The End of the Long Dream
In case you didn't catch it in the description, I do not own any ideas related to Minecraft. I also did not write the End Poem, anything written in blue and green words was not written by me, but were in the credits of Minecraft. I only slightly edited them to make them more pony related.
There it was. Princess Cadance stared at it. The black, gooey-looking portal sat in front of her. “There's no going back now.” she told herself. Her hooves clicked on the stone brick stairs. A Silverfish spawner had been where she was standing only a moment ago, but she had slain the evil insects and destroyed it. Behind her was the rest of the Stronghold she had found deep underground, but she was only interested in the portal in front of her.
Around the portal was the frame. It was filled with the Eyes of Enders, taken from the Enderponies so she may help their race. Through this portal was The End, where the Enderponies lived. Or had lived. Many years ago, the Enderponies had a great civilization in The End, but then the evil Enderdragon had appeared and destroyed it. The Enderponies had come to the normal world and taken blocks to try and rebuild it, but were unsuccessful.
Now Cadance had to defeat the dragon and save the Enderponies. She had gone through many adventures to get ready for this moment. She had fallen in lava and climbed out alive, mined for diamonds at the bottom of the world, braved dark caves full of dangers, made a portal to the evil dimension known as the Nether to take blaze rods from the Blazes, all the time braving the everyday dangers such as zombie ponies, skeletons, and creepers. Now she had finished the End Portal, had mined enough diamonds for a full suit of diamond armor, a sword, and a pickaxe. Now she was ready.
She took one last look around at the End Portal room. There was a good chance she might not live to return. But now was not the time for bad thoughts. The Enderponies needed her help.
She leaped gracefully into the black gooey portal.
-
She materialized again, finding herself in darkness. She pulled out a torch and set it down to find herself on a platform made of obsidian. All around her was an unusual block. It looked like a cream-yellow version of cobblestone. But there was no time to gawk at the pretty stone; she needed to get out.
She took out her diamond pickaxe and swung at the stone. It tore away, and she picked it up. Examining it, she decided to call it 'End stone'. She threw it behind her; it was useless to this battle. She continued digging up (but not straight up; at an angle) until she heard a familiar noise. She couldn't quite explain it, but it was a wonderful yet terrifying sound. She climbed out of the hole and saw black hooves. She immediately looked down. Don't look it in the eyes. she thought.
The Enderpony stared at Cadance with his scary purple eyes. He dipped his head, as if in thanks, then trotted away. Cadance sighed with relief, then decided to observe her surroundings. She nearly gasped as she noticed what she was standing on.
She was standing on an island made of End Stone, floating in blackness. The only other block than End Stone was obsidian. There were several tall pillars made of it. They had some sort of crystals on top of each one. All around were Enderponies. They were amazing; enderponies were tall, black creature that resembled normal ponies with deep purple eyes and strange purple flowers that always floated around them. They had the unique ability to teleport without being unicorns; they used rare objects called Ender Pearls. Other creatures, such as Cadance, could use Ender Pearls, but only once. Enderponies knew how to use on Ender Pearl to teleport all over for eternity.
But she wasn't here for the scenery or the enderponies. She was reminded of this when she heard a roar off in the distance. She looked up and saw a great dragon flying high above her. The rims of its wings were silvery and it's eyes were the same deep purple as the enderponies'. Cadance pulled out her diamond sword and got ready to attack when she heard hoofsteps behind her.
“The crystals heal him, colored one.” an enderpony told her. Stopping herself from turning around and looking at the enderpony to respond, Cadance merely nodded and switched to her bow and arrow. If the crystals healed the dragon, she would have to dispose of them first. She aimed carefully, and shot the arrow directly at the strange crystal. There was an explosion and the crystal was gone.
Instead of worrying why the crystal exploded, Cadance started shooting the other crystals. By the time she had finished off the last one, the enderdragon let out another roar and flew at her. But Cadance was much quicker. She swung her diamonds sword and hit the dragon in the face, making him fly away and cry in pain. But he wasn't finished. He flew around and dove for Cadance again, but the pony just flipped around and sliced him with the sword again.
The same thing repeated over and over again until the dragon, now weak, desperately opened his mouth the breathe fire at Cadance. But Cadance was no longer the little filly she had been before she had come to this strange world of blocks. She was braver, smarter, and quicker. When she saw the possibly deadly attack coming, she pulled out her bow and shot and arrow right into the great dragon's mouth.
It did the trick.
