Proving Quantum Mechanics With Ponies

The Irregularity of Time

After getting out of the shower, I brushed off my clothes and redressed in them. After all, they were all I had to wear. I timidly drank the coffee twilight gave me, taking small amounts in every swallow. She talked ferociously as I stared at her from the other end of the couch, nodding and replying with a short "yeah" when needed. She went on for an hour or so, even with my small sips the drink didn't even last halfway through.

Venturing on, she touched on topics like how late the party went to, statistical data on the refilling of the punch bold, psychoanalysis of the general atmosphere of the party and its change overtime. These topics were trivial to me, but I listened because I wanted to. And it was polite. And it got interesting when we got around to Applejack's sleep cycles. By the end of it Twilight looked even more tired than when I first saw her up close.

"Well that's all of the essential information about the party after you left," she said with a yawn to accentuate the point that she was done.

"Well that was interesting to know," I said strictly out of politeness.

"And you already know what I was doing all night."

"Yes, I have a fair idea." We stared at each other for a minute, almost smiling.

"Welp, I'll be catching up on some much needed rest now, I'll see you in a little bit," she said finally getting up from her seat on the couch.

"I'll be here when you get back," I said in a joyful tone. She then proceeded to smile as she walked upstairs with that familiar sway in her hips. I heard the door close and stretched myself out on the couch. The sun was shining in the ground-floor windows, heating and providing a lovely natural lighting. It smelled of old books and disinfectant still, a home-like smell. It wasn't the smell of my home, but it was a fantastic substitute.

The light from the most westerly facing window made a bright patch directly beneath it. It must have been a little after noon. I placed my hands behind my head and tried to think about what was really going on here, about a way out. But the more I thought, the more tired I became. My eyelids became heavy and I decided a nap would do me a lot of good. So that's exactly what I did.

*****

The next couple of weeks went by rapidly. Twilight and I became close roommates and Spike was alright with having me around too. We did fun things around Ponyville such as apple picking, going to see plays by the Ponyville Preforming Arts Group and average everyday things (as average as they come in a town full of miniature equines). There wasn't a dull day in the entire month and a half that followed the night of the party. Even on the days when it rained we made the best of it inside by reading books and discussing their literary merit. The others of the mane six were always visiting and always brought a good time with them. Altogether, those weeks were quite possibly the best time of my entire life.

Then it all ended, but were not quite there yet, there is still more filler before we get to that action sequence, so might as well enjoy it for the time being.

These weeks were not just me running around, doing what I pleased, there was a mission to be accomplished that I had fixed myself upon after waking up from that nap: to recover or recreate the mystery machine that dropped me here in the first place. (Hopefully just recover because recreating was just downright impossible.)

I didn't want the machine so I could go back home, well, in the beginning I did, but after the first month I wasn't so sure. My home was becoming of less and less significance to me, but it seemed like there were too many loose ends back home that needed to be tied, or cut away. And if it was in my power to do so, I felt obligated to try, but nothing beyond that.

For a specific amount of the day I would go around and ask ponies about the object. It wasn't exactly an efficient plan, but it was really all I had, and for the first couple of weeks there were no developments. Not until after the 17th day of looking did I finally find something.

One of the town's ponies, Bon Bon, had seen a strange shooting star traveling north-west during the same day I appeared. I thanked her and immediately attempted to find it, but without luck. It took another six days of searching before my next stroke of luck. That’s when I finally found the first piece of the puzzle: a portion of the mystery machine. Twilight and I discussed the function and design of it as the half disintegrate hunk of metal sat on her counter top.

"So it takes matter from a specific region of space and interchanges it with another region? That's an amazing discovery!" Twilight said in her usual enthusiastic scientific voice.

"It is quite a find but the really challenge will be decoding how it works and then repairing it," I said unamused, "Quite literally, we understand absolutely nothing about the physical sciences behind the functions of the machine and it could be like trying to imagine the fourth-dimension, which is strictly incomprehensible."

