Twilight Sparkle and the Stupid Original Pony

As usual, we spent the night of moondark under our tiny patch of sky. Hints of an aurora danced around the stars and chill crept down from the spaces between. Late spring was still cool, and we wore heavy robes to warm us through the night.

The lessons on the dark nights spanned language, lore, and liturgy, Isha teaching the same material to both mother and daughter. Naturally I was held to a higher standard. Tonight Gloam filled me with pride as she rattled off an Ode to Aphrodite along with me. Judging by her facility with these human studies, she’d be a natural at unicorn magic once she could get the training. It was a shame I couldn’t teach her any of the little I knew – I must trust the goddess to reward my obedience.

Bless my foal, I prayed silently, reverencing the holy one of Equestria in my thoughts. I could only hope that we’d be home in her world before it was Aphrodite’s specific mode of blessing which I might ask on Gloam’s behalf.

“Ready for a break?”

Isha’s question brought me back to the present.

“Sure.”

The word was barely out of my mouth before Gloam was out of her robe and into the shrubbery; she never tired of her nocturnal explorations in the more overgrown areas.

“Any thoughts on the lessons?” Isha asked. “It’s been a year.”

“I value your teaching and appreciate the effort you put into it.”

“I’ve been glad to have you both. But this is not the tutelage you yearn for.”

“Of course I want to learn the magic of Equestria. Until I can, I learn what is available.”

“Don’t expect me to teach you the Deplorable Word.”

“You don’t even know it.”

That came out a little less politely than it could have.

“Are you quite sure of that, neophyte?”

Stern of voice, Isha towered above me – more so than usual, it seemed.

For a moment I considered. It would be foolish for me to assume that I could assess the limits of her knowledge. But as her friend, I could sense—

“I am sure.”

—there was a spark of darkness missing in her soul.

“You could never learn it.”

A spark I feared dwelt deep within me.

“Correct,” she said, breaking into a smile. “I couldn’t, even if I had the chance. Healing spells, magic to sooth troubled hearts, I can teach you. Ending a world, not so much.”

I nodded my understanding and agreement. I would never choose to utter the word, but it was chilling to know that I could.

“Y’know,” I said, groping for another topic, “the Greek is actually helpful at work, it’s one of the languages I never studied before. We have some original quartos of Trismegistus and it’s good to be able to read the actual documents and check the accuracy of our latin translations.”

“Who’s that?”

“Ancient sorcerer. Centuries before Frer Tantivus, he was one of the first to seriously analyze the formulae in Al Azif.”

“Necrowombicon!” Gloam shouted, poking her head out of a rhododendron near me.

I tousled her hair affectionately before she disappeared again, a naked shadow in the bushes. She was too young to know the horror of that which she mispronounced.

“I’d say that was all greek to me, if I wasn’t fluent in that language. You never talk about what you actually do, in the daylit world. What kind of job needs stuff like that? I know you aren’t a practicing sorcerer.”

“I’m semi-unemployed now, but nominally a research librarian, workin’ the dark stacks. Stuff I can’t talk about. And they don’t let us practice any of the stuff we research.”

“Nominally?”

“Library funding for esoteric services has been cut since Konig became the supreme guide, so I don’t get many hours.”

“I heard that old Kratar was sorta into some weird stuff before he was overthrown.”

“I can can confirm that. If he hadn’t needed people like me supporting his researchers, we wouldn’t have had any budget at all. I think he was probably trying for immortality, there are rumors his LXP didn’t quite take. They’d send my group very narrow requests and I’d send them extracts from the cryptoliterature, all very compartmentalized. I’m pretty sure that at least half of the stuff I researched was useless requests to keep anyone from figuring out what they were trying to do. What about you?”

“I’m a physicist at the high energy lab, specializing in nine dimensional brane mechanics. Some day we’re gonna grab a fold of spacetime and give it a tug!”

“What happens then?”

“Localized control of gravity and a loophole in relativity.”

“So, you mean like, better lifters for transport vehicles?”

“I’m talking macro-scale faster than light travel!” she said with an enthusiast’s grin, and then disclaimed, “uh, we’re a way from realizing that.”

“What’s macro-scale mean?”

“We can already send virtual particles through wormholes FTL. I’m talking about large shit like spaceships.”

“Ad astra a amor,” I quipped.

“Without love?”

“I don’t think our lady is going to get on board a spaceship.”

“Heh, good point. Ready to get back to it? Give me the Greek alphabet, backwards. Gloam, c’mer.”

My daughter darted across the grass and skidded out, sliding to a giggling stop between Isha and me.

“My bottom’s cold,” she said.

“Get your robe on, child,” our teacher chuckled.

—

Through the night we studied, until the square of sky far above us began to lighten. The equinox was only weeks away and dawn came bright and early. Isha had suggested that she host the inevitable post-watch sleepathon.Teacher and students, we traversed the silent city to her place. Golden Way was closer than Oblique Path and we arrived at our destination without any untoward incident.

Golden Way, it turned out, was an arcology almost identical to mine. Identical design, different trim level, probably grown in the same factory, but easily a hundred years older. And showing its age.

“Occupancy is less than three percent,” she explained her choice, “I enjoy the solitude.”

