Pinkie skipped through town, humming a song to herself as she mentally checked off another item on her list.
“Invite Applejack to tomorrow's Only 294 Days Until the New Year Party party... Check!”
Last on the list, Twilight Sparkle, the smarty smart pants unicorn! Pinkie tapped her head on the door and waited. It opened, and Twilight yanked her in. The library was filled with books that lay strewn about across every surface, each open and waiting to be read. Typical Twilight.
“Pinkie, perfect, you're just what I need!”
“Did you need cake? Ooh, or did you need cupcakes? I'm really good at making cupcakes. Sometimes I even put-”
“Not now, Pinkie, I need you for an experiment.”
Pinkie had never gotten to be used for experiments before. Well, not since Twilight tried to disprove her Pinkie Sense, but that was just silly.
“What kind of experiment?”
“A magical one. Ever since I found that spell to temporarily travel back in time I've been obsessed with finding something a bit more practical. Well, it turns out Starswhirl the Bearded had similar ideas, so he created a spell to send the user into the future for about the same time.”
Pinkie just stared.
“Uh, right. I'm going to send you into the future, and you're going to tell me how it was, alright?”
“Okie dokie lokie!”
Twilight activated her magic and assembled a few items into the center of the library; eight mirrors, chalk, and a stopwatch. The stopwatch was tied around Pinkie's neck, and the mirrors and chalk arranged into two intersecting diamonds, each with four mirrors facing the center.
Pinkie stood at the center of all this and, naturally, started making funny faces at the mirrors. Twilight cleared her throat.
“Right, so. The stopwatch is set to noon exactly. Whenever it reaches noon and 20 seconds the spell will wear off and you'll be brought back. Then we can get results. You ready?”
“Ready, captain!”
“Then let's do this.”
Twilight's horn glowed a faint purple. The aura began to get stronger and larger, with beams shooting out and into the mirrors. They showed afterimages of Pinkie no matter where she looked. Something dawned on her at the last second.
“Oh, Twilight, I forgot I wanted to invite you to my-”
SWOOOSH
“- party...”
Pinkie looked around the library. The mirrors were gone, along with the intricate chalk drawings. Even the books had been put back. Other than that, though, it didn't seem much different.
“Twilight, are you here!? Twilight!?”
Nothing. Not one sound. Come to think of it, she couldn't hear birds either. If this is noon, Fluttershy should be practicing her songbird chorus. Usually you can even hear Rainbow Dash doing tricks overhead. Nothing.
Nah, no reason to overreact. She decided to take a look outside. Maybe it's just a quiet day? She trotted over to the window with a bit less in her step. It was gone. Not the window, the outside. There was nothing out there but darkness. Was that light somewhere in the sky?
“I don't like this one bit.”
The stopwatch started ringing, which made Pinkie jump. Time to go back!
SWOOOSH
Pinkie was once again back in the familiar library with Twilight overhead. She looked absolutely ecstatic.
“So, how'd it go? What did you see? Was I there? What's wrong?”
Pinkie didn't wear any sort of look, and that was what gave her confusion away. Any time Pinkie doesn't look happy is truly a strange time.
“Well, Twilight, it was weird. It was... empty.”
“The library?”
“No, the library was fine. It was everything else. Everything was gone.”
Now it was Twilight's turn to be confused. She couldn't blame her, after all.
“What do you mean 'gone'?”
“Well, it's kind of hard to explain. There just wasn't anything outside of the window. There were no sounds, Twilight. No birds.”
Twilight rushed off to her blackboard and began writing formulas and other words she didn't understand on it in chalk. Pinkie just sat there, thinking.
“I think I've figured it out,” Twilight said after a long time. “The spell wasn't powerful enough. It only captured the future of the library, not the outside world or its inhabitants. That must be it.”
Pinkie, of course, had no clue what she was talking about. She nodded anyway.
“Still,” she continued, “I wish I could figure out why that happened in the first place. Maybe I should give Ditzy's friend a call... No, I can manage. It's all fine.”
Pinkie gave a sigh of relief. Though she couldn't understand it, she knew Twilight could, and that it'd work out.
“Well, see you later, Twilight! Good luck on your sciencey things.”
Twilight was too engrossed in her books to notice her leaving. She's used to it. She continued her morning, preparing ingredients for the party and deciding on decorations. Only thing left to do was cut and freeze the cake for tomorrow.
She got up her special party cake kit and headed downstairs. She didn't see Poundcake playing on one of the stairs, and tripped. She plummeted down the stairs shortly before her now airborne materials. The knife was what caught her attention. She barely realized what was happening before she hit the floor with a large gash through her neck. Her vision blurred, and she looked up at Poundcake, who seemed ready to cry. She gave a last smile, and it all went dark.
