Imperatives

by Sharp Quill

Rating: teen
Tags: Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Human, Twilight Sparkle
Length: 163349

The conclusion to the trilogy.

The conclusion to the trilogy. Read Destinies and Inevitabilities first.

Published 2023-10-16 16:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2024-02-26 14:29:56 UTC

2. Mythconceptions

In the infinite void of hyperspace existed an endless plane, softly glowing a deep and near ultraviolet purple. It took a while for Meg to locate her destination, her old office from which she had been—would be— kidnapped. It helped that magic generators were rare at that point in time; their presence discolored the skin of the universe, rendering it tangerine. That the kidnappers helped themselves to all the magic generators in the facility also provided a reference point in time. All that was left was to pass through the skin and wait.

No, there was one more thing. Meg resumed her human form; she had to do that now, as her original universe would not permit violations of its conservation laws. That out of the way, she cast a teleportation spell and appeared in what was once her office.

Nostalgia overwhelmed her. It had been so many years since she’d last seen it. There, on the desk, was the photo of the two of them in Hawaii. She still had it; digital pictures did not degrade with time. How ironic she had arrived at a time, like her own, when there was no Steve anywhere in this universe. Only this time it was because he was in Equestria, along with her past self, on that trip to Las Pegasus.

Meg plunked into her old chair, memories flooding back. Before her was her old workstation. Here and now it was state of the art; by the standards of her own time, it seemed hopelessly outdated, little better than an abacus, a relic in a museum. There was not a trace of magic in its operation.

Enough reminiscing. She checked the time on the computer. About an hour for her to prepare her office for ransacking; the goons were to get what they were supposed to get—and nothing more.

“I was quite sincere,” Andy said. His face beamed from her computer monitor. “Our time as enemies has passed. Why shouldn’t we collaborate?”

Twilight still had not accepted the former Lord Tirek’s offer, first made back in Tartarus, to cooperatively investigate the similarities between the human and pony realms. There was no specific reason why. She just couldn’t help but feel she’d regret it. Somehow. Eventually.

But if that were the case, that he had something nefarious planned, there was only one way to uncover it. So when Andy’s desire for this chat had come in through channels, she took Luna’s advice and agreed. Twilight only added the condition that it’d be a video chat. Not having been to his current residence, talking to him in person would have been too inconvenient. She couldn’t use a plaid pill to go there directly, and using a portal was too risky as she wouldn’t have the option of the pill’s return spell.

“Okay, let’s start now,” she finally said, “with the subject of language. You witnessed the development of modern Equish, right?” A human pen hovered over a pad of paper.

“Excellent!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands together. “I did. However, I would not use the word ‘development.’”

“Oh?”

“Modern Equish did not so much ‘develop’ as appear fully formed.”

The pen continued hovering over a blank sheet of paper. “Fully formed,” she repeated. “It had to form somewhere.”

Andy nodded. “One would think so. English certainly formed here in this world, I have learned, over the course of many centuries.”

“I’m well aware of that.”

A shrug. “I assume magic was somehow responsible, though that would be more your specialty than mine.”

And there was an all-too-obvious explanation, not that she was going to mention time travel to the former centaur. It begged the question anyway. How do time travelers get an entire population of ponies to switch over to English, accent and all? And to do it so thoroughly that no trace remained of their earlier tongue? There wasn’t a spell for that!

“How do you know Equish didn’t evolve over centuries?” she asked.

Andy looked up and to the side, lost in thought. “I can’t prove it,” he eventually said. His eyes returned to the webcam. “One day, I learned of a large population of ponies, all of whom spoke what would become known as Equish. I don’t know how long they were there—generations certainly—so it’s possible their language evolved over time. But even if it did…”

He was lost in thought once more.

“Even if it did,” he resumed, “it bore no similarity to any other language I was aware of at the time.” He paused again. “Another strange thing to consider: that part of the continent, where Equestria is today, was uninhabited wilderness the previous time I had passed through, maybe two—no, three centuries earlier. I’m not sure where those ponies had come from.” He rubbed his chin in thought. “Actually, I had not previously encountered ponies anywhere prior to that. Donkeys, yes. Goats, yes. Even cows. But not ponies.”

Twilight didn’t know what to make of that as she wrote it all down. It raised more questions than it answered. Time travel, again, while superficially providing an answer, again begged the question. A large number of ponies couldn’t be sent from the present to the distant past, thus becoming their own distant ancestors. She now knew enough about genetics to understand that was—at best—highly improbable.

Unless… “What happened to this population? They didn’t somehow all die off after transferring their language to another population of ponies, did they?”

Andy was not amused. “I hope you are not accusing me of genocide.”

The thought had occurred to her, though on reflection she regretted thinking that; Lord Tirek had wanted to conquer and rule, not mindlessly destroy. “It could have been a pandemic, or a natural disaster,” she quickly said. Even if some had survived, so long as their descendants had all died out before modern times, it could still work.

“To my knowledge they were the ancestors of present-day Equestrians. There were no other ponies so far as I know. I do know that Celestia and Luna were born to them.”

“They established their rule by defeating Discord,” Twilight said, seeing where this was going.

“I gave them all to Discord to do with as he pleased,” Andy said with a wave of a hand. “They were too far away for me to bother with; that’s why it took so long for me to become aware of them.” He sighed. “In hindsight, that may not have been the wisest course of action.”

Since it had directly led to his imprisonment in Tartarus.

It’s ancient history, she tried to tell herself. Nothing would be served by holding him accountable for what he had done so—no, he had already been held accountable, by his long imprisonment in Tartarus. Regardless, it confirmed that those ponies hadn’t died out, that their descendants—amongst them Twilight herself—still lived. They could not have been time travelers from the present.

So where had they come from? As tempting as it was to visit them in the past and find out, that wasn’t an option. Traveling that far through time was simply impossible. Not now, anyway—not in the foreseeable future either.

“Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Andy looked at her expectantly. “Imagine what we could accomplish if we had quality time together.”

“Don’t push your luck.”

He threw up his hands. “Hear me out first. I’ve been invited to visit my old home at Knossos, what’s left of it anyway. Perhaps you could come along? There would be a stopover in Athens; I figured we could visit that cave that led me to your realm. Who knows? You might detect some residue of that portal, though after so many centuries I wouldn’t get our hopes up.”

She would have jumped at that chance not so long ago; it had become academic, now that the mechanism behind those portals had been discovered. Andy didn’t know that. Should she tell him? No, he had no need to know. And he was almost certainly right, that there’d be no residue to detect. That could be her excuse to decline.

On second thought, however… Knossos had contact with the Equestrian realm. The human legend of the minotaur originated there. It was probably a long shot, but could evidence of that contact survive to the present day? She could arrange to go there without him, but only Androgeos, son of King Minos, who became the centaur Lord Tirek, could fluently read Minoan.

And as for that cave… who’s to say it didn’t have evidence of Equestrian contact?

Andy was patiently waiting for her reply.

Even better, might he not also let loose a few details concerning his escape from Tartarus? Meg would love learning how she would free him.

“I accept.”

Susie ran up the stairs with Dinky close behind her, both shouting noises of excitement.

Once they were out of sight, Matt considered his sister. “Do you always have to visit us as a pony?”

Meg drifted down onto the sofa and folded her wings. “Plaid pills only work for magical creatures. You know that.”

“You could have a unicorn bring you over?”

Meg frowned at him. “You’re missing the point. If a SWAT team forced their way in here, guns drawn, I want a quick exit.”

Matt sat down next to her. “Aren’t you getting a little paranoid? We’ve been back for a month and no one has so much as knocked on our door.”

“Which only proves they’re not interested in you… and that they don’t have a clue I’ve been visiting.”

“Or maybe that thought has occurred to them, and they don’t care as much as you think.”

Meg shrugged. “Oh, sure, I bet they have this house under observation, but they haven’t seen me at the front door—or any door. Very few know how it works.”

“Then by your own argument it’s safe enough to visit as your human self.”

She sighed. “If it’s the human me you miss, you’ll just have to come to Equestria to see her.”

He shook his head. “When was the last time you were even human?”

“The last time I used a keyboard, for your information.”

Matt grimaced. “Sorry. It’s just that I can’t cross over on a whim to visit you. You couldn’t bring me across right now even if you wanted to.” He looked at the blank screen of the TV. “Too bad none of those alleged portal sightings were real. I mean, just because Andy used one thousands of years ago to enter Equestria doesn’t mean they exist today.”

Meg threw him a wry smile. “Hey, if it prevents everyone from knowing how we really cross over, so much the better.” The smile became evil. “But if you want a portal right here in your house so you can visit whenever you want, that can be arranged.”

A flat look. “Don’t joke about something like that.”

“It’s not a joke. Well, not the part about the portal itself. We recently discovered how they are made and controlled. But putting one here would be a very bad idea. If word ever got out…”

He stared at her for a few seconds. “You’re serious.”

“Yeah. We could set up a big portal right now, let people and ponies go back and forth for business, tourism, whatever. Except.”

“Except for all the craziness going on right now.”

“Right.”

Matt ran his hand through her mane. “Speaking of craziness, what about the trial? I assume you’ll ignore the Senate, since you ignored the House’s subpoena.”

“I’m considering it.”

His hand froze. “Now I know you’re joking.”

Meg’s ears flattened. “I’d do it for one reason and one reason only, to get back at that bastard for what they did to Susie.”

Matt pulled back his hand. “That isn’t how it works. They ask the questions. You answer what they ask. Get real. Even if you cooperate, do your best not to rock any boats, you’d still wind up behind bars. That’s your reward for showing up.”

A grim smile. “Not if I show up as a pony. They can’t stop me from returning to Equestria whenever I want. I don’t have to play their game.”

“Show up—” He shook his head. “Look, if it was only your life at risk, then maybe you could do what you want. But if you’re going to drag Susie into the limelight, just when it seemed everything had returned to normal for her.” He glanced at the ceiling, at where his daughter was playing with a unicorn filly. “What passes for normal, these days.”

Meg stared at him. “And so long as those goons are out there, you’re at risk of being used to get to me.”

“Then what are they waiting for?”

She looked away. “I don’t know. Doesn’t prove they won’t.”

“Did you ever consider that maybe, just maybe, they don’t care about you anymore?”

“They care enough to have a warrant for my arrest for their bullshit accusations, to subpoena me to testify before Congress.”

Matt threw his hands up. “All the more reason not to do something stupid. Just saying.”

Meg’s head dropped to the cushion. In almost a whisper, she said, “I know it works out for me, somehow.”

It took Matt a few moments to respond. “What, your cutie mark told you that? or something?”

“My future self.” She turned away. “I met her—me—whatever.”

More moments passed. “No, you’re not joking.”

“An occupational hazard of time traveling,” she muttered.

“And what about the rest of us? How does it work out for us?”

“I wasn’t told.”

Matt stood up. “Keep that in mind.”

“This is fascinating, Spike! The ancient Greeks did not consider unicorns to be mythological. They really believed they existed.”

Spike put the cup of hot cocoa on the desk next to the computer. “It’s not like unicorns don’t exist.”

“But they never saw one!” Twilight lifted the cup in her magic. Tiny marshmallows were already starting to melt, just as she liked it. “They thought unicorns were in a place called India—” She pointed at the words on the screen as she read them. “—‘a distant and fabulous realm.’”

“So ‘India’ is just another name for Equestria?”

“No, apparently not. It’s a country in the human realm. I don’t think they mean what we mean by the world realm.”

Spike took a sip of his own cocoa. “So were there unicorns in India?”

“No… apparently not. It’s all based on relief sculptures seen in yet another ancient civilization. They weren’t even based on ponies—or even horses. That didn’t happen until many centuries later.”

“I dunno. Doesn’t prove it wasn’t based on actual unicorns. We know that portal existed.”

“Yes, in Greece. Where they never saw a unicorn.”

Twilight continued scrolling through the webpage. She couldn’t help rolling her eyes upon encountering the “unicorns can only be tamed by a virgin” myth. Cadance would love that one. How do these things get started? And humans used the word alicorn to refer to the substance out of which horns were composed—as well as the horn itself? Well, they were certainly right to believe it had magical properties, though not so much medicinal ones. Her eyes went wide. “They ground up the horn into powder!?”

Spike spit out a mouthful of cocoa. “What? How? I thought they never even saw one?”

“It’s…” She cast a spell to clean up the mess. “There, that’s better. Not unicorns, obviously, but other animals—fake alicorn powder.”

“Do they still do that?”

Her jaw set. “I certainly hope not. I will not tolerate that happening to any Equestrian unicorn.”

“Uh, or alicorn?”

The worry on Spike’s face was as plain as the fins on his head.

Her smile was determined. “I can look after myself.”

“Maybe you should bring someone along with more, uh, experience in such things?”

Experience? Who has more experience dealing with Tirek? Discord? Possibly. But he can’t go to that realm. Celestia? Perhaps, but she has a country to run. Meg? Sure, she knows the human realm but that doesn’t mean she knows anything about ancient archaeological—

“You’re not suggesting…”

Spike nodded. “Can a human Andy be any worse to deal with than Ahuizotl or Caballeron? And ancient ruins are right up her alley.”

And I’m sworn to secrecy. Ahuizotl and Caballeron were only hive-less changelings role playing a part, she now knew. It was part of the deal to gain their assistance, to have one of them masquerade as Meg the pegasus. In exchange, they were granted permission to freely mingle with ponies—so long as they behaved themselves, of course. So far they had. They’d been mingling all along, after all, without causing problems. One was in Ponyville even then, serving as the librarian at the Golden Oak Library.

Part of that deal was, for the time being, to keep their changeling nature a secret, until a path to acceptance and integration could be found.

Regardless, Twilight couldn’t deny Daring knew her way around ancient ruins. And just because her villains were fictional didn’t mean she lacked understanding on what made them tick. That’s how she wrote them so convincingly, after all.

“I’ll suggest it to her,” she said. “She’ll probably have to go as Yearling, but that would work too.”

“Sure! Researching the next Daring Do book.”

And why not? She’d even include that in the invitation.

Twilight finished her cocoa and locked her computer. There was a changeling she needed to see.

Tomatoes. Eggs. Honey. Carrots. Aged hay. Various flowers. Meg’s saddlebags were filling up nicely. Up ahead she spied an apple cart. Applejack spied her back and waved.

Sure, why not? She still had room for some apples.

No sooner had she arrived than the orange mare greeted her. “Howdy, Meg! Haven’t seen you around these parts much.”

Meg looked over the cart, wondering what to get; at least eight varieties were laid out, each in its own basket. “I know. Spending most of my time in Canterlot these days. Only here today because Dinky was visiting my niece.”

Applejack nodded. “Susie did make a few friends while she was here, I reckon. Apple Bloom wouldn’t mind seeing her again.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Need some help making up your mind?”

They all looked so good. “Well, I know I want about a pound. That’s all I can carry, I’m afraid.”

“Not a problem! Looks like you’ve been busy shopping.”

Meg shrugged. “Doing my part to support the Ponyville economy.”

A gust of wind ruffled her mane.

“Hey. What’s up?”

“Meg, here, is about to buy some apples.”

Rainbow Dash took offense. “I pay for them!”

“Eventually.”

“I’ll let you choose which ones,” Meg interjected, heading the inevitable argument off at the pass. She reached for her bit bag.

“One pound of apples, coming up.” Applejack proceeded to select a variety of apples and place them in the scale.

“So,” Dash said, addressing Meg. “How about we fly back to Canterlot once you’re done here. You could still use some flight training.”

Meg gave her a blank look. She was planning on flying back anyway, but what she had in mind by “flying” and what Rainbow Dash had in mind…

“I mean, you are spending most of your time as a pegasus now, so it wouldn’t hurt to improve your flying skills.”

Applejack adjusted her Stetson. “She does have a point, to be honest.”

Meg exhaled. “How much do I need to improve. Twenty percent?”

Dash returned a blank look of her own. “I dunno? The point’s to improve, to strive for awesomeness.”

Meg shook her head. “Sorry. I’m under lot of stress right now.” And to be fair, that twenty percent gag was a throw-away line in a single episode. It was even possible it’d never happened.

“All the more reason for flight training.”

And the worst part was? Meg couldn’t deny Dash was right. How long was she going to live primarily as a pegasus?

At least I don’t have a horn. Twilight was even more insistent on giving Steve magic lessons. Flying was as instinctual to a pegasus as walking was to a human; spell casting to a unicorn… not so much, not if the unicorn wants to do anything beyond telekinesis. The book knowledge and training required to do serious spell work was daunting. It was something easy to overlook, when a certain purple pony made it look so easy.

Applejack broke the silence. “Steve isn’t around, is he? Do you already have train tickets back to Canterlot?”

Rainbow Dash was speechless; apparently she hadn’t considered that possibility.

“No, I’m alone. Steve’s been tied up helping to make sense out of the data being gathered from one of the stars.”

Dash looked up at a star. “That one?” The one star bright enough to be seen in daylight.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Princess Luna’s keeping it near us, so that it’s easier to visit. They’ve been up there three times already.”

“But not you?” Applejack finished bagging the apples. “That’d be three bits.”

Meg counted them out. “Nothing I could contribute.”

“So what is a star, exactly?”

“A gigantic diamond stuffed full of incredibly sophisticated spells.”

Dash snorted. “Diamond? Better not mention that to Rarity.”

“It wasn’t on my to-do list.” Meg stowed the apples in a saddlebag.

Now a giggle-snort. “Better make sure it’s not on Twilight’s to-do list either!”

“That’s enough, sugarcube.”

Meg sighed and looked at Dash. “I’m ready to return to Canterlot.”

Twilight looked up from a book. “Well, that didn’t take long.” Spike had brought a disguised pegasus mare into the library. They were both approaching her.

On reaching the desk, Yearling adjusted her fake glasses. “I was already in the area,” she explained. “I had a feeling something worth my while was here.” She grinned. “My cutie mark, you know. Looks like it was right once again.”

While other ponies had similar cutie marks, in appearance, none to Twilight’s knowledge had that specific ability. She wondered how well it would work in a magic-less realm. She doubted she was the only one who wondered. “So you’re interested in visiting ancient human ruins?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“In the company of the former Lord Tirek?”

“I believe ‘former’ is the operative word. As a human he does not concern me. And he is the domain expert here, is he not?”

“He can read the long dead Minoan language, originally being a Minoan, yes.” It was looking promising so far, but there were a few more details that needed addressing. “There will be a lot of publicity, possibly even a camera crew filming a documentary. Who do you intend to go as?”

Yearling faked surprise. “Why, as a world-famous author doing research on her next book, naturally. And if the publicity surrounding our little expedition increases human awareness of my books, why, who could have guessed?”

Twilight wanted to role her eyes. Something worth her while all right.

Yearling looked up in thought. “Though having use of my wings would be nice. Nothing like getting a bird’s-eye view of things.”

Spike waved that off. “Oh, that’s not a problem. Just go invisible.”

Yearling raised an eyebrow at the dragon.

“We can talk about that later,” Twilight said. “Though calling this an expedition is not accurate. The sites we’ll be visiting are international tourist attractions, very much on the beaten path. We’ll be staying in hotels, not tents. Actually…” Twilight looked thoughtful. “We can return here each night. Probably should; it’d be considerably safer.” They would still have the hotel rooms; no human need know they wouldn’t be sleeping in them.

The disguised pegasus thought it over. “It’s an option. It’s just that often at night happen the most interesting things.”

What those things could possibly be, Twilight could not imagine.

3. Shake the Box

An elevator dinged in the distance.

Meg grimaced. The program to zero out all unallocated blocks on her ancient computer wasn’t done yet. Yes, the technology was archaic, but did it really need to take so long to erase a few terabytes?

Maybe it wasn’t them. It was still a bit early. But who else could it be? Unfortunately, she didn’t really know how it all went done; her younger self hadn’t been here. It had to be pieced together from what limited sources they had. The important bit was that she would after a week or so inexplicably escape their clutches. How she would accomplish that was obvious.

A solid clunk reverberated through the empty cubicles from a key card being scanned. Meg stared at the monitor, sighing. It didn’t really matter; the files she had deleted had been sufficiently obliterated. The entire disk was encrypted, naturally, but that was irrelevant. As the the old joke went, any encryption could be defeated with a five dollar wrench, and her plans did not include resisting interrogation—much, anyway. Gotta keep it believable.

The front fire doors slammed shut.

Meg killed the program and erased any evidence of its existence, and from the screen the telltales of its execution. It would have to do. There wasn’t much that could be recovered, and so much was still there to be found that they’d never suspect more had once existed.

And if that somehow turned out not to be the case, well, she would play it by ear. There was no historical evidence they had recovered the deleted files.

She pretended to work on some code and waited.

It was not a long wait.

The closed door to a familiar tea room loomed before Meg. Inside that room was her President, waiting to speak to her. She wouldn’t be alone; Twilight and Luna were in there too. For all the good that would do her. This wasn’t really their problem.

Wings twitched uneasily.

She forced them to be quiescent. But it made her aware she was equine.

That would not do. She would face her elected leader as a fellow human.

One pendant squeeze later, her hand hovered in front of the door. Nothing could be heard. That was to be expected, of course. The best privacy spells in existence guaranteed that.

Get it over with, she thought with a sigh. She knocked.

Immediately the door glowed lavender and opened. Meg entered. The door closed behind her, and Twilight’s horn stopped glowing.

Everyone was looking at her, especially Serrell.

“S-sorry I’m a bit late,” Meg lamely uttered. There was only one chair and it was occupied. She went for the pillow opposite Serrell and sat cross-legged on it. It would have to do.

“It’s alright, Meg.” Luna gave her best reassuring smile. Still not as good as Celestia’s, but every bit helped. “We all understand how difficult this is for you.”

All? Her eyes met the President’s eyes. Nothing there to contradict Luna’s statement.

“I had assumed…” He tried again. “Are you not a pegasus here in Equestria?” He hastily added, “Not that that has any bearing on the subject at hand.”

Meg looked down at her hands. “At hand,” she repeated. “I guess so.” She dropped one hand and with the other lifted her pendant. “I can be whatever I want whenever I want, thanks to Twilight.”

“In Equestria, that is,” Twilight added.

“Yes, but only in Equestria,” Meg said. “I figured being human was appropriate given the topic.”

Serrell shrugged. “Whatever makes you most comfortable. I have been informed of your intentions, but here’s your opportunity to express it in your own words.”

This was it; what should she say? She could trust Luna to have faithfully passed on what she had told her. The fact that this was happening proved Luna had been right, that Serrell was receptive.

But receptive was not approval.

Meg decided this wasn’t the time to beat around the bush. “I want to take Routledge down for what he did to my niece. That is the only reason I’ll subject myself to the crap I’ll have to endure by testifying at your trial—no offense…”

“None taken. Believe me, I thoroughly sympathize.”

And now to blow the bush into smithereens. “And if to do that I have to use information that you have classified, then so be it. I think the time for secrets is over—and quite honestly, they are not your secrets.”

Serrell looked more tired than anything else. “I can’t realistically stop you; I can’t even say you’re wrong. But I must minimize collateral damage. Do you disagree?”

“No, of course not.”

The President got up and drifted towards the panoramic window. He gazed at the unusually bright star near the horizon. “This insanity has to end somehow.”

His gaze shifted to the moon. Eventually, he turned around to face the table.

He addressed the other human in the room. “What, specifically, do you intend to reveal?”

“That I was the one who documented the kidnapping of my niece, and that I used time travel to do it. I may also point out that time travel occurred in a second season episode.”

He nodded. “That has been a sticking point, how those photos and video were obtained. Obviously expensive movie-magic fakes—if not actual magic fakes—so they claimed.” He waved it away. “Unfortunately, it’ll take more than your word to take him down. You’ll just be accused of perjury. Another federal crime you’ve allegedly committed.”

But what had she got besides words? It wasn’t as if she could take them all on a trip through time! What was I thinking? But there had to be something she could do!

Serrell returned to his chair at the table and wearily sat down. “Regardless, we need to shake the box, to break out of the rut we find ourselves in. Let’s not forget that it isn’t just about Routledge. Too many still insist ponies are just photorealistic computer-generated fakery, created for some nefarious purpose. And of those who concede ponies are real, too many believe they must have evil intent—starting with the creation of propaganda in the form of that cartoon. That’s what this trial is really about.”

The cartoon. It always boiled down to that cartoon. It’s why so many believed colorful ponies can’t be real, while so many others are convinced they’re real but up to no good. If it had never existed, then this would have been a normal First Contact situation—whatever that meant given that it also would have been the first First Contact situation. She gave Serrell an imploring look. “Still nothing on the cartoon’s origins?”

He raised his hands in defeat. “We’ve questioned everyone associated with it going all the way back to G1 in the eighties. Nothing.”

“Maybe I should’ve talked to some of them myself,” Twilight conceded. “I had my reasons at the time, avoiding potential time loops you know, but…” She gave a wan smile. “A little late for that now.”

“It would have convinced the doubters among them that you are real,” Serrell said, “but beyond that it wouldn’t have accomplished much.”

Meg stared at her reflection in the table. “I know time travel is involved somehow.”

“That may be,” Serrell said, “but how? It’s not like there was a mysterious package left on someone’s doorstep.”

There was no answer to that.

Twilight broke the silence. “Perhaps a change of subject is needed. Are you aware that Andy has been invited to visit his old home at Knossos?”

“As a matter of fact, I was going to bring that up myself. There’s a small problem: he doesn’t have a passport.”

Twilight looked confused. “So give him one? I think I may need one too. He’s invited me to come along. Actually, make that two. A. K. Yearling will also be coming along.”

Wait. What?

Now Serrell looked confused. “Does not Equestria use passports?”

“Not under normal conditions,” Luna replied.

Serrell took a breath. “I’m sorry, but I cannot help you with that. We can only issue passports to citizens, which none of you are. For you and Ms. Yearling, the solution is simple: create an Equestrian passport and issue it to yourselves. You have the authority to do that, I assume.”

“Sure, but what about Andy?” Twilight asked. “He was never an Equestrian citizen, and even if he was, well, we would’ve stripped him of citizenship.”

He tapped the fingers of one hand on the table. “It is what it is, I suppose. We’ll work something out with the Greeks. They invited him, after all, so they’ll just have to deal with it somehow. And I’ll make sure they know two ponies will be accompanying him. With Equestrian passports. They don’t have to accept them, since they have yet to officially recognize you—nor has the E.U.—but I’m sure Andy can help persuade them to let you in.”

Twilight finally noticed Meg’s shocked expression. “I guess I ought to have mentioned it sooner? Do you want to join us?”

“Me? No. I’m fine. You go enjoy yourselves. Besides,” she added, looking at the President, “Greece has an extradition treaty with the U.S., right?”

He nodded. “Almost certainly. I can get back to you on that if you wish.”

“That’s okay. I’m not going. I need to rethink about testifying in front of the Senate.”

“I can put you in touch with a trusted advisor, if you’d like.”

It couldn’t hurt. And there could be committee members who are on Serrell’s side. They could be counted on to ask favorable questions. This advisor could even arrange for that.

It wasn’t “cheating,” she reminded herself; it was how the stupid game was played.

If she actually went through with it.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” she finally said. Her crossed legs were starting to hurt. “Do you need me for anything else?”

Quick glances across the table. “I do not believe so,” Luna said.

Meg stood up, relieved to get out of that awkward position. “I’ll let you know what I decide,” she said, and she left the room.

There was a secluded spot in the royal gardens. Meg had already checked to see if they could use it that evening, and they could. There were advantages to being a royal advisor. Using his horn, Steve laid out a blanket, then Meg placed the basket in the middle. The basket was full of produce she had bought in Ponyville.

“So I don’t know what to do now,” she concluded, after recounting her meeting with the president. She flipped the lid open.

Steve’s eyes went wide in disbelief. “You got hay?”

“Not just any hay. Aged hay.”

“That’s a thing?”

“Apparently. I couldn’t believe it either when I saw it. A bit pricey too.” She shrugged. “I figured we had to try it at least once.”

He looked doubtful. “Well, cheese could be aged, not to mention wine, but still… I mean, how do they age it? Just leave it out in the sun for a few years or something?”

“I have no idea. Didn’t ask.” She reached out and lifted a strand. “Might as well get it over with. Hopefully it’s not an acquired taste.” Into her mouth the strand went and she bit off an inch. Slowly she masticated, until a verdict could be rendered. “Not bad, actually. Definitely some subtle, complex flavors there.”

Steve followed suit. “Yeah, see what you mean. I wonder if there are hay snobs like we have wine snobs.”

“I bet there are pony wine snobs too.”

“Yeah, I bet you’re right.”

They both finished their strand of hay in silence.

“Well, I guess I’m not a hay snob,” Meg said, “because I don’t think it’s worth the money, but I don’t regret trying it once.”

“Once is enough for me too. So. I’ve been thinking. You know what would really ’shake the box’ as Serrell puts it? Create a nice big portal—”

“You know why Twilight would never agree to that.”

“Hear me out. Not a portal to Canterlot or Manehatten or any other city or town. Have it go to the middle of nowhere—I’m not finished yet—what is now the middle of nowhere. Give that spot to Discord to do with as he pleases, the condition being that anyone who visits returns unharmed. Let the pony deniers try to deny that!”

“That’s… an idea. There would have to be other conditions, of course. Like no one must be allowed to leave this—I dunno, let’s call it a ‘theme park’ for lack of a better term—leave this theme park and escape into Equestria proper.”

Steve lifted another strand of aged hay out of the basket. “Wasn’t there a fanfic about a theme park of Discord’s? And something went wrong with one of the attractions?”

“Don’t remember. Only matters anyway if Twilight approves of this theme park idea. Maybe you should forward a link to her.”

“You let me deal with book-horse,” intoned an all-too-familiar disembodied voice. “And there’s no need to concern yourselves by what some hack writer coughed up.”

Steve groaned. “What have I done?”

Twilight gasped in surprise.

Princess Luna glared. “I do not recall inviting you to this meeting.”

A lion’s paw waved it away. “A mere oversight, I’m sure.” He conjured up an imposing granite throne, right where Meg had previously been sitting, and conjured himself upon it in a seated position, for some reason holding an ordinary plain box. “As it so happens, I have excellent news for you all!” He shook the box until it begged for mercy.

Serrell watched in fascination, not saying a word.

Discord frowned. “Get it? ’Shake the box?’”

“I, uh, must confess I didn’t expect my first encounter with you to go this way.”

Twilight slowly shook her head. “It’s best to just let him do whatever he intends to do and get it over with. I apologize in advance for whatever that may be.”

Serrell held up his hands. “No, no, that’s okay. I’m on record as being in favor of shaking the box, and if anyone knows how to do that, it’s Discord.” He folded his hands and addressed the draconequus. “What do you have in mind?”

“Well, to be completely honest—that is a key aspect of friendship, is it not? Honesty?”

“Get on with it,” Twilight droned.

“I just thought you’d like to know I was taking my friendship lessons seriously. Anyway, as I was about to say, it wasn’t my idea. I heard it from Meg’s husband—Steve, wasn’t it?—just now and I thought—”

Twilight threw him a skeptical look. “You were just talking to him?”

“More like eavesdropping on their picnic, if you must know—”

“You could use more friendship lessons.”

Serrell interrupted. “As fascinating as this is to watch, could we move on to the idea?”

Twilight rubbed her forehead. “Yes, just get it over with.”

The granite throne vanished and Discord reappeared over the mahogany table. “Imagine a theme park, where chaos is the theme.” Below him, on the table, a miniature… well, Twilight assumed it was a theme park, not having seen the human equivalent. There was a plaza in the middle, but surrounding it were… she doubted human theme parks had a pyramid shaped building that rotated tip over base. And how large was this supposed to be?

“This theme park shall be in the middle of nowhere, far away from any town or city. A portal will connect it to the human realm. Humans may visit by the thousands each day, experience my chaos, and return unharmed by their experience. Let the deniers try to deny they were in Equestria, that ponies and magic don’t exist.” An evil smile grew. “And if any ignore the warnings about leaving the premises except via the portal, I get to have some fun.”

Luna frowned. “Harming humans is unacceptable, even humans attempting to leave this ‘theme park’ of yours to enter Equestria.”

“I would have to concur,” Serrell said.

Discord dutifully placed a paw on his chest. “Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”

“However,” Serrell continued, “the idea does have merit. The devil’s in the details, of course, but you are better qualified to address most of them, I’d think.”

“I can think of a big detail off the top of my head,” Twilight said. “Would ponies be visiting this theme park of yours?”

“Why not? Shouldn’t humans have the chance to meet actual ponies?”

Twilight couldn’t deny they should, nor could she deny some ponies would welcome the chance. Even she and her friends might pay it a visit. But there were concerns. “We can discuss that later, once I’ve had time to think about it.”

“So it’s a definite maybe?” Puppy dog eyes pleaded for approval.

I know I’m going to regret this. “Maybe.”

Up. Out. Down. In. Up. Out. Down. In. Wings and lungs synchronized. Heart racing. Cloud crawling closer, the moon rising above it. What was I thinking?

“Faster, Meg! Faster!”

Rainbow Dash was hardly breaking a sweat as she paced her.

“I.” Gasp. “Don’t.” Gasp. “Think.” Gasp.

“Don’t think. Do!”

Muscles were burning out. “I’m.” Gasp. “Not.” Gasp. “An” Gasp. “Ath—” Gasp. “—lete!”

“Neither is Twilight. If she could do it, so can you!”

That cloud, their destination, was finally visibly moving closer.

Meg started her cool down—too soon, but falling out of the sky was not an option either.

“I’m proud of you, Meg. You’re making awesome progress!”

No longer was she gasping for air. “Twilight doesn’t count, you know. Alicorn, remember? Earth pony endurance?”

“She still didn’t know how to properly use her new wings.”

The cloud was approaching rapidly now, too rapidly. She grabbed air, shedding speed, and began her descent. “Maybe you should try being human sometime and do speed typing or something, see what it’s like to master a body part you’ve had no prior experience with.”

“Speed typing?”

Dash was actually intrigued by the possibility. So long as it involves speed, Meg theorized.

It didn’t last. “Twilight won’t let us become human, you know that. I know there’s that mirror realm, but that’s not the same—at least, that’s what Sunset says.”

“It’s not,” Meg confirmed, “though I guess it’s not really that different where it counts. Anyway, it’s only temporary. My future self told me that. We just have to figure out how to prove it’s safe for the Elements. And we will—eventually. Don’t know when, though.”

Meg collapsed onto the enticingly fluffy cloud. I’m gonna pay for that.

Dash lightly touched down beside her. “I’ll let you catch your breath for a few minutes.”

Meg groaned. “No, Dash, I’m done for today. Besides, I have to visit my brother, and I’m gonna be late as it is.” The flight back would have to be a lot slower than she’d expected. “Something came up.”

“Nothing serious, I hope?”

“Don’t know; he wouldn’t elaborate. Hard to say if that’s a bad sign or not.”

But she’d be prepared for the worst.

Meg left the invisibility on after she arrived in her brother’s house. First thing was to determine if anything suspicious was going on. Silently, she walked into the living room—

And stopped dead in her tracks. Seated across from her brother was a tall, middle-aged woman with shoulder-length hair dyed a quite unnatural shade of red. It can’t be.

Whether this counted as a bad sign or not, she had no clue, but invisibility was not going to solve this mystery. She switched it off. “Sorry I’m late.”

The woman threw an arm behind the sofa, the better to twist her torso around, and stared wide-eyed at Meg. “A pony. An actual flesh-and-blood pony. You just arrived from Equestria?” She leaned to the side to snatch a glimpse of Meg’s cutie mark. “I don’t recognize you.”

“That’s Meg, my sister. Meg, this is Lauren Faust.”

“You actually got turned into a pony.”

“Yeah, magic, you know?” Meg carefully stepped forward. “Why are you here? How did you even find me?”

“Fair enough,” Faust declared. “Short answer: I want to see proof with my own eyes. Could you take me there, right now?”

“Only a unicorn can do that, and there are few who I would trust to do it.”

“Like Twilight Sparkle, I assume?”

“Technically an alicorn now, but yeah she’s top of the list.”

“Do you know her personally? Like, could you fetch her now?”

Meg wasn’t sure what to do. Faust had up to now conspicuously avoided any public comment on ponies being real, other than to remind everyone she had left the cartoon several years ago. She must have been questioned by the Feds along with all the others, and obviously—along with all the others—had nothing to tell them. “Why now? This time perhaps give me the long answer?”

“I’m… getting to it.” A pause. “I’ve gotten the impression Twilight doesn’t want to see me. I’ve certainly tried hard enough with every string I could find to pull.” She gave Meg a questioningly look.

Meg rounded the corner and stood in front of the sofa. “You’re not wrong, but not for the reason you’d think.”

A nervous laugh escaped. “She doesn’t want to meet her creator?”

“No pony thinks of you that way, just so you know. They didn’t even know humans existed, much less that cartoon, until quite recently.”

“And they don’t know how the cartoon became a documentary on their lives?”

Meg shook her head. “No more than you do.”

“Huh.”

“And they’re not happy about it, either.” Meg waited silently for her to continue, wondering if she should leave. Was there a point to this? Briefly she closed her eyes, amazed that she’d even consider cutting short an audience with the one-and-only Lauren Faust. It didn’t help that her flight muscles were sore and getting sorer.

“The long answer. Right.”

She took a breath. “When I first heard about ponies in the real world, I thought it was a joke. When I saw Twilight on The Late Show, I wondered how much money Hasbro paid them to promote some upcoming project. It wasn’t the first time Colbert did something like that.”

“Smaug to promote The Hobbit, I know. He even mentioned that.” There seemed no reason to mention that Meg had been backstage, in the green room, while Twilight was making her talk show circuit debut.

“Yes, he did. But Tara insisted she had nothing to do with it, and my contacts at Hasbro insisted… well, I think they were still trying to wrap their minds around it. But I couldn’t accept it. I mean, I created that cartoon. I’m no god; I do not have the power to turn a cartoon into reality.

“Then there was the whole Tirek/Andy thing, and the final straw was when you became the news. I decided to look you up, using your connection to the convention, found your brother, and, well, here we are.”

“Yes, here we are.”

“Would you mind telling me why Twilight won’t see me?”

Meg supposed there was no harm in doing so. “It’s nothing personal. It applies to everyone associated with the cartoon. The problem was that the episode scripts were being written well before the actual events took place in the real Equestria. Twilight hasn’t had the best experience with time loops, so… you know. This was before it was known that the fifth season no longer followed reality, making it irrelevant.”

Faust nodded in understanding. “It’s About Time. I guess that makes sense. But then why hasn’t she changed her mind?”

“I think she’s been reconsidering. But she’s a busy mare and I guess she doesn’t see it as a productive use of her time?”

“Could you put in a word for me?”

“Sure. I’ll mention it the next time I see her.” Meg turned to leave; she could really use that massage right about now.

“Wait.” Faust hesitated. “Would you mind if I asked a personal question?”

Meg had already taken a few steps; she did not wish to invoke the return spell in Faust’s presence. “I suppose,” she said, turning around.

“You had a choice, right? About becoming a pony?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I very much did it of my own free will. No, I’m not permanently stuck as a pony; I can change back and forth whenever I want—in Equestria, anyway, as that sort of magic doesn’t work in our universe. No, it didn’t hurt. No, I don’t have a cutie mark when human, and I’m still coming to terms with having one. Yes, it sucks not having hands, but it’s great having wings. Don’t mind the tail and ears, either.” She forced a smile. “You can tell I’ve been asked too often these sorts of questions.”

“Still coming to terms…” Faust grimaced, but persisted. “Did you choose to become a pegasus, as opposed to a unicorn or earth pony?”

“That I had no say in; the spell did what it did.”

“Do they actually work?—the wings I mean—even in our world?”

This was getting tiresome, and the wings in question were definitely hurting. “If it’s a demonstration you’re asking for, I’m afraid I have to decline. I just had a flight training session with you-know-who and I overexerted myself. But, yes, pegasus flight magic works here just fine.”

“You-know-who. As in Rainbow Dash?”

“You got it,” she singsonged. “So if you don’t mind, I really need to get going. I’ll have Matt pass along what Twilight decides.”

Meg didn’t wait. She invoked the return spell, letting Faust see her disappear into thin air.

4. Point of Departure

“How considerate of you to leave the door open for us.”

Meg stopped typing mid-keystroke. It certainly was considerate of me. They’d never be—no, that spell wasn’t in place yet. It was this event that had led Twilight to put that structural integrity spell into place. Right? It was so long ago…

She turned around and faced Jackson, trying to act the part. “Ex-excuse me?”

“No excuses for you, traitor.” He pulled out a gun and pointed it at her. “Get up.”

Meg stood up. Acting the part had suddenly become a lot easier.

Jackson stepped backwards out of the office, keeping the gun aimed, and yelled, “Virgil, come here!”

Meg knew she wasn’t in any real danger. Even if she didn’t know she’d eventually escape, there was always magic—not that using magic was a real option. That’d be too revealing.

Someone came running, presumably this Virgil.

“Take her prisoner and drive her to the warehouse.”

A blank look. “Prisoner? Where would I put her?”

“Figure it out!” Jackson yelled. “And find something to tie up her hands.”

Imbeciles. She doubted they could’ve kept even her past self from escaping.

Fortunately for Jackson, escape was not in her plans.

Not yet.

Twilight stopped in front of the door to Meg and Steve’s apartment inside the palace. A variety box of donuts, fresh from Donut Joe, hovered in front of her. She pressed the doorbell.

The wait was short. The door opened, revealing Meg, whose eyes fell on the box. “A peace offering, or something?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt.”

Meg stepped aside to let Twilight in. “I suppose not.”

“Wings feeling better? Rainbow Dash should not have pushed you so hard.”

“No pain, no gain, as they say.” The wings in question unfolded and Meg gave them an experimental flap. “Getting better, but I think I’ll stay on the ground for another day.”

A small jar of plaid pills rose from Twilight’s saddlebags. “I brought some for you to keep, so that you don’t have to come to Ponyville. Just keep them out of sight.” Two pills lifted from the jar, then the jar flew all the way to a kitchen counter.

“Before we go,” Meg said. “Did, uh, did Discord come to see you about a—”

“He interrupted our meeting with Serrell.”

Meg grimaced. “Sorry about that. We didn’t know he was listening to us.”

“No harm done, I guess. Serrell was actually open to the idea.”

“It’ll happen?”

Twilight sighed. “Let’s just say I’m thinking about it. Ready to go?”

“Sure. What’s the departure point?” Meg twitched her wings. “Sorry it couldn’t be your throne room.”

“Luna’s observatory. It has a view to die for. I’ll teleport us there, if you don’t mind.”

Meg shrugged. “Not in the mood to fly anyway.”

One teleport later, and the two mares were outside the observatory, its dome closed to protect the telescope from the weather. Twilight sent a pill over to Meg. “Anything I ought to be aware of?” Twilight asked.

Meg shook her head. “Not really. I’ll drive, and I’ll turn off invisibility as soon as I see everything’s okay.”

Twilight nodded, and they both swallowed the pill.

Meg brought them to Matt’s living room. Twilight immediately recognized Matt and Lori, naturally, but seated across from them was a woman she had seen only in pictures.

“We’re here,” Meg announced.

Lauren Faust jerked around and her jaw dropped, her eyes locking first onto Twilight, then her glowing horn, then on the glowing, floating box, then back and forth between those last two. The alicorn stepped forward, presenting her best smile of friendship and sending the box of donuts ahead of her. “A little something I’ve brought from Canterlot.”

Faust hesitantly plucked the glowing box out of the air. Strange how humans always react that way the first time they encounter telekinesis, Twilight thought. It didn’t seem to matter that this human had created—so far as she knew at the time—the ability of unicorns to manipulate their environment via telekinesis.

“Donuts?” Faust asked after removing the lid.

“Donut Joe’s, right?” Lori asked. “Those are good. Say ‘hi’ for me the next time you see him.”

Faust jerked her head back to Lori. “Wait. You’ve been to his shop? It’s real?”

“Yes?”

She put the donut box aside and stood up. Addressing Meg, she asked, “You’ve been there too?”

“I’ve been to many places inside Equestria, and a few places outside it.” She turned to Twilight. “Why don’t we cut to the chase and bring her back with us?”

“Yes, let’s.” She smiled at her alleged creator. “Please stand beside me.”

Faust warily complied. “Anything you should warn me about? Vertigo, nausea, that sort of thing?”

“Nope! You wouldn’t even notice if your eyes were closed.”

Twilight gave her a second to close her eyes, but those eyes remained locked on herself. She englobed Faust in her magic and invoked the return spell. The human stumbled as the background changed from living room to outdoor balcony.

Faust took in her surroundings. “Where are we?” she asked. She took a step to the not-high-enough-for-humans railing at the edge of the balcony.

“Canterlot,” Twilight answered. “This is the tallest tower of the palace.”

“Bigger than I imagined,” the human said, taking in the vista.

“It is the capital of Equestria.”

Faust scanned the streets below. “Lots of colorful ponies, no question about it.”

Twilight walked up beside her and pointed a hoof. “In that direction is Ponyville.”

“Oh wow. Wish I had binoculars. Those orchards over there? Must be Sweet Apple Acres, right?”

“It sure is. And over there, at the edge of the Everfree Forest, is Fluttershy’s cottage.”

“Now I really wish I had binoculars.” She held a hand above her eyes and squinted. “Maybe I can see it?”

After giving her a minute to take it all in, Meg said, “Don’t forget to look up. Those aren’t birds.”

Faust looked up. “Pegasi. Flying pegasi.” She looked down at Meg. “Any weather projects right now?”

Meg shrugged. “Doesn’t look like it, nothing obvious anyway.” The skies were clear.

“Can you do weather magic?”

“I’ve had some light training; nothing I could demonstrate right this moment. No clouds.”

Twilight was about to suggest she could make a cloud, right there on the balcony, when she got a sharp glance from Meg. Got it, no demonstrations. Perhaps Meg was right; the point of this wasn’t to provide their guest with the full, guided tour. But what, exactly, was the point? How long should this visit last?

Faust walked along the railing, apparently lost in thought; the railing extended all the way around the tower. She came to a stop where it overlooked a palace garden, the one in which Discord resided for many centuries as a statue. Her curiosity extended to the statues present. “It’s just I can’t believe this is all real. I thought I had created all this. Obviously that’s impossible, I’m no god, but…” She threw up her hands. “I can’t explain it.”

Twilight could only sympathize. “Neither can I.”

In the garden there was an empty pedestal. “I’m guessing that’s where Discord was imprisoned?”

“It is,” Twilight confirmed. “To be honest, I’m half-surprised he’s not here to greet you. But one can never tell with him.”

“Perhaps he’s too busy planning his theme park,” Meg offered.

“Theme park?” Faust asked.

“I haven’t approved it yet,” Twilight said. “But if I do, don’t worry, you’ll hear all about it along with the rest of humanity.”

The human was starting to look a bit worried. “Should I be personally concerned about Discord?—when I’m in Equestria, anyway.”

Meg shook her head. “No, he’s reformed. Doesn’t mean he won’t try to psych you out now and then, but nothing you truly need to be afraid of. I speak from experience. He can even be useful. He helped me create a voice synthesizer for The Smooze. A combination of computers and chaos magic.” She sighed. “Still needs a lot of work, though.”

Now it was Faust’s turn to shake her head. “The Smooze? I don’t even know how to process that.”

Neither did Twilight, if for different reasons. Progress had stalled long ago on that synthesizer. More than once she had wondered if the draconequus was deliberately holding back, to frustrate their efforts to learn from Smooze about the ancient past. But why help at all, in that case? Asking Discord himself would get nowhere; she’d been down that road too many times.

Faust resumed walking along the railing, eventually returning to her starting point. She gazed at distant Ponyville. This seemed as good a point as any to return her to her realm. “I’ll need to return you soon,” Twilight said. “But before I do, I was wondering if we could come to an agreement.”

“An agreement? About what?”

“To work together on finding out how your cartoon mirrored our reality. I know you’ve already been questioned by your government, but it may be possible to uncover answers with magic, answers you are not aware you have.”

She jerked around, alarmed. “Magic? You want to use magic on me? Like, right now?”

“Not right now,” Twilight said, doing her best to be reassuring. “And never without your consent. In any case, I don’t know a relevant spell. I may have to create one from scratch.”

“You… do know that not everything was created by me. Your names, for example; I had to reuse names from earlier generations that had already been trademarked by Hasbro.”

“I know,” Twilight said. “And Tirek and Smooze were introduced in the first generation. But we need to follow up on any and all leads. I’m even willing to accompany Tirek—former Lord Tirek, now Andy—on his visit to his original home in Minoa, to study how it interacted with the precursor to Equestria.”

Faust shook her head. “Yeah, never saw that coming: Lord Tirek was originally human. Funny, given that G1 featured a human, a girl named Megan.” Faust looked at the orchid pegasus. “Awfully similar to ‘Meg,’ wouldn’t you think?”

“Huh? I mean, it never occurred to me, but, I guess?”

“Hard to see how it could be anything other than a coincidence,” Twilight said. “Their names are about the only similarities they have.”

Long seconds passed. “About using magic on me,” Faust finally said. “I’ll have to sleep on it. Quite honestly, though, I have to admit magic is probably involved somehow, so maybe magic is needed to get to the bottom of this.”

“No, I mean it. Order whatever you want. It’s the least I can do to repay you for all that you’ve done for me.”

Meg continued to scan the menu, shocked by the prices. Yearling must have found the most expensive restaurant in Canterlot. But, hey, she can afford it. Upon turning the page, she blinked in disbelief, hoping it had been an illusion; it wasn’t. “A entire section devoted to aged hay?”

The author beamed. “It’s their specialty. No other establishment has as large a selection, sourced from all across Equestria. Have you ever tried it?”

“Once, yeah. Bought some in Ponyville—and I thought that was expensive.”

“It was… interesting,” Steve said.

“Really? You can get it direct from the farmer in Ponyville? That would cut out the middlemare.”

Meg shrugged. “That’s what I did.”

“There you go! You just saved me enough bits to pay for this meal. There’s a high-end restaurant in my casino that offers aged hay.”

Meg turned to the next page, which held the wine list. Which happens to be aged grape juice, she reminded herself. All ludicrously expensive, naturally. And she’d bet it’d taste the same—to her, anyway—as something affordable. She went back to the entrées.

“Did you know that I’ll be accompanying Twilight and Andy on their trip to Knossos?”

“Yeah, we’ve heard,” Meg said. She was having trouble deciding between a dish that’d be familiar to humans, or going full pony. “I was even present when the subject of passports came up between Twilight and Serrell.”

“So that explains it. Just received mine. Never had one before, never needed one.”

“You’ll need one to cross national borders in the human world,” Steve said. “Technically, you ought to need one to enter the U.S. from Equestria. I have no doubt that one would be needed to cross over using a portal, when one is established.”

“But I have one now. So I present it after Twilight brings me across?”

“Uh…” Meg looked to Steve, to see if he’d answer that. He shrugged, so Meg guessed she should answer. “They’re not really set up to handle our current method of entering the country. They kinda expect you to enter at an airport or a border crossing.”

“I suppose,” Steve added, “arrangements could be made for an immigration official to meet you on arrival, if you really want a U.S. stamp in your passport.”

“Or fly back from Greece to the U.S. instead of directly returning to Equestria,” Meg said. “Quite frankly, you should consider yourself lucky you can avoid the hassle of going through lines at customs.”

“And let’s not forget the whole getting-a-visa thing,” Steve said.

“Visa?”

“Equestria doesn’t do that either?” Then Meg remembered she hadn’t applied for a visa when she visited that archaeological dig in Minotaur lands. She had assumed Twilight took care of it. “You know what? If that hasn’t been brought to your attention, it’s safe to assume Twilight’s handling it.”

Yearling leaned back. “Fascinating. Anyway, I do believe I need to experience this hassle of customs for myself—so that I could include it in a future novel.”

Meg returned her focus to the menu. “You could just go to Tartarus, if that’s what turns you on. No, that’s unfair to Tartarus.” It really wasn’t such a bad place to visit—if you weren’t an inmate. She definitely preferred Cerberus to the typical customs agent.

The disguised pegasus gave Meg a curious look. “I’m sensing there’s a lot left unsaid there, but that can wait. Right now, I’d love to hear the latest on the impeachment trial. You’ve been asked to testify, right?”

“‘Asked’ is such a polite way of phrasing it.” That pasta dish look intriguing. It was loaded with several varieties of flowers. “Just had a consultation with one of the president’s men, to discuss strategy.” Quite expensive too, even for this place. Was it because of the flowers? It was true she didn’t recognize any of them. Maybe they’re aged flowers.

“Care to offer me a peek behind the curtain?”

Meg looked up at Yearling. Yep, flowers it is. “I’m not sure what to say,” she began. “I mean, if you put it all verbatim into one of your books, it’ll bore your readers to tears.”

A smirk. “A skillful writer knows what to omit or when to indulge in poetic license.”

Meg shrugged. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. So, the Senate Judiciary Committee is overseeing the impeachment trial. Senator Routledge is the chair of that committee, and his faction will do their best to ask me the sort of questions whose answers will condemn President Serrell. But there are also committee members who are on Serrell’s side, and they’ll ask me the other sort of questions, those whose answers will exonerate him.