"Oh, come on, Theo. It'll be difficult but not impossible; nothing’s impossible," she said attempting to cheer me up and trying to look into my eyes which I kept fixed on the scrap of unknown metal resting on the table. "Any devout follower of quantum mechanics knows that nothing is impossible!" She smiled having proven a point, and she had proven a big one.

I spent the next week or so finding any other pieces hidden in the grassy meadows just beyond Ponyville. Altogether I came into possession of four of them; four twisted, burnt, banged up pieces of a machine that was almost beyond repair and I hadn't the blue-prints to fix it. This is going to be a fun little challenge, I thought.

Now came the long nights of work. Twilight and I painstakingly took apart the machine, keeping an accurate catalog of everything’s position. The purple pony’s magic was quite useful for taking things out and placing them in their correct pile. We found all kinds of electrical components: wires, capacitors, inductors, resisters, PNP-semiconductors and a single generator near the center of the housing that didn't appear to have a power source. Although all of these parts were identifiable, they didn't obey classical laws of electrical circuits. But after much data gathering, we were able to define new time and velocity dependent functions that accurately predicted the reactance of the components. Although we were able to define these functions, we couldn't for our lives tell anyone what they meant. And once we were finished assembling all of the pieces, we discovered that whatever was at the center, was still missing. It accounted for one sixth of the volume of the machine and it wasn't more electrical circuitry that had just fallen out, the generator was connected to a spherical housing that encased the free space at the center and looked like it would have drawn the power from whatever belonged inside.

These developments took about two weeks. Nonstop work until sleep overpowered us, which usually occurred around three or four in the morning. But by the end of these two weeks we still had no idea what could have belonged at the center.

"It has to be some kind of energy source, and judging the gravity of what the machine actually does, it should be quite a large energy source," I said pacing and not caring enough to laugh at my unintentional pun. (We had determined that the machine manipulates gravity fields in order to transport the matter around it across space and time)

"Such amounts of energy should not even be possible," Twilight interjected. And she was correct, the task we were trying to accomplish was comparable to traveling faster than the speed of light, which requires an infinite amount of energy and then infinite more if you want to go faster. If you listen to the equations, they’ll tell you the same story.

"But the creator of this machine was able to bypass that somehow, somehow he cheated," I said still pacing, felling like I was so close to cracking it. In fact, Twilight was a little bit closer than I.

"Well," she said jokingly, "the only way to get that much energy would be to collect it from all of the points in a battery’s time line."

"Yeah, wouldn't that be an easy save," I said with a little chuckle. I stopped mid-stride and turned on my back foot. "Wait," I said quizzically, "that could work!" She looked at me like I was joking. "Think about it, were talking about trans-dimensional travel here, what’s a little temporal shift compared to that?" She looked at me more seriously now.

"So you want to take all of the energy from a battery at all of the points in time it has ever existed?" she asked unsure.

"Yes! Well, no, not a battery, there’s no way the machine can facilitate a significant time event like that. Whatever energy source we use it has to be inherently interactive with its own timeline." I said excitedly. This was it! The only solution! I thought. But then it hit me, "Great, another impossible substance to obtain." That ruined everything; it was the only solution but we don’t even if that substance exists.

"Well," Twilight cut through my thoughts, "it’s possible that…I may own something similar to that." I looked at her to see if she was kidding. She looked more serious than ever. "Just…wait here," She said a little uneasy.

I waited on the couch until she came back. I checked the clock, 2:30 AM. The stars shown bright through Twilight’s windows and I could see the moon in the western sky, still far from the horizon. It was almost full, just a sliver remained unlit. When I had left home the moon had been full, so if this and my moon were in sync, it should have been two months exactly the next day. I couldn't even imagine what had happened in the two months I was gone. But it didn’t really matter, because this world is so much more interesting than my old one, and after having two months to think, I decided that I would go back only to inform people of my leaving, and then I would be back in Equestria to live my life with the ponies I had grown to love, and one special pony I planned on spending the rest of my life with. You, the reader, are probably thinking I’m crazy for believing that after two months of spending time with someone (or somepony) I could be sure I wanted to spend the rest of my life with them. In reality, it was probably a mixture of teenage hormones, the shock of waking up in a strange new world and meeting someone I could finally identify with that lead me to this conclusion, but to this day I don’t regret it. Even if it caused a life of heartbreak.