She was standing outside Sugercube Corner, handing out party favors to everypony. Wait, this wasn't right. Didn't she just... No, it couldn't have. Must've been a dream, silly! She handed out the rest of the party favors and went inside. Ponies were having fun, dancing and playing the usual games. Pin the tail on the pony wasn't making an appearance this time, being replaced with Twister and Fish of War. Call it a trial period. She bounced toward the center of the crowd, ready to have fun.
…
After a long day of partying and the usual cleaning, Pinkie was left alone in the shop. The foals were out with the Cakes doing some after-party shopping, so the silence was deafening.
The silence. She remembered that endless silence from the library, and it gave her shivers. This action felt weird. That's funny, she wasn't wearing that stopwatch a moment ago. She checked it. “10:59:40”. Weird. Maybe Twilight will know.
So she trotted off to the library once more. This time upon arrival she found a note.
“To whom it may concern,
I'm helping Fluttershy through some research right now. If you need a book, just write your name and its title on the sheet inside after taking it. Be sure to leave the library clean for other ponies.
Sincerely,
Twilight Sparkle”
“Well that just won't do!”
So after a quick change of direction, she set out for Fluttershy's cottage. About halfway through the journey, which took the pony very close to the Everfree Forest, Pinkie spotted what all ponies fear: a bear. Not just any old bear, either, but a black bear. Not to say there's anything wrong with black bears, but it's common knowledge that black bears are quicker to anger and much more violent against ponies.
Pinkie tried her best, but got caught in its attention. And boy, did it seem mad. The bear started lumbering closer to her, giving off a roar. Pinkie, on the other hand, broke into a gallop toward the cottage just over the horizon. Another bear, the female, came out from the woods and blocked her path ahead.
“It must be sweets. I smell like sweets!”
She didn't have any time to make a plan. The close roar made her spin around just in time to see the huge bear's claw coming right at her. She closed her eyes and hoped for the best.
Pinkie sat on Fluttershy's couch, reading through a book about bat migration. This can't be right. She should be dead, or at the very least seriously injured! Could she have ran here?
“Girls,” Pinkie asked the two other ponies, “what are we doing?”
They looked at each other oddly. It was Fluttershy who spoke.
“Oh, um, you and Twilight offered to help me research bat migration, remember? Bats suddenly disappeared this morning, and I can't seem to find an explanation.”
“No, I mean, what am I doing here? How did I get here?”
This time it was Twilight's turn to speak.
“What do you mean? You walked in, asked what we were doing, and offered to help. Don't you remember?”
Twilight looked at Pinkie's chest and gasped.
“Pinkie, where did you get this stopwatch!?”
“That's what I came to ask you about! It appeared on me after... some stuff happened. Twilight, I'm scared. What does it mean?”
Twilight looked down at the clock. “09:59:40”.
“I... I don't know,” she stammered. “This is the same clock I gave you, and it isn't moving. But I thought I had it back at the library... Wait, 9:59:40? It should read 12:00:40. This doesn't make any sense.”
Fluttershy asked, quietly, “what are you two walking about, um, if you don't mind me asking?”
Twilight answered, “I did a time travel experiment using Pinkie Pie and it appears to have some strange properties. Pinkie, has anything odd happened lately?”
Pinkie wanted to tell her, but she couldn't. What if Twilight thought she was a crazy pony? Twilight seemed to sense this.
“Don't worry, Pinkie, you can tell me, no matter what.”
“Well...” she started, “two things happened today.”
“Yes..?”
“I, uh, died.”
She felt bad when she saw those stares. The reaction could've gone worse, she supposed.
“W-what exactly do you mean that you died?” Twilight had a lot less color in her face as she asked.
“Well, I was preparing for the party earlier, and I fell down the staircase while carrying my party preparation kit. I landed on my knife. But then I was outside handing out party favors! It was like nothing happened. And just a few minutes ago I was outside and got attacked by these bears, but now I'm just sitting here reading books!”
With these words she pushed a few books off her couch onto the floor. Fluttershy winced at the noise.
“Alright,” Twilight carefully said, “I'm not sure exactly what's going on, but I'm sure we can fix it. We just need to get to the Canterlot library and figure out what went wrong.”
There was an answer that Pinkie liked. “Sure, Twilight, let's go as soon as we can. The quicker we figure this out the better.”
Twilight turned around. “Can you handle the rest of the research, Fluttershy?”
“Oh, I'll be fine. You two go and get whatever it is figured out. I'll be here if you need me.”