“That consultation focused on two areas. First, how to answer the anticipated hostile questions in the least damaging way possible; and second, brainstorm friendly questions and the answers I could give to them.”

Her expression soured. “I was also warned that I might not care for how I would be treated. There’s talk of having me on a leash—you know, in case I planned on escaping or, I suppose, even attacking someone. Some think being on camera wearing a leash, like some dog, may actually create sympathy for me. Even if true, I’m not sure it’d be worth it.”

“A leash can’t prevent you from returning to Equestria,” Yearling pointed out. “Right?”

“And I’d be happy to prove it to them by doing just that, once they were done questioning me.”

Yearling looked to the side in thought for a moment. “Maybe you shouldn’t do that so publicly. It would fuel fears over the danger magic could pose to humans.”

Meg remembered what Routledge had said during Tirek’s release from Tartarus, after he had witnessed Discord messing around with the journalists. “You may be right,” she conceded. “It could play into Routledge’s hands.”

“Hands…” Yearling muttered. She pulled a small notepad from her dress and a ball-point pen. After scribbling some notes to herself, she put them back. “If I’m going to have humans in my novels,” she explained, “I need to pay attention to how they speak. ‘Play into hands,’ not ‘play into hooves.’”

“Makes sense to me,” Steve said.

Meg was merely curious as from where Yearling had acquired an obviously human artifact. Probably got it from Twilight. Saves having to carry around a pot of ink along with a quill.

“Anyway, cheer up,” Yearling said to Meg. “Nopony ever said politics was easy. I, myself, try to steer clear the best I can.”

“I wish I had that option.”

“Then let’s exercise that option for right here and now. What’s it like to fly across oceans in one of these flying machines of yours?”

The chartered jet leisurely approached, its engines distressingly loud. For all their technology, Twilight wondered why humans couldn’t create a fast flying machine that wasn’t so bucking noisy. She put out a sonic shield, just enough to cut the volume down to something tolerable.

“Thanks,” Yearling said, her ears returning to the upright position.

“No problem.” The magic generator she was carrying held several pounds of recovered U-235; she could afford to splurge. She addressed the Secret Service agents next to her. “It’ll be quieter inside, right?” If not, well, a spell like that doesn’t need much magic, and she always had the option of returning to Equestria to fetch a new generator.

Agent Reubens answered her. “Quieter, yes, but far from silent. Many people use ear plugs or noise-cancelling headphones, but many others aren’t bothered.”

“Right. Rainbow Dash did mention something about that when she rode in that helicopter you piloted out of the Crystal Empire. When the doors were closed.”

He laughed. “It’ll be quieter than that.”

Yearling looked expectedly at Twilight. “Sounds like a story I’ve yet to hear.”

“It’s a long story. I’m sure Rainbow Dash would love to tell it to you.”

“She did commandeer the seat next to mine,” Reubens said. “That pony is obsessed with flying.”

The plane edged towards them. “Too bad Rainbow doesn’t have the opportunity to fly with us in this flying machine.” Not from a lack of trying. But there just wasn’t any reason for her to come along on this journey.

It stopped, engines still running though not quite as loudly. A door near the front opened—from the top, not the side. It swung down, revealing a flight of stairs that almost reached the ground. Three humans appeared from inside and hurried down the stairs, two of them lugging cameras on their shoulders and the third carrying a long pole with… a microphone? Once on the ground, one cameraman pointed his camera at the top of the stairs and the other pointed it at the ponies and the agents. A microphone hovered above them.

What in Equestria is going on here?

Oh, she thought, chagrined. Right. Not Equestria. She sighed. Question still stands.

Before she could entertain any more thoughts, the former Lord Tirek stepped outside. “I’m gratified you didn’t change your mind!” He gestured with a hand. “Come aboard! You’ll love it. This is the way to travel!” He looked down at the cameraman recording him. “Got it?”

He got a thumbs up in response.

Seconds passed as the other camera was pointing at her. Evidently she was supposed to say something, but what? It was time for answers. “What’s going on?”

Andy was taken aback by the question. “Did I not mentioned that a documentary is being made on our trip to my birthplace?”

“You said it was a possibility, yes, but we’re not there yet.” She frowned; a camera was still pointed at her and the microphone still hovered above her. “And why is this being recorded?”

Andy waved it away. “It’ll almost certainly go unused, but it doesn’t hurt to record it anyway. You never know. Maybe it’ll be used in a ‘behind the scenes’ featurette. Anyway, it’s how we’re able to fly in this chartered jet; it’s being paid for out of the documentary’s budget.” A really big smile. “I am learning so much.”

Fine. She knew what was going on. But… “So what am I supposed to say?”

Yearling jumped in. “Ask me if I’m ready to go.”

“Huh?”

“Just do it. In character.”

“In character?”

A calming exhale. “You’re acting, playing yourself. Just pretend the cameras aren’t there.”

Really? Yes, she decided: Really. Fine. Even so… “We can do it over again if I mess up, right?”

“Sure,” the cameraman said, “but we might use the screwups for the blooper reel, if we decide to include one in the DVD/Blu-ray version.”

“Blooper reel?”

“Just ignore it for now,” Andy said in exasperation.

Yes, let’s get it over with. Twilight met Yearling’s eyes. A few seconds to find the right state of mind, and: “Ready to go?”

“I’m always ready.”

Twilight barely suppressed an eye roll. This was reality, not one of the author’s brainstorming role-playing sessions with her changelings. Besides, shouldn’t she be in character as “A. K. Yearling,” not “Daring Do?” And yet, looking at the cameras, she had to wonder if this counted as reality.

Twilight got a thumbs up from the cameraman. “Now we’ll film you entering the plane.”

“Will there be a moment you won’t be filming us?”

“Plenty of them.”

Somehow, Twilight failed to find that statement assuring. In resignation, she said, “Tell me when to start walking.”

“Let us go inside first,” Agent Fowler said. “Make sure there’re no ‘surprises.’”

“Surprises aren’t in the script.”

Agent Reubens through his sunglasses glared at the cameraman. “Don’t tell us how to do our jobs, and we won’t tell you how to do yours.”

Andy quickly interceded. “They’re Secret Service. Best to let them be.”

The cameraman looked back up at Andy. “You’re joking, right?”

“Afraid not. They were assigned to protect me when I returned to this world. They’re obviously here to protect the princess.”

“Not me?” asked Yearling, somewhat miffed.

“Apologies, Ms. Yearling,” Fowler said, “but only foreign dignitaries fall under our protection. That being said, it’s unlikely a threat against you would not also be a threat against Her Royal Highness.”

The cameraman remained skeptical. Twilight was beginning to wonder just who did he think he was? “Even outside the country?” he countered. “Kinda outside your jurisdiction for anyone other than the President.”

“It is true,” Reubens said, “that we would have no authority within the Hellenic Republic. Even so, our presence signals the importance that President Serrell attaches to the safety of our Equestrian guests, a signal that will not go unnoticed by the local authorities.”

A resigned sigh. “Suit yourself. Do your check for ‘surprises.’”

The agents started off for the plane, leaving the ponies alone with this human.

“Perhaps we should be properly introduced?” Yearling asked.

“Indeed,” he heartily agreed. “We shall be spending a lot of time together, so let’s get the formalities out of the way. You may call me Kyle. I’m the producer-slash-director-slash-occasional-cameraman of this documentary. That means I decide how the money is spent and I get to tell everyone what to do when the camera is recording. If you go on board that plane, I’ll be paying for your transportation, hotels, and food. I expect a return on my investment.”

What did I get myself into?

Kyle pointed at the other cameraman. “That’s Mike.”

“Hello,” Mike said, giving a wave of a hand.

“And that’s Dominic. He’s the soundman.”

“Could I get an autograph sometime? It’s, uh, it’s for my niece.”

Somehow Twilight doubted that, but it hardly mattered. “Sure.”

Agent Reubens stepped out of the plane, said, “You may come aboard now,” and went back inside.

“Andy!” Kyle called out. “Step outside to welcome your companions onto the plane.”

He did so.

Kyle got his camera into position. “Start walking,” he told the ponies.

Twilight levitated all their luggage, the agents’ included.

“Even seeing it for myself,” Kyle muttered.

With a shared glance, Twilight and Yearling did as instructed and began walking.

I really hope I don’t regret this.

5. Different Perspectives

Meg experimentally gave her wrists a twist; they freely turned. The spell she had surreptitiously cast still functioned. Packing tape was all her captors could find. The point of the spell wasn’t to free herself, of course—she would be a mostly model prisoner—it was to protect her skin.

She adjusted her position. Being in the back of a van loaded with stolen property, including at least one operating magic generator, was not the most comfortable way to travel. Leaning forward from the side, she took a peek through the windshield. No mistaking those archaic wind turbines lining the hills on either side of the highway: Altamont Pass.

Knots formed in her stomach. So that’s where they held me. An industrial warehouse in Tracy—and they were taking her straight to it. At least I’ll be long gone when what happens happens.

Living through that once was quite enough.

Rarity hummed to herself as her magic delicately unfolded onto a ponnequin the dress worn by Meg for the Grand Galloping Gala. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer I create something more… suitable?”

Meg shook her head. “I want to look my best when I appear on camera with a leash around my neck, and that dress will do nicely.” She certainly wasn’t going to appear naked on national television. “Just, I dunno, add some subtle reinforcement around the neck?”

The fashionista gave her that look. “To avoid being damaged by that leash, I assume?”

“Yep.”

“To be treated like a recalcitrant dog,” Rarity muttered as she inspected the part of the dress in question.

“That’s what my advisors are going for, the visual juxtaposition of an exquisite dress and the inevitable leash—since, you know, they can’t handcuff me on the account of having no hands.”

“‘Exquisite’ is a given.” She looked up from the dress. “Fortunately, I’m always up for a challenge, though this hardly qualifies. It’ll be ready in a few days.”

Five days. “That’s fine.” Five days till her just-scheduled appearance at the trial. This is happening.

“Anything else, darling?”

“Meg!”

Meg jerked around and spotted Sweetie Belle entering the shop. “Yes?” It wasn’t terribly hard to figure out what the filly wanted.

“When can Susie come visit us again?”

“Sweetie, darling, Twilight is not available right now. It will be some time before she returns. You’ll just have to be patient.”

“Well, can’t you bring her across? Can’t any unicorn do it?”

“Darling, that wouldn’t be a good idea—”

“In theory, yes,” Meg interrupted, “but it’s best left to ponies whose special talent is magic.”

“Precisely so,” Rarity said with relief.

“I’ll talk to Sunset Shimmer—and to Susie’s parents—and see what I can arrange. But no promises.”

“I can’t wait to tell Apple Bloom and Scootaloo!” Sweetie chirped, then she trotted over to the stairs and galloped up them.

Meg sighed. “What part of ‘no promises’ did she not understand?”

“I’ll manage them, so don’t you worry about it.”

“Thanks.”

No other incident delayed Meg’s departure from Carousel Boutique. Once outside she paused, wondering, now what? She had taken the train to Ponyville because of the dress, but she was now free to fly back to Canterlot. It was still several hours, however, before she was to pay Sunset a visit at the mirror. She had some time to kill.

Decisions, decisions.

I know, I’ll pay a visit to one of the changelings. They weren’t a bad bunch, once you got to know them. One was usually at the tree library, serving as the new librarian. Which one didn’t really matter; they all took on the same form, leaving ponies none the wiser. The changeling in residence also functioned as a messenger between Twilight and Daring Do.

A function that had become moot for the time being.

What did the changelings do when their “hive leader” wasn’t around? Perhaps they could use the company.

The walk over to the library was pleasant enough. A carefully arranged partial cloudiness kept temperatures just right. Ponies were out and about, seemingly without a care in the world. And it had been months since the last incursion from the Everfree Forest—if a sick and confused manticore could be considered an incursion. Fluttershy wouldn’t let anypony else lay a hoof on it.

After a few minutes the ancient and hollowed out tree was before her. Without knocking—it was a library during its hours of operation—Meg went inside. There was the librarian, straight out of central casting: a mare wearing spectacles, graying mane, a cutie mark of a book. She was talking to… Lyra?

They both turned to look at her.

“Not interrupting anything?” Meg asked.

An awkward smile from Lyra. “No… I ought to be going anyway.”

Wait a minute. Meg and Twilight had stumbled upon Lyra and one of the changelings in the Everfree, when they’d been conducting one of their time travel experiments. The one where the time travel spell repeatedly failed until she had been looking in the direction of where the changeling and Lyra had been at their time of arrival in the past. “What’s your connection to the changelings?” she blurted out.

“That’s… complicated,” was all the unicorn said before hurriedly departing.

With raised eyebrow Meg turned to the disguised changeling. “Would you care to answer that?”

“Not my place to comment,” was the simple answer.

Meg kept her gaze on the librarian; it didn’t work.

She looked somewhere else, anywhere else. “I suppose I could try asking Daring—”

Realization dawned. Back in the forest, they hadn’t yet learned of the connection between the changelings and Daring Do. In hindsight it was obvious: Lyra was using the changelings to pass messages back and forth with the author, the same as Twilight was now doing.

The changeling shrugged. “You’re certainly free to ask her.”

Meg sighed. “I certainly am.” And that pegasus would be just as likely to answer as Lyra was.

“Have you heard anything from her?”

Was that a touch of unease? They’re probably not used to being out-of-touch with her, she decided—and Daring had gone where no changeling could follow (presumably). “I’m not really in the loop on this one, but I wouldn’t worry. By now they’re probably in a plane flying over the ocean to their destination.”

“I must confess I had never heard of you or your books during my brief reign of terror, and the prison library in Tartarus sadly lacks any Equestrian titles.”

“And I must confess I was at the time in the Griffon Empire, doing research for Daring Do and the Eponymous Emerald. I didn’t learn of your ‘reign of terror’ until after it was over.”

The banter was playful enough; naturally, it was all for the camera. Kyle the director had the idea of having Andy and Yearling converse, the logic being that they should get to know each other if they were going to be on a team. Twilight couldn’t deny that logic; that it upped the celebrity factor of this documentary surely was a coincidence. At least it allowed her to be off camera.

“Is that why you’ve joined us? To do research for your next book?”

“Can’t slide one past you,” Yearling remarked. “Having a Daring Do book set in the human realm would be beneficial for sales, in both realms. But, believe it or not, I do have a background in archaeology—write what you know, as they say—and I wouldn’t mind putting that training to work at ancient ruins of human origin.”

And you already did. Not that Yearling was going to mention that here. And, to be fair, she probably meant ruins of human origin in the human realm. Regardless, it was the first Twilight had heard of her background. An archaeologist past had never been mentioned in any bio of the author she had read. She’d have to look deeper into that the next chance she got.

“It remains to be seen if there’ll be anything you can apply your training to,” Andy said.

Yearling wasn’t the least bit fazed. “We’ll see. I hope so, and I feel the humans should hope so too. I bring a different perspective, obviously, and so do you.”

Andy smiled at that. “I certainly do.”

Kyle interrupted. “That’s a good point to break.” He looked towards Twilight. “Anything you’d like to add to this topic?”

Twilight was gazing out the window at the boundless ocean, so far below. “Not particularly,” she said. She fully expected Yearling to utilize her training, but not necessarily in the presence of these humans. And by “humans” she excluded Andy, of course, as only he knew the locations of several points of interest. That wouldn’t make Kyle happy. She wasn’t sure how much that mattered.

“I’ve been sat here, listening to this delightful conversation, and I would like to add that I, for one, am quite interested in the different perspectives these two have to offer.”

That was the resident domain expert, Professor of Aegean Studies Samantha Hutchinson. She was in the back, near Fowler and Reubens. Twilight hadn’t exchange many words with her yet, but any person who has written multiple books was alright by her. The professor’s distinct Trottingham accent didn’t hurt—or British, as it was known here.

“I can assure you,” Twilight said, “that neither of them are known for keeping their perspectives to themselves.” She turned back to the porthole. “I can’t believe we’re going over five hundred miles per hour. Nothing seems to move down there.” Not that there was much to see, just flecks of white against the ocean. Even the occasional cloud passed languidly below them.

The professor got up, walked over, and took a seat near Twilight. “We are seven miles up, I should think.”

“Equestrian airships don’t go that high; they don’t need to. Not with magic to reduce air friction.”

Samantha’s face lit up at the word “magic.” “Are there spells to aid archaeologists? Could any of them be used here?”

The camera was pointed at them. “That would be Yearling’s department, it would appear.”

“Don’t look at me. I’m not a unicorn.”

All attention was back on Twilight. Her tail twitched. “I would have to look into it… but I doubt it.” If only because if such spells existed, Yearling ought to have heard of them alongside her unicorn classmates—which reminded her to find out which school she had attended. “But general magic, such as precise telekinesis, would obviously be useful.”

“Pegasi flight magic can be quite useful too.” Yearling smiled. “Daring Do sure finds it so.”

“Is that how your wings work?” Samantha asked, pointing at Twilight’s wings. “I mean, would they work in our world?”

“I’d be happy to demonstrate they do,” Twilight said, “but not in this tight, enclosed space. Perhaps once we visit a suitable site, I could offer you a birds eye view—if you wouldn’t mind being magically levitated far off the ground.”

Kyle immediately said, “Let’s do that.”

Samantha wasn’t so sure. “I’ll… consider it.”

“Can you levitate a camera man?” Kyle asked.

Mike, the cameraman, was not amused. “We have a drone, you know. An expensive drone.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’ve made your point.”

“I wouldn’t mind being levitated high in the sky,” Yearling said. “To experience flying, like a bird.”

And she said it with such a straight face too. “It would be my pleasure,” Twilight said. “It would help you write Daring Do’s flying scenes with greater verisimilitude.”

Yearling didn’t miss a beat. “I look forward to the experience.”

“Speaking of Daring Do…” Samantha began. “You wouldn’t happen to have one of your books on you I could borrow—possibly even buy?”

Yearling sadly shook her head. “I don’t have one on me right now, and even if I did I certainly could not sell it to you. My human lawyers are quite clear on that. Hasbro’s lawyers are the problem; they feel they are entitled to some of the revenue. It’s under negotiation.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Fortunately, they are not laying claim to book sales in Equestria.”

Twilight grunted. “They wouldn’t get far if they tried and they know it.” The current lack of a copyright treaty unfortunately worked both ways. Complexities like this, where a few scenes from a Daring Do book got incorporated into an MLP episode, didn’t help. She couldn’t help but feel that this was all posturing to make the treaty under development as favorable as possible to the humans. The royal sisters’ advice was to posture right back at them.

“I don’t suppose I could buy the book in Equestria then?”

“Not my department,” Yearling said, nodding at Twilight.

It was days like this Twilight wished she was still just the Ponyville librarian.

“We would love to tag along and film it.”

“It really does look like a control room out of a sci-fi movie.” Meg wandered about, taking a closer look at each of the monitors.

“It’s what we envisioned,” Sunset said, “but it turns out that could have been a problem: we envisioned it. Moondancer and I are not exactly experts in human technology.”

Moondancer stood by a monitor. “We believe our lack of deep understanding of computers is limiting what we can do here.”

Meg processed that for a moment. Then she selected a console and sat down. There was a keyboard builtin to the console and a wireless mouse to the side. She grabbed it with a hand and moved it about; the cursor moved likewise on the monitor.

Her attention switched to the user interface displayed on that monitor. It was vaguely Windows-like. The sole application running appeared to be the portal manager. The sole icon on the task bar was for that manager. There did not seem to be any way to launch anything else, any way to find what else was installed. They’ve both used human computers; why was this so limited?

She went through the portal manager’s menu bar, looking to see what functionality was there. Again, only the bare essentials were present. A manager like this ought to maintain a log of all activity, of all portals created and destroyed over the years—millennia? There was nothing she could find. Maybe a log file was being written to, but there was no way to look for it never mind inspect its contents.

Meg could only conclude that just the mere impression of a computer was being emulated.

She leaned back. “Yeah, I see the problem. So what do we do about it?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Sunset walked over to the pillar hosting the portal back to Equestria. “First, we all leave; second, you return first, with a proper control room in mind; and finally, we follow.”

Meg stood up. “Let’s do it.”

Sunset immediately went through the portal. Moondancer was next to reach the portal and to go through it, with Meg right behind her.

Three ponies stood before the mirror.

Meg took a deep breath, concentrating on what a proper portal control room should be: it would have “real” computers, as she understood them. Exhaling, she went through the mirror.

Everything looked the same, superficially. She wasn’t surprised. The appearance was not the problem, so she hadn’t wasted any effort on expecting anything different.

She walked over to a console and sat down. There was now a USB hub in the console. Hopefully it might even work; she had no way to test that at the moment.

The monitor was dark, in power-saving mode. However silly that might be in this simulation—or whatever it was—that’s how a real computer ought to behave, so that was a promising sign. She took hold of the mouse and moved it.

It was the moment of truth.

The monitor came to life, revealing a perfectly normal Windows desktop, right down to the default desktop background image. She clicked the Windows icon in the bottom-left of the task bar, and up popped the Start Menu. So far, so good. In due course she found and launched the command prompt. It came up, showing the familiar prompt. She typed “DIR \” and the usual top-level files and directories were listed.

“It looks like it worked,” Moondancer said, standing behind her.

“Yeah. This really raises questions about how this realm operates. I mean, I find it really hard to believe it’s ‘simulating’—or whatever the heck it’s doing—a perfect replica of a human designed and manufactured CPU, running an actual copy of Windows. It sure didn’t get all that from me. No one person remotely knows all that stuff.”

“And then there’s Canterlot High,” Sunset said. “They even had a version of the internet. Whoever imagined that into existence had detailed knowledge of both human technology and the residents of Ponyville.”

Meg sighed. “Kinda narrows down the suspects, doesn’t it?” And she was top of the list, though a future Twilight or Sunset could also be up there.

The portal manager was still in the task bar. Meg clicked it.

“That looks promising.”

“It sure does, Moondancer.” The menu bar was fleshed out. Meg went to see what was under “View.” There was a history menu item! She clicked it.

Three rows were displayed, one for each of the portals they knew about, only one of which was currently open. All the information was there: latitude, longitude, when it was created, when and if it was closed, and so on.

“That’s it?” Sunset asked. “We know portals existed millennia ago.”

There was a button for filtering options on the bottom of the window. Meg clicked it. It was as she had suspected. One of the filters was a date range; it only went back a year by default. She typed in a ludicrously ancient starting date then clicked “Apply.”

Nothing happened for a second, then a wait cursor appeared. It kept on rotating. And rotating.

“A perfect simulation of that too,” Meg muttered. “Maybe I shouldn’t have put in such a large range.”

“Anyway to cancel it?” Sunset asked.

“Not that I can see. Who do we even blame for this lousy user interface design?”

“Us? We imagined it, sort of, didn’t we?”

“Whatever.” Meg stood up. “No point in sticking around. Hopefully it’ll be done when we come back.”

Moondancer was walking around the room, searching the walls for something. “I wonder if there’s any place to grab a bite here. I don’t see any doors.”

“I wouldn’t mind a snack myself,” Sunset said.

“I… didn’t think of anything outside this room,” Meg said.

“I didn’t either,” Sunset admitted. “But whenever we wanted to leave this room before, we simply went back out the mirror. Never occurred to me there ought to be other rooms here.”

Moondancer had stopped walking and was facing them. “Same for me. I wonder what we’d find if we cut a hole in one of the walls?”

What would they find? A void of pure magic, whatever that was? “I’m not in the mood for experiments,” Meg said. “Let’s just go the the Royal Café.” There she could bring up the subject of Susie and the Crusaders.

All gathered at windows on the right side of the plane. A few miles to the south-east was the Acropolis, lit up on top of a hill jutting up from a sea of city lights. Andy whistled. “Athens sure has grown over the millennia.”

The plane drifted closer to the ancient and ruined structure on the hill. It was a slight diversion, but one the pilot had been happy to make. I wonder if we could visit it, Twilight thought. Structures like that were surprisingly rare in Equestria, no doubt due to the Discordian era. And this structure, if she had her timeline straight, must have been built with only muscle power and primitive tools. At least ponies had magic.

Andy pointed out the window. “And that’s where the portal was located, in one of the caves in that hill.”

“What, you mean under the Acropolis?” Samantha practically shrieked.

“None of that was there back then,” Andy replied, shrugging. “It was just a hill with a lot of shallow caves.”

“Thoroughly researched caves,” she added, somewhat dejected, “many now open to the public. I don’t see how there could be anything left for us to discover.”

Twilight recalled something the then-centaur had said back in Tartarus. “You said it was located in the surrounding mountains, not in an isolated hill in the middle of the city.”

He shrugged again. “So I told a half-truth. I wasn’t yet ready to give up all my secrets, not before my freedom had been secured.”

“I suppose we should be thankful,” Samantha conceded. “How many people have searched the mountains for that portal—yes, we know it’s no longer there, but they wouldn’t care. They’d bet on it having returned.”

“I can safely say it has not returned,” Twilight said. Now that we have control over them. But it had become moot; this site had obviously been picked clean, and it was unlikely she’d detect anything magical in nature. Might as well visit it anyway for the sightseeing. She was sure Kyle would agree with that. “Can you describe the cave?”

“Its distinguishing feature was that it had three openings. Nothing else like it.”

“The Cave of Pan,” Samantha instantly supplied. “I’ve been there several times. Never suspected it once hosted a portal.”

Kyle slapped his thigh. “The Cave of Pan it is, then. I’ll arrange a trip.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. That cave is open to the public.”

Open to the public. Nope, nothing left there to find.

She met Yearling’s eyes in mutual understanding. If they were lucky, they’d find out if her cutie mark worked in this realm.

Over the next few minutes the plane descended towards Athens International Airport. Twilight tried to glimpse the runway they’d be landing on, but it wasn’t possible to see what was directly in front of them. Nonetheless the ground steadily approached, and soon enough she felt a nasty thump as the plane touched down, everything still racing past the window way too fast.

The engines got louder, oddly enough, but regardless they slowed down and soon they were traveling down the road at a sensible speed. A few turns later and they came to a stop in front of a hanger, where a welcoming committee full of official-looking people awaited them. The local media was also present.

Kyle quickly assessed the situation. “We’ll just acquire their footage. You should go first, Andy. They’re obviously here for you.”

Andy stood up. “Twilight should be by my side as a fellow monarch—even if my title as Prince is now honorary.” He looked expectantly at the alicorn.

Twilight hesitated. What was he up to?

“Then consider that if not for you, I would not be here now.”

Why not. Twilight got up and followed Andy to the door. The co-pilot was already opening it. She wasn’t taking any chances, though; she put a shield spell in place.

In defiance of Andy’s intentions, the door wasn’t really wide enough for the both of them. He stepped out first into the night and onto the door-turned-into-stairs to hearty applause and flashbulbs. Leaning to the side he encouraged Twilight to poke her head out the door, which she did—to stunned silence and even more furious flashbulbing.

Great, she thought. They didn’t really believe I existed either. What could she do about that? It wasn’t as if she could personally visit each and every human in this realm!

Andy went down the stairs. “Come now! If you believe in me, you must believe in her. How else could I be here? Back in my old stomping grounds and not rotting away in Tartarus.”

Yearling joined them at the foot of the stairs, holding out her Equestrian passport. “So who stamps the passports here?”

6. Cave of Pan

The warehouse was on the small side; even so, the floor was mostly bare. Off in a corner workbenches had been set up, and several people were working there. Against the wall were free-standing shelving, mostly bare. Numerous boxes of stolen stuff had been laid about at random. This was where “The Section” was researching magic, research that was to be turbocharged by what Meg had left on her desktop computer.

It ought to have made her feel guilty, to be enabling what would happen, and perhaps her younger self then vacationing in Las Pegasus would have felt guilt; life experience, it turned out, was an excellent immunizer. Besides, immutable past was immutable.

“So what are we gonna do with you?” Virgil, the driver of the van, said. The other one, the one who had ridden in the passenger seat, stood next to him.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at her, unsure what was happening.

Unbelievable. And just over there was a storage room whose door had a key lock on the outside. “You could release me, so I could bring down the forces of good upon you,” she suggested. They’ll figure it out.

“Wake up and smell the roses,” Virgil declared. “We’re the forces of good around here.”

White was the dominant color; what wasn’t white was a shade of gray, with the exception of orange accents. The furnishings were simple and clean designs made of wood. It had a certain elegance of its own, even if it did not offer the impression of luxury. Twilight wished Rarity could see this. Surely she would have been fascinated by this Aegean design language.

The officers had left, having found nothing of concern in the house Kyle had rented in the Neos Kosmos area, not far from the Acropolis. A security detail would keep watch outside for as long as they were present and another would accompany them wherever they went. Whether they were there primarily to safeguard “Prince Androgeos,” as they preferred to call him, or whether it was to also safeguard Yearling and especially herself, as Reubens predicted, wasn’t clear to Twilight—not that it really mattered.

It certainly did nothing to address the pressing issue of the moment.

“Yearling and I will take one of the upstairs bedrooms,” Twilight said.

Kyle consulted the floor plan in the paperwork. It was a house architected like no house Twilight had ever seen, subdivided into three self-contained apartments. “That leaves the other upstairs bedroom,” Kyle said. “Remember each bedroom has just a single queen-sized bed and a sofa bed.”

The two Secret Service agents looked at each other. “One of us should be in that other bedroom,” Fowler said. “Any objection?”

Reubens shook his head. “No, you take it.”

“And as I am the only other woman…” Samantha said.

“I guess we share the room. Just remember I take the security of the ponies very seriously.”

“I quite understand.”

“Alright, the upstairs apartment has been taken care of. That leaves the two ground floor apartments, with a total of three bedrooms. You can have the one bedroom apartment to yourself, Mr. Reubens.”

“Thank you.”

Kyle clapped his hands. “Now that’s all been taken care of, we should all get a good night’s sleep. We’ve had a long day, we’re all jet lagged, and we have a busy day tomorrow.”

The monitor was blank. Surely just the screen saver. As if screens in this realm needed saving. Well, they shouldn’t. Meg twitched the mouse.

“This… doesn’t look good,” observed Sunset.

No, it didn’t. The portal manager wasn’t running. Meg doubled-clicked on it. What popped up showed the status of all currently open portals. She went to the history menu item and clicked it.

“Great,” she said. They were right back where they started. “I guess we shouldn’t have attempted to augment portal management to support portals to Tartarus. Looks like it rebooted the system, if that makes any sense here.”

“But did it work?” Moondancer asked.

Meg navigated to portal creation. “Nope, doesn’t look like it.” Try as she might, she could find nothing to select a realm. It still hard-coded the human and Equestrian realms. “Might as well restart the history dump.” She went back to history. This time, she set the filtering options to go back a mere 5000 years.

And got a wait cursor.

“This time we’ll let it go to completion,” Sunset offered.

“Why should it take so long?” Moondancer asked. “Aren’t computers supposed to be fast?”

“Beats me,” Meg said. “Who knows where or how the information is recorded, or what it takes to retrieve it. Remember that computers didn’t exist thousands of years ago.” The Tartarus problem returned to her thoughts, and she slumped in the chair. “Why can’t it be as easy as taking a plaid pill. Just think ‘Tirek’s cell in Tartarus’ and—boom!—there you are.”

Sunset Shimmer and Moondancer stared at her.

Meg stared back. “No. That’s crazy. It can’t possibly work. Wrong realm. Restricted magic.”

Sunset kept staring at her. “I grab him with my magic and invoke the return spell. Nopony has a clue what happened. The perfect escape.”

“That’s…” Meg groaned. “Fine. There’s only one way to prove this can work—if it works.”

Twilight gently deposited their luggage onto the gray tile floor. It was just as well they had actually packed stuff; maybe questions would’ve been raised if customs had found them to be empty? She closed and locked the bedroom door, then cast a privacy spell.

She looked out the window. It was night. Her internal clock refused to believe it; she woke up only a few hours ago on the flight over. “So this is jet lagged?”

Yearling stood beside her, also staring into the darkness. “Weird realm. Why isn’t it the same time of day everywhere, like in Equestria?”

The astronomy lessons could wait. “It’s… different here and let’s leave it at that. For now.”

“Well, I’m not sleepy. Should we go check out this ‘Cave of Pan?’”

It was night, true, but it wasn’t dark, not really. The glow from all the street lighting and other outdoor sources of light rendered navigation feasible. Even so… “The inside of that cave will be pitch dark. If I provide light, it may be noticed by others. We’re not in the middle of nowhere, like I thought this cave would be.”

“You don’t have a spell to block the light from escaping the cave?”

Actually, she did, now that she thought about it. “We would still have to find that cave. In the dark. Is there really such a rush? There’s no reason to expect we’d find anything.”

Yearling slumped. “Maybe I’m just itching to stretch my wings. I’ve never worn this outfit for so long before.”

Twilight wasn’t sleepy either. They could simply return to Equestria; they had never intended to sleep in this realm. But what if there was something for them to discover? Did she really want that discovery to be part of a human documentary?

Well, possibly yes, actually. But she’d first have to know what it was in order to know if she did.

Twilight walked over to her luggage and opened it. The laptop computer, the one she reserved for accessing the human internet with all its attendant dangers, floated out and over to the bed. “Let’s see what we can find out about this cave.”

After using the wi-fi password they had been given, a quick search for “cave of pan” revealed there was no shortage of such caves, many of them in computer games. She added the word “acropolis” and got what she wanted—including pictures. “Three openings, just like Andy said.”

“Northwest slope,” Yearling added. She had already ditched the cloche hat and fake glasses.

Looks like we’re doing this. Twilight switched off the magic generator in her saddlebags, which she was still wearing. “If we’re going to do this, we’ll do it invisible.” They had gone invisible as soon as the generator switched off and their magic bubbles re-activated.

Yearling—Daring? No that didn’t seem right when she wasn’t wearing anything, not the least her explorer outfit—stretched her wings. “So cast the spell and let’s get going.”

“We’re already invisible—trust me on that. Inaudible too. Long story.”

“I can see you. And hear you.”

“And I can see and hear you. We’re still invisible and inaudible.”

Yearling shrugged. “So we just sneak out the bedroom and up to the roof-top garden?”

“Safer to just teleport to the other side of that window. Start hovering.”

Princess Celestia entered the chamber behind her throne and closed the door. “I can spare a few minutes, Meg. I trust this is important.”

Moondancer fidgeted in her seat at a simple and functional table. Sunset Shimmer was calm, accustomed to being in the presence of the princess. Meg got down to business.

“We think we’ve figured out how we broke—will break—whatever—Tirek out of Tartarus. We need to put it to the test.”

“I see. Please continue.”

“We use one of Discord’s plaid pills.”

Celestia blinked. “That possibility had never occurred to me. I agree it must be put to the test, and soon. I shall oversee it personally; the Tartarus bureaucracy requires a delicate touch.” She turned to leave. “I shall send for you once I have cleared my calendar.”

A pair of winged ponies approached the Acropolis. It was impossible to miss, what with its ruins lit up like a Hearth’s Warming Tree. But what they sought was below, unlit, on the side of the hill upon which the ruins had been built.

“Pretty sure it’s this way.”

Daring Do banked—it was impossible for Twilight to think of her as anypony else under the conditions, naked or otherwise—to go clockwise around the hill, and Twilight followed her lead. In the dim glow of city lights, it wasn’t hard to see the caves as they went by. There were quite a few, all of which had been used to worship ancient gods, according to what they had read, even before the massive constructions on top had been built.

Andy hadn’t seemed to care about that. Perhaps Minoans worshipped different gods.

“There it is.” Daring descended. Twilight spotted it too. Even in this light, there was no mistaking those triple entrances.

A modern stairway, with metal steps and rails, led straight to the Cave of Pan. They landed at the top. One entrance was to the left, the two others to the right. They weren’t that far apart from each other—less than ten feet? “Any preference?” Twilight asked.

Daring thought for a moment. “Not really.”

“Getting anything on your cutie mark?”

The pegasus shook her head. “Hard to say what that means in this realm.”

And their magic bubbles did not extend into the cave from where they were. Twilight would switch on the magic generator once they were inside and crank it up.

“We’re not going to learn anything out here.” Daring walked to the left entrance and went inside.

Twilight followed. Once inside, she put her checklist into action. First, she turned the magic generator back on and dialed it up; there would be no shortage of magic to impede them. Second, she cast a spell to render the entrances impermeable to light. The cave now pitch black, she cast an illumination spell to dispel the darkness.

“I’m impressed,” Daring said. “No shadows.” She looked back at the alicorn. “Not from your horn?” She scanned the cave. “I can’t even tell where the light is coming from. Didn’t know you could do that; honestly I expected a horn light.”

“That would cast shadows.”

The cave wasn’t very big, and apart from having three openings it didn’t seem all that interesting. Some plants grew at the entrances, and water seeped down a wall—no doubt slowly but surely enlarging the cave. A path connected the entrances, and past the final one it burrowed into the hill, the sides closing in as it did so. It looked like a throat if anything, complete with “tonsils” bifurcating the way. Even a pony could not go far down that path; it wasn’t clear just how far it even went.

But apart from the intriguing geology, there was nothing. Whatever had been here to worship Pan was long gone, hopefully in a museum. To expect anything from Andy’s era, back when a portal to Equestria was here…

Daring made her way over to Twilight, eyes on that throat-like formation. “Maybe here? It’s really vague.”

“What here? Was this where the portal was?”

The pegasus sighed. “Beats me. I may just be imagining it. I certainly don’t see anything; I don’t think it’s something that might have fallen into a crevice back there either.”

“I’m sure if something had, it’d have been found ages ago.”

“I wouldn’t say otherwise. Are we done here?”

Twilight gazed at the formation, thinking. It had been a long-shot, at best, true. She could search for magical traces, but after so long… even in Equestria it would be pointless. Here where magic decayed away like the radioactive substance powering her magic generator, it was doubly so. It still would have been nice to confirm Andy’s story.

“Yeah, we’re done. We can return to Equestria. Save ourselves the flight back to the house.”

“Uh, uh. Not without my disguise I don’t.”

I suppose not. Twilight preceded to undo the steps of her checklist. “Okay, we’ll fly back.”

Meg’s last two plaid pills waited in her saddlebag. Both of them would be needed. One for Meg herself, because only she had been inside Tartarus and thus knew where to go, and one for Sunset Shimmer, because for the test to be valid a unicorn would have to return with a “prisoner”—Moondancer filling that role. The latter was with Celestia, her “breakout” on hold as the princess used her “delicate touch” with the bureaucracy.

All Meg and Sunset could do was wait in the Zephyr’s observation lounge until they received word to go ahead.

Meg looked at her saddlebags again.

“There’s always the portals,” Sunset reminded her. “We know how to reboot the system if that history dump refuses to finish.”

Meg didn’t respond. There was no need to repeat her refusal to go through a portal while her world’s insanity persisted; the return feature of the pills was too invaluable. Didn’t mean a portal wouldn’t be useful; Susie could be brought to Equestria that way. She stared once more at the Gates of Tartarus and the guards patrolling it.

They suddenly reacted to something. It was another guard galloping from the direction of Tartarus. The newcomer slowed to a halt at the gate, to be scanned per protocol. After passing the scan, the guard resumed galloping to the ship.

“Let’s see what the word is,” Sunset said as she trotted to the door and opened it.

The guard arrived seconds later, breathing hard. “It’s a go. Tirek’s old cell.”

“Making it as realistic as possible,” Meg fatalistically observed. She got the jar holding the pills out of her saddlebag. “Let’s get this over with.”

Sunset came over and used her magic to lift the pills out of the jar. She presented one of them to Meg.

“Just remember that if it doesn’t work, we’ll probably find ourselves high in the sky over some random location—in which realm I won’t even speculate.”

“Be ready to invoke the return spell. Got it.”

Meg extended her wings and began to hover. Both ponies took their pills into their mouths but did not yet swallow. Just outside Tirek’s cell in Tartarus, Meg thought, then swallowed.

Bars filled her vision, and she fell to the ground. Ouch. Yep, they were in Tartarus alright. Barely functional flight magic. There was Moondancer, inside the cell, oblivious to her arrival. To her side was Sunset, and to her other side… Celestia, standing next to several minotaurs. All waiting. Invisibility seemed to be working; there had been some debate on whether that would work in Tartarus.

“Let’s kill the invisibility in three… two… one… now.”

The minotaurs became quite unhappy.

“Naturally, we will look into countermeasures,” the princess assured the Tartarus officials.

“They haven’t broken me out of this cell yet,” Moondancer said.

“We don’t know if we can even return to the Zephyr ourselves,” Sunset added.

Who are we kidding? Whatever this realm had against magic, chaos magic was evidently exempted. “Let’s just get it over with,” Meg said once again.

Moondancer positioned herself at the bars. Sunset got as close as she could to her and grabbed her in her magic. They both vanished.

Meg sighed in resignation. So that’s how we do it. Still left the question as to when they’d go back in time to do so.

The officials had become even less happy, if that was possible. “You still believe Cerberus was removed from Tartarus in this same fashion?” one of them asked of Celestia.

“I would think that likely.”

“But why? His removal was obviously unnecessary in light of this demonstration.”

“A way of covering their tracks, perhaps?”

“Quite effective, too,” another grumbled. “We were all convinced he had to have exited via the Gates.”

Meg had no desire to be a part of this conversation. What would these minotaurs do if they ever found out she and Sunset were the ones who broke Tirek out? “I should return to the others,” she hesitantly put out.

Celestia gave her a nod. “Of course. I shall not be here much longer myself. Please inform Captain Shooting Star of our imminent departure.”

Their bedroom was exactly as they had left it. Yearling was already putting back on her disguise. “I’m returning to Equestria now,” Twilight said. “You can return when you’re ready.”

Twilight invoked the return spell, returning her to her residence within the Castle of Friendship. Midday sunlight poured in through the windows, matching what her internal clock had been insisting. “Maybe sleeping here isn’t the wisest choice,” she muttered.

“You’re back?” called out Spike’s voice from upstairs. Seconds later he peeked between the railings. “There’s a message from Celestia.” He pointed at the desk.

“A message? From Celestia?” It had to be important; Celestia knew she would be in the human realm. She lost no time in levitating the scroll over.

“So what’s it say?”

A bright flash. “Wouldn’t you rather hear what I have to say?”

Twilight frowned at the gleeful draconequus. Come on, Twilight. You know it’s best just to let him get it out of his system. He wasn’t going anywhere until he did. She returned the scroll to the desk. “I’m listening,” she tolerantly said.

“I’ve made excellent progress on my theme park. You simply must pay it a visit! I’m so looking toward your feedback.”

Right. A chaos theme park. It had completely slipped her mind. “Wouldn’t Meg be better suited for that? It’s for humans, after all.” Almost immediately she regretted saying that; Meg didn’t need this either.

“Of course, of course,” Discord said, waving a claw around. “Unfortunately she’s tied up with Sunbutt right now, and you know what a party-pooper she is. So you are the lucky pony!”

Twilight thought Meg was the lucky one. She held back a groan. This theme park was something she’d have to eventually personally inspect, there was no question of that. But did it have to be right this second? “I’m rather tied up myself right now. I’m accompanying Andy on a visit to his original homeland.” He was about to point out the obvious. Twilight preempted him. “I’m just here to get some sleep.” She looked around; why hadn’t Yearling returned yet?

Discord wasn’t buying it. “It’s noon.”

“Not in Greece.”

Paw slapped forehead. “Right. That insane heliocentric world of theirs.”

“Long time, no see, Discord.” Yearling stepped into view. “Having better luck with your casino?”

“Wait, what?” Twilight couldn’t believe her ears. “You have a casino, Discord?”

Discord looked dumbfounded as well. A lit human lightbulb suddenly appeared above his head. He grabbed it and threw it away; it shattered into nothingness against a wall. “You also just returned from Greece. Having fun exploring human ruins?”

“Ask me again tomorrow.” Addressing Twilight, she said, “The Discordant. It’s not far from Planet Do. Discord doesn’t own or operate it; he’s more of a creative consultant for them.”

“They barely listen to me,” he grumbled.

What would a Discord-themed casino even be like? That is, if Discord could have his way. “Maybe I could talk to them, encourage them to pay more attention to your ideas?” It only seemed fair. Any who entered knew what they were in for, presumably wanted to experience it—within reason.

He waved it away. “I appreciate the offer, but that lot is too risk-averse. You’ll get nowhere with them. It’s only because of Celestia they did as much as they had.” He snapped his talons in renewed excitement. “I’ll put a casino, a proper casino, in my theme park!” He vanished.

Yearling quirked an eyebrow. “Theme park?”

“You don’t want to know.” The scroll from Celestia beckoned. And Celestia knew about his casino? Her magic retrieved it once more, this time without interruption.

“Uh, so what’s it say?” Spike repeated from upstairs.

Twilight wished she’d had the option of avoiding this encounter with Discord.

Sighing, she unrolled the scroll and read it. “Looks like we might be able to find out about all portals created in the past, exactly when and where they existed. That’d be nice. Oh, this—” She remembered Yearling was present. “We may have figured out how Tirek escaped from Tartarus.” That must’ve been why Meg was “tied up” with Celestia.

Too bad Discord wasn’t still around. She would’ve loved to ask him whether those plaid pills could do that—why they could do that. Well, maybe not with Yearling around.

Twilight rolled up the scroll and sent it up to Spike. “Put it away, Spike.”

Spike grabbed it out of the air and departed.

Yearling look up at the sunlight streaming through a window. “So how are we supposed to get some shuteye?”

Twilight doubted the humans were doing much better. “Maybe there’s a spell I can adapt. Let’s go to the main library.”

No sooner had the Zephyr docked in Canterlot, Meg, Sunset Shimmer, and Moondancer rushed to the mirror. Surely, after all this time, the history query would have completed.

Meg was the first through the mirror. The monitor was in power saving mode, of course. She twitched the mouse and waited for it to awaken.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” she groaned.

“What could’ve caused a reboot this time,” Sunset asked.

“Maybe it’s simulating beta software,” Meg grumbled. “It’s all the rage.” Perhaps they’d never find out about ancient portals. She restarted the portal management app.

“Two active portals?” Moondancer exclaimed.

Indeed there were. “How can there be another portal?” Meg asked. “No one else has access to this realm! I mean, Twilight does, but… no!”

“Better shut it down,” Sunset said.

“Right.” Meg selected the offending portal, then clicked the close button. “Permission denied?! What the hell is that supposed to mean!”

Moondancer pointed at some numbers on the screen. “Perhaps we should be more concerned about where that is?”

Meg took a look. The numbers were coordinates. The location on Earth was 37.97083652°N, 23.72611062°E﻿. “We need a map.” There was also the location within Equestria. “Better make that two maps.”

“Don’t look at the drone!”

“Does it have to be so noisy?” Twilight folded her ears. It wasn’t the volume so much, it was that whine. Still she did her best to ignore it as she climbed the stairs, along with the others, to the Cave of Pan. The sooner they got inside, the sooner Kyle would be done with that bucking camera drone.

“And try not to fold your ears!”

She rolled her eyes. Sure, don’t do that either. A silent, magical lift system for drones ought to be at the top of her list of potential exports. She considered the groggy humans; make-up mostly hid evidence of their lack of sleep. Maybe that circadian rhythm adjustment spell she cooked up would sell well too. She and Yearling, in contrast to the others, were ready to tackle the new day.

One by one they arrived at the top of the stairs, in front of the now familiar trio of openings. “Stay there a moment and contemplate the cave. Any words, Andy? Wait for the camera.”

Mike the cameraman and Dominic the soundman quickly got into position between Andy and the cave. “Go ahead,” Mike said.

“I can’t believe it’s been thousands of years since I last stood here,” Andy began. “It almost feels like it happened yesterday.” He smiled at a private joke. “Almost.”

He addressed Twilight. “In there was the portal. I’m sure there’s nothing left to find after so long, but I can at least point out its exact location.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky.” She might as well play along—for the camera’s sake, if nothing else.

“Okay, now go inside. Make it look like it’s the most important thing you’ve ever done. Get moving; we can’t keep the public away forever.”

Looking back down, Twilight could see the growing crowd being held back by Greek security forces.

The cameraman went in first, walking backwards. “Keep going,” Andy told him, “staying to your right until you bump into, well, a wall that’s been gouged out. Better take it slowly.”

Mike waved it away. “Been here before. Don’t worry about me; I know what’s back there.”

Andy shrugged and entered next. He eyed the eroded limestone. “A bit bigger than I remember, if I’m not imagining it.”

“It could well be,” Samantha offered.

Twilight entered next; the others followed. She looked around as if seeing it for the first time; she was seeing it for the first time, in natural lighting. Slowly, pacing the cameraman, they made their way to the other end, where the “throat” was. Could it really have been located there? Perhaps Daring’s cutie mark had worked after all.

“Just around this bend,” Andy said to his retinue.

That would be the throat.

“STOP!” Andy yelled to the cameraman.

Mike turned around and saw the portal he had almost walked through.

7. Magical Incident

The crystal-studded collar, there on a table. One of the crystals had been removed and was currently being X-rayed. Meg knew they would discover how spells were encoded in the crystalline matrix, and from there on to encoding new crystals with spells. All done without supervision by trained unicorns. What could go wrong?

She already knew the answer.

That collar had once adorned her Pinkie Pie doll, the one that started it all. She got that doll back once the magic leak had been closed—sans the collar. No one could explain what had happened to it, not that anyone had really cared; neither had Twilight returned the GPS tracker that the FBI had put on her car. So how did they get that collar from the Feds? A rhetorical question, naturally.

She still had that priceless autographed doll, protected by a preservation spell.

Her office computer had been placed onto an adjacent table. The cables had just been plugged in and they were turning it on. One of them waved her over, demanding, “Your password.”

Their mood had really soured when Jackson and the others had failed to return. They still didn’t know what had happened, though they speculated plenty. Maybe she was supposed to tell them? She’d give it a little more time.

But first the password. She couldn’t make it too easy. But “crack” she eventually would. What she had put onto that computer needed to get into their hands, for it had gotten into their hands. It was small consolation that everything they would do with this knowledge, they would do of their own free will. And hubris.

If only they’d had the decency to do it in the middle of nowhere.

In utter disbelief Twilight trotted to the portal. There was no way anypony would’ve used that portal control room to create this, and yet here it was. Stopping at the boundary, she peered about. Not much could be seen under Luna’s moon, not with Earth’s sun shining through the openings behind her.

Samantha, mouth agape, stood beside her. “Is that what I think it is?”

Twilight fumed. “Equestria? Yes.”

Kyle stood behind her. “Any reason we can’t go through? I, uh, can’t help but notice that you haven’t.”

Yearling joined the party. “We don’t know where that is. There might be dangerous creatures out there.”

“Uh, what stops those creatures from coming here?” Mike asked. He was pointing the camera at the portal.

Yearling—and Mike—had a point. At the very least she needed to verify there was no imminent danger. But she also needed to return to her castle, so she could send a message to Celestia and have this portal closed.

“Should I go down and contact the security forces?” Reubens asked.

They had to be informed—if that portal couldn’t be closed real fast. “Give me a minute to see what we’re up against.” Twilight stepped through, ready to cast defensive magic.

She stepped onto grass and kept walking. As her eyes adjusted, she could see that the grass continued until it reached a forest. It seemed safe enough—indeed, the grass felt manicured—but she still didn’t have a clue where she was. The portal control room would tell her, of course, if only she was there.

Twilight looked up at the night sky and spotted the unusually bright star. If there had been any doubt, that confirmed this was Equestria’s realm. Luna was still keeping it as close as possible, so that she, Steve, and Arcane Scroll along with some of his grad students could study it. I really ought to find out what they’ve discovered so far. But there were so many demands on her time.

She turned around to go back and froze. In the dim moonlight she could see behind the portal a wall. A tall wall that extended far in both directions. There was a huge gate, a gate that when open was huge enough to pass a hydra. And the signage that spanned that gate in an arc…

“DISCORD!”

Most waiting on the other side of the portal exchanged confused looks, but Twilight only had eyes for the asymmetric being who emerged from behind the portal. “Glorious, isn’t it? Still a work-in-progress, naturally.”

Twilight stomped towards the draconequus. “Do you have any idea how much trouble this portal is about to cause us?”

“Trouble? Nonsense. I’m doing you a big favor! Help you kill two birds with one stone, as humans like to say. Go on your trip with ‘Andy’ and check out my theme park.”

“I’ll just stay on this side of the portal,” Andy called out from the other side.

“A wise choice,” Discord declared. “But the rest of you are welcome!” He waved at them. The camera was glued to him.

“And what about everyone else?” Twilight demanded. “That cave is open to the public!”

“They’re welcome too! Think of the boom to the Greek economy.” Paw to muzzle he theatrically whispered, “I hear they could use the help.”

The others had worked up the courage to come through the portal; only Andy and the Secret Service agents remained on the other side.

The camera was still on her and Discord. Mike was cleverly taking in the surroundings by pivoting around them.

How do I deal with this? Why couldn’t he be more patient? She had to try reasoning with him, even as she knew from painful experience how that would turn out. “It’s nighttime,” she began. “It will always be night here when their sun is shining there. You can’t expect humans to fully appreciate in the dark what you’ve created here.”

Discord stroked his goatee. “You may have a point.”

Her hopes rose, against her better judgement.

He snapped his talons. “I’ve got it! I’ll just raise the Sun!” He raised his claw high—

“NO!”

Discord sighed, dropping his claw. “Yes, you’re right. Celestia is rather possessive of that orb.”

