Twilight Sparkle ran through the halls of Canterlot Castle, making her way to Princess Celestia's chambers. In the six months since becoming Celestia's personal student, the lavender filly had become a common sight in the castle. She arrived well before dawn every day to see Celestia make the sun rise, and she returned every afternoon after classes ended at the School for Gifted Unicorns. The castle's guards had become used to seeing her standing at the front gates or trotting through the halls, and Twilight frequently bumped into other ponies -either figuratively or literally- during her pre-dawn runs through the castle. This particular morning was no exception, as the filly unicorn came face-to-knee with one of the most peculiar ponies in the castle.
"Why hello, bright-eyes!" The slightly-scruffy earth pony greeted Twilight. The filly rubbed her snout and looked up into the face of Time Turner, one of Celestia's many advisers. Although, as Celestia had told her, 'Time Turner' was merely a pseudonym, the stallion's closest friends knew him as Doctor Hooves. She didn't know why Doctor Hooves kept that name a secret, but she knew that being entrusted with it made her one of the most trustworthy ponies Celestia knew.
"Oh, um, excuse me-" Twilight started.
"Ah, don't worry about it," Time Turner said flippantly, "I've been through worse than a little pony bumping into me." Twilight grinned sheepishly. "Anyway, I suppose you're looking for Princess Celestia, yes?"
"Yes, yes!" The unicorn replied, "have you seen her?"
"I'm afraid she's not in the castle at the moment," Time Turner answered, "in fact, she had to leave Canterlot on some official something-or-other."
"What?!" Twilight cried, "but how can she raise the sun if she's not here?!"
"Well, ah, you see-"
"If the princess isn't here, she can't raise the sun, and if she can't raise the sun, somepony else has to, but who else can do it?" Twilight was beginning to panic, even though she felt like she was missing an important detail somewhere.
"Why not you?" Time Turner asked.
"Wh- but... I'm not powerful enough to raise the sun, only Princess Celestia is! I'm just a filly! We need to gather up every unicorn we can, and then get them to do it. Wait, there's no time! What if we use a really powerful light spell to put a glowing yellow sphere high in the air, do you think anypony would notice? Wait, if a pegasus pony bumped into it we'd be found out, and anyway it probably wouldn't be hot enough-"
"What if it was possible for any one unicorn to raise the sun? Even a little pony like you?"
"But it isn't!"
"But what if it were?"
"Then I..." Twilight trailed off, thinking deeply.
"Well?" Time Turner prompted. He had a strange smile on his face, the kind Twilight had seen him get when he'd just said something absurd and the princess had agreed with him.
"But... it's not possible for an ordinary unicorn to raise the sun. Not on her own, anyway. Not even Princess Cadance can do it herself. If Princess Celestia isn't moving the sun, it takes thousands of normal unicorns to do it," Twilight protested.
"You're right. One unicorn filly, even a tiny bottle of raw magical power like you, can't move the sun even a fraction of a millimeter on her own." Time Turner admitted, "but what if we could make it possible for any unicorn to do it?"
"Wouldn't a bunch of unicorns start messing around with the sun if that happened?" Twilight asked.
"Only if we told them," the doctor assured her, "Come on, everypony is just like you, thinking only Celestia can move the sun and moon about. D'you think any of them try it?"
Twilight considered this point, and realized she couldn't think of anypony other than Celestia who had tried moving the sun or the moon. She had to admit to herself, however, that her frame of reference was somewhat limited. "Well," the filly decided to ask the obvious question, "how do we make it so anypony can move the sun?"
The doctor gave her an ever-so-slightly maniacal grin. "I'm glad you asked, Twilight Sparkle."
Resting in one of the castle gardens was a box. It was wooden, slightly larger than a grown stallion, it had a door on one side, and was painted blue. It looked slightly ridiculous, sitting on the grass amid flowers and trees.
"What is it?" Twilight Sparkle asked, staring at the box.