“Well then, let's go!”
…
Pinkie and Twilight arrived at Canterlot via a short balloon ride, and quickly made off for the Royal Canterlot Library. Once safely inside the Starswhirl the Bearded wing, they began looking around for anything and everything related to the problem. Their search of time spells brought them to time-related disasters and paradoxes.
“Hm, accidental life tampering is mentioned briefly in one of his earlier works, but nothing afterward. It's a huge blank spot. He refers to it as 'chronological immortality'. Hmm. Let's see if I can...”
Her horn glowed the familiar purple, and books and scrolls began to fly off their shelves and circle around in the air. Words flickered and brightened, and eventually all but one scroll made their way back to their original spot. The lone scroll was titled “Localized anomalies and other errors in time.” Twilight began to search through it until she found the section she was looking for.
“It says here that certain time spells can lock the subject into a specific set of events through time, despite whatever actions they take to prevent the line from occurring. The effects on actual events is unobservable and largely irrelevant, but that should the pony happen to die, they will be moved forward slightly in the time stream as if it never happened. He called this effect 'chronological immortality' because so long as time is observed, the pony will live.”
Pinkie sunk down on her hind legs. It's hard to take news like this in all at once.
“Pinkie,” Twilight said softly, “maybe we should go get something to eat and think this over.”
“Yeah, that sounds good,” she said weakly.
They left the library as it was and headed toward the kitchens.
A bright aura surrounded the scroll, and it floated over and unrolled toward the opposing door where the elder alicorn princess stood.
“Hmm...”
Pinkie and Twilight walked back to the Canterlot Library slowly, not speaking. The day had been hard on the both of them, and neither were in the mood for conversation. Twilight went to open the doors to the Starswhirl the Bearded wing only to find them locked. A sign was taped to the door, reading:
“The Starswhirl the Bearded wing is currently under renovation. Please check back at a later date.
-The Management”
“Well,” Twilight began, “that certainly is odd. I wonder why they decided to renovate? Guess we're headed home, Pinkie.”
Pinkie hadn't been listening, She was lost in her own mind, thinking about all the things she'd been told today.
“Pinkie?”
She snapped out of it, finding Twilight much closer to her than before, and looking worried.
“Oh, sorry Twilight, I was just daydreaming.” She put on a happy face, but knew she'd never buy it. Nonetheless, it stopped the questions. They walked back to the balloon without incident, and began their descent to Ponyville.
“What should we tell everypony?”
Twilight didn't know how to answer that. On one hoof, keeping it a secret could deny Pinkie comfort in her friends. On the other, telling everypony might lead to bad results.
"Well, I don't know, Pinkie. It's hard to imagine our friends reacting badly, but everypony else? I just don't know."
"Oh..."
"We'll figure it out somehow, Pinkie."
Their trip to ponyville was fast as usual, and they soon found themselves once again entering the library. Spike jogged down the stairs to meet them.
Twilight looked at them both and said, "Spike, can you set up the extra bed? Pinkie will be staying over."
Pinkie looked like she was about to decline, but the outcome would've been obvious. And so Spike went on with his task.
Pinkie and Twilight sat in the main room, Twilight reading from a book titled "The Amber Rose and Doctor Irving Spectre" and Pinkie pretending to read "The Party Compendium". She couldn't keep her mind from wandering, even for a second. The thoughts of the staircase clouded her head most of all. The improbability of that event made her wonder, and she decided to voice her concerns.
"Twilight?"
She looked up from her book as she'd done many times that night. Pinkie continued.
"You said before that if I died, I'd just move ahead like it never happened. Well, I was wondering. None of this happened to me before. I mean, I was still alive last week, so nothing wrong happened before then. Why would two things happen now?"
For a while Twilight just sat in thought, and Pinkie kept waiting. Finally, her horn glowed, and a book was levitated over from a high shelf. She paged through it quickly, familiar with its contents, and began reciting from it.
"The law of probability states that the cause leading up to the event approaches 100% from a smaller percentage based on the acts before the event takes place. With a single event, the probability moves from 0 to 100% at a sharp incline of 100%. Given multiple events, it will move gradually until it reaches 100%, which must always be the last event in the series."
Twilight took no time in translating to a simpler speech, knowing most of it would fly over Pinkie's head.
"Meaning, a pony with one death will have a 100% chance of it happening at some point, with the rest of it being 0% until they die. Make sense so far?"
She shook her head.
"Right, so what if a pony had more than one death? The probability would increase each time they died until it reached 100%."
"And what happens then?" Pinkie chimed in.
"I... I don't know."
