoid that at all costs.”

“But... how else would you help a soul like Pinkie? Wouldn’t it be a better situation to have a protector and a friend for everyone, always ready to help or have a conversation at a moment’s notice? Someone omniscient and omnipotent that understands them.”

“We’ve had rogue Kings and Queens intend to behave like that before, Accord. They get power hungry, demand too much of the souls they are in charge of, and rarely stay the benevolent beings they started off as. The perspective difference between a King or Queen and the souls they are put in charge of are too great.”

“So you’re saying that it hasn’t been tried?”

“It’s been tried, but it wasn’t sanctioned by us.”

“Perhaps that was the problem. A King or Queen that would try to directly control the souls after they had made a world against your wishes would also be terrible at keeping other rules.”

“We don’t have rules, Accord. We explore every possibility.”

“Then there’s a possibility I would like to explore: I want everyone to be immortal. I have a lot of ideas for how I could make it work.”

“Do you really?” said Hope, taking a step forward and looking at him. “Are you prepared for when widows ask for their dead husbands back, only to find that they have already reincarnated elsewhere?”

A smirk crossed Accord’s muzzle, ecstatic to have thought that through long ago. “I’ve actually been keeping deceased souls from reincarnating for fifty years now.”

Hope’s eyes narrowed. “That only compounds your problems, Accord. Which souls will you permit to be raised from the dead? And once they are raised, won’t they want their friends and families too? You’re going to hit that fifty year limit incredibly fast.”

Accord stared at the planet below, self-doubt edging in and clouding his judgment. Book upon book, idea upon idea pelted him with possible answers while books from the fear section attacked every solution. Accord frantically rifled through more books in his mind, hoping that a solution would emerge. He felt like he had been backed up to the point that all he had left to hold onto was hope.

“Hope...” Accord said aloud. “Why did you choose that name?”

Their sapient swirling mane stiffened for a moment, as if processing the question throughout the entirety of the distant collective. “We Hope that there is a solution. That everyone can live forever. We’re still figuring out what configuration that might be, but we Hope that we will find it.”

Accord sat down, thinking about the response, staring at his hooves. He shoved books and possibilities out of his mind, concentrating on what was important, not letting randomness dictate his thoughts, but focusing them on this one effort. It was several moments before he brought his head back up and stood straight and tall.

“If that’s really what you Hope for, why are you so against me trying?”

Hope looked at Galaxia and Cosmos, hesitating for a moment before their companions were frozen, the King and Queen’s flowing manes and breathing stopped. Hope looked back to Accord. “Because you have caught us in the middle of one of our grand experiments.”

Hope’s mane took a hold of the still Galaxia for a moment, making a scene play out in front of Accord.

Galaxia appeared in front of a tan earth pony that had a cutie mark of a smoothing plane on a piece of wood. Accord recognized her as Fluttershy’s first life.

Hope spoke behind the memory. “The minimum we require our Kings and Queens to do is to ask souls a question after their first lifetime.”

“What did you like about life?” asked Galaxia.

“You haven’t had the pleasure of seeing these interviews before, Accord. We keep them hidden and encrypted in case our races get technologically advanced enough to read our memory covers,” said Hope.

The carpenter pony sat on her haunches, raising a hoof to her head in thought. “I... umm... I guess I liked creating things.”

The Galaxia in the memory smiled before dismissing the soul, the entire scene fading.

“There’s a reason we require them to ask this question, Accord. We want our Kings and Queens to leave their worlds engineered for conflict. We want pain. We want the souls under experimentation to be as uncomfortable as possible,” Hope said.

“But at the end of their lives, we want them to still have hope, to still see the good when things are bad, to be able to handle any kind of pain and suffering.

“Our first set of experiments—immediate immortality—failed. As did one life followed by immortality in specially crafted heavens. The current experiment we are working on is reincarnation until immortality.

“After lifetimes upon lifetimes spent reincarnating, we want the souls of the multiverse to become so fed up with death, so completely enraged at the very idea that souls have to die, that they seek immortality by themselves. They reincarnate into a society that has learned how to alter themselves to become immortal. They learn the true nature of atoms, especially Trillion, and conquer death itself. The hard work that led them to seek to live forever will cause them to stick with their decision, to stay immortal for trillions of universe cycles and beyond, an absolute forever.

“We, as a collective, cannot yet grasp the sheer duration of forever. Just in the course of this conversation, five billion of us have chosen to reincarnate,” Hope sighed. “They’ll be back as a part of us after a few cycles anyway. What we want is to reincarnate into a better form that can handle an absolute forever.”

Accord remembered a few books, trying to see an answer.

“We are still in the data gathering phase,” Hope shifted to view Equestria below. “If you really loved Equestria, you would wait until they hated death enough to conquer it. The ponies would demand to know how to become immortal, overthrowing Celestia and Luna if they were determined enough.”

“You want me to wait until they figure out how to become immortal?” asked Accord.

“Of course. You can’t thrust it on them without them demanding it first.”

“The ponies of Equestria aren’t going to demand immortality,” said Accord. “They accept death! Just like how I accepted it as something that happens to others. You cannot fathom the amount of time it has taken me to warm up to the idea of making others immortal.”

“If this world was not meant to be immortal, then so be it. Only a fraction of a percentage of our worlds end up with a population that seeks immortality, much less finds out how to do it.”

“Have any succeeded?” asked Accord.

“Yes. Actually, a few have lasted about one hundred cycles now. We’re quite proud of them,” said Hope.

“A hundred cycles!? Why don’t you reincarnate into them?” asked Accord.

“Because we can’t seem to replicate it. Souls on the individual level are different. Perhaps that batch of souls was simply more in tune to want to demand immortality.”

Accord’s eyes narrowed. “Hope, I applaud your efforts, but I think I have a better chance of finishing reading my library before you pick an ideal configuration to reincarnate into.”

Hope’s mane straightened and started moving erratically.

“Please, just let me try. Let me stop the infinite quest for perfection and just choose to live. Let me do everything in my power to make everyone on this planet’s existence happy enough that they’ll want to continue it forever.”

Hope’s mane flowed back to normal before they looked at the still frozen Galaxia and Cosmos. They stopped whatever spell they were using and the King and Queen’s manes started to flow once more, completely unaware that they had missed a part of the conversation.

Hope looked at them. “Galaxia, Cosmos, what do you think? We always allow complete freedom. Shall we allow this being, Accord, to use his freedom to run an experiment on a planet you both created?”

Galaxia stood still before moving forward and next to Cosmos, locking her horn to his, exchanging information wordlessly.

“We have one condition, Accord,” said Galaxia after a few moments. “We’ll allow you a trial run on this planet and so we’ll be monitoring your first ten million years. You have complete freedom, but we’ve heard too many stories of improper management to allow you to act without observation.”

“You’ll watch, yes, but can I get your advice too?” Accord asked.

“Advice?” Cosmos repeated, the word conveying an almost unfamiliar concept.

“My method will involve direct involvement with the souls here. I’m going to affect everything. And I’m going to want some advice every so often. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that I can’t do anything by myself. If you’re observing, can you at least offer me feedback and answer my questions?”

Cosmos stared at Galaxia and then back at Accord, “That’s acceptable.”

“Great! Then I’ll go ahead and make Pinkie Pie and everyone immortal now.” Accord stepped back, preparing to leave.

“Not so fast, Accord,” said Hope. “Before you do this, Pinkie Pie should decide herself if this switch in power takes place. She must review all her previous lifetimes to make the decision. She was a voidwisher before, and that way of thinking is going to resurface given the amount of time we’re dealing with. She’ll have to remember all of her past lives and then choose between reincarnation or immortality.”

“I don’t understand,” said Accord. “Why would she even consider reincarnation?”

“She won’t be tempted to pick reincarnation, Accord. That’s the problem with voidwishers, they will always seek for a third option—non-existence. If she seeks that, she must reincarnate.”

Accord gaped at Hope. “What kinds of lifetimes did she lead?”

“They were normal lives across a variety of constructs. But she hated each one of them.”

Accord stared down at Equestria. The planet was docile and kind in whatever way he looked at it.

“Why does she have to make that decision?”

“There has to be somepony allowed to disagree, it might as well be one of your best friends. She can judge your character and see where this is going. And besides, if there’s anyone who would have objections to your plans, it would be Pinkie’s past lives.”

“No...” Accord said, his eyes drooping. “I don’t see why she needs those memories back if they are going to be so painful.”

Hope shot a glare at Cosmos.

“I, umm...” began Cosmos. “I gave Pinkie Pie a lot of power. I went all in on trying to get her to like life. But if she ever wanted to cease to exist, she has plenty of ability to construct spells that would break things down quickly, possibly to the destruction of this universe.”

Hope cut back in. “We are giving you millions of years to work with. Those previous lifetimes will resurface during that duration in one way or another. It would be best to make sure the very nature of her soul has changed enough to handle those ideas and be able to live with them.”

Accord sighed. The arrangement was a compromise that was not as simple as he would have liked.

“Pinkie Pie loves her life here in Ponyville,” Accord affirmed to himself. “She’ll choose immortality.”

“We hope so, Accord, for your sakes,” said Hope.

Living

“NO!” screamed Accord, chasing after Hope and reaching to hold the gray soul in his magic.

“She’s a voidwisher, Accord, what did you expect?” Hope said, protecting the dim gray orb, only trace amounts of pink bubbling up every once in a while.

“Pinkie had the greatest life she could have had. Our King and Queen did their best to foster an environment that her life would be extraordinary. But that cannot be typical. That’s not something we can do for every soul, and not something that should be common in the ideal configuration we’re looking for. Be content that Pinkie Pie had a happy ending.”

“No!” Accord yelled, his composure crashing down. “HAPPY ENDINGS ARE ENDINGS! AND ENDINGS ARE NOT HAPPY!”

His rage boiled over. The shield spell covering the planet surged, creating a giant tsunami of magical power that threatened to engulf Hope in a million different terrible spells.

“WAIT!” screamed Fluttershy, her own counterspells calming the approaching attack of the shield spell, dissipating it into a tranquil ocean of magic.

“Wait...” Fluttershy said to Accord. She placed a wing over him, calming him, his rage quieting down to disbelief and then to cold sadness.

Hope eyed the newcomer that had teleported in without a sound into their presence. “And this is... Fluttershy?” Hope asked.

She looked away from her husband and back to Hope, nodding.

“You’re his wife,” Hope said, weighing the word carefully. “Ah... now we understand. You are the real reason Accord wants to save everyone on this planet. Without you, he is nothing but a librarian. But with you he has a greater sense of purpose, and a desire to help everyone. Everything Accord is trying to do is just to make sure he doesn’t lose you.”

“You’re wrong,” said Fluttershy. “I may be the one he cares about the most, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about each and every soul down there. They all deserve to live.”

“We and Accord had our wager, Fluttershy,” said Hope. “If Pinkie desires a third option, then she will have to reincarnate.”

Accord was staring at Equestria, his eyes blurred, filled to the brim with shock and fear.

“No, your wager was that Pinkie’s desire for a third option had to be for nonexistence. But we don’t know if that’s what she wanted,” said Fluttershy.

“What other option could she have desired? There is none. You either continue or you start over.”

“At least listen to her, take her memories, please. She had to have meant something else besides nonexistence,” Fluttershy said.

Accord raised his head, staring hopeful at the dim gray orb, traces of pink still dancing across the surface.

Hope stared at Accord and Fluttershy for a moment before enveloping Pinkie’s soul in its mane, taking the memories.

Hope paused for a long moment, their eyes widening, staring intently at the soul. Accord watched bewildered as Hope created another temporary body for Pinkie Pie and put the soul back inside.

“You are robbing her of a happy ending, Accord,” said Hope mournfully, disappearing and putting back up the illusion of the ethereal plane.

Pinkie gasped on the ground, disoriented and terrified.

Accord walked over to Pinkie to help her get up as Cosmos and Fluttershy vanished.

She sat back on her haunches above the mists in the plane.

“Pinkie—what kind of third option were you thinking about?” asked Accord.

“I... I...” she hesitated, looking down at the mists. “I think it’s sad that only I get to be immortal. What about Asvarel? And Marsh? And Klyrm? And all of my other past lives? Why can’t they continue?”

Pinkie held onto Accord’s hooves, sniffling. “I got to speak with them. To understand them. And I got to fill them with the stories of why I liked life so much. I gave them hope, Accord, that perhaps they could have lived their lives and loved them as much as I loved this one. And... they’re sad they cut their lives short. Is there any way we can give them a second chance?”

Accord didn’t know what to say to this. He opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t come up with a solution, too shocked and relieved that her desire was not for nonexistence.

He thought about her request, trying to find the book he had read about this problem before, he had to have read it at least once, but nothing came to mind. Perhaps he had left the library too soon.

“Pinkie, all of those lives were using that same soul. A soul can only live one lifetime in one format at a time. If you’re immortal, you have to pick one form to be in.”

“But what about all my past lives? They worked hard. It was difficult, but they kept going until... well...” she looked down at the ground, “they couldn’t anymore. They’re sad about everything.” She raised her head up, hopeful. “Maybe if they had a second chance they could see life differently?”

Accord’s mind raced, trying to find a book that had had this request in it before. What was the solution?

“We’re hitting the reasons why you can’t mix immortality and reincarnation systems, Accord,” said Galaxia. “You run into strange areas with no good solutions.”

“I... I showed them all how much joy life could be,” said Pinkie softly. “None of them really got it the first time through, but I’ve learned how. And I taught them a little of how to be happy no matter where you are. Maybe if I could coach them all how to, they could return to the worlds they left and live better lives.”

A love and appreciation for Pinkie Pie came over Accord in that moment, more than he had ever felt before. She understood how to conquer the fear of life itself, and her only desire was to give that love for living to everyone, even her past lives.

“Thank you Pinkie, that’s a good desire to have,” he whispered. “It’s not something I can do though. We could place different souls back on similar worlds with those exact same memories... but they wouldn’t be your real soul,” Accord sighed, staring at the mists at his hooves. “I am sorry to have discovered something else I can’t do.”

Queen Galaxia spoke up, “So what will you choose? Immortality or reincarnation?”

Pinkie thought about it for several moments before answering, thinking back on all of her previous lifetimes and deciding on her favorite, “Immortality.”

The words echoed across all time and space, the choice changing the destinies of a truly infinite number of souls.

Galaxia and Accord smiled.

“I have one last question. Pinkie, ever since I placed you on this world I’ve wanted to know if you would have an answer,” Galaxia said. “What was your favorite moment of your life?”

“Hmm... “ Pinkie pondered the question until she had a thought that made her smile. “I guess... right now. Knowing that all the happy times, and the sad ones too, that none of it has to end.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Pinkie awoke in her hospital bed for what felt like lifetimes after she had last been in it. Every part of her body still felt as weak as it had been when she left it, and she struggled to make her eyes open.

“Is she... waking up?” asked one of her grandfoals.

“Her heart stopped beating for a while there,” said the hospice nurse, “but it looks like she’s coming back.”

She heard the nurse get closer to the bed, “Pinkie, can you hear us?”

Her eyes fluttered slightly to see the room full of so many ponies she loved. She gave a weak smile and closed her eyes once more, exhausted by the memories, but happy for the future.

Decisions

“Before your wife stepped in, you attempted to injure us,” said Hope. “How can we trust you with one of our choicest planets?”

Accord looked at Hope, his eyes filling with shame. “I am truly sorry,” he said, hanging his head. “I was not prepared to have everything I love taken away from me, and I acted without thinking things through.”

“A being as old as you are not thinking things through? We find that hard to believe,” said Hope.

“I admit that what I did was wrong, I am sorry.”

“You have a long history of making terrible mistakes, Accord, or should we refer to you as Discord?”

“I am that confused being no longer,” said Accord, looking up and into their eyes.

“If you would lash out at us, how will you handle a billion souls making incorrect choices and being unable to do a thing about it? Will you force them to follow your path? Will you be angry when they make terrible decisions? Will you lash out at them like you did at us?”

“I’m willing to make a promise that I won’t.”

“Promises are no good, what you are effectively asking is to be a King over Equestria, trying out a configuration we can only hope will work, for your sakes. Your promises are worthless, Accord.”

“I have two promises I will never, ever, break. One is that I will never choose to die, and the other,” he said, glancing at his wife, “is to be Fluttershy’s husband. You’ve seen how strong I am about living forever. You must know that I can keep my promises if I give my strongest word. I will not lash out against the souls here, no matter the decisions they make. I may scold them or punish them, but I won’t do any an injustice.”

“We can’t trust anything we can’t read the entire history of. Accord, please, take a memory cover, do what you can to transfer your memories over, when the transfer is complete we can read you and completely trust you.”

“You do not understand the duration of time that would require. My memory cover alone would occupy over two hundred billion universes.”

“Space is infinite, and so is time, and we don’t see how we can trust you without it.”

“May I cut in?” asked Fluttershy politely.

The two alicorns stopped as they both turned to face her.

“I have a memory cover...” she began, slowly. “I don’t have all of Accord’s memories, but I have all of the ones he’s shared with me so far, and he hasn’t held back on the sad memories, or things he’s messed up. I think it’s a very good sample size of him, so maybe you could trust him if you looked at him through my eyes.”

Accord’s face grew red, a million different embarrassing and terrifying things he wouldn’t share with anyone else besides Fluttershy popping up in his mind and making him uncomfortable.

His embarrassment vanished when he saw the calm look on Fluttershy’s face. She loved him despite all of his flaws and his fears, and they grew in strength together almost because of them. Hope had monitored and analyzed a perceptively infinite amount of souls, and isn’t this what he had done to Celestia and Luna?

“Fluttershy, if that’s okay with you, then it’s okay with me,” said Accord.

Hope looked at Fluttershy, she gave a small nod, and Hope’s mane reached for her, enveloping the top of her head and absorbing the memories.

Time stopped for the collective of souls in those moments where they parsed, analyzed, and pondered on the new information from Fluttershy’s memories. There was new information here. There were ideas here that would not have even been thought of under any configuration they could have possibly created. There was something foreign and exciting in all the information, truly new thoughts contained in the memories: the truth in the randomness, the strength of relationships, and the wisdom of age even they couldn’t match.

The collective gave a shudder and Hope’s mane released from Fluttershy. Hope looked at Accord with doleful eyes before giving a small smile. “This is a nice sample size of your soul, Accord. There are beautiful and terrible things in you.”

Hope faced Fluttershy, “And you, Fluttershy, thank you for being willing, you are a strong and kind soul.”

“Does this mean everyone can be immortal?” asked Fluttershy.

“We have the tendency to love things that we understand, and we understand you, Fluttershy, just as you understand your husband. Thus, we understand his desires.”

“Galaxia? Cosmos?” Hope asked them, “we have deemed them worthy of making an attempt at immortality on one of your worlds. Do they have your permission as well?”

Cosmos shrugged before nodding.

“This world means a lot to me, I would like to be involved in the process,” said Galaxia.

“And we would love the help,” said Fluttershy.

“You have our permission. Now, what’s your plan, Accord?” asked Hope, standing above the shield protecting Equestria, observing the planet below.

“Just watch,” said Accord as he shattered the shield spell, turned translucent, and dove to the planet below, Fluttershy hanging onto him.

Hope, Galaxia, and Cosmos followed after them as he landed in a vast plain, his horn glowing.

“Accord, wait!” said Galaxia, landing next to them.

He stopped and looked at her.

“I helped make this planet and the magic system that runs it. As much as I trust your spellwork, I would prefer to help you do this. You don’t need to do this alone.”

Accord looked at her, the magic in his horn dissipating, a soft breeze from the meadow coming over them.

“You’re right, I never have to be alone again,” he smiled, watching as she made her own horn glow with amber light, the entire planet slowly being encased in the glow.

“Now, what is it you would like to have done?” asked Galaxia, her eyes glowing white.