"It's my invention. Doesn't have a name yet," the doctor replied. "I haven't gotten it working quite right yet, so I haven't named it. I'm thinking an acronym, one that forms something that sounds like a word but really isn't. maybe it'll start with a 'T', I dunno."
"What's it do?"
"Well... That's a hard one." The doctor began to walk towards the box. "It sort of... well, to put it simply, it uses a unicorn's raw magic to cast spells, you see?"
"So... it's a magic machine?" Twilight tilted her head sideways and followed the doctor.
"Sort of. My eventual plan is to have it store up power given by a unicorn and turn it into spells, but I haven't worked out how yet. So! What I have to do is hook a unicorn up to the machine and pull magic right from her. Or him. Whichever. Doesn't matter."
Twilight stopped. "And you want me to be that unicorn." She stated.
"A bit, yeah," the doctor admitted, "see, a lot of the magic is lost going from the unicorn into the machine, so I need a unicorn with loads and loads of raw power to put in to it. Don't worry, it's harmless," the doctor added, seeing the look on Twilight's face, "at least, that's what the other unicorns I've hooked up to it said."
The unicorn tilted her head again. "So... how does it work?"
"Don't worry about it, it'd take a scientist to explain."
"I thought you are a scientist."
"I am. Well, sort of. A little. Maybe. Look, the princess keeps me around to try things nopony else is willing to try, and this is one of them, that's about all I can say. Well, all that'd make sense, anyway."
Twilight tilted her head the other way for a change. It didn't help her understand the doctor's explanations, but she hadn't really expected it to.
"Well, all right," the filly said, "if Princess Celestia can't raise the sun, somepony else had better do it."
"That's the spirit!" The doctor said, opening the box's door.
Twilight stared around the interior of the box, wide-eyed. "What? How? Who?" She stepped back out and began walking around the outside of the box, then returned to the interior and said, "Doctor Hooves, it's... it's..."
"Go on," the doctor encouraged, "say it."
"It's bigger on the inside!" The unicorn exclaimed.
"Yes it is!" The doctor affirmed cheerfully.
"But how?!"
"Well, magic! Princess Luna rigged it up for me a while ago back when..." The doctor trailed off, his grin fading into a strange sort of nervous, wide-eyed, sidelong stare at Twilight.
"Princess who?" The filly asked. The only princesses she knew were Celestia and Cadance.
"Oh blimey," the doctor said quietly, still giving Twilight that sidelong stare, "you're not supposed to know about her yet."
"Who?!" Twilight asked again.
"Never mind," the doctor declared, suddenly cheerful again, "anyway, as you can see, we're surrounded by complex and fascinating whatzits and thingies with very many levers and lights and wheels and meters with needles pointing at numbers and moving bits and so on and so on. Come here, this is where we'll hook you up."
Twilight moved slowly to the center of the box, staring all around her at the incomprehensible machinery. She assumed there was some residual magic powering all the lights and moving bits, perhaps also put in place by the mysterious Princess Luna, whoever and wherever she was. In the middle of the room was a raised platform where the doctor was standing, holding a metal helmet with many tiny lights on it, connected to a particularly large and inexplicable machine by a tangle of wires.
"Right then, let's get you hooked up!" The doctor said cheerfully.
"Um, what spell is the machine supposed to cast, doctor?"
"Well, it, ah, bends reality a bit," the doctor explained, "it's sort of... a raw spell, I guess. Like a normal spell, but sort of not, since a normal spell bends reality in a specific way, and the machine just kind of twists it without doing anything specific. I have to use the controls here to determine what exactly it does. Don't worry about it, worrying about it is my job."
"Well, if you say so." Twilight said nervously.
"Stick your hooves in these clamps. The whole thing tends to make the box shake a bit, and we don't want you falling down."
The clamps in question were tall, padded things that reached almost to Twilight's knees. She noticed that they were on rails set into the platform, evidently to accommodate unicorns of different sizes. The doctor bolted them into place, then strapped the helmet onto Twilight's head. It was made for a grown pony, and sat so low on her head that it covered her eyes. She felt the doctor tap the end of her horn, the tip of which stuck out from a hole in the helmet.
