Well, here we are, the last story of the Thought Experiments series.

And I start off by losing half my readers. — Aw, don’t say that, Poodly! Maybe some of them don’t understand all the backstory stuff, but I’m sure they’ll keep reading.

It can’t be avoided, really. This is the last story, which means it has to resolve threads I’ve been setting up since “Javelin”.

So that means that the prologue you just read is a test: if you can follow everything that happened, you’re ready for Chapter 1.

However, I’ll be lenient. Here’s a cheat sheet (but not Pinkamena’s cheat sheet), which is nearly half the length of the prologue itself. (But far shorter than reading the ~~dozen~~ eleven prior stories it pulls from.)

(Which is why we’re putting it in a separate chapter of its own! So that we can explain everything you possibly need to know, and make it easy to read!)

• This is an alternate universe set immediately after the Season 2 premiere, based on a number of assumptions I had about how Equestria worked, many of which were later proved to be false. I managed to sneak references to several Season 2 episodes in as I was writing.
• Equestria is a world located in an obscure corner of the space settled by humanity in the distant future. It sits on a portal to a pocket universe, one where the different physical laws allow willpower to directly shape reality. The portal was closed long ago by the Time Lords, but over time it has become leaky, which has caused the laws of the two universes to mix. This mixture allows magic to exist, and allows the planet to orbit its star instead of vice versa after an act of Discord.
• This world was originally settled by humans, who were unaware of its potentially unique nature. These humans created a barrier around the solar system to hide themselves from the greater universe, with the constellations as seen from Earth painted on the inside. Creating this barrier had the unexpected side effect of concentrating the magic trapped within. Infused with this magic, the humans became mages who created most of the current races of Equestria, but eventually the magic levels got so high that the humans all died. They are remembered in greatly distorted form as “The Ancients”.
• The greatest of these creations were the alicorns, who named their world “Equestria”. The brief rule of the alicorns ended when nearly the entire race was wiped out in an act of suicidal madness by their king. The slaughter left only two alicorn survivors: the king’s two daughters, Celestia and Luna.
• I capitalize the pronouns of beings treated as gods by their contemporaries. It’s only polite, after all.
• Out of loneliness, the Sisters created the three pony races as inferior copies of themselves. This was 7,000 years ago.
• Meanwhile, the entity that ruled the pocket universe sought to invade our universe, but needed a conduit. He infected the minds of both Celestia and Luna with spirits of His creation. Luna’s spirit succeeded in corrupting Her, turning Her into Nightmare Moon. She was banished before she could let her master into Equestria. Celestia’s spirit bided her time.
• Jumping forward to a few decades before the start of Friendship Is Magic, Vinyl Scratch was born blind. She spent her fillyhood in Ponyville, living in the Golden Oaks library with Rarity as her best friend. Then she was committed to an insane asylum against her will. The personality of DJ PON-3 was developed in the asylum as a defense mechanism. On reaching adulthood, Vinyl was let out of the asylum and became not only an expert audio technician, but also Equestria’s first disk jockey, and all of this while still keeping her blindness (and multiple personalities) a secret. She moved in with Octavia in an apartment in Canterlot. I don’t know why I told you this last bit, as Octavia has no further role in events.
• “Javelin”: Vinyl travels to Ponyville, the town of her fillyhood and home of her one-time best friend Rarity. She meets Rarity’s friends, and finds them strange. This isn’t helped by the fact that they have just returned from a bizarre jaunt across time and space, visiting a world called “Earth in the Year 2010” and coming back with a set of Ancient artifacts, ordinary objects that became magical when taken to Equestria. Twilight got a set of books written in the strange Ancient alphabet—not magical, but potentially devastating nonetheless due to knowledge that the Sisters wish to be kept secret. Applejack got a lasso of truth. Rarity got a plastic gem—we just found out what that gem does when smacked. Rainbow Dash got the titular javelin, a potential weapon of mass destruction, as one end will explosively neutralize magic, and the other end will explosively neutralize science. Fluttershy got the anime accessory Ryooki the Cabbit. And Pinkie Pie got a set of compact discs. Working together, Vinyl and Twilight reverse-engineer a CD player from the discs, and together create a company to manufacture both the players and more discs. Pinkie’s original discs contain the magical property of inducing the emotions of the performers in the listener.
