Twilight Sparkle stood tense before a white sheet draped over her parents’ garage wall. Plastered on her face stretched a wooden grin from ear to ear—not at all convincing with the deer-in-the-headlights look in her eyes. Next to her, a table with a second sheet covering some lumpy object soaking into the fabric and a camera perched upon a tripod with Pinkie Pie behind the scenes.
An "amusing" sight—of which Sunset found herself privy—as Pinkie tried to get the bookish girl to loosen up. This was her “big moment,” after all. The mere notion made Sunset roll her eyes.
“I remember this,” a voice akin to her own said.
Sunset laughed slightly. This was so silly she could practically hear her own inner thoughts aloud on how stupid this whole thing has become.
“This was the Kickstarter promo, right?” the voice asked again.
Now the voice stood out. Rather than in her head, it was distinctly in her ear—perhaps a few inches away from it, in fact. She furrowed her brow as she turned to the source.
Sunset gasped. Suddenly a hand covered her mouth as she stared into the person next to her’s eyes. Her eyes. The person next to her was her, albeit with a questionable fashion sense. The clone wore some sort of shiny metallic fiber jacket with large, protruding shoulders sticking out half a foot with tight faux leather leggings. Once Sunset took in her doppelganger, she grabbed her wrist and tried to get her off.
“Listen, I know this sounds crazy, but I'm from the future!” the clone whispered. “I'm going to take my hand away, but you need to not freak out, alright?”
When the double pulled her hand away, Sunset leaped back, bumping into the wall.
“Quiet on the set!” a muffled Pinkie snapped from the garage.
“How do I know you're from the future?” Sunset whispered, glaring.
“You could always cut off an arm and see if I lose mine?” the clone replied, placing her hand on her hip and raising an eyebrow. “Or, maybe you—a literal extradimensional horse—could be a bit more open to possibilities.”
“If you're me from the future, you'd know the stuff I've dealt with and why I'm skeptical.”
Future Sunset lifted her opposite arm—the one she didn't gag her past self with. It was thin, made of innumerable metallic shafts, and shoved into a flesh nub at the elbow. “If you do decide to cut off a body part, just make sure it isn't on this hand.” Her gaze fell flat as the robotic hand swiveled in a full circle.
Sunset—past Sunset—nodded idly for a second. “ So, future self. Got it. Why are you here? You aren't trying to prevent some post-apocalyptic future are you?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Cyborg arm is like crappy sci-fi shorthand for a post-apocalyptic future.”
Future Sunset raised an eyebrow and shook her head. “What? No! This like Lasik in a few decades. Everyone wants a robot arm.”
Again nodding slowly, Sunset ran her eyes up and down her future self once more, her face distorting in disgust the longer she looked. “Well, one thing's for sure. It'll be an apocalypse for Rarity if this is how people dress.”
“Laugh it up,” future Sunset sneered. “The 80’s revival lasts about two centuries, so buckle in for leg warmers and massive shoulders.” she grabbed her past self's upper arm with her non-robot hand. “But, at risk of sounding like a cliche, I really did come back here to stop a dystopian future.”
Looking down at the hand on her arm, Sunset chewed her lower lip. “And what here—of all places—is going to lead to a dystopian future?”
Using the leverage on present Sunset's arm, she turned the girl to look through the cracked garage door to see Twilight, still nervously smiling as she pulled the sheet off the table to reveal a phallus-shaped mound of bean paste.
No way.
Absolutely not.
The beanis was the downfall of humanity?
Sunset refused to believe it.
“I refuse to believe it,” she vocalized.
“Then let me take me—you—back—or forward—to the future.” Future Sunset scratched her chin with her robot hand. “My past, your future,” she reaffirmed for herself more than anyone else.
The two stood there for a moment before present Sunset cleared her throat. “So, where's the time machine?”
“What?” future Sunset recoiled in disgust. “I'm taking you there with words. Do you know how much time travel costs?”
“A lot, I'm guessing…” present Sunset sighed.
“Like thirty-billion beans one way.”
“Thirty what?” Sunset’s face contorted in confusion.
“In the year 2718, Twilight Sparkle is—”
“How old are you—am I—again?”
Future Sunset placed her robohand on her not-robohip. “Well, if you wouldn't interrupt me, you might find out.”
“I'm going to have a headache by the end of this, aren't I…”
Future Sunset flicked her human wrist. “Probably.” She then cleared her throat. “So, as I was saying: in the year 2718, Twilight Sparkle, having amassed so much power through Beanis Inc. over the years has declared herself Lord Sovereign of the entire galaxy. She has effectively stopped aging and cured all diseases—”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” present Sunset said with a shrug.
“Interrupting again—” her future self glared “—and rules with a bean-coated dick.”
“Is that all?”
Waving dismissively, the future Sunset nodded. “That’s the gist of it.”
