The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics says that every particle and parcel of the universe exists simultaneously within every possibility open to it. At some still-mysterious prod, it chooses one of those infinite outcomes and settles on it, and the cycle begins again.
Under this interpretation, when someone decides to go to the circus rather than stay and talk with a normally reclusive friend, this is because the waveforms of the hundred trillion atoms within each of a hundred billion neurons collapse onto possibilities that, jointly, determine this outcome.
Somewhere between these continual collapses of waveforms large and small, does free will slip in? Is anyone, really, to blame?
This story will not answer that question. It is concerned only with three particular assemblies. Let us label them Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.
In our world, Wynken had long blonde hair. It was bleached, and up close it looked like straw, but it shimmered so that when she walked in daylight, you might mistake her for a sunbeam. She was unremarkable in photographs, but beautiful when she looked at someone she loved. She believed in true-hearted knights, rightful kings, unicorns, communism, and all impossible dreams, because they were impossible.
She would not have liked the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. She would have shaken her fist and declared that, if a waveform were as noble as Don Quixote, as faithful as Sancho Panza, and as stubborn as Sancho's ass, then it would not collapse.
Let us consider her claim. The predominance of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is, after all, only an accident of history. It was merely the first coherent interpretation of the data. But choosing one of an infinite number of possibilities at random introduces not just a very large, but an infinite additional complexity to the theory. The proper response, as a scientist, is to prefer interpretations without this infinite complexity penalty. One should instead assume, until proven otherwise, that this collapse does not happen—that every possible path is pursued, every reality realized.
In some reality, therefore, horses became the dominant lifeform on Earth. This is science. Let us call this reality Equestria.
In Equestria, Wynken was a straw-colored earth pony who sometimes insisted she was an albino bat-pony, only without the wings or the ear tufts. If you asked her whether she really believed this, she would grin and say she did not bow to the tyranny of facts.
Blynken was a unicorn who had come to Ponyville from Starlight's Village the week after the wall of cutie marks came down. He still froze sometimes when he entered a grocery store, staring at the ranks of shelves full of a hundred kinds of food. He smiled only at things he found very funny or very sad, or both. It was hard to tell; for he always smiled with a twinkle in his eyes and a skeptical upward twist at one end of his mouth, as if he'd just told you a joke that was funny only because it was true. Taped to his refrigerator was a letter from Canterlot's Clearinghouse, saying, "You Might Already Be a Winner!" It always made him smile.
Nod was old enough to be their grandfather. He was a short, quiet earth pony who had left his heart across the sea in Prance. During the Great Misunderstanding, the Guard had taken him from his farm in Appaloosa and put him onto a ship in Baltimare. After a month of rocking and vomiting below decks in the dark, they dragged him up into the sunlight and dropped him onto a beach, where he fell in love for the first and only time--with the land. When he talked about his beloved Prance, and the people he'd known there, he stood taller and spoke more clearly.
We shall add a fourth character to this story. He need not be named or described, since in this reality he is superfluous, a Chekhov's gun that fails to fire. He studied an obscure sub-field of particle physics. It turned out to be a complete dead-end, but at the time he imagined the hoof of destiny was on his shoulder, and so devoted himself so much to his work that he was more tool than person. Thus, this (de)characterization is appropriate.
One day in the magical land of Equestria, our unnamed cog in the wheels of Fate had a pair of tickets to the Barneigh and Bay Leaf Circus, in Sweet Clover's field just outside town. He'd bought them a month ahead of time and told Wynken to keep the day clear on her calendar. They were long, slender, elegant-looking tickets, printed on shiny cardboard stock with the date on the very tips. He paused before knocking on Wynken's door and practiced fanning them out in his hoof so that a slight gap appeared between them.
When she answered the door, he did it perfectly, fanning them out just so with a snap of his fetlock, but her face remained an ordinary pony face as she watched.
Then she looked at him and smiled. He almost dropped the tickets then. He loved her, you see, as much as it was possible for him to love somepony.
But he had walked slowly to her house, one leg at a time, because he'd worn his white suit, his only suit, and hadn't wanted to get it dusty. So they had to rush to get to the circus before the elephants and the dragons marched in and two dozen clowns climbed out of a single wagon. They were almost to Sweet Clover's field when they ran into Blynken.
Blynken rushed up to the stallion, spraying dust from the dirt road all over his white suit. He said that he wanted to talk. This was odd, because Blynken never rushed, and Blynken never said he wanted to talk; he would just start talking. It was odder because he was quiet and earnest, instead of loud and ironic.
Wynken said that of course they could talk, then looked at her stallion to see if that was all right.
And of course it was all right with him. He didn't care about the tickets. He didn't say they could talk with Blynken after the show. He tore those fucking tickets into pieces and threw them in the trash, even though they cost 60 bits each and it was the last performance of the year, and even though he had imagined repeatedly and in detail how the whole evening with Wynken, whom he had not yet gotten to home plate with, might go. You put your friends above your own plans or pleasure in Equestria.
