Goodness, you sure woke up fast. I thought for sure Sunset would be back before you came to, but I should have known better. You’re all very resilient after all. We proved that during the last bout of testing, not that you’d know.
Oh, no. Please don’t struggle. Even with the help of the nano-tech, you’re still incredibly weak. That concussion was a nasty one. I’m sorry about that. I just didn’t expect you to struggle so much. You’re just exacerbating the strain on your body by flailing like that. It’s a state of the art gurney. Not even a fully grown hippo could break free when we secure it. All you’re managing to do is make yourself—.
Oh no. Now you’ve done it.
Doesn’t feel so good, does it?
No matter what universe, you still never listen to me.
Let me fix it. Don’t struggle. I got it.
Your cortisol levels are a bit high. You seem nervous, which is a natural reaction, but I’m going to ask you to calm down. It works a little better when you’re relaxed.
Just pay attention to me and breath. There we go. That’s better.
I know you’re wondering where you are. This is my lab. Well, me and my wife’s lab. It’s not much yet, but we just got married, so we still use the one at her house. We’re slowly moving everything to this one. You’re actually the first test subject that we’re having here. It’s a lot better for conducting tests; lots of acreage, underground, far away.
But, where are my manners. Let me introduce myself.
My name is Twilight Sparkle. You don't know me where you're from but here...We actually know each other quite well.
I’ve known your counterpart since we were 4. We met in kindergarten, if you can believe it. Worst year of our lives. But, it was when we met, so arguably, it could be the best year of our lives, depending on how you’re looking at it.
Of course back then, we didn’t get along very well. She didn’t get along well with anybody really. She was just a sulky and angry classmate that scared everyone else. I made sure to keep my distance. She approached me first, all reckless and heroic.
It was kind of funny actually. Those boys were probably twice her size, but she had these eyes. They were so…sharp, like they could pierce the core of the planet with wit and determination alone. Until then, I’d only seen another person scare away bullies with a look on TV.
Sorry, I’m rambling. I hope you don’t mind.
Oh, look. Your heart rate is finally at a reasonable BPM. I hope that means you’re liking the story. It’s better than staring at each other, don’t you think?
Anyway, after that, I got curious about the girl with the sharp eyes. I found out that she was another genius level child; two of us in the same class.
I always thought that it was fate. Sunset thinks we were just really really really really lucky. Either way, the universes where we never met each other are always strange. It makes me grateful knowing that our circumstances fell in that 0.00000011324%.
It didn’t take much time at all until we became each other’s best friends. There were a few others along the way—like Moondancer and Starlight. They were at the wedding too—but no one else understood me like you did.
You always knew what to do. You were always so confident and sure. Whenever I doubted myself, whenever I was criticized, you were always there to talk me into believing in myself again. You stood by me and supported me. I owe you everything, you know? Nano-implants. Digi-tech body enhancements. Eye Phones. Everything.
Oh, I just realized that I’ve been referring to my Sunset as you. You just look so much like her, I forgot for a second.
You just have no idea what she means to me. It made me so happy when she asked me on a date. Finally got tired of waiting for me to make the first move, I guess.
Third happiest day of my life, behind getting married, and when you—sorry, she—asked me to move in with her. Though to be fair, I don’t think anything will top that day.
It’s ingrained in my memory. Dark, gloomy, raining like the heavens themselves broke a water main. It'd been like that for quite a few days, and being the colossal child she is, she decided it was a good idea to go for a fast food run. We were soaked to the bone in under five seconds. I wanted to sit in our underwear and watch reruns of Twisted but True, but she tossed me one of her lab-coats with a smile that obviously meant she’d planned something.
“Do you want to see the project I’ve been working on?”
Well, duh. I definitely wanted to, but I was a little nervous.
She told me to close my eyes and not to open them until she gave me the signal, standard surprise stuff. I can’t begin to explain how conflicted I was.
I went down the steps while she was holding me, making sure that I didn’t trip.
Between you and me, I think she held me closer than necessary, just so she could “accidentally” grope my butt, not that I was going to complain.
When we finally reached the bottom, and she told me to look, I couldn’t speak. She was smiling so wide, I was afraid she’d split her face in half.
I just stared.
There were bodies, three of them, in a neat little row. I thought they were cadavers at first, but I could see their chest rising and falling with their breaths. They were connected to heart monitors, electrodes, and IVs, surrounded by all manner of surgical tools, like they were in a mini hospital right under Sunset’s house. It even had that strong antiseptic smell running thick in the air.