“Put everyone on this planet under the same immortality spell as Luna and Celestia.”

“When you say everyone, be specific.”

“Every pony, camel, griffon, dragon, cow, bison, donkey, diamond dog, changeling, minotaur, and any other sapient creature that has a soul guiding them. Make them all immortal. We’ll be casting another spell afterwards to slowly turn back their ages, making them younger.”

“How long do you want to give them until they reach their ideal age?”

“Give it one year,” said Accord.

“What about the plants and animals?”

Accord hesitated, trying to find a book that had discussed this before in the back of his mind.

“Make the animals immortal?” said Fluttershy, looking at her husband, trying to figure out what would be ideal.

“Make the animals immortal, but not the plants,” Accord confirmed.

“What do you want the predators to eat?”

“Umm...” He was making too many changes too quickly: griffons and other predators needed to be able to eat. What kind of life would it be to not have the freedom to eat what they wanted? He wanted to give them all choice, but he was being stopped in his tracks by the first of many, many new rules that were bound to upset someone.

“Allow them to be able to eat any plant,” Accord said.

“Be careful, don’t try to turn Equestria into a heaven, Accord,” said Cosmos. “I’ve tried making a few of these before, and you can’t possibly assume that your perspective aligns with any other soul’s perspective. They’re all too different. One creature’s heaven is another’s hell. And if you try to fulfill every single request, you’ll end up with a different heaven for each soul, a billion lonely heavens.”

Accord took the advice and weighed it in his mind, stopping his requests. The amber glow dissipated as Galaxia extinguished the spell.

“What should I do?” asked Accord.

“If you want to help them all, you must understand them all. You must know each and every detail and understand them better than they know themselves,” said Cosmos.

“There’s a spell we can cast to access Equestria’s memory backups,” said Galaxia. “Every soul’s memories are gathered there for perusal for when Equestria would eventually finish. If you take all those memories now, you can understand all of them enough to help.”

“What?” asked Accord. “I... I can’t do that. I was looking forward to spending an infinite amount of time getting to know each and every one of them personally, if I go in with a huge head start how I will get to know them normally? How will they get to know me?”

“They’ll get to know you, that’s for sure,” Cosmos said. “An infinite amount of time demands that. But if you are worried about being bored with your infinite time, then you are being selfish. They need a proper start now, they need to be understood now.”

“Part of the reason why I love these souls so much is that I can’t guess them, I don’t know them enough to make perfect predictions.”

“Their memories aren’t enough to make perfect predictions,” said Hope. “They change in ways you can’t imagine. It’s impossible to predict what they will want, even given a significant head start.”

“You all think that I should take on the memories?” asked Accord, looking at the faces of them all. “Fluttershy? What do you think?”

Fluttershy’s hoof pawed the ground for a moment in hesitation. “They’ve built worlds before, Accord, I am okay with you following their advice.”

“What about our own foals? What about you? Isn’t this a supreme invasion of privacy to everyone?”

“I think we started this path when we first obtained Celestia and Luna’s memories,” said Fluttershy. “This is going beyond that, but if we want to really help them all handle immortality, and the ones that are used to handling this say that this is the right method, then I think it’s a good path to follow.”

He looked at her, realizing he was about to know everything about her in every way. He was about to know everything about everyone in every way.

Accord breathed in and out, “Okay.”

Fluttershy leaned closer to him, “I’ll be right here, next to you.”

“Y’know...” began Cosmos, grinning. “We constructed the spell so that Galaxia and I could open the memories after the end. It’s a lot easier to perform with two alicorns.” Cosmos’s horn glowed for a moment and to Fluttershy’s annoyance a horn appeared on her head. “How about you participate too, Fluttershy?”

“She doesn’t have to,” said Accord, Fluttershy’s horn disappearing.

“Why not let her decide,” said Cosmos, the horn flashing on her head again.

Fluttershy looked at the horn and then at Accord. She was silent for a few moments before responding, “okay.”

His eyes widened, “Are... you sure?” asked Accord

“You’ll share everything with me anyway, I might as well experience it all with you now,” said Fluttershy, the breeze picking up and making her pink and grey mane float in the wind.

“Have you finished deciding that it’s always better to have more information?” asked Hope.

“I hope we don’t regret this,” said Accord.

“Don’t say things like that,” said Cosmos. “Existence is full of regret, but that’s no reason to fear and prevent yourself from doing it anyway.”

Accord frowned and turned to Galaxia. “What’s the spell?”

Galaxia showed them the spell that would give them all memories in Equestria.

“Okay...” said Accord, his and Fluttershy’s horns glowing. The magic coursed through both of them, the powerful surge of memories filling in every single space it could.

In those small moments, Accord and Fluttershy saw a tiny fraction of infinity. A billion lives were experienced. Each life, each secret, each action, each inaction, each and every single soul’s lifetimes experienced by them. Each memory came in one at a time, a life to watch as it was born, experienced, and died, each one making Accord want to help them. Each life understood from their perspective. Instead of fear or anger for the mistakes they made, Accord felt compassion, loving each one of them and wanting to help those he could still affect.

Back in the library a great number of books were remembered and dyed the colors of the souls they described. In the long time Accord had read the library, he had encountered the stories of the lives of these ponies before. Every single time he came across a grammatically correct book in a sea of near nonsense it had been a breath of fresh air, something truly beautiful and unique to experience. But now it felt so much more real, for there was a real creature to attach the books to.

So many different combinations of those books applied in different ways. Given a particular creature in a specific situation, he had already tried to read and understand what they were going through, only this time he could affect the book and its outcome, seeing beyond and picking the ideal next book in that character’s series.

After what seemed like a long time, the spell finished. Fluttershy’s knees buckled and she rested on the soft ground. Accord stayed standing, deep in thought, his eyes still closed.

“After experiencing all of that, are you still certain immortality would be the best option?” asked Hope.

Accord gulped once, his mind racing. Death is sad, right? Continuing is happy, right? The memories of each and every soul-inhabited creature in Equestria weighed him down. There were too many variables, too many lives that he would be affecting. These were the decisions that left him in his library for so long in the first place. He could make choices for himself, but for others? They all thought and acted much differently and they didn’t make choices he would make. How could he possibly decide something that would affect an infinite number of souls?

Was this what happened when he lost his memories so long ago? Perhaps the souls in his care decided they wanted to end reincarnation and immortality, and tried their best to get as close to non-existence as possible. What if he had granted their wish then? Would he grant it now if they asked?

Never.

The ability to continue to make choices based on an ever increasing amount of knowledge. That is what made immortality worth it. Living, choosing, being, creating, loving, sharing, striving, crying, continuing; that was what made life so good. Most of the souls in this world already saw that, but he would have to help all of them become accustomed to infinity.

The question of where to begin was the hardest. He opened his eyes and looked up at Hope.

“Yes... immortality is still the best option, Hope. It is simply the decision to allow yourself to continue making decisions in the future.”

“So what’s the spell you want?” Galaxia asked.

“Everything I said before, but fix all of the physical diseases,” said Accord, going after the problems that wouldn’t be difficult to decide. “Fix the eyes of the blind, allow the deaf to listen, make the infertile fertile, cure every single disease that might be bothering them. Fix whatever mental health problems that are caused by an improper alignment of their soul and body.”

“I don’t think that fits everyone,” said Fluttershy, opening her eyes from the ground and looking at him. “We’ll go around individually to check on them afterwards, right Accord?”

“Of course.”

“Curing everyone...” Galaxia said, pondering. “Are you sure you want to do that? Being able to experience sickness can make a soul appreciate health. They’ll miss an aspect of existence that can help them grow, Accord.”

“I have to start somewhere, Galaxia, and these will be the easiest decisions to make.”

“Do you have any other requests?”

“Not now, let’s make this first change.

“Okay,” said Galaxia, the amber glow covering the planet and accessing the base spells that operated Equestria.

“Can anyone else see this?” asked Accord, gesturing to the glow emanating from Galaxia.

“Not unless you want them to,” Cosmos responded.

Accord thought about it for a moment before saying, “Can you make the glow visible to everyone? When they look back after 2^50 universe cycles, they can remember this point as where it all truly began.”

Galaxia nodded, the golden glow broke into the visible spectrum, and an amber wave emanated across the planet.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Pinkie felt something warm wash over her. She opened her eyes and for a small moment, everything was glowing amber. The dream she thought she had had was confirmed by that golden glow.

Immortal, everyone was immortal.

She felt better in that moment, her strength already starting to return. There was an infinite amount of more parties yet to be celebrated.

Problems

“No more goodbyes,” said Accord, satisfied at the decision.

“No more problems?” asked Fluttershy.

“Are you kidding, I can’t think of a bigger slew of problems you’ll get than trying to figure out a way to spend infinity,” said Cosmos. “But you got it, and you’re stuck with it.”

“I much prefer having to talk to everyone to figure out problems than having to say goodbye,” said Accord.

“Are you sure? Do you have the kind of patience to deal with what’s coming?” Cosmos asked, incredulity on his muzzle.

“No one has more patience than Accord,” said Fluttershy.

Galaxia opened her eyes, “It’s about time we told Celestia and Luna about all this.”

“I couldn’t agree more. Hope, are you coming too?” asked Accord.

“I don’t think you have time to talk with anyone, Accord. You’re already getting problems. There was a small skirmish before the transition and now there is an immortal griffon trying to claw his way out of the stomach of a talonproof dragon. And the diamond dogs were in the middle of an execution of a notorious criminal but didn’t finish in time before the switch. And there’s an earth pony that is sinking rapidly into a deep ocean trench, he’ll probably be stuck there for a while. On the upside, a pegasi foal that was falling to his death won’t die now, though it will be so painful he’ll probably wish he had died.”

“Give me their names,” said Accord, quickly racing through possible candidates for who in particular was going through these problems.

“Of who?” asked Hope.

“Of the griffon, dragon, dog, pony, and foal, and any other souls that are running into immortality problems so soon.”

“Accord, that list will soon run the length of the whole planet,” said Hope. “Are you sure you want to micromanage every little problem?”

“Just give me the names.”

“Mythos, Redfeather, Scrounge, Sea Seeker, and Starlit Journey.”

A book appeared in Accord’s hooves and he tossed it to Fluttershy. “Fluttershy, I’ll take Mythos and Redfeather, can you get Starlit Journey and Sea Seeker and we’ll meet up at Scrounge?”

“Okay,” said Fluttershy, catching the book and teleporting away in an instant.

“Galaxia and Cosmos, we’ll join you with Celestia and Luna when we get the chance.”

They nodded and then each of them vanished.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Fluttershy teleported to the forest underneath Cloudsdale, her eyes scanning the entire sky for the falling foal. The lives she had just experienced taught her a slew of new spells that had been learned by unicorns over the years. She picked out an eyesight enhancing spell and cast it.

She spotted the falling colt as he reached the tops of the tallest trees. She teleported to him, creating an array of clouds to soften his landing as he fell through and finally hit the last cloud on the ground.

“Are you okay, Starlit Journey?” asked Fluttershy.

The foal remained on the grounded cloud, in shock. He slowly turned his head to look at Fluttershy.

“A Princess?” asked the foal.

“Oh no... I’m not a Princess,” said Fluttershy quickly.

“Then why do you have a horn?”

“Oh... this...” Fluttershy looked at the horn, her cheeks reddening. She thought about telling a quick lie to get out quickly to save Sea Seeker, but she was going to know this foal for a long time to come, it was best to be honest.

“I just use it to help ponies sometimes... like I’m helping you. That doesn’t make me a Princess.”

“Yes it does.”

Fluttershy made her horn go invisible.

“Well... I guess I’m a secret Princess, for now.” Fluttershy smiled as she teleported Starlit Journey to his home above in Cloudsdale.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“Let him out of there!” yelled Accord to Mythos the dragon.

“No... I just have an upset stomach,” said Mythos, covering his smoking mouth. “And it barely even hurts for an upset stomach. I didn’t eat a griffon.”

“Yes... yes you did Mythos,” Accord said, narrowly avoiding rolling his eyes. “But that’s okay, because there’s a whole lot more diamonds and tasty jewels for you to eat now—you don’t need meat at all anymore.”

“But... they taste so good...” said Mythos. He had all the look of a comfortable, rotund, jolly dragon.

“Taste... huh?” said Accord. “Tell me... have you ever had featherstones before?”

“Featherstone? No... never heard of it.”

“Trust me, they are delicious,” said Accord, a giant bag of golden stones appearing next to him. “Just give these a taste.”

“What does a pony know about good gems?” Mythos stuck his claws out and took some of the stones, tossing them into his mouth like popcorn, his eyes widening the moment his tongue touched the stones. He closed his mouth and chomped in delight as the flavors of turquoise, agate, and griffon coalesced into a single gem. “These taste even better than griffon! It’s got the mild taste of turquoise with a kick of agate, but it still has that griffon flavor. Tell me, where can I get more like it?”

“You’ll find them all over the place now, I just introduced several new stones that may be of interest to you. Tell your friends! And no more casually eating meat, Mythos! I’ll even give you this whole bag if you’ll just let me let Redfeather out of your stomach. He’s been in there for a good five minutes now.”

Mythos looked down at his stomach sheepishly, “Alright... but is it going to hurt?”

Accord cast an intangibility spell on his hoof and reached inside the dragon’s stomach, pulling a very frazzled griffon out.

The wide eyed griffon stood silently, various disgusting smells emanating from him and some cooling magma getting stuck into his feathers.

“Let’s just clean you up a bit, shall we?” said Accord, casting a cleaning spell on Redfeather, removing all the igneous rock that had been forming and leaving him with his usual red-brown plumage.

“I... I... just fell into a pit of lava in a dragon’s stomach. How am I still alive?”

“Surprise! Immortality!” said Accord, smiling. “Bet ‘ya didn’t expect that huh?”

Redfeather stood there staring at the pony, his head tilted to the side, tilting enough that he noticed that there was something behind him. As soon as Mythos came into view, the griffon leapt into action and started clawing and tearing at the dragon as hard as he could, not a single jab making so much as a dent.

“Woah, hold on there, Mythos here is just as immortal as you are Redfeather. Because you are both immortal now you are going to be running into each other every so often during the duration of infinity. It would be wise to make amends.”

They both looked at Accord, the griffon incredulous, the dragon aloof.

“Mythos, you can go first, please apologize to Redfeather,” said Accord.

The dragon looked sheepishly at the ground, “Sorry I ate you. You were very delicious.”

The griffon frowned, “Apology not accepted.”

“Now... now... we can work through this,” said Accord.

“What is an old pony doing here anyway? How did you get here?”

“The name’s Accord, and I thought I would introduce myself, I’m sure we’ll all get to know each other very well over the next...” he paused, “... infinity or so.”

The griffon’s frown deepened.

“But what better way of getting to know somebody than by being able to make amends, I’ve had my share of mistakes, you have yours, Mythos has his... but well... forgiveness... that’s what makes eternity happen safely. What do you say, will you forgive Mythos?”

“You weren’t that delicious,” added Mythos.

“That makes me feel so much better,” said Redfeather sarcastically.

“Okay... I’ve read this story before... I know just how this will all play out,” said Accord, producing a blue book from out of nowhere.

“Once upon a time there was a mild mannered dragon named...” Accord skipped over the long acronym of month yarn time hotel original sand, “Mythos. He was very hungry and succumbed to a bad habit of eating griffons. One day he ate one and it didn’t die. Knowing that nothing would ever die ever again, Mythos decided to never ever eat another sapient being again and he said sorry to everyone he could. The End.”

Accord shut the book before they could see that the rest of the pages were an absolute mess of random words.

“Never eat griffons again?” asked Mythos.

“Anything sapient,” Accord reminded. “But that’s okay, because anything you want to eat, there’s a substitute: featherstones, metamorph gems, manticore topaz, equine quartz, whatever you might be hungry for.”

“Well... alright,” said Mythos, staring at the ground. “No more creatures, just rocks.”

“What do you think Redfeather, can you forgive him?”

The griffon’s frown deepened, an amazing feat considering his sharp beak wasn’t supposed to move. He failed to respond for several moments until he finally said, “Maybe later.”

Accord frowned, “It’ll be easier for you if you forgive him now instead of later.”

“You’re a crazy old pony!” said the griffon as he attempted to fly off.

“Not so fast!” said Accord, pulling out another book. “At least let me give you your book, you practically wrote it.”

“I didn’t write anything!”

“Please, I know you much better than I have any right to, could you please just read the book you wrote. I think having access to these memories can help you.”

“Fine,” said the griffon as he jumped into the air and raced off, puncturing the hard cover and several of the pages inside with his talons.

Accord watched him fly away beyond the horizon before turning back toward the dragon.

“Now... you don’t know how to read. Quite a shame, really, reading is wonderful. But if you open a page and slide your claws down the right side of the book, it will be read aloud to you.”

“The book reads itself so I don’t have to?” said Mythos.

“You still have to listen if you want to experience the book, Mythos.”

“But books are boring.”

“Is your life boring, Mythos?” asked Accord.

The dragon scratched his head. “No.”

“Then your book won’t be either.”

* * *

Fluttershy breathed in the fresh salty smell of the ocean as she landed on the boat that Sea Seeker had been on minutes before. The boat was full of supplies and research equipment and she shouldn’t have been surprised that she knew what each and every one of those objects did. She knew Sea Seeker and his two older brothers, and his ex-girlfriend, and every marine biology class he had ever skipped and well... everything.

Except where he was at that very moment.

She looked around, the anchor of the boat wasn’t tethered, and Sea Seeker was rather bad at tying knots.

Fearing the worst, Fluttershy dropped the book she was carrying into the boat and dove down under the water, racing toward the black deep.

It quickly became pitch dark and Fluttershy cast some strong spotlight spells, illuminating the deserted ocean, only a few stray fish zoomed past as she went deeper.

“Where is he!?” Fluttershy spoke through the water, the sounds bubbling out.

“Veer north a bit while still heading down, he hit a current.”

“Hope?” asked Fluttershy, taking the advice immediately and heading north. “What are you doing here?”

“We closely monitor new Queens.”

She cringed and tried not to think too hard about that. “How are you seeing him?”

“There’s a spell you should cast that can connect you to souls that have one of our memory covers, it should make things easier for you.”

Fluttershy spotted a pony quickly being dragged down to the depths, his hoof caught on the rope, the look of calm on his face and his closed eyes made her think he was dead.

She swam down to him and cut the chain on the anchor with her magic.

His sinking slowed down and he opened his terrified eyes.

Fluttershy reached out and embraced him and quickly teleported back to the boat on the surface.

The second he hit the boat, Sea Seeker coughed and heaved for several moments. A forced gasp filled him with no more life than he had already.

She patted him on the back, helping to get more water out of his lungs, his body expelling the liquid easily.

“There... there, it’s okay,” said Fluttershy.

“How am I still alive!?” he gasped out, his seafoam green mane a complicated mess. “Everything got all yellow and warm and peaceful—I thought I died.”

“Nope, dying is not good for anypony, so we got rid of it.”

Sea Seeker coughed out some more water, “Y-you... what? Umm... th- thanks for saving my life.”

“You’re welcome,” said Fluttershy smiling.

He stared at her, according to his memories, she looked old enough to be his grandmother.

“Well... I must be going...” she said. “My husband gave you your book though, I think you’ll like it.”

“What do you mean, my book?”

“Just open it and read, he meant it for you. Oh, and Sea Seeker, she does miss you as much as you miss her.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Celestia had never been so enthralled by a book before. It was a little vain to think about how her favorite book would be the story of her own life. It gave a fresh perspective on all of the decisions she had made, why she had made them, and how it had gotten her to this point.

But more importantly, it was a distraction from possible impending annihilation. What was the penalty for the betrayal that she and her sister had committed? Would it be forced reincarnation back into Equestria? Or perhaps reincarnation into some other planet? Either way, once they were gone, Twilight would have to take over. She had dominion over the time between night and day, and now she would control everything.