It was a good thing, too, because they learned that most of Blynken's smiles that they thought had been happy had really been sad. He didn't feel like he Might Already Be a Winner.
They all talked late into the night. I don't know if they found the magic words that make sad people feel better, the words Wynken always believed in though neither of us ever found them. Perhaps these words are well-known in Equestria. Perhaps they're printed on the sides of milk cartons, instead of pictures of people who've vanished. No one vanishes in Equestria. Perhaps instead of making their assistant disappear at the close of their acts, stage magicians in Equestria make some other pony unvanish, somepony who had gone missing, but with a swish of a wand or the glow of a horn, there they were. Perhaps those two did go to the circus, and were sitting on wooden risers munching popcorn when Blynken stumbled out of the magician's cabinet, blinking into the glare of the spotlights. The point is, Blynken did not vanish that night.
The next year Blynken bought all three of them tickets to the circus, and they saw the elephants and the dragons and the two dozen clowns, and they laughed and cried. The other stallion, the fate-conscious physicist, loved them both as much as he could love anypony.
And when Wynken finally realized that that was as much as he could love somepony, well, there was Blynken, and they were all good friends, and so they all stayed good friends, only differently. Wynken didn't latch onto some stud with a smart suit and a used-wagon salespony's smile. Blynken was a good pony with a good heart, not a stallion whose eyes slid across other ponies as if they were wall decorations. He wasn't eager to play with new ponies the way a foal is eager to play with new toys. The other stallion accepted it gracefully, and never got drunk and called Wynken on the phone begging her to come back, or sent her photos taken by a private detective of her new lover going out or staying in with other mares. There are no restraining orders in Equestria.
So Wynken, Blynken, and that other pony were all still good friends when they met Nod. Not many ponies really met Nod. Nod never spoke to anyone. He came to the library once a month, pulling a large wagon full of books. He would return the books in the wagon and fill it with other books. He didn't seem to care what the books were about.
They asked him why, and he said he lived alone on his family farm far outside of town, growing weeds. He was too old to work, and had never married, and all his friends and family were gone, and so he sat in his house and read books all day, because he didn't know what else to do.
So Wynken, Blynken, and that other pony decided to all trade addresses with Nod, and they promised to write him letters. The physicist pointed out that he would still just be reading, but Wynken and Blynken told him this was quite different, and he was being stupid, which in fact he often was.
Then Nod discovered he was not really a reader, but a writer. He wrote to each of them every week. He wrote about sitting on his porch watching the moon pass behind the leaves of the oak tree his great-grandfather had planted. He wrote about what kinds of flowers grow in what kinds of soil, and how much sunlight or shade each needed. He described the tiny piece inside a self-winding watch that turns a wheel to wind a spring every time you move your foreleg. He warned them against eating too much peanut butter, because there is a fungus that sometimes grows in peanuts which cannot be removed and over-stimulates the immune system.
He wrote with large letters and used capitals and exclamation marks freely. He wrote his messages on broad sheets of fine paper made of 25% cotton, not on napkins that he stole from fast-food restaurants because he couldn't afford paper.
Most of all he wrote about his year with the Guard in Prance, so long ago. He wrote how, when he'd arrived, the water in the harbor was crystal clear, and so full of sunken ships that they couldn't anchor near the pier. They had to trot across a floating bridge of planks, with seaweed-covered ships flashing in the light beneath them each time a wave rolled by. They saved up their pay, and cans of white gas, so that once a month they could eat wormy Guard chow by "candlelight" while a local stallion serenaded them in Prench, which was all the more beautiful because they didn't understand it.
And they all wrote him back, in the magical kingdom of Equestria. They weren't doing anything so goddamn important that they couldn't take the time to write back to an old pony who was racing to set down and pass on everything he knew to somepony, anypony who would listen, before it was lost.
Eventually, Nod's letters talked Wynken and Blynken into taking Nod on a trip across the sea, where he could see Prance one last time. Blynken, Wynken, and Nod stood on the aft deck of an ocean liner as it pulled away from the pier. That's how I remember them—Blynken holding his foreleg around Wynken while her mane streamed behind her in the wind, while Nod hopped up and down, pawing at them and babbling about Prance, so that they looked like parents hectored by a large, eager child, as they set off for new adventures across the sea, adventures too extensive and exciting to recount here.
That's where they are today, far across the sea. Back in Ponyville, all of the books Nod ever checked out have been returned to the library. Wynken cleared out an empty shelf in her kitchen, and it's waiting for her to bring back the set of Prench dishes she's always wanted. The wall of Blynken's bedroom is still as white as a clean hoofkerchief. There are no shotguns in Equestria.
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod never met in our reality. Their waveforms each collapsed alone. But, as previously shown, it is necessary that in some realities, horses became the dominant lifeform on Earth. It is necessary that in some realities, Nod went back to Prance. It is necessary that in some reality, both of these things happened. This is science.
And that's what happened to Wynken, Blynken, and Nod in Equestria. Shut up. Shut up. That's how it all happened in the magical kingdom of Equestria.