The enderdragon let out one last howl of pain, then he started disintegrating. He appeared to be exploding silently, scales falling off of his body and disappearing before they hit the end stone below. Then he was gone, leaving behind nothing but another gooey portal.
Cadance trotted over to the portal and stared into the blackness within it. It would take her home. Back to her blocky, hoof-made home where she would continue to live with her pet cat. She waved goodbye to the Enderponies, then stepped inside.
-
This isn't home. Cadance thought. She appeared to be slowly falling through blackness. Did the portal not work?
But this wasn't just simply falling into nothingness. There was something even more interesting than that; she knew this when blue and green words started to appear in her vision. At first she thought the words were directed towards her, but then realized that the two different colors were talking to each other.
I see the pony you mean.
Cadance?
Me? Cadance wondered. Are they talking about me?
Yes. Take care. It has reached a higher level now. It can read our thoughts.
That doesn't matter. It thinks we are part of the game.
I'm reading thoughts? What game?
I like this pony. It played well. It did not give up.
It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a screen.
So I am reading thoughts... these words... are somepony's thoughts?
That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a game.
Dream of a game? Imagine? I don't understand...
Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the reality behind the screen.
They used to hear voices. Before ponies could read. Back in the days when those who did not play called the players witches, and warlocks. And players dreamed they flew through the air, on sticks powered by demons.
What did this pony dream?
Who are these words? I mean, who are the ponies behind these words? What are they talking about, with games and dreams?
This player dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed. It dreamed it hunted, and was hunted. It dreamed of shelter.
Hah, the original interface. A million years old, and it still works. But what true structure did this player create, in the reality behind the screen?
It worked, with a million others, to sculpt a true world in a fold of the shubgfvyv, and created a hjrnc for jhrciuhn, in the hcrhhnkx.
What was that? I can't read it. Was it something important? I need to know!
It cannot read that thought.
No. It has not yet achieved the highest level. That, it must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream of a game.
'Level'?
Does it know that we love it? That the universe is kind?
Are they still talking about me?
Sometimes, through the noise of its thoughts, it hears the universe, yes.
But there are times it is sad, in the long dream. It creates worlds that have no summer, and it shivers under a black sun, and it takes its sad creation for reality.
To cure it of sorrow would destroy it. The sorrow is part of its own private task. We cannot interfere.
Sometimes when they are deep in dreams, I want to tell them, they are building true worlds in reality. Sometimes I want to tell them of their importance to the universe. Sometimes, when they have not made a true connection in a while, I want to help them to speak the word they fear.
It reads our thoughts.
Sometimes I do not care. Sometimes I wish to tell them, this world you take for truth is merely gbsdjgvbf and yhgrccb, I wish to tell them that they are hfgfik in the dhgunf. They see so little of reality, in their long dream.
I can't read that either! Please just come out and tell me what you are talking about!
And yet they play the game.
But it would be so easy to tell them...
Too strong for this dream. To tell them how to live is to prevent them living.
What dream? Won't they please explain?
I will not tell the player how to live.
The player is growing restless.
How did they know?
I will tell the player a story.
But not the truth.
No. A story that contains the truth safely, in a cage of words. Not the naked truth that can burn over any distance.
Give it a body, again.
What does he mean by that...?
Yes. Pony...
Use its name.
Cadance. Player of games.
So they are talking to me. But what games do they think I play?
Good.
Take a breath, now. Take another. Feel air in your lungs. Let your limbs return. Yes, move your hooves. Have a body again, under gravity, in air. Respawn in the long dream. There you are.
Cadance's hooves softly touched grass as the world formed around her. She was no longer falling into nothingness. She took two deep breaths like the green words had told her.
Your body touching the universe again at every point, as though you were separate things. As though we were separate things.
But who are you? What is all about?
Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the mountain. Mother sun, Mother moon. Ancestral spirits, animal spirits. Jinn. Ghosts. The white and blue ponies. Then gods, demons. Animals. Poltergeists. Aliens, extraterrestrials. Leptons, quarks. The words change. We do not change.
But those are words, that doesn't explain who or what you are.
We are the universe. We are everything you think isn't you. You are looking at us now, through your skin and your eyes. And why does the universe touch your skin, and throw light on you? To see you, Cadance. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there was a pony.
The pony was you, Cadance.
Sometimes it thought itself living on the thin crust of a spinning globe of molten rock. The ball of molten rock circled a ball of blazing gas that was three hundred and thirty thousand times more massive than it. They were so far apart that light took eight minutes to cross the gap. The light was information from a star, and it could burn your skin from a hundred and fifty million kilometres away.
