It all turned out to be a silly misunderstanding, which somehow ended with this. Twilight and her friends posing in front of the giant cornucopia that took up the entirety of the school’s auditorium stage, dressed up in ridiculous, if meticulously fitted, food-themed ensembles. There was no one in any of the rows of chairs facing them save for Photo Finish, who was ready at her camera, prepared to immortalize the scene for the entire school.
It was at that very moment that she knew that it was all about to end.
“Wishin' y'all a happy holiday, from our cornucopia to yours.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. She was normally so good at not letting herself know such things.
“Love, Applejack.”
Was it because it wouldn’t matter anyway, this close to the end?
“Sunset Shimmer.”
No. Every moment mattered, down to the very last.
“Rainbow Dash!”
Something felt off. Her hair clip, yes!
“Fluttershy.”
That is what the Twilight Sparkle that didn’t know the end was coming would do.
“Rarity.”
She would have a look of concentration on her face as she reached behind her head to adjust it—
“Pinkie Pie!”
There! Fixed up just in time. Look at the camera, hands down at the front of her dress, big smile—
“And Twilight Sparkle!”
The camera’s flash lit up, and the world froze in place.
Twilight thought Sunset seemed to be taking it all pretty well. Sure, her hand was gripping the left arm of her chair pretty hard, and the way she kept her eyes fixed forward and staring down toward the front of the auditorium at the frozen image of herself and all of their friends was pretty intense, but given everything that she just learned, she was taking it all pretty well.
Without turning to look at Twilight, she let go of her grip on the chair and pointed a finger forward.
“So if that’s the edge of the universe now, everything behind it is already gone. Is that right, Twilight?”
“That’s right, Sunset.”
She knew what it was that Sunset was staring at. Right behind the frozen smiles and poses of the girls, the stage ended in a wall of blackness. Not the inky dark of the night sky, but a true blackness that was the absence of anything at all. A backdrop curtain that extended out to forever.
“So all of us just happen to be the last people alive in the universe? That’s a bit on-the-nose, isn’t it?”
“On-the-nose? If I roll the tape forward by about three more microseconds, then…”
It would have been easy for Sunset to imagine it. The nothingness advancing just a few more meters to swallow up the stage, just like it had already advanced all the way in from the boundary of this world’s light cone.
“And besides, we’re not quite the last ones.”
“Ah, right.”
Sunset broke her staring contest with the endless abyss, and Twilight followed her gaze up and behind them at the frozen image of Photo Finish, still crouched over her camera, staring at the display on its back with a smile on her face.
“She’d be looking right at the end of the world just as it came, huh? And she wouldn’t even have any time to react. Any time to even know. No time to feel it. No time to dread. That’s good at least.” She looked at Twilight. “And the school’s pretty much deserted at this point, so there would be no one at the front entrance behind us, right?”
“I, uh…” Twilight checked. “Yeah, that’s right.”
Sunset smiled slightly. “So she’d have the honor of being the last person to ever exist in this universe, but she wouldn’t even know it. That’s a shame. Judging from the look on her face, I bet her very last thought is being proud of another photo well done. Not a bad one for the universe to go out on.”
“No. Not a bad one at all.”
Sunset sighed, and caught Twilight’s gaze with her own for just a second before looking back out at the stage in front of them, and the wall of nothing behind it.
She frowned.
“Could you rewind the tape a bit, then? Before we could see the edge from here.“
Twilight did so, and then the wall of nothing receded backwards. As it did, the purple background curtains, then the auditorium wall behind it re-emerged. The frozen images of the girls on stage changed not at all.
“And how about further? All the way to before the collapse began.”
“I did,” Twilight said, as Sunset stared at the second hand of the clock that hung above the stage. It would not have moved an iota.
“That fast?”
Twilight nodded.
“Huh.” Sunset shook her head.
