"I'm so glad the humans' first thought when we discovered each other was to send a scientist over!" Twilight exclaimed, opening the door to the library to allow Dr. Jay Wile to enter.
"Thank you, Your Highness." The human had a graying mane--hair, Twilight corrected herself--but he still moved with ease. Twilight marveled at the grace with which his bipedal stance walked. Even Spike, whose legs were shorter (moving his center of mass lower to the ground, thus making balancing easier), struggled with stairs sometimes, but Dr. Wile had climbed them readily.
She sat down in one chair and gestured him to another; it had been magically enlarged to fit him comfortably. "You don't have to call me 'Your Highness', Dr. Wile. Just 'Twilight' is fine."
He smiled good-naturedly. "All right, if you call me Jay."
"Of course. Would you like tea, Jay?"
"I'd love some."
She picked up a tea tray with her magic and levitated it towards Jay. He watched in amazement. Grinning as she set it down, she said, "I'd heard you couldn't do that. I wanted to see your face."
He nodded. "I read you had magic of various sorts, but I still wasn't prepared for that."
At his mention of reading, she beamed. "Oh! You got the books I sent you, then? I thought that would streamline things, if you already had a general basis for what our world is like before we met."
"Yes, they were fascinating to say the least." He picked up a large bag he'd brought. "I got you some books too. Sorry I wasn't able to send them over earlier."
"That's quite all right!" She picked up the bag and placed it on the side table where the tea had been before. Pouring two cups, she said, "I think we should start this first meeting with any questions you might have had about what I sent you. Later, after I go over your books, we can meet again and you can tell me about anything I didn't understand."
He nodded and pulled out a notebook and pen. "I was hoping you'd say that. I don't know if you have an answer to this question, but I was wondering why your world has magic and ours doesn't?"
She beamed. "I thought you might ask about that. I put together a presentation!" Eagerly, she whipped out a slide projector and pulled down a screen from the ceiling. "For a long time, we've been sure that we're a fairly unique planet. We knew the odds of having more than one sapient species on a single world were incredibly low, so we're probably the only place that has that, but there was more than that."
She flicked the projector on, and an image of a beautiful, starry sky filled the screen. "The entire universe, of course, is filled with magic, but it rarely enters everyday life. What it does do is fill in the cracks. It holds things together, connects things."
Jay paused in scribbling notes to look up. "Hold on a second. Are you saying dark matter is magic?"
"Dark matter?"
"Yeah, it's..." He paused, trying to figure out how to describe it. "Well, basically galaxies would be expected to fall apart because of their rotation, but they don't, and nobody can see any reason why not. So we theorized that there's this stuff that nobody can see, that only affects gravity, and the universe was full of it. Holding everything together."
"Well, that's not quite how magic is, but I can see how you would theorize its effects to be those of gravity. Anyway, there was this one space--some ponies have theorized it's the actual center of the universe--where much of that magic gathered." She switched the slide in the projector, which now displayed a bizarre land full of floating islands, unimaginable plants, waterfalls that changed color halfway down, and a swirling purple background. "With no one to control the magic, it ended up in total chaos. And out of this chaos came..." She changed the slide again. "...him."
Jay paused in his note-taking to stare at the horrifying amalgamation on the screen. Its body was similar to a snake, perhaps, but with four limbs--all different. Most of it was covered in fur, its head looked somewhat like a goat with a fang, and mismatched wings extended from its back. On its head, two different horns sprouted, and Jay couldn't even classify them. An impala, maybe? And was that a deer, or-
"His name," Twilight continued, oblivious to Jay's discomfort, "is Discord."
Abruptly, the figure sprung to life. "Really, Twilight, trying to make a presentation about me, without asking me? I'm offended, truly!"
"It's not about you, and stop with possessing the images. That creeps me out."
He rolled his eyes. "Ugh, fine." The projection screen melted into a pile of goo on the floor, then sprang back up into the form of the creature Jay had seen on the screen.
"How did you do that?" Jay asked.
Twilight sighed. "He's made of pure magic, and also chaos. He is also replacing that screen when we're done, which I hope he realizes."
"Yes, very well. But really, Twilight, it was your own fault. You should know better than to cover a topic as fascinating as myself with a slide presentation. To truly tell this story, you need big. You need bold. You need... time travel!"
"Absolutely not! I am not messing with time ever again!"
Jay looked up eagerly. " 'Again'? You've done it before?"