Sometimes the pony dreamed it was a miner, on the surface of a world that was flat, and infinite. The sun was a square of white. The days were short; there was much to do; and death was a temporary inconvenience.
Sometimes the pony dreamed it was lost in a story.
Sometimes the pony dreamed it was other things, in other places. Sometimes these dreams were disturbing. Sometimes very beautiful indeed. Sometimes the player woke from one dream into another, then woke from that into a third.
Sometimes the player dreamed it watched words on a screen.
Like now?
Let's go back.
The atoms of the pony were scattered in the grass, in the rivers, in the air, in the ground. A mare gathered the atoms; she drank and ate and inhaled; and the mare assembled the player, in her body.
And the pony awoke, from the warm, dark world of its mother's body, into the long dream.
And the pony was a new story, never told before, written in letters of DNA. And the pony was a new program, never run before, generated by a sourcecode a billion years old. And the pony was a new pony, never alive before, made from nothing but milk and love.
You are the pony. The story. The program. The human. Made from nothing but milk and love.
But what does that explain? It mean that I am just a pony born from a mother like all others.
Let's go further back.
The seven billion billion billion atoms of the pony's body were created, long before this game, in the heart of a star. So the pony, too, is information from a star. And the pony moves through a story, which is a forest of information planted by a stallion called Julian, on a flat, infinite world created by a stallion called Markus, that exists inside a small, private world created by the pony, who inhabits a universe created by...
Shush.
By who?
Sometimes the player created a small, private world that was soft and warm and simple. Sometimes hard, and cold, and complicated. Sometimes it built a model of the universe in its head; flecks of energy, moving through vast empty spaces. Sometimes it called those flecks "electrons" and "protons".
Sometimes it called them "planets" and "stars".
I created the universe?
Sometimes it believed it was in a universe that was made of energy that was made of offs and ons; zeros and ones; lines of code. Sometimes it believed it was playing a game. Sometimes it believed it was reading words on a screen.
You are the pony, reading words...
Shush... Sometimes the pony read lines of code on a screen. Decoded them into words; decoded words into meaning; decoded meaning into feelings, emotions, theories, ideas, and the player started to breathe faster and deeper and realized it was alive, it was alive, those thousand deaths had not been real, the player was alive.
You. You. You are alive.
I am alive...
And sometimes the pony believed the universe had spoken to it through the sunlight that came through the shuffling leaves of the summer trees.
And sometimes the pony believed the universe had spoken to it through the light that fell from the crisp night sky of winter, where a fleck of light in the corner of the pony's eye might be a star a million times as massive as the sun, boiling its planets to plasma in order to be visible for a moment to the player, walking home at the far side of the universe, suddenly smelling food, almost at the familiar door, about to dream again.
And sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the zeros and ones, through the electricity of the world, through the scrolling words on a screen at the end of a dream.
And the universe said I love you.
And the universe said you have played the game well.
And the universe said everything you need is within you.
And the universe said you are stronger than you know.
And the universe said you are the daylight.
And the universe said you are the night.
And the universe said the darkness you fight is within you.
And the universe said the light you seek is within you.
And the universe said you are not alone.
And the universe said you are not separate from every other thing.
And the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code.
And the universe said I love you because you are love.
And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the pony dreamed again, dreamed better. And the pony was the universe. And the pony was love.
You are the pony.
Wake up.
I am the pony... I am the universe... I am love?
Then Cadance was falling into nothingness once more.
-
“Cadance dear, time to wake up.” a soft, kind voice roused the young princess from her slumber. She looked up to see the face of Princess Celestia, her adopted mother.
“Good morning.” Princess Cadance stood and stretched.
Princess Celestia smiled. “Were you having a good dream?”
“Of course.”
“Well, I'll leave you to wake up.” Celestia walked out the door. “I'll see you in the royal hall in half and hour for breakfast.”
Cadance nodded. When Celestia closed the door, Cadance used her magic to levitate a hair brush over to her and started brushing it out of her face. She looked in the mirror and saw herself. The same young filly she had always been, not the brave mare who wore diamond armor and saved the Enderponies.
But then she noticed something different.
On her flank was a crystal shaped like a heart.
Her eyes grew wide as she realized what it meant.
“I am the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code..” She whispered out loud. “I am the universe... I am love.”
Cadance had no idea who the voices really were, or what the dream really meant but she did know one thing. She would dream again and dream bigger. She would dream until she found out.