I have to do better. “Shouldn’t the portal be inside those walls? You were supposed to ensure that humans couldn’t go into Equestria proper.”

“Oh, those walls? They’re just for show. What’s the point of an entrance if everypony bypasses it?” He pointed at Kyle, who had wandered to the edge of the forest. “The real security? See what happens when he tries leaving the grass.”

Twilight lost no time in teleporting over to the director, startling him. Not wasting time on an explanation, she teleported him back to the portal.

She returned to Discord. “We’ll talk about your security measures later.”

He sighed, shaking his head. “I’m hurt. You act like there’s a monster out there, hiding amongst the trees, ready to eat stragglers.”

Maybe she should trust him, even a little, by now? Permanently harming his “playthings” never was his style.

“For your information,” he continued, “it’s just a fun little barrier. You don’t even feel anything. All it does is reverse your direction. The faster you run into it, the faster you’ll run away from it.”

Twilight was starting to feel rather foolish. “And if you dig under it or somehow go over it?”

“Figure out a way to get past it?”

Twilight nodded. There wouldn’t be, of course; that is what she expected to hear, along with no small amount of pride.”

“Well, in that case, the timberwolves will get you.” He looked away for a moment in thought. “Perhaps I should put up warning signs to that effect?”

Now she felt foolish for feeling foolish. “Yes, I’d strongly recommend that.”

This wasn’t getting her anywhere. The signage above the entrance mocked her: Discordland: The Discordiant Place in the Multiverse. She couldn’t even find the will to point out that “discordiant" was not a word; it somehow felt appropriate.

Yearling had approached them, the only one with the nerve to do so. “Would I be correct in saying that you’d like as many humans to visit as possible?”

“You always did have a good head for business on your withers,” Discord conceded.

“Then this portal simply won’t do. It’s too small. You can’t even make it bigger, because it’s inside a small cave. And even if you could, the cave isn’t that easy to get to. And as Twilight mentioned, to spend all day here, they’d have to stay up all night there. You’ll never fill this place up with humans using this portal.”

Discord sagged. “You’ve made your point. The portal will be gone in a few minutes.”

He vanished.

“You heard him!” Twilight shouted. “Back through the portal, now.” Resuming a normal voice, she said to Yearling, “I’m envious. I’ve only seen Fluttershy manage him that well.”

The pegasus shrugged. “Don’t know what to say.”

The two mares began walking to the portal. It still bugged Twilight. Yearling had used facts combined with solid logic—but so had she. Did Yearling use better facts and logic? But facts and logic were usually ineffective with Discord; he was too good at twisting arguments to his favor. But he didn’t even try with Yearling’s argument. Could he be treating me differently than how he treats others? Why? What would that mean?

The others had returned to the cave by the time Twilight and Yearling reached the portal. No sooner had they passed through it than it closed, once again revealing the “throat” formation. Reubens and Fowler were still there. “Did you inform them?” Twilight asked.

“No,” Reubens said. “We could hear your conversation with Discord, so we waited to see how it went.”

“We could inform them anyway,” Fowler added.

Twilight sighed. “No, it would only complicate matters for no benefit.”

“That’s what we figured,” Ruebens said.

“No benefit?” Andy asked. “I’m not so sure—oh, not to us.” He nodded at the throat of the cave.

“I see what you mean,” Reubens said. “Informing the security forces of a portal may cause chaos.”

“Yes,” Andy confirmed. “Fortunately for us his options for messing with this world are limited.”

Is that what motivated this? He always had shown an interest in humans. But then why back down so readily? It just didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Would they ever understand what made Discord tick?

Kyle approached her, jolting Twilight out of her thoughts. “Do you think it’d be possible for us to do a documentary on this ‘Discordland?’ You know, get a look behind the scenes, cover the grand opening, stuff like that.”

“Maybe? I mean, I could ask him, but you do know what you’d be getting yourself into.”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “Maybe you should sleep on it first.”

Conflicting emotions played over Kyle’s face. “Maybe I should.”

Moondancer leafed through the atlas. It didn’t take long for her to locate the desired page. “Here,” she said, her hoof touching the page. “Northeastern edge of the Everfree. No nearby towns or settlements.”

Meg had looked up the other set of coordinates on her phone. “And the other end in Athens, somewhere in the Acropolis. A major tourist attraction. That portal will be noticed.” Of the mares present, only she had noticed that Equestria used the same latitude/longitude system used by humans. Because of course they did.

“Humans in the Everfree.” Sunset sighed. “We need to inform the princesses. Like, right now.”

“It would be nice to know how that portal got created,” Moondancer said. “The princesses will ask.”

“But we don’t know, and we’re not going to.” Meg came to a decision. “I’ll do it. I’m meeting with Luna soon anyway.” She got out her phone. “Could one of you magically project an arrow on the map?”

“I can,” Sunset said, and did so.

Meg snapped a photo. “I guess I should get going.”

After departing the Royal Library, she made her way through the palace, keeping an eye out for Celestia in case she crossed paths with her. But uncrossed their paths had remained when she finally arrived at the private tea room.

The door was closed, of course, nor could she hear anything from inside the room, no matter how she adjusted her ears, as to be expected. She hesitated, for she was early. This is too important. Furthermore, it concerned the other occupant of the room. She knocked.

The door glowed in the color of Luna’s magic and opened. Meg entered. “Sorry for being early, but something has happened that both of you need to know.”

President Serrell raised an eyebrow. “Oh? This ought to be good.”

“Another portal has been created. We can’t shut it down, get ‘permission denied’ when we try. It goes from the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, to the northeastern edge of the Everfree Forest. We need to send the Royal Guard there immediately to stop people from coming through and getting, well, killed.”

Luna held up a hoof. “You may relax, Meg. The portal has been closed.”

“You already knew about it?” she asked as she made her way to the table.

“Twilight was there and she went through it. It leads to Discord’s new theme park. It is he who created the portal.”

“Agents Reubens and Fowler were there too. They reported back to me, and I of course passed it on to Luna. Needless to say, my life would have gotten a lot more ‘interesting’ if that portal hadn’t been shut down.”

“But none of us knew the precise location of this ‘park’ within Equestria. It is you who has uncovered that information.”

Meg took a seat, still digesting what she just heard. “Discord can create a portal we don’t have the permission to close.”

Luna cocked her head. “That does sound disquieting.”

“And he knows how to operate the simulated computer console—no, that’s an assumption, maybe he can bypass the simulation—oh, I don’t even know what that means.” What, exactly, was the nature of the simulation? No one knew. All she knew was that she had not imagined any kind of system security, and if she had she would’ve given herself root access.

“We may safely assume Discord’s understanding of that realm is far greater than ours.”

“It certainly exceeds mine,” Meg grumbled. She got up. “I guess I should come back when I’m supposed to be here.”

Serrell signaled her to sit down. “Since you’re here, let’s discuss your upcoming testimony.”

Meg sat down again. “Well, Rarity has finished her work on my dress. She, uh, assures me that it will survive a leash on my neck. I don’t know what she did, it looks pretty much the same to me, but I have no reason to doubt her. It could be something magical.”

“So long as it looks appropriate.”

Luna looked up in recollection. “Meg wore it to the Grand Galloping Gala. It was exquisite. You will not be disappointed.”

“The Gala, eh? Can’t wait to see it myself.”

“Wait a sec.” Meg got out her phone. “I have a picture.” She navigated to the picture in question, then hoofed the phone over to the president.

Serrell shook his head in wonder. “I still can’t believe you can do that with hooves.”

Meg shrugged. “I just… do. It helps not to think about it, quite honestly. Fingers are still better.”

He shook his head again. “I’ll take your word for it.” He looked down at the phone. The dress was on a ponnequin in Rarity’s workshop. He let out a whistle. “That will set tongues wagging, no question about it.”

“That’ll make Rarity very happy,” Meg said. “She wouldn’t be against taking on human clients someday, maybe even opening a shop in the ‘human realm,’ as she puts it.”

Serrell let out a sigh. “If only that day could be sooner rather than later.” He gave the phone back to Meg.

“Perhaps Discord has the right idea, with this theme park of his?” Luna offered.

“It’s hard to say. The devil’s in the details. You’ve had a lot of time with him, haven’t you, Meg?”

“Not as much as Twilight, and certainly not as much as Fluttershy.”

“Enough to form an opinion about his motives?”

Meg got up and walked over the panoramic windows, staring out at the sky. “It’s hard to say. I think he’s trying, but he doesn’t get the desired results, not often enough anyway. I mean, just consider this impromptu portal. His heart may have been in the right place, but the execution left a lot to be desired.”

“Indeed.” Serrell got up himself, stretched, and joined Meg at the window. “Fortunately, Yearling was there to persuade him. Twilight wasn’t having much luck.”

“Oh? Guess we should consider ourselves lucky she went along.”

Luna joined them at the window. “It bought us some time, but it is clear we need to find a way to make this park work. Discord has his heart set on this.”

“Well, for starters, we need a proper terminus for that portal,” Meg said. “One with plenty of parking.”

“And in the Equestrian time zone,” Serrell added, “though I suppose anywhere in North America would be close enough.”

“Another of those unexplained coincidences,” Meg muttered.

“A mystery for another time,” Serrell remarked.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t let it get to me like that.” Easier said than done, unfortunately.

Over the croplands outside Ponyville, pegasi were assembling rain clouds. Serrell was studying them. “I wonder what it’d take to have weather management in our world.” He looked down at Meg beside him. “It is possible, right?”

“I think so. I know standing on clouds work. Probably need a magic field that encompasses all the clouds, I’m guessing.”

“Yeah, that could be a challenge.” He gazed some more at the weather pegasi at work. “Could we arrange for an experiment, to see if it could be done?”

“I’ll pay Rainbow Dash a visit before dawn. I suspect she’ll be up to the challenge.”

“Before dawn? Wouldn’t she be a—ah, right. You really do that? Visit dreams?”

“She sure does,” Meg said. “Took care of a nasty nightmare of mine, too.”

“That… must have been an interesting experience.”

“It makes the dream lucid, and I can remember it as well as if I’d been awake, so yeah—and that was one strange dream. Tartarus, Celestia, The Tree of Harmony, Jackson and the other human prisoners, and even the Cutie Mark Crusaders.”

Serrell shook his head. “Can’t imagine how those all could fit together.”

“It seemed to make sense at the time.”

“Speaking of which,” Luna said, “I’m glad that you finally figured out how you broke Tirek out of Tartarus. My sister is quite pleased with you.”

“For making her deal with those prison officials? I was happy to get out of there before their attention could focus on me.”

Luna cocked her head. “She said it was… tiring. But their concerns are also our concerns; it is not in our interest for others to do what you will do… have done.”

“I’m staying out of this one,” Serrell said. “Don’t need to know how it was done, don’t want to know. I’m just glad all these time loops seem mostly an Equestrian problem.”

Meg turned around and walked back to the table. “Just because you don’t know about a time loop doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. There was a time when none of us knew about any time loops anywhere; they still existed.”

“Point taken.” He headed back to the table himself. “It’s hard to wrap my mind around.”

“It’s no fun living it either.”

Serrell retook his seat, the one of human design. “Any more thoughts or concerns about your upcoming testimony?”

“Not really.” A thought came to her. “Did you know Lauren Faust sought me out?” Would that have any relevance to her testimony? Seemed unlikely…

Lauren Faust?” Luna asked. “Who’s she?”

“Alleged creator of your world,” Serrell replied first to the princess. “No, and I’m surprised quite frankly.” He leaned back in his chair. “She wanted to stay out of this mess, according to the reports. Couldn’t believe it was happening anyway. What did she want?”

“I’d say those reports are out of date. She wanted to see proof with her own eyes. Wanted to know why Twilight seemed to be avoiding her. Long story short, Twilight agreed to meet her and gave her a quick visit to Canterlot.”

Serrell contemplated that, tapping his fingers together. “Did she happen to offer insight into how her cartoon matched reality?”

“Nope, she’s as clueless as the rest of us. Said she wasn’t a god, which was why she refused to believe it in the first place.”

He rubbed his eyes. “Doesn’t sound like it changes anything. Will there be future contact between Lauren and Twilight?”

“Probably. It looks like I’d be the intermediary.”

“Let me know if anything develops.”

Several thousand years old, and the Parthenon was looking every day of it. Twilight could not help but wonder how the Castle of the Two Sisters managed to remain in such relatively good shape. Possibly because it suffered merely benign neglect? Samantha had provided running commentary of its history as they approached it—mostly for the camera, but Twilight had paid attention, noting how one civilization’s architectural triumph got successively repurposed by later civilizations who cared little for the motivations that drove the original creation, and had anyway long since lost the ability to maintain and repair.

“Along the top,” Samantha continued, “on all sides, ran exquisite statues and friezes. Many did not survive to the present day, and most of those that did had been removed and shipped to museums in other countries. The few that remained suffered damage from modern air pollution, and to save them had to be taken down; those are in the museum nearby.

“As you can see from the scaffolding and the crane, restoration is in progress. Started over a quarter century ago, the work will not be finished anytime soon. The classical Athenians took only nine years to build it, mining over a hundred thousand tons of Pentelic marble from a quarry ten miles away. Decorations took another six years. All without the aid of modern technology, such as that crane.

“The sculptures honored the Greek gods, Athena most of all; other mythological beings were also depicted.” The professor turned to Andy. “Including centaurs, as it happens.”

That caught Twilight’s attention. The portal had been nearby, after all.

Andy was intrigued as well. “As is well known by now, I never returned after becoming one myself, nor am I aware of any other centaur who had gone through the portal or had ever encountered a human.” He smiled. “Of course, the portal had closed after me. If humans and centaurs had ever mixed, it must have been before my time.”

“Have you heard of Pirithous, king of the Lapiths?”

He searched his memories. “Can’t say that I have.”

“He was friends with Theseus, the founder and king of Athens?”

He shook his head. “He was unknown in the Athens I had visited.”

“He’s not known to have actually existed,” she conceded. “But then, neither were you and yet here you are.”

Andy shrugged. “Don’t know what to say.”

“Perhaps he was born after your alleged murder? He was said to have built a palace on this hill, but you have said there was nothing here.”

“Perhaps,” he conceded. “How were these centaurs depicted? I assume there’s a connection to this Pirithous.”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “According to the myth, he was getting married and the centaurs were invited to the wedding. They weren’t used to wine, so they got drunk and tried to abduct the bride and other Lapithan woman. Battle ensued and Theseus, a guest at the wedding, came to Pirithous’s aid. The centaurs were defeated and expelled.”

Andy guffawed. “Centaurs can no more get drunk than horses. Both rapidly break down alcohol. It was one of the pleasures denied to me, and believe me I tried.”

Humans really have that much trouble with alcohol? Twilight had never been in the presence of a drunk human. If Andy had gotten drunk after his return, he had done it in private.

Samantha directed a query at Twilight. “And ponies?”

The camera targeted the pony. “It takes dedication, and it doesn’t last long.”

“Huh. Well… sometimes a myth is just a myth.”

The Secret Service agents had been staying back, content to take in the sights, but Twilight noticed that Reubens was talking on his phone. Fowler was close by, apparently interested in the conversation. Neither looked particularly happy.

The phone call ended. All business, Agent Reubens strode towards her. That conversation evidently concerned herself, and she doubted it was good news.

The others had taken notice. Kyle was not pleased. “We’re trying to shoot a documentary here.”

Reubens ignored him, stopping in front of Twilight. “The president is asking for your assistance, Your Highness. There is what we assume to be of magical origin an ongoing incident in the small Californian town of Tracy.”

8. Tracy

The door to Meg’s prison opened. Her accommodations had improved considerably since her arrival. Her captors had built a makeshift room inside the warehouse and even put a half-decent cot in it, upon which she was lying on her back. No toilet in that room, of course. Or shower. Or change of clothes. A man came inside carrying her dinner.

“You can’t keep me here forever,” she ritualistically stated.

There was no answer as the man placed the tray on the small table. They had grown tired of repeating their intention to swap her for the ones who, she had informed them, were by then “probably” in Tartarus.

It was time to start wrapping things up. “They’ll never agree to it, you know. They refuse to believe you have me, right?”

“So they claim.” The man spun around at the door. “Then we’ll make them believe, and for your sake you’d better hope that won’t be necessary.” He took a step towards her. “Any suggestions how to persuade them?”

Meg swung her feet over the side of the bed and sat up. “How about I escape and tell them myself?” Not that she’d actually tell anyone in this time period, obviously, but that wasn’t the point.

The man barked a laugh. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Meg shrugged. “Believe what you want. I know a thing or two about magic.”

He counted off on his fingers. “You don’t have a horn, you don’t have enchanted crystals, and there is no magic in this part of the warehouse.” He counted off his fourth finger. “And you’re still here.”

Thereby proving assumptions were dangerous. “So what happens when someone opens that door and I’m not inside?”

Agent Reubens was dead serious, that much Twilight could tell. “What leads you to think this incident is of magical origin?” She had no reason to doubt that it was—Serrell would not lightly ask for her assistance—but she needed something to go on.

“They couldn’t give a good description of what was happening, basically because nothing like it had ever been seen before. A warehouse in the industrial section of town has… imploded? Air is rushing in from all directions. At the center of it all… they can’t really describe it. All they know is that nothing that goes in remains intact. And it’s getting bigger.”

It sounded oddly familiar, but she couldn’t place a hoof on it. “What precisely happens to objects that go in?”

“I couldn’t tell you. We need to get there ASAP. I suggest taking a shortcut through Equestria. A convoy will be waiting in Sunnyvale to take us there.”

Which wasn’t Tracy. “How long will it take to drive there?”

“This late, around an hour.”

Maybe use the portal? But she would return to Ponyville, and the portal was in Canterlot—and she had nothing prepared to transport the humans. The hour, maybe longer, drive would have to suffice. “Okay.”

“You go on without me,” Yearling said. “I don’t see how I could be of assistance.”

“Wait a minute!” Kyle shouted. “How long will you be gone?”

Twilight threw him a scowl. “This is a tad more important,” she said. “You’ll just have to do without me.”

“I quite agree,” Andy said. “I wouldn’t mind offering my own assistance, but a ‘shortcut through Equestria’ is not an option for me.”

“What does that even mean, a short—”

Twilight invoked the return spell, transporting herself and the two agents to her private residence. “I’ll be back in a second.” She teleported to her bedroom and retrieved a pill—no, two pills—and got her phone, so she could message Meg—and teleported back downstairs. “We’ll go back to the hotel first to retrieve our luggage. That shouldn’t take long.”

“No objection from us,” Fowler said.

And that’s what they did. A few minutes later they were back in Equestria. “Spike!”

A head poked through the railings above. “Yes?”

It seemed silly at the time, but Twilight was now so glad Spike had insisted on having his circadian cycle adjusted too. “I have a message for Luna.” After giving it to Spike, along with some details supplied by the agents, she turned to them. “Where in Sunnyvale?” she asked. She had put down her luggage; the agents held on to theirs.

“The Department of Energy office, in the parking lot behind the building,” Reubens responded.

Twilight swallowed the second plaid pill and took them there. It was night, of course. Three vehicles were lined up, ready to go. “The middle SUV,” Fowler said. Lights began flashing on the other two.

After the agents put their luggage in back, all three took a seat inside the spacious vehicle and the convoy departed.

Naked. The TV camera leered at her, herself being the only person in the Senate chamber who forgot to wear something. None of the others seemed to notice or care, least of all the one holding her leash.

A leash counts as clothing, right?

A sharp yank made her yelp. “Bad pony. That is not the correct answer.”

What was the question again? It had somehow slipped her mind.

“I think that’s enough of that.”

The arrival of Princess Luna brought clarity. The question remained unremembered—for that matter, nor could she remember the “incorrect” answer she had given. Par for the course; it was a dream. She scanned the chamber with new clarity. “Could we have a change of venue?”

The leash thankfully dissolved away. Recalcitrant dog, indeed. Rarity could be blamed for that bit of imagery. Only three more days to the real thing. Meg again scanned the chamber; everything else remained the same. Senator Routledge waited, patiently, yet uninterested in the uninvited alicorn.

“I would first like to take this all in, if you would not mind.”

The hearings had been put on pause. It no longer held power over her. “Getting rid of that leash was enough, I guess.” Meg rubbed her neck with a hoof. “Are you here just for the nightmare, or was there something else?”

“The latter, unfortunately. President Serrell has asked for our assistance. Twilight is even now on her way to a town called Tracy.”

No reaction from the senator. He was a figment of her dream anyway. He could only react as she would expect him to react. “Wait, Tracy? As in California?”

“You know of this town?”

“Well, we’ve driven through it, stopped at a gas station. It’s on the way to the Sierras.” A blank look. “Mountains with a lot of tourist destinations.”

“Ah,” Luna said. “It appears there is a magic incident taking place there.”

“What kind of incident.”

“That is unclear.”

And would obviously remain unclear until Twilight could get there and investigate. But why Tracy? “Too bad I wasn’t involved sooner. I could’ve taken them right there. Well, to Tracy, if not the precise location of the ‘incident.’”

“Then I ask that you go there now. The message from Twilight states that Steve’s special talent may be of use.”

That didn’t sound good at all. “But how would I find it, especially at night? There’re a lot of square miles to search.”

“I was given an address. Would that be sufficient?”

“Exactly what I need. I hop over there, go to the address, come back, and return with Steve.”

Oh.

“One small problem: I’m out of plaid pills.”

“I shall personally deliver some to you right now. Wake up.”

Meg awoke to a dark bedroom, her husband in bed next to her. “What time is it?” she mumbled. She looked at the clock on the nightstand, its hands enchanted to softly glow. Almost two in the morning.

Luna would be there soon.

She sighed and gave Steve a prod with a hoof. “Wake up.”

It took a harder prod.

“What…” he groaned.

“An emergency. Luna will be here any second.”

His horn glowed and a light switched flicked on. “Did you say Luna was coming?”

“I am here,” proclaimed the princess from outside the bedroom.

“Be there in a second!” Meg shouted. “Get the short version from Luna while I get ready,” she said as she rolled out of bed. Her phone was on the nightstand. There was a message from Twilight. It had the address in Tracy. Tapping it brought up the location on a map. A few miles from that gas station? She put on the phone holder Rarity had made for her and put the phone against it, letting the magic lock it in place.

She was as ready as she was going to be. Leaving the bedroom, she found a plaid pill floating in the air waiting for her. “I didn’t know you had your own supply.”

“Twilight gave them to me before she departed, so that I may visit President Serrell.”

Right. How else was Serrell in that room? Twilight was in Greece at the time.

She was wasting time. “Should be back in a few minutes.” She went for the pill.

“Wait. You need the address.”

“Already have it.” Meg held up the leg with the phone. “Twilight messaged me.”

Steve waived a hoof. “Go already.”

Meg went. The gas station was open but idle, as to be expected at this time of night. She brought up her phone, checked her orientation, and leaped into the air. The ground fell away. Maybe that flight training wasn’t a waste of time after all. It wouldn’t be long before she got there.

Once she got to a cruising altitude of a half thousand feet, she focused more on the map on her phone than on the ground. What was she supposed to be looking for down there anyway?

One mile. Another mile. Oh. Meg put her leg down. In the distance were a perimeter of cars, lights flashing atop them. A rather large perimeter. At least a thousand feet in diameter. She doubted there were that many police cars in the entire city. Inside that perimeter a few flood lights had been set up, with another turning on as she watched, illuminating… the remains of a large building? It looked like an implosion, the walls crashing inwards. But there didn’t seem to be enough stuff, and what about the ceiling? In the middle… she couldn’t make sense of it, like darkness through a funhouse mirror. If only the sun was shining.

How close should she get?

Who was in charge down there?

If Twilight had her phone with her, and evidently she did, it would be best to call her. But she could anticipate what the alicorn’s first questions would be. She came to a hover well above the perimeter and prepared to take a picture. Before she took it, she realized she was drifting over the perimeter. There was a breeze here. She was pretty sure there hadn’t been one at the gas station. It was easy enough to correct for. She took the picture.

Unfortunately, to send it, never mind make a phone call, she had to switch off her magic bubble’s invisibility, for it did not make a distinction between radio and visible light. This high up in the night sky, she figured it was safe enough.

After sending the picture, she called Twilight.

“Meg, you’re there?”

“You got the picture, right? Where are you?”

“I got it. I was hoping you’ve been there before. Hard to make out what’s there in the center; I’ve already seen drone footage. I don’t recommend you getting much closer without me. I’m about fifteen minutes away. Is Steve there yet?”

“Not yet. I have to be on the ground to fetch him. Who’s in charge down there?”

“Agent Reubens here. FBI is in charge. I’m in contact with the head of operations there. Look for a flashlight waving about.”

Meg scanned the area below her, but did not see such a flashlight. She began to circle the containment area. “Looking for it,” she said. “They won’t try to arrest me, will they?” She’d just return to Equestria if they did, but that would defeat the purpose of her being there.

“They will not. A state of emergency has been declared. The president has made it clear that ponies are to have free rein within the containment zone—all ponies.”

A state of emergency. Is it really that bad? Some would question the wisdom of giving free rein to ponies. Some would claim ponies were somehow responsible for this emergency—because magic, right?

She flew over the assorted media, bathed in their own pools of light. Of course they’d be here. No waving flashlight down there, she was glad to see. “The press is here,” she warned into her phone.

“We know,” Twilight replied.

Of course she knew; she was in the loop via Reubens. There was probably little she could tell her she didn’t already know.

She found herself drifting towards the perimeter again. That breeze kept shifting direction. It was pulling her lower too. Easy enough to correct for, but something about it didn’t seem right. Oh, right. It’d be obvious if not for the sleep deprivation getting to her.

The anomaly was sucking in air. Where could it all be going?

There. The waving flashlight. Meg began her descent. “Found it. Going in for a landing.”

A few seconds later: “They’ve been informed.”

Nice to know I’m expected. Meg wasn’t sure if she was being sincere or sarcastic. Not being able to descend that steeply, she spiraled down, making sure to spiral down outside the containment zone, breeze or no breeze. Rainbow Dash, of course, would’ve dived straight down and pulled out at the last possible second to a perfect touchdown. Meg doubted any amount of training would enable her to do likewise.

She made her final approach. The flashlight pointed right at her. Despite what Reubens had said, she hoped that’s all that was pointed at her. It certainly made it difficult to tell who she was approaching.

“I’ve landed,” she said to Twilight over her phone—but more to let them know she was in touch with others—and to them, she said, “Do you really have to shine that in my eyes?”

The flashlight switched off. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the lesser illumination of the nearby street lights. There were three G-men—none of whom were pointing a gun at her. A promising start.

“Sorry,” the flashlight owner said. “I’ve never seen a flesh-and-blood pony before. You’re really a former human?”

Here we go again. “Right now I’m not human.” So they knew who she was, and still no guns pointed at her.

“Can the smalltalk,” said another. “I’m Special Agent MacAuley, the one in charge here. There’s supposed to be a unicorn with you?”

“I’ll be back in a minute with him.” Meg invoked the return spell.

Luna was still there. “I was beginning to be worried.”

“Is that Luna I hear?”

Meg lifted her phone and put the audio on speaker. “She’s here, Twilight. Anything you want to tell her? Make it quick. I really should get back ASAP.”

“Just surprised, that’s all. I should arrive in a few more minutes.”

Plaid pills floated over to Meg and Steve. “Be careful, Twilight.”

“I will, Luna.”

Steve walked over to Meg, pill in mouth. Meg nodded. A few seconds later, she was back in Tracy, this time with Steve at her side. “Switch off the invisibility,” she told him. “On the count of three… one… two… three.”

“I don’t believe it,” the third one said.

“What I don’t understand,” MacAuley said, “is how you can come straight to Tracy, while this Twilight had to drive all the way from the coast.”

Missed opportunity is what it was, but Meg chose instead to say, “Magic doesn’t always make sense.” Especially when it was Discord’s magic.

He waved a hand at Steve. “So what is it you unicorns do?”

Steve took a few steps to the zone. “In this case, investigate.”

Meg caught up to him. “Twilight said not to get closer until she arrived.”

He stared at the anomaly. “No argument from me.” He closed his eyes and lit his horn.

Seconds passed. “What’s he doing?” MacAuley asked.

“Investigating,” Meg answered.

Steve reopened his eyes. “I can’t sense anything from here. I either need to get closer or I need a much larger magic field. You think Twilight has a generator with her?”

Meg shrugged. “If not, we can go back and get one. Sounds safer than getting closer.”

“You don’t want to get too close to that,” MacAuley warned.

“Why?” Steve asked. “What happens?”

“You notice this breeze?”

“Yes.”

“It gets stronger the closer you get, like it’s sucking the air out.”

Like? “Is the air being sucked into it or not?” It sure seems like it.

“Beats me. And it’s getting bigger. That’s why it’s an emergency.”

“Have you sent a drone in there?” Steve asked.

“It didn’t survive.”

“I see.” Steve continued to stare at the anomaly. “I’m beginning to have a clue as to why Twilight wants me here.”

“Which is?” MacAuley asked.

“I’d rather not say yet. Twilight should be here soon.”

The convoy came to a halt. Agent Reubens opened the door and got out, leaving it open. Twilight jumped out and scanned the area. There. She began trotting towards the two other ponies present. Beyond them was the containment zone.

Once she was close enough, Steve called out a question to her. “Do you have a generator on you?”

Twilight nodded. “In my saddlebags.”

“How big a bubble can it create?”

She considered the anomaly. “Not that big. We’ll have to get somewhat closer.” A possibility came to her as she reached them. “Unless it’s maintaining a sizable magic bubble of its own.”

“How likely is that?” Meg asked. “I mean, magic presumably created that, but is magic needed to maintain it?”

“We don’t know what it is,” Steve said.

“Only one way to find out.” Twilight turned up the generator to maximum output.

Meg grimaced, stepping back a few feet. “That brings back memories.” She stepped back a few more. “That’s concentrated magic, all right.”

That would’ve been after the leak had been closed, Twilight remembered. When Discord was pushing all the magic remaining in the hyperspatial tube back into Equestria. She hadn’t experienced it herself, though Celestia had found it “bracing.” Twilight wasn’t finding the generator’s concentrated magic unpleasant in the least. Was it an alicorn thing?

“I don’t feel anything,” MacAuley said.

The other two humans looked at each other and shrugged. “Me neither,” said one of them.

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Twilight said, “not being magical creatures. You okay, Steve?”

He experimentally lit his horn. “It’s… interesting. Not exactly pleasant, but I can deal with it.”

“Then give it a go.”

The unicorn closed his eyes and put his special talent to work. Twilight put to work her own magical senses.

“Is this going to take all night?”

“Perhaps,” Twilight admitted. “I’m not sensing anything from here.”

“Me neither.” Steve ducked under the yellow tape marking the perimeter and kept on going. “How far should we advance?”

Twilight caught up to him. “As a first approximation, whichever comes first: the wind gets too strong, or one of us senses something.”

Steve grunted. “If the latter, I do hope that happens before the point of no return. You do know that drones sent in there cease to function, right?”

“Actually, no. At what point does that happen?”

“We’re nowhere near that point—yet.” It turned out that Special Agent MacAuley had been following them.

Twilight glance behind her. Reubens and Fowler were beside him. They would be the president’s eyes and ears, she knew.

One hundred feet.

One fifty.

Two hundred.

The breeze was gaining strength, becoming outright wind. Air flow ought to quadruple in speed as the distance was halved; that seemed to be happening.

Two fifty.

Three hundred.

“Stop,” Steve commanded. “I’m picking something up.”

Twilight strained her magical senses. “I’m not.”

“So what is it?” MacAuley asked Steve.

“Something is messing with space-time. It’s… expanding in there. That’s what’s sucking the air in, newly created vacuum.”

“So how much air will it gobble up?”

“Potentially? All of it. Unless we stop the expansion.”

The agent digested that. “Would that destroy a drone?”

“Maybe? Depends how fast the expansion is… would rip it apart.” He shook his head. “No. If it was that fast, it would be pulling in air a lot harder… wait…” Eyes closed in concentration. “I think time is being dilated in there too. That would slow down the air flow. Could also mess with the drone’s remote control, even if it stayed intact, by doppler-shifting the radio waves.”

“Is there a way to compensate for that?”

“Theoretically? Sure. The Huygens probe that was part of the Cassini mission to Titan had to do just that. But it’s tricky; though the probe was engineered to do that, an oversight almost doomed the mission. Drones for use on Earth aren’t engineered for that, and I very much doubt they can be quickly modified to handle it.”

Maybe without magic. Twilight knew of spells that could compensate for time dilation; her fear was that such spells were the cause of the anomaly before them. But how could humans know of Star Swirl’s work, never mind use it? For now, they were only unfounded fears. No need to share them yet.

“I’m surprised a pony would know of that.”

Steve let his horn rest and turned around to face MacAuley. “I’m the other human-turned-pony, if you must know. I also happen to have a Ph.D. in Physics from Stanford, so you may trust that I know what I’m talking about.”

The agent threw up his hands in submission. “Fine, so now I know.” Still, a smirk. “But I bet you didn’t learn how to use that horn at Stanford.”

Steve sighed. “No, I certainly did not.”

“I taught him, if you must know.” Twilight stared at the anomaly. She needed to uncover the spell work that created it. Only then could she figure out how to end it. “I’m afraid we’ll have to get closer.”

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” MacAuley said. “The wind is bad enough here.”

A valid point, but there were ways of dealing with that. “Steve, how much farther until space-time becomes… unhealthy?”

“Between another two and three hundred feet, I’d say. I can definitely stop us before that point was reached. The real problem is this wind. It’ll overpower us well before that point.”

It had already done that to most of the interior of the former building. The concrete floor was holding up well enough—except right under the anomaly itself. Concrete would not effectively resist being pulled apart by space itself expanding.

“I can request a suitably heavy vehicle,” MacAuley offered, “and have it anchored.”

“How long will it take?” Reubens asked.

“More hours than I like.”

“I don’t think it’s wise to wait that long,” Twilight said. “A shield spell combined with a telekinetic anchor should suffice.” She cast a slightly porous shield and the wind faded to a mild breeze—only to be replaced, as demanded by this realm’s insistence on balancing the books, by the strain of transferring its force deep into the ground.

MacAuley looked around at the translucent bubble enclosing them all. “Amazing.”

“You get used to it,” Fowler remarked, offering a smirk of her own.

“You sure you can keep this up?” Steve asked.

Twilight checked the generator. The drain was high, but several pounds of U-235 held an incredible amount of energy. “The generator’s good.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

Was the strain that obvious? “I’ll manage.”

Our lives depend on it.

They started walking.

“I’m not sensing anything anymore,” Steve said.

“The generator was already maxed out,” Twilight said. “Powering this spell has shrunk the magic bubble somewhat.”

“Not by much, I hope. I can’t tell if we’re dangerously close without it.” He examined the ground ahead of them. “Though I suppose it ought to be visually obvious too.”

Fortunately the lights illuminating the anomaly weren’t directly behind them, so their shadows didn’t obscure the ground. They kept on advancing, step by step.

Another ten feet.

And another.

“I’m sensing it again.”

“And I’m still not.”

The anomaly was now close enough to reveal some details. It seemed to be spherical in shape, maybe five or six meters in diameter, but it was hard to tell given the darkness. It didn’t reflect any of the lights, nor was it opaque to them. Lights on the opposite side were visible, but oddly distorted. It seemed to be resting in the crater that it created, but the bottom of it could not be seen from this angle. Flying would solve that, but it wasn’t an option with the others dependent on her shield.

Despite the shield, the breeze was picking up strength as they got closer. On second thought, flying above the anomaly wasn’t an option even if she had been alone. Maybe Rainbow Dash could avoid being sucked in; herself, she wasn’t so sure. Twilight decided against tightening the shield; better not to hide the danger any more than necessary.

There.

Twilight went a few more feet then stopped. “The ambient magic has changed. This anomaly is generating its own magic field.” But how? If Steve was right, any magic generator originally inside there had been ripped apart.

“What about active spells?” Steve asked.

“Working on it.” There must be an active spell involved, if only to generate this field. She closed her eyes and focused her magical senses, searching.

“Twilight… not that I want to rush you or anything, but the sooner we go back the better.”

“Almost there…” Having to keep up the shield spell and the telekinetic anchor was not helping.

“I’m serious. I think your magic generator is adding power to whatever is going on in there.”

Is it? She switched tracks, tracing the flow from her generator to the anomaly and… “Got it. Let’s get out of here.”

No one had to be told twice. “So what’s the verdict?” MacAuley asked as he ran after the trotting ponies.

My worst fears confirmed. “I know what spell caused this. What I don’t know is who could’ve possibly cast it here—or why.” Precious few could have cast it—and she refused to believe that her future self had done so. There was no conceivable or justifiable reason for doing this.

The yellow tape marking the perimeter approached. On the other side of it Meg had been waiting patiently, looking half-asleep. Twilight slowed to a walk and dropped the shield spell.

Ruebens took a moment to catch his breath. “I think I can answer the ‘who’ part. We have some leads that The Section had set up shop here, but we didn’t know precisely where or for what.”

“But it’s becoming easier to guess,” Fowler added.

“What’s this about The Section?” Meg asked.

Her husband answered: “It’s possible they might be involved with this.”

“Great,” Meg muttered. In a normal voice she said, “The wind picked up strength while you were there.”

It wasn’t by much, but a pegasus could be counted on noticing something like that.

Steve was looking at the anomaly. “It’s grown visibly larger too. I was afraid of that.”

The others turned around to see for themselves.

“Shit.” MacAuley glared at Steve. “What do you mean by that?”

“We were supplying it with additional power.”

Twilight cringed. “He’s right.” That was how she tracked down the spell. But she was still missing something. “It was already growing, before we arrived, correct?”

MacAuley carefully answered, “That’s right.”

She turned to Steve. “Then where does that power come from? It’s safe to say they were using the magic generators they stole from the Department of Energy. Would those be up to this, if they were even still functioning?”

“I have to say no. And we have a bigger problem.”

“And what would that be?” MacAuley asked.

“It’s safe to assume magic will be needed to fix this. That means getting a magic generator near the anomaly. If we’re unlucky enough, we’d need a sufficient quantity to encompass the entire anomaly.”

Twilight supplied the conclusion. “And we now know it ‘feeds’ off any generator in close proximity.”

“Exactly. Though since it maintains its own magic field, a small generator may be sufficient.”

“Maybe that’s part of the solution. Figure out how it’s doing that and block it, starve it of magic.”

Steve didn’t reply immediately. “Be careful. Magic may be what’s stabilizing it. Starving it could be catastrophic. You said you know what spell caused this, right?”

“I do.” Her head sagged. “It’s a variation of Star Swirl’s space expansion spell, similar to the spell used on Celestia’s high security vaults. But it’s been incorrectly cast.”

“So you know how to fix this,” MacAuley stated.

Twilight stared into the abyss that was the interior of the anomaly. “Not yet.”

9. Candid Camera

“You can’t keep me here forever.”

The man—Meg still didn’t know his name—slammed the door behind him. “And you’ll have to do better than your last attempt.”

“I got out of this room, didn’t I?”

Without bothering to open the door, never mind unlocking it. There was no need to limit herself to three dimensions. She had invoked her own version of a “return spell,” a spell that returned her to hyperspace.

She had deliberately let herself get caught, of course, and get caught inside the building no less. “Next time, I’ll get out of this building.”

Conflicting emotions fought for control. He settled on a sneer. “Despite your best efforts, we accessed the advanced spells kept on your computer.”

Her efforts to prevent that had only been enough to look convincing. The past was immutable, after all. But she had little trouble looking crushed. “You should not meddle in matters beyond your comprehension.” Even as she said it, she cringed at how clichéd it sounded.

“Fortunately, you ‘know a thing or two about magic.’” He literally finger quoted that. His eyes turned stone cold. “You have a niece, do you not?”

Steve had not returned home when Meg woke up the next morning in her bed. She hadn’t stuck around in Tracy; there wasn’t anything she could do there. Twilight did suggest before Meg departed that a software model for the anomaly would be helpful. A model certainly wouldn’t hurt, but not one created while sleep deprived. Not that she got a good night’s sleep. Her upcoming appearance before the Senate made sure of that.

But that was two days away, and this crisis was now, so where to start?

Best to start with breakfast.

Meg got out of bed and made her way to the kitchen. She stopped before she got there. There was a folded note card on the table with her name on it. It bore a royal seal.

After picking it up and unfolding it, she read it. It was a request that she attend a working breakfast with the princesses. Guess I don’t have to make myself breakfast, was her first thought. Her second thought was to wonder which princesses would be present. Celestia, certainly. Luna, probably, though it wouldn’t be breakfast, technically speaking, for her.

Twilight, that was the question. But since Steve hadn’t returned, presumably neither had Twilight. And those two would have the most up-to-date information.

The card had not stated what would be “worked.” Maybe she shouldn’t make assumptions. Just make herself presentable and go. She’d find out soon enough.

Dawn had broken. The sun was only minutes away from rising unassisted. This was a state of affairs that didn’t exist in Equestria, where the transition from night to day was far, far shorter. It was the first time Twilight would experience the human realm’s version.

The wind at the perimeter had strengthened in the last few hours. Presumably the anomaly had grown in size to match, but that was surprisingly challenging to determine—and not just because it had been until recently night. It wasn’t opaque. It didn’t glow. There was no obvious boundary. Whatever was on the other side of it was plainly visible, if somewhat distorted. Maybe slightly dimmer too, with the hint of a tint. The interior was there for them to see, but all that could be seen was… nothing.

“Can you get a lidar unit here?” Steve asked, a mug of coffee floating before him. He was talking to MacAuley, who also had a mug. It was the only way they were staying awake. “We need to measure how big it is—on the inside—and more importantly, how fast it’s growing. Also determine the geometry in there; light can map out the geodesics.”

Lidar? Whatever that was. She still found it amazing how many inventions humans had with which to do what ponies did with magic. Like measuring the size of this anomaly. She had already ruled out using the spell for measuring a realm’s size. Not that it wouldn’t have worked, but because it would require exposing the anomaly to another magic generator. It was growing fast enough on its own.

“Sure,” MacAuley said. “We can get whatever we need. But we can see the dent in the ground it’s making. Isn’t that a good enough approximation?”

Steve shook his head. “It’s a lot bigger on the inside than the outside; that’s where all the air is going. A laser is the only thing we’ve got that can pass through it in one piece.”

“How can you be so sure of that?” MacAuley shrugged. “Not that I can see any harm in trying.”

“Because we can see through it.”

MacAuley did just that, gazing at the far side. “Yeah.” He turned to a subordinate. “Go requisition one.”

The subordinate nodded and left them, careful not to spill any coffee from his mug.

“So where is all the air going? I mean, can we get it back? Has it left our universe or something?”

“No, it’s still very much a part of our universe. Think of our universe as a rubber sheet, ignoring the fact that this sheet is two dimensions instead of three. Now think of this anomaly as a bubble in a rubber sheet. If we can shrink it, make the sheet flat again, we get all the air back.”

“And if the bubble… pops? Does everything bleed out of our universe into… whatever contains our universe?”

Steve shook his head. “I wouldn’t worry about that. The rubber sheet analogy is flawed, but I don’t have anything better. It can’t pop. It’s not even a bubble, really, in that it doesn’t ‘extrude’ outside the universe; that’s not how space-time curvature works. It’s not how the expansion of the universe itself works. There is no ‘outside the universe’ as far as the laws of physics are concerned.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

No outside the universe… But there was, of course. Even if this realm’s physics was oblivious to it. “Perhaps we should go out there and take a look,” she told Steve. “A different perspective could help.”

He thought about it. “No idea what we would see, but I guess that’s the point. If we can locate this spot. And if you-know-who cooperated.”

MacAuley raised an eyebrow. “You-know-who? Any reason I should remain ignorant?”

Twilight sighed. “Discord, if you must know.”

“I thought he couldn’t come to our world.”

“He can’t. That’s not what I’m suggesting.”

“Then what are you suggesting?”

Twilight hesitated. She looked to Steve. He shrugged. “You might as well tell him,” he said.

The FBI agent was waiting.

“Fine. We can go outside your realm, into the hyperspatial void between our realms, and take a look at this anomaly from the outside. No idea what we’d see, but, as Steve said, that’s the point.”

“I thought he just said there was no ‘outside.’”

“No, I said our laws of physics don’t acknowledge an outside. There’s very definitely an outside. Both Twilight and I have been there.”

“Can our scientists accompany you?”

Twilight frowned. “Unfortunately not. Discord claims that he can only keep magical creatures alive in that place.” And yet Future Meg, apparently in human form, was able to handle it all on her own. Must have been due to future technology. Regardless, it was of no help to them in the present.

MacAuley locked his gaze onto a certain unicorn. “May I assume that you are now a magical creature?”

Steve was unfazed. “If by that you are asking whether your scientists can be turned into magical ponies so they can accompany us, the answer is yes. Would they be willing to do that? It is not a decision to make lightly.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here,” Twilight declared. There were enough things on her to-do list without adding the training of additional humans-turned-ponies.

“I’ll pass that along,” MacAuley said, evidently content not to discuss that topic further. “Do you think you can fix this from—hyperspace, was it?”

Twilight and Steve exchanged glances. “I wouldn’t depend on it,” Steve said.

The phone in Twilight’s saddlebag started playing the My Little Pony theme, which meant Meg was calling her. Custom ring tones were an fortuitous discovery; she could now ignore any unknown caller. The rare such call she’d actually care about usually left a message. She retrieved her phone from the saddlebag and accepted the call, putting it on speakerphone. “Hi, Meg.”

“Do you have a few minutes? I’m in a meeting with the other princesses. They’d like an update.”

“And little old me!”

Discord’s there too? Twilight couldn’t imagine what… well, they could use his help anyway. “Sure, we can give an update.” She waved Steve over. “Why don’t you summarize what we’ve come up with so far.”

Steve did so. While he was doing so, MacAuley had come over uninvited. Twilight didn’t think it productive to point that fact out. “Are you willing to escort us there?” Steve concluded with a question directed at Discord.

“I wouldn’t miss it for anything. I can almost taste the chaos it must be causing, all the way here in Canterlot.”

MacAuley fumed. “That ‘chaos’ you’re tasting may end up destroying our world, if we can’t put a stop to it.”

“And my help you shall have. A dead world is a dull, boring, chaos-free world.”

“Don’t argue with him,” Steve softly said.

MacAuley glared at the unicorn, but then thought better of it.

“Who are we addressing?” asked Princess Celestia.

“Special Agent MacAuley. I’m in charge here. And to whom am I speaking?”

Twilight face-hoofed.

“Princess Celestia. I can assure you, Special Agent MacAuley, that we shall provide whatever assistance we can to end this magic-based threat. It is deeply troubling that there is one, in the first place, in your realm.”

“Your Highness. Perhaps it was inevitable there’d be a first,” he conceded. “Fortunately, there is reason to believe ponies were not behind this.”

“As much as I wish that were true, I am not so sure. I am familiar with Star Swirl’s space expansion spell. There are few ponies I would trust to cast it. I have always myself cast it on the few vaults in my palace that would benefit from it. It is difficult to imagine how humans could have learned of this spell, much less cast it.”

MacAuley gazed into the anomaly. “Unfortunately, forensics is impossible when the spell has destroyed evidence of its own casting.”

“A not uncommon occurrence when that spell is cast incorrectly.”

He drank some coffee. “So how do you recover from that? Can we not do that too?”

“I think I should answer that.”

“Of course, Twilight.”

“There are spells to deal with this,” Twilight began. “I am of course familiar with them. The problem is, they won’t work in this realm. They don’t conserve energy, can’t conserve energy, which this realm won’t tolerate, and it isn’t obvious how to fix that.”

MacAuley sighed. “It is obvious that it cannot be fixed?”

“No?”

“I guess that’ll have to do for now.” Sudden realization struck, and he pointed a finger at the phone. “You received a phone call from… Canterlot, was it?”

“I’ve got my phone with me,” Meg said.

“And you’re there, in the same room as Princess Celestia and Discord.”

“I am here as well,” declared Princess Luna.

“Us too,” Cadance said. “We happen to be in town.”

“And you’re doing a great job, Twily.”

Did he even recognize all those voices? He hadn’t recognize Celestia’s. “Uh, in order, that was Princess Luna, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, and Prince Shining Armor.”

He waved that away. “Your phone is getting a signal in Equestria?”

Over the phone, Meg simply said, “Magic.”

“Magic.”

Twilight smiled. “That’s right. Magic.” The full explanation would no doubt go over his head.

Steve changed the subject. “Look, I’m running on fumes here and coffee can only do so much. Until we can get that lidar there’s not much more I can do here, so I think I’ll return and try to get some shuteye, then maybe help Meg with modeling the anomaly in software.”

“Quite honestly, I think I’ll need Twilight’s help with that, because of the magic component. Unless, Twilight, you think Sunset Shimmer knows that spell.”

“She does,” Celestia said, preempting Twilight.

Steve was pointing off into the distance. “Are we on camera?”

MacAuley turned around. “Not good.”

Twilight looked for herself. A human with a shoulder-mounted camera was standing next to a parked van, using it to obscure their presence—attempting to use it, anyway. Another human, behind the first, was pointing some sort of… was that a large funnel of some sort? Whatever it was, it was pointed in their direction too. Reubens was already purposefully striding in their direction.

“Is that a directional mike?” Steve asked.

“Looks like it,” MacAuley said.

Agent Reubens reached the pair. Neither had tried to escape him. The funnel was no longer pointed at them. Was that the “directional mike?” What did it do?

“How long do you think they were listening to us?” Steve asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” MacAuley replied.

Twilight’s eyes widened in alarm. “They were listening to us?” She remembered the camera. “Wait, was what we were saying being recorded?!” It had never occurred to her that there could be technological equivalents to eavesdropping spells here.

“Yep,” Steve said with a sigh. “And if we’re really unlucky, they were transmitting, not recording.”

The phone. It was still in her magical grasp. She looked down at it. “Did you hear that, Celestia?”

“Yes, Twilight. You are best suited to determine the prudent course of action.”

“Damage control,” MacAuley dryly noted.

That was obvious, but how? She didn’t even know how long they’d been there! Her only consolation was that the others were just as caught off guard—and they were familiar with the technological possibilities.

They watched in silence as Reubens questioned the two men. It wasn’t much longer before the interrogation ended and he started back. The other two made haste and headed back to the media pool.

“So?” MacAuley asked once Reubens returned.

“They got everything starting about the time the subject of lidar came up. They were transmitting, so that’s that. It’ll be all over the news soon enough.”

“Great. Time to get started on that damage control. So if you’ll excuse me…”

“Sure,” Twilight said. She turned to the Secret Service agents. “You too?”

Reubens and Fowler shared a glance. “I’m afraid so,” he said. “I’ll go make the call.” And he departed.

“I’m going back now. Let me know when the lidar arrives.” Steve vanished.

“Just us two left,” Fowler said. “You should probably go back too. Doesn’t look like there’s anything else you can do at the moment.”

There didn’t seem to be. Maybe her time would be better spent working with Meg on that simulation software. She looked down at her phone. It was still communicating with Meg’s phone. “Any ideas over there on what I can do?”

Several seconds of silence. “There does not appear to be,” Celestia said.

What? Not even a… creative one from Discord? “Okay. I’m returning. Talk to you later.”

Meg followed Sunset Shimmer through the old mining tunnels, the latter’s horn lighting the way. It was a refreshing change from the helmet light she usually relied upon. When they reached the locked door, the unicorn was able to unlock and open it with her magic—another refreshing change. Normally, Meg had to knock and wait.

A royal guard came to investigate immediately, of course, but relaxed upon seeing them, content to close and magically re-lock the door. Meg quickly noticed all her co-workers were present and gathered around a whiteboard.

There was also someone else present, seated in a chair out of the way, who was far more interested in the new arrivals than in the whiteboard: Lauren Faust.

“Could someone fill me in?” Meg asked.

Diana paused her scribbling on the whiteboard. “About the situation in Tracy, or our unexpected guest?”

“I’ve been to Tracy, seen the anomaly for myself. Twilight was there too. Are all of you being dragged into this?”

“Top priority. We’re to do whatever we can to get a handle on it. If Twilight was there, could she confirm magic was involved?”

“She sure did. Has a good idea which spell it was too: one of Star Swirl’s, though incorrectly cast. That’s why Sunset is here, to help me model it in software.”

Faust joined the conversation. “Star Swirl, as in ‘the Bearded.’”

“The one and only,” Meg replied. “I don’t want to be rude or anything, but this is the last place I’d expect to find you.”

“Faust’s getting the VIP treatment,” Jake, their manager, said. “Word came down from on high.”

Their guest shrugged. “I don’t know what you did after I last saw you, but all the sudden my calls were being returned and… here I am. Or should I be thanking Twilight?”

“It could have been either of us,” Meg said. Though it was probably my mentioning you to Serrell that did it. She walked towards her workstation. “If this is top priority, I’m assuming we’ll have all the computing resources we could want to run my model of the anomaly once I get it running?”

“Money is no object,” Jake declared.

As opposed to when I ran the simulation that came up with the necklace for my Pinkie Pie doll. She arrived at her workstation. Whatever happened to that necklace? She had gotten the Pinkie Pie doll back from the FBI, but it was missing its collar. No one seemed able to explain what happened to it.