With the story out of the way, present Sunset rolled her eyes. “That doesn’t sound so dystopian to me.”
Suddenly a loud thud shattered the relative silence.
“Quiet!” Pinkie yelled from the garage again.
When Sunset looked, her future self punched a hole in the wall with her robotic fist. “It is. That invention is about to go viral in the worst way, me. Beans become the primary crop in the future—an entire slave labor force is enslaved to labor away in the bean mines. It becomes the primary food, currency, and tool for forced lovemaking.”
Uncontrollably, Sunset twitched. “Wait—what?”
“Forced lovemaking.” The future Sunset shuddered. “Those not enslaved are having non-stop lesbian sex with those bean dicks! It’s your food and your lover.”
Jaw agape, Sunset simply stared in abject horror.
A small smirk spread across future Sunset’s face upon seeing her past self’s reaction. She nodded in agreement. “So now you know why she must be stopped.” Just then, Sunset—the future one—reached behind her back and pulled out a pistol and pointed it through the crack in the garage door at Twilight’s head. “We must kill Twilight before she creates her empire!”
Present Sunset turned her horrified gaze down to the gun. “Absolutely not!” she whispered with strained vocal cords, as though she was yelling while whispering. She grabbed the muzzle of the gun and pulled it down so Twilight was out of the crosshairs. “You can’t kill Twilight!”
“I have to stop her!” her future self replied, narrowing her eyes. “I should have stopped her when I was in your shoes rather than saying ‘that's the worst idea I've ever heard’ like that would do something.”
“Well shooting Twilight is the worst idea I've ever heard! She’s already made the beanis!”
Yanking the gun away, future Sunset pushed her past self aside. “But she hasn’t made the company yet!”
“You’re batshit insane!” Sunset cried out, no longer caring about the volume.
A loud pop forced her to flinch, followed by a shell casing dropping to the ground. In an instant, her future self was gone, vanished between blinks. The gun dropped to the ground, and just after it hit, Pinkie shrieked.
Everything happened so quick Sunset barely had a chance to register it all. Twilight was dead, on the ground. Pinkie, having found Sunset shocked and a gun next to her, called the police. The last thing Pinkie heard before the gunshot was Sunset yelling right as Twilight asked the camera to support her project. It was all on tape. Not to mention her fingerprints were certainly on the gun since she shot it in about seven-hundred years.
Suddenly Sunset was pulled off the ground, her arms cuffed. She vaguely heard the cops muttering something about her rights, but she was still too shocked to comprehend. They hauled her outside to a waiting cop car with its lights flashing. She was going to jail for killing her best friend.
Just then, two more loud pops broke the mental haze over her. The cops dropped to the ground leaving Sunset falling to her knees right in front of the cop car. She looked up, and standing there was herself.
The clone stretched out a robotic arm and on her face a scar running from her forehead, over a glassy eye, and down her cheek. She had a leather jacket on that exposed her torso with a rocking six-pack, though—thankfully—she wore a tube top under said jacket. “Come with me to save the future!”
“Literally how!” Sunset yelled at her future self.
“Literally what?” future Sunset raised an eyebrow.
Sunset pinched her eyes shut. “If future me shot Twilight, wouldn’t that have changed the future so she wouldn’t have come back to kill Twilight so nothing would have changed so she would have come back to kill Twilight?” As much as she wanted to scratch her aching head, she couldn’t due to the cuffs.
The future version of Sunset reached into her pocket and pulled out a pair of sunglasses. As she nestled them on her face, she sighed. “The more you think about it, the less it makes sense.”
“The gun should have disappeared too! All I want is some consistency!” Sunset—the present one—protested as her future self picked her up and broke the cuffs with her robohand. “I hate time travel…” she said under her breath.
“Well, buckle in, kid. It’s about to get weirder.” Future Sunset pulled back the sleeve on her human arm and exposed a watch. She pressed a few buttons as her present self rubbed her wrists.
“You look the same age as me…” Sunset protested. “Also, isn’t time travel expensive? Like ‘thirty-billion beans” or something like that?”
Despite the sunglasses, Sunset knew her future self was giving her a glare. “I don’t know what shitty sci-fi movies you’ve been watching, but you need to knock it off. This thing cost me about thirty-thousand cobs, okay?”
Sunset’s whole body twitched at the odd word out there. “Cobs?” she asked, tightening all the muscles in her neck.
“Look. Things have gone horribly wrong. Seven-hundred years from now corn has become the primary food, currency, and marital aid—”
“Hold on!” Present Sunset stomped her foot. “Corn?” She took a deep breath. “Have you considered not building an entire economy, global food chain, and sexual relations on a food item? Does the word diversify just lose all meaning in the next seven-hundred years?”
