The Source of the Incident
You have 3 hours.
We had walked ourselves into a classic Manehattan diner, the Morning and Night, owned by two stallions named Flapjack and Coffee Bean. They were polite folk, with Flapjack being from the countryside by the sound of his accent.
“Ma’ams,” he had said, serving me a plate of blueberry pancakes and chocolate for my partner, Promis
Once he was out of our hair, my partner gave her watch a nervous glance. “The records said they’d be here. Why don’t I see the Princess?”
I started sweating, partly because her anxiety was rubbing off, and partly because the atmosphere in the city of Manehattan, 1109 C.E. was stale and choking. How were we going to find the Source within three hours in a city like this? We were in the city sixty years before the Incident swallowed it whole. The streets were more crowded than I could have imagined.
“They’ll show up,” I said. “You see that guy?”
I pointed my hoof to a stallion sitting in a booth by the window. He had an old-fashioned notepad, actual paper, and wore a chevron moustache and short-cropped brown mane with streaks of grey running through it.
“Yes. Why?”
“Matches the description of the reporter. That means we’re close, the Princess and the Source should be arriving soon.” This time, I was the one looking at my watch. Two hours and forty-five minutes. We didn’t have a large window to complete our mission objective. According to the records, the reporter interviewed the Princess and her friends for two hours. At that time, the Source was spotted in the area.
Our mission outfitter had done his homework, at least. Promis had been given a replica of a late-Celestia Era dress, coated in purple sequins and accented with golden gemstones. For myself, a red turtleneck and beanie easily hid my warped horn and scars. From my shoulder hung a satchel which held all the relics of the time period to verify we had indeed found the Source.
I took out the faded notepad now, comparing it to the one the reporter was scribbling in. The ink on mine was faded, but I could still make out what he was writing on the top page. It was a doodle of the Princess punching a big-horned centaur in the face.
“He’s bored,” my partner noted. “They must be late.”
“Or maybe he’s early,” I said. “But none of that matters. This has happened already, we just need to wait and catch the Source when she shows.”
“What if we’ve changed too much? The Source might suspect us, she might not even show up.”
“That’s impossible. The Incident is decades away, she had no reason to suspect us. The only ones who are going to suspect us are the locals.”
My partner quieted down, but she was no less fidgety. The Source had a habit of escaping, we learned this the hard way before time travelling, back when we thought we could contain in our own time. But it only took sixteen months for the Incident to spread from the Source to the rest of the world, consuming everything in its wake. If we missed the window of opportunity, the only time where we knew the exact location of the Source, there was no guarantee we’d be able to find it again.
Two hours and thirty minutes.
With that in mind, my partner headed for the road. I would have said something to bring her back, if I thought for a second that she’d listen. Instead, I kept an eye on her, watching as she paced up and down the street, her lips counting each step. I knew what she was doing. We had run drills for months in preparation for our mission, walking the streets of Manehattan in our own time, familiarising ourselves with surviving maps and the devoured landscape of the city.
But this looked nothing like the present. For one thing, the apartments across the street had been torn open, windows and walls, and all the food and drinks inside were gone without a trace.
The streets were even and well-maintained. Okay, they were maintained, at least, despite the cracks and potholes. They were definitely in a better state now than after all the fighting to stop the spread of the Incident. I pressed my beanie down, feeling my twisted horn underneath.
It had been like that for as long as I could remember.
“Look alive,” Promis said, planting herself back in her seat and shoving a whole pancake into her face.
“The Source?”
“No, just the Princess and her friends, including the Progenitor.”
“Then we’re right on target. Everything is continuing just like the records said. The Source is bound to show up.”
The bell above the door rang as Princess Twilight and her five friends walked in. Almost immediately, the reporter perked up and flipped to the next page in his notepad. I did the same. He started with the purple-haired mare, Rarity. According to the records, they were here to discuss her business ventures, after all. Then he moved on, asking questions to the Princess herself.
She was smaller than either of us expected, a lot smaller than the towering mare she had grown into in later decades, but her purple coat and the streak of pink in her mane was unmistakable.
“Do you want me to order you a milkshake?”
I looked from the notepad. “What?”
“Milkshakes. Should I order you one?”
“We’re on a mission. The fate of all Equestria depends on us finding the source, and you’re thinking about milkshakes?”
“We’ll be loitering if we don’t order anything,” she said, pointing to both our plates, “and don’t act like you’re still not hungry. When was the last time we had actual cooked food to eat, not wheat paste and bark soup?”