“When do you think you can have something to run?” he asked.

“I don’t know how to model it yet. I guess I can start with a black hole simulator, because something is definitely being done to space-time. The big unknown is how that space expansion spell is interacting with the field equations, never mind what the hell is powering it.”

Faust asked, “How are you going to use a keyboard with hooves?”

Meg’s hoof stopped short of her pendant. “I wasn’t. I was about to go human. Easier to sit in this chair, too.”

“Right. You can do that here. But before you do that… could you fly a bit? I’d like to see a pegasus flying up close—if you’re not exhausted from flight training again.”

“She’s never flown for any of us,” Martin pointed out.

“You never asked,” Meg shot back. The cavern was big enough, so long as she kept it slow and easy. She decided that humoring her wouldn’t hurt. “Sure, I can afford a minute or two.”

So she stepped away from the computer, extended her wings, began flapping, and lifted a few feet off the floor. Next she carefully flew over to Faust. “So what do you think?”

“I’m thinking…” Her eyes were tracking the slow flapping of Meg’s wings. “I’m thinking that you’re barely exerting yourself—which ought to be impossible.” She threw up her hands. “I know, I know. Magic.”

“You’re right on both counts. I’m not exerting myself; I can keep this up indefinitely. And magic.”

Diana approached her. “But pegasi can fly in our universe, right? You must be violating conservation of momentum; you’re not moving enough air, to put it mildly.”

“It doesn’t feel any different flying in the other universe. I don’t know how it knows, but flight magic compensates. Over there, momentum is conserved; the equal and opposite momentum is carried away by gravitational waves. But only over there; here, it isn’t conserved.”

“How do you know that?” Jerry asked.

Meg was beginning to wish she had simply claimed ignorance. “My husband figured it out shortly after becoming a unicorn. Telekinesis works the same way.”

“Okay… Regardless, how does magic ‘know’ how to deal with the limitations of our universe?”

“I, uh…” Meg turned her head to the unicorn in the room. “Do you have a clue?”

Sunset looked up in thought. “Can’t say I do. There is much we don’t understand about so-called instinctive magic, even as to how it works in our own realm.”

Meg returned to the floor and squeezed her pendant, eliciting a shocked squeal from Faust.

“You get used to it,” Diana said.

“I sure have,” Meg commented as she walked on two legs back to her workstation. She sat down and logged on to her computer.

“I-I can’t even begin to imagine what it must… must be like to experience a transformation like that!”

Meg spun around in her chair and threw Faust a smile. “That makes two of us. I don’t experience anything. Really. And I’ve tried. It’s always something that has happened, never something that is happening.” She returned to her computer. “Probably better that way.”

Martin rubbed his chin in thought. “Stream of consciousness is unaffected by the transformation. So when your brain is transformed between human and pegasus, its state is perfectly and instantaneously mapped from one to the other. That sounds like one hell of a computation that’s being performed damned fast.”

“It’s magic,” Meg said with a sigh. “What do you want?”

“To understand it, of course. If we could harness it… just imagine what else it could ‘compute.’”

“Who says it can ‘compute’ anything?” Jerry said. “It’s magic, not a computer.”

“Still looks like it’s computing to me.”

“On what? No conceivable computer can begin to compute that!”

“Maybe this proves we’re living in a simulation. That’s what we should find out!”

“We can worry about that later,” Jake said. “After we save the world.”

“Not even then,” Sunset said. “That particular spell is beyond my ability to cast. Beyond any unicorn’s ability to cast.”

“She means it’s alicorns only,” Meg said. “Or Discord. So don’t get your hopes up.” She started typing, creating a new branch in the repository holding the black hole simulator. Then her hands went slack. “That was the easy part. Still have no idea how to model the spell.”

Sunset scrunched her face. “A spell cast incorrectly. Which makes it worse. We don’t yet know how it was incorrectly cast.”

“Maybe the simulator can help figure that out?” Diana suggested. “Vary the parameters until it matches observations.”

“That could work,” Meg said. “Especially since we have an unlimited computing budget. One small problem though: we don’t have observations to match against—not yet.”

“And what are the parameters to vary?” Sunset added.

“Well,” Martin began. “There’s an obvious one to start with. It’s a spatial expansion spell, right? The field equation has a term tailor-made for that, the so-called cosmological constant. What if the spell manipulated that?”

“It’s as good a place to start as any,” Meg said. “There’s still a problem though. Star Swirl didn’t have a clue about Relativity. His spell would only manipulate space, ignoring that it was connected with time.”

“Which is why,” Sunset continued, “that spell must be cast with precision, otherwise things can go horribly wrong. And that includes problems with time.”

“And Steve reported that time dilation is happening inside the anomaly. Plugging in a non-zero value for the cosmological constant won’t cause that.”

Martin shrugged. “Doesn’t mean that’s not a part of it. Maybe if the spell was written with knowledge of General Relativity, that’s what it’d do, directly. Because it wasn’t, maybe it’s doing it indirectly, via some Rube Goldberg contraption. It’s only his genius that got it to work at all.”

Sunset gave him a studied look. “You know what? I can’t say you’re wrong. But it does make me wonder how he managed to avoid destroying our realm before he got it working.”

Twilight’s head sank onto the open book. Her head jerked back up again. “Maybe I could use some coffee,” she groaned. She was still running on Greek time. That had become as unhelpful here in her library as it had been helpful the previous night in Tracy.

“Latest set of books from Celestia.” Spike walked in, yawning, with three books in his hands. “She thinks these are the last she’ll find.”

All were quite thick. “Put them over there, Spike.”

He did so, adding them to the existing pile. And yawned again. “Maybe you should catch some shuteye?”

“There’s no time for that. That anomaly had doubled in size, at least, while I was there, maybe more.”

“Then at least use that… what did you call it? That ‘jet lag’ spell?”

She yawned. “Won’t help. It only lets me fall asleep when I otherwise couldn’t; it won’t keep me awake.”

“Tea? Coffee?”

She’d prefer tea, but she needed something stronger. “Coffee.”

“Whoa. You really are struggling. Be right back!”

As the baby dragon hurried out, a disguised pegasus entered. “Save the world yet?”

Twilight eyed the too-energetic Yearling. “How are you managing to stay awake? And no, not yet.”

“It’s not that late. You’re working yourself too hard. You should take a break.”

Her head slumped back onto the book. “Maybe you’re right. I can hardly think straight.” She looked up at Yearling. “How would Daring Do solve this one?”

“She wouldn’t. This isn’t her kind of story.”

Twilight sighed. “I suppose not. So what did I miss in Athens?”

“Well, in addition to the Parthenon, which you saw, briefly, we also visited the Old Temple of Athena, the Sanctuary of Zeus Polieus, the Theater of Dionysus Eleuthereus—”

“I get the idea.”

“Also an impressive museum,” she hurriedly finished. “Seeing so many ancient ruins belonging to an alien civilization… they’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

Maybe it was just as well I had to depart early. Visiting ruins for the sake of visiting them didn’t do much for her. “They are human, after all. So when do you leave for Knossos?”

“Tomorrow.”

Spike returned with a mug in claw. “Hey, A.K. Would you also like a mug of coffee?”

She shook her head. “No thanks. I plan on going to bed soon.”

He set the mug down in front of Twilight. “Probably a good idea.”

Twilight stared at the mug, not disturbing it.

“You might still want to go there,” Yearling said. “There’s still the question of that minotaur myth.”

That was her motivation for tagging along. It hadn’t become less important just because of the anomaly. Maybe she could find an hour or two. But if she didn’t go back now, how would she get to that palace?

Seemingly reading her mind, Yearling added, “I can take you there when you have the time.”

Of course she could; that’s how the plaid pills worked. It would be better to do so while Andy was still there, when they had official permission to poke around, but that wasn’t absolutely necessary.

“I’ll let you know.”

11. Constructive Interference

Celestia had just raised the sun; she still insisted on doing that every now and then. The palace gardens were not yet open to the public. Meg followed the paths, devoid of ponies and humans, heading toward an aging statue of a pegasus in flight. Once it was in her sights, its purplish color caught her off guard.

A pair of eyes formed and gazed back at her.

“Hey, Smooze. Scrubbing it clean?” It had been too long since Fluttershy had had a talk with the local pigeons.

His mouth appeared, though of course it remained frozen in a vague smile. “Susie’s statue doesn’t get the attention it deserves from the staff.”

“Can’t fault them too much, you know. She’s before their time.”

Meg had little doubt it’d look as good as new once Smooze was done. The standard statue preservation spell guaranteed that. “Just got back from the past, back around the time I created that first speech synthesizer for you.” She threw him a mischievous smile. “Remember that?”

“I’d rather not.”

She couldn’t blame him. “Well, Discord had his reasons.”

“I know; it’s why I forgave him. But seeing your reaction when you finally found out who that mysterious ancient alicorn was almost made it worthwhile.”

“Hah! At least you could see my reaction. You were just as shocked. We all were.”

“With one exception: Discord.”

Yes, Discord. “He got a sneak peek, you could say.” As did I. But the draconequus possessed senses Meg did not. And speaking of Discord… It was long past time for an intervention. She would discuss it with Twilight when she saw her that afternoon.

Meg endlessly walked around in circles, perfectly matching the course her thoughts took. Chaos as a concept was easy to throw around, but as the basis for concrete action? Not so much, not if the point was to achieve specific goals—at least if one was not a draconequus.

There was only one goal: take down Routledge. So what chaotic action could she take during her televised appearance in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing? She wasn’t a Spirit of Chaos; her only tools were words. Well, sure, maybe she could try using weather magic—no, that was just stupid. Even if she could make it rain or something—questionable given that she’d be on a leash, so no flying—it would only play into his hands, boosting him not tearing him down.

Words it would have to be, but what words? Mere utterance of facts and reason would get her nowhere, she already understood that, and anyway that was by definition the opposite of chaos.

But lies and nonsense were also non-starters. Perhaps they were a form of chaos, but chaos of a primitive and unsophisticated form. Discord could not have meant that. Right? Didn’t matter; lies and nonsense would not be more effective than facts and reason, not once the talking heads on the news channels were through with her.

There was a knock at the front door.

She was getting nowhere anyway; going in circles tended to do that. Answering the door would be a welcome distraction.

So answer it she did. Opening the door revealed Twilight, who was carrying a large box in her magic. “Can I come in?” the alicorn asked. “I’ve got your dress—and there’s something I’d like to talk about.”

Meg eyed the box, then returned her gaze to Twilight. It seemed to be important, whatever it was. “Sure.” She stepped aside. “What’s on your mind?”

Twilight entered and set the box down out of the way. “It’s about what your future self told you concerning the Element Bearers going human. That we could prove it would be safe for the Elements, by creating a time loop that’d be paradoxical if it wasn’t safe.”

Meg realized they’d let that slip through the cracks. “Why now?”

Twilight summarized what had happened at the anomaly. “So I figured this was a good time to explore the option of going human.”

“Creating a paradox,” Meg said. Just the distraction she needed. She resumed her circular path. “A paradox that would only occur if the Elements were harmed.” The pegasus trudged around the circle. “Nothing’s coming to me. I mean, we know it has to involve a time loop, and in this loop you have to go human, and… I dunno. Go back to being a pony, I suppose, and check on your Element, and if it was harmed… then what?”

“Go back in time and tell myself not to transform? But then I won’t, so I wouldn’t know my Element was harmed, so I wouldn’t go back in time, but the past is immutable, so I did, which meant the Element was harmed. Maybe the answer is that the time travel spell fails; that eliminates the paradox, but the Element is still harmed, so that’s no good.”

Meg completed another circle. “We need a time loop where your transformation takes place only if the time travel spell succeeds, and it succeeds only if your Element is okay after the transformation.”

Twilight tilted her head. “But how do we do that?”

Meg ran through the conversation she’d had with her future self. It was all about reality itself being a quantum supercomputer. They just needed to run the correct “program,” a program that would answer the question, Does a bearer transforming into a human harm the bearer’s Element? How do they come up with such a program?

She froze. Maybe they were looking at it from the wrong angle. “We don’t have to. Our future selves will tell us how.”

“I don’t get it.”

Meg approached her. “A time loop serves as a program running on the quantum supercomputer that is reality itself. Have the time loop compute not only whether the transformation is safe for the Elements, have it also compute how to figure out whether it is safe! If the time loop can be created, then it is safe.”

Twilight tilted her head in the other direction. “I still don’t get it. We still have to figure out how; we will become our future selves.”

Meg smiled. “No, we won’t, because our future selves will tell us how to do it.”

“So… you mean we will go back in time to tell our past selves what we were told by our future selves.” Twilight closed her eyes in thought. “Then where does the knowledge come from?”

“Well, technically, from the wave function collapse. The wave function, over time, forms a superposition of every possible outcome, some more probable than others. The time loop causes any paradoxical outcome, through destructive interference of the wave function with itself, to have zero probability of occurrence. If there is a way to figure out whether you going human is safe for your Element, that outcome has a non-zero probability and will be selected. If there isn’t, the time loop is paradoxical by design and the time travel spell fails.

“There could be multiple ways of figuring it out, each with a non-zero probability. Which one is selected by the wave function collapse is unknowable and random, but we don’t really care which one is selected, just that there is one.”

Now it was Twilight’s turn to walk in circles. While the alicorn was lost in thought doing that, Meg wondered whether this could be used to solve her “chaos” problem. But she quickly decided no; there was no apparent way to create a paradoxical situation from the lack of a chaotic solution—or the lack of a way of figuring out a chaotic solution. What even constituted a “solution?” The problem lacked proper definition.

Twilight stopped and looked at Meg. “I’ve got it. First, we specify a time and place for our future selves to visit us. If they are a no-show, we can assume my going human will harm my Element. But say they show up. They somehow convince us it is safe, tell us what to do to prove it, and we shall do it. The key is—and we have no idea how they’ll do it—the key is that they’ll have to convince us, that there is no possibility of our future selves, I dunno, actually being changelings in disguise on a mission to trick us into destroying the Elements.”

Meg spent a moment trying to poke a hole in that plan. “Sounds reasonable, I guess, but a no-show only means we don’t know it’s safe, not that we know it’s not safe. A time travel spell could fail for any number of reasons.”

“In that case we try again, with a new place and time. If we keep getting no-shows, the odds build that it truly is not safe.”

“Fair enough. So how much of a hurry are you in? I mean, we could do it right here, right now, but, to be honest, I’m not really in the mood for it.” Meg turned away. “I’ve got too many other things on my mind right now.”

“Do you have to be present?”

That… was a good question. “I suppose I don’t have to, strictly speaking. I’m not an Element Bearer.”

“Do you want to?”

“I…” Meg exhaled. “Let me sleep on it, but don’t let me hold you up beyond that.”

Luna had just raised the moon, and Sugarcube Corner glowed in the moonlight. Twilight went inside and found Mrs. Cake behind the counter. “Is Pinkie around?” The place was busy, she noticed; perhaps it was best she didn’t talk to her here.

“She’s in the kitchen, Twilight.” After studying her face, she added, “Is everything all right?”

“What? No. I mean, yes: everything’s fine!”

A few heads were turned their way.

“Kitchen’s that way, Dearie.”

Yeah, I know. She took the hint and got moving. Once she got there, she found Pinkie was busy cleaning pots and pans and other stuff.

She did not pause her work upon noticing her. “Oh, hi, Twilight! What’s up?”

It was best to just get it out of the way. “Pinkie, uh, by any chance has your Pinkie Sense been going off recently?”

The pink pony put a stack of clean dishes away, then she put a hoof to muzzle. “Weeelll, now that you mention it, I did have a right ear twitch followed by an itch on my back-left frog.”

Not what she was expecting. “What does that mean?”

Pinkie perked up. “That somepony would ask if my Pinkie Sense has been going off recently! And somepony did. You!”

Now she was starting to feel foolish. “And that’s it?” After all, she knew nothing bad would happen—yet did she know Meg’s future self was being completely honest? But what was the point in being dishonest about her ability to prove that the transformation would be harmless to her Element? Either she could prove it or she couldn’t.

“Were you expecting a left ear twitch followed by an itch on my back-right frog?”

Twilight’s face went blank. “Should I?”

“I dunno; I can’t read your mind, silly.”

“Well, what does a left ear twitch followed by an itch on your back-right frog mean?”

“That we’ll be visited by our future selves.” Her face scrunched. “Or is it the other way around? I always get those two mixed up.”

Mixed up? “How often do those two occur?”

“More often than you’d think.”

Yeah, not touching that. “Well, I’m expecting to be visited by my future self in the not too distant future. Does that count?”

“Sure does! So it must be that a right ear twitch followed by an itch on my back-left frog means that we’ll be visited by a future self.”

“But I did ask whether your Pinkie Sense had been going off recently.”

Pinkie shrugged. “Coincidence.”

Twilight sighed. “Right. Coincidence.” Pinkie Sense is what it is. She had to accept that. “Thanks, Pinkie.”

“Your welcome!”

As Twilight departed Sugarcube Corner, she wondered if this confirmation by Pinkie Sense was sufficient. If she was to be visited by her future self, then the time travel spell worked, and if that worked, then it proves the transformation was safe. But if she skipped the visitation as a result, then what was causing Pinkie Sense to fire?

Sounded like a paradox.

Or would the possibility—no, she wasn’t going down that road again. Pinkie Sense is what it is. That’s final. She would just have to go through with it and avoid any possible paradox.

The moon had barely moved while she’d been inside; she had the whole night ahead of her. Being on Greek time was becoming inconvenient. She should take Yearling up on her offer and visit Knossos; afterwards she could go back on Equestrian time.

But that was tomorrow. Maybe she should just get the visitation by her future self out of the way now.

No, not an option. She had to let Meg sleep on it first.

Twilight looked up at the moon again. Perhaps she could keep company with Luna tonight, take advantage of the situation.

Meg knocked on the door to the cavern, finally able to catch her breath. Momentarily, the door opened revealing a Royal Guard. “I’ll take you to the intruders,” the guard said.

Entering the cavern, she spotted her three human coworkers. “Their word isn’t good enough?” she asked, pointing at them.

“With all due respect, ma’am, they have no authority here.”

Dianna shrugged. “We just work here, I guess.”

Meg sighed; it was too late for this. She first went over to her workstation to drop off her mining helmet, then said, “Take me to them.”

The guard started walking and Meg followed. Shortly they arrived at a secure room that had been constructed near the portal for just this purpose. Inside were two humans. “I can confirm the man is my husband and the woman is Sunset Shimmer,” she told the guard.

The guard turned to the humans. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”

“That’s quite alright,” Sunset said. “You were only doing your job.”

“Mind if we borrow your pendant?” Steve asked.

“Go ahead.” Meg dipped her head as he removed the pendant from around her neck. “Should I ask why?”

Steve squeezed the pendant and resumed his equine form. He levitated it over to Sunset. “Nothing too shocking. They offered us a ride back, it was a chance to discuss what we found out, and we figured that you’d probably be here anyway.”

“Yeah, well, on top of my own issues, Twilight paid me a visit and gave me an issue of her own to think about—no, don’t ask. That’s for Twilight to share.”

Sunset levitated the pendant back to Meg, returning it to its proper place around her neck. “We, uh, should’ve known better than to assume.”

“Well, since I’m here now, you might as well fill me in on what you discovered.”

“Let’s join the others first,” Steve said.

Meg led the way. “By all means.”

Once they had entered the main cavern, Steve began to fill everyone in. “We have some numbers to plug into your simulation, enough to narrow down the search space. It wasn’t easy; that lidar unit was never intended to measure astronomical distances.” A grim smile. “It didn’t like it, kept reporting internal errors, but with a few phone calls we figured out how to get around that.”

Astronomical. “So… just how bad is it?”

“It takes one point one six three seconds for light to cross the anomaly, or about three hundred and fifty thousand kilometers. It’s increasing by about nineteen kilometers every second—our seconds, don’t forget. The apparent diameter, from the outside, is nearly tripling every twenty-four hours—two point nine three to be exact.”

Meg collapsed to her haunches. That was enough to suck out all the air on the planet, no question about it. It was only a matter of when. The amount of air being sucked in would increase by an order of magnitude each and every day.

Yay for time dilation. It was the only reason air wasn’t being sucked in even faster. All Equestrian air too? Maybe they’d have to close the portal, to prevent that. Or did they? She had never felt a breeze from the portal; there’s no way the air pressure could be identical on both sides, not every hour of every day. Yet no one has ever mentioned having to pop any ears either. Magic?

Focus. “Can you measure the time dilation? That’s an important number for the simulation.”

Steve frowned. “Not yet. I’m hoping spectroscopy would give us that answer. The absorption bands are affected by time dilation. But we need a suitable white light source for that. Or maybe stimulate the atoms—somehow, probably with a laser—and observe their emission bands. That might work better. Either way, we need equipment we don’t have—yet.”

“What about geodesics?”

“We’re working on that too. I’m not sure we can do better than observing where a laser beam comes out correlates to where it went in. Unfortunately, that doesn’t tell us the actual curved path it took inside, only the cumulative effect of all the curvature the beam went through. Maybe we can deduce that if we had enough going-in/coming-out pairings? Sort of like a CAT scan?”

“Maybe? I suppose I could see if such an algorithm exists, but aren’t we forgetting something?”

Everyone looked at each other. “Like what?” Martin asked.

Meg sighed. “Look, getting a good simulation going is nice and all, but how can it help us fix this thing? We know we have to replace the energy extracted via time dilation, and given the amount of mass flowing in every second, it’d make the energy output of an H-bomb look like a firecracker.”

Steve laid a hoof on her withers. “Meg, we have to start somewhere. Besides, we don’t know where that energy is going. Maybe only a tiny amount, relatively speaking, is being converted into magic or expansion. Maybe the rest is being stored, somehow, like a compressed spring. We just don’t know. That’s what we need to model.”

We just don’t know. That was the problem. Eventually, they would know—right? Not if the world was doomed; then there would be no future. But if there was a future.

Well, she had met her future self, right? But for all she knew, all that meant was she had escaped the destruction of the Earth by remaining in Equestria. Her future self had not volunteered any information on this topic.

Meg headed to the door. “I’m going to find Twilight.”

If Twilight was to have a visitation from her future self, they might as well have her future self delay that trip to the past until she knew the answer.

Twilight stood in front of The Mirror. She was tempted to “expect” it as a place in which she’d retain her alicorn form, so that she may probe the magic underlying this realm of pure magic. The problem with that, however, was that query on historical portals. It’s been a few days since anypony had last checked on it. Surely it had finished by now. But if she changed the rules by which that realm operated, it would reset the simulated computer.

That had already happened several times. Probing the magic would have to wait a little longer.

She went through the mirror, expecting it to remain exactly as it was.

And so it was. There was the console where the query had been entered, and Twilight walked over to it on two legs. The monitor was dark; she understood that to mean the screen saver had kicked in—it seemed silly that a simulated screen would need saving, but that was part of the simulation.

She gave the mouse a shove, and the screen dutifully came to life.

“Great,” she muttered. Instead of a list of past portal openings, there was a dialog box complaining “operation timed out.”

“If I didn’t know better,” Twilight said to the empty room, “I’d say somepony didn’t want us to know.”

But did she know better? She wasn’t an expert on computers; that was Meg’s area of expertise. Yet she had had plenty of experience using real computers, and she had never encountered such problems with what ought to be a simple query. Why should it take so long? Archivists at the Royal Library were faster than this at retrieving data!

On the other hoof, there was that portal Discord had created at the Parthenon. Meg had tried to close it, but couldn’t; she lacked the authority to do so. Could Discord be behind this too? Granted, they had the authority to do the query. Maybe this time he was being subtle about it? One cannot expect consistency from Discord.

Which, of course, raised the question as to why he would want to keep them ignorant of the details, when they already knew he had done it.

Twilight sighed. She would bring it to Meg’s attention the next time she saw her.

Returning through the mirror back into Equestria, she set out for the throne room, that being the most likely place to find Princess Luna in the early evening.

The stroll through the palace was placid enough; not many were around this late to bow to her as she passed. It was kind of refreshing, actually. Could she even get away without her regalia? Best not; her mentor would not approve. How would Luna feel about it? She didn’t know. But then, Luna was no less likely to be seen in public without her regalia than her elder sister.

Soon enough the foyer to the throne room came into view. The doors were closed, and Luna’s staff were on the wrong side of it. That probably meant a private audience was taking place. Technically, it was within her rights to intrude, but what was the hurry?

A unicorn approached her and bowed. “Princess,” she began. “Your presence would be welcome.” She held a hoof out to the throne room doors.

That was unexpected. Luna couldn’t have known she was coming; were there ponies out searching for her? She nodded in response and continued on.

As she approached the throne room, a pair of Royal Guards opened the doors with their magic—but only enough to let her through. Luna was sitting on her throne, and she smiled as she noted Twilight’s entrance. Only as the doors were closing behind her did Twilight discover who had been granted the private audience.

In a raised voice, to cross the distance, Twilight said, “I just came back from the mirror realm, Meg. The query ‘timed out.’”

“Timed out? I’m beginning to think something fishy is going on.”

“Thoughts of Discord had crossed my mind too.”

Meg stood up. “Well… yeah, maybe. But let’s put that aside for now. About your upcoming visit from your future self. I have a suggestion to make, to take advantage of that.”

Twilight reached the throne by which Meg was standing, as Luna observed in silence. She briefly wondered what they had been discussing, not that that was any of her business. “What sort of suggestion?” she asked in reply.

“We don’t know how to deal with the anomaly—today. But we will in the future, or at least I certainly hope so. So why not have your future self tell us how it was dealt with? Have the ‘program’ solve two problems at once?”

Solve two problems at once? Was that feasible? What if the anomaly couldn’t be dealt with? Well, her future self could inform them of that too. But where was the potential paradox? If the time loop occurred regardless of whether it could or could not be dealt with… What if could not became self-fulfilling? Because they were told it could not, they didn’t even try, so it wasn’t. No paradox in that!

Twilight shook her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. There’s no potential paradox, none that I can see, so we may get an answer we don’t like instead of no answer at all, even if an answer we would like was also possible.”

Meg grimaced. “Because it’s random. You’re right. Too dangerous. No way to constrain the set of outcomes to those desired. Forget I mentioned it.”

Luna tilted her head. “Could somepony explain it to me?”

“If you really want to know,” Twilight said, “I can explain it later. I was planning on keeping you company tonight anyway.”

“Truly?”

“Side effect of being on Greek time.”

“I’d love to hear an explanation of that too.”

Meg took a step towards Twilight. “I’ve decided to be present when your future self visits.” She looked around the empty throne room. “I guess we could take care of it right now, if you want.”

All six Element Bearers appeared in front of the closed doors to the throne room. “The past looks aaawfully similar to the present,” Pinkie Pie proclaimed.

“Except for the extra Twilight Sparkle by the throne,” Rarity said.

The new Twilight stamped a hoof. “Girls, please!” She cleared her throat. “Ahem. My past self does wish to take care of it right now.”

The first Twilight scowled. “Was it asking too much to let me say it out loud first?”

Applejack adjusted her Stetson. “Told ya we ought’ve arrived a minute later.”

“That’s not how I remembered it!” complained Future Twilight.

Present Twilight stamped her hoof. “Can we just get on with this?”

12. Knossos

Canterlot High was before her; Meg had made it a point to expect whatever was already there, so this wasn’t her doing. Off in the distance, over to the side, a volleyball game was in progress. One of the players had unmistakable rainbow hair.

Twilight hadn’t failed to notice. “He held nothing back, I see.”

“Yeah,” Meg replied. “Not hard to figure out who he’s with.” This intervention was overdue.

Twilight shielded her eyes with a hand and looked around. “So where do we start?”

Meg pointed at the game. “Start with Rainbow Dash?”

Twilight gulped. “Nope, not awkward at all.”

The Twilight from the future cleared her throat. “Yes. We’ll get on with this right now.” She glared at her companions. “The sooner the better.”

“Hey!” Dash protested. “I didn’t do anything!”

The Twilight of the present wondered why she’d brought them. “Why did you bring them?” Meg asked, apparently wondering the same thing.

“That will be clear in a minute,” Future Twilight said. “But first thing’s first.” Her horn lit up, then she no longer had a horn.

Twilight stared at the human now standing in front of her. Long, black hair. About the same height as Meg as a human. A skirt with her cutie mark on it. This is what I’d look like as a human? It wasn’t that different from her mirror realm form, just with proper human coloration. Assuming she wasn’t looking at a changeling. Yet she recognized the isomorphic mapping spell in action—nor was there a cascade of green fire that marked a changeling’s transformation. On second thought, it made her wonder how that mirror “knew” what that mapping spell would produce.

While this was all persuasive, it wasn’t proof.

“And back again.” The human was once more an alicorn.

Wait. How was the spell cast again? Yet it indisputably was—by an allegedly magic-less human.

A smile. “You’ll figure that out.”

Twilight groaned.

“I know. I remember groaning too. But that’s what the wave function collapse has given us.”

Twilight took a deep breath and exhaled. “Fine. Then you also remember that this demonstration, so far, falls short.”

“Indeed I do!” She addressed her friends. “It’s time. Let’s prove I still bear the Element of Magic!”

Rainbow light swirled around the six mares as the Elements within them awakened. Twilight had never observed from the outside the transformation into their Rainbow Power forms. She had to admit it was almost convincing.

“Then try to doubt this! Let’s zap her, girls!”

Twilight froze in shock. “Wait. WHAT?!”

The rainbow beam slammed into her, suffusing every cell of her being with harmonic energy. It was… pleasant, actually. Sort of relaxing. Was this what Meg had experienced? It didn’t seem like it; time still insisted on being perceived. But she was already connected to harmony, already a magical being, an Element Bearer no less.

Speaking of which… the Element of Magic within her had noticed. It was reacting, resonating—with itself!

That settled it. The being in front of her could be none other than her future self, still the bearer of the Element of Magic. She had personally witnessed her transformation into a human and back, evidentially with no harm to her Element.

The prismatic glow faded away. The six mares had reverted to their everyday, unpowered forms. “Our job here is done,” the other Twilight said, strangely lacking conviction.

“Wait!” Meg shouted, trotting over to them. “What about the anomaly? How was it fixed?”

Future Twilight scowled at the pegasus. “I thought we agreed a time loop cannot safely solve that problem for us.”

“That’s quite the assumption, darling. That it was fixed.”

“But we’re not saying it wasn’t,” Rainbow added.

Meg advanced upon them. “Yeah, yeah. Twilight coached you on what to say—and what not to say. But answer me this: What’s the point of Twilight going human if humanity was destroyed?”

That’s a good question. And obviously her future self would remember it being asked.

And her future self had an answer prepared, as if reading from a script. “You’re assuming there’d be no point to me visiting the human realm incognito prior to its destruction—assuming the anomaly did, in fact, destroy it.”

“And that point would be?” Present Twilight asked.

Meg shook her head. “No, Twilight. The point is that none of them seem terribly shook up by the hypothetical destruction of my world.”

“Maaaybe,” Pinkie countered, “it hasn’t happened yet!”

Meg gave a smile of victory. “Then you could have led with that and avoided this whole conversation.”

Pinkie replied with a sheepish grin.

Future Twilight sighed. “Yep, just as I remembered.”

Her horn lit up, and all six disappeared.

Twilight and Meg looked at each other. “I guess that means we do fix the anomaly?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah, let’s go with that.”

Princess Luna approached them. “I doubt I would have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

“I’m beyond disbelieving anything a time loop throws at me.” Twilight conjured a notepad and pen out of thin air. “Guess I’d better record what just happened.”

“So you can regurgitate it when you go back in time with the others,” Meg said.

“You got it.”

Luna tilted her head. “Then… where did those words—”

“It’d take too long to explain,” Meg said, “and it’ll only give you a headache. I guess I’ll be going. I should investigate that portal history query time out. Thanks for the talk, Luna.”

“I am glad to be of service. On your way out, please inform my staff that they may return—unless you, Twilight, wish to talk privately?”

Twilight shook her head. “No. I’ll just be by your side as you carry out the Court’s business.”

Luna looked at her like she’d sprouted a second head. Twilight realized she hadn’t the opportunity to mention why she had come. Luna returned to her throne, barely suppressing a laugh. “Try not to be bored.” She tapped her sister’s throne with a hoof. “I don’t think she’ll mind.”

Now that she thought about it, Twilight realized that there had been an absence of petitioners outside. “I guess we’ll see what happens,” she said before she ascended the stairs to the thrones.

Meg stepped through The Mirror, hardly noticing the transition from four to two legs. She walked over to the console and flicked the mouse, bringing the monitor to life. Sure enough, there was the query time out dialog box. She dismissed it.

“So what do I do now?” she muttered.

There seemed little point in running the query yet again. She could try a shorter date range, do a binary search to find out how far back they can go before molasses set in. But somehow she felt she already knew the answer.

There really was no other logical explanation. However this realm worked, it was currently modeling human computer technology. In any sane application design—and all this was based on her own expertise, presumably—that query would result in a SELECT against a table in an SQL database, a logging table to which a row is appended when a new portal is created, modified, or destroyed. She couldn’t imagine such a query taking days to run—and it certainly ought not take that long to time out!

She could spend the time trying to reverse engineer the program, maybe try attaching a debugger to it—if she even had permission to do so—but if what she suspected was correct, it’d be a waste of time. She wouldn’t be allowed to succeed.

It was time to talk to Discord.

On second thought, maybe she was overthinking it. Sure, now it was modeling human computer technology. It most certainly wasn’t when those ancient portals were open. Where was that information stored? How would it get mapped to a modern database? Could that be the problem? Maybe it wasn’t doing an SQL query at all; maybe it was executing a remote query against—well, whatever kept that ancient data.

Regardless it didn’t feel right, and she already knew that Discord could and did mess with the emulated computer. And like it or not, he was the closest thing to an expert on this realm.

It was still time to talk to Discord.

She looked at the time on the monitor, which conveniently matched Equestrian time. It was getting late.

She sighed. Tomorrow.

Luna had been quite right, as it turned out. Only one pony had sought an audience with the Princess of the Night, a mare whose filly suffered recurring nightmares. Naturally Luna offered her assurance that she would take care of it. Indeed, before midnight struck, Luna departed so that she could safeguard the dreamscape; that was something Twilight could not participate in, much less help with, so she went her separate way.

That left the rest of the night. There wasn’t much to do; pretty much everything was closed. She returned to her castle for lack of better options. There, at least, she could always catch up on her reading. But as she perused the stack of books…

No, there was something else she could do first: visit the anomaly. It was getting late, true, but not so late that no one would be around. She got a plaid pill from the dispenser and took it.

The anomaly itself wasn’t visible at night, of course—to the extent it was visible at all. Floodlights still illuminated the perimeter of tape, which had been moved back. A lot. No crowds that she could see—or hear. There. Inside the perimeter some activity. She trotted over, mindful that there could be bad actors.

It was a needless concern. Present were three humans: Martin, Steve, and Sunset Shimmer. It reminded her to give Meg more plaid pills—perhaps Sunset should get some too.

They were so focused on a device that they failed to notice her until she was practically on top of them. “Decided to drop in for a late night visit, eh?” Sunset asked, her voice raised to be heard over the ever-present wind.

“Not much else to do at night, as it turns out.” Twilight nodded at the device on a tripod. A laser beam shot out to the anomaly; it seemed to disappear inside it. “Scanning the geometry?”

“Trying to,” Martin said. “Jerry’s on the other side. Surprisingly difficult to match up the entry with the exit.”

“It doesn’t go straight through?”

“Oh, sure, if it’s aimed at the exact center. But that’s not very interesting.”

Jerry’s voice came from a phone lying on a tray below the device. “Okay. Got it positioned on the beam at this end.”

“Starting it now.” He pushed a button. Nothing obvious happened. Answering Twilight’s unspoken question, he said, “The beam is now tracing out a pattern. We’re recording how that pattern is distorted as it goes through the anomaly.”

“Thus telling us something about its geometry,” Twilight guessed.

“Correct.”

“Any conclusions yet?”

“It’s not symmetrical, we figured that much out.”

“Is that bad?”

“Don’t know.”

“I suspect it has to do with the distribution of consumed matter,” Steve said.

That seemed reasonable to Twilight. After all, they believed it was that matter that was powering the spell.

The effort continued for another two hours before they called it a night. During that time Twilight noticed the wind got a bit stronger.

She returned home and spent the remainder of the night catching up on her reading. She made a lot of progress; nopony else was around to interrupt. But all good things come to an end, and shortly after sunrise a disguised pegasus found her. “Aren’t you back rather early?” Twilight asked A. K. Yearling.

“Got too dark for filming. We spent most of the day driving around the island as Andy provided commentary on what used to be there. Samantha ate it all up, of course, peppering him with questions. I found it pretty interesting too. But maybe it was just as well you skipped it.”

Considering her reaction to Yearling’s gushing over the minutia of the Parthenon, Twilight couldn’t argue. “But you will be visiting Knossos tomorrow, right?”

“With or without you.”

“Then it will be with me,” she declared. Afterwards she could get back on Equestrian time.

Yearling turned around and departed. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

When tomorrow came, Meg took to the air, heading towards the old mine entrance. Once she reached the backside of the mountain, she decided it was as good a place as any. Still flying to the main entrance, she called out. “Discord, we need to talk!” It was unlikely to work, of course. He rarely showed up just because you called out to him.

Minutes passed by. The defunct ore processing facilities came into view. As she touched down at the mine entrance, she resigned herself to flying over to Ponyville during lunch to seek out Fluttershy.

Once inside she extracted the helmet from a saddlebag and put it on. But before she could turn on the light—

“FIRE IN THE HOLE!!”

A kaleidoscopic blinding flash!

But the exact opposite of a loud bang, like the very existence of sound itself got nullified.

Over too many seconds Meg’s sight returned, revealing a draconequus outfitted in full mining attire. “. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .” she failed to say.

“. . . .?” Discord failed to reply.

A puzzled look, then a lightbulb lit above his head. He snapped his talons. “That better?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Mining for chaos of course!” He examined the closest section of the tunnel wall—completely unaffected by the… whatever that was—and sadly shook his head. “Nothing.”

“Mining for chaos. Sure. Whatever. Could you hold off until I’m safely past? But while you’re here, mind if I ask you a question?” That’s probably why he was here, she figured; he just had to make a big production out of it.

“Walk with me.” He set out down the tunnel.

She was heading that way anyway so she followed. Every now and then he’d tap a rock with a perfectly ordinary pickaxe; each time nothing unusual happened. Eventually she took his silence as acquiescence. “Are you preventing us from accessing the portal log dating back to ancient history?”

“Yes.”

“You admit it, just like that?”

He briefly stopped to tap again, then continued. “Yes.”

“Why?”

He gave her a hurt look. “It would be terribly predictable if I didn’t give a simple, direct answer now and then.”

“No, I mean, why block access? We already know you created those portals, so what are you hiding?”

He shrugged. “Maybe I have nothing to hide. It would also be terribly predictable if I only hid something when there was something to hide.”

“So would always hiding something when there was something to hide, but I’m not aware of you ever failing to hide in that circumstance.”

“Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.” He stopped to tap again, and again the result was a perfectly ordinary tapping sound of metal against rock. He sighed, saying, “Not promising.”

“What do you want to happen?”

He looked at her in surprise. “Something chaotic, obviously!”

Meg sighed. “Obviously.” She resumed walking. “I’ll leave you to it.”

More tapping behind her, then: “Give ’em chaos tomorrow!”

Thanks for reminding me. Not that she could possibly forget her upcoming trial appearance. She continued walking. “We’ll see.” A sudden thought, and she turned around. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything about that trip into hyperspace to study the anomaly from that angle?”

“Can’t say that I have.” Another perfectly normal tap. “Nopony tells me anything.”

Meg sighed. Maybe if you weren’t so hard to get a hold of. She resumed walking.

A symphony of vuvuzelas blared behind her. “Jackpot!! Pure chaos!!”

Meg pointedly ignored it—the best she could, anyway. Eventually she was alone with the sound of her hooves. Thoughts of tomorrow’s impeachment testimony flooded in. It almost made her want the cacophony of those vuvuzelas. Almost.

She plodded along, her body on autopilot. As the locked door came into view, no insights had come to her. She wished the trial was already behind her.

Once she was on the other side, she surveyed the room. None of her co-workers were there; most were at the anomaly, she knew. Steve would be there soon himself. She thought Sunset Shimmer would be there too, but there she was, sitting in front of a computer busily typing away—with hands, no less. “Did you drive all the way back from Tracy to the portal?” Meg asked.

“Had no choice, really. Steve and I went there as humans.” Sunset rotated her seat to face Meg and lifted a familiar looking pendant that hung from around her neck. “Made one for myself. I, uh, did a quick study of yours when I borrowed it.”

Meg squeezed her own and resumed her human form. “You can do that?”

Sunset shrugged. “I wasn’t sure I could. Might’ve required alicorn-level magic, but apparently not. The pendant doesn’t actually do the transformation—”

“It just triggers the chaos magic that’s already in place, I know.” She walked over to her own workstation. “Mind creating one for Steve? If it’s not too much effort.”

“No problem, now that I’ve made one myself.”

“Speaking of chaos… I just ran into Discord in the tunnels.”

“What’s he doing there?”

No, there was no point going into details. “Being annoying, mostly, but it did remind me that he’s offered to take us to the anomaly from the hyperspace side of things. If we’re going to do that, we ought to do it soon.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that, actually.”

Not the response she’d expected. “Huh?”

“What I mean is, there’s no point, really, unless we could actually learn something, and I’m not sure what that’d be. We can’t use analytical magic on it for the same reason we can’t in your realm.”

Meg slumped. “Because it’ll fuel its growth.”

“If we can even cast magic outside the realm that’ll reach inside it.”

I bet my future self knows the answer to that. Too bad she hadn’t become her yet. “Yeah, maybe we shouldn’t rush. Who knows how the rapid expansion of space-time inside the anomaly affects adjacent hyperspace anyway?”

“Not my area of expertise, I’m afraid.”

“Nor mine.” She’d ask Steve at the next opportunity.

Sunset typed away. “But this is my area of expertise.” She finished whatever she was doing. “Just sent it to you. What you need to model that expansion spell.” She exhaled. “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“It wasn’t cast correctly. There’s an unlimited number of ways they could’ve messed it up.”

Meg opened the email from Sunset. Lots and lots of equations. “Yeah.” She scrolled down. More equations. “Let’s get started.” Anything to take her mind off of tomorrow.

Twilight found herself in a modest bedroom in Athens. The bed hadn’t been slept in, of course. “So what now?” she asked.

Yearling walked towards the door. “Join the others. They should be waiting for us.” She nodded at the door handle. “A bit awkward for hooves.”

Twilight studied it for a moment, then quickly with her magic turned the lock, turned the doorknob, and pulled the door open. No question that if pony tourism ever became a thing, humans would have to accommodate them somehow. “After you.”

The disguised pegasus went through, and Twilight followed, closing the door behind her. Yearling led her to a common area, where the others were all, indeed, waiting. “Look who’s here!” she declared.

Kyle looked up from his phone. “Excellent! Shall we be on our way?” He didn’t wait for an answer, getting up. All the others took his cue and got up too.

There wasn’t much for Twilight to do but follow them. That didn’t mean she couldn’t satisfy her curiosity along the way. “Have you heard much about the anomaly out here?”

Kyle was already at the door. “None of us read or speak Greek, so we follow the same news online we’d follow anyway.”

“I do, actually.”

“None of us except for Professor Hutchinson,” he corrected. “Did Celestia really admit that ponies were probably responsible?”

Twilight cringed. “You heard that.”

“Sure did,” Mike said.

“She had… incomplete information. I can’t say more at this time.” More like, it wouldn’t be productive here and now to say more.

“Celestia’s not omniscient. Who knew?” Andy whipped out his phone. “I’m amazed that magic can make one of these work in Equestria.”

Kyle opened the door. “Let’s get going.” He waved everyone through. “Our jet is waiting.”

Once outside, Twilight said, “It’s useful. That’s why I have my own phone with me.” Not that she was in the habit of keeping it on her in Equestria.

“Did you get a new SIM card for it?” Dominic asked.

“SIM what now?”

He shook his head. “Your phone won’t work here then.”

“It won’t?” She pulled it from her saddlebag and checked. Nope. “Ponyfeathers.”

Samantha snerked. “You actually say that.”

Twilight sighed. “Where’s the van?”

Meg started the simulation. On the monitor they watched hours of work come to fruition. The space-time grid expanded in the middle, stopping once the volume had doubled. Proper time within the region matched proper time outside it. “Looks like we modeled it.”

“Can’t disagree,” Sunset said. “That’s how the spell ought to behave when cast correctly.” She stepped back. “I’m afraid that’s all I can assist with. I think I should help out at the anomaly now.”

Meg didn’t know what more she herself could do either, in the absence of additional data. “Sure. Go ahead.”

It wasn’t long before she had only her thoughts to keep her company.

Three red intact columns, holding up a small piece of intact stone… ceiling? Twilight wasn’t sure what to call it. An outdoor corridor? Two broken columns, still freshly painted red, continued off to the side. Behind the columns was a stone wall with a mural painted on it; it looked like it could’ve been painted yesterday. All around it were ruins.

Andy pondered what he saw. “Not exactly as I remember it.”

“I’m assuming this bit here has been restored,” Yearling said.

Samantha adopted her lecturing voice for the camera. “This is a restoration, of course. Arthur Evans, who excavated this site a century ago, did extensive restorations, many that have been criticized as inaccurate, some even that had led to further damage.”

“I’ll reserve judgement for now,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “To be fair, I have no idea how long our palace was occupied, what changes had been made by generations after mine.”

“It was destroyed and abandoned around thirteen seventy-five B.C.E.; that much we know—that’s about three thousand four hundred years ago. We also know the Mycenaeans had been using it by that time for the better part of a century.”

Andy snorted. “Surely you’re joking.”

“I’m… afraid not. They invaded this island and destroyed every other palace around fourteen fifty B.C.E. Perhaps the earlier eruption of Santorini presented them with the opportunity; it’s hard to say.”

His eyes were locked on that mural. “Our great empire—the work of my father, who ushered in an age of prosperity by wiping out piracy in the Aegean—destroyed by nobodies.”

Samantha opened her mouth, then thought better of it. She said instead, “At least this narrows down when you disappeared. It had to be before fourteen fifty, but after sixteen hundred B.C.E., as that was when Mycenae got started—so far as we know, of course.”

He sighed and redirected his gaze to the professor. “I can narrow that down further, assuming my understanding of when Mycenae formed is the same as yours. I would say not long before fifteen hundred, possibly a bit after.”

Yearling stepped closer to the pair. “Then the invasion could well have happened in your lifetime, had you lived out your life here.”

He looked down, clenching his fists. A deep breath later and he forced himself to relax. “I would’ve been a decrepit old man,” he told himself, “useless.” He looked up and scanned the fallen stone walls. “And even if we had won then, would this palace be in any better shape today?”

It was a rhetorical question none dared answer. Twilight wanted to move on to the subject of the minotaur, but… now… did not seem the time to do that.

“Here ya go, dearie.” A cinnamon and daisy swirl vanilla shake was deposited in front of Meg. It’d seemed silly flying all the way to Ponyville to get one, but it’d been a while since she last had one. Besides, it didn’t seem so far to fly anymore. All that flight training was paying off.

“Thanks, Mrs. Cake.” She was the only customer in Sugarcube Corner this late at night, and that suited her just fine. Even Pinkie wasn’t around. As she sucked in the creamy goodness, the door opened.

Of course it couldn’t last; maybe she should’ve taken it to go. Too late now. Trixie had spotted her and was making a beeline towards her. Now what could she want?

The Naked and Unadorned Trixie took a cushion on the opposite side of the table. “Just the pony I needed to see.”

Well, at least she wasn’t in her stage persona. “What can I do for you?” Meg asked around the straw.

“I’m assuming there won’t be any engagements in the human realm in the foreseeable future?”

“’Fraid not. Got a world-ending catastrophe going on right now.”

The unicorn cocked her head. “You mean like last Tuesday here in Ponyville?”

“Was there?” Meg shook her head. “Sure. Of course there was. Sorry, but I spend most of my time in Canterlot these days.” She sighed. “Look, humans aren’t use to that, and even once that’s taken care of, I just don’t know when you could perform there. Things are sorta also messed up in other ways.”

Trixie got up. “I’ve already decided to go back to Las Pegasus. I appreciate the help and all, but I need to earn a living.”

Well, that was easy. “You can’t wait forever, I understand. If the situation changes, I’ll send word to you.”

“That’s all I can ask.” The showmare departed.

Meg nursed her shake. There was only one way to change that situation, and her appearance tomorrow in front of the Judiciary Committee was the way to do it. Somehow.

13. Into the Labyrinth

“I guess that’s it.” It’s where Rainbow Dash had sent them. Meg started walking toward the middle of a strip mall, where an ironically bucolic sign proclaimed the presence of a petting zoo.

“A petting zoo,” Twilight said as she followed her. “But I guess it makes sense we’d find Fluttershy here.”

“It makes perfect sense.” Meg reached the door. “Not so sure about the indoors part, but maybe farms or zoos don’t exist in this place.” She paused before opening it. “Or maybe it’s Discord being Discord.” She thought it over. “Nah, not chaotic enough.”

Inside, the decor resembled the interior of a barn. The straw-covered floor bore numerous randomly scattered pens. Most held smallish animals like rabbits or hamsters. The biggest creatures were goats—no, wait, were those Shetland ponies?

Never mind that, over there was this realm’s version of Fluttershy, who was combing down one of the perfectly plain ponies. Meg couldn’t decide if that was ironic or not. The pink-haired girl turned to look at the new arrivals and gasped. “Princess Twilight! It’s been so long. What brings you here?” Concern crossed her face. “Nothing bad I hope.”

Andy sneered. “This is no throne room.”

It looked heavily restored to Twilight. The walls were painted red, with yellowish depictions of flowering plants and strange animals—they vaguely reminded her of griffons. The throne itself was a smallish block of stone, carved with simple shapes, and on top a thin stone seat-back against the wall. The seat-back had an odd wavy outline. It seemed… undersized for a monarch.

“You wouldn’t know of this,” Samantha said. “It was made by the Mycenaeans after they took over, and of course it had been heavily restored by Evans.”

“But this is where the minotaur was kept?” Yearling asked.

Andy wandered about the room. “Yes. Not in some labyrinth. And we certainly didn’t demand tribute from Athens to feed him. You know as well as I do that a minotaur, no more than a pony, would eat a human.”

“So how was the minotaur treated?” Twilight pointedly asked.

“He was well-fed and looked after, of course, like any animal in a zoo. We were aware he was an intelligent creature, but that mattered little.” Twilight opened her mouth but Andy speared her with his eyes. “I know what you’re going to say, so don’t bother. Humans were enslaved back then too.”

Twilight glanced at the camera and decided this wasn’t the time or the place.

“Could you talk to him?” Yearling asked.

“Poorly. By the time I’d left, he had learned no more than a few dozen words.”

By the time I’d left. The implication was obvious. “You don’t know what ultimately happened to him.”

“How could I? All I can know for sure is that he never returned through the portal.”

And history did not record the minotaur’s fate. Oh sure, there was that myth, but if he hadn’t been kept in a labyrinth and fed with tributes, then the rest of it wasn’t true either. Like it or not, unless some Linear A tablet was found that revealed all, they may never know.

Unless…

Time travel that far back was not possible—but what if it became possible? Then they could observe what truly happened. No. Better. They could rescue him! You can’t alter history when no history had survived. The only question was whether to return him to his own time and place, or bring him to the present. Undoubtably the former would be best, and they could do it too because that part of Equestrian history had also been lost. Probably. Hopefully.

But first things first. Like Meg’s upcoming Senate testimony. Fortunately, that would take place during the night here so she could hop back and watch it.

“Are we done here?” Kyle asked. “The Grand Staircase is next.”

“Where did you get that dress!” “What do you think about Andy’s trip to Greece!” “Why are you a pony!” “Is Celestia behind the anomaly!” “How do you feel about the leash!” “Is Serrell conspiring with Celestia!” “Why are you wearing anything!”

Meg steadfastly ignored the media mob as she was led by leash to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. If her FBI entourage had any saving grace, it was that they prevented the media from mobbing her.

Shouldn’t there have been more questions about the anomaly? Meg saw the pictures taken at dawn. The old permitter was gone, and so were bits of the surrounding buildings, not having been designed to withstand hurricane force winds. By nightfall, at this rate, those buildings will be partially inside the anomaly, and by tomorrow morning they’d be completely engulfed.

They finally reached room 226. Fortunately, that media didn’t follow inside; they didn’t have to, for others were already there. Who knew how many dozens of photos were taken of her as she followed her leash to a seat up front. The twenty-two members of the committee were already present. Senate Routledge waited for her to be seated, like a mythological minotaur eyeing its next meal.

Meg sat as best she could, careful not to wrinkle her dress. The other end of her chain-link leash was tied to a massive block of metal that had been placed next to the chair. She took comfort in that it could not stop her from returning to Equestria.

Her entrance had caused a bit of a stir. Virtually no one, apparently—not the privileged attendees in the galley, those in the media pool, or the members of the committee itself—had ever seen a pony in the flesh. She wondered how many of them hadn’t really believed in the existence of ponies, how many had expected her to show up as a human.