Her future self cleared her throat. “With Twilight dead and her beanis gone, there was nothing to stop the rise of corn. It was cheap, filling, and only caused mild irritation after repeated anal insertion.” She paused, looked down at the ground. “Mild at first, anyway. Unfortunately, we made a huge miscalculation…” Grabbing the rim of her sunglasses, future Sunset looked off into the distance. A single tear trickled down her non-scarred cheek. “Corn is a horrible source of protein, you know? We grew weak… Lazy, even. When Cornis Enterprise took over, we were too malnourished to stop them. They wiped out the men first, afraid their sperm was a valuable source of protein…”
Glaring straight ahead, present Sunset placed her hand on her future self’s shoulder. “Stop. I don’t care. Between inevitably getting raped in jail, getting raped by a beanis, or getting raped by corn, I literally can’t even anymore. Let’s just bring Twilight back and get this over with.”
“Well shooting Twilight is the worst idea I've ever heard! She’s already made the beanis!” Sunset whisper-cried, extending her arm out towards another Sunset Shimmer with a robot arm and some weird metal fabric. But as the metal fabric-clad Sunset raised a gun to point in the direction of Twilight Sparkle, a sudden click went off in her ear. Her heart stopped and she turned to see someone she never expected. Herself.
“Literally what?” the two Sunsets from the past said in unison, looking to a leather-clad Sunset with Sunglasses and a Sunset wearing broken handcuffs.
“What are you doing?” the beanis future Sunset asked her cornis counterpart.
“Stopping you,” she began and motioned her head towards the unsuspecting Twilight Sparkle in the garage, “from stopping her.”
“She’ll doom us all!” beanis Sunset replied.
“You’ve no idea the horror her beanis was holding back!” cornis Sunset ripped off her sunglasses. “Twilight Sparkle must live, even if you have to die!”
"Who’s she?” the present day pre-arrest Sunset asked, pointing to her handcuffed counterpart.
“I’m from about half an hour in the future.” She turned her gaze between the two far-future copies. “Don’t worry, it doesn’t get any easier.”
“Hey, shut it!” cornis Sunset told herselves. “Twilight needs to live to stop the rise of corn!”
“She needs to die to stop the domination of beans!” the Beanis Sunset retorted.
Suddenly another click from behind cornis Sunset. She turned around to see Twilight Sparkle but wearing tattered rags.
“Literally what?” all four Sunsets asked in unison.
Pre-arrest Sunset rubbed her forehead. “Is it nine o’clock or something? Everything weird always happens during nine…”
“Put the gun down, Sunset. Sunset doesn’t kill me today. I survive the gunshot and go underground. From there, I perfect my beanis and rise up to prevent the corn from rising!” future Twilight said, her trigger finger twitching slightly. “With my Beanis Mk. II corn doesn’t stand a chance and I save humanity. Have I ever given you a reason to not trust me?”
“Yes!” beanis Sunset replies.
“Not you,” Twilight snapped.
A tear welled up in cornis Sunset’s eye as she stared into her long-lost friend’s warm gaze. “So I have to let me shoot you so you can save us?”
Another cock of a gun, this time pointed at future Twilight, and everyone turned to another new Sunset. This one clad in all white with a robot arm and a robot leg with a cybernetic laser eye. “Don’t listen to Twilight. She made a grave miscalculation and her Beanis Mk II becomes self-aware. It launches the entire world’s supply of tactical Intercontinental Beanis Missiles, wiping out all cities in the blink of an eye.”
Another cock of a gun, this time at the latest mostly cyborg Sunset with yet another Sunset—each iteration progressively getting more cyborg—behind her. “Sunset,” the newest sunset started, “put the gun down. Really, you can actually just tell her to program empathy into her Beanis Mk II and that pretty much solves everything.”
Suddenly a scream shook the hallway. The present-day—pre-arrest—Sunset jumped up and snatched the gun from the primary beanis future version of herself. “I have fucking had it with this! Time travel makes no goddamn sense. It either leads to more goddamn problems than it solves or solves absolutely nothing because of multiverse theory!”
The future Twilight cleared her throat. “Judging by all the copies of you, I’d say multiverse theory isn’t in play here—” Suddenly a pop and the primary beanis Sunset dropped when present-day Sunset shot her. Before the other Sunsets or Twilight could react, the enraged teenage girl unloaded, killing all her future selves and a future Twilight.
With a massacre on her hands, Sunset threw the gun on the ground, kicked open the garage door to see Twilight and Pinkie both looking frazzled. “Okay. For the record—” Sunset pointed at the uncovered beanis on the table and took a breath “—I lied. That is not the worst idea I’ve ever heard. It is, in fact, the motherload worst idea in the history of bad ideas smothered in don’t-do-this sauce.”
Huffing and puffing, adrenaline still coursed through her veins after committing four suicides and one murder. Sunset turned back towards the door she entered from. “I’m going to go drown this from my memory with as much alcohol as I can find for literally every waking moment of the rest of my life. Have fun making dicks out of beans,” she said, storming out over the pile of corpses.