I pressed my lips together, trying not to think of my stomach now that she was talking about food. But, she was right. The owners weren’t going to let us take up a table for hours until we kept ordering.
“Fine, a strawberry milkshake,” I told her. “And fries.”
By the time my partner had finished her second chocolate milkshake, the reporter had cycled through each of the interviewees, asking them about the grand opening of Rarity’s boutique. I eyed the Progenitor with special care.
“Now?”
“Not yet,” I said, turning several pages ahead to the reporter’s sighting of the Source. A simple “what was that?” next to a doodle of the Progenitor could, under other circumstances, be regarded as a passing thought of no consequence. It was a small note in his margins, but ironically scribbled next to the Progenitor’s comments about self-duplication.
Making copies of yourself always sounds like a great idea, he had quoted. I showed that page to Promis.
“They haven’t reached this part yet,” I told her. “When they do, we’ll know for sure that the Source is in sight.”
She grabbed the notepad away from me and flipped through it. “Pinkie is a big spender,” she read aloud. “Followed by three bit signs. If her appetite is anything like the Source, she should have ordered something by now.”
“The night is still young. She will.”
As if just to prove my point, the Progenitor stretched her hoof out and waved over to Coffee Bean. “Don’t want to rush you, but are my pancakes ready?”
“As tactful as the records say,” I mused. “See? She already ordered. We have plenty of time.”
“Except we are here this time,” she said. “And we’ve been making orders since six o’clock. What if we’ve changed so much that the pancakes don’t come out in time? The Source might not even come anymore!”
I reached out and put my hoof over hers before her sharpened whispers turned to full-on shouts. “Cool it. Nothing has changed, the kitchen can handle a few fries and milkshakes.” I looked at every other plate in front of her. “Along with two orders of garlic bread and a plate of grilled zucchini.”
“Order’s right here, Pinkamina!” Flapjack called out, bringing a half-metre high stack of pancakes.
“Celestia Almighty,” I swore under my breath. “Maybe you’re related.”
Leaning in closer to me, Promis nodded her head towards the door. Coming in from the bustling street, a pink-coated pony in a trench coat and dark hat over her face walked in. She signalled to Coffee Bean and took the booth just behind the Progenitor.
“The shady-looking one,” my partner noted. “Think that’s the Source?”
I wanted to believe she was, but there were dozens of pink and rose coloured ponies in Manehattan. We passed two earlier before we even walked into the diner. Jumping too soon and causing a scene in the past could lead to irrevocable changes in the future, and not always for the better.
“I don’t know,” I told her, grabbing the notepad and listening in close to their conversation.
“And then Rarity was all like ‘Oh how I wish I could make more copies of myself,’” the Progenitor said.
“And did she?” the reporter asked. “I mean, Princess Twilight is known for her feats of magic.”
“Yeah, making copies of yourself always sounds like a great idea, but before you know it you’re locked in a room with fifty Pinkie Pies watching paint dry.”
At the moment the Progenitor swallowed a few pancakes whole, the stranger turned, lifting her hat when Flapjack went over to take her order. It was only a moment, but a long enough one that we both caught a good glimpse of her face.
“And she will have a face just like this picture,” Promis whispered the words Princess Twilight had told us before we stepped on that metal platform.
“What now? Should we grab her?”
“No, too risky,” I said.
“Riskier than losing her and going back to an Equestria without chocolate? Who cares if we make a scene, we’ll be out of here in a second.”
We had our little argument without either of us taking our eyes off the Source. On the far side of the diner, the Princess and her friends were chatting and drinking coffee, waiting for the reporter to call them to corroborate their friends’ statements.
“There’s a lot of ponies,” I said. “If I were her, I wouldn’t leave through the front door. Let her take the alley door, we’ll follow and corner her right by the machine.”
And right then, our waiter came over to our table. “You two ladies doing alright?” Flapjack was loud and confident, the bulk on his shoulders and back telling a lifetime of shucking hay bales and pulling ploughs.
“Yes, we were just thinking of something else we’d like to order,” my partner said. “Could you give us a few minutes?”
“Right, right,” Flapjack clicked his tongue, “thing is, I just came over from that table over yonder, and the lady there says you two’ve been ogling her since she came in. What’s all this I’m hearing about cornering some pony?” He tipped his head in the direction of the Source. “Reckon that’d make any pony uncomfortable.”
I laughed to hide my sudden discomfiture. “We’re just waiting for someone, that’s all. She looks like a friend of ours, and then we noticed how much she looks like Pinkie Pie over there, and we were going to, uh, corner them to ask if they were related, that’s all. But we’re sorry, we’ll keep our eyes to ourselves.”