Senator Routledge, of course, was one of the exceptions. “State your full name for the record.”

Meg adjusted the microphone with a hoof. “Meg Coleman.”

“Your testimony is under oath, Ms. Coleman. Please stand and raise your… just raise your right hoof.”

Meg did so.

“Do you swear that your testimony provided here today will be the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”

“I do.”

“Thank you. You may lower your hoof. Let the record reflect that the witness has been sworn. Ms. Coleman, if you have an opening statement, now is the time.”

“I object to being chained like a dangerous animal. That is all.”

“You chose to appear before us as an animal; you can’t very well be handcuffed. And—need I remind you?—once your testimony here is concluded, you shall be handed over to the FBI.”

Surely he couldn’t believe that, could he? Even if he was just saying it for the cameras, how would it look when she simply disappeared? I’ll play along for now. If he actually did believe it, better to let him think he had the upper hand.

“Why are you here as a pony? Did you have a choice?”

“Of course I had a choice.”

“Could you choose to be a human right this second?”

“Not right this second, because the conservation laws of this universe prevent that sort of magic from working here. I’d have to return to Equestria first.”

A thin smile. “I don’t think so.”

She shrugged. “Then you’ll just have to take my word for it.”

“So why are you here as a pony?”

So you can’t capture me. Naturally she wasn’t going to say that. Instead she said, “I’m species-fluid; I don’t identify as a specific species.”

“I don’t find that amusing.”

“It wasn’t a joke.”

“I, for one,” spoke up a different senator, “don’t have a problem with that. And I assume that stunning dress would not fit you as a human.” This senator was one of the friendly ones, an ally of Serrell.

“It’s a Rarity original, and no it would not.”

Routledge recovered quickly from his initial annoyance at the interruption. “Yes, let’s talk about your attire. I imagine a—what did you call it?—a ‘Rarity original’ would not come cheap.”

Maybe wearing that dress hadn’t been the best idea. “I would imagine not.”

“How much did you pay for it?”

Definitely did not like where this was going. “It was a gift.”

“A gift. Nothing of value expected in return?”

“No.”

“Not even, say, putting her creations on display in front of our world, here and now, to potentially expand her business to humans?”

“This dress was made for me nearly a year ago, so—no.”

“Surely there must have been some reason for this dress to be made. Ponies are not big fans of clothing, I hear.”

“Rarity wouldn’t have much of a business if that were true.”

“Touché,” he said. “I’m still waiting for that reason.”

“I needed proper attire to attend the Grand Galloping Gala, if you must know.”

A smile of victory. “Oh, we do, I can assure you. You must have met many rich and powerful ponies at this gala, correct?”

“Among other things.”

“Other ‘things?’”

“Discord was an invitee. He brought his own… plus one. Do I need to say more?”

“On that subject, no,” he said, waving it away. “I’m more interested in the ponies in attendance. Were the princesses present?”

Meg saw an opportunity to get a jab in of her own. “There were important griffons and minotaurs present too, one of whom later visited the White House. They may get hold of a transcript of this hearing.”

“We’ll get to the White House in due time. For now, answer the question: were the princesses present?”

“All the princesses were present.”

“Did you meet them?”

There was little point in denying it; fortunately, her defense team had prepared her on how to handle this. “Yes, I met them. I also met Discord and… survived the experience.”

“Survived?”

“He took me to the Everfree Forest next to a pack of timberwolves so we could have a private conversation. Yeah, I know how that sounds, but I was never in any danger. It’s just how he works. You get used to it.”

“I don’t see why you should have to, why anyone should have to.”

Meg shrugged. “Then stay out of Equestria.”

“No argument from me. You mentioned having a private conversation. What could you possibly have to discuss with the Spirit of Chaos?”

Of course he would take that bait. “Something concerning The Smooze—that was his plus one.” And now the magic words: “I don’t recollect anything more.” Didn’t matter if it was a total lie. It was the one lie that did not count as perjury.

“Did you meet Smooze too?”

So predictable. “Oh, yes. Not a bad guy. Not evil, just misunderstood.”

“Can he exist in our world? I most certainly hope not, for all our sakes.”

And now for the payoff. “I don’t believe so, which is a shame if you ask me. He’d happily devour all our toxic wastes.” Not that anything stopped those wastes from being transported to Equestria for his consumption.

“Yes, I’m sure—along with everything else.”

“No. He wouldn’t. He’d only consume what we ask him to consume. I can say that because I know Smooze personally.”

“Let’s get back to the princesses. That would include Princess Celestia, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you discuss with her.”

The magic words never wore out. “I don’t recall.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“There was a long line waiting to pay their respects. What do you imagine I’d discuss under those conditions? Certainly nothing rememberable.” The truth was that she hadn’t discussed anything with Celestia at the Gala, but better to imply that she had than to invite questions as to what other opportunities she might have had.

“What about Princess Twilight Sparkle? You’ve had frequent contact with her, have you not?”

She could hardly deny that! “Yes.”

“And Twilight has the ear of Princess Celestia, does she not?”

“If by that you are asking whether I use Twilight to influence Celestia, the answer is no.” Because as a Royal Advisor to the Court, of course, Meg already had direct access to Celestia—but she would avoid mentioning that at all costs!

“What do you know about the kidnapping of five Americans, including a co-worker of yours.”

Going down that road now, eh? “I wasn’t present.”

“The ones kidnapped say otherwise. You had a role in that.”

“I’m aware of that. Doesn’t make it true. There are plenty of witnesses who can vouch for my presence in Las Pegasus at that time.”

“Would these witnesses all happen to be ponies?”

“The five in question also saw me in Equestria.”

“Which means you saw them while you were in Equestria.”

“That is correct.”

“Why don’t you inform us of the circumstances of this meeting.”

Meg was half-tempted to reply “I don’t recall,” but decided it was more helpful to Serrell to give an actual answer. “I was on vacation, staying at the Planet Do hotel/casino in Las Pegasus, when suddenly, thanks to Discord, I found myself in Celestia’s throne room—though I must add he was acting at Celestia’s request.

“The five prisoners were present. They had my key card, which granted access to restricted parts of my workplace. That’s why I was summoned, to verify that it was my key card. I was told they claimed to have taken it from me when they’d kidnapped me from my office. They were rather insistent about it, actually. Anyway, in the throne room they claimed that I must have been a changeling or something because the ‘real me’ was in their captivity.

“They proclaimed that the me they had supposedly kidnapped would not be released unless and until they themselves were returned home. After that, Discord sent me back to my hotel room.”

Routledge digested that for a second. “That’s quite a tale you spin. The five tell a different story.”

“They forgot to mention the ‘kidnapping me’ bit, I bet. Will they be testifying here under oath?”

He pointedly ignored the question. “So who do you think they supposedly kidnapped instead of you? A changeling?”

“Funny enough, Discord suggested that very possibility to them. They refused to believe it.”

“Did you see the prisoners again?”

“I saw Eric Tanner during his stay in Tartarus.”

“In the same cell block as Tirek?”

Andy had already stated that publicly. “Yes.”

“Who else was with you?”

“I don’t recall.”

“Perhaps this will jog your memory. Were you accompanied by two Secret Service Agents?”

It wasn’t hard to guess from whom he’d learned that. Meg noted that Eric’s sister had not been mentioned. “I can’t rule that out.”

“Was Serrell aware these citizens had been thrown into Tartarus?”

“I can’t read his mind.”

“You have met the president, correct?”

“That is correct.”

“You do seem to have the knack for meeting powerful people—and ponies.”

“I even met you once, outside the Gates of Tartarus.”

“Indeed. You do seem to get around. While in the president’s presence, has the topic of these five ever come up?”

“Not that I recall.”

His eyes bored into hers. “Did you help Serrell form his smear campaign against me?”

That came out of left field. Meg’s eyes bored back. “I am not aware of any ‘smear’ campaign.”

“Must I stir you memory? I’m referring, of course, to the debunked kidnapping of your niece that I’m supposedly a part of.”

“The video evidence—”

“Fakes, sophisticated fakes to be sure, but fakes, as conclusively proven. You’re good with computers, are you not? Did you create them?”

“I took all the video myself with my phone, yes.”

Murmurs from the gallery.

The senator threw her a patronizing smile. “So you expect us to believe you witnessed all that using a drone, and not one of the alleged culprits noticed the drone following them? They’re quite noisy, you know.”

Meg extended her wings for a few seconds. “I don’t need a drone.”

Conversations erupted in the galley. Routledge glared at its occupants. “Quiet please!” Silence fell. Focusing again on the pegasus, he continued. “You’re hardly helping your case. You’d have us believe you witnessed the kidnapping of your niece—that you just happened to be present for—and you did nothing to stop it?”

Serrell had made it absolutely clear: there was to be no mention of time travel.

“I remind you that you are under oath.”

After a few more seconds, Meg admitted, “It wasn’t possible to stop it.”

“I find that hard to believe. All you had to do, if that video is to be believed, which it isn’t of course, was to keep your niece home from school that day.”

It was beginning to sink in: He was going to get away with this. “That wasn’t an option,” she forced out.

Almost mocking, he added, “Perhaps you could have asked Twilight to help you. No doubt a powerful alicorn like her could have taken care of those evil kidnappers without breaking a sweat.”

That’s how we got Susie back! Those were the words Meg so wanted to say, but Twilight’s involvement had been and was to remain out of the public record. All she could say was, “That wasn’t an option to prevent the kidnapping either.”

“No, I suppose it wouldn’t be. It would get in the way of orchestrating the kidnapping of your own niece.” He stared at her, daring her to contradict him.

Doing so would get her nowhere, she realized. All of the people caught red-handed by the video she took had denied any involvement, claimed the video was fake. An excellent fake, to be sure, but within the means of the Serrell Administration. The only flaw in that narrative was the absence of leaks from the alleged perpetrators of the fake. It was an easily overlooked flaw. That her brother and his family had been hiding away in Equestria, inaccessible to the media, may in hindsight had been a mistake.

He’s really going to get away with this. The only reason she wasn’t going to rot in a jail cell for the rest of her life was because she could return to Equestria at any time.

There was nothing she could say that he couldn’t counter; it was her word against his, and that was a losing game. She might as well get it over with and leave now. At least that would cause some chaos.

Chaos.

Maybe Discord was right. Say something so unexpected that Routledge wouldn’t know how to respond. But what could she say that she wasn’t forbidden from saying?

But what could Serrell do about it? He could no more touch her in Equestria than could Routledge. She had no life in the human world anyway unless Routledge went down.

And Routledge had to be ultimately responsible for the anomaly—not that she could prove it.

And Serrell always did talk about “shaking the box.”

Well, Discord would approve.

“There was no option because the past cannot be changed.”

The senator blinked a few times. “Excuse me?”

“I didn’t stumble upon the kidnapping in progress. After it happened, I went back in time to observe and record it.” There was no need to mention Twilight or Rainbow Dash. “Believe me, I would have prevented it if I could, but the past is immutable. Even so, having observed the boat my niece was transferred to, it was simple enough to return to the present and have the Coast Guard intercept it.” Meg smiled. “Which they did.” And because of Twilight’s involvement, that had been kept out of the news.

Routledge almost lost his composure right there. “You expect me to believe this load of garbage? I remind you you are under oath.”

“And I remind you of season two, episode twenty: It’s About Time. Oh yes, time travel is quite real—and that’s with Star Swirl the Bearded not having a clue about relativity and quantum mechanics.” Meg paused for effect. ”Twilight has more than a clue.”

The senator fumed for perhaps a little too long before replying. “An interesting story. Care to offer proof?”

Meg gave it a moment’s thought. “Have my future self pop in here?” Maybe she could pop in from the future, but she didn’t know it would work. And it probably wouldn’t matter anyway. “No, you’d just claim the me-from-the-future was really a changeling or something. And in any case,” she concluded with a smile, “if I’m going straight to jail after this, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to take another trip through time.”

“I can assure you that is precisely where you are going. You shall pay for your involvement in the conspiracy to kidnap those five individuals. Not even magic will save you.”

That was an odd claim. Meg checked the status of her magic bubble. It was active. Nothing stopped her from invoking the return spell, or even just going invisible—though that wouldn’t free her from the leash. Well, it shouldn’t free her. “Senator, I personally know the foremost experts in magic. You are no expert, even if your goons—excuse me, those individuals—did ransack my office at the Department of Energy.”

“That will be quite enough—”

“Wait. They didn’t just ransack my office. They also claimed to have kidnapped me. I-I understand now.” She remembered what her future self had told her. For some reason Routledge was letting her speak; Meg could only assume he was more interested in her newfound understanding. “They kidnapped my future self,” she continued, and smiled at him. “They couldn’t keep her—that is, me—in captivity, could they?”

Half the people in the room stared at her as if she were an escapee from an asylum. “If you’re aiming for the insanity defense, Ms. Coleman, you’re making an excellent start.”

A thought came to her. She wondered why it hadn’t occurred to her before, hadn’t occurred to anyone. “Maybe I should take another trip into the past, find out how the anomaly in Tracy got started. Can’t prevent it, unfortunately, but it would sure help Twilight if she knew precisely which spell was involved and how its casting was botched.” She calmly looked at the senator. “You wouldn’t be concerned about what might be discovered, would you?”

A forced smile. “As you yourself said, being in jail deprives you of the opportunity to time travel.”

Meg smiled right back at him. “I said ‘if.’”

She invoked the return spell.

Twilight’s private residence appeared around her. There was the screen, showing a live feed of the room she had just left. Pandemonium had erupted. Twilight and Celestia gaped disbelieving at what they had just witnessed; Meg had little doubt certain humans were doing likewise.

Discord appeared before her, clapping. “Masterful, just masterful! I don’t think I could’ve done a better job myself. Just look at them!”

The two alicorns turned back to look at them. “I do not believe you followed the plan,” Celestia said, “based on what Luna had told me.”

Twilight was more blunt. “Serrell won’t like this. I’m not sure I do.”

Meg doubted all of Twilight’s grumpiness was due to sleep deprivation. “I know. I just couldn’t help it, once it became clear Routledge was going to get away with it.” Meg looked at Discord’s approving smile. “So some advice I received suddenly seemed like a very good idea. Besides, he was so damn smug about me not having any means of escape.”

“I see,” Celestia said.

Her mentor’s nonchalance caught Twilight off guard. “I’m not sure I do.”

“Look, I can go back, I’ve made my point. Let’s just settle one thing, right now, before I do: Shall we time travel to witness the creation of the anomaly?”

Twilight sighed. “It certainly couldn’t hurt.”

Meg turned to Discord. “A plaid pill would be convenient right now.”

The draconequus snapped his talons and one appeared in front of her—and a bowl of popcorn in front of himself. “I can’t wait to see what happens next!”

“How about a bowl for each of us too?” Meg heard Celestia asked just before she swallowed the pill.

She returned to the chair she had left a minute ago. The leash remained on the floor. How long would it be before they noticed her return? She decided to get things moving. “I believe I’ve made my point!”

Security rushed back to her, of course. One of them picked up the leash.

“That stays off, or I’ll depart and this time I won’t come back.”

The officer paused for a second, then dropped it.

Senator Routledge had retaken his seat. “You will show this committee the respect it deserves.”

Meg was not about to let herself be intimidated, not now. “You claimed magic could not save me. I merely provided testimony that that was not the case. You wouldn’t wish me to commit perjury, would you?”

To his credit, he didn’t blather about how she would be taken into custody anyway. “Where did you go?” he demanded.

“I just had a quick chat with Twilight.” Countless photos were snapped. “Looks like we’ll be taking that little trip back in time to observe the creation of the anomaly. We will share our findings, of course.” Did the blood just drain from his face, or was it her imagination? “Oh, and I saw Discord too. He heartily approves of the chaos my, er, ‘testimony’ caused, for what it’s worth.”

“You didn’t answer the question. Where did you have this ‘quick chat’ with Twilight?”

Meg got the impression he was stalling. “Ponyville.”

“And that’s where you also saw Discord, who somehow is watching these proceedings?”

“He was watching C-SPAN with Twilight.” It felt best to leave out the other princess who was present.

In a voice dripping with disbelief, he said, “You can get C-SPAN in Ponyville.”

“Magic.”

“Right. Magic.” He folded his hands on the table. “Getting back to that ‘little trip back in time,’ I would insist on the participation of one or more individuals of this committee’s choosing.”

That’s what he was stalling for, to come up with that. She had to admit it was an excellent counter. Yet could he do that? It didn’t matter; she could hardly refuse with the whole country watching, possibly the entire world. Maybe Serrell would have something to say on the matter, but that was later, not now. Even passing the buck to Twilight was not the best idea, as she would have the same problem.

But was it even possible? Any humans who came along would not—could not—be invisible, for they couldn’t take a plaid pill. That made it difficult for them to be pure observers, and that was essential for avoiding paradoxes. It was quite possible that their very presence would prevent the time travel spell from working.

And should that happen, there was no way in hell they’d believe that explanation. And that’s assuming they intended to be pure observers. As whoever Routledge picked would presumably know how the anomaly originated, that seemed unlikely—though what intentions could they have?

“Is there a problem with my request?”

“No,” Meg blurted. “I mean, it’s not up to me.”

“Who is it up to?”

“Twilight.”

“Would she be concerned that ‘the findings’ would implicate the president?”

“You’d have to ask her that.”

“Would you be concerned?”

“I don’t see why I should be.”

“The president is on trial for conspiring with Equestria to our detriment. We have Celestia’s own words that a pony had likely caused the anomaly; it is undisputed that magic was involved, magic that Serrell welcomes with open arms.”

To Meg’s surprise, Celestia’s words were also her best defense. “Her own words also show she doesn’t know how it was caused. She is not responsible for it, nor does she know who is responsible. Yes, magic was involved, but the fault lies with the ones who used it, not magic itself. If magic must be banned because it could be misused, so must most human technologies.”

“She could be lying to protect herself.”

“None of us knew our conversation was being captured by the media.”

“Which doesn’t prove she wasn’t lying to you, possibly even to Twilight.”

“You have no proof that she was lying. Even if, for the sake of argument, you are right, what possible reason would Serrell have to conspire with Celestia to literally destroy our world?”

“None whatsoever. That is not what he’s on trial for. I remind you that the House passed the Articles of Impeachment prior to the existence of the anomaly. Nonetheless, his collusion with Equestria on other matters undoubtably made this situation possible.”

And in a twisted sort of way, he wasn’t wrong. If Serrell hadn’t been open to exploring the benefits of magic for humanity, none of this would be happening. But that just begged the question of who was at fault.

There was only one way to find out for sure.

14. The Un-Redacted Truth

“You needn’t concern yourself, my dearest Fluttershy.” Discord, his usual draconequus self, entered from a back room. “Why don’t you visit your other friends?”

Fluttershy hand paused in the middle of a stroke. “Is everything all right?”

Discord’s gaze fell upon Meg and Twilight. “They undoubtably feel otherwise,” he quietly said. “Please let us talk in private.”

Fluttershy completed the stroke and stood up. “Okay.” She gave the pony a pat on the head and departed, Discord’s eyes never deviating from her until she left the building.

“I know what you’re going to say.” It was barely a whisper.

Twilight sighed. “She wouldn’t want this. She made her decision.”

“We’ve all lost loved ones,” Meg added. “This…” She waved her hands around. “This isn’t healthy.”

He turned away. “I know.”

Twilight put a hand on his shoulder. “Equestria needs you.” He looked back at her. “You can’t stay here forever.”

Discord threw up his arms and howled in agony. Everything dissolved around them, revealing a black void with an infinite grid for a floor. It reminded Meg of a Star Trek holodeck.

That out of his system, he slumped. Lethargically he turned to face them. He studied them, as if seeing them for the first time.

Meg stared back at him. “What.”

“You are old enough.” It wasn’t a question.

“Huh?” Meg replied. “What does that mean?”

He sighed. “It means it is finally time.”

Twilight tilted her head. “Time for what?”

“The un-redacted truth. Ask your questions.”

President Serrell stormed back and forth across the Oval Office. “And it’s not just the media. Russia and China are both demanding representation.” He threw up his hands. “To make sure we don’t take advantage of being in the past to harm them somehow, or so they say.”

He stopped in front of a cringing Meg. “That’s why mentioning time travel was off limits.”

There was no point repeating her justification. It hadn’t worked anyway. A flying pegasus may be quieter than a drone, but not a single person noticing her? It’s not like phones had extreme telephoto lenses; she hadn’t been, couldn’t have been, far from them. It just reinforced the faked video narrative.

There was a reason for not being noticed, of course—the invisibility feature of the magic bubbles—but she hadn’t mentioned that and for good reason. Everybody was freaking out enough as it was over time travel.

“Don’t they understand that the past is immutable?” Twilight asked.

Serrell swung around to the alicorn. “Do they? I’m sure they heard the words, but I’m not sure they processed them. You won’t believe the number of people demanding to know why we haven’t yet killed Hitler as a baby, and an equal number saying that obviously we must have, but all it did was create an alternate time line.”

“Kill what now?!”

Serrell waved it off. “Doesn’t matter, it needn’t concern you. The point is you will have a lot of passengers.”

Twilight grimaced. “Will you want a representative as well?”

“Yes. If only to keep an eye on the Russian and Chinese representatives.” He sighed. “And especially Routledge’s.”

“I’m not worried about them messing with the past,” Twilight said. “I’m worried that their intentions to mess with the past will cause the time travel spell to fail. I’m sure they’d blame me for that.”

Serrell paced back and forth once more before responding. “I guess we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Or… the spell doesn’t fail.” All looked at Meg. “Predestination paradoxes are not prohibited; I-I know that from personal experience. We shouldn’t assume they are unaware of that—actually, they may already know because they did pull it off. They’re just completing the time loop.”

He exhaled, rubbing his eyes. “Is there anyway to know that has happened? Or better yet prevent it from happening?”

Meg and Twilight looked at each other, the latter answering. “Not that I know of. I mean, in theory we could go back in time first to observe what they do when we bring them back later, but that… makes me uneasy just thinking about it.”

“Better to do it after we bring them back,” Meg said. “Less potential for paradox, and it isn’t as if we can prevent it anyway if it did—does—happen.”

The president stared at the ponies, open mouthed. “Aren’t you worried about meeting yourselves?”

Meg shrugged. “Been there, done that. Both of us.”

“Twice, in my case.”

“O-kaaay.”

“Maybe we should plan on going back twice,” Twilight said. “Even if all the others are well-behaved, their presence will still distract me from analyzing that spell, if only by preventing me from getting up close and personal while being invisible.”

“You don’t want to be anywhere near them when they do cast that spell,” Meg said. “I doubt there’s any defensive spell you could cast that’d protect you.”

Twilight looked up in thought. “No, you’re right. I could possibly neutralize their botched spell, or even correct it, but that’d be changing the past.” She thought some more. “They must be using technology to use magic. Hopefully it’d be sufficient to study whatever machine they’re using, what spell that machine has been set to cast.”

“I should come along,” Meg said. “I’m best qualified to handle the computers—and I know I won’t be killed by being there when that spell gets cast.”

Twilight smiled at her. “Neither shall I, so long as I don’t complete my latest time loop.”

“Good point.”

Serrell shook his head. “Okay, okay, I’ve heard enough. Just do what you think needs to be done. I’ll take care of the passenger list—and remember that nothing would stop them from being killed when that spell is cast.”

“Don’t get us wrong,” Twilight said. “It’d kill us too. It’s just that it’s guaranteed we won’t be near it when it does get cast.”

“Fine, fine. Point still stands.”

“And point taken.”

“Now,” Serrell said, with far less energy than before, “about the anomaly. It grew about a thousand feet in the last twenty-four hours. We need progress.”

“We’re working on it the fastest we can,” Twilight said.

The president was not impressed. “It’s on the verge of taking out the two-oh-five. The winds have already forced us to close it down.”

Meg couldn’t blame him for being demanding. Shutting down a major interstate highway, never mind having it destroyed, was intolerable. “We’re doing all we can. What more can we say?”

He sighed, but said nothing more.

“So… are we done here?”

“No.” Serrell locked eyes with Meg. “There’s still the matter of your disappearance during your testimony.”

Oh crap. It had been too good to be true. Of course he was going to bring that up.

“There’s a huge difference between mysteriously disappearing from a jail cell and disappearing from a Senate committee hearing on live television!”

Meg had difficulty swallowing. She wanted to vanish right then and there.

“Now I’ll confess I got a kick out of seeing the senator get flummoxed by your little stunt.” He paused for a second. “But you just showed that magic-wielding Equestrians cannot be held accountable for their actions. Catch one that committed a crime? Poof and they’re gone.” He turned around and returned to his desk. “You just made Routledge’s case for him.”

“How could I’ve been so stupid.” Meg scrolled through the headlines on her phone. Serrell had been right. Even the articles that gave her the benefit of the doubt—and there weren’t many of those—still agreed that magic permitted ponies to get away with literal murder if they were so inclined. And what would happen when humans got access to magic?

Then there were the articles that did not give her the benefit of the doubt. Obviously her story was a lie, a transparent lie that the good senator handily shredded. Equestria should be pressured to hand Meg over, as a magic-less human naturally.

And still there were those who insisted the whole thing was a massive con job. Just how stupid did Hasbro think everyone was? Obviously Routledge and the others were on the take; they had to be to pretend there was an actual, not-CGI pony in that chamber.

And, of course, the anomaly. It was growing exponentially. In about a month it would be as large as the entire Earth. The assurances that it was “being dealt with” had begun to sound hollow. But not to worry, asserted some: It was obviously a cover story for some secret military project gone horribly wrong. A catastrophe, sure, but hardly world ending. Whatever. Some people still believed the Earth was flat.

Chaos had backfired on her.

She put the phone down. But what else would have worked? Not even in hindsight did she have a clue.

Steve put a hand on her shoulder. “Wait until we witness the genesis of the anomaly before passing judgment on yourself.”

She grabbed his hand with her own. Perhaps he had a point. If not for the chaos, would she have thought outside the box and come up with that? Well, no, because time travel was a verboten subject.

Tomorrow was another day. It was just as well she’d be spending this night as a human. If she were to suffer a nightmare, she’d rather suffer it in private.

The intact warehouse was before her. Twilight flew over to an adjacent building, behind the warehouse where it won’t witness their future selves out front. There, she magically glued a camcorder plus a small magic generator, to the wall just below the roof, and aimed it at the doomed warehouse. She then moved forward one day. The warehouse had imploded, and as she hoped the camcorder was still there. It should have caught the precise moment the spell had been cast.

Meg took the camcorder from Twilight’s magical grasp and plugged in an HDMI cable. After placing the device on the desk, she plugged the other end into her workstation’s monitor.

“It’s already positioned,” Twilight stated.

Meg started the playback as Steve and Sunset Shimmer took up position on either side of her. The side of a warehouse in the fading light of the setting sun appeared. Nothing was happening. It was on par with watching paint dry.

The large roll-up doors along the loading dock all spasmed inward—and remained there, obviously fighting a pressure differential that would only increase.

“That,” Twilight said, “is when the spell was cast. At around seven twenty-six in the evening. Seven seconds after that, to be precise.”

They continued watching. After a few more minutes more damage became visible, when the top of the wall broke off and fell towards the interior.

“We don’t have a view of the roof, but it’s safe to say it collapsed prior to this point.” Twilight stopped the playback. “It ran out of storage before capturing anything else worth seeing.”

Sunset started to pace around the cavern. “So what do we do next? There doesn’t seem much to be learned from observing outside of that building, but neither does it seem healthy to be inside it.”

“It’s perfectly safe being inside it,” Meg said, “so long as we’re out of there before seven twenty-six and seven seconds.”

“Right,” Twilight said. “We give ourselves enough time to study the means by which they cast that spell.”

“That still leaves the question of our ‘passengers,’” Meg said.

“Yeah. I know. I don’t see how we can let them go inside. They’ll be seen.”

“Which will prevent us from studying what they got,” Sunset said.

Thoughts of Trixie came to Meg. “Hold on…” Why had that crossed her mind? Surely that performer would be of no use in this situation! But Trixie was an illusionist, and one of the key tricks employed by illusionists was… “Misdirection.”

“Misdirection?” Sunset asked.

“Misdirection,” Meg repeated. “What if we claim we can analyze that spell from outside the building. Our passengers will witness the implosion, we will report what we ‘discovered’—don’t bother asking how because, you know, magic—and we’ll return to the present. Everyone’s happy.”

Twilight tilted her head. “But how can we report… right. Because we’ll make a separate trip where we actually analyze what they did.”

“And because we’ll be inside for that trip,” Sunset concluded, “we won’t cross paths with our future selves in the subsequent trip. What can go wrong?”

She had to utter those words. Meg sighed as she unplugged the cable. And, of course, on second thought several problems came to mind. “What can go wrong is that nothing we ‘officially’ discover can tie it back to Routledge. That sort of evidence would be inside the building, where we ‘officially’ did not go.”

“We would still ‘officially’ learn enough to fix the anomaly,” Twilight said. “That is the top priority.”

Meg switched her monitor’s input back to her computer. “I know, and I wish there was a way we can take them inside but I just can’t see how that’d work.”

“Why don’t we focus on when and how we’ll get inside,” Sunset said.

Twilight frowned. “It’s safe to say there’ll be magic generators operating inside. We can’t depend on invisibility.”

Sunset tapped her muzzle in thought. “What if we set up another camera in the past to observe the entrance. See when people enter and leave, so we know when it’s empty.”

Twilight’s frown grew. “It’d have to be far removed from the first camera, but then it’d have to be to have a view of the entrance. The real problem is that it would record our future selves and our passengers. That’s a complication we could do without.”

“Not if we removed the camera prior to our arrival,” Sunset pointed out. “There’s no reason to bring our passengers back much before the implosion.”

“True…”

Meg waved that away. “For all we know, some of them are living in there; we won’t see them enter or leave.” She sighed. “Look, we can’t depend on the place being empty or us being invisible. Even if we were invisible, I need access to their computers and being invisible won’t help if they’re all in use or if they have noisy keyboards. The best we can do is to go in after midnight, when, hopefully, the place should be unoccupied or anyone there is asleep.”

“Sounds good to me,” Twilight said. “Doesn’t matter what hour of the day it is when we’re time traveling.”

Sunset cringed. “What about surveillance cameras?”

Now Meg cringed. “Yeah. Can’t rule that out. The only question is whether anyone’s watching the feed that late at night. They’ll be recorded, of course.”

“We won’t have to open any doors, fortunately; that’d definitely set off alarms.”

Twilight thought it over. “Does it really matter? The place will be destroyed the next day. There is no evidence Routledge knew of our visit, not if his reaction to your proposal is any indication. If the place isn’t deserted, I can cast a sleep spell.”

Meg shook her head. “He may be a better actor than you give him credit for. For all we know, our visit spooked them, forcing them to act before they were ready.” She grimaced. “What are the odds we are the cause of the anomaly?”

Twilight stomped a hoof. “Meg, stop that. I’m not saying you’re wrong; I’m saying it is what it is and we just have to deal with it.”

She’s right, of course. Even if they did spook them, they wouldn’t “force” them to do anything; they are the ones responsible for whatever stupid actions they took, and they paid dearly for those actions. This was about fixing the present, not un-breaking the immutable past.

In a more conciliatory voice, Twilight continued: “Let’s arrive at two in the morning, about seventeen and a half hours before the event. We’ll depart tomorrow morning. All agreed?”

“Yeah.” “Sure.”

“Okay. See you then.” Twilight teleported away.

The intact warehouse stood before them. Meg scanned the partially-lit parking lot. “No cars. That’s promising. Should check the other sides, just to be sure.”

“I’ll do that,” Twilight said. “You two look for the best way to get inside.” She took wing and flew off around the building.

Sunset pointed a hoof. “That looks like the entrance.”

There was extra lighting where she was pointing, reflecting off what was probably a glass door. Windows extended on either side. Probably a few offices carved out of the interior space. “Looks promising,” Meg said.

As they trotted over, Sunset retrieved a device from her saddlebag. Under her magic, it separated into two parts connected by an expanding pole long enough to extend one part outside her magic bubble. “A weak magic field,” she said. “Nowhere near strong enough to disrupt our bubbles.”

“Or our invisibility. For now.” Meg slowed as they reached the door. “But it’s nice to have confirmation something’s going on in there.”

They both peered inside. There wasn’t much to see. Just a desk, presumably for a receptionist. A computer monitor and keyboard was visible, and little else.

“There’s a camera.” Sunset pointed up where two walls and the ceiling met. A red light was on.

“Guess we don’t have to worry about that one.”

“Yeah. Well, easy enough to teleport inside. Ready?”

Meg nodded. “Yep.”

“Oh wait…” Sunset collapsed her magic probe and returned it to her saddlebag. “Okay. Three. Two. One.”

They were inside.

“Wait for Twilight?” Meg asked. “Shouldn’t be long.”

Indeed, just then Twilight touched down in front of the door and folded her wings. After peering inside, she teleported to join them. “No other cars, for what that’s worth.”

“We’ll find out soon enough,” Meg said.

Sunset retrieved her magic probe and extended it again. “Only a weak field here—” she nodded upwards “—and there’s an active camera there. I’m sure there’ll be others.”

Twilight looked upwards herself. “We did expect that.”

Meg looked down the short corridor, ending in a T-junction. “Guess we go that way.”

“What about this computer?” Twilight had gone behind the desk to take a closer look.

“There’s no point. That’s for a receptionist. Probably. Certainly no reason to think it has anything interesting for us.” It looked like the monitor was not within the field of view of that camera.

“What about a visitor’s log?”

“That’d be on paper, so visitors can sign it.”

Twilight had already turned the computer on. Meg couldn’t see the monitor from where she stood, but she was content to wait until Twilight reported her inevitable conclusion—well, it ought to be inevitable. They all waited patiently for the system to boot.

Twilight frowned. “A login screen.”

Exactly what Meg expected. “If the disk isn’t encrypted, we might get something useful off it, but we can’t do that here and now. Is it worth taking it with us? I suppose we can time travel back and replace it before anyone notices. Mind you, whatever we discover isn’t going to convince anyone, especially if we can’t say how we obtained the information.”

With a mouse motion and a click, Twilight shut off the computer. “We’ll worry about that later. Top priority is finding their magic research.”

Meg lead the way. Once they reached the T-junction, she looked both ways. It didn’t seem to matter which they chose. In either case the corridor, dimly lit as most of the lights were off, went on for a while. Closed doors to offices were on just one side, facing the exterior wall, and the corridor ended with a fire door, on the other side of which presumably was the warehouse proper. She turned to Sunset. “Is magic stronger in one direction or the other?”

The unicorn checked her device. “It’s stronger here than outside, as expected.” She turned left and walked a dozen feet. “A bit weaker.” She turned around and went a dozen feet down the other way. “A bit stronger.”

Twilight turned right and began walking. “Good enough for me.”

Once they reached the fire door, of course, it wasn’t a simple matter of opening it. “Key card access,” Meg said, staring at the offending pad mounted on the wall.

“We can teleport,” Twilight said. “We don’t want to open doors if we can help it anyway. Is it safe to assume there’s a clear space on the other side?”

“It’d be stupid if there wasn’t, maybe not even legal. I mean, this is an escape route if there was an actual fire.”

“I noticed what looked like huge rollup doors in the back.”

Meg shrugged. “Loading dock, I’d guess. Warehouses have them. Doesn’t change things; the more escape routes, the better.”

“I’ll go first.” Twilight walked up to the door, then vanished.

A few seconds later, a muffled voice. “All clear, if you can hear me.”

Sunset had already put away her magic probe. They both walked up to the door. “Three. Two. One.”

Meg found herself on bare concrete, in what should be a huge open space. It was hard to tell, as there was no lighting apart from Twilight’s horn. It certainly sounded large enough, what with the reverberating noise coming from the ventilation. Sunset added her light to Twilight’s, to little effect, then redeployed the magic probe. “Let’s see where the action is.”

The unicorn went off on her own, her bubble of light detaching from Twilight’s, and she performed a random walk, her hoofsteps reverberating in the void. Over time her walk straightened out as she determined the gradient of the magic field. “Definitely this way,” she finally reported.

Meg and Twilight followed. Much of the floor space was unused. Eventually a row of workbenches came into view, with chairs on both sides, and on them were scattered papers, gemstones, and a few computer workstations. Sunset stopped there, put away the magic probe, and waited for the others to join her. “The field is strong enough here to shut off our bubbles.”

Meg looked up, searching for cameras. None could be seen in the limited light, no lit LEDs from any cameras present. “I don’t think this area is under video surveillance. There’d be some kind of lighting here if there was—no, could be infrared. Visible only to the camera. Still can’t see any cameras.”

“Neither can I,” Twilight said. “I’m guessing they don’t want a video record of what they’re doing. They must be relying on sensors to detect the breaching of the perimeter.”

Sunset lifted a gemstone in her magic. “Too bad we can teleport.”

Twilight lifted another gemstone. “Unless they’ve figure out how to detect that.”

We’ll find out if they can soon enough, Meg thought.

Sunset cringed, as if smelling something awful. “How could they come up with this?”

“I know.”

“Come up with what?” Meg asked.

Twilight put the gemstone down and picked up another. “These are enchanted with spells, but not in any way that makes sense. I can’t imagine how these could be used.” She put the other one back too. “Quite honestly, I can’t really tell what the enchantment even is.”

“Early attempts?” Meg offered. “Failed prototypes?”

Sunset was examining her third gemstone. “I’m not so sure. I feel we need to determine how the spell gets cast. They’re not using horns, don’t forget.”

Twilight wandered about. “Or how these gemstones even got enchanted, for that matter. They didn’t use horns for that either.”

Is that? “Twilight, over there. I think that’s my computer from work.” Seeing her computer made Meg wonder where her future self had been held captive.

“Could be.” Twilight made a beeline for it. “Sure looks like it. And it’s turned on.” She nudged the mouse and saw a familiar login screen. “That’s it alright.”

Meg trotted over. No doubt about it. She looked at the keyboard, then at her hooves. Well, she was there to deal with computers and had come prepared. Out of her saddlebag she got a hoof attachment. As she oh-so-slowly typed out her password, she wondered if they’d changed it, if they had ever cracked it in the first place. It was a proper password; cracking it shouldn’t have been possible. But then why was it even on after so much time?

She hit “enter” and it was accepted. “Huh.” What did that mean? One thing for sure, the desktop was not as she had left it. A lot of stuff was gone, and… “That’s not mine.”

Meg stepped aside so Twilight could get a closer look. The alicorn’s jaw slowly fell. “That’s not possible.”

“What’s not possible?” Sunset asked. She came over.

“See for yourself.”

She did so. “Yeeaaah. Never saw it written up like that before, but it couldn’t be anything else.”

“Could somepony explain it to me?”

Twilight and Sunset looked at each other. Twilight sighed and answered Meg’s question. “It’s one of Star Swirl’s space-manipulation spells. This one you haven’t been given. Yet here it is, rewritten into a form suitable for your magic simulation software.”

Meg knew better than to ask how this happened. “It’s not the only spell.”

Twilight browsed through the directory. “It certainly isn’t.”

“Is that what’s on those gemstones?”

Twilight scrunched her muzzle in thought. “Maybe? It’s so… I don’t know. ‘Unconventional’ is the nicest way of putting it.”

“It has to be,” Sunset said. “In some form. That’s what the anomaly is.”

“You’re right of course.” Twilight began walking around the workbenches. “Let’s see what machines they got here. Let’s figure out how they enchanted those gemstones and how the spells on them got cast.”

Meg stuck to Twilight, as she was her light source, while Sunset went in a different direction. It didn’t take long before Meg spotted what turned out to be an X-ray machine, and on a table next to it was a familiar collar—though most of the gems were gone. “So that’s what happened to it.”

Twilight lifted the collar in her magic and examined it. “Still has the spell I put on it. I wonder what happened to the other gems?”

“And they were studying it with this X-ray machine, I bet. Perfect for figuring out how spells are encoded in the crystalline matrix.”

“Bunch of boxes over here,” Sunset said. “I’m guessing this is what they stole?”

Meg trotted over and looked inside them, one after the other. “Sure looks like it.”

“Over here!” Twilight shouted.

Meg rushed over, Sunset close behind her. In front of Twilight was a cobbled together contraption. One of the stolen magic generators was to one side, with some of the liberated gems from the collar placed between it and a small platform upon which a gemstone rested. Pointing at this latter gem from all directions were numerous thin tubes. A mess of wires from the back of those tubes, through several intermediaries, eventually plugged into a USB port on a nearby computer.

A close look at the tiny writing on a tube answered one question. “Looks like they’re lasers,” Meg said. “I’m guessing this is how they ‘enchant’ the gems or cast the spell within them, or maybe both.”

“That’s a safe bet,” Sunset said.

The computer was still on. Meg moved the mouse. The monitor came to life. The desktop was locked, naturally. If any computer was to be “borrowed,” this was the one. She noticed a sheet next to the keyboard. “It does both. Here’s the cheat sheet on using the computer.”

Nearby was a notebook. Meg flipped through a few pages. “Looks like they’re trying to create a wormhole or something to reach Equestria.”

The notebook practically vanished as Twilight yanked it over to herself. Quickly she scanned the first few pages. Then her magic focused on the gemstone in the machine. “This can’t be right.”

“What do you mean?” Sunset asked.

Twilight was too focused to answer. Each successive page turned over ever more harshly. Meg half expected a page to rip. A snarl fermented on the alicorn’s muzzle.

“Idiots,” she muttered. “A Magic Kindergarten dropout knows better than this.”

The notebook, somehow still in one piece, returned to the table. She eyed the gems from the collar. “Gotta give credit where credit is due, though. They used as part of this machine my own spell that manipulated the magic field that had emanated from that doll. It now manipulates the field coming from the generator.”

Sunset looked uneasy. “Why do I hear a ‘but’ coming?”

“I understand now how the enchantment is done, how the spell gets cast, so I can now decipher the spell in the gemstone. That spell cannot possibly cause the anomaly we know.”

Meg didn’t like the way she said that. “And that’s… not a good thing?”

Twilight picked the gemstone up in her magic, glared at it, then forced herself to put it back down—gently. “What this spell would do makes the anomaly look like a Pinkie party.”

15. Theme Parks Mattered

Discord rolled his eyes. “That’s the question you start with?”

Truth be told, it had been ages since Meg had last thought about it, but her recent visit to the ancient past had resurfaced old memories. “You certainly can’t use that old excuse of us being ‘too young’ to handle it.”

“I did just admit to that,” he reminded them. “It’s merely so… inconsequential.”

“Then why the run-around back then?” Twilight asked.

Discord grumbled. “Because then I’d have to explain that the Elements hadn’t really turned me to stone.”

Twilight’s jaw dropped. “What?”

“Oh, mind you, I was expelled. That statue was just a placeholder for my non-presence, evidence that I’d been dealt with. Harmony would never do something so cruel to me as literally turning me to stone.” He looked up in thought. “Not sure she could actually do that, even if she wanted to.”

Meg quickly put two and two together. “So let me guess. You were floating around in hyperspace, unable to return to Equestria, so lacking anything better to do you watched events in my world.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Twilight said, shaking her head. “What do you mean by ‘Harmony?’ You’re talking about her—it—whatever—as if it were a sapient entity.”

With a tired sigh, Discord conjured for everyone chairs upon the infinite grid. “Meg, correct, though I could return here as well. Hyperspace is a terrible place to visit, and forget about living there. Twilight…” He slumped into a draconequus-shaped chair. “Make yourselves comfortable. It’s time for a story.”

“Maybe it’s the wrong gemstone?” Meg asked.

That gave Twilight pause for a few seconds. “They obviously haven’t cast this spell, so the fact that it’s in this machine means they either intend to cast it or they had just enchanted it. But why enchant this spell, unless they intend to cast it?”

“Could we re-enchant it to something harmless?” Sunset asked.

Meg shook her head. “Then they’ll just enchant another gemstone and try again. What I don’t understand is this: They must have run this spell through my magic simulator, so why do they think it’s a good idea?”

Twilight frowned. “Because this particular spell breaks certain simplifying assumptions built into the simulator.”

“Great.” Probably need to fix that before they could simulate a potential fix to the anomaly. Except: “Then how did the anomaly happen instead of… whatever this would do?”

“Don’t get me wrong. This spell would cause something very much like the anomaly, just that it would grow to consume the entire planet within minutes.”

“So maybe they tweak it tomorrow?”

“We don’t know that.”

“And what if they don’t?” Sunset asked.

Meg groaned. “Isn’t that obvious? The question is, what do we do to slow its growth down?”

Twilight grimaced. “I’ll have to think about that. But it means we’ll have to come back again near the time of the spell casting; if they made the tweak themselves, great, otherwise we’ll have to intervene.”

“We can’t hide from them, you know. Not with these magic generators probably cranked up to full power.”

“Won’t matter,” Sunset said. “Not when this place is about to be destroyed.”

Right, Meg glumly thought. “Let’s just not get destroyed along with it.” That ought to be impossible, because paradox. Even so, she didn’t feel like putting it to the test; most likely, it just meant the time travel spell would refuse to take her—or Twilight—back. And there was still the trip to bring the sightseers back to observe the event from the vantage point of the parking lot.

Regardless, they shouldn’t leave any gemstones unturned before leaving. “Just to be thorough,” Meg said, “why don’t you check out the other gemstones, make sure none of them have a spell that would cause the anomaly as we know it.”

“Yeah. Good idea.” Twilight started walking along the workbenches. At the first gem she found, she inspected it with her magic. “Well this one’s clearly a dud.”

Meg turned her attention to the computer controlling the contraption. “Do we borrow this? I’m sure it’d be helpful if we can find the spells they’ve been putting into those gemstones.” She frowned. “Assuming it’s not encrypted.”

“Yes, borrow it,” Sunset said. “Maybe the next one they planned on enchanting is the one that causes the anomaly.”

“I agree.” Twilight stepped over to the next gemstone. “These over here are un-enchanted. Most of the others I’ve checked are duds. But one would glow a shade of orange, and another turns transparent. The most advanced one I’ve found self-levitates. None of these effects would be persistent.”

Fortunately, one does not have to login in order to do a clean shutdown—no, wait. “I’ve a better idea. Let’s ‘borrow’ mine. The spell has to be on that, because of the simulator.”

Sunset looked back and forth between the two computers. “I suppose?”

“And we know we can log in to mine.”

Sunset shrugged and started walking. “We can always come back for the other one if necessary.”

After a moment of indecision, Meg followed her. She’d let the unicorn do the unplugging. However wonderful it was to fly, having a horn would be nice too.

“Now it’s your turn, darling.”

“Yeah. We’ve told you all the awesome stuff we’ve been doing!”

“It’s just that we ain’t seen you in so long.”

A waiter came by to remove the empty bowl in the middle of the table and replaced it with a new bowl piled high with french fries. Rainbow Dash immediately grabbed a hoofful and stuffed it into her mouth. Rarity levitated over a single fry and daintily munched on it. “Quite astonishing nopony had ever thought of preparing potatoes this way. I hear it’s becoming all the rage.”

Applejack grabbed a hoofful for herself. “They’re okay. Mind you, they’ll never replace apple fritters.”

Rainbow rolled her eyes and grabbed another hoofful and pointed it at Twilight. “So spill it already.”

Twilight sighed. “I know. It’s just that I’ve been so busy recently.”

Rarity smiled at her. “Well, you’re here now. Surely you have made progress on that anomaly?”

“Yes—and no. Our trip back in time got some answers, but unfortunately raised even more questions. We brought back Meg’s old work computer, and she and Sunset are going over it now.”

“So ya can’t yet fix it in the here and now?”

Twilight shook her head. “No. Knowing the exact spell they used—and we still don’t—doesn’t help all that much. It’s their realm’s insistence on conservation laws. It just isn’t possible to undo the anomaly without first replacing all the energy it has extracted and converted to magic, which irretrievably dissipates into the environment.” She helped herself to a fry. “What’s so frustrating is that that’s so easy to deal with here in our realm. I know the spells; they just won’t work there.”

“I know darn little about magic,” Applejack began as Twilight ate her fry, “but couldn’t you just teleport—or somethin’—that anomaly to Equestria so you could fix it here?”

Twilight froze in mid-bite.

“Darling?”

She slowly finished off the fry. “No. It can’t be moved here. It’s far too large.”

Applejack shrugged. “Don’t mind me, then.”

“But,” Twilight continued, “maybe there’s another option. I’ll have to look into it.”

“Hah!” Rainbow shouted. “Applejack solved it, and she never even went to Magic Kindergarten.”

“I’m sure the devil’s in the details, darling.” Rarity smiled again at Twilight. “See? This is why you need to find the time to be with us.”

Twilight helped herself to another fry. “The devil in question is our local draconequus, but point made.”

Rainbow crossed her forelimbs. “Need we ask?”

“He’s not to blame for any of this, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“Can’t blame me for thinking it, just saying.”

“She does have a point, sugarcube.”

“Well… not this time. I’m far more concerned about the human ‘observers’ we need to take back in time to observe the creation of the anomaly. They represent various factions that—let’s just say they’re not friends—and their motives for ‘observing’ may be questionable.”

“Does it really matter?” Rarity asked. “Didn’t you say that the past cannot be changed?”

“No, it cannot, but unfortunately it does still matter.” Twilight sighed. “But the details as to why it still matters don’t matter to you, so I’ll spare you the lecture.”

“Thank Celestia,” muttered Rainbow. The others pretended not to hear that.

Applejack adjust her Stetson. “Sounds like you can use some help in uncovering the varmints.”

It couldn’t hurt, Twilight had to admit. Refusing the participation of the, uh, varmints was probably not an option, but if exposed they’d be easier to control—one would hope.

“And I can help keep them in line,” Rainbow declared. She flared her wings. “Not gonna get away from me!”

That there was no denying. It seemed unlikely her speed would be needed, but if it was… It might make the difference between the time travel spell working or… not. Twilight looked expectantly at Rarity.

The fashionista politely cleared her throat. “Yes, well, I suppose I could be of assistance, should the need arise, in helping to defuse a tense situation.”

Twilight beamed. “Perfect.”

She’d talk to Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, naturally, but it was difficult to imagine the former being eager to participate and as for the latter… Pinkie could be so unpredictable sometimes.

Considering the non-deterministic nature of time loops, could that be a good thing?

Meg started the simulation. A bubble of space-time expanded and extruded outside the known universe, forming something that looked sorta like a wormhole. After ten seconds, the simulated magic generator was switched off. The tube retracted, releasing its stored energy as gravitational waves. Perfectly sane and reasonable. Once the fabric of space-time had returned to being flat—or as flat as it was going to get in the Earth’s gravitational field—she ended the simulation.

“At least we know what they thought they were attempting,” Sunset remarked.

Going by the timestamps on the files, that was the most recent spell they had simulated—and it matched what was on the gemstone in that contraption. Other files had variations on the spell, none of which performed as smoothly in the simulator and, obviously, had never been cast. The older files matched what had been found on the other gemstones, their version of Magic Kindergarten.

Meg quit the program and turned her attention to her current workstation. “Now let’s see what that spell does in our updated simulator.” The one in which the simplifying assumptions had been remedied, not that Meg understood what those assumptions were about. Nopony could explain it in simple English.

Meg hit “run.” It was like a bomb going off. A shock wave radiated out through space-time, and behind it space inflated like it was the Big Bang. Not literally, but bad enough. As expected, time slowed to a crawl as the energy of matter swept up by the shock wave powered the magic field. Twilight, it turned out, had been optimistic. The Earth would be consumed in seconds. Just over two of them.

What would happen then was unknown, as the simulator had hit its limit. Would the shock wave die out once it hit the near vacuum of the solar system? Or would it get as far as the Sun? If it did die out, what would happen to the inflated space-time it left behind?

Fortunately, those questions were academic. That hadn’t happen. The question was, What did they do to scale back the anomaly to what had actually happen?

“Any progress?”

That was Twilight, just having teleported in. She was carrying a box of donuts, from Donut Joe’s probably. Meg gave her a summary of what they’ve found.

“Two seconds, really?”

Meg reran the simulation for her.

Twilight cringed. “I guess that answers that question. We need to find some way to weaken that spell; at least we know we’ll succeed. On the other fronts, I just had lunch with the gals. At least Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Applejack will accompany us to help keep our observers in line. Perhaps I should have Applejack present when I meet them for the first time.

“And speaking of Applejack…” A chagrined look. “She came up with an idea for dealing with the anomaly in the present: Move it to where the standard corrective spells would actually work. Not Equestria, because I can’t teleport something that big, but into the adjoining hyperspace. I’ll have to talk to Discord about that; there are a lot of unknowns here.”

Sunset picked out a chocolate donut. “It’s already sucked in a lot of air. Would it be possible to retrieve that air afterwards?”

“That’s one of the unknowns.”

It was still a plan, Meg thought as she picked out a jelly donut. Relying on Discord, though, was never the best option. “If Discord should be… unhelpful—I know what he said, but, you know—we could let our distant future selves deal with it.” Once Twilight had become a fully mature alicorn, for example. Even her own future self seemed shockingly capable in hyperspace.

Her future self.

Who was going back in time to be “kidnapped.”

Shit.

“I know how those Star Swirl spells got onto my computer.”

God how I hate time loops.

