Teleportation is just a flash, I once thought. Pop-poof and you're there. I should be able to forgive myself for thinking that, but I can't. I can't forgive any of my selves for being so fundamentally wrong.
There are more of me now, in this magical nowhere. Over my time as an alicorn princess, I learned to focus my magic to preserve my body in the absence of the normal conditions for life, and I learned to shield my mind against insanity. My survival time here is now measured in months instead of days. And I teleport a lot in months. Not nearly so much as I used to, but still a lot.
And my magic works here now. Just.
So the multeity of myself, occasionally reinforced, occasionally culled, we work here. We work to prevent ourselves.
It makes sense. Our mission is to prevent Twilight Sparkle from teleporting again so nopony else is stuck in this hellscape.
I'm always squeamish about using my corpses as supplies, at first. I wear myself down eventually. Always have. Hopefully eventually won't have to.
Might not have to, the wrong way. I call myself over to the segment of spherical shell that serves as a staging point for computation for the moment. I study my work with growing ice in my veins. (Figuratively. Fortunately.) I'd always held out hope that it was conical, or N-greater-than-three-dimensional, or some other way unbounded. No such luck. My latest spell, acquired from my latest remnant, confirms it.
This sphere is finite.
There is no today. But today I pulled myself back.
I had a bright idea a while back. Go deeper. Teleport across the sphere.
Teleportation erases tracking spells. I wonder why. Several of me have arrived with magical trackers. I reapplied one to me, and I teleported. I arrived, and I searched for me.
I never found myself.
Another attempt, with the strongest tracker I knew. Then the most dedicated magical search I've ever heard of. I have all the time in the world.
I got myself back. Dead. Suicide.
Again, this time with an expectation of search time. This time, I came back alive, and with a report. Written in my own leather and ink, of course.
Another sphere. Still occupied by the first scout's corpse and the second's final scrawlings. Slightly smaller.
There is but one logical course of action.
I live longer and am useful for longer, and reinforcements continue to arrive. I know all I can about this sphere and the next one. There is another beyond. So, Multeity Squared.
I spread across the universes. My little universes. All I know. I travel down the stack by teleporting.
The only way up is to be pulled.
I scrawl messages, I light signal flares. I try to send information up the chain, with the hope that I can apply it to send information beyond the chain.
Chicken and egg. Information flow needs a connection. A connection out needs information flow.
Interception never works.
I teleport less now. Better with wings.
I walk across the carpet of fur and the floorboards of bone to the Wall. I measure it.
Vertical.
Halfway.
Reinforcements appear halfway between the level of bodies and the Apex. Much of my time is spent moving gruesome beacons to change my spawn point. Different Twilights in different areas break down at subtly different times.
It's always a downer when I go insane before touching the floor. Moreso because it was clearly a downer before I teleported away from it.
My council approves drastic measures. The chain stretches further until I find myself in a deep sphere barely big enough to hold me.
I follow myself. I never arrive.
If there is no room in the sphere, the next Twilight fails to materialise, at origin, destination, or intermediate containment.
Twilights could be created or relocated. Now they can be destroyed too.
Three quarters.
Three quarters of this sphere is full of my bodies.
I have a microcosm of civilisation here. Bakeries, factories, universities, hospitals. No graveyards. All built from myself. Perfect recycling. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
But the only way to stop the madness is to fill the universe. So every few thousand of me, I build a new level, construct new buildings, and fill in the old with what's left of me after I'm done with it.
Waste not, want not.
I've made a discovery. One that won't save us, or Twilight, but might save everypony after.
If a sphere is full, the teleportee is destroyed. That was known.
If a sphere is so very close to full, a small object near the top can be displaced to the teleport origin to make room. That was unknown.
The Twilight Council has commissioned the Report on the Negative Effects of Teleportation on Teleporters.
I can pronk halfway to the Apex from this layer of dead me.
There are no smaller spheres to go to - all full. The universities are buried. The Twilight Council no longer meets. When one Twilight appears, the oldest must seppuku - there is only so much.
The Report is being edited for its fiftieth draft.
Appendix A contains a complete accounting of ~~everypony~~ everyone who's ever died here and their cause of death. Appendix B contains a complete history of us.
It's a good thing I'm here and not, say, Rainbow Dash, bless her mortal soul, wherever it is now.
I can pronk and hit my head - not my horn, my head - on the Apex. There's room for less than a hundred more. The Report is in final copyediting.
I am the second last. Everypony else is dead. There is room for only one more Twilight in this largest of spheres. To swap her in, the report I've just signed, stamped, and scrawled a warning on must be swapped out.
I can only hope.