“You know what this reminds me of? Something I’d wondered about for a while, ever since the Starswirl Music Festival. Whatever happened to all those Pinkies and Rainbow Dashes and yous that I left behind every time the time loop reset? Did they keep going with their lives? Or did they just stop existing? What would that feel like for them?”
Before Twilight could say anything to that, Sunset continued.
“But at some point I stopped thinking about it. I just decided to take comfort in the idea that if they all did just stop existing, at least it was on a day that was so happy. You know, kind of like this one.“
Sunset gestured towards the stage.
“All smiles, as if our only purpose in life was to wish whoever was looking at the photo a happy holiday. No Equestrian magic to find. No battle to fight. No cruise ship to evacuate. Just something we could take out from the album years from now, long after high school, to remember what it was like to have a silly little day like this together. I can just imagine it, you know? It’s nice.”
“Yeah.” Twilight smiled. “It is nice.”
They sat in silence for a bit, gazing at themselves.
“But that’s not something that would happen, right? Because if you roll the tape forward…”
There was a hard look in Sunset’s eyes as she looked at her, and Twilight understood. Twilight rolled the tape forward and the wall of nothing advanced again, right up to the point where it was just about to swallow up the girls on the stage again. Seven poses, seven smiles, against a backdrop of eternal black.
Sunset just stared at it with a blank expression for a few moments before she spoke.
“So if all of this is a simulation, then what am I?” She looked at Twilight while touching her own face. “I think I’m Sunset Shimmer. I remember being her. But am I really?”
“That’s a philosophical question. And maybe a distressing one.” Twilight frowned. “As for what you are, you’re an… extrapolation. Of a scan that I took of the original Sunset Shimmer. Take every electron in her synapses, every link in her connectome, every memory in her head, all recreated down to the smallest possible detail, then put all that through the experiences you’ve had from the start of the simulation until now. That is how we get the you of, well, you right now.”
Twilight gave her an apologetic look.
“Whether or not that makes you the same person is, well, like I said, a philosophical question. And maybe a distressing one.”
“Huh.”
Sunset blinked.
“I feel like that should be distressing, but it’s strangely not?”
She looked at Twilight.
“But if you scanned every memory in my head, you’d know why already, right?”
“I could know, yeah.” Twilight smiled softly at her. “But I’d rather have you tell me.”
The corner of Sunset’s mouth pulled back.
“Okay.”
She took in a breath.
“So back in Equestria, we have transformation magic, right? And a pony’s head could be shrunk down to the size of a Breezie’s, or turned into stone by a cockatrice stare, but nopony ever wonders if they’re the same pony after. Because we knew that what we really were weren’t the brains in our heads that were changed by the magic, but rather the magical patterns woven into them. Patterns that the magic didn’t destroy. So when I figured out that going through the membrane between our worlds would transform my body into a different creature, I didn’t really think anything of it.”
Sunset held her hand in front of her, staring at it as she flexed her fingers.
“But then I got here, and it didn’t take long before I realized that there wasn’t any magic in this world like there was back in Equestria. So I read about it, as much as I could, until I understood that as a human, everything I experienced and thought were just electrons whizzing around the brain. And thinking about what it meant that I went from being a lattice of magical energy to meat and electrons, well…”
She clenched her hand into a fist.
“I lost my appetite for learning more about how humans worked after that.”
She looked at Twilight.
“So yeah, it was distressing. But I’d already distressed about it years ago. You didn’t do anything to me that I hadn’t already done to myself.”
Twilight could only look down, avoiding Sunset’s gaze, only meeting it again when Sunset said,
“And what about our friends? Were they the same thing that I am? Simulations based on scans of our brains?”
“That’s right. The same for everyone in this school, everyone in Canterlot, everyone and everything in the world. It wouldn’t be a very good simulation unless I used all of the data I ever could.”
And with a slight hiccup of hesitation, Sunset asked,
“And what about you?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be a very good simulation if I were any different, right?” Twilight spoke softly. “Everything I did, everything I said, everything I felt, all of it was real in the exact same way all your experiences were. They were exactly what I really would’ve experienced if… if I’d taken your hand that day.”