Twilight took a step towards her. “Meg? You look ready to kill somepony.” She hesitated, as if afraid of the answer. “Who was it?”

Meg spat it out: “My future self.” She shook her head. “She told me she was going back to be their prisoner. She had access. She must’ve deleted all the stuff that’s missing.” I can’t believe I will do such a thing! Put the whole world at risk. Even worse, her future self would remember feeling this way—and do it anyway.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Sunset said. “You couldn’t have translated those spells, not without a lot of help from us.”

“Depends how far in the future we’re talking about,” Meg countered. “I witnessed my future human self doing things only Discord can do today, not to mention using a time travel spell.”

Twilight finally picked out a sugar-dusted donut for herself. “I’m beginning to think very far, but this is all a distraction. The real question is, Why is this anomaly part of a time loop? How does it increase the loop’s probability of happening?”

Everyone ate their donut in thought. Like it or not, Meg knew why her future self apparently set in motion the events leading to the anomaly: Because it had already happened, because it was a part of her past, and because the past could not be changed. Even so, this particular time loop could not exist if it lead to a paradox; and would be unlikely to exist unless it somehow constructively interfered with itself, increasing the amplitude of its wave function.

So how did the anomaly do that?

She hadn’t the slightest clue.

“We can worry about this later,” Twilight finally said. “Right now, we need to figure out how to modify the casting of that spell.”

Discord appeared to massive applause. Doing a poor job of pretending not to notice the aforementioned applause, he bent over the donut box, inspected the contents, and picked out one that was lava-frosted. Meg was fairly certain it hadn’t been there before. As he lifted it out of the box, some of the lava oozed onto a finger. A howl of pain, followed by audience laughter.

“This isn’t an old sitcom,” Meg grumbled.

“Spoilsport. I thought you of all people would appreciate it.” He took a bite out of the donut. Steam poured out of his ears. “Mmmm. Spicy hot.”

At least he’d dispensed with the laugh track. “We’re kinda busy. Any particular reason you’re here?”

He took an indignant pose; the lava-frosted donut had ceased to exist. “A particular reason? I should say so.” His eyes visited each one in turn. “Have you all forgotten about my theme park?”

Actually, Meg had forgotten. “Something important came up. You do remember the anomaly?”

Before Discord could reply, Twilight said, “Actually, I want to talk to you about that, the anomaly that is. I think I know how it can be solved, and it requires your assistance.”

“And I’d be happy to talk about that—after we talk about my theme park.”

He’s reformed, Meg told herself.

“Time is of the essence here,” Twilight said. “The longer we delay—”

“Says the time traveling pony.”

Twilight froze, mouth open. Of course she had no response. Discord was infuriatingly correct. They could’ve ended the anomaly hours ago for all they knew; it wasn’t a paradox so long as they did not observe its continued existence after that point in time.

“You know what?” Twilight eventually said. “Let’s talk about your theme park. I have a use for it.”

“You do?” simultaneously asked Meg, Sunset, and Discord.

“Yes, I do. We’ll be taking some humans back in time to observe the creation of the anomaly. I’d first like to vet them; Applejack will assist with that. It’d be best to do that in Equestria, and I think your theme park would be an excellent place for that. Of course I’ll mention it all belongs to you, and that you’ll be... unhappy should anything happen to it. You’ll also be happy to hear that the group will include at least one person from the media.”

“Can never complain about free publicity.” He tapped his muzzle in thought. “Sounds like you wish me to stay away.”

“I’d be satisfied with you being a silent—and invisible—observer.”

“But should one of them… misbehave?”

Twilight paused. “Only if they cross a line—that I draw. Don’t worry; I’ll be sure to give you permission if that happens.”

He held out his paw. “We have a deal.”

Twilight offered a hoof and they shook on it.

“Now,” Discord said, then took a bite out of a rainbow-frosted donut that wasn’t in his paw before. He gagged on it, fire erupting from his ears. “And I thought the lava was spicy!”

Rainbow Dash had often tried to get Meg to sample pure, liquified rainbows. She was glad she had never succumbed to such an obvious prank; Dash would never touch it herself.

“Tough crowd,” he mumbled. The donut had vanished. “Ahem. The anomaly?”

“Right,” Twilight said. “To destroy it, we must first remove it from the human’s realm restrictions on magic. It’s too big to teleport here, but what if we separated it from their realm, have it float free in hyperspace? No limitations on magic there, correct?”

“Hrm…” Discord massaged his goatee in thought. “Possible. Won’t be easy. I’ll have to think about it.” He raised his claw to—

“Wait,” Meg said.

Discord looked expectantly at her, claw still raised.

“I think I also have a use for your theme park—and this time you’ll be the star attraction.”

Andrew’s face peered from the monitor. “You’re literally holed up in a cave. And aren’t you a pegasus these days?”

Meg kept her face neutral—mostly. “Do you want the convention to happen or not?”

“And how are you supposed to help with that when you’re on the run?”

Did he have to make it so difficult? “I’m not on the run, not here in Equestria.”

He rubbed his forehead. “And how are you supposed to help us put on a convention when you’re stuck in Equestria. Literally holed up in a cave. Sure you’re not on the run there?”

Then why did he agree to talk to me? Best to just cut to the chase. That’ll make him take it seriously. “Because I’m proposing to hold the convention here in Equestria, in a new theme park created and operated by the Spirit of Chaos himself—who, by the way, also wants Guest of Honor billing.”

Blessed silence. He didn’t see that coming.

Finally, he asked, “Does that mean no Lord Tirek?”

Meg stared at him. “That means no Lord Tirek.” He’s still obsessed with him? “But on the other hoof, it means the Mane Six are back on the table—but no commitments yet. Maybe I could even get Celestia and Luna to make a brief appearance.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Why? I thought you were done with us?”

I thought so too, she thought. “Because it’s the only way to end this insanity. People denying ponies are real. People insisting evil intent. I know it won’t fix everything overnight, but it’s a start. Encourage the non-believers to attend. Let them try denying it after experiencing Discord close up.”

Meg could see the gears turning behind those eyes. She was counting on it.

“How will people get there?”

He was hooked, just as she’d hope. “A portal, like the one Andy used to enter Equestria millennia ago. We now got control over them. Just have to decide where the other end goes.”

He nodded. “Will parking be here or there?”

That was an excellent question. “I guess it could go either way. I don’t remember Twilight mentioning anything that looked like a parking lot, but I’ll ask Discord about that. It’d take just a snap of his talons, you know.”

“O-kaaay... Is there a hotel there?”

Twilight hadn’t actually gone inside. “I’ll get back to you on that too.”

“What about troublemakers? How will we keep them out?”

Meg bore a grim smile. “Discord doesn’t want them kept out. Enough said.”

“Yeeeaah. I see what you mean. Still leaves us open to legal liability.”

“Does it? Equestria is outside the jurisdiction of all human legal systems.”

“And the Equestrian legal system?”

Meg suppressed a snort. “Good luck suing Discord in an Equestrian court.”

“I was more concerned about us being sued.”

“No pony would hold you responsible for Discord’s actions. But if it’d make you feel better, I’ll see about getting a preemptive decree from Celestia.” It wasn’t just about humans visiting the park; ponies would be visiting too. Better to have this addressed now. That’s how she’d pitch it to her.

“It wouldn’t hurt. Say, any chance of having that mirror that goes to the Equestria Girls world? That’s a thing, right?”

Meg slumped in her chair. “Yes and no. The mirror exists, but that world isn’t what you think it is. It’s… not a good idea.” They still didn’t know what would happen to humans who entered. What would happen to non-magical creatures entering a realm of pure magic? Discord had his theories, but that’s just what they were: theories.

“You’ve been there?”

Meg just nodded.

“So… let’s just forget the mirror.”

“Already forgotten.” She checked on the latest simulation to finish on the cloud. The resources available to her now dwarfed what she had years ago, back when they needed that spell for that Pinkie Pie doll’s collar. “Anything else? I, uh, need to get back to saving the world from that anomaly.”

Andrew sighed. “Regularly saving the world is one part of MLP that could’ve remained fiction as far as I’m concerned.”

“You and me both.”

She ended the connection and turned her attention to the simulation.

Her heart sank. Of course that’d be the one that worked.

16. In the Beginning…

“Harmony and I go back a long, long way. For lack of a better word, you could call us siblings. The existence of your human realm had been known forever, but what hadn’t been known was whether it harbored life. Many argued that without magic that was not possible.

“Your realm, Meg, is mostly empty space. This realm—our realm—co-exists with yours across its entire span. They are fraternal twins, you see, created in the same instant; ours got the magic, yours got everything else. The two affect each other; you perceive us as dark matter. We, likewise, can trivially detect concentrations of matter in your realm. Advanced magic research enabled us to peer into your realm, to see it as you see it from within—no, Twilight, I’m not going into the details right now.

“We created a suitable detection spell and cast it, and it sped throughout our realm, peeking into yours seeking life. Even though it traveled far in excess of the speed of light, it still took many decades for it to return with an answer. During that time, it had been conclusively ‘proven’ that life without magic was impossible. The alleged discovery of your world only proved, as far as all were concerned, that the detection spell was flawed.

“An expedition to find out one way or another was shot down as pointless, a waste of resources. We decided to mount an expedition anyway. Bridges were burned; we felt it was worth it.” Discord shrugged. “Perhaps life had become too boring.

“We found Earth, obviously. Visiting in person was not possible, but we could observe your planet, study it from a distance, so to speak. Over time, our inability to exist in your magic-less realm, to interact with your pre-literate ancestors, became frustrating. We gave up everything for this? Until one day, we came up with a solution.

“The answer was to create a new realm, one that reunited what had been sundered at creation, one that would have both the magic of our realm and the physical laws of yours, a realm in which we could co-exist with material beings such as yourselves.”

Twilight patiently waited while President Serrell walked back and forth in front of the panoramic windows of Celestia’s private tea room. She could hardly blame him, considering what she had just told him. Celestia serenely sipped her tea as she watched, while Luna just watched.

He stopped, and he looked down at the lights of distant Ponyville. “How am I supposed to sell this?” he asked, his age seeping through into every word he spoked. “They want to get rid of me as it is, in case you’ve forgotten.”

All Twilight could say to that was, “Discord insists it’s much safer to pull the entire planet into hyperspace than just a small piece of it.”

His gaze remained upon the town below. “Sure. Must have done it dozens of times.”

The tone was facetious, and she felt compelled to add her own facetious remark: “He didn’t volunteer that information.”

“Any timeframe? If this isn’t solved soon, I’ll have no choice but to issue an emergency evacuation order for the whole town, possibly adjacent towns too.”

Unfortunately, Discord had vanished before they could discuss timing. “Not yet, no.”

Serrell shook his head. “Regardless, I thought non-magical creatures couldn’t exist in hyperspace, certainly not by any means at his disposal.”

Nor ours. “The displacement into hyperspace will be tiny, less than the width of a proton. You’ll still be gravitationally bound to everything else, and quantum fields would also remain partially coupled. It’s enough to keep the physical laws in place, but not enough to keep them immutable. That causes conservation of energy to fail, and that will allow me to destroy that anomaly.”

He sighed. “Any chance of explaining that in plain English? Or at least something our physicists could understand?”

Twilight was beginning to see his original point. How could this be explained to every human to their satisfaction? “Well, for your physicists, tell them Noether’s Theorem. They already understand why conservation laws are a thing, that time translation symmetry leads to conservation of energy. In other words, conservation of energy exists only when the laws of physics do not change over time.”

“And for the rest of us?”

Twilight scrunched her muzzle in thought. She really ought to make the attempt to come up with an explanation for “the rest of us.”

She moved an unused pillow off to the side. The very act of doing that with her magic, of course, violated conservation laws, but explaining why was too difficult—and telekinesis somehow knew how to obey conservation laws in the human realm, anyway, by using gravitational waves as the equal and opposite reaction.

No, she had a better idea. “See this pillow,” she said, pointing a hoof at it. “Now I magically change a law of physics by reversing the direction of gravity.” She did so in the region of the pillow, from the floor to the ceiling. It fell up and impacted the ceiling. “When I did that, potential energy came from nowhere and got turned into kinetic energy as it fell up.” She canceled the spell. “Same thing happens when I undo it. I can repeat as many times as I want, creating as much energy as I want. Technically, I expend energy casting the spell, but the amount of that energy is not related to the amount that can be created. If the pillow were made of lead, it would take no more energy to cast the spell, but far more kinetic energy would be created out of nothing.”

“That’ll have to do, for now I guess.” He rubbed his eyes; Twilight wasn’t sure how successful she was. “Getting back to the displacement,” Serrell continued, “would we be… inconvenienced by it?”

Maybe not as successful as she’d like. “Possibly? I mean, you wouldn’t want any rockets going into space, that’s for sure. And the sun might look funny…”

“And astronomers should take the night off. Got it. Satellites?”

“They’ll remain in orbit.”

“But what about radio communication with them?”

Twilight grimaced. “Not… sure.”

“So certain forms of long-distance communication might not work. Same for GPS.”

Twilight sighed. “It’s really hard to say. We just don’t know what a partially coupled electromagnetic quantum field will do to photons crossing the boundary. Could be anything from nothing significant to totally blocking them.”

Serrell turned back to the window. “Perhaps it would be best to make no public announcement of any kind. If it turns out to be ‘nothing significant,’ great. And if instead it winds up being quite significant… well… we could just say it was a side-effect of the magic to kill the anomaly. It wouldn’t even be a lie, from a certain point of view.”

Twilight wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but it wasn’t her call. “I’ll see if the satellites can be displaced along with the Earth; it doesn’t increase by all that much the volume displaced. That should reduce unwanted, uh, side-effects.”

The president sighed. He turned to the royal sisters. “You two have been quiet.”

Celestia peered over her teacup at her sister and offered a barely perceptible shrug. Luna met her eyes and gave her a slight nod, then addressed the president. “Do not view the ‘inconveniences’ as a liability, something that one hopes does not occur or is mild enough to ignore. View it as an asset, proof that we and our magic exist. I would go so far as to suggest magnifying these side-effects, though of course only to the extent that they remain mere inconveniences.”

Serrell had no immediate response. Twilight said, “That’s… an interesting idea.”

Silence returned. Eventually, Serrell broke it. “I don’t know which is worse: the ones who refuse to believe ponies are real, or the ones who believe I’m conspiring with you to overthrow humanity. Your idea, Luna, will help with the former, but the latter I’m not so sure of.”

“Perhaps the former would help with the latter?” Celestia offered.

“Maybe it doesn’t matter. The anomaly makes it necessary. When you’re given lemons, make lemonade.” He took a breath. “One question, though. Will this ‘displacement’ permit Discord to visit Earth?”

The question took Twilight by surprise. “He, uh, didn’t mention that? Which doesn’t mean anything, you know. Even if it did permit him to exist on Earth, he would be occupied with maintaining the displacement, and that might only be possible from hyperspace.” She looked at Serrell. “Do you want him to make an appearance? I can see how his antics could be considered proof of our existence.”

“Or be considered proof of your danger, whatever your intentions.” He threw his hands up. “I honestly don’t know.”

Nor did Twilight. She remembered how Routledge had reacted to Discord messing around with a journalist at the Gates of Tartarus. It was far from inconceivable that that incident had been motivating his more extreme actions.

“I chose to release Discord from his prison,” Celestia said, “because I felt his magic could be of great benefit to Equestria. While there’s no denying he can be tiresome at times, I have yet to regret my decision.”

“Point taken,” Serrell said. “I’ll keep the option open.”

Twilight scrunched her muzzle. “And I’ll talk to him about it.”

There was a knock on the door.

A look of confusion from everypony. This was unusual, to say the least.

Celestia stood up. “Give me a moment, please.”

Twilight half expected it to be Discord. Sure, he usually just popped in uninvited, but maybe that had become too predictable for his chaotic tastes.

The door opened under Celestia’s magic. It was Meg.

“Could you spare Twilight for a few minutes?” she asked, looking at the mare in question. “It concerns the anomaly—how it was created, that is. A simulation has identified a spell, but… you won’t like it.”

A smile grew on the president’s face. “All that taxpayer-funded cloud time has come up with something useful? By all means come on in! I could use some good news.”

There was no objection from anypony, so Meg entered. “How good remains to be seen.” She squeezed her pendant once she reached Twilight, removed her laptop from the saddlebags that now hung around her neck, and set it down on the table and opened it up. A bit of typing and trackpad movements later, and she said, “Take a look.”

Twilight did. The spell was… different. Something no unicorn would have come up with, but that was hardly surprising; a search algorithm on a computer had found it. Regardless, it looked plausible enough. Using her magic, she simulated a finger press on the trackpad and played the recorded simulation. It did the job, no question.

“See the problem?” Meg asked.

“Not really?” Twilight went back to the simulation parameters and looked more closely. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

She reviewed the spell again. “No flexibility on when it’s cast?”

Meg shook her head. “Damn little, barely a microsecond. Too late, and it’s useless. Too early, and it’ll create a different sort of anomaly almost as bad.“

Twilight frowned. She’d have to review the simulations which varied the time of casting to understand that, but there was no reason to doubt it. The spell, it appeared, was to be in a ring of crystal that surrounded the crystal holding the spell that caused the anomaly. While it was in that machine. As it was being operated by the bad guys—and who was going to cast the corrective spell in that ring at the precise microsecond?

Yeah. Problem.

“It won’t be pretty,” Meg said, as if reading her mind.

“No, it won’t.” Twilight, with a frown, closed the lid on the laptop. “And it looks like I’ll have to be there to power it when the anomaly is created. I have no idea how I’ll survive it, but somehow I must, because it’s a paradox if I don’t.”

“A paradox?” Serrell asked.

“I’ve been visited by my future self, and I haven’t completed that time loop yet.”

With a sigh, Meg returned the laptop to her saddlebags. “We need to study their spell casting machine more closely. We still need to figure out how to synchronize the casting of the two spells. One way of doing that would be to have that machine cast both of them, if it could be arranged.”

Microsecond timing, wasn’t it? “I agree.” Then maybe she wouldn’t have to be there.

Meg resumed her pegasus form. “The arranging part may prove problematic, but I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

There was no point in asking about a gem to replace the problematic one. If the search had turned up such a candidate, Meg wouldn’t be presenting this one. Though why was there only a corrective spell, one that would modify that other spell? Why was there no spell that would directly create that anomaly? It would sure avoid a lot of headaches.

“I prefer to remain in ignorance, if at all possible, on how that problematic part is solved.”

Meg looked up at the president. “Don’t blame you. If it’s any consolation, whatever we did do that day—or didn’t do—didn’t make the news, at least not in any way that ties it back to us.”

“I’m more concerned with it making the news in the present or near future, but point taken.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” Twilight said. There was no need to add to his already considerable problems.

“That’s all I can ask.”

“Any reason I shouldn’t leave?” Meg asked. “I should get back to the lab.”

Twilight felt the need to return to the lab herself.

“I think not,” Celestia said. “But I strongly recommend you call it a night as soon as possible. Now is not the time for you to burn out.”

“I’ll make sure of that,” Luna solemnly declared.

“I’ll, uh…” Meg turned to the window. “Fine. Would one of you mind teleporting me outside?”

“I’d be happy to,” Celestia said.

Meg began to hover. A flash of sunlight, and she was outside. With strong strokes of her wings, she soared into the night.

“Still have trouble believing this is real, sometimes.” Serrell had watched, fascinated. “I hope it’s safe to fly at night like that.”

“My moon provides plenty of light.” For proof, Luna switched off the lights and moonlight flooded in through the windows.

He nodded his head. “Indeed it does.”

Twilight lit her horn, with a roll of her eyes, so she could read her notes.

Celestia turned the lights back on. “But not quite enough to read by, sad to say.”

Her horn now extinguished, Twilight consulted the agenda. “Next topic: the observers I’ll be bringing back to the anomaly’s creation.” She addressed Serrell: “Any progress on that item?”

As Meg flew back to the old mine, she focused on the problem of improving the simulation search space. It wasn’t a matter of insufficient computing capacity; for all intents and purposes she had a blank check for cloud resources. The problem, for lack of a better phrase, was a lack of “creativity.” Unfortunately, that creativity was the job of the programmer. Artificial intelligence or no, only an idiot would expect it from software.

By the time a guard had let her inside the converted cavern, she was no closer to a solution. Part of the problem, of course, was that she knew little about magic. Sure, she saw the equations Twilight and others had given her, and she had faithfully translated them to software, but that was like trying to explain color to a blind person by providing the equations for electromagnetic radiation. Maybe if she had been a unicorn instead of a pegasus; Steve did say that being one made a big difference, yet even he struggled with advanced magic. Or as he put it, being able to hear does not automatically make one a great musician.

Still better than being deaf, which metaphorically speaking she was.

Meg resumed human form and sat at her workstation. Since she had last checked over an hour ago, the genetic algorithm generating new variants had produced refinements to the previously discovered solution, but just that: refinements. Minor refinements at that. It would be a good idea to make sure that solution didn’t dominate the “gene pool” to the point of exterminating all other approaches, but she could worry about that tomorrow.

No one else was present, apart from the ever-present guards. This late that was unlikely to change.

Off to the side was her stolen office computer. With a sigh, she started to unplug it and prepare it for transport. They’d be returning it to the past tomorrow. The odds were that its spot on her desk would then be occupied by the computer that controlled the enchanter/caster; its importance had skyrocketed. Then she would go home and save Luna the trouble of kicking her out. There wasn’t really anything more she could do that night. Maybe what she needed truly was a good night sleep. Let Luna do that for her.

Once that was done, she decided to check her phone—best to do that before resuming her equine form.

There was a message from Andrew, asking for a status update on holding the convention at Discord’s theme park. She groaned, wondering if it had been wise to give him her new e-mail address. At least he didn’t have her new phone number—which wasn’t under her name, naturally. The honest truth was sufficient here: Discord had been unreachable and who knew when that’d change. Well, Discord would know, presumably, but he wasn’t sharing that information.

With that out of the way, Meg squeezed her pendant and went to find a guard to open the exit for her.

When Meg returned to the cave the next morning, it was the opposite of deserted. Sunset Shimmer was there, of course; they ought to be departing for the past as soon as Twilight showed up. She was half surprised she wasn’t there already, if only to take a closer look at the simulation results from last night. Her human co-workers were all present; it looked like one of them had brought a box of danish. And was that an espresso machine over there?

A little girl stormed into cave from a side-tunnel, screaming, “Meg!”

Meg froze. “Susie?” Her niece glommed onto her.

Her brother belatedly entered from that same tunnel. “Surprise?”

Jake, her manager, explained. “I arranged it. Thought you could use it.” He waved at the recent addition. “Got approval for a break area, seeing as the one in the office isn’t accessible to you.”

“I sure could—ah, Susie, could you let go now?”

Reluctantly, and only after her father put a hand on her, she did. Meg stepped back and squeezed her pendant.

“Whoa…”

Meg tilted her head down at the little girl. “Told you I can do that here.”

“Yeah but…” Matt answered for his daughter, waving his hands around. “Seeing is believing.”

“No argument from me.” Meg walked over to her workstation. “Give me a minute to check on something.”

That something was the genetic search algorithm. How far had it progressed overnight? The answer was not at all, not even a token improvement. And as she had feared, the spell identified last night was pushing out the remaining, so far less successful approaches. It should be possible to partition the gene pool, give each its own set of servers in the cloud. Let the other genes freely mutate in their own pool, free from competition from this one successful gene, while letting that gene evolve in its own pool and maybe it’d break through to something much better.

Well, she could hope.

But in the meantime… “Sunset, we have a spell candidate. It… leaves something to be desired. Twilight briefly looked at it last night.”

Meg brought it up in the simulator as the mare trotted over. “This should be interesting,” Sunset said. A platform for her to stand on, so she could see the monitor, floated in front of her. Following her were the humans. Once they had all gathered around, Meg clicked on “run.”

When it had completed, she brought up the spell in a different window. Sunset perused it, her muzzle scrunching in concentration.

“Yeah, I know, no unicorn would’ve ever come up with something like this. Twilight already mentioned that.”

“And no unicorn did come up with this, but that’s not what’s…” Her gaze switched over to the simulation parameters—and she grimaced. “Must be cast simultaneously with that other spell.”

Before Meg could reply, a flash of light caught everyone’s attention.

“Twilight!” Susie ran to her and gave the alicorn a hug.

She hadn’t teleported in alone. Standing next to her was an unknown stallion, peering through his glasses at her niece as if he’d never seen a human before.

“Okay, Susie, that’s enough for now. I have important business to take care of.”

Matt had reached them. “That’s enough,” he repeated.

“Okay.” The girl released her.

While that had been going on, Meg gave the stallion a once over. Did she know him? Elderly. A coat that was once a deep blue. A graying violet mane. A beard that would do Star Swirl proud. Why did that sound familiar?

The stallion’s eyes finally scanned the other occupants of the cave. “Sunset Shimmer?”

“Professor Arcane Scroll?” The mare stepped towards him. “You remember me?”

“You were one of my best students. We’ll have much to discuss.”

“We… do?”

Twilight moved to the center of the cave. “The professor has been researching the spells powering the stars. You may have noticed the unusually bright star in the night sky. Princess Luna has been keeping it as close as possible so that we may visit it.”

Sunset’s jaw dropped. “You can actually visit a star?”

“I’m glad it isn’t just us humans shocked by that,” Martin said.

“Twilight can do anything!”

Susie’s father got her attention. “You need to keep quiet now.”

“Long story short,” Twilight said, “recent discoveries have shown the need for additional… resources. Professor?”

He cleared his throat. “I have made several trips to the star so far, always in the company of Princess Luna I must add. We’ve made some progress in identifying the stellar spells, but it has been quite… humbling. Magic unlike any seen before, upending everything Star Swirl has taught us.”

He took a breath. “It has become clear that the creators of those spells had an understanding of physics not dissimilar to that of you humans. We could use your assistance.”

Steve had helped with that the best he could, Meg knew, but he lacked sufficient knowledge of magic. Diana pointed out the obvious, saying, “We’d love to, but we know precious little about magic. You’re a professor of the subject, correct?”

“Indeed I am,” he said, chuckling, “but not magic of this nature. Ironically, you may have the advantage of not being shackled by expertise.” His eyes scanned the computer workstations lining a wall. “And… computers?”

Twilight walked over to the one Meg was sitting at. “I’ll let you get better acquainted. In the meantime, Meg and I need to swap computers in the past. I think we can handle that without your help, Sunset.”

The mare nodded and looked at her former professor. “Yeah, I’m needed here.”

Meg addressed her relatives. “I shouldn’t be gone too long.”

A few minutes later, Twilight brought Meg and her old computer to the warehouse, which disturbingly was illuminated for some reason. Meg was giving her the eye; Twilight shrugged in return. First things first: Twilight restored Meg’s old office computer to its original place on the workbench. Was there a clock somewhere? None she could see.

Could they have arrived at the wrong hour? It was unlikely. The uncertainty principle did apply to time travel; it could be minimized, but only by increasing the odds of the spell failing—and this time she had taken that risk. They ought to have arrived within minutes of their prior departure.

Meg urgently nodded her head at the computer. The cables needed to be plugged back in.

No sooner than Twilight had picked one of them up in her magic, the fire door opened and two humans walked in.

A quick check revealed their magic bubbles inoperative, as before, due to the nearby magic generator.

She ducked under the workbench. Meg did likewise.

One of the humans spoke. “Did you hear something?”

“You’re imagining things. Whoever took that computer is long gone.”

A second later: “Then explain that.”

The sounds of footsteps resumed, getting louder.

“That isn’t possible.”

“Maybe magic’s involved?”

“That doesn’t make any sense! Why would ponies…”

One of the humans—the one who’d just spoken?—dropped to the floor and eyed Meg and Twilight.

17. Borrowed Computers

Meg outstretched her arm, hand open, and willed a cinnamon and daisy swirl vanilla shake into existence. True, she was human now—humanoid—but that mattered little in this place. The first sip through the straw brought back old memories. Discord and Twilight availed themselves of their own refreshments.

“Well, at least that solves one mystery,” Meg said. “We never were able to time travel that far back.”

Discord gave them a smug smile. “That was all entirely our doing. Mind you we started with baby steps. Many experimental realms were unstable, failures that had to be terminated. The Tartarus realm was the first stable one, but still a failure magic-wise. We got close with the Breezy world, close enough to know we were ready for the real deal.

“We created the Equestrian realm, populated it with magical stars that kept it stable. Then the pièce de résistance: a planet full of life.”

Meg waved him on. “Yes, Earth, you cloned it, we got it.”

Discord frowned. “That obvious?”

“Yes,” Twilight stated. “It’s what we would’ve done if we had been able to.”

Meg rolled her eyes. “Sure explains how the dodo and other extinct species wound up in Equestria’s world, not to mention the continental similarities yada yada yada.”

“Fine, fine,” he grumbled. “We pulled your planet slightly into hyperspace, used the raw magic there to clone it, returned the original, moved the copy into your realm, recently created, and fired up the Sun.

He bore a dreamy look. “At first, it was wonderful.”

The human pulled out a gun and pointed it at the two mares. “What have we got here?”

His associate joined him on the floor, and his eyes went wide. “Isn’t that Meg?—the one that isn’t Twilight.”

“Huh?”

“You know, the one we held prisoner until she somehow escaped? Who’s now a pegasus?”

Meg fought the temptation to invoke the return spell. A quick glance showed that Twilight’s horn was softly glowing. Good.

“Yeah, you’re right.” A smile grew. “Guess we can take credit for recapturing her.”

Twilight seemed calm enough, another good sign—that and the fact they wanted to recapture her and not kill her. Meg decided it was safe enough to risk annoying them. “That spell you’ll cast tomorrow evening will destroy the Earth if we don’t take measures to prevent it.”

They both stared at her, blank face, then broke out in laughter. “Did… did you ever hear such a… a…” He inhaled. “Pathetic!”

The other waved his gun. “Come out of there.”

Twilight did so. “Your gun won’t work.”

“Oh really?”

She rolled her eyes. “We don’t have time for this.” The two men collapsed. Twilight caught them in her magic and set them down on the floor. “A sleep spell,” she said.

Meg came out from under the workbench to join her. “And when they wake up?”

“Does it really matter? We know we’ll do what needs to be done.”

And if they’re here when the spell is cast… problem solved. Even if they weren’t, there’s no evidence what they’d just witnessed would be passed on to others.

What am I thinking! Problem solved? When had she become so callous? She looked at the sleeping men. One of whom had pointed a gun at her.

Even so.

“Twilight, maybe we could take them back with us? Put them in Tartarus?”

The alicorn had finished plugging the cables back into her old office computer. “Already tried that once. Didn’t work out so well.”

Meg didn’t feel like arguing that point. “What if the sleep spell hadn’t worked?”

Twilight had moved over to the spell casting device. “Done something else, I guess.”

With the lights on above, the device looked more… ordinary? Certainly less mysterious. There was a perfectly plain computer, and a—okay, the spell casting machinery now looked like a cheesy prop from a low-budget sci-fi movie. Meg moved the mouse. As before, that brought up a locked desktop. “We still need to unlock it somehow.”

Twilight sighed. “I know. Not much point in taking it if we can’t.”

Meg looked about and around. “No post-it notes.” At Twilight’s blank face, she said, “They didn’t write the password down and leave it in plain sight.”

“Oh.”

Meg began to ponder how to use a quantum random number generator inside a time loop to “guess” the password, but unless an incorrect guess could somehow be turned into a paradox—

“Hold on.” Twilight retrieved the notebook they had previously found by the machine, the one with their research on creating a wormhole to Equestria. She opened it to the last page and levitated it over to Meg. “Look at the inside cover.”

Meg did so. It was blank except for a gibberish word, a word with upper and lower case letters, some digits, and even a symbol. “Sure looks like a password,” she declared. A password for what, there wasn’t a clue. “A good one at that. Couldn’t hurt to try it.”

Twilight carefully typed it in, character by character, and hit enter.

The desktop unlocked.

Meg sighed relief. They were too damn many time loops as it was.

A large window, covering most of the desktop, belonged to the program that enchanted spells into gems, if “enchanted” was the right word for something that used decidedly non-magical lasers. Twilight was on it, seeking out what the last spell—next spell?—with which a gem had been enchanted.

“No question about it,” she finally stated. “It’s the world-ending version that’s currently enchanted into that gem.” She looked around some more. “There seem to be other variants, but we don’t have time here to study them.”

“Then shut it down and take it back with us. That was the plan.”

“That was the plan,” Twilight echoed.

Less than a minute later, it was off and unplugged. Twilight levitated it all: the computer and casting machinery, that notebook and the cheat sheet. “Let’s head back.” Without waiting for Meg to respond, she and the hardware vanished.

Before invoking the return spell herself, Meg contemplated the two men motionless on the ground. They ought to remain unconscious until after they had returned and replaced the borrowed equipment, if Twilight had cast the sleep spell correctly—and of course she had. But then what?

One thing at a time. Meg invoked the return spell.

Twilight was waiting for her in the side-tunnel, a short distance away from the main cavern-turned-office. No one is supposed to go there, thus reserving it for time travel. Upon seeing her, Twilight fired up the time travel spell. Before long they had returned to the cavern, equipment in tow.

Not much had changed in the short time they had been gone. The professor was with Sunset at one of the workstations. Diana was demonstrating one of the magic experiments to Susie, while Matt hovered (figuratively, of course) nearby. Their return had yet to draw any attention.

“We’re back,” Twilight announced. Everyone’s attention turned to the machinery in Twilight’s magical grasp, in the process of being lowered onto a reasonably clear workbench.

Jerry was the first one to reach it. “So this is their spell engraver/caster, eh?” He peered at the lasers pointing at the gemstone and let out a whistle. “Gotta hand it to them. Never would have thought lasers would do the job.”

“No unicorns to help them,” Martin said. “And they still managed to pull this off.”

The gemstone was engulfed in a cyan-ish glow. “Imbecils,” Arcane Scroll muttered.

“We know, professor.” Sunset watched the glow fade away. “This equipment was retrieved from the past shortly before the spell in that gem was cast.”

Arcane stared at her, mouth hanging open. “That… that spell will not cause the anomaly you described.”

“We know that too,” Twilight said. “We’re going to intervene—once we figure out how. Which is why we brought this here, to determine our options.”

The professor shook his head. “Do you plan on casting that spell here? The effects ought to be containable, though the margin for error would be vanishingly small.”

“No,” Twilight said. “Certainly not with this machine. It would be destroyed, and we must return it to the past.”

“Nor should it be necessary,” Sunset added. “We can do computer simulations, like I told you. Let me show you.”

Arcane Scroll followed Sunset Shimmer to Meg’s workstation.

Martin watched the departing ponies. “Seriously? You can actually contain something like that?”

Twilight turned on the “borrowed” computer. “In theory, yes. But only here, in our realm.”

“Could we understand that theory?”

She watched the computer boot up. “Someday? Maybe?”

Martin sighed. “At least the answer wasn’t ‘no.’”

He looked on as Twilight started to explore the other spells on that computer. Jerry joined him. Diana obviously wanted to, but… Susie. Meg squeezed her pendant and headed their way. “Go,” she told Diana.

“Is it always this crazy?” her brother asked her, after Dianna left to join the others.

Meg shrugged. “Welcome to my world. At least the Spirit of Chaos isn’t here.”

Matt glanced around.

“It takes more than that to get his attention, believe me. Hell, we’ve been trying to reach him.”

“Oh really?”

“Discord’s fun!”

Matt stared at his daughter as if seeing her for the first time. “You’ve met Discord?”

“Uh huh.”

He stared at his sister.

His sister stared down at Susie.

Susie replied with a guilty face.

“She is not the problem, Meg.”

Maybe she should consider herself lucky it took this long for her niece to spill the beans. “Obviously she survived the encounter just fine.”

“And just what did this ‘encounter’ entail?”

Meg looked at Twilight, who studiously kept her attention on the screen in front of her. The same could not be said of her co-workers. Upon noticing their attention, she decided Twilight had the right idea; this really was none of their business.

Her brother was still staring at her, now with folded arms.

She didn’t need this crap on top of everything else going on, and besides it wasn’t as if it wasn’t all going to come out anyway. Her eyes drilled into his. “Discord turned her into a cute pegasus filly. There were no lasting effects—none.”

“Celestia and I thoroughly examined her.”

Matt swung his head to Twilight then back to Meg. “And I’m only hearing about this now?!”

“Because I knew you’d react this way!”

“And why shouldn’t I?”

“Because this is Equestria, and this sort of shit happens here! Nothing stops Discord from showing up right now and turning you into a pegasus!”

Meg almost wished Discord would show up and turn her brother into a pegasus. Everyone else, Matt most of all, suddenly paid attention for draconequus signs.

Naturally, there were none.

“Did she acquire a cutie mark?” he finally asked.

“No. She was not bound to the magic field. Only the Element of Magic can bind her.”

“And I did not use it on your daughter.” Twilight’s eyes never left the monitor.

Somewhat mollified, he got down to his knees in front of Susie. “Did Discord turn you into a pegasus without your permission?”

Susie put her foot down. “I wanted to be a pony.”

“But without magic, honey, you can’t fly.”

“I did fly!”

Meg put hand to forehead. “Discord lent her some of his magic so she could do pegasus things. There was no trace of it left after Twilight turned her human again. Note that she does not automatically become a pony when she’s brought to this realm, unlike me.”

“Discord can do that?” Arcane asked.

Sunset pointed at the professor. “Yeah, what he said.”

“Not even Celestia knew he could do that,” Twilight replied, eyes still glued to the monitor, apparently still oblivious that Susie had not been the first so gifted.

“Learn something new every day,” Sunset said, while Arcane shook his head in wonderment.

Matt rubbed his eyes. “How long was she a pony?”

“Most of an afternoon, I guess?” Meg wasn’t sure where he was going with this.

“Do I want to know what she did while being a pony?”

Meg shrugged. “Nothing earth-shattering. Took her to Ponyville, got her a cupcake with flowers at Sugarcube Corner, and…” Did she really want to mention that? The hell with it. “Rainbow Dash gave her flying lessons.”

Susie giggled. “It was awesome!”

The joke those two had played on her—well, Dash had played on her—not so much.

“That sounds so cute,” Diana said. “Got any pictures?”

Pictures?

Matt put an arm around Susie. “Yeah, do you?”

“Didn’t think to take any?”

“So there wouldn’t be any evidence?”

“What? No! I didn’t plan for any of this to happen! And I also had to deal with Trixie—”

“The Great and Powerful?”

Meg shot Martin an ugly look. “Yes, if you must know, and no I’m not getting into that right now.” And as bad as that had seemed at the time, it was the good ol’ days compared to her present situation. When will it be over?

Matt sighed. “Maybe it was a mistake to come here.”

What did he mean by that? There were so many possibilities. Taking her silence as a confirmation, he put a hand on his daughter’s back and guided her towards the portal. “Come on, Susie. Time to go home.”

“Wait.”

Matt stopped and turned around. “Look, I get it. You have a world to save and we’re—I’m a distraction you don’t need right now.”

He wasn’t wrong; that was the problem. “It’s the thought that counts?”

A smile. “Sure, let’s go with that. Come on, Susie.”

This time Meg didn’t try to top him.

What was it about saving a world? Right. Twilight was still focused on the borrowed computer, her co-workers surrounding her. It was time for her to join the party. “Find anything useful?” Meg asked as she walked over to them.

“Not really,” Twilight replied. “I found other spells, but nothing comparable to what’s on that gem, and certainly nothing that would create the anomaly we know. It looks like that gem is what they’re going cast.”

Of course it would. “So we’ll need our spell and we’ll need to figure out how to cast it simultaneously with theirs.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. We need more information. We need to see this device in operation.”

“So what about the other spells?” Meg asked. “We get a blank gem, put it in, enchant it, then have the machine cast it. We know they tested it with simple spells.”

“I’ll be right back!” Diana ran over to a cabinet, retrieved a gem, and rushed back. “Would this work?”

Twilight levitated it from her hand and studied it. “Perfect.” She removed the other gem from the machine and put this new one in its place. Her attention returned to the monitor. “So let’s go with… this one. The self-levitating spell.” After a quick glance at the cheat sheet, she began the enchanting process.

The lasers above the gem shifted, Meg would have to guess, to their starting position. Dim, red laser beams intersected somewhere inside the gem. The point of intersection shifted around in a tight spiral as the intensity of each beam was independently modulated. For several minutes it continued, then it shut off.

Twilight examined the newly enchanted gem with her magic. Satisfied, she nodded. “It worked.”

Martin whistled. “We need to copy everything off that computer.”

“Why not?” Meg asked. “It’s only fair; after all, they stole my computer.”

“No objection from me.” Twilight scanned the cheat sheet, and once she found what she was looking for, she returned her attention to the computer.

A few seconds later, a green laser that Meg had not noticed before sprang to life. It was directly above the gem, and it had some optics that caused the beam to fan out, shining the entire gem.

The laser switched off; the gemstone rose half an inch.

Twilight’s horn was lit, focusing her magical senses on the still-levitating stone. Her attention then switched to the magic generator and the gems in front of it, gems that had come from the collar of the Pinkie Pie doll. She switched off the generator and the gem fell. “Interesting.”

“Why should the magic generator matter, here in Equestria?”

“Excellent question, Jerry.” Twilight switched the generator back on, but the gem remained where it was. “It’s part of the activation sequence, along with those other gems and the green laser, altogether functioning crudely like a unicorn’s horn. It’s not just about providing the magic that powers the spell, though obviously it also does that in your realm.”

Meg looked at the inactive gem. “Any ideas how to cast our own spell simultaneously with that one?”

Twilight looked pleased with herself. “Actually, yes. But I’ll need to do a little reading first.”

Which still left the problem of putting the ring into place around the other gem, and making sure it remained there while the bad guys created the anomaly—but one step at a time.

Twilight stepped away from the monitor. “Why don’t you go copy whatever you want off that computer right now.” She walked over to an empty part of the cave and waved Meg over.

Meg did so, after first squeezing her pendant so that she may converse with the pony face to face. “Is there a problem?”

“Yes. Discord. To be more precise, our inability to get in touch with him.”

“Not even Fluttershy?”

“Nope. We still have to end that anomaly, and we cannot do it without him.”

No, they couldn’t. Nor could Meg move forward with the convention at his theme park. “Well… someday we will see him again, right? So when that happens, we’ll just grab him, time travel to right now, and put him to work.”

Twilight actually looked around to see if they would carry out that course of action.

They would not.

“Too many time loops as it is,” Meg conceded. “So any other ideas born of desperation?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but yes. Remember his condition, that we take his theme park seriously?”

“Yes…”

“Then let’s go there.”

“Uh… sure. Like… right this second?”

“The sooner the better.”

“How sure are you it’s gonna work?”

“We’re talking about Discord.”

That didn’t exactly answer the question. Or maybe it did. “Fine. Let’s go there.”

It was a bit early for lunch, but Meg didn’t have anything better to do as Twilight arranged for their transportation. The cafeteria in the palace was surprisingly egalitarian. Sure, workers and staff dominated, but nobles were not strangers. And in the scheme of things, Meg was closer to the latter than she sometimes liked to admit.

She decided on the salad bar. A unicorn attendant assembled her salad from her chosen ingredients, heavy on berries. Once that was finished, the bowl was placed on a tray, then the tray was levitated onto her back. It stayed in place, of course, as she made her way to one of the smaller tables; trays were enchanted to do that, she had learned—at least in the finer establishments they were.

Arriving at an empty table surrounded by other empty tables—it was a bit early after all—she grabbed the tray with her mouth and transferred it to the table. She sat down, picked up a fork with a hoof, and started to eat.

“Mind if I join you?”

Meg looked up to see A. K. Yearling. “I guess? Never thought I’d see you here.”

“You’d be surprised. I butt heads with Canterlot bureaucrats all too often.” The disguised pegasus transferred her own tray from back to table and took a seat opposite Meg. “It’s the curse of having business interests.”

“I don’t recall Daring Do ever ‘butting heads with bureaucrats.’ Aren’t you supposed to write what you know?”

“My publisher insists I write what sells.”

Meg picked out a large strawberry and ate it, savoring its flavor. “So you’re done with exploring Grecian ruins with Andy for that documentary?”

“All wrapped up. The others are probably back in the U.S. by now. I decided to skip the flight back and return directly home.”

Meg wondered how customs officials, in both countries, would feel about that. It’s something they’d just have to deal with, for now anyway.

“So,” Yearling began, pointing a fork-speared carrot at her, “making any progress on that anomaly? It’s starting to panic the humans. Hard not to notice that.”

“It’s… complicated.”

“I can handle complicated.”

Which wasn’t really the problem, of course. Even so, Daring had been trusted with royal secrets before, including Meg’s true nature, and had never betrayed that trust. “We think we have a solution.” Meg looked around—the tables around them were still empty—and said with lowered voice, “It… involves Discord.”

“Oh really.”

“It’s the politics that may be messy—at best—and it’s not clear if Discord will help or hurt there.”

“Politics, eh? Human politics is a subject I’m very interested in right now. Research for a future book, you know.”

“Talk to Twilight. I’ve had enough politics to last me a lifetime.” Meg dug into her salad with a vengeance. “And speaking of Twilight…” she said between mouthfuls. “I’m in a bit of a rush right now. She’s arranging transportation and she’ll be here soon to get me.”

A raised eyebrow. “Oh? Where to, if I may ask?”

Or maybe the trip could be avoided. “You wouldn’t happen to have anyway of reaching Discord, would you? You know, because you two are both involved with Las Pegasus casinos?”

“Not particularly. You could try leaving a message at his casino.”

“We’ve already tried that. Generally they have no idea when he’ll be by to pick up his messages. It ain’t often, that’s for sure.”

“There’s always the possibility he’s avoiding you.” She leaned forward. “So, I may not ask?”

Meg sighed. It wouldn’t hurt. “We’re going to his new theme park, hoping he’ll deign to meet us there.”

Yearling leaned back. “Discordland, eh? Only seen the outside of it, myself.”

Meg’s fork froze in midair. “You’ve been there?”

“Twilight never mentioned it? When that portal got created between Athens and Discordland.”

“No, not that I remember.”

“Not sure if I should feel hurt by that. Did she mention that the film crew behind the ‘Andy visits his ancient home’ documentary would be interested in documenting that theme park?”

“No?”

“Isn’t that supposed to be your area as a Royal Advisor?”

“I suppose? The princesses aren’t required to ask my advice, you know, or follow it when given. Did Twilight make any commitments about that?”

“No. It’s really up to Discord, anyway.”

“Well, if we actually find him there…” Meg’s voice trailed off. A documentary crew, who want to document Discordland. Would they be interested in covering the first brony convention ever held there? (If one is held there, she had to remind herself.) “Would you know how to contact them? The film crew that is.” Maybe if she’d put them in contact with Andrew, that’d get him off her back for a while.

“They gave me their card, yes. I’d assume their contact info means more to you than it does to me.”

“I’m sure it does.”

18. Message Received

In front of Discord manifested a beach-ball-sized Earth, slowly turning with evolving weather patterns. “Actual stuff, following its own rules, independent of any magic. Such simple rules, your laws of physics, yet yielding astonishing complexity and self-organization, from the sub-microscopic to the scale of continents. And life—life!—from bacteria to whales to mushrooms to trees.”

The globe changed, colors shifted, cloud patterns altered. “But we miscalculated. We had no idea how linked your world was to the rest of your realm. No moon, no tides. No solar tides from our sun substitute, either. No solar wind interacting with the atmosphere. No cosmic radiation. Many creatures cared about the phase of the moon; that we could and did fix.

“Slowly the planet warmed up. At first we thought something had gone wrong with the sun. But it wasn’t just the planet; the entire realm was heating up. Heat radiated from the planet, spread throughout space, and looped back to the planet—because the realm was the surface of a small hypersphere. Once we’d figured that out, Harmony adjusted the spells powering the stars.”

The planet was dismissed. “By then the damage had been done. Comparing against the original made that clear enough. We considered starting over with a fresh clone.

“Instead, we went to work fixing what we had—and making a few improvements.”

The E.R.S Zephyr hung high over the northeastern edge of the Everfree Forest. Just outside the forest was an impossible sight—impossible anywhere, that is, but here in Equestria. Meg turned to Twilight. “What should we do? Land this ship? Fly down ourselves?” She looked around the observation lounge. “Wait for Discord to show up? I’m half surprised he’s not already here to greet us.”

Twilight continued peering down at Discordland. “There’s certainly enough room down there to land the ship.” She scrunched her muzzle. “But there’s supposedly a barrier to keep people from leaving the park. Better not to risk passing the ship through that, not until we know more.”

“What about us passing through that?”

Twilight started walking to the intercom. “Stay behind me, and be prepared to stop if I stop.”

“Okay…” It was probably safe enough, Meg told herself. Twilight can detect and analyze any magical barrier. If only Discord was expecting us. But all attempts to contact him had failed.

Once Twilight had reached the intercom, she pressed the button to talk. “Captain, Meg and I will fly down. Remain here until we return.”

“As you wish, Your Highness.”

Twilight walked over to the nearest window. “I’ll teleport us outside.”

Meg was used to that by now. Seconds later the two were outside, hovering. “Before going down there,” she said, “I’d like to scope out the area. If a brony convention is to be held there, some things need to be sorted out—like, could people drive here through a portal? Where would they park?” She scanned the ground below. “There’s that large grassy area between the park and the forest. Maybe that can be turned into a parking lot?”

“The entrance is on that side, though I’m sure it could be moved if necessary.”

“Yeah. Or maybe it’ll move on its own. Because chaos.”

Twilight squinted. “Hasn’t moved yet. But we can speculate forever. We really need Discord to show up.”

Meg sighed. “You’re right. Let’s go down. Probably the best way to get him to appear anyway.”

“Maybe we should’ve insisted on Yearling coming along with us. She seems to have a knack for handling him. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’d be more likely to show up if she were with us.”

And with that said, Twilight slowly descended, her horn already lit. “Remember: stay well back, just in case.” Meg waited a few seconds, then followed, trying to match the alicorn’s precise path. That was easy enough to do, providing plenty of opportunity to examine the theme park below as they descended.

Clearly it was inspired by a certain famous Californian theme park—if its creator had been dropping acid while designing it. It could have been worse, she supposed. At least the buildings weren’t walking around; some of them even possessed flat surfaces meeting at right angles. Though one of those had a waterfall that ignored the prevailing direction of gravity.

Twilight was suddenly flying right at her.

“Gah!” Meg made a hard right to avoid colliding. “What just happened?”

The alicorn slowed to a hover. “I just hit the barrier, I think. It’s supposed to do what you just saw.” She rotated to face it. “Strange I didn’t sense it.”

“Could you teleport past it?”

“Don’t see why not. It’s supposed to keep humans in, not magic-using ponies out.”

“Guess it’s just as well we didn’t try to land the ship.”

“Yeah.” Twilight resume forward movement, then stopped. “Should be about here. Still don’t sense anything.” Moving forward once again, she was turned around.

Not rotated, just… now going the other way.

Twilight stopped and turned around. “Okay, let’s try a teleport.”

And she did—in the wrong direction. And once again facing the other way.

Now she was getting angry. “That makes no sense!”

“Au contraire! It makes perfect sense.”

Twilight smashed hoof into forehead. “By all means, Discord, explain how this makes perfect sense.”

The draconequus faded into view, wearing a brown top hat, a plum jacket, sand colored trousers, and a beige bowtie. He leaned on a brown, rod-like cane, never mind they were all well above the ground.

“Do I have to explain everything? Next you’ll be questioning whether snozzberries taste like snozzberries!”

“What?”

Meg groaned. “She’s not gonna get the reference, you know.”

Discord winked at her. “But you do.”

Twilight looked at her.

And back at Discord. “That’s beside the point! Just answer the question.”

“Oh… fine.” He raised the cane then pointed it at the entrance below and they all started to descend, the barrier now irrelevant. “I’m thinking ahead, Twilight, my dear, and your constructive criticism can take credit for that. Sure, humans don’t do magic today, but what about tomorrow? And what better way to test the security than to put it up against the Element of Magic herself!”

“I couldn’t even sense the magic,” she grumbled.

“And you don’t know how happy that makes me! If you can’t sense it, then you can’t analyze and counter it.”

Twilight had no response to that. Meg couldn’t blame her; that explanation made shockingly good sense.

They all touched down on the grass in front of the entrance. In response, the ponderous gate creaked open. Cane still in paw, Discord raised his arms and proclaimed, “Welcome to Discordland, the discordiant place in the multiverse!”

Where had been closed gates now began a wide road, straight as an arrow. No, its chaos revealed itself not through shape but through makeup. Concrete abutted asphalt abutted brick abutted wooden planks abutted green goo. Well, it looked like goo. How solid was it? Maybe there was a transparent barrier above it? As Meg’s eyes drifted down that road, other unlikely substances presented themselves. Of course there’d be cotton candy.

What wasn’t to be seen was equally noteworthy. No booths to collect admission fees. No security to inspect backpacks. One could argue Discord had no need for either. She looked back at the grassy plain that went right up to the gate. “Before we go inside,” she said, “we need to discuss how your human guests will arrive.”

Discord gasped in glee. “Am I about to receive advice from Sunbutt’s Royal Advisor on Human Affairs?”

Twilight scowled at the insult to her mentor. “She’s an advisor to all princesses, myself included, for your information.”