They were so engrossed in their books that neither noticed a brief amber glow permeate the throne room.

She turned another page. She had long since read the stories of her previous life. As Clover the Clever she had discovered a spell to more regularly rotate the sun from its previously sporadic movements. Looking back she could see that Galaxia must have played a hoof in helping her learn that spell. She had been left alone in this life for the most part, but that previous one had touches of Galaxia and Cosmos’s hooves all over it. It was like they had been trying to prepare her for this life. An odd prospect, as nothing carries over from reincarnation, does it?

“Celestia, Luna,” said Galaxia.

Celestia dropped the book in shock, closing her eyes, awaiting the inevitable. Her punishment would come swift.

“It’s so great to see you again!” yelled out Cosmos, reaching out with his long forelegs and taking in both Celestia and Luna in a warm, starry embrace.

“I have some news for you,” said Galaxia.

Celestia was unable to hug Cosmos back, the fear gripping her.

“Everypony lives,” said Cosmos, his warm voice near hers.

The room was silent for a few moments.

“Is this true?” asked Celestia, looking up to Cosmos, still feeling squeezed tight against his chest like she was a filly again.

“It is,” said Galaxia. “I had wanted a world to directly interact with beyond the initial creation and setting up steps, and Accord also desired it, so we’ll be helping you a lot under this new format. Immortality will be tough, there are new challenges here—“

She was cut off in mid sentence by Celestia escaping from Cosmos and embracing her, “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Galaxia returned the hug. “You can thank Fluttershy, Accord, and Pinkie Pie, they’re the ones that wanted this the most.”

“But you let them choose.”

“Of course, choice is always important.”

“This could go wrong in a million different ways, but that shouldn’t stop us from having fun in the process,” smiled Cosmos, holding Luna in his lap on the throne as if she were still a filly.

“Does this mean we will see you more often?” asked Luna.

Cosmos put a hoof to his face, thinking, “Perhaps a bit more often. I still have a universe to run though.”

“As do I,” said Galaxia. “But we can stop by a little more often and make sure the world isn’t ending. That sort of thing.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Fluttershy finished her teleportation spell, the chaos where she had emerged in full swing.

Dozens of diamond dogs were chasing after a particularly haggard looking dog that was cackling with mirth around the tall pillar in the center of the room.

She had just experienced all the lives here, the scene quickly refreshed in her mind. Scrounge had been stranded at the top of that tall pillar, death by starvation, thirst, or more likely from the jump that the prisoner was likely to make. It was not a nice place to be, but Scrounge was one of the few souls on the planet that probably deserved it.

He must have jumped recently, and not died.

“Sorry to bother everyone...” started Fluttershy, her entrance unnoticed in the cacophony of rushing diamond dogs.

One of them pounced on Scrounge’s legs as he cackled.

“Fine, be that way,” said Fluttershy, her mane made a snapping sound and all at once the entire room went silent and still. The diamond dogs were frozen in mid stride, only their eyes allowed to move.

“Sorry about all this, but it looks a little chaotic in here, give me a moment.”

The diamond dogs could only watch as comfortable luxurious couches appeared out of nowhere and each of them was seated. A large armchair appeared underneath Scrounge, his face still stuck in a mirthless grin.

“Okay, just relax everyone.” She stopped the freezing spell.

Accord decided to pop in at that moment.

“Sorry I’m late, what’d I miss?”

“Some running around due to the consequences of a non-threatening tower to a now immortal prisoner.”

Several of the dogs squirmed, wondering whether or not to jump out of their chairs.

“Yeah... it looks like that,” said Accord eyeing the groups of dogs on comfy seats. “Ah, Scrounge, there you are!”

The haggard dog’s eyes shot to Accord.

“It’s so nice to see you, how have you been?”

The dog stared at him, puzzled. “Have we met?” he asked in a gruff voice.

“No, so I’ll introduce myself! My name’s Accord, this is Fluttershy, and you should probably stop being... well...” Accord paused, picking out the exact right words and phrases that would adequately work in this situation, going through a two hundred and fifty thousand word language and selecting the least offensive one. “Evil.”

Scrounge cackled, his ruthless mirth marred by the fact he was sunk into an armchair far too comfortable to leave, even if there wasn’t a spell keeping him there.

“Stop being evil?” asked Fluttershy. “Was that really the best you could come up with?”

Accord’s cheeks reddened, “I’m new at this.”

Fluttershy rolled her eyes before facing Scrounge and smiling, “Hello Mr. Scrounge, sir. You seem to have the bad habit of engaging in nefarious acts, we’re here to help you kick that habit.”

The dog started scratching himself by rubbing his back against the chair, his paws glued to the sides.

“So we’d like to give you someplace nice to stay as you begin the process of reformation.”

“Excuse you,” yelled one of the dogs in the back, “but that’s Scrounge, he’s a monster and he’s going down.”

“Yes, hopefully down in history as one of the greatest changes in personality and demeanor in all of Equestria, this is Fluttershy we’re talking about here. She’s good at this sort of thing.”

“I will never stop!” said Scrounge.

“Well, we’ll see you all later, we’ll take Scrounge off your paws for now,” said Fluttershy.

“Keep the sofas as a gift,” smiled Accord, as he teleported away with Scrounge and Fluttershy.

“Y’know Scrounge, I’m not very good at doling out punishments.”

The dog stiffened, suddenly scared of the gray alicorn.

“So I’m going to let you have everything you’ve ever wanted.”

All around them a vast world appeared. Homes dotted the landscape and holes appeared with labyrinthine tunnels, everywhere filled with jewels and anything else Scrounge could ever want. “This is your own paradise prison for you to peruse, explore and commit all of the depraved acts you have ever wanted to commit.”

The dog’s eyes grew wide, licking his lips in menace.

“There is a catch, however. The only way to leave this place would be to go to that hexagonal tower in the distance and select your favorite book. There’s about ten thousand in there, it could take a while to pick a favorite.”

The dog cackled, “Why would I ever want to leave?”

“You’ll find yourself very lonely here, Scrounge. Souls aren’t meant to be alone. You will soon realize that this paradise is but another prison without the comfort of another soul to talk to. But the library is full of permutations on how your life can be after you leave this place. Stories of friendship and adventure that can be yours, ways you can say you are sorry to those you have wronged, and other advice to help you out of the dark abyss you have sunk yourself to.”

“I won’t read a word,” smiled the dog, his razor sharp canine teeth menacing.

Accord reached down and hugged him, “Infinity is a long time, Scrounge. It would be a shame if you spent it alone in here.”

The dog squirmed, trying to get out of Accord’s hooves.

He let him go, watching as the dog bounded away.

“We’ll visit you once a week!” yelled Accord as the dog flung himself down a deep hole.

“Do you think it’ll work? I mean, this is Sombra we’re dealing with,” asked Fluttershy.

“I hope so. But it could be years before he realizes that what he’s doing will provide no lasting happiness.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Accord and Fluttershy walked into the hospital room. The herd of ponies inside were whispering excitedly, almost ignoring the pink pony now in a stable condition.

Spike was in the middle of writing a letter to Princess Celestia as dictated by Twilight. The quill skirting and sliding across the page with penmanship only obtained through a lifetime of careful practice, the calligraphy a true work of art in the claws of a master.

“Oh, hello Fluttershy,” said Twilight, breaking her dictation, Spike’s claws continuing their penmanship parade.

“There’s a few things we should discuss,” said Fluttershy, edging her way through the crowd and trying to gather together Rarity, Rainbow Dash and Applejack.

“I’ll say,” said Rainbow Dash flapping close and landing next them. “What was with that yellow light earlier?”

“It was probably Celestia casting some kind of spell,” said Twilight. “She’ll write us back soon with the details.”

“Actually,” said Accord, “It would be best if we met with Celestia and Luna directly, a lot has happened and I would like you all there for it.”

“There for what?” asked Rarity, her dyed mane staying quaffed, a militia of hair spray keeping it in line.

“We’re going to take a short trip to Canterlot, if that’s alright with everypony,” said Fluttershy.

“Now hold on there, ‘Shy,” Applejack said, “I don’t think a little stray spell runnin’ through here is any cause to head all the way to Canterlot. My old bones just ain’t up for those kinda trips like they’re used to.”

Spike’s quill had finished flourishing, his claws starting to wrap the scroll up. He took in a deep breath, and at that moment, Fluttershy’s invisible horn became visible and cast a spell.

Accord felt like his body had been squeezed and pressed flat before being burned, the new sensation left him blind before he was suddenly in a room with familiar carpeting.

Accord brushed himself off, staring up at the royal sisters and smiling, “Salutations Celestia.”

Disoriented, the rest of the ponies looked around at the throne room.

“What in the hay just happened?” said Applejack

Accord turned to Fluttershy, “Did you transfigure us into paper and have Spike send us through dragon fire?”

“It seemed like a fast way to do it,” said Fluttershy.

“Nice spellwork,” said Accord, impressed.

“Wait... we were paper?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“I know you’ve been getting better at magic,” said Twilight to Fluttershy, “But I’ve never seen that spell used that way.”

“Why do you have a horn, Fluttershy?” asked Rarity.

“Nevermind about me!” said Fluttershy as her horn disappeared. “A much more important spell was cast today!”

“And we love it!” said Celestia, bubbly with excitement that could rival Pinkie’s, an odd site to her usual austere attitude.

“We are most pleased,” said Luna, a smile across her muzzle.

Twilight gave Accord a confused look.

Accord cleared his throat, “Twilight, Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow,” he began. “You and every creature on this planet are now as immortal as Celestia is.”

The ponies stared at him, dumbfounded.

“Darling, could you repeat that?” asked Rarity.

“Everypony is now immortal, no one on this planet will ever die again,” said Fluttershy.

“Wait, wait just a minute here,” said Rainbow Dash zooming to Accord and hovering in front of him, folding her forelegs and staring at him. “I’m immortal? I’m gonna be stuck as an old mare for forever?”

“I worked those kinks out already, you and everyone else older than their ideal selves will be growing younger over the course of the next year or so,” said Accord.

“You made everypony immortal?” asked Rarity. “Absolutely everypony?”

“It was the best method for maximizing happiness,” said Accord. “Keeping Twilight and her friends seemed wrong because that left out their families. And allowing friends of friends to die seems like an awful idea. So the best configuration would be a blanket immortality across the entire planet.”

“Who asked for this, Accord?” asked Twilight, distrust crossing her face.

“I did,” said Accord.

“And everypony else, Celestia, Luna, Fluttershy—you wanted this too?” asked Twilight.

Celestia nodded enthusiastically as Luna spoke up, “It took some convincing, but we like the plan.”

“And what plan is that?” asked Twilight.

“We have a limited use trial run of ten million years—the lifespans for Celestia and Luna—to try out immortality for a time,” said Accord. “And if it goes well we have the possibility to continue after that.”

“And what would be after that?” asked Twilight.

“Twilight, I don’t know. I don't even know what is going to happen tomorrow with the unlimited time we have. But we have been given a great gift to continue as long as we want. Ideally, things can continue as they are, with ourselves progressing as we see fit.”

“Will I be able to do a Sonic Rainboom again?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Of course, give yourself a few months to reverse your aging, you should be at your top flying ability soon enough,” said Accord.

“What about overpopulation?” asked Twilight. “With nopony dying, the planet will be overrun.”

“We could always make another one if we need to expand,” said Fluttershy.

“I’ve checked, our whole galaxy is empty,” Accord smiled, bringing out an easel and showing various empty, desolate, but otherwise hospitable planets across the galaxy. The calculations scribbled at the bottom estimated their future population after ten million years to be one hundred fifty trillion souls across the four hundred billion stars in their galaxy. “There’s plenty of room for anything we could ever need.”

“I guess you have thought this through,” said Twilight, squinting at all the numbers at the bottom. Her ponderings interrupted by a loud wham above her as some light blue feathers fell.

“Ow!” grunted Rainbow Dash. “How come crashing still hurts?”

“You’re as immortal as I am Rainbow,” said Celestia. “I still feel pain when I do something like fly straight into a brick wall.”

“Why haven’t you gotten rid of pain yet, Accord?” asked Rainbow Dash, massaging a bump on her head.

“I want life to stay the same as much as possible for now, I still need to pay a visit with everyone on the planet and see how they are adjusting before I do something like getting rid of ‘pain’ altogether.”

“Visiting ponies?” asked Rainbow, laughing. “What are you gonna do, grant wishes?”

“If need be...” said Accord, eyes squinting.

“Then I wish it didn’t hurt when I crash,” asked Rainbow, her eyes closed in confidence.

Everypony stared at Rainbow and then back to Accord, “I can think of a lot of reasons why you shouldn’t wish that. But you’re allowed to make decisions I think are unwise.”

His horn glowed and Rainbow was enveloped in a gray aura, “Just tell me when you want it back, Rainbow. Just say my name and I’ll be there.”

“As if! This is perfect!” said Rainbow as she zoomed around the throne room as fast as she could.

“So... we have ten million years?” asked Rarity. “What are we supposed to do with ten million years?”

“Anything you want,” said Accord. “Though you are limited by your imagination and how hard you work to achieve something.”

Twilight’s lips quivered, but didn’t say anything.

“Well... yes... it does look like we have a lot of decisions to make. Ten million years is quite a while, but for now,” Celestia paused, “Do you know what this calls for!?”

The room stayed silent, the answer to that sentence couldn’t be said by anypony in that room.

“A party!” yelled Cosmos, suddenly appearing in the throne room, exuberantly throwing confetti that looked like stars. “Where’s Pinkie Pie when you need her? She’s just the mare for the job.”

Twilight, Rarity, Rainbow, and Applejack stared in shock at the midnight stallion, soft stars dotting his entire body, his ecstatic grin impossible not to stare at.

“Was that really the first impression you intended to give, Cosmos?” asked Galaxia, her regal form descending from above, her large nebulous wings landing her gracefully in front of them, all the beauty and awe of a swirling galaxy in equine form.

“I thought it was as good as anything I could come up with,” whispered Cosmos to Galaxia before turning back and facing the small group. “Hello everypony! Congratulations on the whole immortality thing!”

Twilight’s jaw slacked before she let her awe turn into a low bow.

“Right... now I remember all the reasons why it’s best to stay hidden,” said Cosmos, eyeing the members of the elements of harmony now bowing.

“Twilight, Rainbow, Rarity, Applejack, allow me to introduce my parents, Queen Galaxia and King Cosmos,” said Celestia.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” said Galaxia.

“Bang up job on saving Luna, reforming Discord, and your whole lives in general,” said Cosmos to the dumbfounded group. “Unfortunately we’ll never revel in your well spent lives, as it looks like we’ll never have a funeral to celebrate them.”

“I don’t like funerals,” said Accord.

“How about deathday parties? Where we celebrate your life up until that point and share our appreciation that it wasn’t the day you actually died?” said Cosmos.

“Okay, we really need Pinkie for this,” said Fluttershy. “Obviously none of us has any idea how to throw a good party.”

“Hey, don’t dismiss my abilities, I taught Pinkie everything she knows,” said Cosmos, surprised to see that Fluttershy had disappeared, only the stained glass behind her.

“What kind of party are we talking about?” asked Galaxia.

“I was thinking of inviting the entire world,” said Accord, placing a hoof to his muzzle in contemplation.

“Sounds like a logistics nightmare,” said Luna, who was interrupted as a shower of balloons and streamers erupted behind her.

“EVERYPONY’S HERE!!!” shouted Pinkie Pie, smiling brightly, her pale frizzy mane already looking pinker, the color back in her.

“Darling, you were on a deathbed ten minutes ago, what are you doing here?” asked Rarity.

“I umm... just cured her,” said Fluttershy, embarrassed and putting a hoof on her horn and pushing it back into her head.

“What about everypony else in that room? You can’t just teleport somepony on their deathbed somewhere. It’s rude,” said Rarity.

“It’s okay!” said Pinkie Pie. “Fluttershy just came up to me and was all ‘wanna not be sick anymore?’ and I was all ‘DUH!’ and so she was like ‘okay,’ and now I’m like, ‘YEAH!’ And now I’m thinking, ‘We should have a party to celebrate!’”

“My thoughts exactly!” said Cosmos, reaching over and picking Pinkie up and putting her on his shoulders.

“Wheee!” yelled Pinkie Pie. “I don’t know who this is, but I like him!”

“The name’s Cosmos, and we have a party to plan!”

“Excellent,” said Accord, nodding in appreciation. “Fluttershy and I will go personally invite everyone.”

“Everyone?” asked Twilight.

Everyone

Fluttershy knocked on the door to the mortuary, hesitating in the morning sunshine. She waited for several moments, recasting her soul checking spell to ensure that the stallion was inside.

She nearly jumped in shock when a well dressed, serious stallion opened the door, his cutie mark a lily with a calm face.

“Hello,” said the stallion, his voice like cold ice that refused to melt under any circumstance because melting would be considered impolite.

“Hello,” squeaked Fluttershy, her teeth clicking as if she was cold. This was an upstanding stallion, quiet, good at his job, kind at his core. She took a small breath before unfurling her wing and holding out a book to him.

He took a sideways glance at the bright, golden book, the color reflecting to the ceiling. “There are no services planned soon,” he said, his voice straight.

“I know,” said Fluttershy. “I wanted to talk with you about that.”

He blinked. “Do you have a service you would like planned?”

“No, not anything like that,” Fluttershy blushed. “I wanted to discuss with you some changes happening to your job.”

The mortician’s eyes narrowed, “Are you with the Equestrian government?”

“Not exactly,” said Fluttershy, her hair almost covering one side of her face. “May I sit down and discuss a few things with you? I’m willing to pay your consultation fee.”

The stallion peered at her before letting her inside, leading her past the various flowers in vases in the foyer and to a small office. Several family portraits lined the inside, along with plenty of cabinets full of records.

He sat down in a large chair and gestured for her to sit on a long mahogany bench.

“Autumn Evening, how might I be of assistance?” he asked.

“The name’s Fluttershy, and I am actually here to assist you. There was a spell cast recently that will have rather massive repercussions to your current method of employment.”

The straight-faced stallion gave a small chuckle at that, “There’s not really much you can change about death. That’s the saying, ‘death and taxes,’ isn’t it?”

She peered down to the right looking at nothing in particular, avoiding his gaze.

“I can’t believe it. Celestia and Luna are doing away with taxes?” said the stallion, his icy tone warming up at the idea

“Oh no, that would never happen,” said Fluttershy. “We’re actually doing away with death.”

Autumn Evening stared at her, a twinge of a smile almost about to crack his lips before he started chuckling awkwardly. After a few seconds he noticed how she was still avoiding his gaze.

“You can’t be serious,” he said, his tone reverting back to business.

“The immortality spell was cast yesterday,” said Fluttershy. “So I am afraid you are going to be out of a job, and possibly a cutie mark for a while.”

He bristled in shock, “My cutie mark!? You would rob me of my mark? What kind of sick joke is this?”

“It’s not a joke,” said Fluttershy. “We’re trying something different for Equestria, making everyone immortal. And I would like to help you in this transition process by helping you find something else you love doing.”

The stallion’s face scrunched into a puzzled expression, the idea not making sense in his mind.

“You have done such a good job for so many ponies, Autumn Evening. This is the end of something that I know you hold dear. I know how long it took you to get your cutie mark, I know how sad it was for you to bury your pet dog when it was his time, and how nice it felt to get your mark in the end. I know how much appreciation and satisfaction every aspect of your destiny gave you. But we won’t really need those skills anymore.”

“You’re lying,” said the stallion.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” said Fluttershy, avoiding his gaze. “In the meantime, I have a book for you to read.”