She finally let go of me, grabbing a vial of this green liquid from one of the metal tables. She told me to watch while she injected it into the IV attached to one of the men, easily the one closest to death. His breathing was so labored, I had to strain in order to make out the movements that signaled life still flowing through his body. It came out as soft wheezes, whistling through a clogged windpipe.
I watched while that green chemical mixed with the saline as it entered past this pasty white skin and into the dark purple veins underneath. I thought my heart was going to stop when I saw him begin to stir.
He seemed to relax, his vitals spiking and stabilizing, until his skin seemed to get a bit more of its color, the veins no longer so pronounced. I wasn’t clear on what was wrong with him but Sunset looked like she’d earned another PhD.
It looked like whatever she made had worked, until it didn’t.
It started with a twitch. His eyes started to flutter open, darting back and forth like he was stuck in REM sleep, while his body started to seize. White froth dribbled out of his mouth mixed with his blood until he was vomiting globs of black ooze. It started dripping out of his eyes, ears, and then seeped under his fingernails. He kept coughing but the only sound I heard was his heart monitor, beeping erratically, like it had been replaced by an alarm clock. I couldn’t believe that the other two stayed still.
My eyes must have been bugging out. I was transfixed with fascination, adrenalin coursing through me, just as the chemicals coursed through him, running through him until the alarms were replaced by a solid clear tone and he was still once more.
I looked at her and the smile was gone, but those eyes were sharp as ever, and they hypnotized me, like they’d done a million times before, rooting me to the cold linoleum floor.
That’s when she said, “this is why I need you. I can’t do this alone.”
I found out later that the man was in his final stages of cancer and it had cleared his body. It was the shock that stopped his heart. She hadn’t been able to fix that problem and she was asking me for my help, not just as a colleague but as a partner, in more ways than one.
It was poetic.
I knew that if you’d hooked me up to that man’s heart monitor, it would have been racing just like his. To be included in her work and to know that she trusted me with everything, it meant the world to me. I knew then and there that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, learning about the world together. The only one that didn’t laugh at me when I’d first proposed trans-dimensional travel. In turn, I didn’t laugh at her when she propose human testing. The two of us aren’t so small minded that we’re blinded by the fact that progress is built on sacrifice and risk.
As soon as we got married, her glorious mind mixed with mine, we got to work and we completed our respective projects. We finally built a stable wormhole that didn’t rip the existence of an entire world apart, while she’s made astonishing medical advancements I can’t even begin to express. I had my meager contributions but I’ve always had a secondary interest in human anatomy. That’s more of Sunset’s thing.
What about you? Do you hold the same fascination? It’s never been clear whether interests are acquired or ingrained. What parts of humanity are integral to our DNA and what parts are cultivated? It’s that nature versus nurture argument. It seems trivial but we’ve unlocked so much useful information.
Probability of delinquency, for one—useful for adjusting upbringing and environment, specific for that one child. True defining qualities based on running life paths—no more struggling to find your true “calling”. Guaranteed one of the yous in the multiverse has found it. Those have mostly been hands off.
In a more involved experiment, we found out that pain tolerance is invariable across a hundred different subjects. The military will have quite a use for that, I imagine.
Oops. Looks like your heart rate is rising again. I’ve said too much, haven’t I? I would be lying if I said I didn’t expect this. I saw it the moment you opened your eyes. Teal, with little flecks of a deeper sapphire. Gorgeous. But you know something, they’re too soft. You’d never understand.
But if it’s any consolation, it’s hard watching someone with the face of my true love be in any form of distress. I’m truly sorry. After cracking multidimensional travel, it only made sense to use our own counterparts with ourselves as a baseline. It’s perfect. No one will ever be able to trace us. Take heart in knowing that your sacrifice won’t go to waste. You’re advancing science by decades, providing greater understanding to humanity
I get excited just thinking about it, and I can’t wait to start.
Oh, I think I hear her now.
Sunset! We’re down here!
Don’t worry. You've never met my counterpart but you'll get a chance soon. We'll pick her up too, and the four of us can have one big happy science extravaganza.
You should sleep for now. We need you as healthy as possible for accurate data.
Goodnight, Sunset Shimmer #436.
Author's Note
This was a lot harder to write than I anticipated.
Still had a lot of fun.