"Right then, they tell me this feels a little tingly." The doctor said. Twilight heard the clunks and squeaks of moving levers and spinning wheels, followed by a strange humming sound. As the doctor had told her, the unicorn filly did in fact feel a strange, tingling sensation in her horn. The humming sound steadily increased in volume, and the box began to shake.
"Yes, yes, yes, yes... No! No! NonoNONONONOnono!!" The doctor said as the humming changed in pitch. The shaking got worse, and Twilight was glad for the leg-clamps. She could hear the doctor scrambling frantically around the room, banging levers into place, spinning wheels and pounding on buttons. Finally the humming and shaking stopped, and the doctor took the helmet off of Twilight's head.
"Right, well, that might've gone better, but I think it worked." The doctor said, un-clamping Twilight's legs, "You wait here a bit, I'll have a look outside." The doctor hurried to the door and slowly opened it, looking outside. Twilight couldn't clearly tell what was outside from where she was standing, but she got the feeling it wasn't the same as it was before.
"Oh blimey," the doctor said under his breath.
"What?" Twilight asked, worried, "what did we do?"
"Ah. Well. Hm. Yes." The doctor closed the door, clearly trying to decide how to explain the situation. "This, ah, this is going to sound worse than it is. Well, it'll sound as bad as it is. Well, it might sound better than it is. I'm not making you any less worried, am I?"
Twilight shook her head. "No, doctor, you're really not."
"Right. Well, what happened was, the machine worked, but it worked too well. Turns out you're too powerful for the machine-"
"What did we do?" The filly demanded, getting frustrated at the doctor's evasiveness.
"We. Broke. Reality." The doctor said flatly.
Twilight Sparkle and the Doctor stood at the door of the box, looking out at the world. Several small penguins flew through the sky, catching golden fish as they fell from the earth. Vowels went to war with consonants, but were quickly brought into peace talks by the number seven, which was backed by a multi-digit military. Tabeloids focused on the rumors that the number zero could not have children. An orange-and-mango smoothie became rich by short-selling stock in gravity. A walleyed pegasus pony stopped an invasion from the Griffon Empire by infiltrating their army's command structure with the aid of an exploding sock puppet and a number of classy ferrets. A pair of large textbooks were renowned as the world's finest players of doubles tennis. The sun and moon waltzed across the skies while a band of stars played a cheerful dirge. The People's Republic of Ambulatory Tables was rated as the least economically stable developed nation for the sixth year running, largely because of institutionalized repression of rock-farming poker tables. Philosophical stopwatches argued about whether a cat in a box was alive, dead, zombified, or had teleported to the next town during lunch. A heroic diamond dog slew a rampaging dragon with a sword that went snicker-snack as he swung it, while a passing caravan of sandwich smugglers cheered him on.
"We can fix it, can't we?" Twilight asked with a nervous laugh, as a flock of uncomfortable armchairs took to the air.
"Well..." The Doctor said, trailing off.
"Can we fix it? Please tell me we can fix it!"
"I don't know, all right?" The Doctor grumbled, "look, this has never happened before, Never! You're so powerful, you completely overwhelmed the machine. We just hit the world with a blast of magic strong enough to do literally anything, and it overloaded all the bits that were supposed to limit or control what it did, and I have to make sure all of those whatzits and oddments didn't suffer any permanent damage before I can even consider trying to put all this right, understand?" Twilight had never seen the Doctor this serious before. In fact, she had never seen the Doctor at all serious before. It was unnerving to see his characteristic silly grin replaced with the dark, hard-faced frown he wore now.
"Oh, I wouldn't worry about putting things back to normal if I were you," came a familiar and welcome voice.
"Princess Celestia!" The Doctor and Twilight Sparkle exclaimed together, as the glorious winged unicorn descended from the skies.
"This is good, Twilight Sparkle," the Doctor whispered in Twilight's ear, "the princess is a realistic singularity."