"Twice, I'll tell you about it some other time."
Discord harrumphed. "Now, really, Twilight, I'm not reckless, you know."
"That'd be a first."
"We'll just be observing," he steamrolled on, ignoring her. "You've already done it once, back when we first met and I gave you that riddle." He sighed nostalgically. "Those were good times."
"You brainwashed my friends into behaving like the exact opposites of themselves and tried to take over Equestria."
He shrugged. "Like I said. Good times."
Jay watched this back-and-forth with fascination, still taking the occasional note. There was clearly a lot going on here, and he'd have to ask about it all at some point.
"Look, Discord, I still don't think it's a good idea."
A rushing, grating sound filled the air, followed by electronic beeping. "What?" Discord called. "Can't hear you! Too busy traveling through time!"
"DISCORD!"
The room spun around them, and as Jay watched, he, Twilight, and Discord became whitish and semi-transparent. Then he realized he wasn't standing on anything, but instead was floating in midair, and looked around.
It took his breath away. They were floating through space, numerous spectacular sights passing by his awestruck eyes. Galaxies spun in slow spirals. Stars passed so close he could see solar flares and feel the warmth. Nebulas swirled with brilliant colors. The light of a thousand stars reflected in Twilight's wide and awestruck eyes. Neither human nor pony spoke; it felt wrong to disturb the utter stillness of space.
They found themselves approaching a strange object; it was barely the size of a large table, and composed entirely of something swirling, purple, and glowing. Discord didn't slow his pace, but hurtled straight into it, and to Jay's surprise, out the other end into the center of magic Twilight had described earlier. "Welcome," Discord said, "to the Realm of Chaos."
"I still say that's a misnomer," Twilight grumbled.
Both of them cut off as Discord himself flapped by. A gleam of mischief sparkled in his eyes, and something about him--perhaps the way he carried himself?--seemed younger. Maybe it was the fact that he was actually using his wings instead of just floating around.
"That's me," the present-day Discord remarked helpfully.
"No, really?" Twilight muttered sarcastically.
As the Discord of the past floated by them, taking in the chaos with a slightly maniacal grin, he noticed the swirling portal and stopped to look at it. His face unsettled Jay in a way that the present Discord, despite his oddities, never did.
"Are you sure he can't see us?" he asked uncomfortably. He expected Discord to respond, but instead it was Twilight.
"The thing is, we're not actually here at all," she explained. "I've been examining the magical signatures, and if we were actually in the Center of Magic-"
"Realm of Chaos," Discord corrected.
"-they would be off the charts."
"Then it's... some sort of illusion?" The notebook and pen were in Jay's hands again.
"Not quite that either. I'm not sure exactly what-"
Past-Discord plunged right through her and into the portal, leaving her sputtering. "Whatever it is, that was exceedingly unpleasant!" she managed. The three of them turned to follow Past-Discord.
"In all my time in the Realm of Chaos," Present-Discord narrated, "I'd never discovered this opening before. It fascinated me--a whole universe, with none of the constant chaos I was used to."
The young Discord had paused just outside the portal, and a profoundly discomforting grin appeared on his face. "It was a brave new world, full of possibility," the present Discord said. "In the Realm of Chaos, the disorder was so constant it had become predictable, which chaos should absolutely never do. In this new land, however, I could create my own chaos, and have the thrill that came with bringing it about."
Past-Discord was rubbing his hands together and cackling now. Twilight rolled her eyes. "I guess you always had a flair for the dramatic, huh?"
Present-Discord rubbed his chin. "Yes, I think I might have overdone it."
"How long ago is this?" Jay asked, pen poised to jot down notes.
"I'm not the best at keeping track of time, you know. I think it was about ten thousand years, though."
Past-Discord snapped his fingers and teleported in a flash of light, dragging the three observers along with him. They arrived just above the surface of a strange planet. Jay scribbled frantically on his paper, while Past-Discord glanced over the planet, then shook his head and snapped his fingers again.
"I wandered around the universe, searching for a planet to bend to my will. It took me seven thousand years or so before I found the right one." As Present-Discord spoke, Past-Discord snapped his fingers again and again, taking them to world after world. "I don't think we need to watch the whole process," Present-Discord said, snapping his own fingers. They were transported to Equestria.
A few seconds later, Past-Discord appeared and began to look over the world. He seemed older now, though still with that mischievous, discomforting look to him. "Yes... YES! This is the one!"