“Waiting for someone, huh? For what, near three hours now?” Flapjack checked the clock on the wall and then clicked his tongue. “Yep, reckon so. Now, either you two are the most patient gals in Equestria, or you ain’t very good at spying or whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Spying? Us?” I laughed again. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Sorry,” Flapjack said, shaking his head with just tired resignation in his voice. “She’s a regular here, and if I’m being honest, you two’ve been here a while and it’s getting kinda weird. Gonna have to ask you to pay your bill and leave.” He gestured out the back door.
“What?” my partner snapped, her voice spiking tenfold and drawing the eyes of the whole diner, including the Princess. “You can’t just kick us out. I… I demand to see your manager!”
“You’re looking at him,” Flapjack said, shrugging, “unless you wanna talk to my husband, but he’s a bit busy right now.” He clicked his tongue and grinned. “With Princess Twilight and all, we’re kinda busy.”
Slowly, I produced my purse from my bag and placed seventy-two bits on the table. “I understand. Sorry if we’ve bothered any pony.”
“Othe!” My partner shot me a surprised look. “What are you doing?”
“The responsible thing, trust me.” I took her by the hoof and gave Flapjack a final nod before leaving through the backdoor, almost having to drag Promis with me into the alley.
“How could you just walk out like that? The Source saw us, she knows we’re onto her. It’s just like the Incident, always one step ahead of us.”
“Hey, can you chill for a second?” I snapped at her. “You understand that your outburst got more than just her attention, right? We’re supposed to be discreet, but now our future’s like a tree branch, full of budding directions and uncertainty. If we do anything out of the ordinary, Twilight told us that the future, our present, will be different every time.”
“It was always going to be different,” Promis said back. “If we stop the Source from causing the Incident, what do you think is going to happen to us? Did you seriously think the new Princess Twilight will know who we are? How about the rest of the survivors?”
I blinked, realising that I hadn’t given it much thought. I had been focused on capturing the Source.
“This was a one-way trip, Othe. The future we’re going back to won’t exist. But at least it’ll be a future where the Incident never happened.”
I looked sadly down at our watch. Ten minutes left. We were exiting the frame of certainty now. No, we had already left it, when Promis shouted at Flapjack. But maybe it wasn’t too late.
“She asked Flapjack to kick us out,” I said, feeling hope come back to me. “She wouldn’t have done that if she planned on staying.”
“You think?”
I nodded, and then took my beanie off. My twisted horn glowed and I removed the concealing spell from the time machine, a circular metal plate lined with crystalline circuits all along the edge. It was so small it could have passed for a trash can lid if it wasn’t so shiny.
“Good, it’s still warm,” I said. “Let’s cross the street and watch from there, and as soon as the Source steps out, we grab her and hop on that machine as fast as we can. We’ll be out of here before any pony has time to react.”
Promis stared at me. “What happened to being subtle?”
“Well, you kind of threw that out the window when you asked to see the manager,” I told her.
Without waiting for a response, I set out, pounding the ground with my hooves as I went, almost tasting the victory. The Source was onto us now, and if she ran at the first sight of me, I wasn’t confident I could catch her, being the monster that she was. But I had something a little better than speed, and I trusted I could count on her. Sure enough, I hadn’t gone more than five steps before I heard my partner’s hooves clopping along after me.
“What’s our move if she runs?” Promis asked, as if reading my mind.
“You run her down, I use magic,” I said, “together we’ll herd her into the alley and onto the machine.” We turned the corner, but at that moment, our hearts sank.
She was gone.
“Where—?” Promis took a shocked step back, looking around the street. “She couldn’t have gotten far. She just couldn’t have! She was right here, where could she have gone?”
The sound answered before I could. It was a whirling, electrical sound that came from the alley, and though I didn’t want to look, I already knew.
“Othe!” Promis yelled, “Othe she’s taking it! The Source is taking the time machine!”
“Oh, you bet!” cried its incessant, rubbery squeak of a voice. “This is the best gift I’ve ever gotten from two strangers. I’ll make sure to let them know it was you.”
I only found just enough will to move my legs and look back down the alley of the Morning and Night, and I watched as the Source of the Incident, the magical copy of Pinkie Pie, flashed into the future.
“Do you think,” Promis asked me hopefully, “do you think that was enough? I mean, she won’t be around to start the incident, will she?”
My partner looked at me, and I at her, and all I could do was shrug. “You never know with Pinkie Pies.”