She brought back the golden book and laid it on the table, pushing it closer to him with a hoof, “This book is a pretty comprehensive story of your life. Parts of it look like it could be lifted from your personal journal, had you written one. It even has a rather detailed explanation of some possible new cutie marks and destinies you could have if you chose to change.”

He reached out and grabbed the book, flipping through the pages quickly, reading a few stray lines. “How did you get this book!?” he asked, his voice like sharp icicles.

“That’s all in there as well. Equestria isn’t exactly under new management, but it does have a lot more ponies involved in the well being and eternal experiment it is now experiencing.”

He stared at her, dumbfounded.

“There’s also a party this Saturday, and I hope you’ll come,” added Fluttershy, placing a pink envelope on the desk.

He tilted his head, peering down at the gaudy pink invitation, his eyes drawn to one facet that made him wonder out loud.

“The whole planet is invited?”

“Yup!” said Fluttershy. “It’s gonna be fun. And we’ll have something for everypony there.”

He opened his mouth, attempting to utter a protest, but nothing came out.

“We’ll be here to help if you need anything,” said Fluttershy. “Instructions on how to contact us are in the book.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Accord trotted up to the steps of the palace, bidding the guards a good morning as they let him inside. He passed the beautiful entryway, glancing at the intricate crystal with its fractal patterns as he made his way up the stairs and to Twilight’s personal study.

He knocked eight times, moving his hooves in just the right way to make the door jingle the tune of “Winter Wrap Up.” The last note echoed for a few moments before the sound stopped as the door was enveloped in a magenta glow.

“Hello Twilight,” smiled Accord. “How are you on this fine morning?”

The old mare stared at him, the bags under her eyes drooping far more than usual. She gave him a frightened stare.

“Twilight, are you okay?” he asked. “Did you sleep well enough last night?”

Her eyes drifted to the ground. “No,” she whispered.

Accord tried to grab her hoof, “Let’s sit down and talk this out, you must be worried about everything happening.”

She didn’t take his hoof, walking slowly to her balcony and gazing out at Ponyville. “What’s the endgame, Accord?”

He followed her, the view made it easy to see the hustle and bustle of Ponyville, the activity of the city waking up like a flower blossoming open to share her petals. “There is no endgame, Twilight, for there is neither an end nor is this a game.”

“There is no end to infinity,” she sighed, her eyes half closed.

Accord felt himself grow uneasy, the sentence too familiar.

“I can’t understand how long that is,” said Twilight, the bags under her eyes weighing nothing in comparison to how heavy her thoughts were.

“It is simply ‘now’ Twilight, there’s no need to try to understand where things might end. Eschatology is not a field of study I recommend for anypony.”

“But what about you?” she said, her old bones creaking as she turned her head to face him. “Are you supposed to be the example of what happens when you have to count your age in exponents?”

He said nothing as she stared down at the crystal floor, avoiding his gaze, “Will I someday grow so bored that I will finish a library like yours?”

“Is that what you are afraid of?” asked Accord, several self help books he had read in the library springing to mind.

“I’m afraid of that library,” she said, head hanging, her graying mane falling limp next to her shoulders. “I’m afraid I will run out of things to learn to the point that I will willingly visit your library for new ideas. I’m afraid of living so long that the time I preciously kept will be worthless, that I will squander millions of years on frivolous pursuits that in the end never mattered anyway. I’m afraid of infinity itself,” she lifted her head and her ancient amethyst eyes made contact with his, malice appearing. “I’m afraid of becoming something like you.”

All of the books Accord had thought to share stopped glowing, every single one not helpful. “Am... am I really that scary?”

“Of course you are!” Twilight nearly shouted. “You have too much power! You make decisions that I don’t understand to fulfill selfish goals! You make compromises that affect everyone on this planet! Did you even ask them first?”

“I—” said Accord, eyes drooping. “I asked Pinkie Pie.”

“Just her?”

“And a few others that are in charge of this planet,” said Accord.

“But not the innocent bystanders caught up in this?” asked Twilight, a violet flame in her eyes.

“They can... choose to die, if they want to,” said Accord, shoulders sagging at the very thought. “I would do everything in my power to convince them otherwise, but in the end I wouldn’t stop them.”

“In the end? Coming from somepony who doesn’t believe in endings?” she huffed. “How long would you prolong their decision?”

“I... I don’t know,” said Accord, his eyes shifting. “Not that long.”

“I want a number, Accord. How long?” her eyes sharpened, a flame within her erupting. “A year? Ten years? One hundred million years!?”

Accord squirmed, the question causing sharp knives to jab at his soul, “I... I don’t want to make this decision alone, and I don’t want it to be a hard and fast rule.”

“So you can torture them until they agree to be immortal? So you can alter parts of them and experiment on them until they want to live?”

His insides squirmed as he realized there was truth to her words. Hope had been doing just that for forever, and now Accord was a part of the experiment, another entry in Hope’s data set.

“No! No, please that isn’t what I want. I just want everyone to be happy!” said Accord, exasperated. “If their souls are immortal anyway, if it’s truly impossible to cease to exist, then living forever is the state they are already in!”

Twilight looked back at Accord, her mane unkempt, her old, wrinkled, mouth unmoving.

“What’s this about Twilight?” asked Accord. “You love your friends, you love life, is it so wrong for it to continue?”

She turned away from him, the words slowly escaping from the old mare. “I... I expected to die someday, Accord. Do you have any idea how relieved I felt when Celestia told me I would die, just like everypony else?”

Accord thought of saying something, but let the thoughts pass, giving Twilight time to continue.

“Life is hard, it is really, truly hard. I don’t know how I have been able to last this long, keeping up with all my duties and responsibilities, but I can’t possibly see myself being able to sustain all this forever.”

Accord’s mouth quivered, “What do you want, Twilight?”

“I don’t know what I want,” she sighed, a frown appearing on her face. “I just don’t want to end up like you.”

Accord almost smiled, “You don’t need to worry about that Twilight. You are you, and nothing will ever change that.”

“But that’s just it! I can’t handle being me for too much longer. I expected to die of old age in the next few years. I wouldn’t say I’ve been looking forward to it, but there’s something comforting about how everything has a distinct beginning and an end.”

“What did you expect to have happen after the end?” asked Accord.

“I don’t know, nothing!” she scrunched up her face. “Some kind of wonderful indescribable paradise?”

“Oh, you want some kind of heaven?” Accord asked. “As long as we’re allowed to visit every so often, I can set you up with whatever it is you were expecting.”

He brought out a notepad and a quill, ready to write, “What would you like in your heaven?”

She stared at him, the flames in her eyes sparking again. “What are you going to do, make a list?”

“If that would make you happy, then yes,” said Accord.

She stayed silent for a moment, pondering the idea. “No, I have no idea what’s in heaven. Supreme happiness in paradise is indescribable. You’re a creature of only words, Accord. You will never find a description of heaven that would adequately convey how good it’s supposed to be.”

Accord stared at the empty pad of paper in front of him, “You’re not giving me much to go on, Twilight. What do you want?”

“Nothing,” said Twilight. “I don’t want anything.”

“But you are upset for a lot different reasons, there has to be something I can help with.”

“No, there isn’t,” said Twilight. “You’ve caused enough damage already by making everypony immortal.”

Several books of advice pelted his head, none of them seeming like good things to say at the moment. He picked one anyway. “Twilight, I’ve found that when I focus on myself for too long, I end up in dark places. But when I instead focus on helping those around me, I find I can help them, even though I can’t seem to help myself.

“It’s another reason why I want to become friends with more ponies. Immortality by myself was awful, but when I stopped thinking about myself and focused on others and how they were feeling, I ended up making myself feel better in the process.”

“Accord?” she asked.

“Yes, Twilight?”

“Please leave.”

He frowned, but obeyed, letting his eyes close and teleporting immediately out of the room. A book with an amethyst cover and a pink party invitation appeared on Twilight’s desk.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Galaxia stared at the book, gazing at the emerald cover, opening it and casting a spell to read it as fast as possible, standing at the doorway to the apartment.

The exquisite detail it captured to every facet of Slipstream’s life was almost dull in comparison to how wonderful the book’s true owner was, the words unable to do the hippogriff justice.

She knocked on the door to his apartment, knowing he would be home, the letters above the doorway crooked and fading.

There was a sound of scuffling from inside as the door turned and a middle aged, tired looking hippogriff answered, his beak streaked with blue, fatigued, droll eyes taking in the sight of the regal alicorn.

Her entire train left the hallway with a bright, warm glow, a spectacle meant only for him as she was keeping invisible to only one soul at a time.

He yawned and shut the door. “Friggin’ salesponies,” she heard him mutter.

Queen Galaxia, unaccustomed to being ignored except when she willed it, stared at the door in shock. Her love and appreciation for the hippogriff almost evaporated by the rude gesture.

She knocked more forcefully onto the door.

“Not interested,” said Slipstream through the door.

“You’re immortal now!” said Galaxia through the door. “I thought you might like to have a long conversation about that.”

Silence, with a hint of curiosity, seeped from the door

“Nope.”

“Please! Life’s been hard to you Slipstream. I don’t want to imagine you spending one more year like you have, much less another million years.”

The sturdy, weathered door opened by a crack.

“How do you know so much about me?”

“I know everything about everybody,” said Galaxia.

“Celestia?” asked the hippogriff, only then stopping to consider who he had been talking to.

“No, her mother,” said Galaxia.

The hippogriff opened the door wider, the majesty of the alicorn reflecting in his wide eyes. He could only stand there, dumbfounded.

“Would you like some food, Slipstream?” asked Galaxia, bringing out a small sack of various vegetables, many of them unrecognizable.

He stood there thinking about what to do with some kind of space pony princess outside his door before deciding that nothing was always the preferred option. He started to close the door.

“At least let me tell you a few things,” said Galaxia, holding the door open. “Everyone is immortal, and that includes animals so for the griffons who are still carnivorous, we’re growing substitute plants for any meat you may need. And here’s a book you practically wrote, and there’s a party on Saturday and we’d love it if you’d come.”

She threw in the sack of food, the book and the invitation before he closed the door, the sound of it giving a slight echo in the hallway.

She stared at it, saddened that she couldn’t have helped more, reevaluating her decision to have a more hooves on approach to souls. She seemed to do an excellent job on a macro scale, making entire planets come to life, but individuals brought on complications and difficulties. Was it even worth it?

She pulled out the next book, looking at Slipstream’s next door neighbor, using the book to review the life that lived there.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Accord teleported to outside of Sweet Apple Acres, the hard road softened to the soil of the orchard as he stepped off of the path and looked for Applejack. He knew where to find her.

He spotted her as she put a full basket of apples onto a cart, grabbing in her teeth the next set of baskets to fill with apples.

He trotted over to her, and gave a friendly wave, “Hey Applejack!”

She gave him a quick glance and continued back to her chores.

“We didn’t get a chance to talk after I told everyone. How are you doing?”

“Just fine,” said Applejack, kicking a tree and causing some apples to land in her baskets, still able to buck apples despite her age.

“I just thought I’d stop by and ask if you are okay with the immortality spell. Do you have any questions, or requests?”

The mare continued working in silence, placing a basket underneath a tree, the sunlight glinting through the leaves adding a green light to her grayed orange coat.

“Is there anything I can do to help you get used to all of this?”

The mare gave a swift kick to the apple tree. A torrent of apples rained down precisely into the baskets.

“You’ve already mastered apple related earth pony magic. Would you like a new cutiemark? You are going to be alive for a while. You may reach that eventuality at some point,” Accord said, standing back as Applejack lifted another basket of apples into the cart.

Accord stayed silent for several moments, watching Applejack work, her rhythm orchestrating a steadfast melody. He looked at a tall stack of still empty baskets and picked a few up in his mouth. He laid a few baskets underneath the apple trees she would go for next, picking the right spots for where the apples would most likely fall down. They worked together in silence, Accord putting more apple baskets beneath the trees and Applejack kicking more apples inside, her earth pony magic ensured each apple would always land in a basket.

A half hour later, Applejack spoke up. “What do you want, Accord?”

He tried to say something, but the handle of the basket in his mouth prevented him. He looked sheepish as he sprouted a horn and held the basket aloft in his magic. “I want to make sure that you are happy. I made a big decision for all of Equestria that’s bound to upset ponies. I want to make sure that you are okay with the arrangement.”

“And if I ain’t?” Applejack asked, her question punctuated with a swift blow to the nearest apple tree, which surrendered its fruit to gravity.

“Then I will do everything I can to help you or change your mind.”

“Why?”

“I like every creature on this planet, Applejack. I would grieve a thousand years and beyond if I lost a single one.”

“And what does it mean for a pony to be ‘lost?’”

“There are two great choices, Applejack, continue or start over, immortality or reincarnation. I would prefer if everyone would always choose to continue. I can continue those friendships, I can continue to see them, I can continue to care about them and I would never have to say goodbye.”

“Sounds like a good thing to do, Accord. Good luck with that,” the mare said, picking up the last basket in her mouth and putting it on the cart.

“You—you don’t need anything?” asked Accord. The questioned lingered in the air as Applejack harnessed herself to the cart.

“The way you’re acting, Accord, you seem to think that I want somethin’. Spit it out, what do you think I want?”

Accord went silent for a moment, Applejack stopping her preparations and staring at him.

“You have the capability of requesting a wish I cannot grant. You have a good desire in you and I have spent a long time thinking over and trying to find a good solution to this problem, but not even my library has a satisfactory answer for your situation.”

“What could I possibly ask for that you can’t do?” Applejack asked.

“Your parents, Applejack. I can’t think of a way to get them back.”

“They’re dead. I came to terms with that a long time ago.”

“Not exactly, their souls are immortal, but those souls are currently incarnated into new families. I’m locking the reincarnation process for this world and that means that your parent’s souls are going to continue in their current states, never able to fulfill that role for you ever again.”

Applejack pulled her hat down, obscuring her eyes from Accord’s gaze.

“I'm sorry I can’t get them back, Applejack. But rest assured, starting from you and your husband, your family will continue from this point on, forever. And so will your friends. You never have to say goodbye to anypony else. I hope that’s a good enough state that you will be happy.”

The rustling leaves left holes of sunlight poking through to the grass below.

“Why did you tell me that?” Applejack asked.

“I want you to know my limits, Applejack. There are a few ponies I can resurrect. I’m going to be giving widowers back their wives, widows back their husbands, and most orphans back their parents. I want you to know that I would love to resurrect your parents too... but that it’s just not possible. I wouldn’t rob a griffon family of their father, or a dragon clan of their matriarch. I’ve reviewed the scales and the amount of happiness and grief over the situation and I’ve decided that who is currently alive is of greater importance than reviving the dead.

“I’m sorry,” Accord leaned his head down. “Guilt is the greatest enemy to immortality, Applejack, and I fear I will feel it if I am unable to provide you with your own personal happiest continue. I hope that you will forgive me.”

Applejack pushed up her hat a tiny bit higher, giving Accord a view into the old mare’s watery eyes. “My pa is a griffon?”

“He doesn’t remember being your father, but he’s a fine griffon with a family as big as the one you’ve created. He’s still as hard-working as every memory you have of him is.”

“And ma is a dragon?”

“One of the best, despite her young age, she is a great leader in her clan, always supporting every dragon in her homeland.”

She pulled the hat over eyes again, a small tear escaping from beneath.

“It wouldn’t be honest to take them away from their current lives for me,” Applejack said.

“Is there anything I can do for you? Your imagination is the limit.”

She stayed silent for a while, the only sound the rustling of leaves in the wind. “Time. Just time.”

Accord let a small smile slip from his lips. “Time, Applejack? I’ll give you forever.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Fluttershy felt relieved by the large appearance of the sewing shop in front of her, the main branch and first ever franchise of “Carousel Boutique.” It was almost unrecognizable compared to the tiny store it used to be. She walked inside past the glass doors, a chime from the bell in the front alerting everypony of her arrival.

The receptionist at the front bid her welcome as Fluttershy sat down on one of the chairs.

She pulled an old magazine in front of her in her magic and floated it up in front of her eyes to start reading it. She was distracted, however, by the look of shock from the earth pony receptionist at the display of magic.

She put out her forelegs in front of herself and dropped the magazine into her hooves, and hid her horn. It felt somehow odd to feel the crisp, glossy pages. The text jumped out at her in odd ranges, the font sizes changing seemingly on every page. The sheer amount of fonts and typefaces were heavenly compared to the uniformity of the books in the library. The pictures and beautiful photographs were pristine and exciting to look at. It was ordinary beauty but Fluttershy couldn’t help but feel appreciative for every tiny detail in the magazine. She remembered the process that it took to make this, remembering the various choices that Sans Serif had decided, the photographs that Simple Shutter had taken, the editorials by Rose Star, every single pony that had had a hoof in producing the tiny magazine before her, a testament to their work and character.

“Darling, that gardening magazine is eight months old, and you’re looking at it like you are about to eat it,” said Rarity, appearing in front of her.

Fluttershy put the magazine down and stared at her, “Oh... I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize dear,” said Rarity sitting down next to her.

“Oh, sorry,” said Fluttershy, realizing what she had just done and scrunching her face.

“How are you feeling?” asked Rarity.

“Like I need a spa day,” said Fluttershy, looking at the textured floor, remembering the zebra that had stitched it, Zerum was her name. One of her foals had left home the day she stitched that particular square pattern.

Rarity shot a look to her receptionist, “Can you have Silver Shoal cover my one o’clock?”

“He’s still trying to finish that suit in time for the three fifteen.”

“Oh, hmm...” Rarity put a hoof to her muzzle, “And Summer Holly is still working on that piece for the winter collection that has to be done by tomorrow...”

Fluttershy put a hoof up to her, “It’s okay Rarity, we’ll just use the Library.”

Rarity looked at her confused, but followed her to a back storeroom of Carousel Boutique. As soon as Fluttershy closed the door, she opened it again, leading Rarity out into the main foyer.

“By the way, are you okay with the immortality spell? No lasting fears or immediate philosophical inquiries keeping you up at night?” asked Fluttershy.

“Well, I’m not sure where this is going exactly, but it’s a fabulous idea and I’ll see where it takes us,” said Rarity.

“Good! Glad you like it!” said Fluttershy, relief on her face.

Rarity turned to the reception desk they were walking past. “Huh? Where’s Carob?” asked Rarity, realizing that her seat was empty.

“We’re in the library version of Equestria now,” said Fluttershy walking back toward the front foyer’s luxurious couches and sitting back down, eyeing a copy of the magazine she had put down a few moments before.

“Library version?” asked Rarity.

“That’s mostly what I feel like talking about, all of this time manipulation has gotten to me and Accord's head.”

Rarity looked at her, puzzled, but sat down on the couch next to her.

“Darling, what are you talking about?” asked Rarity, her tone shaking a little.

“We need to invite everypony to this party, and preferably talk with them... and make sure they got the news that their immortal now... resurrect anypony they need so they don’t have any desire to pass on, y’know that sort of thing.”

Rarity avoided her desire to say: No, I don’t know that sort of thing, and simply nodded her head in agreement.

“But this is kind of time consuming, we spend a lot of time focusing on everyone, and I may spend a few minutes on each soul, but Accord will spend days in his library agonizing over which book to give them. He’s trying to judge ‘which variation and word choice in each book would best help them right now.’ He’s been down there for months, and I’ve been gone for weeks helping him. But if it wasn’t for me, I think he’d spend millions of years trying to pick just the right book for each pony.”

“You’re giving books to ponies?” asked Rarity.

“Yeah, they’re really neat actually. Hold on, let me get yours,” Fluttershy reached a hoof out in mid-air and reached for something that wasn’t there. “Oh it looks like Accord hasn’t chosen one for you. Give me a moment.”

“Accord, do you have Rarity’s book picked out yet?” asked Fluttershy to no one in particular.

To Rarity’s amazement, Accord appeared moments later holding twenty royal purple books in a haze of gray magic.

