Author's Note

Thanks for reading!
If at any point in the story you weren’t clear on what was going on, please let me know! I’m sorry I didn’t convey myself adequately, but I’d love to explain further if you’re curious.

There are a lot of points of failure in Rosen Bridge’s setup which she’s probably addressed, but I have failed to describe in hopes of not being obtuse. Feel free to complain about them.

Full disclosure- this work is honestly pretty much a heavily expanded version of a 999-word mini-fic I submitted to a site called “Quantum Shorts” in 2013, which wanted quantum mechanics related fiction. The original version, I confess, had nothing to do with ponies. Unfortunately, I decided it wouldn’t be morally objectionable to re-weave the concept of the story into the universe of MLP, so now you all had to read this garbage. I’ll also have you know that the pun in Rosen’s name existed in the original work, where her name was “Alberta Rosenbridge.” I’d post that here too, but I think it would violate site rules by explicitly having nothing to do with pony?

A few weeks’ worth of free time over the course of four years have gone into flushing this out the way I wanted, and the process has made me gain an amazing amount respect for the writers here who are both far more prolific and far more competent than I. Thank you all for reading a busy amateur’s daydream.

If you were fascinated by the implications of this work of fiction, I would google “Quantum suicide” and “Quantum immortality.”

If you were terrified by the implications of this work of fiction, first of all, I’m sorry, and I understand.

I’ve been prone to some pretty abstract irrational fears. When I was 10 years old and I first learned an innaccurate notion of the many-worlds theory from a pseudo-scientist in some movie, I had nightmares for days because I thought I was stuck “in the wrong universe” somehow and that this wasn’t my “real family,” or my “real house.” My parents had a lot of fun with that one. So I understand your terror at the implications of this fic and I do apologize for instilling it in you.

If that’s you (whether or not you’re significantly older than 10 and have significantly more rational fears about the whole mess), please keep in mind that we don’t actually know if this is how quantum mechanics works, and there’s some thoughts on the subject of why subjective immortality might just be a load of hogwash by Max Tegmark (thanks wikipedia!), which I happen to subscribe to myself.
Being an “observer” isn’t as special as you might imagine, and our brains are constantly dying (and reforming, I suppose) in a sense. If quantum immortality was possible, you would have already noticed because the state of your mind would probably be pretty static. For starters, it would probably be impossible to fall asleep from your perspective. Probably.
Heh.
I’m not going to enumerate the set of counterpoints to that because honestly— it’s just more and more conjecture from there on out.

Go read up on it and form your own opinion, I promise it’s probably not as terrifying as this fic makes it seem, especially because you’re not going to take the route Dr. Bridge does here.

If you were terrified by the metalogue, I did warn you. If you weren’t terrified by the metalogue, I’m sorry, I’ll try harder with my descriptions of atrocity next time.

Oh! I’m supposed to always conclude with what I learned from doing this. It’s a personal rule. This story I was trying to learn to set up my character flaws subtly early on so that when they fail it doesn’t seem out of the blue. I think I succeeded, let me know if I could do better! Rosen Bridge’s flaws are mine, or what I perceive mine as a child were when taken to the extreme, so I suppose I had some reference here. This has been “Pros and cons of a type A personality- the fic”

Cripes, what a pretentiously long author’s note!

Happy Holidays! See you next time!