• “The Masterpiece”: After taking a peek inside Pinkie Pie’s nightmares, Luna becomes convinced that Pinkie is heading towards a mental breakdown. She confides Her fears to Twilight Sparkle. It is revealed that Pinkamena (the personality from “Party of One”) is in fact the pink pony’s original personality, and that the Sonic Rainboom somehow created Pinkie Pie. Ever since then, the reclusive Pinkamena has been living in the back of her own brain, allowing Pinkie Pie to stay in charge. The story ends with the other Bearers reaching out to become Pinkamena’s friends. Vinyl Scratch is not present for this.
• “But Wait...There’s More”: The Sisters have been living Their lives bound by a set of prophecies in Their possession. They can foresee a moment three thousand years in the future, when magic levels have dropped to the point that it kills Them, but not Their creations. This will be the moment when mankind will break the barrier, and the ponies have to be prepared, or they will be exploited out of existence. Twilight is an important part of this plan, a pony raised to question Celestia’s judgement, unlike most other ponies, and thereby set a precedent for the future. This part of the plan didn’t work out very well, but to the Sisters’ surprise, Vinyl manages to more than make up the gap in independence, leading Luna to decide to break one of the prophecies, and allow the ponies to create their own future. This also means that humanity might intervene in pony history long before the predicted moment. Along the way we are introduced to Oars in Wells, a scheming unicorn “radio” producer that tries to use the Bearers to make himself popular, and Vinyl meets Pinkemena, although she doesn’t realize it at the time. During their confrontation with Oars, he dismisses the idea that Rarity could be a spy, categorizing her as a definite “damsel in distress”.
• “Luna and the Tree Ponies”: A story set in Luna’s past, covering Her introduction to the Doctor, and how She and Her sister became powerful enough to create the ponies. This is also the moment when They were infected by Their spirits.
• “The Trial of a Time Pony”: Celestia puts the Doctor on trial for his continual interference in pony history, which was done to prepare the ponies for a threat not covered by prophecy. Luna figures out that Celestia is being taken over by Her own spirit, a sister to Nightmare Moon. This is the end of the Doctor Who content in this series.
• “Whopper of the Year”: Luna rounds up the Bearers and Vinyl, and takes them to confront Celestia. Vinyl is revealed to have some powers derived from her blindness, including the ability to “see” on a microscopic level. Luna exploits this ability to extract and imprison Celestia’s spirit, Waking Terror. Celestia then convinces Waking Terror to turn against the ruler of the pocket universe, and rewards her with an artificial dragon body. Waking Terror is second-best dragon, but she needs far more hugs than she is getting.
• “[Redacted]”: A tiny outcast dragon discovers the portal to the pocket universe. After killing its ruler and absorbing as much of its power as he could hold, he emerges back in Equestria as a controller of minds. From here he becomes the Dragon Emperor and sets out to conquer Equestria, starting from Stalliongrad. Luna sets out at the head of an army to face him, but almost immediately disappears. Vinyl volunteers to become a spy for the Princesses. Just then, a human-constructed robot appears, bargaining with both Celestia and the Dragon Emperor for an extremely-lucrative trade: the exchange of ordinary objects between the two sides of the barrier, objects which would become powerful artifacts after the exchange. The long-term effect of this practice would almost certainly be disastrous to worlds on both sides of the barrier. Meanwhile, the Emperor has not been doing too well in the war, so he sneaks into Canterlot, allies with Oars in Wells, and ambushes Celestia and Twilight, trapping them in a nightmare of his creation, all so that he can make a deal with the robot. Vinyl uses both friendship and her special power to save the dreamers without risking going into the dream herself. The nightmare backfires on the Emperor, driving him permanently insane, but nobody realizes that this was actually the Emperor. Meanwhile, it turns out that the ever-resourceful Oars has planned for this possibility…
