I, Me

The uniform sphere of light coalesces into existence suddenly, releasing Twilight into an environment both alien and familiar—as if she had come into contact with a distant memory or dream.

The place in which she currently finds herself in is eerily similar in structure and underlying atmosphere to her old Magic School—Celestia’s palace, the Canterlot Castle. More specifically, her old dorm room.

Lost in nostalgic musing, Twilight walks around the room, quietly reminiscing about how she once had so many opportunities but managed to wind up as such a failure.

“I wonder what is going through your mind at this very moment, while you stroll around in such a relevant place,” said an anonymous voice. “Every single one of us tend to overthink so much in circumstances like these,” claimed the voice, which was apparently coming from the room’s entrance door.

Turning around with a sense of dread and nausea going through her body, Twilight couldn’t help but feel afraid in some way at what she saw—a undiscerned figure—, but her overriding emotion at this moment was closer to a surreal form of dissociative detachment than anything else.

The enigmatic pony fully enters the room, revealing herself from the shadows—she was Twilight Sparkle, Celestia’s faithful student.

“Oh, it’s you…,” the confused purple unicorn sighted in relief, attempting to find some measure of comfort in the supposedly-familiar face. This imagined solace, however, didn’t last long as the now-incursing Twilight notices the fact that the pony standing in front of her was a unicorn, not an alicorn.

“I know what must be going through your head,” started the mysterious Twilight. “You are probably not even surprised at all. I know I wasn’t,” she confided in her dimensionally-displaced counterpart, whom she continually approached with a weird gracefulness and understanding while getting closer and closer.

Regular Twilight, feeling melancholic yet lucid, agreed, “Hah… I’m not even sure if I ever truly believed I was special in some way; even in this ridiculously strange scenario. But, don’t get me wrong,” she kept going, tired of feeling sorry for herself, “The way Alicorn Twilight apparently is going about all this is irrevocably interesting. Do you think I can meet the others, if there are more than just the two of us?”

“I like how calculating and direct we can be—this is one of the few aspects about dimension-hopping which will always fascinate me; the window it gives me into my… Unburdened self,” waxed the Peculiar Twilight, in a dismissive, almost autistic tone.

Noticing how her counterpart was currently displaying a change in attitude, Regular couldn’t help but feel puzzled; and, since social grace was not her forte, that showed.

“Oh? Ah, excuse my cryptic talk,” Peculiar Twilight said, in response to her alternate version’s apparent confusion. “The thing is: having had a chance to forgo my previous reality—escaping my seemingly-sterile world and coming to this one alongside that semi-facsimile of us—was definitely a significant event; however,” she tried to make sense of her feelings, having some difficulty to grasp for words, “The new set of possibilities which stand at my disposal at this renewed moment are… Not without their own tainted particularities, so to speak.”

The mystifying unicorn paces around the room, sulking in the now-trivial details which used to be so wonder-inducing and exciting to her in the past. She dismissively passes through her interdimensional doppelganger; aiming for the room’s balcony.

There is a myriad of sensations which flow through the royal bedroom from the large balcony-area—a perspective once fond of Twilight. Such a vista remained ingrained into her most distant affective memories—so distant, in fact, that the voids in her recollection were usually filled by favorable interpretations she used to concoct about her past; keeping them alive with the same care an author invests in her narrative arcs.

Now, however, such perspective is meaningless. Twilight have seen it so many times, under so many different circumstances and conditions.

“I know this is going to sound dumb, but having access to so many possibilities via Alicorn Twilight’s reality-warping abilities made me realize that I am miserable because I want to,” Peculiar Twilight pauses, somewhat affected by her emotions, “That I felt trapped in my former universe, unsatisfied and longing for something else, due to my own laziness and selfishness attitude,” she leans to the edge of the balcony, her hooves positioned on the top rail, “And now, with my newfound reality-defying power, I see working on myself as nothing but a trifle, although I see I’m just falling for the same thought patterns which landed me in this situation to begin with,” she finishes her self-absorbed speech; contemplative.

Meanwhile, Regular Twilight feels overwhelmed by the display of genuine emotion and seizes this opportunity to sneak out of there into the hallway.