Discord lowered his head next to Meg’s, somehow not toppling over, and in a stage whisper said, “I think she’s just upset I haven’t come up with a nickname for her yet.”

“No. I’m not. Really.”

After giving Meg a wink, he returned to an upright position. “Obviously, my second most favorite adult pegasus, humans shall arrive via a portal.”

Adult? Never mind, at least they were past the topic of nicknames. “Yes, but do they walk through a portal, or do they drive through? If the latter, they need a place to park here; if the former, that end of the portal must be near parking facilities. There’s also the question of hotels: which side of the portal are they to be?”

Discord looked at the grass in thought, paw on chin. “I think I’d prefer to have the hotel here, and this time without partners to restrain my inspiration.”

He did complain about that back in Las Pegasus, didn’t he? Well, convention attendees will know what they’re getting into. “Just so long as nothing permanent happens to the guests.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, waving it away.

“Perhaps even better to have a ‘safe word’ if things get too…” Meg sighed. “Look, you have to appreciate that not everyone has the same enthusiasm for chaos that you do. Let them experience as much as they are willing to experience, but no more. If you want repeat business, it’s critical to respect that.”

“I suppose…”

Well, it was the best she could hope for. He seemed sincere enough, anyway. “If you want your own hotel, then you also should provide parking. You don’t have to pave over this lawn; you could put it underground, beneath the hotel. Which means guests will drive through the portal, and the Earth-side portal needs to be placed accordingly.”

“Only one portal?”

Obviously multiple portals could be opened, but should they? On the one hand, it could cut down on air travel; but on the other… What if the portals went to different countries? Would anyone use them to circumvent passports and customs?

The questioned answered itself. “Better to stick with just one.”

“Fine, if you insist…”

“And you should know that a hotel is more than just a place for people to stay overnight. It also has rooms, small and large, some very large, to hold convention events and a marketplace. As examples I can give you brochures with floor maps from hotels that do conventions.”

He looked a bit miffed. “You mean like that Las Pegasus hotel/casino with my name on it.”

“Well… I guess? I mean, I didn’t notice when I was there but if they hold conventions then they’d need to do that too.”

His posture sagged. “This is going to require some thought,” he finally said. “I’ll get back to you on the hotel.”

“Take your time, and when you’re ready I can set up a meeting with the convention runners. You’ve already met some of them a while back.”

“I did, didn’t I?”

There was still the subject of the documentary crew. Meg decided it could wait until later. It was Twilight’s turn with the draconequus now.

And Twilight took advantage of the opening. “As you know, I’d like to use this park as a place to vet the humans I’ll be taking back in time to observe the creation of the anomaly. Where would be a good place to do that?” She waved a hoof at the grassy field. “We could do it out there…”

Discord’s eyes lit up. “I know just the place!”

He strode over the threshold and onto the chaotically composited road inside the park. Twilight followed him, and Meg followed Twilight.

One question had been answered: no transparent barrier covered the road. Each region possessed the texture one would expect from its material. They approached the green goo. Discord stepped right into it, then out of it. The goo gave, but none stuck to his foot. Twilight hesitated, then did likewise. Meg just did it; it felt springy—and dry. Other questionable substances turned out to be equally inoffensive.

“Over there is Chaos Mountain,” Discord said, pointing with a talon. “It’s a roller coaster through chaos.”

The “mountain” was somewhat cone shaped, big surprise, but the Anaheim equivalent didn’t rotate about its tip—rotate vertically, that is, as in it went upside down halfway through its rotation. “How do the cars stay on the track when it’s upside down?” Meg asked.

Discord looked almost insulted by the question. “The cars would fall off the track unless it did go upside down.”

Meg decided not to ask how passengers got on and off. That must happen when the base was on the ground. Right?

“And that’s ‘it’s a mad world.’” One could hear the lack of capitalization in the name.

The ride presented a façade of numerous buildings of various architectural styles from around the world—the human world. In the center was an oversized clock, somewhat stretched and distorted as if it had partially melted at some point. The two hands were moving at randomly varying speeds and directions, changing size and shape as they did.

But most unsettling was that the attraction had its own miniature Sun and Moon, moving in an arc over the façade in perfect synchronization with that misshapen clock. Celestia’s Sun held no dominion here; the only light, or lack thereof, illuminating the façade and surrounding grounds came from those miniatures.

It even had its own weather system, equally chaotic. Right now, it was raining chocolate milk from cotton candy clouds. Fortunately, it barely extended into the areas where ponies would be present. Giant sponges, that came seemingly out of nowhere, were already at work wiping the beverage off the pavement.

Twilight shook her head. “Can’t wait for Pinkie Pie to see this,” she muttered.

“She’ll have to wait a while longer, I’m afraid.” Discord let out a sigh. “That ride remains stubbornly orderly.”

Meg forced a smile. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out eventually.” For his sake, she just hoped he remembered her advice to let his guests experience only what they’re willing to experience. “It really is impressive what you’ve accomplished here.” And she meant it. Sure, his powers were god-like, but he still had to come up with all this. He couldn’t just snap his talons and bring the entire park into existence all at once, right? His own admission of problems with that blatant “it’s a small world” ripoff says otherwise.

“This tour is all nice and well,” Twilight said, “but a ride is not an appropriate place for me to vet people.”

“I quite understand,” Discord declared. “We have so much time and so little to do.”

Twilight was about to object to the absurdity of that statement when Meg, shaking her head, put a hoof to the alicorn’s mouth. Meg tilted her head at the draconequus, waiting for the inevitable line.

All she got was a smirk in response. “Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?” Discord snapped his talons…

…and they were all teleported to an open area. Plain concrete was beneath their hooves. Spaced around them were planters bursting with colorful flowers and simple metal benches. It was strangely… unchaotic. If not for what surrounded them, Meg could almost believe they had left the theme park.

“Welcome to Pandemonium Plaza!”

Twilight turned a full circle. “What pandemonium?”

“The flowers, obviously! Those colors are practically rioting.”

And now that Meg focused on a single planter, it became clear it wasn’t as “normal” as it had first appeared. Several blue flowers drifted in on a red flower in their midst and made contact, forcing their blueness upon it. It fought back, spitting red back onto its attackers. The red dots slowly expanded. All the flowers were engaged in sluggish battles; none of the dozens of colors seemed to be winning.

“Are these flowers safe to eat?” Twilight asked.

“Perfectly safe,” declared Discord. “If you don’t mind your coat’s coloration joining the battle royal.”

“Okay, we need to discuss that, but I can let that slide for now since humans won’t think to eat them.”

“Am I hearing this plaza meets your needs?” He chewed on his talons. “The suspense is killing me; I hope it lasts.”

The alicorn rolled her eyes. “It looks like it. All I need are the exact coordinates so that a portal is placed right here.”

Discord was radiating happiness. “You’ll find it already set up in the portal control room. Just provide the location on Earth and you’re good to go!”

“Perfect. Now, about the anomaly.”

“Whenever you’re ready. The sooner, the better, if you want my opinion.”

How about yesterday? Meg grumbled to herself.

Twilight rolled her eyes. Again. “And you’ll show up when we are ready?”

“Indubitably!”

“Guess that’ll have to do.” She looked up the Zephyr. “How do we get past that barrier?”

Discord held out his open paw. Half a dozen tokens rested on it. “Carry one of these with you. It grants entry and exit.”

Twilight took them in her magic. “That’s most helpful, Discord.” She turned to Meg, levitating one over to her. “We should return to Canterlot.”

“I’ll follow in a minute,” Meg said, taking the token in hoof. Soon she was alone with Discord. “And how do I contact you to schedule a meeting with the convention staff?”

“Calendars are so orderly, don’t you think? Just bring them here by portal; I’ll know.”

She had little doubt of that. “And will you be in that ridiculous getup?”

“Most certainly not! I’ll be in something ludicrous.”

He vanished.

Meg sighed. At least he’d have an audience better able to get the reference. Whatever it turns out to be.

She took flight. The return to the airship was uneventful. As advertised, the token let her through the barrier as if it wasn’t there. Twilight was waiting for her outside the observation lounge. One teleport later and they were both inside.

Discussion waited until the Zephyr was on its way back to Canterlot. “We take out the anomaly next, now that Discord’s on board—right?” Meg asked.

Twilight took a seat. “The other options are to first return the enchanter/caster setup to the past, vet the observers that we’ll be taking to the past, or go back ourselves to observe from inside the building. As they all involve time travel, I know, there’s no good reason to do any of them ahead of fixing the anomaly in the present.” She looked out at the Everfree below them. “Best I can come up with is because doing the anomaly first is too obvious.”

“You think Discord’s definition of our readiness differs from our own?”

“The thought has crossed my mind, yes. Perhaps we’re not ‘ready’ until we do one or more of the other things first.”

Would he really do that? Could they really rule it out? Maybe no one had been killed, yet, but the property damage was growing exponentially, never mind all that air being suck out. Did that matter to him? Was the chaos being generated more important to him? Maybe he needed to be reminded that he couldn’t just fix everything with a snap of his talons.

“I guess,” Meg said, “that we’ll find out by when he decides to show up.”

“It’s not just that.”

“Oh?”

“Well, consider: If the anomaly was gone, would the demand to ‘observe’ also go away?”

“That’d be a good thing, right?” Meg scrunched her muzzle. “On second thought… I don’t think it would go away. The whole point of observing is to assign blame, or even to experience time travel, maybe try to take advantage of it. Getting rid of the anomaly won’t change any of that.”

“I suppose not.”

Forest encrusted hills flowed beneath them.

“So we take care of the anomaly first. How do we proceed? Just show up at the hyperspace portal and hope Discord turns up?”

Twilight exhaled. “Not exactly. Discord needs to go to hyperspace to displace your world into hyperspace. Me? I’ll be on Earth, ready to cast the spell once he does that.” She frowned. “The only question is whether to officially schedule it with human authorities.”

“Which would be rather difficult to do if we don’t know when Discord will turn up.”

“There’s that, too.”

And this was the reformed Discord they were dealing with. Meg had to remind herself that the pony next to her had dealt with the unreformed draconequus. “Let’s face it,” she said, remembering what he had said about calendars. “We can’t schedule it, because he won’t give us that option.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” Twilight said, grimacing. “On the other hoof, Serrell himself is not sure whether to make a public announcement.”

“Then let him know it’ll be sooner rather than later, Discord willing. It’s the best we can do.”

Twilight sighed. “I suppose it is.”

The two mares stared out the window in silence. In due course the ship began to decelerate, and shortly thereafter Canterlot came into view.

“Will it ever return to normal?”

Twilight’s eyes remained on the capital of Equestria. “Speaking as a mare with some experience in world-threatening situations like this… yes. But not necessarily to the same ‘normal’ as before.” The alicorn briefly extended her wings as an example.

“The infamous ‘new’ normal. Right.”

Meg didn’t dare guess how the new normal would differ from the old. It seemed a safe bet it would not be an improvement to her quality of life.

Once the Zephyr arrived at Canterlot, the two lost no time getting to the secure vault in which the mirror was kept. Once inside the mirror realm, they went straight to the portal control panel. Meg sat at the console and moved the mouse.

The user interface displayed the portal creation dialog box, with the Equestrian coordinates already entered. “I guess Discord followed through.” Meg brought up an editor and copy and pasted the data. “Might as well keep that for future reference.” She stood up; they had as of yet no Earth-side coordinates to enter.

“Good idea.” Twilight went to the pillar she had entered through. On the other side was the hyperspace portal. Going through by herself was not an option, not yet. “Discord, are you there?” They knew from prior experience that sound passed through to the other side.

He could be there. He had to have been here to enter those coordinates.

There was no response. “Wouldn’t he have to be near the portal to hear us?” Meg asked.

“Maybe? Not sure what difference it makes. The point is, he’s not here now.”

Meg pondered that for a moment. “Go to the anomaly? Maybe he’s there, waiting for you to show up before doing the displacement.”

Twilight put hand to chin. “It’s possible. Magic does color the ‘skin’ of the realm as seen from hyperspace. But how long is he prepared to wait out there?”

“Perhaps there’s preparation he has to do?”

She shook her head. “We can speculate forever. Might as well go there and see what happens.” She went around the pillar to the portal back to Equestria. “And try to give Serrell a heads-up.”

By the time Meg went around the pillar herself, Twilight had already gone through. After going through herself no Twilight was to be seen. She couldn’t have exited the vault that quickly on hoof; presumably she had teleported, almost certainly to get plaid pills.

That turned out to be the case. Twilight returned, with saddlebags on her back and two pills in her magical grasp. “Sorry,” she said, as one pill floated over to Meg. “Figured we shouldn’t waste any time if he’s waiting for us. I’ve already sent a message to Serrell.”

“Before we go… when was the last time you’ve been there?”

“Over a day… oh.”

“Yeah, we can’t go there, not any more. I flew there from about two miles away, so I can bring us to that gas station—should be safe enough.”

“Sounds good to me.”

They both went airborne and swallowed a plaid pill. Meg could almost forget the taste, it had become so familiar.

A wind was pushing them towards the anomaly. Far below them, what few cars could be seen out and about were mostly heading in the opposite direction. Even from here, the hole in the ground was visible. “We better gain altitude as we approach,” Meg said.

“Yeah. It’s almost as high as it is wide.” The alicorn squinted into the distance. “Actually, we want the closest intact building to land on. We’d have to descend anyway.” She flew off.

Meg followed, keeping an eye on the ground. It looked like all attempts to cordon off the anomaly had been abandoned. The perimeter was too large and expanding too fast. The wind was picking up speed; soon they’d have to fly in the opposite direction to keep their ground speed in check. They came upon a lot of equipment, some of it spilling into the now useless roads. Scientists? And that looked like media.

They landed in a relatively sheltered spot, with Twilight providing telekinetic assistance to Meg so as to fight the now-powerful winds. The hole in the ground started about four blocks away; any building closer had begun disintegrating.

“Time to signal Discord,” Twilight shouted and her horn ignited.

They weren’t far from the edge of the roof, so Meg figured that if she kept low she could make it over there and check out the activity below. She noted barriers had been erected to shield from the worst of the winds.

People then started pointing up at the sky; why was that? Meg herself looked up. The sky was darkening, as if the blue color was being sucked out. It wasn’t just the sky; it was happening everywhere. She peeked at the late afternoon sun, as briefly as she could. Was it yellower than usual?

Twilight ceased her efforts, for Discord had received her message.

20. Consider it Dark Magic

Discord shook his head in disappointment. “That tree is Harmony, my sister. She took that form to stabilize the world; her roots go deep and wide.”

“Wait a sec!” Meg leaped to her feet. “You mean that when I was zapped by the Elements when I first came to Equestria, that voice I thought I heard… it wasn’t my imagination?”

He shrugged. “What can I say? She prefers to work from behind the scenes; that ‘tree’ notwithstanding, she barely exists in the physical world as you understand it. Me? I’m more hands-on.” He sagged. “That led to some… irreconcilable differences. You humans were the problem.”

“Never heard that before,” Meg sarcastically said. “So what was it? You, I know, have always had a fascination with us. Sis couldn’t understand that, or something?”

Discord snorted. “Hardly. She was just as fascinated as I was. The problem was what to do with you. She wanted to go Prime Directive, observe but not interfere. I wanted to interact, to have fun.”

Meg resisted pointing out that humans were not his toys. He had reformed a long time ago; he knew that now, if he hadn’t then. Besides, it was ancient history.

Which begged the question: “How long ago was this? When did you clone the Earth?”

The Zephyr rested motionless over Discordland. Meg checked her phone: about ten minutes until Sunset Shimmer opened the portal to Andrew’s living room. Twilight hadn’t come along; Meg hadn’t even been able to interrupt her research long enough to get the princess to book this airship. Fortunately, it turned out that a Royal Advisor had the authority to do that—something she finally learned only after grabbing a moment of Celestia’s attention.

The only question was whether Discord would show up. Andrew had wanted the meeting to be ASAP, and she had no reason to deny him. It wasn’t as if the draconequus would be more likely to show up a week later instead of the following morning—or maybe he would, but how could she know that? Naturally, attempts to reach him were unsuccessful.

“Might as well get going,” she said to no one in particular.

She went over to the intercom. “I’m leaving now.”

“Understood.”

The door to the outside opened—no teleportation this time. Meg leaped outside into the air and spread her wings.

Nothing below looked any different, nothing new that looked like a hotel or a parking lot. Probably not the best sign.

There was Pandemonium Plaza. She easily passed through the barrier, thanks to the token hanging from her neck next to her pendant.

A minute later she touched down. Nothing to do but wait for the portal to open. She waited by one of the planters. Okay, that was different: the battle royal of colors had been sped up, no missing the shifting colors now. A better sign, hopefully.

Meg looked around. Still no Discord.

She checked her phone. Ten more seconds. How precisely would Sunset time it?

Quite precisely, as it turned out; for as the clock struck ten, the portal appeared in the center of the plaza. Through it she could see Andrew and his living room. The others were behind him, waiting for him to take the first step through.

Discord still was nowhere to be seen. Might as well do his job, she figured, stepping up to the portal. “Welcome to Discordland, the Discordiant Place in the Multiverse.” She waved a hoof to invite them in. “It’s, uh, what it says on the entrance.”

Andrew stepped through, looking around.

“Discord hasn’t shown up yet, but hopefully he’ll be here soon.”

Penny, Head of Charity and Sponsorships, stepped through next. “So this is it? His theme park.”

“Sure is. This is Pandemonium Plaza. Just don’t eat the flowers.”

Tyler, Head of Events and Programming, came next, bearing a look of confusion. “Why would we? Am I missing something?”

Meg sighed. “Ponies eat flowers—never mind. Best not to even touch them.”

Joe, SILICon Vice-President, headed straight for the nearest planter. “The colors are moving about?”

“That’s the ‘pandemonium.’ They’re fighting each other. That’s what Discord told us, anyway. And eating a flower will infect you with the chaos magic animating the battling colors.”

Elaine, Head of PR and Marketing—and brother of Eric Tanner, one of the five who had been in Tartarus—was the last one through the portal. “Is there anything else people should not eat or touch? It’d look kinda bad from a publicity standpoint. Just saying.”

And the one person who’d know the answer to that was still a no-show. “I’ll have to circle back to you on that. But I can say that Twilight was also bothered by flowers that ought not be eaten, and she will work to ensure that the appropriate ground rules are in place.”

Andrew wandered around the plaza’s perimeter, taking in the view. “I’m not too worried about that. A lot of bronies who come here would like to experience some chaos magic. It’s just a matter of…” He shrugged. “I dunno. A ‘safe word,’ perhaps? Some way to say enough’s enough and oh-god-end-it-now?”

“Sure,” Elaine said, “that way we could promote it as part of the experience.”

“No objection from me,” Meg said. “But the one who must address this is, uh, not here yet.” If he’ll even show up. It seemed less likely with every passing minute.

“What about Twilight?” Andrew asked. “I know that’s not who you’re referring to, but any reason she’s not here with you?”

Meg glared at him. “Actually, there is. She’s in a library researching how to get rid of that damn anomaly.”

Joe smirked at Andrew. “Gotta admit that’s a tad more important than us, right?”

Penny pointed up into the sky. “What’s that?”

Meg looked up in that direction. “That? That’s the airship I took from Canterlot.”

“Looks big. Any chance we can go on board?”

Meg shook her head. “No, there’s a barrier around this theme park that you can’t pass through. Discord has provided me with means to pass through,”—no point in hiding that fact, as it would otherwise lead to the obvious question—”but not for any of you.” Nor was she going to potentially trap herself here so one of the others could leave. “That barrier also keeps out critters from the Everfree Forest next door.”

“We’re next to the Everfree Forest?” Elaine asked.

“That’s what I said,” Meg singsonged. “The opposite side from Ponyville. Too far for most pegasi to fly.” Like me.

“Any possibility of seeing those critters through the barrier? That might be something worth promoting too.”

“Maybe? Can’t say I’ve noticed any myself, but I haven’t really looked either. I imagine Discord could do something about that.” If he would just show up.

“Discord. Discord. Discord.” Penny giggled. “Couldn’t hurt to try.”

Nor was it productive. “Guess he’s not Beetlejuice,” Joe said.

“Could you give us a tour of the place, Meg? Do the rides work?”

“Not really, Andrew. I’ve barely explored this place myself. I do remember Discord complaining about one ride not working right or something, so it’s definitely a work in progress.”

“Do you know what he’s planned for a hotel and/or parking?”

“I’ve mentioned it to him, and he said he needed to think about it.”

“And I have!”

All eyes turned to the draconequus and… “Fluttershy?” Penny asked. “That’s really you?”

The butter yellow pony ducked her head behind her mane and inched closer to Discord. “Sorry, it’s my fault Discord was delayed in coming here.”

“Now, now, my dear. You mustn’t blame yourself.”

Meg stepped forward. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but why are you here?”

Elaine also stepped forward. “Are you interested in being a Guest of Honor at our convention?”

“We’ll have that conversation at a different time,” Meg quickly interceded. “And quite frankly, if Fluttershy does appear, it should only be in the presence of the other five.”

“I quite agree,” Discord declared.

“Oh, absolutely,” Elaine said. “We wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Thank you,” squeaked the pony in question. “Anyway, I wanted to see Discord’s theme park, so I asked to come along.”

“And I tried to explain it’s a work in progress, not yet ready to be experienced.”

“But you’ll be showing it off to them.”

Meg decided to end it there. “I think we see why you were delayed.” Fluttershy blushed and Discord rolled his eyes. “I don’t have a problem with you being on the tour, and I’m sure none of the others do either.” Nodding heads all around. “But so you know, we do have a need to check the place out now, before it’s done, so we can make preparations in time to hold the convention. By then, of course, this park must be finished.” Didn’t she once hear that on Disneyland’s opening day the drinking fountains didn’t work? “For some definition of ‘finished.’”

Fluttershy smiled. “I understand.”

Andrew retook control of the conversation. “So, Discord, what are your thoughts on hotels and parking?”

Discord perked up. “I definitely intend to have a hotel—and this time have it done right. Parking can go beneath it. Have the portal go there, right into the parking lot. As for location…” He snapped his talons and they were all transported just outside the theme park. “Right here. I’ll have to move the barrier a bit further out to make room, of course, but right over there is the Everfree. Not too far of a walk, and you’d be able to walk right up to the edge.”

“And see dangerous critters?” Elaine asked.

Discord put paw to mouth and whistled. Timberwolves emerged through the trees and glared at them. They moved side to side, but did not leave the forest. “Like that?” A small manticore joined them, its barbed tail pointing in their direction.

“Perfect.”

“Is that a juvenile?” Fluttershy asked. She started walking over to it. The timberwolves started to snarl.

Penny grimaced. “Sure hope that barrier holds.”

“So little faith,” Discord griped.

The barrier was invisible. Meg hadn’t seen a token on Fluttershy, so she should be okay. Yet something didn’t seem right. Those creatures couldn’t see the barrier either, so why didn’t they bump into it? That couldn’t be happening, because they weren’t being turned around.

Fluttershy didn’t bump into it either, stopping well short of where it probably was.

“You want to see them close up?—er, closer, anyway—well, come along.” Meg trotted over to Fluttershy.

She didn’t look back until she had reached her; they were coming. “You’ve probably noticed the Zephyr up there,” she told Fluttershy. “If you want, you can fly back to Canterlot with me afterwards, over the Everfree—no, I can drop you off in Ponyville if you’d prefer.”

Discord was beside them. “An excellent idea! There is so much more to see of that forest than that tiny bit near your cottage.”

“You can come along too, I guess.” Not as if Meg could stop him, after all. And it rendered the lack of a token for Fluttershy a non-problem. “Hey, is there a reason they’re not touching the barrier? I find that odd.”

Andrew had joined them. “How do you know they’re not touching it? Sure looks to me like something’s holding them back.” It sure wasn’t holding back the frustrated growling, now quite audible.

Discord gave him an eager smile. “Why don’t you touch it yourself and find out?”

Andrew froze in indecision. He turned to Meg. “Would I regret it?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, it’s perfectly safe. Disorienting, perhaps, but harmless. Just walk into it, even run into it; you won’t feel a thing.” She turned to Discord. “You haven’t answered my question.”

He displayed mock offense. “Wasn’t my fault I was rudely interrupted.”

Meg sighed. “Fine. Everyone: don’t interrupt this time.”

“Ahem.” He waited to make sure no one would interrupt. “Your answer is that there is another barrier, just outside the first, that behaves like a boring, unimaginative barrier. A necessary sacrifice on my part to create the best viewing conditions of the local fauna.”

Fluttershy smiled. “And your future guests will appreciate your kindness and consideration.”

“Ahhhh,” Penny whispered. “That’s so adorable.”

Fluttershy blushed while Discord went “Hmph.”

“I’ll take a pass on the barrier,” Andrew declared.

“That’s fine,” Meg said. “You should know it forms a dome around the entire theme park. It’s to keep humans in as much as to keep the local fauna out. No entering Equestria from here.”

“What about underground?” Joe asked. “Can you dig under it?”

Discord stroked his goatee. “Haven’t yet come up with a sufficiently imaginative solution for that.”

“How will ponies get in and out?” Elaine asked. “Or will they be visiting?”

“Yes, they will be,” Meg said, “I’ll make sure those issues get onto one of Twilight’s lists. Why don’t you take us back into the theme park, Discord, and give us a tour?”

Fluttershy eagerly nodded. “I can’t wait.”

“Twilight?”

The timing was perfect; Twilight could use a break. She lifted her head from the latest of many tomes she had been perusing. “Yes, Spike?”

Her assistant threaded the aisles of bookcases, homing in on her voice. “Got a message from Serrell.” In his claw was a thin stack of paper.

Twilight levitated it over. It was a printed e-mail. The message was simple enough. The observers had been selected—their names were listed, including a short bio for each—and were ready for her vetting. All that was needed was a time; they had already decided to put the portal in a hotel conference room.

She needed to see Applejack first. “Let’s aim for early afternoon, one P.M. his time.” That’d be ten A.M. Equestrian time. “I’ll confirm that by tonight.”

“Gotcha.” He waved a claw at the pile of books. “Making any progress?”

Twilight slumped, her head falling onto an open book. “Yes and no. If I knew exactly the value of certain parameters, it’d be trivial, but I don’t. I need to make the spell adaptive to the situation at hoof, and there isn’t any good way of doing that.” She sighed. “I really wish there was a magic computer that could be programmed. Then it’d be simple enough. Have it magically analyze and respond to the environment, computing the necessary values to plug into the spell.”

“Maybe you’ll invent one? You know you’ll succeed; you just don’t know how yet, right?”

“Right. But there’s no way I’ll invent a magic computer in any reasonable time frame—yes, I know, I could send it into the past once I do, but if that’s what’s supposed to happen, what is Future Twilight waiting for?”

Spike tapped a claw to his chin. “Just guess what the values of those parameters are? I mean, you have to guess correctly, right? Because it’d be a paradox if you don’t?”

Because it’d be a paradox if I don’t. Twilight swept him up in her hooves, giving him a humongous hug. “Spike, you’re a genius!”

“I am? Well, of course I am! Uh, which part of that was the genius part?”

Twilight closed the book. “Guessing the correct way would avoid a paradox!”

“Is that what I said?” He buffed his chest with a claw. “I guess I must be a genius.”

She got up and hurried for the exit.

“Wait! Don’t forget about Serrell’s message!”

“I won’t!”

The quantum random number generator website presented itself on the monitor.

“Now what?” Twilight muttered.

She got up and paced around her bedroom.

In principle, it was simple. Generate a stream of random bytes, which will form a quantum superposition. Convert them into the parameter values she needed. Only those bytes that yield a set of parameter values, a set that adjusts the anomaly to be what they had already observed, would have a non-zero amplitude in the wave function; all others would result in a paradox and hence must cause the wave function to destructively interfere with itself, yielding a zero amplitude. And probability was just amplitude squared.

The trick was figuring out a way to convert those random bytes into useful parameter values.

“If only Meg was here.”

She had yet to return from Discordland.

But Twilight felt she ought to be able to figure this out herself. She had read enough human books on computers. It should be easy to do—but mess it up, then the parameter values would be garbage, and the time travel spell would most likely fail.

Okay. So there’s no real harm in messing that up. Just keep trying other approaches until time travel happened.

But there were so many approaches. Practically an infinite number, if one allowed arbitrarily convoluted…

She shook her head. “No. I’m over-thinking it.” The approach didn’t matter. So long as it could yield any number in the range of useful parameter values, there would exist a sequence of random bytes that would produce the correct values.

A floating-point number as used by computers could represent such values. It’s how the magic simulation software operates, after all. And how did a computer represent a floating-point value? As a sequence of four or eight bytes.

Perfect. Just use the random bytes directly as the parameter values.

She started up the random number generator, then stopped it once the screen filled with hexadecimal digits. There were five parameters, so forty bytes were needed—she had decided to use double precision, because more precision couldn’t hurt. She moved the mouse, selecting and copying the required number of bytes, starting at the upper-left corner. Next, she opened up an editor and pasted them.

They still needed to be turned into five floating-point numbers.

Meg could probably write the program to do that with her eyes closed. Twilight sighed. She really should make the attempt herself.

She compromised. First touch bases with Applejack. If by the time she got back Meg still was absent, she’d give it a go. Maybe she could even go back in time to that warehouse alone to complete the task, sparing Meg the bother. So long as the time travel spell worked, Meg’s presence wasn’t required to avoid a paradox. And why would it?

The trip to Sweet Apple Acres to see Applejack: done. Confirm appointment to vet observers for 1PM EST, tomorrow: done. Turn hexadecimal bytes into floating-point numbers: pending.

Twilight had taken a crack at it—several cracks, actually. But she was missing something, and it was taking too long to figure out what it was. Anyway, Meg ought to have returned by now.

Flying back to Canterlot, she spotted the Zephyr; hopefully, Meg would be back at the lab.

And that did, indeed, turn out to be the case; in fact, she was the only one currently there. She explained the problem to her.

Meg swiveled her chair to face the keyboard. “That’s trivial,” she said, confirming Twilight’s suspicions, as her fingers danced on the keyboard. “The magic incantation is ‘type punning.’”

Twilight smirked. “Did you say ‘magic?’”

Meg rolled her eyes. “Consider it dark magic, like use it only when there’s no other alternative. Anyway, you set up an array of bytes like so… read off the bytes for the first number.”

Twilight did so; she had printed them out. Meg typed them in.

“Now you take the address of the first element… cast it to a pointer to double, like so… now dereference and print on standard output. A little bit of boilerplate so it all compiles… save…compile… and execute.”

A number appeared on the screen. It looked reasonable enough for the first parameter. Twilight wrote it down. “Four more numbers to go.”

Four times the process was repeated, and four more parameter values were written down. All looked reasonable.

“Shall we get it done?” Meg asked.

“You read my mind.” Twilight trotted over to a cabinet and retrieved the crystal ring. A few seconds later and a new spell was layered on top of the one already there, designed to trigger the anomaly correction spell precisely when the anomaly creating spell was cast within the ring’s center—assuming, of course, that the time loop computed the correct parameter values. “Let’s go.”

She went to the usual side tunnel, the one set aside for time travel. When Meg arrived, she did so on hooves. Twilight nodded. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

Twilight cast the time travel spell.

Nothing happened.

“Trying again.”

Nothing happened.

Two more attempts; nothing happened.

Meg stepped back. “Try without me.”

“Can’t hurt, I guess.” Meg’s presence wasn’t strictly necessary, after all.

Four more failed attempts.

Twilight sighed. “What are we missing?”

“I dunno. It doesn’t make any sense. We know we’ll do it and succeed.”

“Not that we’re allowed to go back and observe ourselves doing it,” the alicorn grumbled.

“Could the two be connected somehow?”

“Hard to imagine how,” Twilight said, shaking her head. “Even if this crystal ring is the wrong solution, it is not a paradox for us to go back and observe our future selves implementing the correct solution, so long as we eventually carry it out.”

“Yet there’s a paradox somewhere.”

“I know.” Twilight started back to the main cavern. “Maybe we have to bring the observers back first. Can’t imagine why, but there’s only one way to test that hypothesis.”

“Guess so. Are you ready to vet them?”

“Tomorrow morning. It’s all set up.”

“Just you and Applejack, right? And Discord, I suppose.”

“That’s right. How did your trip there go?”

“Pretty well. Discord was quite helpful, for a change—oh by the way, Fluttershy showed up with him.”

That made Twilight stop. “She did?”

“Yeah. Wanted a tour of the place. Discord had tried to talk her out of it. Obviously failed.”

“Okay…” Twilight resumed walking.

“It wasn’t a problem,” Meg said. “They gave her her space, so to speak. She also flew back with me on the Zephyr—with Discord.”

Will surprises ever end? “Did the ship survive his presence?”

“Didn’t lay a claw on it. Guess he was too focused on giving Fluttershy a running commentary on the flora and fauna of the Everfree we were passing over.”

Well, that didn’t sound so bad.

“He’d bring samples up, of course, every now and then, for Fluttershy to inspect.”

And that didn’t sound so good.

“But he always kept things in check—though, I have to admit, I kept my distance for some of them.”

Twilight sighed. “Well, Discord will be Discord.” If it made Fluttershy happy, then that was good enough for her.

“And Fluttershy will not be there tomorrow.”

“That’s for the best.”

“Oh, by the way, the satellites were not included in the displacement. Some cool, time-lapse images of the Earth have been released. Pretty much as expected. By the end, only infrared cameras were able to really see anything.”

Twilight pondered that as they continued walking. “Any reaction to that?”

“Not really. First, we knew the satellites would remain in orbit—”

Meg stopped dead in her tracks.

Twilight turned around to face her. “Meg?”

“The paradox… maybe we did overlook something.”

“Like what?”

“Gravity.”

“Gravity?”

“Yeah, gravity. Why doesn’t the anomaly fall?”

“Well, obviously because it’s supported by… the…” Ground? But that didn’t make any sense. It was consuming the ground underneath it, like the air all around and above it. So why did it stay in place?

“Exactly. So maybe we need another corrective spell, one to keep it from falling all the way to the center of the planet.”

“But I didn’t detect another spell; I should’ve noticed that! Maybe the anomaly is immune to gravity?”

Meg shook her head. “That ain’t how gravity works. In some sense space itself is flowing down. Everything flows down with it, unless something is actively preventing that. Like the ground. What we experience as weight is the ground pushing us up, accelerating us upwards—upwards relative to space flowing downwards.”

Twilight grimaced. “And the ground can’t push on the anomaly, because it’ll just consume it.”

“Hence we need another spell.”

Twilight resumed a slow gait. “Which I didn’t detect.”

“Could you mask it so that you wouldn’t detect it?”

The alicorn sighed. “I think so. And I should be able to get around that masking, if I did it the way I think I would.”

“Another trip to the anomaly?”

“Another trip to the anomaly,” Twilight repeated with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

Meg stopped and put hoof to forehead. “Right. Before I forget. There are two checklist items concerning Discordland I have for you.”

21. Real is as Real Does

Discord scratched his goatee. “I’m not sure, actually. We didn’t really keep track of time back then, the way we do now.” He looked up in thought for a moment. “I’d say between fifty-five hundred and six thousand years ago.”

“Surely we can narrow it down better than that,” Meg said. “Were any pyramids built yet? Any humungous stone structures at all?” There were none that Smooze had to erase, but that didn’t mean Discord had not himself “had fun” with them prior to the Great Erasure.

“Pretty sure there were not.”

So at least around five thousand years ago. “What about writing? Had that been invented yet?”

Discord grimaced. “Barely. Jabbing the ends of sticks into soft clay. So primitive compared to what they could say. There was much we taught them—well, mostly I taught them. Sis wanted to see how they’d develop on their own. So she conceded me some and ensured the rest remained untouched.” He rolled his eyes. “Not that was really an option considering how we had mismanaged our copy of your world.”

“So,” Twilight began, “what happened to the humans? Even before Meg erased all evidence of their prior existence, they had gone extinct.”

Meg and Twilight appeared on the rooftop, the same one from which they had previously tried to fix the anomaly. It was easy enough to see, in the early afternoon sun, what had or had not changed. The building they were on: it seemed the same. Wind: down to a mild breeze. The hole in the ground: larger. But not much larger. Maybe a few dozen feet? It’d be nearly double the size if not for their efforts. “I guess it still counts as a win,” Meg said.

“It certainly buys us more time.”

Less than a block away from the hole, a perimeter had been re-established, and behind it was activity galore. “Let’s get a closer look?” Meg asked.

Twilight took off in response, and Meg followed.

They came to a stop above them and observed.

Someone pushed a cart towards the perimeter, which was shockingly close to the hole, joining numerous others already there with their own equipment. Once the cart reached the tape, a probe of some sort extended forwards, presumably into the anomaly.

“Can you analyze the anomaly’s spell from here, or do we go down there?”

“The closer the better, quite honestly.” Twilight shifted her gaze away from the anomaly and towards the humans gathered nearby. The military was there, keeping the public at a distance. Over there were the media, considerably more abundant than before. More scientists too; additional tents had been set up. “It can’t be this crowded around the whole thing.”

It was hard to tell from there, what with the anomaly’s distortion of light passing through it. Meg jumped into the air. “Only way to know is to go there and look.”

The pegasus gained altitude as she flew around the anomaly, Twilight by her side. The perimeter had to be at least a mile around, yet without fail wherever a road intersected it there was activity. The little show they had put on yesterday was almost certainly the cause, but could so many have gotten here so fast? “Maybe there? At least it’s free of media.”

“True.” Twilight did not begin a descent. “I wish there was some way to get under it. That’s where a spell holding it up must be active, right?”

Meg shrugged. “Maybe? But tunneling under it doesn’t seem practical, not unless you have a tunneling spell handy.”

“What, no tunneling machines?”

“Oh, they exist. It’s just not practical. Even if money wasn’t a problem, it’d take too long.”

Twilight sighed. “I’d like to see one of your tunneling machines in action, but not today. Okay. Let’s go down. If only the anomaly wasn’t putting out too much magic—hold on…” Her horn glowed for a second, then she smiled. “It isn’t; that time dilation spell has vastly reduced the magic radiating from it. Our magic bubbles are up and keeping us invisible. Excellent.”

Losing no time, Twilight dived, aiming for the largest gap, about a dozen feet wide, between scientists. Meg followed. They could be done and gone in a few minutes, no one the wiser. Worked for her.

By the time Meg landed, Twilight was already at work, her glowing horn pointed downwards.

Seconds passed.

“Not yet…”

More seconds.

“Maybe? False alarm… no… there.” She raised her head and looked at Meg. “Got it. Let’s go.”

Twilight vanished.

Meg invoked the return spell; Twilight was waiting for her in the cavern. “Well, don’t keep me in suspense. What’s holding it in place?”

Twilight’s smile was triumphant. “There’s another spell there, as suspected. It won’t let anything denser than water to pass through. The spell is anchored to the other spell, in the center of the anomaly, thus holding it up.”

Meg scrunched her muzzle. “But there’s a depression underneath it. Obviously concrete, dirt, and rocks have gone inside the anomaly.”

“Easy enough to explain. As the anomaly expands, that other spell shifts downwards; it stays where space is normal—relatively flat, that is. Stuff that used to be on the other side now finds itself in expanding space, spreading it out, destroying its structural integrity and vaporizing it, allowing it to disperse into the growing vacuum inside.”

It seemed to explain everything…

Hold on a second… “Wouldn’t that time dilation spell mess with the ‘suspension’ spell?”

“No, because it’s outside the region affected by that spell. There’s still enough magic flowing out of the anomaly to power it. The strength may be low, but it’s over a large area.”

“Yeah… no work’s being done—in the physics sense—so conservation laws are appeased.” Meg pointed at the crystal ring upon her desk. “Now that the time loop computed the necessary spell”—because that was, in effect, what had happened—”shall we go for it?”

Twilight grabbed it in her magic. “We’re going for it.”

One new spell was layered onto the crystal ring, and they went to the usual side tunnel.

“This time, time travel should happen,” Twilight declared, then she cast the spell.

Nothing happened.

“You had to jinx it,” Meg said.

Twilight scowled and cast it again.

Nothing happened.

“I know the drill.” Meg stepped back.

Four more times the time travel spell failed.

Twilight was fuming. “What are we missing.”

Meg collapsed to her haunches. “I haven’t a clue.”

Twilight walked back and forth, deep in thought.

“Sleep on it?” Meg suggested. “Take care of other matters for now?”

The alicorn, still upset, came to a halt in front of Meg. “I guess we don’t have much choice, do we?” An exhale. “And it’s not like the clock is ticking—at least time travel gives us that.”

The mirror portal awaited Meg.

“You still want to go through with this?” Steve asked.

Her eyes remained fixed on the shimmering surface. “I just want a taste of normality. But…” She sighed.

“But… it’s just a taste.”

“Yeah.”

They stood silent for a moment. Steve finally broke it. “It’s up to you. I’ll do whatever you decide to do.”

Meg grimaced and took a step forward. Steve also took a step forward.

“This is silly,” she grumbled, and plowed through the portal.

On the other side was the living room of their old apartment, as it was before they were driven out of their world. That is what she expected as she went through the portal, and the mirror realm delivered. Steve was standing beside her, looking completely normal—normal, specifically, by Earth standards.

“Sure brings back memories,” he said.

She looked down at her hands, not vaguely orchid colored but her true human skin color. “Nice to know this place can do proper humans.” Turning around, there was only a wall. The portal was there, of course, if not visible.

Steve had gone into the kitchen and was opening the cabinets one by one. The shelves held what they were supposed to hold. “Too bad we can’t take any of this back.”

“No,” she confirmed. Any attempt to bring back objects from the mirror realm had in the past always failed. The objects simply wouldn’t go through the portal. They wouldn’t go through the other way either; they simply vanished upon entering the realm and reappeared when re-entering Equestria. Sort of like their physical bodies, actually.

Putting that USB port on the computer that controlled the portals was rather pointless, in hindsight.

Meg went to a window and opened the blinds. She saw exactly what she expected to see. How far could she walk before reaching the end of the simulation? Surely she couldn’t have recreated the entire world!

There was the remote control for the TV. Did she dare turn it on? What would be on the cable news channels?

Steve spared her the decision. He grabbed the remote and pushed the “on” button.

For several seconds the screen remained blank. Finally, it displayed “searching for signal on this channel.” He tried changing the channel a few times, with the same result.

“Guess that answers that,” Meg said. Yep, definite limits to this simulation.

He shut off the TV. “So now what?”

She plunked down on the sofa—their sofa, at least identical to the one they had bought just two years ago. “I dunno.”

“We could go to that Thai place for lunch.” He smiled. “That’d be a taste of normality.”

She looked at him. “Ha Ha.” Her head fell against the cushion. “What’s food in this place anyway? It’s not real, just like these bodies aren’t real.”

Steve shrugged. “Real is as real does. What is real? How do we know Earth and Equestria aren’t simulations themselves?”

Meg looked askance at her husband. “If they are simulations, at least they’re simulations that are not trivial to reprogram.”

“Fair point.” He gently sat down next to her. “But aren’t we just beating around the bush?”

Meg was silent.

“Look, I get it. Our lives have been turned upside down. Maybe if we’d had a clue we could have told Twilight to get lost, then convince ourselves we somehow had a shared hallucination and lived our lives none the wiser.”

“Did we really have that option?” Meg grumbled. “Aren’t you forgetting the Pinkie Pie doll? The reason Twilight paid us a visit in the first place?”

“Then she would’ve… done something without us knowing about it.”

Meg glared at him. “And who bound the magic leak to that doll? Not us, in that scenario. So why our doll, in that case?”

Steve exhaled. “I don’t know.”

“Precisely. To tell Twilight to get lost would’ve cause a paradox. We had no choice. QED.”

“No, not QED. There’s a flawed assumption in your argument. You assume there was no superposition. Granted, if Twilight paid us a visit, then the time loop required that we welcome her; you’re correct about that. But what if she had visited someone else? Indeed, if we had truly been dead set on rejecting her, then the superposition could not have included us because that would’ve lead to a paradox.”

“We would still have found out about ponies being real, along with the rest of the world.” It was a non-sequitur and she knew it but couldn’t help saying it.

“Maybe, maybe not. We can’t know how things would’ve turned out with someone else. Regardless, we would still be living our old lives and that’s the point. The reason we’re not is because we were open to Twilight, because we did choose to explore the possibilities she represented, and that is almost certainly why the collapse of the wave function had a high probability of picking us.”

Meg dropped her head into her hands. The irony, of course, was that if they had “chose” differently, they would have been oblivious to ever having made that choice. “Fine,” she conceded. “That still leaves us where we are. How do we get our old lives back?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “The joke is, there are countless bronies who’d happily exchange places with us, to be able to live in Equestria and be friends with the Mane Six.”

The joke didn’t seem that funny. “Too bad for them the wave function collapse picked us.”

“We take it one day at a time. Maybe things will get better after the anomaly is gone and the convention is held at Discord’s theme park.”

And maybe pigs will fly. But, Meg sourly considered, this was Equestria; Discord need only make it so.

He stood up. “I think we’ve been here long enough.”

“Maybe you’re right.” She got up herself. “Let’s go—though first let me reset this realm back to the portal control room.”

“Oh, I don’t know…” Steve was suddenly smiling. “Can you imagine sending Lyra here?”

Meg scowled. “You know she doesn’t have a hand obsession.”

“Yes, yes…” he said, waving that away. “It could still be useful—think about it. Sooner or later ponies will be visiting Earth. Why not use this realm to let them know what to expect?” He held up a hand to fend off an obvious incoming objection. “Set this realm to leave ponies ponies, except maybe for us and a few others like Sunset Shimmer.”

She had to admit the idea had… possibilities. “It would mean the mirror portal would no longer be so secret, though.”

“We can talk to the princesses about it. The original reason for secrecy has become academic, I’d say.”

Back when it led to a realm that for unexplained reasons had a copy of every pony—well, the important ones, for some definition of important—mapped to colorful humans, most of whom were high school students, also for unexplained reasons. Regardless, that was quite clearly no longer the case.

“I’ll mention it.”

Twilight Sparkle paced back and forth in Pandemonium Plaza, waiting for the signal. Serrell had strongly advised against opening the portal at a preset time, but rather wait until all candidates had been gathered at the designated spot. So she paced, waiting, her phone floating ahead of her. Not often did she bother to leave home with it, but this time she had made sure to bring it along.

Sunset Shimmer was waiting outside the mirror portal, her own phone at the ready. When Twilight received the call, she would in turn give Sunset a call, and the portal would be opened.

“Why doncha give yer hooves a rest, Twilight. Pacing ain’t gonna speed them up.”

Twilight kept on pacing as she check the time on her phone. “They’re twelve minutes late, Applejack.” That it had been proven correct to avoid a preset time did not make the delay any easier to deal with.

And where was Pinkie Pie? Once she had set up the table of treats and refreshments she had pronked away, going forth to explore the theme park. She ought to have been back by now, ready to greet the newest arrivals to their realm. She had been quite insistent about it.

Or maybe her Pinkie Sense told her they’d be late. Who could tell with her?

Maybe that’d explain Pinkie’s absence, but what about Rainbow Dash’s?

Applejack addressed the draconequus, who was busy inspecting the rioting colors on the nearby flowers. “Don’t suppose anything you could do to speed things up?”

Discord’s muzzle remained buried in the flowers. “Nope. Outside of my jurisdiction.”

She adjusted her Stetson. “Couldn’t hurt to ask.”

Another minute passed.

Rainbow Dash finally returned, apparently having completed her own sight-seeing, and came to a hover before them. “They’re late, aren’t they?”

Applejack glared at her. “Don’t you start too. You don’t even have to be here.”

“And leave you defenseless? Ya, right.”

Discord finally pulled his head out of the bushes. “I believe that to be my pleasure.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be out of sight or something?”

Twilight stopped her pacing. “Enough, you two—”

Her phone rang. She accepted the call. “Twilight here.”

“It’s a go.”

“The portal will open within a minute.”

Twilight ended the call and started a new one. It was answered quickly.

“It’s a go?”

“It’s a go.”

After ending that call, she addressed Discord. “Why don’t you go work on your hotel now?”

He saluted her. “Remember: just say the word,” he said, and vanished.

“Finally!”

Whatever Rainbow had meant by that would remain a mystery, for right then the portal opened. Through it could be seen a large room with three dozen or so humans in it, only two of whom were known to Twilight. Many of the others were from other nations. She had had few encounters with such humans; this would prove most interesting. One of the two whom she did know walked right up to the portal and peered through, looking around but not stepping through.

“Permission to enter Equestria?” asked Special Agent Paul Reubens.

Twilight smiled at the familiar face. “Permission granted, by my authority as Princess of Equestria.” The exchange was just a formality, theater really—that was the whole point of the portal, after all—but after looking over that crowd of observer-wannabes, perhaps theater was the right idea.

“Right this way.” Reubens himself then stepped through and to the side.

The others hesitated, but slowly and surely they dribbled through the portal. Rainbow Dash kept an eye on the growing collection of humans; Applejack did likewise, but more casually. Last one through was Special Agent Jessica Fowler. A few remained on the other side, by the door, presumably other agents to ensure that door remained closed.

Most of the candidates looked about, uneasy at the… interesting buildings around them, which were ignoring the laws of physics as they understood them. A few looked back at the portal, no doubt wondering if it would close, possibly trapping them there. That was one concern Twilight could address immediately. “The portal will remain open,” she said. “You are free to return at any time—though doing so prematurely will end your candidacy as an observer.”

That seemed fair. After all, if they can’t handle something as simple as this, could they really handle time travel?

“Get your ‘Welcome to Equestria’ pastries, muffins, cake slices, and party favors here!”

Twilight rolled her eyes. There was Pinkie, behind the table she had set up earlier. Of course she would magically appear when the portal opened. How could it ever have been in doubt?

Pinkie had gotten their attention, no question of that, but only a few were heading her way. Dash was keeping an especially close eye on them. The rest didn’t seem sure what to make of it. Twilight thought it was an excellent way to break the ice. “Why don’t you all help yourselves,” she told them, “and while you’re enjoying the best Sugarcube Corner has to offer, I’ll explain how we’ll be proceeding.”

That got them moving. Twilight patiently waited as they kind of formed a line, perused the treats, and picked something out—well, most of them picked something out. Pinkie was smiling that big smile of hers the whole time, somehow managing not to bounce. Not clear how this crowd would’ve responded to that level of enthusiasm.

A few minutes later they were gathered around Twilight, none in possession of a party favor. “Here’s how we’ll proceed. If you’ll look up there—” she pointed “—you’ll see the E.R.S. Zephyr.” She gave them a second. “One by one, I’ll teleport each of you up to the ship’s observation lounge, where the interview shall be conducted. Applejack will also be present. You should know, if you don’t already, that she represents the Element of Honesty.”

“Which means you ain’t getting one past me.”

Twilight nodded. “Precisely. Once the interview is over, I’ll teleport you back here and you may leave through the portal. You are also free to explore this theme park, though be aware it’s still a work in progress. Also keep in mind that this portal will not be open forever, so don’t explore for too long. You probably don’t want Discord seeking you out and forcibly returning you to this plaza when it’s time for the portal to close.”

That elicited some nervous mumbling. Perfect. “If you object to any of this, you’re free to leave through the portal now.”

They all looked at each other, no doubt wondering who would bail. Only two of them did.

“Great,” Twilight said with a smile. “Any volunteering to be first?”

It was the first time Meg had been upstairs at the Carousel Boutique. She wasn’t sure what to have expected. In no way was it a dump, yet it lacked the high fashion sensibility of the shop on the ground floor. Equal parts form and function, one might say. Certainly nicer than her old apartment.

Rarity poured freshly brewed tea into each of their teacups. “I must confess I had an ulterior motive for inviting you over.”

Meg had thought it a bit odd, but then Rarity had been a guest in her old apartment so she figured the unicorn was simply returning the favor. “Anything to do with why you’re not with Twilight and the others?” Sure, Fluttershy wasn’t there either, but that was to be expected.

“Not at all, darling. I am here and not there simply because, for me, there’s no reason to be there. Rainbow Dash and Applejack will have matters in hoof just fine without me.”

Meg took a sip. The tea was excellent, naturally. “Okay, then. So what can I do for you?”

“It concerns your ‘brony’ convention. I understand that it’s back on, thanks to Discord’s new theme park?”

“No guarantees, but it’s looking promising.”

“Will there still be an auction to raise money for charity?”

That caught Meg’s attention. “I don’t see why not. Is there something you wish to contribute?”

“Actually, yes: my services. Winner receives a bespoke dress, a Rarity original.”

“A dress for a human?”

“Naturally.”

Well, why not? “I’d sure like to see the bidding war on that.”

A sly smile. “Precisely what I had in mind.”

Meg raised an eyebrow. “Planning on opening boutiques in my world?”

“Whatever would give you that idea!”

Upon arriving in the Zephyr’s observation lounge, the human jerked, almost falling over. It was a not uncommon reaction amongst those who ignored Twilight’s advice to keep their eyes closed. Applejack sadly shook her head at the sight. Fortunately they tended to recover quickly.

“Egor Yusupov,” Twilight said, “are you okay?” It was out of politeness, mostly, for other than the apparent disbelief of suddenly being someplace else he was evidently just fine.