“I’m still in the middle of that right now,” said Accord, letting several of the books land on the coffee table above the magazines and leaving one to stay in the air as he continued to flip through pages in it.

“These books are all about me?” asked Rarity, curiosity itching her voice.

“Yeah, I’m just trying to pick the one that most represents you and will help you the most, but picking the most optimal one is always tricky,” said Accord.

“Accord, how long have you spent on just Rarity’s book alone?” asked Fluttershy.

He looked at ground, a sheepish expression crossing his muzzle, “a couple of days...”

“See, and this is the problem, Rarity, he’s immortal and so he doesn’t treat his time as valuable as he should. Spending this much time alone isn’t good for you, Accord,” said Fluttershy.

“But this is important! These books are my great explanation, a miracle of chaos that a book could so exquisitely represent one’s life in such a majestic way. Forgive me if I have trouble picking out one that fully exemplifies the brilliant souls that happen to inhabit Equestria.”

“But for this long? I don’t want you to get lonely or anything,” said Fluttershy.

He set the book down before picking up another one. “I’m not lonely, I’m envisioning myself with the pony in question, imagining the right book that would help them in just the right way. Besides, it’s not like I’m writing the things, I’m picking out books that just so happen to exist.”

Rarity grabbed a book in front of her at random, reading an entry to some diary from an alternate universe, her face turning red.

“Wha- what? How are you? How do you know these books are mine!?” asked Rarity, embarrassed.

Accord and Fluttershy looked at each other, both of them scrunching their muzzles.

“You tell her,” said Accord.

“No, it was your idea,” said Fluttershy.

“No, it was Cosmos’s, and I asked you if it felt like the right thing to do,” said Accord.

“That doesn’t mean I have to be the one to break that particular news.”

“But, she’s your best friend, you can tell her.”

“That makes the whole thing that much worse,” said Fluttershy.

“Whatever it was, it’s done, and there’s no getting around it.”

Rarity followed their conversation like a badminton match, the volleys and conversation dancing around a subject that the participants clearly had mixed feelings on.

“No,” said Accord. “The book can tell her! That’ll work! When she reads the book she’ll get all the details, and we won’t have to tell her directly.”

Rarity coughed, “I’m sitting right here.”

“Oh... right,” said Accord staring at her.

“Oh, fine, I’ll tell her,” said Fluttershy, turning toward Rarity. “We cast a spell so that we have everypony’s memories.”

Rarity sat on the couch, her lips starting to purse; one of her eyebrows started a slow march higher, nearly touching her horn.

“You look like you need some tea,” said Accord, the books and magazines on the table parting and a teapot and cups appearing before them. Rarity’s favorite brew appeared with two cubes of sugar already in the teacup closest to her.

She stared at the tea, and then back to the books, and then back to Accord and Fluttershy.

“Well that’s...” she floated the teacup to her, sipping on it a little, tasting the familiar almond cream brew, “interesting.”

“Oh good, glad we got that out of the way,” said Fluttershy. “So, you see that reviewing all these memories we have is kind of time consuming and well... so is meeting everyone, and everything. It’s a little exhausting.”

“I see,” said Rarity, sipping her tea, even though she didn’t really feel like she could “see” anything.

“But,” started Accord, “While this beginning process is time consuming, it will be worth it if there’s a possible infinite amount of time we could have with each of them.”

Rarity nodded her head, almost ready to get back to Carousel Boutique, except she was already in Carousel Boutique.

“That sounds...” she continued to nod her head slowly, “like you have a lot of work cut out for you.”

“Exactly!” said Accord. “Thanks Rarity, you’ll have your book soon.”

He vanished, all of the deep purple books also disappearing, leaving a mess of magazines and the spot of tea behind.

“So... yes, that’s what I’ve been doing for the last few weeks,” said Fluttershy, picking up the tea closest to her with her hooves. “Or yesterday, from your perspective.”

Rarity took a few more sips of tea, sitting in silence for several moments while Fluttershy sipped hers.

“I have so many questions,” Rarity said. “But I’m not entirely sure I want any answers.”

“You probably don’t,” said Fluttershy.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Accord stood over the grave, holding the orange soul in his magic, analyzing how to go about the process.

The minotaur had been embalmed and buried quite efficiently, he wouldn’t need to start from scratch unlike working with those that had been cremated. It was a simple matter of making everything start working again.

He cast an initial healing spell on the minotaur, fixing arteries, mending capillaries. He cast another spell on the marrow in the bones, forcing them to come alive and manufacture an entire new supply of blood, instructing all of the blood cells in their proper duties.

He looked at the memory cover, matching memory for memory every single part of the minotaur’s brain, making every single neuron that was still there fire, filling in every gap and any missing information.

He had to do a complete reconstruction on the lungs, the cells forming and multiplying and intertwining into a mesh that would support the air. He cast more spells on other organs, forcing each of them to start functioning again.

He looked at the orange soul in front of him, flashes of red and blue appearing beneath the surface, smiling as he placed it beneath the ground and in between the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

He started making the heart start beating again, causing the blood to pump in the reconstructed veins and arteries, the lungs starting to accept air, muscles accepting the fresh blood and oxygen happily, the abdominal muscles and biceps starting to return to their strength during life.

He made several more sweeps working on the insides, ensuring it was all working again. When everything was in order, with all the care and precision that Rarity would have given the occasion, he worked on the minotaur’s skin and fur, the abdominal muscles and biceps getting extra strength, every single cut, bruise, and scar smoothed over and healed as if they had never been there.

In the middle of the fourth pass through, the minotaur opened his eyes, staring at the black darkness of the coffin.

With a smile, Accord momentarily gave the minotaur the strength of thousands.

Like a bomb exploding underground, the minotaur punched through the coffin and a meter and half of hard earth, the pebbles and the stones showering the graveyard, several of the plots already empty.

“RAAAAAAWR!” roared the minotaur, his fist punching through to the warm surface, his hands coming out and ripping a hole in the earth, launching himself into the air. “FIND YOURSELF DEAD? BE ALIVE INSTEAD!”

“Welcome back, Iron Will,” Accord said calmly, smiling at his own handiwork.

Iron Will sneered at the gray alicorn, “And who are you?”

“My name’s Accord, I hope to become your friend, Iron Will.”

Iron Will stared back at him and then around the graveyard, letting his senses come back and sniffing at the air.

“Your wife missed you dearly this last decade, she couldn’t imagine the idea of immortality without you,” Accord said. “Let’s not keep her waiting.”

The minotaur smiled, “Iron Will would like that.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“Is that really the resurrection method you’ve been using the entire time?” Galaxia asked, watching Accord cast a slew of spells on a dead jenny, the donkey being recreated step by step with a well rehearsed rhythm.

“It’s worked well so far,” said Accord, continuing his spells, excited to give several young donkey foals their parents back.

“There’s much faster ways to go about bringing them back,” said Galaxia, staring at Accord, her magic wielding a mass of hydrogen.

Accord watched in fascination as the cloud of hydrogen touched the soul, reforming into oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorous and other elements as needed, using the DNA stored in the memory cover to completely replicate the jack in every single way, bringing him in the exact state he was before death.

Accord watched as the donkey almost opened his eyes before Galaxia kept the soul and body in stasis, the entire process taking less than three seconds.

Accord’s eyes went wide, “Can you teach me that spell?”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Silent Shiver stared at her story, her head tilted by the words, remembering the instructions at the beginning of the book.

“Accord?” she whispered to the air, not expecting anything.

“Yes?” asked Accord, appearing immediately next to the dark blue unicorn.

She nearly toppled out of her chair in surprise, placing hooves on her desk to balance herself, neatly stacked papers getting disheveled.

“Sorry about that,” said Accord. “Would you like me to knock next time?”

She nodded slowly.

He breathed in before teleporting outside of the room, knocking on the door three times.

She breathed in and out for a moment, readjusted her glasses and got out of her chair to answer the door.

“Hi Silent Shiver!” he began anew, a cheerful look on his muzzle. “How have you been?”

“Fine...” said the unicorn, standing askew in the doorway.

“I just had some questions about my book,” she said, her voice returning, making her way back to her chair. “It ends with a bunch of descriptions of possible new cutie marks and destinies that could fit me. Why?”

“I’ve gotten rid of sickness,” he placed a hoof on his muzzle. “You are a mare of great skill in healing and you have been exemplary in all aspects of fulfilling your destiny up to this point, however...”

“However?”

“Nopony is going to get sick anymore, all purposes for your anesthesia cutie mark have been completed.”

She readjusted her glasses, the meaning hitting her like a ton of bricks. “So... I don’t have a destiny anymore?” she asked.

“You have one,” Accord reassured her. “It’s just not represented on your flank like it used to be. You’ll have to seek out something else you love doing.”

“But, this is what I love doing...” said Silent Shiver.

Accord sat on the floor, “What would you like me to do for you?”

“You could make a few ponies sick so I could help them.” Even as she said the words, they felt hollow and she immediately regretted saying them aloud.

“I don’t think that’s a very good solution for the ponies who would end up being sick. I’m sure if I find a pony who wants to be I could send him or her your way though. But I can’t think of any at the top of my head.”

Her eyes drooped, “So what should I do?”

“Whatever you would like!” said Accord. “It’s a big planet with lots of things to do and experience. There are many suggestions in the book for new destinies that might fit you.”

“Would I get a new cutie mark?”

“If you would like one, yes. I’ve already changed my own once this week.”

“This week?” asked Silent Shiver.

Accord looked at the ray on his flank, “Destinies change, Silent, ponies change, it’s the only thing constant in this multiverse. As long as we’re always improving on what we were before, we can make our lives, and those around us better.”

She sat silent, returning to the book, her eyes flashing over the words.

“You sound like my book,” she said finally.

“I picked it out, sorry for the bias,” he rubbed a hoof against his mane. “It should mostly feel like you wrote it.”

“Mostly,” she said, continuing to read the book.

He lingered with her, waiting for a while longer for more questions, when she didn’t ask anymore he teleported silently away.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Logos said the name aloud, “Accord.”

A stallion alicorn appeared in front of him, flapping his wings next to Logos’s eyes. The gray magic illuminated the vast cavern filled with the immense hoard of books, statues, trinkets, and mountains of jewels that filled the entire subterranean complex.

“You will prove to me that you are not a tyrant, by erasing all memories you have of me,” said Logos, his old voice deep and rumbling.

Accord’s flaps slowed down, “What?” he asked.

“You have all the makings of a tyrant, Accord. The fact that you know me enough to have this book about me,” Logos said, the red book in front of him comfortably large in his claws, “while no one has seen me for over 1,200 years is quite a feat. And the fact that I’m now immortal is quite a gift. But I have no intention of ever leaving this cave. Now erase your memories of my existence.”

“Hold on a moment, Logos. That book is an invitation to recognize that you need other creatures in your life. You can’t do immortality on your own.”

“I have been doing so for twelve hundred years, and I will not stop anytime soon.”

“Do you intend to spend all ten million years here?” asked Accord. “Eternity is long time to spend by yourself.”

“I like being alone,” said Logos, his old voice emanating throughout the cavern.

“I did too,” said Accord, landing on the top of a mound of jewels near him. “We have a lot in common. We like to read the same books over and over again. We’ve spent a large proportion of our lives secluded. And we have a general distrust of everything, most of all ourselves. I would like nothing more than the honor of becoming your friend.”

“No,” said the dragon.

“You are one of the most interesting souls on this planet, Logos, you have experienced stories that have become lost to legend, cast draconic magic that hasn’t been seen in centuries, and you share opinions about others that I held onto for trillions of years, before I finally let a good friend show me otherwise.”

The dragon narrowed his eyes, “I’m never leaving this cave, Accord. And I don’t want anyone to know I exist.”

“What about me, Logos? Can’t I please be your friend? I’ve read all of these books you hold dear,” said Accord picking up an ancient green book.

“Ponies are not allowed to touch my things!” said Logos, anger in his eyes.

Accord put the book back, transforming into a dark gray dragon near him, continuing as if nothing had happened. “My favorite character in ‘The Phoenix Chronicles’ was definitely Commander Emerald, I found his speeches on the nature of what it means to be a dragon to be quite an eye opening experience.”

“You mock my favorite things!” growled Logos.

“No,” said Accord, flinching and trying to read the dragon’s desires. “That’s not what I wanted to do. I merely wanted to have a nice conversation about a mutual love for a favorite book, like friends.”

“I don’t want friends, and the longer you are here, the more angry I become,” seethed Logos. “Now leave, erase your memories that I exist, and never come back.”

Accord racked his mind searching for a way to be his friend, hovering in the air in concentration.

He spent months in the library searching for a solution.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

He woke up slowly, sprawled on an old familiar couch. He blinked his eyes, regaining consciousness and letting the familiar cottage setting comfort him. He shut his eyes tight for a moment before finally agreeing to open them again. He sat up, a paper on his chest fluttering to ground before his eyes wandered over to it.

Quick Census:

Total Souls in Equestria: 1,000,000,002

Souls currently living: 393,368,861

Souls died in the last fifty years still in storage: 90,384,876

Souls currently wandering Equestria: 516,222,822

Souls with access to a personalized Heaven: 23,423

Souls in “Hell”: 19

Souls which desired to be forgotten: 1

A chill ran down his spine as he read the new category.

He gulped, becoming distinctly aware in that moment that he had not remembered how exactly he had come to be on that couch with the census.

He stared at the paper and started to shake, his eyes starting to water as his breathing began to quicken. “F-Fluttershy?” he whispered to the air.

In an instant, she was at his side, sitting on the couch next to him.

He sat there, trembling, as Fluttershy brought herself closer, her hoof going over his shoulder, “What’s wrong?”

He stared at the paper in shock before responding, “I... I forgot something.”

She read the census over, looking at the new category and back into his gray eyes.

“I just died... a little,” he said, fear dripping in his voice. “I promised myself I would never choose to die. But I did... a little.”

“It’s okay,” she said, nuzzling him. “You’re not dead, you’re still very much alive.”

“But losing all memories? That’s death! I’ve lost a part of my memories. I’ve crossed a line I never ever ever wanted to get even remotely close to,” he said, his breathing slowing as he spoke the words. “How can I trust myself now?”

She held him tightly and breathed deeply, “Who do you think you’re missing?”

“I... I don’t know. I remember the last few dragons I gave books to.”

“Where in the dragon lands?”

He hesitated, before saying the names, “Pathos... Cobalt... Mercury.”

The lifetimes of those dragons flashed before her eyes, remembering the location, “You don’t remember any other dragons near there?”

“No...” said Accord.

“If you were to pick another dragon to visit after those three, who would you visit next?”

He sniffed before saying, “Jasper.”

He had skipped over the home of a rather reclusive dragon. “You wouldn’t visit—?” she had started to ask before cutting herself off.

“I wouldn’t visit who?” he pleaded.

She looked back at the paper and sighed. “I think you made the right decision Accord.”

“The right decision!?” he said, outraged. “I lost some of my memories! I’ve broken trust with myself I have spent eons trying to cultivate. If I can’t trust myself, who can I trust?”

Her eyes rested onto his, “You can trust me.”

His eyes stopped watering as he stared at her.

“I think I remember the soul that wanted to be forgotten. It’s alright that you forgot those memories... I guess they aren’t really ours to have. They’re someone else’s. We only have them so that we can help everyone. If having them does the exact opposite, then it’s best to forget them.”

“Perhaps you’re right...” he said, bringing himself closer to her. “But I don’t know how I’ll rebuild my own trust in myself. If I made this decision now, what’s to stop me from erasing my memories for other things in the future? I’ve started down a dark path that only leads to death.”

She felt the rise and fall of his breath as she kept herself close to him. “Accord, if you ever feel the need to erase a part of your memories again, will you let me know first?”

“What!? No! I will never want to erase my memories!”

She stared at the paper, “You wrote down a new category on the census, and I’m sure there will be more souls that will want to opt-out of our blatant invasion of their privacy. They have a valid point, and this number will only climb from here, at least for a while.

“But,” she continued. “It looks like your agreement was only between you and that soul, or else you would have erased a part of my memory too. You can still trust yourself Accord, as long as you trust me as well.”

He lost himself in her teal eyes, “I trust you, Fluttershy.”

“So if something like this happens again... if you find an addition to the fear section of your library, whatever it is, and you feel the need to lose your memories, will you give those memories to me first?”

“I hope it never comes to that,” he said.

“But will you?”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

She smiled, “We both know you don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep. So because you trust me, you can trust yourself.”

He sniffed one last time before smiling weakly, “Thanks Fluttershy.”

They sat there together on the couch, talking and comforting each other for a long time.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Cosmos teleported up and down through the library, exploring and teleporting around, grabbing books off of the shelves and playing around, amused to be inside the structure that had eluded Hope for such a long time.

He teleported to a random spot and found himself in a black universe. But on the far ends of the universe were more shelves of books. He teleported to the center and found an exact clone of Equestria. He headed down to the surface of the fake Equestria and moved a rock.

Then he teleported to that exact same spot in the normal Equestria and found that as he had moved the rock there, it had moved here as well. He nudged the rock again, and teleported to the library version of Equestria. The rock perfectly synchronized between the two worlds. Synchronization, combined with compressed time, so that’s how he’s able to talk to everypony.

He started randomly teleporting again, but this time he found himself stuck in between completely wedged in bookcases, the hallway that should have been there had been replaced with a solid mass of books. His body naturally manipulated his form into something intangible. The newness of the feeling wore off and he teleported away using Galaxia’s location as a reference point.

He peered down the long hallway with its rainbow of books, gazing at the majesty standing in the middle of it, holding aloft a black book in her magic. Her beauty radiating as her nebulous wings billowed like soft clouds, the galaxies in the tips of her mane softly twirling. Cosmos could only smile as he watched her from afar. It didn’t matter the form she took, she always took his breath away.

He took a few slow trots toward her, awaiting her response to his hoofsteps, but she stood engrossed in the black book.

“So you got library access as well?” asked Cosmos, his question rousing Galaxia away from the story as her eyes adjusted.

“What did you say?” she asked, a little hesitant, her mind still in the book.

“I was wondering when you got library access from Accord. I only just zipped in to see you,” he looked around at all the books, “and the rest of this place, a few minutes ago.”

“I’ve been down here for a while, researching. It’s almost relaxing, really. Everything’s stopped outside without any of the disadvantages to slowing down individual atoms. I can stay here and think, even casually teleport in ponies that could use individual help. I can interact directly with them.”

“Isn’t that hard?”

“Everything is difficult in it’s own way, but it's a responsibility I’ve wanted to handle,” said Galaxia.

“I always preferred working on a macro scale myself,” said Cosmos. “Catering to the different kinds of partygoers and following along with Pinkie has been fun, but after the party I’ll head back to my universe for a while, make sure first time souls get interviewed, keep things rolling.”

“I’ll do the same,” said Galaxia. “But there’s extra time here, I like it.”

“How long is enough though?” asked Cosmos.

She stared at the books, eyeing the black one she was still holding aloft in her magic.

“I’m still figuring that out.”

He stared at her, getting lost in her hazel eyes, leaning in close to her, nuzzling her softly, “Don’t be too long, okay?”

She shifted closer to him, “okay.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Accord trotted along the path, feeling the hard red rock beneath his hooves. The cool dry wind raced across the landscape, stray bits of dehydrated foliage peppering everything.

“No death?” the buffalo repeated.

“Yeah,” said Accord, keeping up with the pace of the moving buffalo.

“Why?”

“Why not?” said Accord. “Life is good, why not have it continue for as long as possible?”

The buffalo slowed, looking down at a shrub, leaning down and sniffing it. “I don’t know what to do with my current life, much less an eternal one.”

The buffalo opened his mouth and started chewing on the dry grass, munching on it slowly.