Twilight came back into the room as I was deep in thought. She moved quietly so as to make a dramatic entrance. She levitated what she had brought back with her and placed it directly in the space in front of my head with amazing speed and accuracy. As it stopped just before slamming into me she said in a loud voice, “Here it is!” Needless to say this startled me, which is exactly what Twilight had wanted. She giggled as I composed myself and grabbed the box from her magic.

I tried to grab it and asked, "What is-" before she quickly pulled it away from me.

"We can’t open it, not now!" she said forcefully. I looked at here with a raised eyebrow.

"What is it? A Christmas present?" I asked jokingly. She stared back seriously.

"No, inside this box is a Firmagus crystal."

"What’s a-"

"I was getting there if you let me finish."

"Okay, continue."

She took a deep breath and did, "The Firmagus crystal is an extremely rare magical object. It’s magical because that’s what it’s actually composed of, it’s literally solid magic. They form when a unicorn dies and is buried underground. As the body decays, residual magic is expelled from the flesh and pressurized, forming the crystal. The, uh, intentional production of these crystals for monetary gain was declared illegal under Princess Celestia’s rule.  But the one in here was created from one of my ancestors and has been in my family since before Celestia’s rule. Now the reason it must remain in the case is because the crystal releases energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation. If it’s placed in an open area, the crystal converts it’s mass into energy and eventually completely becomes light. If left in a small enclosed space, the energy has nowhere to go and condenses back onto the crystal. There is one more effect of the crystal, because it is such a high concentration in one region of space it has been known to have weird effects on time. People have reported missing whole years because they held on for too long. This one was a possession of my great-great-grandmare, she had it made to commemorate her mother. A great way to preserve her, I think, it’s what I prefer anyway."

Once Twilight had finished her informative anecdote, I sat back on the couch and absorbed this new development.

"Wow, Twilight, this is exactly what we needed, what I needed. But I can’t take it. It’s obviously very important to you, being in your family for so long."

"No, it’s okay; I want you to have it. I couldn't use it for anything anyways."

"Are you sure Twilight, this is a big deal."

She sighed, "Yes, I’m sure." I stared at her for a second. Then I lunged at her from across the couch and held her in a hug. It was so selfless of her to do this for me just so I could tell my parents goodbye. We stayed like that for a little bit, just sitting there and hugging. Then I thought of an idea.

"May I perform an experiment on the Firmagus? How long does it take to fully convert to energy?"

"Yeah, it’ll take about 30 minutes to fully decay into energy. What will you be testing?"

"I’ll show you what I’ll be testing." I grabbed a pen from my pocket and uncapped it. Then I set the Firmagus case on the table and held the cap about a meter above the case.

"Can you open the case? It’ll only be for a couple of seconds?" She did so and just as she did a purple glow filled the room. The Firmagus was the most beautiful think I had seen in my life, it glowed a soft pink-violet. Just as the case was opened, an identical looking pen cap to the one I was holding shot out of the case and landed on the rug a couple of meters away. Twilight and I looked at it, then at each other as I dropped the pen cap I was holding. It accelerated towards the opening in the case and just before it entered, it disappeared into the past. Twilight shut the case and stood on all fours. She used her magic to levitate the cap to my open hand and I fitted it onto the pen, it was the same. The test was a success. I hugged Twilight one last time before she headed upstairs to her bed. I thanked her another three times before she disappeared onto the second floor. Then I lay down on the couch, where I had been crashing for the past two months. Tomorrow’s going to be quite a big day, I thought before drifting off to sleep.