"A what?" Twilight whispered back.
"To put it simply: The princess can't be changed by magic. Even though we broke reality, she's exactly the same as she was before."
"If that's true, why are there three of her?"
"There aren't" The Doctor explained, looking at the princesses, who seemed to be waiting patiently for the two ponies to finish whispering to each other, "relativistic perception alteration. The world can't break her, but it can break the way we see her."
"How do you know?" Twilight asked.
"Because I only see one of her." The Doctor said, "but she's upside-down."
Twilight stared at the Doctor, not sure if he was joking or not.
"Now then, I suppose both of you have had enough strangeness for one day, hmm?" The Celestias asked, stepping forward. Twilight and the Doctor stood aside, and as the first of the group of Celestias stepped into the box, the others vanished in a haze of reasonable explanations, taking a group of odd things that looked like laser-armed trash cans with them as they went.
"So, ah, your majesty," the Doctor said nervously, like a scolded foal, "I'm guessing you have a plan of some sort?"
"More of one than you did, Doctor." Celestia replied. She made it sound like an off-hoof remark, but Twilight noticed that the Doctor recoiled as if she'd just kicked him. Normally the Doctor was as airy and silly around the princess as any other pony, but it was clear to Twilight that he expected Celestia to be very, very angry with him, and was fearfully waiting for her to show it. Twilight was quite familiar with this feeling, she had felt it the very first time she had met to the princess.
"Um... Princess Celestia? I'm really sorry, we didn't mean to-" Twilight began.
"It's not your fault, my faithful student." Celestia interrupted, "let me guess, you thought I had to be in Canterlot to raise the sun, and since I wasn't, you decided somepony else had to?"
"Y-yes." Twilight admitted.
"For what it's worth, I can move the sun from anywhere. Most ponies seem to think that's only true during the Summer Sun Celebration, but really, that whole thing is just me going about my morning routine while everypony makes a fuss about it. Anyway, I assume the Doctor convinced you to try using his machine to raise the sun. Am I right?" Celestia concluded.
"That's right, all my fault, really," the Doctor chimed in. Celestia silenced him with a look, then turned her gaze to the metal helmet. The princess removed her crown and levitated it to Twilight.
"Twilight Sparkle, can I ask you to hold onto this for me?" She asked. Twilight wordlessly captured the crown with her own telekinetic magic. It was much heavier than it looked, which for reasons she couldn't quite understand reminded Twilight of just how long the winged unicorn had been alive. She looked up from the weighty crown to see Celestia place the light-covered helmet on her own head. The golden glow of the princess's magic surrounded every moving part of the great machine, and it began to hum.
"Oh, blimey," the Doctor said again, "you're planning to power it and control it at the same time? I don't think that's even possible!"
"Doctor, I'm not even possible, you've said so yourself," Celestia replied, "and it's not possible for a single pony to move the sun and the moon on her own. I'm an impossible pony who does four impossible things every day, so today I think I'll make it five." The hum increased in volume, but this time there was no shaking. All the levers and wheels and buttons were being moved by the princess all at once, as if six ponies were working the controls in perfect harmony. Then, suddenly, everything stopped.
"There, all is right in the world again." Celestia pronounced, removing the helmet and taking her crown back from Twilight, "I even brought the sun up, just because the machine actually could. Come on, you two, let's go outside."
As Twilight Sparkle stepped out of the box, she looked around. Everything was, from what she could see, back to normal. Just as Celestia had said, the world made sense, and the sun was rising. Then, the filly realized that something was still very, very wrong.
"Princess, why is the sun rising from the east?" Twilight asked, confused.
"I decided to mix things up a bit, that's all." the princess explained, "I even made it recursive, so the sun's always risen from the east now. That will make the change easier for everypony to cope with. Of course, you'll know it used to rise from the north since you were in the box, but it'll be our little secret, all right?" Celestia flew into the sky without waiting for an answer. Twilight looked at the Doctor, who simply shook his head and grinned.