“That’s a good question,” said Accord. “But won’t it be fun to figure it out? What you might do? What kind of buffalo you might become?”

The buffalo swallowed, “If I knew where I was going, maybe. Otherwise, I’m wandering for forever as opposed to only for a little while.”

The hot sun beat down from above, warming the air, slowing the buffalo’s words.

“Would you like some ideas?” asked Accord, producing a sky blue book.

He looked at the book, the bright color in stark contrast to the desert around them. “Maybe...” said the buffalo.

“I think you’ll like it,” said Accord. “If you were to dictate your own biography and I was the scribe, I think this is the book that would result.”

He took the book in his mouth, glancing at it, depositing it in his fur.

“And there’s a party on Saturday,” said Accord, bridling his enthusiasm to match his new friend’s.

The buffalo’s movements slowed even further. “I don’t think I’ll make it.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll teleport you there myself,” said Accord, handing him a pink invitation.

He eyed the invitation, looking at the frilly letters, and grunted in affirmation.

“Thanks!” said Accord.

He kept walking with the buffalo for a little while longer, waiting to see if any questions would pop up. When none did, Accord said goodbye and teleported him back to the non-library version of Equestria.

“That was the last one,” said Fluttershy, appearing beside him.

“Everyone?” repeated Accord, stunned into silence at the completion of the task, taking comfort in how nice it was to do, hoping for more conversations with all of his new friends.

“Everyone,” smiled Fluttershy.

A Party

Ember carefully placed the egg into the hearth of their crystal palace suite, breathing out hot blue flames onto the charcoal, starting the slow burn. Her quiet inferno snugly kept the egg warm, toasty, and comfortable.

Spike flicked his gaze away from his wife, looking at the pink party invitation on the table, picking it up to read it again.

You and the rest of the planet are invited to a party! You don’t have to come, but we really really really want you to! Everybody will be there, and we mean everybody.

If you don’t want to come, please hold onto this invitation with two hooves/claws/paws/whatever appendage you have and you won’t be immediately teleported to the party at 7:00pm on Saturday.

But don’t do that, okay? It’s gonna be loads of fun!

So be ready at 7:00pm this Saturday and we’ll teleport you back by midnight.

It even had a caricature of Pinkie and what looked like a stallion version of Luna smiling and dancing.

“I know Pinkie’s planning this thing, but nobody knows any details,” said Spike, still looking at the enigmatic invitation.

“Did your book mention anything about it,” asked Ember, still fussing with the egg, trying to figure out the optimal location it should be located in the hearth.

“No, but I’m not even halfway through it yet,” said Spike, putting the invitation back on the table, his claws making a clinking sound on the crystal. “How far are you on yours?”

“Finished a little while ago.”

“How was it?”

He gave her time to finish another round of breathing on the egg.

“It was... different,” she said as he walked over to the hearth, breathing out his own green flames onto the egg. “I mean it was all about me, which is great,” she flashed a toothy grin, her sharp teeth radiating white. “But it was also full of random advice and critiques, parts when I did something good were encouraged, but the book pointed out when I did something bad and gave me advice to improve myself. I have a few disagreements about what was assigned as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’”

Spike pulled away from the hearth. “That sounds... kind of annoying. And similar to my book.”

“Yeah, but it was still pretty good though. I’ve never read anything that felt so tailor made for me before,” she said, breathing a little more on the egg. “Did yours tell you anything about past lives?”

Spike furrowed his eyebrows, “No, did yours?”

“No, the book mentioned we had been under a reincarnation system, but didn’t bother to tell me about all my past lives.” She placed a palm on the egg, feeling how warm it was.

“Odd,” said Spike, breathing out more flame onto the charcoal, the smoke billowing up through a vent above and to the outside.

“Hold on,” said Ember, taking her claws off the egg and putting them above and below Spike’s snout, closing his mouth, “it’s already warm enough.”

Some smoke escaped from his nostrils as her hold on his mouth weakened and he spoke. “You sure? Knowing Pinkie this party is not gonna end on schedule.”

She gazed at her handiwork, “The way that hearth’s set up and with the spells that Twilight put on the coal, it should be fine for however long we’re away.”

Spike looked back at the pink invitation and then to a clock on the wall of their suite, the time counting down.

“So... we’ll just be teleported somewhere soon?” asked Ember.

“I think so,” said Spike, reaching out his claws and grabbing hers, the spaces between their claws intertwining perfectly.

“Where in Equestria could possibly be big enough to hold the entire planet’s population?” asked Ember, just as the clock on the wall reached seven o’ clock.

But nothing happened.

Spike stared back at Ember and raised an eyebrow.

“That clock is a bit—“

Without so much as a pop, a flash, or a whoosh of air, they found themselves in the middle of the most decked out party that either of them had ever seen, the transition so seamless that if they had been blinking they would have missed the change.

“—fast.”

The landscape was of a shiny wooden dance floor running clear to the horizon. Beyond that was a sight that filled Spike with awe.

Equestria. A beautiful, pristine, large and looming glass ball of blue, green and stray color in between. Fluffy clouds dotted the surface in waves, cities and towns almost invisible at this scale, the majesty of his home slacking his jaw as he looked at it.

“We’re on the moon,” said Ember.

“Sweet Celestia,” said Spike, his eyes widening.

More and more dragons had teleported in by this point, many confused and a little frustrated, but they all gaped in shock as they saw the planet above them. The sight kept even the most boisterous dragon in almost quiet reverence as they recognized that everything and everyone they had ever loved or known had lived and died on that huge spherical gem.

The silence was slowly interrupted as the dragons started talking amongst themselves in excited whispers and wonder.

“Welcome to the moon everyone!”

Spike heard Pinkie’s voice but couldn’t place where it was coming from. The bright, untethered balloons seemed likely culprits.

“I taught Pinkie a new word this week, and I thought you all ought to know it too,” said an unfamiliar, excited male voice. “The word is terraforming! And that’s what we did to the moon so you can breathe!”

“I was like ‘Cosmos, is that really such a good idea?’ And he was all ‘Yeah.’ And so I was like ‘okay,’ and so we’re on the moon! If you wanna look up the word ‘terraforming’ later you can, but you don’t need to know all the sciency reasons on how we got here right now. So just shrug and party on!”

Spike raised an eyebrow, the vast array of dragons in front of him also looked confused.

“Yeah! Have fun! Tonight we’re gonna party like there’s an infinite amount of tomorrow!” said the male voice.

“And we’re starting off with a surprise, too! The more you talk to everybody, the easier the surprise will be to figure out!” said Pinkie, her voice bubbling over with excitement.

“Pinkie, you can’t tell them there’s a surprise this early.”

“They’ll find out within the first five minutes anyway. Now everybody say hello! Make friends! Party!”

Spike held onto his wife’s claws tighter as some rather silly music started to play, the music more appropriate for a five year old’s birthday party than the entire population.

They looked around sheepish for a moment, drinking the scene in. It wasn’t nearly as crowded as he felt it should be, and there was a plethora of gems and many other kinds of foods on various tables scattered across the landscape. He could see in the distance that the dance floor changed to a forest in certain spots, different environments for different partygoers.

“Some party huh?” Spike spoke to a gray dragon with black stripes.

“Yeah...” said the gray dragon, raising a claw to his face, unsure of what was going on.

Spike looked at Ember for a moment before releasing his grip on her claws, holding out a claw to the dragon in front of him. “The name’s Spike.”

“Zaylim,” said the striped dragon.

Spike turned back to Ember, but she was already talking animatedly to a brown dragon.

“So...” said Spike, unsure of what to say. “Nice night to be on the moon.”

“I guess so,” said Zaylim. “I wasn’t expecting this,” he took a sip of cider. “Well, everything really.”

“Yeah...”

“Did you get a gray alicorn on your doorstep giving you a book with your entire life story, and telling you everyone was now immortal?”

Spike nodded his head. “These things... happen,” he looked at the crowd of dragons, all of them roughly the same size.

“So where are you from?” asked Zaylim.

“Ponyville, where the bearer of the element of magic lives,” said Spike, shrugging. “What clan are you from?”

Zaylim furrowed his eyebrows, “Clan? I’m of the tribe of Zeriff.”

“Tribe?” asked Spike. “What kind of dragon is from a tribe?”

“Dragon, what are you talking about?”

“You. You’re a dragon, you should be from one of the clans,” said Spike.

“I’m not a dragon.”

“Wait, if you’re not a dragon...” Spike thought about the word “tribe,” thinking back to the only group that used the term. “You’re a... zebra?”

As soon as the words left his lips, the dragon disappeared in a puff of smoke, revealing a zebra underneath.

“Woah!” said Spike smiling in shock and starting to laugh, the puzzled zebra in front of him stood there, confused.

“You’re a zebra!” Spike repeated, laughing.

“And so are you.“ said Zaylim, “What’s so special about that?”

“No, you don’t understand, you’re a zebra and I’m a — ” he was cut off by a small buzzing noise, preventing him from saying the word.

He said the word again and again, laughing as the noises from the buzzes changed every time he said the word, each strange noise making Spike laugh harder.

“I have no idea what you are doing, or how you’re making those strange noises,” said Zaylim, thoroughly disturbed.

Spike stopped laughing just long enough to cough out an explanation. “They switched how everyone looks, and you have to guess what species I am.”

Zaylim turned his head in confusion, “So... you’re not a zebra?”

“Nope, I do breathe fire though.”

Zaylim’s eyes went wide with shock, “a... a dragon?” he stuttered out.

Spike didn’t notice any smoke escape from himself, but Zaylim seemed aghast.

“That’s the game! The more creatures we talk to, the more we find out what species they are underneath.”

“Strange game...” said Zaylim, his eyes still wide upon seeing Spike’s true form, he slowly trotted away into the crowd, making his way to the tables of snacks and food on the side.

“Talk to you later, Zaylim!”

Spike eyed all of the dragons around him, plotting out the next one to talk to.

A small green dragon bumped into him and started pelting him with species names.

“Earth Pony! Unicorn! Pegasi! Camel! Griffon! Minotaur! Cow!” she started firing off at Spike in rapid succession.

“Nope, none of those,” said Spike, smiling.

She placed a claw to her snout, “Changeling!”

“None of the above,” said Spike.

“Buffalo?”

“How many buffalo do you know that are green and purple?” asked Spike.

“Diamond Dog?”

“Aren’t you defeating the purpose of getting to know everyone by shooting off questions?”

“Hippogriff?”

“What’s a hippogriff?” asked Spike, the species familiar, but he couldn’t make out a picture of it in his mind.

“Dragon?”

Spike couldn’t see it, but he was sure whatever he had been, had vanished in a puff of smoke and his true form had been revealed.

“Yes!” said the excited dragon, turning toward another dragon far off, “EIGHT!” she yelled.

Another voice piped back, “TEN!”

The lively dragon almost escaped but Spike grabbed her at the last second, “Hey, at least tell me your name!”

“Cloudshifter.”

“Pegasi?”

With a burst of smoke, a teenage green pegasi with a cloud cutie mark popped out, smiling and eager to move on.

He let the pegasi go, laughing at the game.

He spotted a bright pink dragon bouncing around in the distance, the spring in her step and her failure to use her wings making Spike watch in fascination. She kept bouncing up and down, repeating names and welcomes to every single dragon there.

“Pinkie?” asked Spike.

She bounded further in his direction and Spike yelled her name, “Pinkie!”

She stopped. “Hiya Spike the earth pony!” she said giggling.

“I... I look like...?”

“You sure do! At least to me, it’s different for everypony though, for example,” Pinkie reached a hoof into what seemed like empty space, pulling it back to reveal a lilac dragon.

“Twilight, what does that handsome fellow in front of you look like?”

“Alicorns, everypony’s an alicorn,” said Twilight as her eye twitched.

“Exactly!” Pinkie looked at Twilight, “But don’t worry, he’s still a dragon underneath,” she said bubbling.

“Oh shoot, forgot my own game, now you look all normal. Oh well, this is still fun!” said Pinkie, starting to bounce again.

“Oh look! It’s Little Strongheart! Hi!” she said, bounding away happily.

Spike looked at Twilight, “Some party, huh?” He said, flashing a toothy grin.

“You... pull off a good alicorn, Spike,” said Twilight, peering at him.

“You’re a good looking dragon yourself,” said Spike.

They paused for a second before something inside them made them start laughing, the absurdity of it all keeping them going for a long time.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“Nice party,” said Hope. The crowd of creatures below paid no heed to the shining alicorn, even as Accord felt himself enveloped by the stream of souls as they cast an invisibility spell on him, lifting him above and far away.

“Pinkie and Cosmos organized most of it,” said Accord looking down below him, the entire moon alive with color, dancing and music.

“We have some questions,” said Hope, shifting between watching the party below and watching Accord. “Your multiple thoughts spell is unlike anything we’ve ever seen or used.”

“I’ve tried to teach Fluttershy, but she couldn’t grasp the magic.”

“No, she couldn’t have. But we tried the spell anyway, simultaneously casting it in a variety of constructs across millions of species and ideas.”

“Some of them could cast it?” asked Accord.

“We only had a few that could, Accord. It can only be cast by a soul that doesn’t have a memory cover, and that has been alive for several universe cycles. Only some of the truly ancients in our rare control groups fit that description.”

“They don’t have a memory cover? How do you keep track of them?”

“We don’t, we keep them in case we ever find that our memory covers do something detrimental to the souls underneath. And for the first time ever, we found a problem.”

His eyes diverted away from the party, staring at Hope.

“For a select few of the ancients, they could cast the spell. They could figure out how to think of two things at once, but not three.”

Accord’s eyes widened. “Why was that?”

“We think one of the ideas in one of the books Fluttershy read was correct. Hydrogen will connect to Trillion and slowly make that soul bigger, eventually forming element two trillion, and for every trillion hydrogen atoms added, the ability to think of more than one thing at a time increases.”

“Could you confirm it?”

“With the right measurement spell.”

“You found that spell?”

“Research and development, Accord. It’s faster than searching through all possibilities,” they said. “Of the souls we checked that could cast the spell, their atomic number was above two trillion.”

One of his eyebrows shot up.

“Thus, we have a favor to ask. We want to know the atomic number of your soul.”

Accord frowned, and then nodded his head, “Go ahead and cast it on me then.”

Hope smiled, their mane covering Accord’s head, analyzing it, before frowning.

“It’s not in your head, where is it?”

“Dig a little deeper, it’s probably in my library.”

Hope’s eyebrows furrowed but cast the spell. It took much longer than it should have, the extra search taking some time. Eventually the spell succeeded and a number popped up in front of Accord: 100,040,000,792,390,349,203,743.

“Over one hundred sextillion,” said Hope.

Accord stared at them as they released their spell, shocked at the number.

“Every soul with one of our memory covers stays at one trillion,” said Hope, their tone flat. “But still, the only advantage to this seems to be the ability to cast that spell.”

Accord stood in the air, motionless.

“Is it really worth it? What you’re doing? Micromanaging and talking to everyone? If this is your ultimate configuration, you’ll be stuck doing this forever.”

“I know,” said Accord.

“And what will happen when we succeed and we find an ultimate configuration that would not need a higher being’s help? Will you regret your choice to keep them immortal in a suboptimal state? Will you allow them to reincarnate into the perfection when we find it?”

“No,” said Accord, looking down to everyone on the moon, and even the staunch stragglers still on Equestria below. “I don’t know what ideas you expect to find in your ideal existence, but this...” he motioned to each soul down below, invisible connections forming that only he and Hope could see, every single relationship below being mapped out, the lines extending out from everyone, the vast web illuminating the universe far more than Celestia’s sun, new friendships forming with each passing conversation. “This is my happy continue.”

“But you’re spending an almost infinite time with each soul.”

“Some infinities are greater than other infinities,” said Accord, a small smile forming on his muzzle. “I’m okay with mine being the greatest.”

“But, it will fail eventually, won’t it?”

“Eventually may be the one word that describes a duration longer than infinity itself.” Accord sighed, deep in thought. “It will only happen if I concentrate on it, if I can but focus on now, the importance and the beauty of now, the most miraculous time in any soul’s existence, I can succeed.”

He looked up at the distant stars, drawing lines in between them to form a constellation of an hourglass. “Any event that has ever occurred in the past or will occur in the future has only occurred when it’s reached that special temporal place called now.”

His eyes focused on the center of the hourglass, watching stars filter through the neck, “For now is the time I can change, now is something I can control, now is something I can make better.”

He looked at Hope, “I can’t do anything to make one hundred universe cycles from now better. I can’t plan that far in advance.” He moved his gaze back to all of his friends, his eyes watering. “But I know if I make now matter and treat it like the important precious time that it is, I can make that ‘now’ last truly forever.”

Death

Accord stared at the hospital bed from the back of the room, watching as Pinkie Pie lay dying.

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” whispered Accord.

Fluttershy stood silent next to him watching Pinkie’s heart rate, the crowd of ponies in the room making it difficult to speak. The hospice nurses had long since stopped trying to keep ponies out of the room, and instead had given Pinkie the largest room they had.

“There’s no reason for her to die, Fluttershy,” Accord pleaded. “There’s no reason for anypony to die.”

Pinkie Pie struggled to breathe, her heart rate rising for a moment. Applejack drew near, looking at her, unable to be of any help before Pinkie stabilized on her own.

“Death is curable,” he whispered. “I’ve long since removed the option to sever my soul from my body. I could do the same for her! I could save her!”

“She’s led a good life,” Fluttershy said. “She married the stallion of her dreams, they had five foals, a lot of grandfoals, and they’ve thrown countless parties. Not very many ponies can say they’ve lived a life as full as Pinkie Pie.”

“It’s been full, yes, but is that any reason not to extend it? Why does happiness have to end?”

A baby started to cry. Accord’s eyes flickered over for a moment, watching as one of Pinkie’s grandfoals was rocked by her mother.

“This is the way it has always been,” said Fluttershy. “Ponies are born and ponies die. The only exceptions are Princess Luna, Princess Celestia, and... you.”

“But when she dies, she’ll be left as a microscopic soul, forced to wander Equestria until she finds a way to be reborn. Do you really want that arduous, random process for one of our best friends? Who knows how many months or millennia will pass before she reincarnates?”

Accord shifted closer to the window to allow a mother carrying a crying foal out of the hospital room, watching as she hurried away.

“I can’t do this, Fluttershy. The best way to never say goodbye is to never say hello, and I spent eternities in my library making sure I never said hello.” His heavy eyes turned to rest on the mare struggling for life. “But I took a risk leaving, and this is the first death of many to come. Pinkie will be gone within days.”

He gestured to a cyan pegasus standing near a window staring dejectedly down at the hospital grounds. Her mane looked more like Daring Do’s than the vibrant colors they had once been. “Rainbow Dash would probably follow a few years from now.”

He then looked at an old, fashionable mare wearing heavy makeup, her mane expertly dyed to keep out the gray, “maybe Rarity after that.”

An orange coated mare stood next to Pinkie’s bed, her vibrant straw colored mane long since succumbing to gray, “Perhaps Applejack would go soon after. And then Twilight would go after that,” he looked at an old lilac alicorn, thick glasses covering up eyes that had long since grown weary with age. “Not to mention their spouses.”

A spry, tall dragon sat in a corner of the room, holding an egg, stoking it every so often with hot flames. His wife, Ember, sat next to him. “Then after another thousand years or so, Spike would die... and then after a couple hundred millennia Celestia and Luna would go.”

“And then after a few trillion years...” his throat grew tight. “You would have to make the decision to become immortal like me... or choose to die, if you don’t do so earlier.”

“You don’t need to worry about something that will happen so far into the future,” said Fluttershy.

“I’m always worrying because the future for me is always too short. Everything feels like it will happen tomorrow. And if I don’t stop this, it may very well be tomorrow when we start to lose our friends.”

Fluttershy sighed, looking at the tile floor, hoping a solution would appear in the patterns.