• “The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville”: Admitting defeat, the Dragon Emperor invites the Bearers “and one guest” to travel to his headquarters to draft the terms of his surrender. Celestia knows this is a trap, but there are many ponies still in danger, including Her missing sister, so She agrees. But the guest will not be the obvious choice of Spike (who can be mind-controlled), but instead Vinyl Scratch (who is way too stubborn to be controlled by anyone). The Bearers are able to enter the Emperor’s portal, and are instantly knocked out. Vinyl is blocked, because the portal’s magic is visual in nature. Vinyl improvises by creating a spell based on one of Pinkie Pie’s CDs, containing a song that had emotional resonance with Twilight Sparkle. Vinyl enters the portal, and is also knocked out. She wakes up inside Twilight Sparkle’s dream, her memories overwritten to fit her assigned role in that dream. Over the course of this dream, Vinyl figures out who she is, she once again meets Pinkamena, and the dream character of Spike becomes self-aware (making him Best Dragon for sheer tenacity). On escaping Twilight’s dream, Vinyl and Twilight now know the nature of the Dragon Emperor’s trap: everypony has become a pawn in everypony else’s dreams, dreams that are being manipulated to kill them, which will kill them in real life. A dream can only be ended by making the dreamer self-aware, or by waking them up, and these aware ponies are then aware in the next dream they enter. And Vinyl can use her CDs to choose which dream to enter. Oh, and this story establishes the convention that colored text represents the thoughts of the characters, which cannot be detected by the dreamer, and presumably the Dragon Emperor.
• “Masquerade”: Vinyl and Twilight enter Pinkie Pie’s dream, and find themselves in the waking world as Princess Celestia and one of her advisors, Pr. Stein. They are confronted by Waking Terror, who becomes possessed by the Dragon Emperor and tries to kill all three of them. Vinyl-as-Celestia then breaks through into an even deeper level of reality, a world where Equestria is the setting of a role-playing game played by juvenile Ancients. That thread will not be followed up in this series.
• “Accelerando”: Vinyl, Twilight and Pinkie enter Rainbow Dash’s dream. Spike is summoned back into existence. Pinkamena becomes a major part of ending the dream, so Vinyl finally learns who she is. Rainbow’s family is revealed to be extremely controlling, which is why she is slumming as a weather pony instead of the bandleader role that was picked for her. Fluttershy is revealed to have a frankly psychotic mother, who has a serious prejudice against non-pegasi. Rarity is shocked by the dream’s horrible fashions into not just waking up from Rainbow Dash’s dream, but from the whole cycle of dreams altogether. It helps that she is a lucid dreamer. And Applejack achieves self-awareness, all by herself! (And absolutely not because of what happened when the author tried to write her dream.)
• “The Mistress of Dreams”: The Dream Emperor gives Rarity permission to create a lucid dream to try and prepare the other dreamers for what will happen after the last dream, so long as she succeeds in killing one of them. What she does instead is separate Pinkie Pie from Pinkamena, and then traps Pinkie Pie in a video game that will keep her from helping the others until it is too late. She then trains Vinyl in using music to shape dreams, and helps Twilight and Spike to find a way to share magic, since Dream Spike is technically Twilight’s familiar. The only pony who dies in the end is Rarity, and since she was lucid dreaming, that will only eject her from the dream cycle again instead of killing her for real. Pinkie Pie’s mysterious backstory is finally revealed: She’s a rogue goddess known as The Judge who has gone a little nuts as a result of being locked up in Limbo for all eternity with nothing but Earth cartoons to watch. Rainbow Dash’s Rainboom happened right on top of Pinkamena, and as result it knocked her into Limbo. The Judge befriended Pinkamena and helped her return home, and at the last second Pinkamena decided to bring her new friend along with her. When her abusive father made her life too difficult to bear (see “The Masterpiece”), Pinkamena surrendered her body more or less permanently to Pinkie Pie, who escaped to Ponyville and later became the Bearer of the Element of Laughter. Pinkie has been carefully controlling the use of Her powers, although this isn’t helped by the fact that She bores easily. If the fact that She escaped Limbo ever became known to Her jealous race of gods, the consequences would include the deletion of Equestria from history.
• Currently, the only individuals aware of Pinkie Pie’s true nature are Rainbow Dash (because She told her), Rarity and the Dragon Emperor (because they were watching the dream), and Waking Terror and Celestia (who as you read in the Prologue barely know anything).

…And that should be everything.

Author's Note

From this point, I will be publishing one chapter a week until the story is done.

Some chapters are split into two parts. When that happens, I'll post both half-chapters on the same day.