The elevator ground to a halt three floors above her domicile.

“Getting some peace and quiet makes up for the quaint little drawbacks; about half of the elevator landings are inaccessible.” She strode down the left hallway. “Stairs are over here.”

This floor certainly looked abandoned, doorways un-doored, glimpses through showing empty domiciles; the spotless floors spoke to emptiness and not mere cleanliness. And we left no tracks, I noted with approval.

“Hey, Jeeves—” Isha waved at a cheap security node overlooking the stairwell “—guests. Approved for future access.”

“Yes, Doctor Myrtle,” a synthetic voice replied. “I have nothing to report, but I’ve started two coffees and a hot chocolate.”

“Thank you, Jeeves.”

It sounded like an off the shelf Jeeves unit, probably about as intelligent as a wristwatch. I’d have Bear discreetly boost her safeguards.

“I only own the one dom’ unit,” she explained as we approached an opening door, “but I extended my perimeter all the way to the elevator. Nobody comes up here but me.”

Isha’s dom’ looked more like an extension of the physics lab than a living space. It gave no hint that its occupant might also indulge in some less than scientific practices. Rather than wait for the grand tour, I followed the scent of coffee.

Thanking her Jeeves, I asked, “does she have a tray I can use to carry these?”

“No, ma’am, I suggest using a dinner plate,” the domestic A.I. murmured.

I gathered up the other drinks and went looking for Isha and Gloam.

In what should have been her dinning room, Isha was showing off some apparatus – a small metal frame held a row of dark metal spheres. As Gloam released one sphere, it clacked into the others and the one at the far end swung away from the others.

Clack, clack, clack, the motion continued at alternating ends of the thingy and Gloam accepted cocoa without looking away from the demonstration.

I gave Isha her coffee and carried the plate back to the kitchen. When I returned she was still watching Gloam watch the clacking spheres, and explaining the principle behind it as Gloam slurped her cocoa.

“Gloam should get to bed,” I said once the cocoa was gone.

“I’m not tired,” she yawned her reply.

“Uh-huh, you need your rest.”

“Can I use your shower, Isha? I have grass in my butt crack.”

I slapped my forehead. Of course she did, after sliding around naked on the lawn.

“Sure—” Isha was trying not to laugh too loud “—shower up and then crash in my bedroom, there’s room for all of us.”

“Throw your clothes in the auto, don’t just leave them on the floor,” I called after her.

I looked around the equipment filled room as I sipped from my mug. Ninety percent of the stuff, I could not identify.

“Don’t worry, I have a permit,” Isha said, affectionately running her hand across the enormous machine the sphere gizmo was sitting on.

“Uh, good?” I tentatively agreed.

“It’s a Quantum Arthrac, you dweeb. A particle accelerator.”

“Me a dweeb? You’re the dweeb getting wet about it!”

Instead of retorting, Isha blushed.

“I just really like physics.”

“Physics, huh.”

“But sometimes I feel conflicted between my role as a physicist and my duty as a priestess. Science versus magic, y’know. Duality.”

“Everything exists in dualism.”

Despite strong, sweet, coffee I was feeling drowsily philosophical.

“Not really,” she disagreed. “Some stuff doesn’t fit into any dichotomy.”

“So reality consists of things that are dualities, and things that are not dualities. That sounds like a duality to me.”

“Wait, what? No.”

“And if all of reality consists of a single dualism, then that could be wrapped into a monad, a philosophical singularity.”

“I call ‘bullshit’.”

“Isn’t all philosophy bullshit? I don’t see any conflict. No matter what theogony you embrace, no aspect of the deimatrix should be threatened by science. Science is just the worshipful study of creation.”

She looked skeptical.

“By taking it apart,” I continued, “and making weapons out of the interesting bits.”

“Like you can speak about weapons after what you can do – I’ve seen you kill, twice.”

“Touché”

“What went wrong when you stopped the speeder? Do you know what your mistake was to learn from it?”

“Uh, physics isn’t really my thing, you know,” I admitted. “Instead of creating a barrier for it to hit (that’s what I’d do next time) I tried to stop it by converting the velocity to heat. You take the mass times the velocity squared and square all that, and that’s the amount of energy that needs to be dissipated.”

“Nuh-uh. You divide. Because of symmetry. Em times Vee squared, all that over two.”

“Yeah, that would do it. My bad.”

“It must have been thousands of degrees inside there.”

“They died instantly, fucking exploded.”

“I’m trying to wrap my head around it. In class, if you use the wrong equation you get marked down. But when you did it wrong, reality conformed to your error.”

“Back to the physics/magic duality. Maybe an avenue worth exploring.”

“Hold your horses, pony lover! Even if you care naught for the sanity of a mere scientist, don´t break physics when your daughter lives in this universe.”

I sighed.

“Not for long, Twilight will rescue us.”

“And if not?” she asked as she led me to her bedroom.

“Stopping a speeder turned out to be easy. Some day I will learn to step between worlds.”

The room was silent – Gloam was already asleep somewhere.

“I hope you do,” she said with a yawn. “You wanna be on top?”

I’d never seen a queen size bunk bed before.