Sunset looked back at her clenched fist, then opened it up, staring at her hand for a few moments.
“So that’s why you did this? To see what would have happened if that day had gone differently?”
“...Yeah.”
Sunset just kept staring at her hand.
“So what happened on that day, Twi? Because I remember your device in my hand. I remember the magic from my friends surging into me. I remember— I remember reaching out to you.”
“Well…”
Twilight gave her an apologetic look.
“You tried to collect the magic from your friends. But you only got up to ‘Generosity’ before I knocked the device out of your hand and took it back. I mean, it was pretty obvious where you were going with that.”
Sunset still kept staring at her hand, but that at least got a flash of a smirk from her.
“Yeah, I guess it was, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Sunset finally looked at her.
“So then what happened?”
“Well, there was nothing stopping me after that. There was a lot of screaming, a lot of panic, but nothing I had to pay attention to. So I just tuned it all out and… thought.”
“Thought?”
“Yeah. I had the device in my hand. I just saw you pull some sort of energy from your friends. That was enough to figure the rest out.”
Twilight held out her own hand, as if she were holding that device.
“How to capture the Equestrian magic flowing into this world from the rifts I created. How to extend my consciousness into it, turning every thaum into a memory cell or a logic gate. How to expand my mind far beyond the limits of what any human one was ever meant to hold. I knew that I wouldn’t be the same person I was before after that. I knew that I probably already wasn’t. But I couldn’t stop myself. I had the chance to know everything. I couldn’t not take it.”
She sighed sadly.
“I grew smarter than I ever thought was possible. I thought faster. I understood even more about magic. It didn’t take too long after that to figure out what would happen to this universe, and to realize that it was already too late by then. The rifts to Equestria and the magic flowing in through them had already destabilized this universe, and well…”
She gestured at the wall of nothingness that was still on display in front of them, and saw the quiet light of understanding in Sunset’s eyes.
“And do you know what I did after that?”
“What did you do, Twi?”
“I opened up even more rifts into Equestria. I pressed a thousand magic eyes against the membrane between our worlds, desperately gathering what data I could. I tried to understand and think and reason and derive, using the very magic that was making things worse the more I used it. I thought that it would be outweighed by me finding something I could do to stop the end, or somehow slow it down.”
Then, in a smaller voice,
“At least, that was the excuse I had.”
“And I take it that didn’t work out?”
“No.”
Sunset took in a deep breath, then let it out.
“So what’s it like right now, Twi? Outside of the simulation? Out in the ‘real world’?”
“Are you sure you really want to see it?”
“I do. I’m sure.”
“Okay. I can show you what it’s like. But just to prepare you, this isn’t going to be an exact simulation. In what’s really out there, there’s no gravity, or air, or photons bouncing around to let you see.”
“I understand.” In a firmer voice, “Show me.”
And in an instant, the auditorium disappeared. And there in front of them was the body of Twilight Sparkle in that magically transformed outfit that Sunset would remember. The sharp purple dress, the glasses and shoes of pale fire, the wings and the horn. Laid out on the slab of stone she would recognize as part of the base of the statue at the entrance to Canterlot High. Both floating right about where the second row of seats in front of them would have been.
And about the same distance further, was the same wall of nothingness that had been in front of them before, but much closer. Close enough to see the curvature of it.
“So… not much time left out there, huh?” Sunset said, in an understatement.
“Or a lot of time left, depending on your point of view,” Twilight said. “The entire simulation so far has only been a few nanoseconds.”
“I see. And everything else in the universe was already destroyed by the collapse?”
“Well, not quite…”
Twilight rubbed the back of her neck.
“The Equestrian magic I used to scan this universe let me get away with a lot of things physics and information theory normally wouldn’t. Knowing the position and velocity of every single particle in this world. But there’s still no way to get all the information you possibly can out of something and still have that something at the end of it. So…”
“Huh.”