"Why on earth did you pick Equestria?" Jay asked, slightly discombobulated by the rapid teleportation. It took him a few moments to realize what he'd said, at which point he laughed. "Oops."
"I think Twilight mentioned it before I arrived," Discord said. "Equestria had an incredibly wide variety of sapient species, more than any other planet I'd ever encountered. Those different factions, all arguing and bumping heads (literally in some cases), created some excellent chaos before I'd even started."
Past-Discord began waving around his paws, changing the color of some objects and causing some other things to float upwards. "That's... not very impressive," Twilight said.
Present-Discord snorted. "The worlds outside of the Realm of Chaos resisted magic. That was part of why I wanted a world with such excellent potential for chaos--it gave me a chance to cause some disharmony indirectly, whispering in creature's ears and such. Made things less boring while I worked on sinking my claws into Equestria and making it more receptive to magic."
He waved his talons, and time began to move at a rapid pace. Equestria grew more and more chaotic as they looked on, until several thousand years had passed and he returned to normal time.
Twilight took over the tale. "Eventually, he pushed too much magic into Equestria, too much chaos. It had stood up well, but eventually, it just... broke."
"What broke?"
"Everything. The world. All laws of physics. It just stopped working."
Jay paused in his note-taking to raise an eyebrow. "You can't just break the laws of physics."
"That's what magic is, Jay. Telekinesis breaks gravity. Transfiguration breaks the Conservation of Mass. Magic is something that, under ordinary laws of the universe, would never be able to happen."
"Magic is just science we don't understand yet!" he retorted.
"Magic is the exception to science!" Twilight drew a diagram in midair with her horn. "The scientific principles still hold in cases not attached to magic, but when magic enters the equation, they break down. The most logical explanation for this phenomenon is that magic is the cause of the breakdown of science!"
"That's not the only logical explanation!" Jay argued back. Discord pulled out some popcorn and sat back to watch. "The laws of logic state that if X and Y correlate, X might cause Y, or Y might cause X, or Z might cause both X and Y."
"Saying the breakdown of science is what causes magic would be patently absurd," Twilight objected. "And what we have that most people who describe those laws don't is the ability to actually control the magic, to introduce it into the equation ourselves. If I try to use magic to levitate an object, I can observe that the object in question stops obeying gravity's laws. Time after time I observe that, after magic is introduced, the laws of physics break down. Thus, the magic broke the laws of physics."
Jay sat back, thinking. "Fine, I suppose I can acknowledge that."
"This is all well and good," Discord said, tossing the popcorn aside, "but we still haven't gotten to the heart of the issue."
"Right. This is where the real answer to your question is. I told you, earlier, that magic is what holds the universe together, correct?"
Jay nodded.
"Well, when Discord broke the world, magic rushed in to fill the gaps. Clouds could be moved around the sky now, instead of drifting by themselves. The sun and moon could be raised and lowered by magic. In fact, not only could those things happen by magic, it was the only way they would. Ponies absorbed much of the magic, because Discord had toyed with us the most."
"I couldn't resist, they had three different types!" he said. "I came to Equestria itself for the variety, how could I resist the variety found in ponies?"
"Dragons got some as well," Twilight continued, "and a few other creatures. But... that's about it, really. Discord, you can take us back now."
He snapped his fingers, and they were seated in the library once more. "Have I mentioned recently how creepy you used to be?" she asked.
"A few times, yes," he yawned.
"One thing is still bugging me," Jay said. "In fact, it was the biggest part that was bugging me when I first asked the question: your sun. In every system we've ever observed, the planets rotate the sun, not the other way around. Why is yours different?"
Discord yawned. "Is that all? I changed that eons ago. I liked having a sun and moon I could yank around on a whim."
He vanished, leaving Jay and Twilight staring at each other awkwardly. After a long pause, Twilight remembered the tea. Surprisingly, it was still warm when she took a sip. "So... was there anything else?"
"I don't think so. Anyway, I'm not sure I can handle another explanation like that one."
She laughed. "I'm pretty sure there aren't going to be any more like that in the future."
Author's Note
Dr. Jay Wile is a real scientist. No, he probably wouldn't ever be chosen for something like this; he writes science textbooks. I think he's a pretty cool guy, though. Plus, another former student of his just named a species of bacteria after him, so I had to do something cool for him too. I wonder if I should tell him I wrote him into an MLP fanfic. Would he be impressed, or depressed?