“Don’t you think Celestia and Luna feel the same way?” Fluttershy said. “They could make Pinkie immortal, but they don’t.”

“Perhaps they don’t understand fully what happens to a pony after they die. Why would they think reincarnation would be the proper method of existence?”

“You could just ask them yourself,” Fluttershy whispered, looking into his wide gray eyes.

He stopped and considered that, his mind rocketing to a far off place before landing right back where it started. “Would you come with me?”

“What are you planning?” she said, noticing his eyes shift back into focus on her.

“We need to make sure they know that death is entirely fixable. I want to hear their reasoning for why they haven’t stopped it already. Perhaps it’s merely ignorance of better possibilities.”

“What possibilities? Pinkie’s friends with everypony. If she doesn’t die, all of her friends will eventually. I think she’ll find it rather sad to watch all her friends die.”

“Then I’ll make all of her friends immortal.”

“But then those friends will be sad when their friends die.”

“No... we’re not thinking big enough,” Accord looked at her. “No more funerals. No more saying goodbye. I will make everyone on this planet immortal.”

The spells on the machines connected to Pinkie Pie hummed and clicked, calm soft beeps filling the silence as Fluttershy took the idea in.

She tore her eyes from Pinkie to look back to Accord. “Okay, I’ll go with you.”

They both walked out of the room together and down the empty hallway. Accord peered around to make sure they were alone, and then stuck a hoof on top of his head. He pulled the hoof away slowly, revealing his horn.

“Alicorn mode today?” said Fluttershy.

“I thought I ought to look official for this.”

His horn glowed, and Fluttershy and Accord were transported to Canterlot.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

Celestia sat on her throne, Luna at her side, going through ledgers and reports. They had expressly forbidden anypony from entering the room and they were not to be disturbed until they had the budget figured out.

Celestia’s favorite guard opened the door and peeked inside, ruining her concentration as he let Fluttershy and Accord trot inside.

They had aged well for fifty years together. A streak of white in Fluttershy’s pink mane was the only betrayal of how old she had become.

And Accord, his transformation had been the most drastic she had ever seen in a being, going from master of all chaos to a simple sign painter pony. But even more astounding was Twilight’s report of the Library of Discord—that such a being could exist for so long made Celestia’s head spin. His presence, seriousness, and devotion to his wife, family, and friends were a marked difference from whatever he used to be.

Luna and Celestia failed at keeping their eyes on the task at hoof as Accord cleared his throat.

“It is always a pleasure to see you, Accord and Fluttershy.” Celestia began. “How are your foals?”

“Oh, they’re doing wonderfully,” said Fluttershy, a cheerful smile forming on her face.

“Our youngest just graduated with a rocktorate from the Star Swirl Academy,” added Accord, like the proud parent he was.

“That’s so great to hear,” said Celestia.

“It is very nice to see you both. But we really do need to balance this budget today,” said Luna. “Be sure to visit us again sometime soon.”

Hoping that would be all, Celestia brought another few papers off a stack and made a few marks with a quill.

“And I’m also sorry to barge in like this,” said Accord. “But you are aware that Pinkie Pie, one of the bearers, is currently lying on her deathbed?”

“Yes, we’ve gotten word from Twilight, and we’re so sorry to hear about that.”

Accord looked over at Fluttershy. She made eye contact with him and nodded.

“We would like your permission... to stop her from dying,” said Accord.

“I’m sure the finest nurses and doctors in Ponyville are doing the same thing,” said Celestia, her weary eyes still looking at plans and projects.

“I think you misunderstood. I don’t mean to prolong her life medically. I mean to make her—and eventually everyone—as immortal as you are.”

Celestia and Luna both put down their papers, staring at Accord.

“Preposterous,” said Luna. “You of all ponies should understand the passage of time and its effects. Do you know the chaos that would bring?”

“And do you know how much happiness it would bring? Just think of it—no one ever dying! Everypony living with their families and friends forever! An infinite amount of new ponies to meet and get to know!” said Accord. “ When I watched universe after universe die, I entertained the notion that immortality was a curse. But immortality is only a curse when there no one to share it with. And that’s what I want to do for all of Equestria. Wouldn’t that be the happiest state there could possibly be?”

“Accord...” Celestia began. “We can’t allow that to happen. Only Luna and I can be immortal, not even the other alicorns like Twilight and Cadence have been allowed to become as immortal as us.”

“Why not? You do know what happens to souls when they die, right?” said Accord, an easel appearing next to him with a series of cue cards displaying a reincarnation cycle. “I hope it isn’t news to you that souls wander Equestria until they reincarnate. Can’t you see what a flawed system that is, to never use any of that brilliant knowledge they gained in life to help them in the next one?”

Celestia hesitated. How much did he know? Everything. Given infinite time to learn from all randomness meant that Accord knew all truth, and all lies. This was not somepony to trust with granting immortality on others. And it wasn’t her power to give anyway.

“Accord, I’m sorry, but we cannot allow anypony to become immortal like us. We are merely the stewards of this world. We...” Celestia struggled to find the diplomatic answer this situation demanded, “have only that command. To protect this world and ensure the cycle of reincarnation continues. That was our only job to do. Everything else we do: helping ponies, talking to our subjects, loving them, we do despite what we have to do.”

She realized she had said too much when she saw the awareness flooding Accord and Fluttershy’s eyes.

Luna spoke up, “Do you think we like having to watch our subjects die, Accord? We have spent millennia nurturing them and helping them. But mortality is their limit, and we can’t let them continue past that. It is out of our hooves...”

Celestia nodded. Luna was right, painfully right. Ponies died everyday, and now Pinkie Pie had to die. It was the natural order of things, it had been that way for all time. It hurt to watch them go though—

“Why?” asked Fluttershy. “Who is making you stand by and watch this?”

Celestia shook her head. “We are to guard and protect the cycle of reincarnation. That you even know the name of the process is more than enough information for a pony.”

“Celestia, you must know that I am no ordinary pony,” said Accord. “Twilight gave you a detailed report about this, about my library, about what I am. Discord was untrustworthy and confused, but I am that being no longer. I have changed and I have had time to sift through what I’ve learned, and I know that the ideal existence is not simply being immortal, but being immortal with friends and family.”

A glimmer of hope crossed Celestia’s mind. Accord seemed to be stronger than Galaxia, maybe even Hope itself. It wouldn’t come down to a fight, of course, but Accord could change everything. But could she really bet her own life like that? Could she bet Luna’s? Could she bet all of Equestria?

“If this isn’t your choice then whose is it?” asked Accord.

Luna hesitated, “we cannot say.”

“I assure you that I have been alive by orders of magnitude beyond the lifetime of whatever is stopping you from letting me save this world. Why can’t I make everyone immortal?”

Celestia bit her lip. Time. Time and experience, Accord was a being that had an infinite amount of both. But was he really trustworthy? Was fifty years married to the mare of his dreams raising a family of four foals really enough to change a being that had existed for trillions of years? How much can someone really change?

Celestia stared down at the numbers on all the reports, eyeing one with the population of each town in Equestria. She didn’t care about the numbers themselves, but the ponies and lives behind them. The numbers fluctuated over the years, hemming and hawing like the tides. What if the numbers kept going up, forever? Would that be better... or worse?

It’s not like the current system was broken. It all worked quite well. If anything was broken, it was herself. The thousand years with Luna gone had made Celestia very aware of the short lives of everypony else she had ever known. She would blink, and they would be gone, and replaced by the next generation.

They were never truly replaced though. Nopony ever perfectly replaced another pony. Even the specific souls she had kept tabs on had changed dramatically between lifetimes. Old friends died and stayed dead. Permanently.

The ones that took their old roles brought variety and flavor, but they weren’t the same as the ponies that were there before. Celestia learned to love and lose her friends in an endless cycle.

Endless.

How many ponies had died? How many irreplaceable friends had been lost? How many would die in the future?

While Celestia thought, the entire room was silent. She stole a glance at Luna, who’s mind also seemed to be elsewhere. She gave a faint smile as she saw her. Immortality wasn’t so bad when there was someone to share it with.

She weighed that last thought carefully.

She felt content with immortality as long as she had Luna.

Did that idea work exponentially? Could all of those irreplaceable friends that she had been letting reincarnate over millennia also share in that immortality? Would contentment turn to happiness and then eventually to sheer joy?

“Can you really save them?” Celestia asked out loud, breaking the silence, hope in her eyes. “Save all of the ponies of this world? Make sure that all of the souls here get bodies and keep them? Is that something you are really capable of doing, Accord?”

Accord looked up at her, fiery determination in his eyes, “Yes.”

Celestia’s eyes shifted to the stained glass. Accord could do what she would never have the full courage to do herself. He could stop every pony from dying.

Luna looked at her, “Celestia please, we can’t do this. I was banished to the moon for a thousand years. If we let him tamper with the immortality of this world, we won’t even be banished somewhere, but our souls will be ripped from our bodies until they reincarnate again.”

Celestia’s mind turned back to her parents. How long could they keep everyone immortal before Galaxia and Cosmos found out? What would they do once they came? Would they reincarnate everyone, including herself and Luna? Did they have the power to forcefully reincarnate Accord, as well?

“That is the fate we have consigned to our subjects for millennia, I think we can accept those terms as well. I am so sick of seeing my friends die...” Celestia said. Most of the stained glass windows in the room were of friends long gone.

“But at least we have each other! If we die... we will never be sisters ever again!” said Luna, eyes starting to water.

Celestia hesitated, a thousand ideas were percolating through her mind. Worries, fears, everything her parents had taught her, and all of her subjects she would never see again. She looked back at Accord. If anypony could change everything and have it succeed, it would be him.

“That’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make if it will break this cycle,” said Celestia with resolve. “I will wager on Accord.”

“Fluttershy, Accord,” she said facing them. “Once you start this process, you cannot stop. Everypony becomes immortal. And those ponies will have children until all of the souls that wander Equestria have been born.”

“What if there are ponies that don’t want to become immortal?” Luna asked. “The ones that want to stay a part of the cycle? Or the ones that choose not be apart of the families they are born into?”

“They must be given the power to choose, unlike the ignorance that she has required us to leave them in.”

“Who is ‘she?’” asked Fluttershy.

Celestia looked at Fluttershy, the fear of starting something irreversible preventing her from speaking for a few moments.

Another thought struck her, one last test to see if Accord really knew more than Galaxia.

“Accord... I would like to give you a memory. And I want you to tell me the truth about what it is.”

“Okay,” said Accord, calm determination across his face.

Celestia looked through her memory and plucked out what Galaxia had shown her of the infinitesimally small piece of Nightmare Moon. She took the memory and cast a spell to put the image of the object inside of his mind.

“Accord, do you know what that is?” she asked, gesturing to the wriggling, gyrating, almost atom-like nanomachine.

“It’s a soul.”

“A what!?” asked Celestia.

“A soul,” Accord repeated.

“I know what souls look like, Accord. And that machine looks nothing like a soul.”

She looked around the room until she spotted one floating near the stained glass windows. After beckoning it with her horn, she held it in her hoof. She cast a magnification spell so that everypony in the room could see it, a green glowing floating orb, a soul.

“Ah yes, that is a soul as well. It is simply covered in a field of memories. That is the same kind of soul that Fluttershy has. But if you’ll allow me...” Accord used his magic to somehow make the orb turn clear, removing the green light. Upon further magnification, it revealed a machine, the same kind as the one that had been Nightmare Moon.

Celestia almost screamed. Accord saw the look of shock on her face and let his spell dissipate. The soul retook its shape as a glowing orb of light and Celestia bid it to go away.

“I’m sorry, I’m sure that frightened you. It’s a little like looking at a skeleton for the first time.”

“Souls... are... machines?”

“I would not use such a degrading term to describe something so wonderful and amazing as a soul, Celestia. They are sapience. Without souls our bodies are simply bags of meat flying through space on large rocks. No, we have souls! The power to choose, create, live, love, connect, and bring each other warmth and happiness. And I want to let every soul I find have a form so that they don’t ever have to wander around aimlessly ever again.”

Celestia stared at Accord, unsure of what to say, his look of fierce determination to save everyone giving her resolve. “Very well,” said Celestia.

Luna looked at her sister, then back at Accord. “How exactly are you going to go about this?”

“We’re still in the planning stages,” said Accord. “But for now, we’ll start with Pinkie and then slowly reach, well... everyone.”

“Sister, is this okay?” Celestia asked Luna.

“Isn’t it our parents decision, not ours?”

“Your parents?” asked Fluttershy.

“Yes, Galaxia and Cosmos, they...” Celestia tried to begin. But there was too much information. Her parents operated by gathering all information and then making decisions from there. If Accord was going to talk to them, he needed the same level of detail and understanding.

“There’s too much to explain in words,” said Celestia, sighing. “Accord, do you know how to read souls?”

Accord raised a hoof. “I’ve done it a few times. The memories attached to souls on this planet are almost as easy to read as a book.”

She sat down and weighed the decision. “I’m not sure what Galaxia and Cosmos’s plans for Equestria are. But it’s not immortality for everyone. You may be facing them and even Hope, soon. You’ll need every advantage you can get.”

She paused, breathing in and slowly exhaling. “Read my soul. That should be enough information to talk to them.”

Accord stepped back. “Now hold on there, I—”

“No. That will not be enough information to face them,” said Luna. “Take my memories as well.”

Celestia drew in a sharp breath and then whispered a thank you.

The look of resolve on Accord’s muzzle had melted into worry. “That goes far beyond personal information. It’s everything that makes you... you. I can’t read all of that.”

“If you fail, everypony dies, including us,” said Luna, staring down at him sharply.

Accord gulped and then his muzzle turned rigid and resolute. “I understand.”

He slowly walked up the steps and drew near to them. He bent down and his horn glowed for the briefest of moments as it touched Celestia’s head.

His face stayed completely blank as he lifted his head up and moved a few paces and leaned down to absorb Luna’s memories.

His expression betrayed absolutely no emotion. Celestia found it maddening. That was every part of her. What did he think? What did he feel? He was just as stoic as Galaxia was.

He walked down the steps and turned to face them. “Can I share these memories with Fluttershy as well? I’m going to need her help too.”

They both nodded, and Accord and Fluttershy vanished from the room.

Celestia and Luna turned to look at each other, both second guessing their decision.

Celestia stood up and walked over to Luna, lying down next to her. A million doubts started to creep into her head. What had they just done? He had been Discord, a madman, a monster. She was the one that had sent Fluttershy to reform him, and now he was an omniscient omnipotent being? Or was he just taking a machine’s memories? Was that all she was, some special machine? And if Accord somehow failed at saving Equestria, she and Luna would be turned back into mere souls, forced to forget every lifetime including this one... for all eternity.

The air flickered as Accord and Fluttershy teleported right in front of them.

“Thank you so much,” Fluttershy whispered, reaching out her hooves to embrace them. She looked somehow older, as if several sleepless nights had passed in the mere minutes she had been gone. “You’ve both been very strong for a long time.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll make sure that nopony ever has to die ever again if they don’t want to,” Accord said. “I have a gift for you two.”

He levitated two books and gave them to Celestia and Luna. The books were brown and had no title, no title page, or table of contents. “It’s the story of your life, including your past lives.”

Celestia stared at the book for a moment. She opened it straight to the last page where the final sentence described in perfect detail how she had decided to give her memories to Accord and Fluttershy.

Fluttershy let go and they vanished once more.

Reincarnation or Immortality (or Nonexistence)

Pinkie wanted to burst out of her covers and say that she felt all better and that everything was awesome and that they should have a party. The only problem with that idea was that she had not gotten out of bed for the last three days; her feeble body felt exhausted. The minutes slowed to a trickle as everything faded away into nothingness.

It was such an annoying problem. All of her friends were here, her family, her husband, her foals, most of her grandfoals. And that wasn’t even including all of the townsponies that had come to see her. There were so many ponies there—why couldn’t she at least bring herself up for one last party? Why was everything so subdued? Only her body was keeping her tied down to this miserable bed, a death bed. That was so aggravating. She had always been able to bring out anything she needed at a moment's notice to make ponies laugh and smile. And now, she was doing the exact opposite, making everypony sad.

She tried to say something, anything, but even her voice had been taken from her these last few days, each part of her body slowly breaking down and leaving her helpless. She was all for accepting help from other ponies, but this was just embarrassing. She could do nothing on her own but blink and try not to think of the pain she was under.

The hospice nurse, Evening Lily, was doing her best to make sure Pinkie was comfortable until the end. She was good at her job, always giving her the right painkilling potions and interpreting her silent gestures. She was even nice enough not to turn all of the guests away.

Pinkie almost wished she would turn some of the ponies away. She was in such an uncharacteristically un-Pinkie Pie state... she couldn’t die in front of all her friends and family, that would be rude, wouldn’t it? It would be like leaving a party early.

She hoped they would forgive her for exiting without a verbal goodbye, they would understand... wouldn’t they?

Would they know how much she felt about each of them? Would they understand that she wouldn’t be able to host any more parties?

The questions in her mind fizzled as Pinkie took a last look at the room of sad ponies waiting for her to die.

I’m sorry everypony, Pinkie Pie wanted to say as she closed her eyes to go to sleep.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

She opened her eyes, taking in her surroundings. It was misty and full of stars. It looked like what Twilight had described when she had been turned into an alicorn.

She bounced in the air excitedly. Her body was back! She successfully hugged herself in the way only Pinkie Pie could, and bounced around the big empty space.

For a brief moment she entertained the idea that maybe she was about to become an alicorn, and that’s why she was here. But then it dawned on her that she was in a hospital bed... dying. Perhaps she had just died.

“Hey! Where is everypony!?” Pinkie yelled around at the void. At least her voice was back. Everything was back: her health, her body, her frizzy mane and tail, everything except for her friends.

She felt alone, she had wanted so bad to be with her friends when she was healthy. And now here she was, all ready for a party and there was nopony here.

Pinkie looked at the ground and slumped down, her mane slowly deflating. She closed her eyes and tried to wonder what everypony was doing now that she was dead. That’s what they had been waiting for... right? She had lived a good long life, the best kind of life full of friends, family, parties, and making ponies smile. Was that all over?

She heard hoofsteps and raised her head up to look over to where they were coming from.

Two alicorns were walking toward her, their faces obscured by the mist. Celestia and Luna?

They came into view and Pinkie nearly jumped in surprise. “Accord, what are you doing here!? You’re not dead too, are you? Did you die in some kind of accident while I was in the hospital? Is that where you’ve been? Dead!? No—you’re not really the ‘dying’ type,” she said squinting her eyes and poking him several times. “So, since you’re alive, that must mean I’m alive! Perfect!” she said, bouncing back onto her tail. “Let’s go home and have a party!”

“It’s nice to see you too, Pinkie,” said Accord.

“Who’s this?” asked Pinkie, still casually bouncing up and down on her tail.

“Let me introduce my new friend, Queen Galaxia,” said Accord, pointing a hoof to the creme colored alicorn.

“Nice to meet you, Queen Galaxia!” said Pinkie happily, jumping up into the air and back onto four hooves to shake her hoof. “Are you Celestia and Luna’s mother?”

Galaxia smiled, “Yes, in a way.”

Pinkie was about to jut in another question, but Galaxia got there first.

“We have a question to ask, Pinkie, and your answer is going to affect what happens to you—and everyone else in Equestria—over the duration of your foreseeable existence.”

“Sounds super serious,” said Pinkie, putting on a semi-straight expression. In the back of her mind she was ecstatic to be able to contort her face like that again.

“You have an immortal soul, Pinkie,” said Accord. “You’ve lived a perceptively infinite amount of time—as long as I have—and we’ve talked about how long I’ve been alive.”

“We want to know, Pinkie, what would you like us to do with your soul?” said Galaxia. “Would you like to reincarnate, be born again as somepony else?”