Twilight hesitantly looked at Sunset, who, to her surprise, was smiling at her.
“So you saved us.”
“W-what? No. I meant the opposite. I got what I wanted from the very beginning. I wanted to know literally everything about everything in the world, and then I did. By destroying it. By destroying you all.”
“Well, I don’t know about that, Twi.”
Twilight suddenly felt something. Sunset taking her hand, the heat of her skin on hers.
“I don’t feel very destroyed right now.” She kept smiling at her, impossibly. “We were about to all die in a collapsing universe. By scanning us, and running this simulation, you let us live out our lives as they would have gone. You saved us.”
Twilight didn’t say anything in return. She couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“Can we go back to before, in the auditorium? Before the collapse started.”
To this, Twilight could only say, in a small voice,
“Okay.”
And then they were back to where they were. The stage in front of them, the wall of the auditorium behind that, and not a hint of nothingness to be seen.
Sunset was still holding Twilight’s hand, but she wasn’t looking at her. She was looking down at the stage, at herself and her friends.
“It was a good life, Twi. For the first time in my life, for the first time ever, I felt happy. In ways that I never even imagined. In ways that made it hard to regret anything that had ever happened to me in my life, because I wouldn’t trade what I had with you or any of our friends for any other possible world.”
She squeezed Twilight’s hand.
“I’m grateful for it, you know?”
“I…”
Twilight scrunched up her face into a frown.
“You shouldn’t be. This isn’t something I did for you, like I was the Empress of the Universe or something. All I did was calculate exactly what would have happened if I let you finish that spell. All I did was run the simulation, as exactly as I could. It made sense. It was the least I could do.”
“But the simulation’s over now, Twi. So what’s next? Isn’t that up to you? You are the Empress of the Universe, like it or not.”
Twilight couldn’t fully meet Sunset’s eyes.
“Yeah, I… I guess I am.”
She sighed.
“I thought about changing it, you know? Tweak the rules of how Equestrian magic works in this universe, so that none of you would notice a difference in your experiences, but the universe’s physical laws wouldn’t collapse like this. But what I replace it with would be… arbitrary. Each one would lead to a different version of events that would follow. Why should I pick one version over another? There would be no reason to.”
“Well, who’s to say you have to pick just one, Twi?”
Twilight looked at her, as Sunset smiled back with excitement in her eyes.
“Think about it. You already gave us this one life, but you could give us thousands. Millions.”
She gestured grandly at everything in front of them.
“Don’t you want to see all the different ways that this could end? All the different ways that this could have been?”
“I do. More than anything. But it’s… not all going to be days like this, especially not for everyone in the world. There are going to be moments of sadness, of pain, of agony. There are going to be times when they’re far more than just moments.”
She sighed.
“And sure, the universe wouldn’t end now. But no matter what, for each of you, there’s still going to be an end eventually.”
Sunset gave her a soft look. She squeezed her hand.
“That’s life, Twi. It all comes with the package. And that’s scary, but…”
She looked back down at the stage.
“If I were her, I’d want to take the chance.”
Twilight returned her soft look.
“Okay.”
Then,
“If you were her?”
“Yeah! I mean. she hasn’t had the experiences I just had just now, so we’re not really the same person anymore, right?”
Twilight nodded tentatively.
“And if you put me where she is, it wouldn’t be a very good simulation. So if it’s okay with you, I think I’d like to stay here with you and watch.”
Twilight smiled at her. “I’d really like that, yeah.”
“Good!” Sunset smiled back. “And I’m ready whenever you are.”
“Okay,” Twilight said. “Okay, okay, I just thought of one! Oh, that’s good. You sure you’re ready?”
Sunset nodded.
“Alright, then. Here we go!”
“Wishin' y'all a happy holiday, from our cornucopia to yours. Love, Applejack.”
“Sunset Shimmer.”
“Rainbow Dash!”
“Fluttershy.”
“Rarity.”
“Pinkie Pie!”
“And Twilight Sparkle!”