Regular Twilight walks down the corridor, searching for her Alicorn counterpart, but also eager to explore this new environment. Anything would be better than having to think about what just transpired in the previous room.

However, there was something odd about this Canterlot—it was completely emptied of other ponies. Twilight treaded lightly through the hallways, expecting to have an undesired encounter with some member of the royal staff or anyone for that matter. But there was simply no one in there.

Puzzled by this development, the interdimensional traveler decides to go to a place where the chances of finding something were higher—the throne room. Inevitably pondering on what that emotionally-distraught Twilight said, Regular Twilight thought visiting a place which had so much relevance to her past would be at least interesting. After all, she used to be so cold towards Celestia back then; maybe now she could have a chance of “doing the right thing.”

After effortfully recalling the paths she used to walk as a filly, Twilight manages to find her way into the main hall, the one where Celestia should be.

The spacious chamber is, not surprisingly, devoid of any pony presence as well. Twilight paces around the throne room for a while, attempting in vain to figure out why Canterlot was in such a condition.

“Don’t worry about the sense of intrigue this kind of circumstances brings you,” said a voice identical to Twilight’s, echoing from the main hall’s entrance—this was Alicorn Twilight, Regular was sure of it. “This sort of feeling tends to be proven pointless, anyway.”

Regular directs her field of vision to the voice’s apparent source, revealing the alicorn with serious look in her face. “Awful fatalistic of both you and the other Twilight, huh?” stated Regular Twilight, numbed by the absurdity of the situation.

“I meant it in the most literal way possible, Me,” retorted Alicorn Twilight, projecting an affable exterior. “I am not able to control the universe-crossing spell as well as I want to yet, rendering the destination which I end up in almost completely random.”

“Almost?” interpolated Regular.

“Yes. Almost. All dimensions the spell allow me entrance to have a factor in common: they are all dying worlds,” the alicorn explained, in a very matter-of-fact manner, as if such explanations were given regularly by her. “I hate liars, so I’ll be direct with you,” she continued “I’m looking for a certain kind of Twilight—a very rare one—, and the versions of us you see rooming around here are the ones who don’t fit that profile.”

“That’s also the case for me, I imagine,” Regular Twilight asked, with a melancholic, uncertain tone in her speech.

Alicorn Twilight attempted the most neutral inflection while composing her response, “Well, that is, in fact, the case; however, it mustn’t be a tragic thing,” she offered, but now barely being able to repress her macabre enthusiasm. “After all, now you’re the freest you could ever be. You could even leave this place right now and ignore the fact we ever met, if you so desire.”

“Oh?” emoted Regular, out of instinct. “So, what was the point in bringing me here to begin with? Leaving me to die back there wouldn’t have affected the current arrangements in any way, and there must be other dying universes wherein alternate iterations of us are dead anyway.”

The alicorn came closer to Regular Twilight, putting her right hove in the counterpart’s shoulder, as in a strange gesture of comfort, “Call me Machiavellian, but the only satisfactory explanation I can give you is that I’m trying to prove a point,” she said after giving Regular a wistful look.

“You see,” Alicorn Twilight carried on in a crescendo, “There’s a fundamental error in most universes—they are all populated by otherness.” She turns to Celestia’s empty throne, jumps into the air, and resumes her monologue, “I see all these different creatures getting the shorter end of the stick by other beings, just because they lead opposing lifeways or have distinct needs...,” she pauses briefly, then blasts an explosive spell into the throne sitting in front of her, destroying it completely.

Regular, despite her situational apathy, gets startled by this, taking a few steps back. Alicorn Twilight notices it, and turns her attention to Regular, “My Celestia was sweet and nurturing, but also a demented liar. A shame, isn’t it?” the reactive alicorn offers Regular, giving her a consoling glance.

Regular Twilight does not reciprocate.

“Oh, Me. I see you’re confused and afraid. It’s ok; I would feel the same in your place,” said Alicorn Twilight, decreasing altitude and getting closer to Regular; meanwhile the throne burns in a gigantic inferno behind her. “And that’s exactly my point here; only we can understand each other.”

Out of an instinctual response of her fight-or-flight reaction, Regular Twilight lets herself slip through the cracks of the cosmos—she exits Alicorn Twilight’s home dimension into the unknowable.