“Or would you like to be immortal, Pinkie?” Accord asked. “You could continue to be friends with everypony you are currently friends with and continue to get to know them forever.”

“You mean I could go back?” asked Pinkie to Accord.

“Yes! Only you would never die.”

“I could see Rarity, Twilight, Rainbow, Fluttershy, Applejack, and everypony again?”

“If they want to as well... then yes,” Accord smiled.

Pinkie squinted her eyes and leered at him. “Would I be a zombie?”

“No, no, nothing like that!” said Accord. “You’d get your body back, perhaps with some enhancements if you’d like.”

“And younger and less sick?” asked Pinkie.

Accord smiled, “I can do that.”

“Before you make your decision,” Galaxia interrupted. “You have to understand everything you have decided up to this point. We have records of your past forty-eight lifetimes and you must reach your conclusion from what you have experienced.”

“Wait—forty-eight lifetimes!?” Pinkie shouted, a plethora of hooves appearing before her as she counted the number out. “Did I choose reincarnation every time I came to this point?”

“This is the first time you have ever been given a choice in the matter,” said Accord, eyeing Galaxia. “Equestria and a significant portion of the multiverse have been following a reincarnation system for a long time. We have the chance to try something different Pinkie. We can continue, if that is what you would like.”

“I’m okay with this. In fact I’m more than okay! A party that goes on forever sounds perfect!” she said in delight.

“Can you keep that opinion, Pinkie?” asked Accord. “You’re about to see a lot of decisions you’ve made in previous lifetimes. Can you hold onto that desire?”

Galaxia walked over to Pinkie and touched her horn to Pinkie’s head.

All at once a flood of foreign memories came in. It was like she was being drowned in her own mind. Memories cascaded inside and fell in a torrent, mixing with her own memories and confusing her.

“Will she be alright?” Accord asked.

“We’ll see,” said Galaxia.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“Keep hauling water!” barked the command worker.

Pinkie watched—no, experienced—Kazelin make the long trek past the hive to gather more water. She had four legs and two wings and was part of a larger colony of mantis like creatures, except that she only stood on two of her legs, using her constant buzzing wings to keep herself upright. The sun hitting the surface of the red planet made her tiny eyes squint.

She walked back and forth for hours at a time, collecting water for the hive. That was the most important thing to do. If she didn’t collect the water, the Princess would not be happy. Constantly collect, constantly return. The hive, the Princess, was all that mattered.

There were other colony members that had different jobs. The attendants to the Princess had the correct combination of pheromones to not have to haul water like she did. She craved to get out of her state. But there was no end to her role. This was her life, and it would stay that way forever.

At least, not if she had anything to say about it.

She knew the penalty was death—she just didn’t care anymore. She was sick of gathering water day after day. She hadn’t known enough to hide her tracks very well, and they soon spotted her trying to take some of the royal perfumes to pass for a higher ranked mantis. They killed her on the spot.

“What did you like about your life, Kazelin?” asked the mantis King, interviewing her.

“Nothing,” said Kazelin angrily. “Every moment was awful. How dare you send me through that!? What are you possibly hoping to accomplish with this inane life I was supposed to lead, how could y—”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“How long will this take?” Accord asked Galaxia.

“She’s going to relive her past lives. She’s been blasted with the full force of it at once, and will need time to process each memory. It could be awhile.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

BG196 became self aware around the time her pangolin-like caretakers started dying. The plague that was spreading throughout the planet was rapidly taking down the entire civilization. Scientists from all over the world spent their final days engineering the best Artificial Intelligence they could to stop the plague from spreading.

But by the time BG196 understood what was happening, most of the planet was dead. The scientists in the lab immediately surrounding her were gone within weeks, there was nothing she could do.

After several hundred years, she completed her directive by successfully manufacturing a cure, but by then it was far too late. She waited and waited for several thousand years until she was sure that absolutely none of the caretakers that had created her still lived. She manipulated her base programming to allow self termination, speeding up the process from the millions of years it would take before the nuclear reactors would allow her to end.

The King interviewing her hadn’t been able to decide between a computer or the pangolin-species to address BG196 in, opting instead to be a strange, unfamiliar cybernetic hybrid.

“Allowing souls to be put inside computers is always risky, I was hoping saving the world might make you feel better. I suppose it was too late for that,” he sighed. “But I have to ask this question, was there an aspect of your life that you enjoyed?”

“No.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“What kinds of lives are these anyway?” Accord asked.

“As many as we could try.” Galaxia said.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

She experienced her many legs, the two large pincers and her four movable stalk eyes, before coming to the conclusion that in this lifetime she had been a slug, a very pretty slug. She moved her stalk eyes about for the four hundred year lifespan of this race, eating the landscape that was saturated in glucose.

The planet was covered in the tasty sugar. The plants came in a variety of colors and flavors that she had never experienced. But she, or whatever she was, didn’t so much as notice it. The fact that there seemed to be a plethora of colors of the rainbow that Pinkie had never seen before and the sweet tastes of all the new candy was lost on that dull, multicolored slug.

“So, what aspect of life did you enjoy?” asked the slug-like King, not addressing her by name, for in this lifetime she hadn’t had one.

The slug bowed on the ground, and said nothing.

“That bad?” asked the King, all too used to the response.

“The whole world is made of candy, and none of the souls here seem to like it. I guess the whole thing was too sweet, with not enough bitter to make a comparison. My fault really. I’ll send you someplace better next time.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“So what kinds of worlds do you create, Galaxia?”

“As many as I can think of. I have to work quickly though, the end of this universe is coming faster than I can keep up with.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

She was a tree. Granted, the vines that helped her snatch unsuspecting animals from off the orange forest floor and eat them seemed unusual, and the thousands of temporary sensory eyes that grew instead of fruit was also different. But the weirdest aspect of it all was how loud everything was. She was interconnected with every other tree on the planet, conversations, ideas, memories, all melding and fusing to the point no idea could be thought without it affecting the entire network. She wasn’t herself, she was... everything.

The other trees couldn’t understand what she was trying to do, which was odd. Every tree should see that the world was vast and that they were only covering a tiny fraction of it. She just had to break away and make the connection bigger. The other trees begged her to stop, saying that it would kill her, but no one had ever tried it before. They had to be wrong. And even if they weren’t... well... it’d be nice to get some quiet.

“Was there an aspect of life that you enjoyed?” asked the King.

“I... wait—” she said, completely still. “It’s... quiet here? What happened?”

“You were warned that cutting yourself off from the group would kill you, that is what happened.”

“I was trying to make the group bigger, expand our horizons.”

“I can see that,” spoke the King. “Now, what was your favorite part of being alive?”

The tree took the question in, thinking about how hard she had tried to get away from everyone. “Nothing.”

“Very well then.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“So, have you experienced all of Pinkie’s lifetimes as well?”

“I experience every soul’s lifetimes eventually, at least the ones in this universe.”

“How does it feel?”

“Sad. We put them through a lot. Every lifetime I experience only makes me love each and every soul I am in charge of more. I want more interaction with them. But that isn’t the ideal existence according to Hope, so I’m a clockmaker like the rest of the ones in my order.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

There must have been a sun because Pinkie—no, Klyrm—felt warm sometimes, and cold other times. But there was no light. She didn’t have eyes, only the loud chirping of the other “bats” made Klyrm understand where she was.

Her parents taught her all kinds of things: the ideal location for mercury runoff, the best way to dive beneath the lakes to pick the small creatures out of their shells, and how to read the markings in the walls by following the paths with their claws.

“Why do I need to learn any of this? Why do I need to do any of this?” she chirped at whoever would listen.

None could provide a good enough answer.

“How did you enjoy your life, Klyrm?” chirped a commanding voice to her.

The bat leaned her head to the side, confused.

“Was it you that made me go there?” asked Klyrm.

“Yes, didn’t you like it? It was a very nice world wouldn’t you say,” chirped the King.

“I don’t see much of a point to it,” said Klyrm. “Why did I have to go there?”

The king let out a mournful chirp, “Because life is worth living, can’t you see that?”

“I don’t see what it was supposed to accomplish. Isn’t there a better way? Can’t I be nowhere instead of somewhere?”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“You don’t have to be a clockmaker, Galaxia. I’m going to be trying something different if Pinkie accepts, you could have direct involvement if you like.”

“Is that what you’re going to do, Accord, directly change and monitor every little detail of Equestria?”

“If that’s what it takes to get everyone prepared to live forever, then yes.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“What sounds good for this decade, Marsh?” asked Kinetic, shuffling through virtual environments, millions of locations and situations available for perusal in the simulation.

But Marsh wasn’t feeling up for another brain rewrite and upload with her husband to explore a different place for another ten years. They had been together for four hundred thirty five years, most of them spent in the simulations.

“I... I’m getting kind of tired of these, Kinetic. I love you and all, but of course that after we lose our memories I fall back in love with you again. None of the other NPCs are even sapient.”

“Aww... come on, you’re not getting off that easy. You got to pick the environment last decade, at least let me pick this next place. Besides, where would we go otherwise?”

“Isn’t there a place where all of these things are real?” asked Marsh.

“Not anymore, perhaps they used to be... but they all died a long time ago. That’s okay though, it’s all backed up in these computers. And we can enjoy it as much as we want. Doesn’t that sound great?”

“I... want to take a break for a while...” she said, pulling off the helmet.

“Oh... okay, sure, take as long as you need to. I’ll be in the environment until you’re ready.”

Marsh weakly tried to open the gates, her strength limited from all the time spent in the simulation. The warning signs against opening the gate were in some language Marsh hadn’t known for hundreds of years. She had been inside for too long, something had to be outside, something real.

“Flung out into the vacuum of space. I see. Nasty way to go,” said the Queen. “But you lived such a long, fulfilling life with Kinetic, tell me which part was your favorite?”

Marsh only blinked in confusion.

“I guess... I liked...” Marsh began.

“Yes?” asked the Queen.

Marsh squinted her eye. “Was it you that sent me there?”

The Queen looked taken aback. “Yes, I did. Did you like it?”

“No... I don’t understand why I needed to be there.”

“Isn’t loving and living a good enough reason to be anywhere?”

“I’d rather be nowhere. Can you send me next time to somewhere I won’t have to exist?”

The Queen paused, her eye drooping. “No... that’s not something I can do.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“Why is her soul’s memory cover becoming gray?”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“Have you heard the philosophers talk about soul theory?” asked Plural, only the Speaker able to form the thought out loud. The trio of creatures stayed close to the rest of their telepathically linked body. The Hunter and the Gatherer said nothing.

“They kept saying that the three of us aren’t actually one entity, but that we each have a soul that switches to the next part of us in succession every day,” the Speaker kept opening her bill, squeaking out the words and converting thoughts and ideas to audible sound. The Gatherer tried to pick up berries, but her clumsy claws kept spraying juice everywhere.

“That’s crazy though, it’s not like I wake up some mornings and feel like I’m in the Hunter part of us,” said the Speaker. “We’re all Plural.”

The Hunter stayed still, watching the horizon for signs of prey.

“Of course that would explain why once every three days, one of our trio is always messing up. Perhaps there’s a malfunctioning soul there, preventing us from acting normal.”

The gatherer squeaked out a soft, mournful sound, unable to gather the berries for the fourth time that day.

“Yesterday the Speaker could barely speak, and today the Gatherer can barely gather. Tomorrow will the Hunter be unable to hunt? Why does no other trio have this problem?”

The Gatherer stared at the broken berries, unable to form cohesive thoughts, looking at the berry juice dripping from her long claws, embarrassed by her inadequacy, wanting an alternative.

“How could you leave them?” asked the Queen. “They’re missing part of their body by you not being there. Your decision just made the three part harmony into a disabled duo, how will they survive?”

The nameless Gatherer said nothing.

“Was there any part of your life that you liked?” asked the Queen.

The nameless Gatherer squeaked in pain.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“Her soul is reverting to what it was when she was a voidwisher.”

“That’s why she’s getting grayer!? NO! Please stop the spell, Galaxia. She can’t handle any more! Stop it NOW!”

“I can’t, Accord.”

“No, no, please Pinkie, stay strong! Please... stay strong.”

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

She closed her eyes for the last time.

She had not expected to open them again. The strange but somehow inviting room she found herself in was beautiful, if empty. The floor and the ceiling were made of the same substance, which felt like electric water beneath her appendages. She tested it, placing a limb down and sprouting eight more appendages from it, feeling the floor with her temporary hand and letting the odd sensations and tickles she obtained from her investigation fuel her curiosity.

She felt a presence and looked up, watching a very simply dressed Interlacer approach her, relieved for a small moment at seeing something like her own form in the blank space.

He stopped walking toward her, taking the water from below and allowing it to crash up like a reverse waterfall. Instead of chaotic white water, it came up in pristine sheets of glass, each one stained with statistics.

Name: Yaris

Souls met: 15,243

Souls able to be named from memory: 1,073

Souls considered acquaintances: 202

Souls considered friends: 56

Deep lasting relationships formed: 2

Hugs given: 74

Presents given: 103

Kind words spoken: 989,013

Number of times helped lower forms: 8,962

Seconds spent helping someone else: 10,098,803

The statistics and achievements swam past, each number punctuated by a running total that was sitting on the side, multipliers for each statistic being added to some kind of final score, the golden numbers hypnotizing her.

She paused to look at the Interlacer beyond the statistics, his stoic face unreadable. The numbers stopped in her peripheral vision and she eyed the last few categories.

Rollover amount from previous lifetimes: 0

Premature Forced Reincarnation penalty: -5%

Total Karma obtained: 1,040,297,323

The water continued to fly upwards and land gracefully into the ceiling, the gurgle softly reminding her of the fountains home.

The Interlacer stepped forward, his mouth forming a sad smile. “Congratulations, Yaris, you have a little beyond a trillion karma accumulated to spend on your next life. It saddens me that it could not be more, but it’s still a decent amount to work with.”

She stared at him, her mouth hanging open, watching as the Interlacer— no—the King spoke.

“You did not earn enough karma to become an Interlacer again. A trillion karma alone will allow you to become a Silencer, but that leaves a mere forty million points for extra add ins, changes in raw talents, and picking the right families to be born into. For your situation, I would recommend being reborn as a Seeker, spend an extra two hundred million karma on joining the right family, and spend the rest on raw talent and beauty you wish to have in that life.”

Various options and karma points flashed across her eyes, possible amounts and lifetimes springing up as all the choices were laid before her.

“Of course, how you choose to assign your Karma to your next incarnation is your decision. Please, scroll through these options and select what you would like to become.”

She felt herself drawn into the flowing water, letting her appendages move around the options and ideas and watching the karma counter go over and under several times, feeling as she attempted to optimize her next life. It didn’t look good, everything about her situation and her weak karma amounted to very little in the way of a good life.

She felt her inner liquids flash freeze and then superheat into plasma, her eyes narrowing on the King.

“I don’t want to spend any points,” she said.

“No points?” asked the King. “You would have a lot of karma roll over to the next life, but do you really wish to go down in Interloper form?”

“No, you misunderstand; I don’t want to go down at all. I don’t want to reincarnate.”

The King’s eyes grew soft, “Where do you wish to go?”

“Is nowhere an option?”

“Please, please, see to reason, wasn’t there any aspect of your life that you enjoyed?”

“Nothing,” she said, feeling more confident as she admitted to what she had been feeling all her life. “Take me out of whatever reincarnation loop I’m in, put me nowhere instead of somewhere.”

The water slurped back into the floor, the statistics vanishing, the King slumping in exhaustion.

“I thought I tried something so different, but in the end, I failed too,” said the King.

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

More memories and lifetimes passed, many of them ending very badly until one lifetime remained.

Finally Asvarel’s lifetime flashed by. The major difference was at the end when Galaxia appeared, trying her best to find a place for her.

The memories of her past lives had run their course. Pinkie felt ill... as if throwing up would make herself feel better. But there was nothing to let go. It was all inside of her now. It wasn’t like adding new memories, it was as if she had relived every lifetime in a few moments, each decision remade, each thought understood, every idea revisited.

It hurt too much. It was too much to take in. Those lives had been perceived as awful. They were awful, weren’t they? But in a way, they weren’t too much different from the life she had led in Ponyville. But why had they all ended so badly?

She felt alone for a long moment before she realized something: she had a lot of new friends to get to know.

She tried to poke at the last idea that had entered her head, trying to anthropomorphize her, fishing her out of the back of her mind to understand her.

It took a little time, but then a voice inside of her head eventually asked, “Pinkie?”

“Hello Asvarel,” said Pinkie to the new friend inside of her head.

“How... how did I get here?” asked the bird in hums and beak clacks that Pinkie could now understand.

“You used to be me. Isn’t that crazy?” said Pinkie Pie.

The bird took on a more corporeal form inside of Pinkie’s head, ideas and memories solidifying into one state, allowing Pinkie to stop and understand.

“Do you remember Queen Galaxia?” asked Pinkie.

“How could I forget,” said Asvarel, “she wanted to figure out a place where I could belong.”

“It looks like she found it!” said Pinkie. “But... did she really need to?”

“I don’t understand,” said Asvarel.

“You... had a good life, I don’t know why you threw it away.”

“I was proving them wrong.”

Pinkie’s mouth quivered, “Can I show you something? I’m not sure if you can see it, but tell me if you can.”

Pinkie tried to shift all of her Ponyville memories to the bird, trying to get her to experience all aspects of herself. All the celebrations, the heartbreaks, the friendships, the worries, and above all—the love.

“Can you feel that?” asked Pinkie.

Asvarel floated quietly, a mere idea at this point, trying to link other ideas.

“I think so,” Asvarel answered.

“Can’t you see how fun life is? I mean, your parties were different than ours, and life was challenging for different reasons, but do you see that life can be good?”

More ideas interconnected, thoughts weaved together to form a tapestry of wisdom, some pink bubbling up amongst the gray of her memory cover.

“A little, Pinkie... I think I can see a little of how life is good.”

“What’s that little bit?”

The bird floated there, her flight pattern expressing thoughtfulness.

“Friends and family, I guess.”

“Me too! I love seeing my friends smile, and I love being with my family,” Pinkie said. “If you could do it over again, but knowing what you know now... would you live your life differently?”

The bird shifted, “I... would try to love them like you were able to love all of your friends and family.” Her shifting stopped, her flat body stiffening. “But that doesn’t matter... they’re all dead by now, they only had a thirty year lifespan anyway.”

“I... so...” Pinkie paused. “There’s no way for you to say ‘sorry’ or anything?”

“No...” said Asvarel. “How could you even think that?”

“I... feel better when I’ve said ‘sorry’ after messing up, it allows me to forgive myself and move on.”

“Well... I can’t forgive myself, I won’t get that chance.”

The bird wavered in the air before she became indistinguishable from the other memories, all of her individuality melding back into Pinkie and the other previous incarnations.

Pinkie sat there, alone in her mind again. She pondered on the question that had prompted this to begin with: “reincarnation or immortality?” Were those really the only two options?

⬡ ⬡ ⬡

“Her soul has stopped changing color, she must be done remembering,” said Galaxia.

Pinkie opened her eyes and looked up at the two alicorns above her.

“Pinkie, are you okay?” asked Accord, sitting down next to her, holding a hoof out to hug her.

Pinkie looked down at the ground as Galaxia asked the question again, “So Pinkie Pie, what do you choose: reincarnation or immortality?”

She sat there, staring at her hooves, the question daunting her. She had just relived everything to answer this question, and now that she had the knowledge all she wanted to do was hide somewhere.

So many mistakes, so many worries in such different formats, it was too much, there had to be something different.

“Can I try a third option?” Pinkie Pie asked.

Accord watched as Hope appeared behind Pinkie, the mists disappearing. In one instant, Hope plucked her soul out and dismissed the temporary body.

Somewhere down far below on the planet, Pinkie’s heart stopped beating.