Spike casually walked into the room at this point.
"Will either of you be eating dinner, because I'm starving!"
"Sure thing, Spike," Twilight said, "I'm sure we're all hungry right about now."
"Biscuits and gravy, coming right up."
They sat there, eating mostly in silence. At least Twilight was able to fake happiness for Spike's sake. Pinkie couldn't do that so easily. Spike knew better than to ask. So, dodging the topic, he tried for easier questions. Trouble was, nothing was worth talking about, as they spent every day together.
And so they ate in silence until Twilight had an idea.
"Pinkie, would you be up for going to Canterlot one more time?"
"Huh, but I thought they closed the library for repairs?"
"We're not going for the library. We're gonna go talk to the princesses."
"Sure! But, uh, we should get some sleep first. I'm pretty tired."
And after a few minutes of strained dialogue later, they did just that.
In the morning, they woke to the sounds of birds and the light tapping of hooves on the ground outside. The two ponies woke fast, leaving Spike only to imagine the details of their mission. Still, at least he didn't have to get up...
"Spike, I'm going to need you to look after the library. Here's my checklist."
He accepted from under the blanket. There goes his perfect day.
They headed off for Canterlot in a train this time, which is much faster and involved a lot less work. Pinkie and Twilight sat in the caboose, mainly because of Pinkie's love of the name, leaving them alone from the rest of the early-morning crowd.
As they climbed the mountain tracks, with Twilight talking lightheartedly about the recent discovery of a new element, Bulletium, and Pinkie pretending to understand, the train stopped. The incline of the general environment and the obvious lack of ponies lead to the deduction that this was not Canterlot. Suddenly, the train began to roll backwards.
Pinkie looked scared, positively frightened.
"Is this supposed to happen, Twilight?"
"Somehow I don't think so."
Twilight ran to the door of the cabin and opened it. Nothing but empty air awaited her.
"The car's detached itself! We're heading down the mountain!"
The cliff wall wasn't so far downhill. Twilight went back to Pinkie Pie and just stared out the window. Pinkie looked at her, sad, but wearing a smile.
"Twilight, you could use a teleportation spell and get out of here."
She knew that. She could get out of here with only some minor injuries, but she wouldn't. She won't.
"No. I won't abandon my friend, no matter what."
There was barely enough time for a tear to roll off of Pinkie's cheek before they made contact with the wall. Not even time for that tear to hit the ground.
"Welcome back to Canterlot, Ms. Sparkle."
They looked at each other, to the guard, and back again. They hugged and yelled and cried like nopony had seen before, and despite the odd looks they got, that moment was the best they'd had.
"Uh, are you two alright?"
"Oh, uh, sorry sir," Twilight started after calming a bit, "but we, uh, just got some good news."
This all looked awkward from his perspective, but he passed them threw anyway. Questioning Twilight Sparkle never failed to get you lectured.
Twilight and Pinkie approached the throne room where Celestia waited. With a glance and a brief nudge, they entered.
"My faithful student. Come seeking answers, or just to have a chat?"
Celestia sat alone in her usual attire with a calm look on her face. And yet, Twilight felt that something was wrong. That feeling you get when something just didn't look right.
"Uh, yeah, we came to ask you a few questions."
"Well, let's hear them."
"Something happened to Pinkie, and it's all my fault. I used her in an experiment, and now she's..."
"She's immortal."
The bluntness of her words threw them both off balance for a moment. Twilight didn't know what to say. Celestia began to talk.
"I'm sure from reading Starswhirl's works you know quite a bit about time travel, having performed an experiment or two yourself. And from last night I'm sure you now know about his idea of quantum immortality."
"That's... that's right."
"There's a lot you still don't know. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them."
Twilight understood what was so offputting about the situation. They were alone. Celestia always has at least two guards around her, but this time there were none. They were the only three in the room. She thought for a moment, and asked.
"What's going to happen to Pinkie?"
A hardhitting question, and right to the point. Celestia seemed to be expecting it.
"She won't ever stop existing. She will die countless times over countless years, but will always remain the same."
"Can it be reversed!?"
"No."
And that was that. Twilight and Pinkie must've shared the same look in that moment. Crushed, and hopeless. One for her life, the other for her dear friend. Twilight managed to ask only a short question.
"Is there anything you can do? Please..."
"I'm sorry, Twilight, but Starswhirl died long ago, and no other pony knew his spells well enough to help you."
It took them a few painful minutes to leave, letting themselves get escorted to a royal suite within the castle that was once Twilight's. She had her books to turn to for comfort.
But despite her best efforts, Pinkie could only weep.