He ignored the question, wandered over to the panoramic window, and looked down. “Невероятный.”

“Excuse me?”

He turned around, mouth still open, then shook his head. “Sorry,” he said in a thick accent. “Incredible, that what I said.”

Not that he hadn’t seen a half-dozen others be teleported to the ship and back, but obviously that was no substitute for experiencing it himself.

“You don’t need me to know that was the honest truth.”

“No, I suppose not.” Twilight smiled at the human. “Shall we begin? Why don’t you take a seat.”

There was one human chair present, and without comment he sat in it. Two cushions suitable for ponies faced it, placed on elevated platforms so that they may talk eye-to-eye.

Twilight looked down at her notes. “You are the representative of the Russian Federation. My first question is, quite simply, What is your goal—or your government’s goal—in observing, in the past, the creation of the anomaly?”

23. Jailbreak

Meg waited for Discord to finish the thought, to state what could and did create a species bearing harmonic cutie marks. Twilight also looked on expectantly. Yet the draconequus remained silent.

“So who or what did?” Meg finally asked.

Discord sighed and stood up. “Let’s go pay her a visit.”

The two diarchs sat across the mahogany table from Meg. The morning sun shone through the panoramic windows. Celestia had already started brewing tea, as she was wont to do. “Do you have a date yet for this convention?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Meg admitted. “Hopefully we’ll know soon.”

“It is difficult to say if we can make an appearance until the date is known,” Luna said.

“I understand. But you’re at least open to the possibility?”

Celestia bore that smile of hers. “I should think so. A brief appearance, I must add.”

Luna nodded in agreement. “And no interviews. We teleport in, give a short, prepared speech, and teleport out. Perhaps lower the sun and raise the moon?”

“I figured as much. Andrew would want more, obviously, but I’ll deal with him.” Not like he’d have much choice in the matter. “What about Discord? I assume you’d like him to be elsewhere when you are on stage.”

Celestia was unconcerned. “I’ll have a talk with him.”

Better the princess than herself. “I think that covers that topic.”

“You have another?” Celestia asked.

“Yeah. Twilight might’ve already told you, but we’re going to travel back in time to free Tirek from Tartarus. I mean, we already knew we’d have to do that someday, but that day is basically now. Because it turns out if we don’t do that first, we can’t go back to fix the creation of the anomaly.”

“She has yet to inform me,” Celestia said. “It seems odd the two are connected.”

Meg sighed. “Tell me about it.” She got serious. “Is there anything you know about Tirek’s escape that now would be a good time to tell me?” Like how Cadance had known all along about that trip back in time, but had been Pinkie Promised to secrecy.

“I’m afraid not, Meg. We truly were clueless about how he escaped, nor had we any clue of the presence of your future selves back then.”

“I guess that tells us something about what not to expect, I suppose.”

That still left Discord, naturally. No way he didn’t know of “future” Twilight’s presence. He has already proven he can sense the presence of an additional alicorn. Maybe that was why he gave Twilight that hint when he did?

Meg raised her voice. “I don’t suppose, Discord, that you have anything to offer on this subject?” That rarely worked, but what the heck.

“Nope.”

Wait, what? Meg quickly scanned the room, but the draconequus was nowhere to be seen. “This time you responded?”

“I was becoming too predictable.”

Still invisible. “Whatever. You must have known we were there.”

“Imprisoned in stone, remember?”

A sheepish grin. “Oh, yeah. The escape was during season two. Sorry.”

“Apology accepted.” It sounded surprisingly sincere.

“Since we have your attention,” Celestia said, “let’s discuss the ground rules for my appearance—and Luna’s too,” she quickly added, “at the convention.” A brief pause. “Along with other convention concerns.”

Next on Meg’s list was a meeting with A. K. Yearling. The meeting was to take place in the palace cafeteria. At that hour business was light, making it easy to hold a private conversation. When Meg arrived the author was already seated, in the same general area as their last encounter there, digging into a slice of cake fit for a princess. Apparently that slice was all she had gotten, a between meal snack.

Meg wondered if she should’ve got something, but it was a little late for that now. She sat down across from Yearling. “So what are your thoughts on attending the convention?”

She helped herself to another bite of cake before answering. “I don’t know, to be honest.”

“Meaning?”

Yearling looked up at Meg. “Meaning, I do not know. The obvious reason for making an appearance would be to market my books. Unfortunately, with the recent insanity over ponies in your realm, I’m getting nowhere in signing up a publisher.”

“I knew it was bad, obviously, but that bad?”

It was the part of inter-realm relations Meg hadn’t paid much attention to; that was more Twilight’s area, and even she’d had little time to spend on that, what with everything else going on. But a while back, Meg had set up a laptop for Yearling and instructed her on its use, Serrell’s people helped make the initial contacts, and the author/businessmare was more than capable of handling matters without Meg’s further involvement.

“Looks like it. They’re not telling me to get lost, mind you, but they’re in no hurry either. It doesn’t help, to put it politely, that my non-de-plum is already in use in the human world due to previously published books by Hasbro.”

“Maybe this convention could change that? Create a demand they can’t ignore?”

“The demand’s already there and they know it. They just want to wait until the dust settles, so to speak. Unfortunately, it isn’t clear whether that convention will help settle the dust or stir up even more.”

No, it wasn’t. Not clear at all.

Apparently having concluded that Meg’s failure to volunteer an answer to the implied question was in itself an answer, Yearling continued. “And finally, there’s the question of how I’ll appear. I still haven’t figured that one out.”

Meg wondered if she’d heard that correctly. “As yourself, A. K. Yearling? There may be ponies in attendance, besides those who already know, I mean.”

She had another bite of cake. “It’s not that simple.”

“O…kay?”

Yearling—Daring Do?—focused on what was left of her slice of cake.

Who are you? Was she really A. K. Yearling? A pegasus disguised as an earth pony? That made little sense. And a disguise for what? A fictional character she role-played along with a bunch of changelings playing the parts of archvillains? So what if the public knew she did that. She could probably sell tickets to it!

Dared she ask her? It was a sensitive subject, that was obvious enough. But then… that mare wasn’t above dumping a “situation” on her either.

Meg looked around; no one was near. Lowering her voice, she said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but… who are you—really? You’re not ‘Daring Do.’ That’s somepony you role play with changelings as a means of brainstorming your next book—right? And if you’re really ‘A. K. Yearling,’ then why pretend to be an earth pony? What’s the point?”

A nervous smile. It almost made Meg feel guilty bringing up the subject.

“Let’s just say I’m a very private person and leave it at that, okay?”

Meg leaned back. “I guess you’re rich and famous enough to do whatever you want.” And if privacy was what she wanted, that hardly made her evil. Meg got up. ”Once you’ve figured it out, let me know.”

“I’ll… do that.”

Meg departed. She had enough to send Andrew a status report, so she made her way through the palace to what had become her home. After arriving there and closing the door behind her, she squeezed her pendant to resume her human form, the better to type away.

She sat down on an office chair borrowed from the lab. It didn’t take long to write the report on her laptop. As she was reviewing what she had written, an all too familiar voice made itself heard.

“You could provide an update on my hotel.”

Meg exhaled and swiveled the chair to face Discord. “I could,” she politely agreed. “Regardless, I think it’s safe to say he’ll want to see it for himself—and… perhaps… offer constructive criticism?”

“Oh I see where this is going. The same thing happened in Las Pegasus. By the time—”

“I’ll do my best to prevent that.”

She had his attention.

“Look, I’m not promising absolutely no changes will be needed, but I assure you that plenty of bronies would love to experience what you have in mind—so long as it doesn’t go too far. We’ve already talked about this. Moderation is the key.”

He rolled his eyes. “Moderation.”

Meg sighed. “Yes, moderation—but. Some people will need more moderation than others. Maybe offer several tiers of chaos? From mild to… to no holds barred? Like I said before: just offer a safe word or something. And whatever happens, it must be temporary.”

He was still frowning.

“Do it right,” she teased, “and you’ll have a hit on your hands.”

He rubbed his goatee in reluctant thought.

There was still the subject of the documentary crew to document the progress of the theme park. No attempt had yet been made to contact them. Meg decided that topic would have to wait again.

“Fine,” he finally grumbled, and raised his claw to—

“Wait a sec, change of subject.”

His claw remained raised, waiting.

“Any chance of The Smooze making an appearance at the convention? Just an appearance, no questions, since we never did get that speech synthesizer to work properly. Too bad he can’t sign autographs.” After all, he had nothing with which to sign them.

An eyebrow raised… all the way to the ceiling. “Let’s make that a definite maybe.” A snap, and he was gone.

Meg swiveled back to her laptop. She stared at the screen. There was no point, she decided, in mentioning the hotel or Smooze. Not yet.

Twilight was the first to enter the Zephyr under an overcast sky. The cloud cover did not bother her; the weather over the Everfree was unmanaged anyway. It would be what it would be, both in the present and in the past. Too bad there were no records of Everfree weather that could be consulted.

After informing Captain Shooting Star of their flight plans, she went through her saddle bags, double checking that she did not leave any enchanted crystals behind. One set was for extended time travel and another for extended teleport. The latter was new, needed so that Tirek and Cerberus could be extracted to distantly separated areas. She barely had time to properly test it, but it did work; the spell was related to the extended time travel spell, differing only in the direction through space-time.

Nothing had been forgotten. Nothing to do but wait for the others to arrive. To pass the time she got out a book and began to read.

Barely a dozen pages later, Meg entered the observation lounge. “Re-reading Daring Do and the Calamitous Catacombs?” she asked.

Twilight’s eyes remained glued to the page. “Next book should be out soon.”

Meg wandered over to the window. “Just had a chat with her. She hasn’t decided whether to appear at the convention.”

Twilight looked up. “Why not?”

The answer wasn’t immediate. “I’m not sure, really.”

And Twilight wasn’t sure what to make of that. Perhaps she should have her own chat with Yearling. Or maybe not. It wasn’t that important, really, and there was enough for her to do.

Sunset Shimmer then arrived. Upon seeing the other two present and accounted for, she said, “Are we ready to go?”

Twilight put down her book. “Yes.” She went over to the intercom and pushed the button. “We are departing now.”

“As you wish, Your Highness.”

Mere seconds later, the ship began to rise. There was nothing to do until they arrived at the designated spot over the Everfree. It wouldn’t take long, just long enough to finish reading the current chapter and the next. Returning to the book, she picked it up and resumed reading.

In actuality Twilight finished that next chapter before the Zephyr began decelerating. She put the book down anyway and walked over to the front window, joining Meg and Sunset. Forest as far as the eye can see, which wasn’t that far given that the ship was as low as it was safe to be.

A rare clearing came into view. It wasn’t long before the ship hovered above it.

“Okay,” Twilight began. “Teleporting down now.”

They were down on the ground, drenched in sunshine. No clouds here. Twilight looked up. The ship had begun to rise, the better to stay safe until they returned. It would then go to the rendezvous point over another clearing. From her saddlebag she retrieved the gem enchanted with the time travel helper spell. Her horn lit up, channeling magic into it.

She cast the spell.

For a split second everything turned black.

Then they were back in the clearing.

The sky was still clear, but the sun had shifted position. It was mid-afternoon. Just as it should be.

From her saddlebag she retrieved the other gem, enchanted with the teleportation helper spell, and the obligatory plaid pills. Two of them went to the other mares. “Remember: go after I teleport.”

Once again, her horn lit up, channeling magic into the teleportation gem.

Twilight cast the modified teleportation spell.

She was just outside Ponyville, not far from the dam. Perfect. No perceived duration, as predicted. The distance traveled this time had been a few dozen miles, not lightyears of temporal displacement.

Nopony was around. It had been a gamble, but a calculated one, for history could not be changed. Nopony had reported seeing her around here, so nopony would. Ditto when she returned with Cerberus. If coming back, here and now, had led to a paradox… well, it hadn’t, so better get on with it. The other two should already be in Tartarus.

Twilight swallowed her plaid pill.

There was Cerberus, on his bed. Two heads were awake. Neither seemed aware of her sudden presence. Good. They already knew the pill’s invisibility worked in this realm. Probably because it was chaos magic—though why should that matter? She shook her head. No time for that now.

Over there was the guard station. Neither minotaur was looking in the guard dog’s direction. Perfect, again. It’d be a paradox if they were, for they had not seen the dog vanish into thin air. Nopony knew where he had gone or how he had left.

Twilight walked over to Cerberus. She glanced over at the guards; they were still chatting, passing away the time, letting Cerberus and his canine senses be on the alert.

Twilight grabbed Cerberus in her magic—it took way too much effort in this place—and invoked the return spell.

Cerberus jumped to his feet, all three heads swiveling about.

One of them, then all of them, locked onto her, in a decidedly unfriendly fashion.

Twilight spread her wings in royal display. “Calm down. Everything’s fine.”

Panic and anger morphed into confusion.

“I know you haven’t seen me like this before, and just to make it more confusing the next time you see me I won’t have them. It’s complicated.” She looked around; still nopony to see them. “I have a message from Princess Celestia. For your dedication and hard work, you have been granted a holiday.” She smiled. “Have fun!”

She teleported away, out of the bulldog’s sight. What she had told him was true enough; her Celestia had proposed giving him that message. She got out the teleportation helper gem and proceeded to recharge its magic.

Meg watched Twilight vanish into thin air. She turned to Sunset. “Ready?”

“Not really.” She swallowed her pill and disappeared.

Meg sighed. “Me neither.” She swallowed her own plaid pill.

There was Lord Tirek, behind bars, reading a book. They had access to books here?

“Go visible in three?” Sunset asked.

Focus, Meg, focus. The existence of a prison library was irrelevant—however much Twilight would disagree if she were here. We can do this. They already had, after all. Or others who impersonated us.

“Meg?”

Her head jerked to the unicorn. “Yeah, in three.” But that kind of magic didn’t work here. “One… two… three.”

Meg canceled the invisibility of her chaos-fueled magic bubble. Tirek had yet to notice their sudden appearance.

Now or never. Approaching a whisper, she said, “Lord Tirek, your freedom has arrived.”

His eyes closed, his head sagging. Sluggishly he put a bookmark in the book and set it down. He turned towards the mares, seemingly out of boredom. “This is a new low, even for Celestia.”

Meg exchanged glances with Sunset, who shrugged in response. Back to Tirek, Meg said, “You think Celestia sent us?”

“Your failure to use her title persuades me not at all.”

Meg had rather hoped it would.

“Princess Celestia,” Sunset said, “is unaware of our presence here.” The one in this time period, anyway. “Do you wish to leave Tartarus, or not?”

“Neither does your belated use of her title.” Tirek’s boredom did seem to have diminished, if only slightly. “How do you propose to accomplish this task?” He rubbed his chin. “For that matter, how are you here?—if not at Celestia’s pleasure.”

“We shall depart the same way we arrived,” Meg said.

Tirek smirked. “That only begs the question.”

“Regardless,” Sunset retorted, “either we can or we cannot get you out of here. If we cannot, you are no worse off; indeed, you can have the pleasure of calling the guards on us. If we can, does it matter the means?”

After a second, he broke out in laughter, which he quickly suppressed. “No worse off? I’d say it depends very much on the means. What if ‘cannot’ was due to us being captured on the way to the Gates? How do you plan on getting past that blasted guard dog?”

Meg couldn’t believe how much trouble this was becoming. “Because we’ll all teleport from this spot straight into Equestria, hundreds of miles from those Gates.”

Tirek’s eyes switched back and forth between Meg and Sunset, the centaur struggling to decide if he was being granted his fondest wish or was being served the greatest prank. “I suppose,” he carefully stated, “in that case, that I would indeed not be worse off should it be ‘cannot.’”

“Sooner would be better than later,” Sunset said. “Cerberus is being taken care of right now as a diversion.”

An eyebrow raised at that remark. “There is still the question of why? Why are you helping me?”

Oh shit. It had never occurred to them that he’d be so suspicious, that he’d care about the why. What excuse could they offer? And it had to be consistent with their eventual future encounter. There must be something, otherwise it’d be a paradox!

Then it came to her. “To correct an injustice,” Meg said. “You have served too many centuries already.” That very rationale had contributed to his eventual release back to humanity.

The centaur studied her, for a bit longer than was comfortable. Eventually he nodded. “I see. And what would you have of me in return?”

“Nothing.” No point in asking for good behavior; history was clear on that. It’d only sour their subsequent meeting. “We go our separate ways upon returning to Equestria.”

He smiled. “Then let us see if you can deliver on your claims.”

“Stand close to the bars,” Sunset said.

Tirek did so. Sunset grabbed him in her magic and invoked the return spell.

They disappeared.

Meg did likewise, returning to the clearing. Tirek was staring up at the sky in disbelief. “You are in a forest,” she said, “inhabited by many dangerous creatures. Nothing you can’t handle, I’m sure. But you are safe from the princess and her guards so long as you remain here.”

Suspicion returned to his countenance. “Is it a condition that I remain?”

“No,” Meg said, shaking her head. “We impose no conditions; you are free.” She nodded at Sunset, who was now beside her. “We will now depart.”

“Wait!”

Sunset waited; Meg wondered if she should have. “Yes?”

“I would know the name of my liberators.”

Meg froze. He did call her by a different name when he had first seen her back in his cell, hadn’t he? It had completely slipped her mind. What was that name again? She had to get it right, otherwise it’d be a paradox! But what was it?! Then it came to her: “You may call me Common Ground.” Meg looked aside to her companion. He had referred to her by her actual name. “And this is Sunset Shimmer.”

Before he could say anything more, Sunset teleported Meg and herself as far as she could in the direction of the rendezvous clearing. There was no clearing in sight. “Best I could do.”

Meg sighed. “Let’s start walking. I’ll fly up to spot it once we’re far enough away from him.”

Fortunately, most of what the forest could throw at them could be handled by Sunset.

Not to mention giving Twilight something to zero in on, should that happen.

Twilight fired up the long range teleport spell as soon as the gem had been recharged. The rendezvous clearing appeared around her. She trotted over to the top of the rocky outcrop that formed its center and looked around. Nopony else was in sight.

That wasn’t too surprising. She figured she should give them thirty minutes. Their task was a bit more complicated, after all, and Sunset’s teleportation could only take them so far.

She passed the time keeping an eye on the surrounding forest. All 360 degrees of it. While she knew the direction Meg and Sunset ought to arrive from, those two weren’t the only ones to watch out for. Not in this forest.

The minutes passed lethargically.

After ten minutes or so, second thoughts intruded. Maybe they encountered a timberwolf or manticore. Sure, Sunset ought to be able to handle it, but even so…

Twilight took flight. Better safe than sorry. But no sooner had she gotten above the canopy, she spotted something in the distance, too far to clearly make out, close but not too close to the trees.

She teleported as far as she could, unaided by the gem, and let out a sigh of relief. Meg was carrying Sunset, her front legs wrapped around the latter’s barrel. Not sure how they were managing that, but she couldn’t deny her eyes. One more teleport and she was beside them.

“Missed us?” Sunset asked.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “An abundance of caution,” she said. “No offense, Meg, but how are you carrying her? I wouldn’t have thought you had the endurance for that.”

“Ask Sunset.”

“Okay?” She looked towards the mare in question. Twilight then noticed the unicorn’s horn was glowing.

“Gravity countering spell,” Sunset said, confirming Twilight’s suspicions. “Something I’ve been working on after studying human physics. Seemed like a good time to try it out.”

“A pack of timberwolves caught our scent,” Meg said. “Flight was the only escape.”

“Much faster to fly, too,” Sunset added.

The rendezvous point was coming into view. A minute later and everypony was on the ground—to which Sunset collapsed. “That spell does take a lot out of you, though.”

“Won’t be long before we’re back on the Zephyr.” Twilight got out the other time travel helper gem. She had two of those as it would’ve taken too long to recharge the spent one. Meg was already by Sunset’s side. Twilight joined them and cast the spell.

The sun changed position and a few clouds now dotted the sky. Above the mares was their ride home. One teleport later and Twilight returned them all to the observation lounge. She lost no time informing the captain of that fact.

“So when do we try going back to observe the anomaly’s creation?” Meg asked.

“Now that the paradox has been resolved…” Twilight sat down next to the others. “Hopefully.”

Meg was still waiting for an answer to her question.

“Let’s try for tomorrow morning.”

24. T-Minus Zero

The old castle in the Everfree had been in poor shape the first time Meg had visited it, and the passage of time had only made it poorer. Their destination was the cave underneath it, the cave in which the Tree of Harmony resided. That all looked essentially the same, somehow eternal.

Discord touched down in front of the faintly iridescent tree. Meg and Twilight did likewise.

“We could’ve teleported, you know,” Twilight grumbled. Flying all the way from Canterlot had been annoying.

Discord waved the complaint away. “It’s more dramatic this way.”

“Whatever.” Meg walked up to the crystalline tree. It had been decades since she’d been here last. The Elements were still embedded in its branches. That sense of harmony, that she had experienced undiluted upon being blasted by those Elements, could still be faintly felt here. “You once told me it was a tree of few words, Discord. You were being generous.” It had never uttered a word to her knowledge.

The draconequus pointedly tapped the trunk, sending ripples of illumination from the point of contact. “That’s about to change. Right, sis?”

Nothing happened.

This time, Twilight had used an enchanted time travel helper gemstone, just in case all the other attempts had failed due to the anomaly creation being too far in the past for her usual unaided spell. That was unlikely, but it didn’t hurt to check.

No, Meg’s presence was required. She had hoped to spare her the trouble. It was possible, of course, that something else was the cause of the apparent paradox, but not likely. Purely random numbers, quantum mechanically generated, had effectively spelled out “free Tirek” and they had done that. Unlikely indeed that there could be another cause.

But how would Meg’s absence cause a paradox? It was bad enough that not freeing Tirek first would cause a paradox. It just didn’t make any sense.

Twilight sighed. Nothing to do but wait for Meg to arrive.

She return to the main cavern. It was still early; no humans were around yet. It wasn’t a long wait before Meg arrived. Twilight let her in.

The pegasus looked at her. “Something wrong?”

“Huh? No, just pondering something.” Nothing to do but go through with it and hope whatever happened would clarify the nature of the potential paradox.

Meg came over to her. Twilight noticed she had her phone with her this time. “I put it in airplane mode,” Meg said. “No confusing the network with multiple copies of it. It might prove useful to take pictures or video or something.”

“We’ll see. We’re there to intervene, not document, don’t forget.”

Meg shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt.”

Twilight led the way to their time travel side tunnel of choice. Once there, she double-checked the contents of her saddlebag. Everything was there. “Casting time travel spell now.”

Nothing changed around them, but that was to be expected. She breathed a sigh of relief. “This time it worked.” Again, proving that Meg’s absence would cause a paradox—but no wiser as to why. No need to burden her with it. She got out the two plaid pills. “Let’s go for the corner opposite the workbenches. It should be far enough away for our magic bubbles to make us invisible, but even if it isn’t nopony should be paying attention to that corner.”

“Sounds good to me.”

They swallowed their plaid pills.

Twilight couldn’t believe her eyes. Half of the observers from her next trip to the past were there. Two guns were pointed at them, by the same two who had interfered with the return of Meg’s stolen computer to the warehouse. Three others were about the machinery that would cast the anomaly-creating spell.

“How could this be happening,” Meg muttered.

It was a bucking good question. Twilight had to assume her future self was outside the building, along with Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Rarity—possibly Pinkie Pie. Why hadn’t they prevented this?

She face-hoofed. Because her future self remembered seeing this; the past—her future self’s past—could not be changed.

Meg must’ve been thinking the same thing. “Any chance of asking your future self outside how this goes down?”

It was tempting; she couldn’t deny it. “Better we don’t.”

“So what do we do? And how much time left do we have in which to do it?”

No clock was visible, and no way could they get close enough to a computer to see its clock—not without themselves becoming visible and being seen. “There will be enough time.” Was the need for Meg’s presence somehow connected to this latest complication?

“Because it’d be a paradox if there wasn’t, yeah I know. But do what?”

Indeed, what? They were already planning on intervening. The obvious place to start was with the ones with the guns. “I’ll start by taking care of those two—again.”

Twilight first prepared a sleep spell, ready to fire. She then trotted over to the gunmen. The instant any of them noticed her presence, indicating that her magic bubble had collapsed due to the ambient field of the local magic generators, she would fire the spell at them.

It took surprisingly long. The captors were focused on the observers, and the observers on their captors.

In the shock of recognition, one of the gunmen started re-aiming his gun at her. He collapsed in slumber before he could finish. Then the other one collapsed. “Everyone leave this building now!” She glared at the three operating the machinery. “That includes you.”

Most of the observers hurried for the exit. Three did not: the Russian, Egor; Serrell’s pick, Austin; and Routledge’s pick, Kimberly. Nor did any of the three operators. Of course not; who would operate the machinery? It’s a fact that no one escaped the building prior to its demise—excepting those from the future, ideally.

“We here to observe,” Egor said. “We leave with you.”

“I stay so long as she stays,” Austin said, pointing at Kimberly.

The operators were still operating. There will be sufficient time, she reminded herself. She looked expectantly at Routledge’s pick, who was clearly agitated, undecided. If she was going to make her move…

“Destroy everything!”

The operators preceded to do just that—with sledgehammers? Twilight zapped them all with sleep spells and then turned and zapped Kimberly.

Meg came to a landing beside her. “I got that all on video, for what it’s worth.”

Was that why Meg was needed? To create that video? Its impact would be powerful, no question. But then, there were the other three observers still there.

Meg walked over to a monitor that was still connected to a functioning computer. “We have three minutes thirteen seconds.” She went over to the computer that controlled the spell caster. The keyboard was smashed; Twilight had zapped them before anything more could be done to that contraption. “Idiots. Don’t even need a keyboard for this. But…” She suddenly looked sick.

“But what?”

“Somepony will have to stay behind to click that mouse button to start the spell.”

Twilight feared she was beginning to understand why Meg’s absence would have caused a paradox—but she still had no idea what the connection was to Tirek’s jailbreak. She turned to the two remaining observers. “Go outside. Now. Please.” She got the anomaly-modifying gem out of her saddlebag.

“We leave with you,” Egor declared.

“You can’t.” Twilight put her ring-shaped gem into position around the anomaly-creating gem. “I’m not the Twilight outside. I cannot return you to your proper time.” Or rather, herself visiting the future was not the best idea in the world.

“Does outside Twilight know about you?” he asked.

“I should hope so.” She started to gather up the slumbering humans. Kimberly would have to come back with her, proper time be bucked. Might as well save the others too. None will be returned to their realm anytime soon. “She’s my future self.”

“You should save as much equipment and records as you can,” Austin said.

A good idea. “Time?” she asked Meg.

Meg checked the monitor. “Two minutes, seven seconds.”

Twilight got busy. She started sweeping up whatever she could and dumped it all in a pile near the sleepers.

“One minute.”

More stuff over there. Twilight galloped to it and swept that up too, forming another pile.

“I… I have to stay,” Meg said like death warmed over. “I don’t know how, but nothing can happen to me.”

The last of the obvious stuff was added to yet another pile. “Because paradox, I know.” She moved the three piles close to each other, then her magic spread out to encompass both sleepers and piles.

A cough.

They were still here?! “Get over here,” she commanded, “and get down on your knees right there—just do it if you want to survive this.” There was no time for arguing. Nor was there time left for them to escape the building on foot. Nor was teleporting an option, not when the magic field didn’t extend to the exterior.

“Twenty seconds.”

Twilight stared helplessly at Meg. Logically, she knew there wasn’t sufficient time to invoke the return spell after clicking that button. Logically, she knew nothing could happen to Meg, because it’d be a paradox if something did happen to her. Logically, she knew nothing could survive what was about to happen.

“Fifteen seconds.”

There had to be something she could arrange that would click that bucking button after they’d departed. Maybe have an object drop onto that mouse? But it’d have to be high to buy sufficient time, and thus heavy enough to fall straight, but that may smash the mouse instead… if it didn’t miss.

“Ten seconds. What are you waiting for? Leave!”

The ventilation system quietly rumbled.

Her mind was blank. Maybe her future self would suddenly appear with the solution?

“F-five seconds. Leave already!”

Twilight invoked the return spell.

25. Future Twilight's Problem

The ripples from Discord’s tap propagated onwards, reflecting back whenever they reached the tip of a branch. The Element of Magic, embedded in the main trunk, began to pulse. The ripples faded and the Element went dark. “Yes, Discord, it is time.” The Element pulsed in synchrony with the reverberating female-ish voice.

So the Tree could talk after all. Meg found that annoying, oddly enough, what with all the times she had received silence. “So why start communicating now?”

Warehouse was replaced with tunnel. A quick check showed that everything had come across without mishap. To one side were the piles of stuff and the humans she had zapped with a sleep spell, and on the other were two crouched humans. She moved the piles and sleeping humans further down the tunnel, making space for Meg’s return. Excessively optimistic, arguably, but it didn’t hurt.

As for the sleepers, she zapped them again to make sure they stayed asleep for a while longer. She’d come back later for them, once appropriate accommodations had been prepared.

Next Twilight’s attention turned to the conscious humans. Both were still on their knees, looking around at their new surroundings—especially at what was above them. “Now you know why you had to get down,” she said. “This tunnel was not built with humans in mind. I’ll return us to my present.” And provide more empty space in which for Meg to return.

But by now she should have returned, if she was going to return at all. Was this why they had to jailbreak Tirek first? Because she was no longer available?

Unlikely. Meg had to return one way or another. Paradoxes were impossible. Celestia knows they tried hard enough to create one deliberately.

She just didn’t know how Meg would return. Or when. Maybe Meg didn’t know herself, yet.

The piles of stuff could travel to the present the slow way—no, then she would’ve seen them earlier and she hadn’t. Twilight included them in the time travel spell along with all the humans, both awake and asleep. Unsurprisingly, it worked, returning them all to her present—but not the present of Egor and Austin.

“Now I’m going to teleport you out of here.”

Twilight teleported herself and the two non-sleeping humans to the mine entrance, bypassing the main cavern. No need to risk interactions between future and present day humans. Plus one of them was a Russian; he might have awkward questions about what he saw there, and she didn’t have time to clear it with the Americans.

Egor walked outside and peered down. “You not abandon us, correct?”

Twilight joined him. “No, I’m not abandoning you, either of you. You have to understand you are still in your past. Probably by just a few days, but I don’t know—no, don’t tell me. I can’t return you—literally—until we catch up with your present. To do so would be a paradox, since I assume there’s no record of there being two of either of you existing at the same time.”

She looked questioningly at Egor, then Austin. Both shook their heads.

“You’ll be our guests until then. Canterlot is up there, on the other side of this mountain. Please be patient while I go and make arrangements. It shouldn’t be too long before I’m back.”

“You’ll find us here,” Austin said. He looked around. “No place to go, really.”

“Please just stay here.”

Twilight took off and climbed high in the sky. A few minutes later she touched down at the main entrance to the palace. First stop was the throne room, to touch bases with Celestia. She walked past petitioners lining the marble wall. The massive doors emblazoned with the Solar and Lunar Crests were closed; court was not currently in session. Perfect. The Royal Guards bowed at her approach and opened the doors just enough to let her through. The doors closed behind her.

Celestia was nowhere to be seen. Luna, however, was seated and consulting with a clerk.

Twilight walked towards the thrones. “Luna? Where’s Celestia?”

Luna lowered a coffee cup and looked at her. “Something important came up that required her immediate attention. No, I don’t know what. Asked me to fill in for her and just disappeared. Literally.”

That was odd. “Did she happen to say when she’ll be back?”

“She did not,” Luna grumbled. “And it’s well past my bedtime.” She drank some more coffee. “Is there something I need to help you with?”

“Not really. I just wanted to inform her that the anomaly creation has been taken care of. But two—” On second thought… Let the humans be Future Twilight’s problem, the Twilight of their present. She could come back to the past for them all and return them directly to their own time. No need for the guests to sit around for a few days, and no need to put the sleepers in a dungeon. “Scratch that. But Meg had to stay behind and… well… she didn’t return.”

Luna looked over her coffee cup at her. “You seem surprisingly unbothered for such an unfortunate outcome.”

“Because she has to come back, somehow. It’d be a paradox if she didn’t.”

Luna groaned. “It’s too late for talk of paradoxes. I’ll inform my sister when she deigns to turn up.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Twilight said. She turned to depart.

Once she was outside the palace and back in the air, she wondered what to do next. Returning to her castle was one possibility. She needed to write a summary for Serrell—and in particular inform him of the observer complication she’d encountered. But there was also the matter of Meg’s unknown whereabouts. Yes, she had to return, but that didn’t mean she’d return quickly—she hadn’t, after all. Various people ought to be informed of that.

She’d start with her co-workers. A quick flight around the mountain—but well short of the mine entrance, where the two humans might still be waiting for her future self—followed by a teleport and she was there. “I need your attention,” she declared. Jerry, Martin, and Diana were around a workbench, and when they turned towards her a familiar looking device was revealed. “You’re making a copy of it?”

“That magic-casting device from the warehouse?” Jerry asked. “We are. We’re… making progress.”

“What did you want to tell us?” Dianna asked. “Sounds important, whatever it is.”

Uh, right. That device can wait till later. “The anomaly’s creation has been taken care of, but…”

All eyes were on her.

“But Meg had to stay behind and start that original magic-casting machine. She’ll be fine, otherwise it’d be a paradox, but she hasn’t come back—yet—and I don’t know when she will. Just thought you ought to know.”

Silence.

Dianna broke it. “How did Steve take it?”

Twilight shook her head. “I thought he might be here too. He doesn’t know yet.”

“Probably with Professor Arcane Scroll,” Martin said. “They were here earlier.”

“Okay, I’ll check with him next.” Twilight’s eye returned to the magic-casting device. Back at the warehouse, those humans had the option of turning off their magic generators. That option didn’t exist in Equestria, not with an ambient magic field. “I’d feel much better if a suitable unicorn was around when you’re ready to test it, if I wasn’t available.” And it was all too likely she wouldn’t be, she had to admit.

“No argument from us!” Dianna said. “Sunset Shimmer, Moondancer, and the professor himself have all offered their assistance.”

“Excellent. I’ll be off, then.”

Back to Canterlot she went, this time heading towards Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Before long she had arrived at the professor’s office, the door open. Steve was, in fact, there. She coughed to get their attention.

“Twilight,” the professor said, standing up. “What brings you to my office?”

She looked uneasily at Steve. “Actually… it’s Steve I’m here to see. It’s about Meg.”

He took a step forward. “What about her?”

“She, uh, had to stay behind to activate that spell-casting machine. She… didn’t return.” She quickly added, “Not yet, anyway.”

Arcane Scroll looked aghast. “You mean she was ground zero when that anomaly was created!?”

Twilight merely nodded.

Steve took a moment to process that. “No, she has to be alright. It’d be a paradox otherwise.” He gulped. “For some definition of ‘alright.’”

“You might want to check the news,” she said. “There were other… complications. Not that they really change anything, not with respect to Meg, anyway.”

“I’ll do that.”

Then she facehoofed. “Sorry, don’t check the news, not yet. The observers haven’t gone back yet.”

“Okay?” He shrugged. “Hard to keep things straight when time travel’s involved—no, don’t bother telling us the complications. Not if we don’t need to know about them now.”

“There were other eyewitnesses to Meg’s actions, that’s all.” Twilight looked over to a blackboard, covered in magic equations. “That’s… different.” She hadn’t been following the research into the magic of stellar bodies. “Stars, I take it?”

“Indeed it is,” Arcane declared as he moved over to the blackboard. “These equations here are for the spells that maintain the stability of our pocket realm.”

“Their design clearly shows knowledge of relativity,” Steve said.

Arcane nodded. “And so no pony, lacking such knowledge, could have created them. Not even Star Swirl the Bearded. I think Discord could be ruled out too; this isn’t chaos magic. But, quite honestly, it doesn’t seem to be pony magic either.”

Twilight contemplated the equations. “It stands to reason that this magic was present at the beginning of our realm, whatever that means. Logically, it could not have come from any creature that came into existence within it.”

“Would that alone rule Discord out?” Steve asked.

“I… don’t know. But there is another candidate: Harmony. We never have done a formal study of the magic of the Tree of Harmony or of the Elements.”

Arcane grunted. “We’ve barely done a study of chaos magic. But your point stands.”

“It’s something to think about.” Twilight started to leave, but decided to ask something instead. “By any chance do either of you know were Celestia is?”

“You haven’t told her?” Steve asked.

She shook her head. “Only Luna. She doesn’t know where she is either, some sort of urgent business she had to attend to. She’s filling in for her right now.”

“At this time of day?” Arcane sat back down. “How odd. But, no, we do not.”

It was a long shot, after all, that whatever this urgent business was had involved her school. To Steve she said, “Should I tell her brother or do you want to do that.”

“I’ll take care of that.” He grimaced. “If she doesn’t come back soon.”

“You might not want to wait, not for long anyway. Serrell could make a public statement about that, though not until after the observers go back in time. I’ll have to tell him what happened at that warehouse, naturally.” That was next on her to-do list.

He sighed. “Duly noted.”

The flight back to her castle was uneventful. The first task was to write a summary, for Serrell’s eyes, of the trip back to the anomaly creation. It certainly had not gone according to expectations, not with the interference from the observers—who have yet to go back in time to observe. She emphasized that that didn’t change anything, that they would go ahead as planned with the observers—indeed, they had to—so please schedule a date.

She followed with the fact that Meg had taken video on her phone of the interaction between Routledge’s pick, Kimberly Hurst, and the occupants of the warehouse, an interaction that he’d be quite interested in seeing. Except…

Twilight sighed. Not even Pinkie Pie could sugar coat this. She explained what happened to Meg, but was quite specific that she would turn up eventually. Because paradox, if not in so few words. But until then, no video.

She sent it off.

Rainbow Dash picked that moment to fly in through the door. “Hey, Twi, any word on the observer stuff?”

Twilight stood up. “Just sent off a letter on that very topic. We should know soon.”

The pegasus hovered in close to study the alicorn. “What went wrong.”

Twilight looked askance at her. “Nothing, exactly, but…” She gave her a recap.

“Whoa. You’re sure about that?”

“As sure as can be. Paradoxes are forbidden.” She checked the computer; no response yet. “But I have no idea when or how she’ll come back.”

Dash cocked her head. “Forbidden by who?”

“Who? Nopony! It’s physics.”

“Geez, just asking, sorry.”

“No… I’m the one that should be apologizing. Let’s go out and get a bite to eat.”

They decided to round up the other gals as well. Rainbow Dash took care of Fluttershy and Applejack, while Twilight fetched Pinkie Pie and Rarity. They all met at the hayburger restaurant. Once they had been all seated and their orders taken, Twilight broke the news.

“You’re sure she’ll be okay?” Rarity asked.

“As sure as I can be. The problem is, I don’t know when she’ll return. It should have either been real soon, if not immediately, or…” Twilight shrugged. “I don’t have a clue what’s holding her up.”

“How awful,” Fluttershy said.

“Ah’m sure it’ll make that Routledge fellah real happy.”

Twilight couldn’t help noticing that Pinkie was being quiet. “No Pinkie Sense concerning Meg? What happened could be considered a doozy, right?”

She looked up in thought. “Not if she returns all safe and sound. That’s the opposite of a doozy!”

On the way back to her castle, a thought bubbled up in Twilight’s mind: those offices. The ones back in that warehouse. What was in them? She had brought back whatever she could from their work area, but was that everything?

Fortunately, nothing stopped her from going back and checking them out. She just had to avoid their past selves.

First things first. She checked for a response from the president; there wasn’t one. After getting a plaid pill, she headed to the designated time travel tunnel. After arriving, she then had to decide precisely the moment in the past to target. In the middle of the prior night, after their past selves had teleported past the fire doors.

Maybe that wasn’t an optimal time for removing stuff, because it might be later noticed by their owners, but first discover if there was anything worth removing. If it turned out there was, then she could come back closer to anomaly creation to remove it.

One plaid pill later, the corridor appeared around her. She didn’t bother testing the door, teleporting past it. Enough light made its way in from the parking lot to see. The room was unused, empty.

So was the next, and the one after it. In fact, all of the rooms were empty.

Well, it didn’t hurt to check.

Upon returning to her castle, she again checked for a response from the president. Again, there wasn’t one. Well, he was a busy man.

And she had been busy too, these last few weeks. Now that she had some time, she should take care of some action items on her cross-realm negotiations to-do list. The top item on that list was currency conversions. There was considerable disagreement on the dollar/bit exchange rate, of course, but it was even more fundamental than that. Could bits even survive undamaged a trip to the human realm? All coins have a spell to prevent counterfeiting; a coin without that spell is not legal tender. What would happen to that spell in the absence of magic?

Only one way to find out, and this was a good a time as any to do so.

She picked out a one-bit coin and got a plaid pill. But to where? It didn’t really matter. She decided to visit Meg’s old apartment complex. Hovering above the floor, she swallowed the plaid pill and found herself above the building. The roof. She could set the coin down there, fly far enough away for it to leave her magic bubble, then she would retrieve it.

She hesitated, her focus on what laid below her. The mob was long gone, of course. No sign remained of it ever having been there. No doubt someone else now lived in her former abode. Meg could not return to live there even if the insanity ended.

With an exhale, she flew down to the roof and carried out her plan. A minute later and she was back in her own home.

Twilight held the coin up to her eyes for inspection. It didn’t look any different. Of course it didn’t. That wasn’t the test that mattered. She applied the standard detection spell on the coin… and it failed. Legally, it was counterfeit. Another spell revealed that no spell of any kind was present on that coin.

“As I suspected,” she said to nopony in particular. The spell might have come back after the coin returned to a magic field, as many spells do, but then that particular spell had also been designed to be fragile, to foil tampering or deep analysis. She went over to her computer and wrote up her findings and sent it out to the relevant distribution list.

U.S. currency had the opposite problem: nothing stopped it from being duplicated once inside Equestria. Sure, they had serial numbers, but she gathered it’d be way too long before duplicates were spotted. Other earthly currencies no doubt had the same problem.

These weren’t showstoppers. Apparently humans were used to using alternatives to cash anyway, many even preferred it. Something of a digital nature would need to be setup to handle cross-realm currency transfers.

But what to do with her now-counterfeit coin? She could re-cast that spell on it. She had looked it up, of course. It was notoriously difficult to apply correctly—by design, naturally—but nothing she couldn’t handle. It wasn’t even improper for her to do so; she was a princess, after all. Eventually, maybe. She could show it in its spell-less state to interested parties.

Next item on the to-do list was precious metals—precious to humans, anyway. Duplication spells made them un-precious to—

An email arrived. From Serrell. Twilight read it. It was basically an acknowledgement, a confirmation that there was no change in plans.

Back to precious metals. She sighed. There was no way around it and it was time to face that fact. She added a new to-do item: create a spell that would detect precious metals (above trace amounts) so they could be prevented from passing through a portal. All arrivals to Equestria should be tested too, so that they’d have the chance to return the metals to Earth and not be forced to leave them in Equestria. Better yet: run the detection spell before entering Equestria. Their realm’s conservation laws shouldn’t be a problem.

She added a new to-do item to create a similar detection spell for bits, so that they would not accidentally become counterfeit.

Finally, an item for a detection spell for human currencies, so, like precious metals, they could be kept from entering Equestria or, once inside, from leaving. How to do that she hadn’t a clue.

Okay, another item: collect a sample of human currencies, so what they have in common could be determined. She knew they had anti-counterfeiting measures of their own.

Spike came down the stairs, carrying a cup of hot chocolate. “Thanks, Spike,” she said once it was placed beside the keyboard.

“Figured you’d need that. I know how you feel about Andy.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

He looked askance at her. “You haven’t checked that email box, have you?”

“Uh… no?”

Spike rolled his eyes and went back upstairs.

“I would’ve got around to it eventually!”

Twilight had a growing collection of email addresses, having taken Meg’s recommendation. It made it easier to give one out to less-than-trusted individuals—like the former Lord Tirek. Might as well see what that’s all about, she thought as she fortified herself with hot chocolate topped with the perfect quantity of marshmallows.

And there it was. There wasn’t much to it. Just an FYI that the documentary was not finished just because they had all returned from Greece. Kyle, the director/producer, would like her to participate in interviews, pick ups, or roundtable discussions. Sure, in my plentiful spare time. He was also still interested in doing a documentary on Discordland and the brony convention to be held there. That’s more Meg’s department. Whenever she would come back.

Twilight leaned back from the computer, pondering the messenger, still not knowing what to make of “Andy.” She had occasionally checked in on his YouTube channel. Recently it had been dominated by his recollections of his early, human life, and lessons from that which could be applied to the modern world. They had attracted a huge audience. He also must be making a fair amount of money selling “merch” on this channel.

Nothing nefarious about any of this, of course, but she couldn’t help but wonder what he planned to do with this fame and fortune.

Many thought he was a fraud, true, just like they thought ponies were fake, but Andy could read Linear A, the ancient writing system of the Minoans. He wasn’t faking that, and the “he’s a fraud” crowd had no explanation for that, other than an incredibly weak “he must be a linguistic genius.” The cognitive dissonance was a sight to behold: If he wasn’t a fraud, then cartoon ponies must be real, but that’s obviously impossible, so… and round and round it goes. The presence of herself and Yearling in that documentary was not likely to convince the holdouts.

Regardless, putting all that aside, was it indeed the case, as he had claimed, that their time as enemies had passed? Superficially, perhaps so, but… That was unfair, she knew. She was the Princess of Friendship. She had accepted Discord’s change of heart, for Celestia’ sake, and ironically Andy had never done anything since leaving Tartarus that called for remedial friendship lessons.

She just didn’t know.

Twilight looked at Andy’s email once more.

When are you coming back, Meg?

26. Paradoxes are Forbidden

“You are mistaken,” the Tree of Harmony said. “We have communicated once before, when my magic was used to make you a magical creature.”

That was so long ago, but Meg could still remember it like it was yesterday. In that moment, she had felt embraced by harmony, accepted by harmony; she had perceived a timeless connection to harmony; harmony had given her a purpose, a destiny—even if the nature of that purpose had remained frustratingly murky. Every time she had ventured near the Tree, she had felt that oh-so-diluted harmony. “That really was you.”

The ventilation system quietly rumbled.

“F-five seconds. Leave already!”

What the hell was Twilight waiting for?

Then she left, taking the humans and gathered stuff with her.

Three seconds.

Meg was alone.

Two seconds. She closed her eyes, unable to watch.

One second.

She forced her hoof down on the mouse button.

The ever-present background sound of air rumbling through the conduits and vents on the warehouse’s ceiling ceased.

Wait.

That couldn’t be right.

It wasn’t possible.

That computer didn’t control the HVAC system; that was absurd.

She opened one eye.

Then the other.

“I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” she croaked out. It seemed appropriate. All around her were stars embedded in vague mist. She looked down. More of the same. She took a few steps. What she was standing on felt solid, if invisible.

Not what she’d expected, to put it mildly—not that she’d had expectations. Was this the interior of the anomaly? Why hadn’t the atoms of her body been ripped apart? Regardless, there must be a way out of this, or it would be a paradox. Nothing had changed in that respect. But she was alive and in one piece, and that was a good start!

For who knew how long, she wandered about, no closer to figuring this place out or how to get out of there. That was starting to concern her, paradoxes being forbidden or not. Yet she couldn’t escape the feeling that it… seemed familiar?

Princess Celestia was before her.

It clicked.

“Oh no no no no. I didn’t sign up for this! You are not making me a princess!”

That produced a smile. “Nor need you become one. Nonetheless…” She took a half-step. “Walk with me.”

Meg did so. “Nonetheless, I’m getting a horn out of this, aren’t I?”

“I shall tell you what I told Twilight: It is time for you to fulfill your destiny.”

Meg halted. “I am not one of your little ponies.”

Celestia turned with a sigh to face her. “It is not I who decides such matters, Meg. Know that once, long ago, I was brought here myself for ascension. If you wish to blame something, blame your cutie mark.”

My cutie mark. The mark of her destiny. Which only begged the question, of course. Who—or what—handed them out?

And why now? No need to ask; it was for the same reason Twilight had ascended when she did: She had proven herself worthy. She had passed the test. What had Meg’s test been? Clicking that damn button knowing it would have been certain death if not for the paradox that would cause?

When did Meg get her cutie mark? After being blasted by the rainbow cannon when she first became a pony. And come to think of it, when did Twilight ascend? After likewise being blasted by the Elements of Harmony. Coincidence? Could be. After all, Meg had not been blasted by the Elements just now.

The princess resumed walking. Meg quickly caught up to her. “Don’t I at least get a montage of significant moments of my life?”

Celestia tittered. “For many years I had hoped for Twilight’s ascension and had planned accordingly. This is as much a surprise to me as it is to you—not that I have the means, naturally, of observing your life in your realm.”

The seemingly omniscient Celestia, bearer of future-revealing visions, was surprised by this turn of events? That was actually somewhat comforting to Meg. It ruled out a time loop in which she had met her in the past, never mind one in which she helped to raise her or even—god forbid—gave birth to her.

The stars slowly shifted position as they walked. “Then how did you know to be here?”

“It’s an arrangement I have, and let’s leave it at that.”

Mysterious as ever, Meg thought—and it implied no answers would be forthcoming from the princess concerning who or what—can one have an arrangement with a what?—decided these things.

But then a rather important matter occurred to her. “Which Celestia are you—that is, what time period are you from?”

“Your present, Meg. When you were brought here, you were also returned to your own time.”

Meg grunted. “Convenient. Wish I knew who to thank.”

In silence the stars continued to shift.

“So I never returned from that warehouse. Twilight must be worried sick about me.” Never mind her husband!

“I have yet to see her since you two departed for your mission, but my faithful student shares your belief that paradoxes are forbidden.”

“A belief that has yet to be proven false, thankfully.”

“It would so appear.”

“Even so, the sooner we get this over with, the better, I guess.” And have her life turned upside down yet again.

Celestia gradually came to a stop and nodded at Meg. “I feel the time has come.”

“Just another minute!” Meg quickly shouted, to who or what wasn’t clear. She removed her phone from its holder. It looked okay. It woke up like it should, but it didn’t have a signal. Why not?

Right. Airplane mode. She turned that mode off, potential network confusion be damned. Still no signal. There were several possibilities. Perhaps the means by which she arrived here did not activate Steve’s magic. Or maybe it did, but the other end of the wormhole was in the middle of that anomaly and that’s what’s blocking the signal. Regardless, she wasn’t going to contact anyone from this place.

She took a panoramic video of this strange realm. Evidently this place was compatible with the physics on which the phone operated. She held it out. “Please hold this while I go through… whatever is about to happen. I can’t risk losing the video I took at the warehouse.”

A warm yellow glow surrounded the phone and lifted it away. “I shall keep it safe.”

That being taken care of, it freed her to wonder how one prepared for this. Never mind that, what the hell was everyone gonna think when they saw her new appendage? Never mind that, what would this do to her human form?!

Rainbow swirls filled her vision.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to relax. She had met her future self; there was no horn sticking out of her forehead. No wonder she would eventually be able to handle hyperspace—though without a horn? Some mysteries still remained.

It hadn’t hurt being turned into a pony that first time; she hadn’t even noticed the transformation as it was happening. It was no different this time. And she was already magical—

But not this kind of magical! It suffused every cell of her being, filling her with… she had not the words to describe it. It wasn’t just earth pony or unicorn magic, though she knew that to be part of the package. This was fundamentally different. It had to be alicorn magic.

“You can open your eyes now.”

Meg did so, to see Celestia pointing her phone camera at her. “You know how to operate a phone?” she asked, flabbergasted. The diarchs had steadfastly refused the gift of a phone. Was she going to regret not locking it first?

The elder alicorn levitated the phone back to her. “Twilight showed me how, while demonstrating the wonders of human technology. I figured you would like to see your transformation, possibly show it to others.”

Meg reached out a hoof to take hold of her phone. Then she almost face-hoofed. She had a horn now; she could actually look up and see it. Except she didn’t know how to use it. And anyway it was a bad idea to risk first using telekinesis on her phone. She returned the phone—using her hoof—to its holder—which was still on her leg, unaffected by her transformation. Well, better safe than sorry, and she got a video out of it—who would she show it to?

“Shall we return to Equestria?” Celestia asked.

“And then enroll me in magic kindergarten?” Meg flatly asked and pointed at her horn.

An almost suppressed titter. “Only should it prove necessary.”

Meg sighed and looked around. How big was this place? There was no obvious boundary. It also seemed devoid of life; why did it exist? Two questions that could be asked of Tartarus—and probably the Breezy realm—for all she knew.

Stop avoiding the inevitable. “Let’s go home.”

Celestia’s horn flashed and Meg found herself in the converted cavern, with the princess still in front of her. Her co-workers were all present, too occupied to have noticed their arrival. Meg was wondering how to break the ice when it was done for her.

“Your Highness—es?”

All turned upon hearing the voice of the Royal Guard, one of several assigned to guard the portal. Their attention then turned to Princess Celestia—and then to definitely-looking-like-but-not-actually-a-princess Meg. They were definitely staring at her new horn.

The definitely-a-princess took command of the situation. “Meg is not a princess of Equestria nor shall she become one in the foreseeable future. That having been said, Meg has ascended and is now an alicorn.”

Another guard had joined the first and bowed. “Understood, Your Highness.” He returned to the portal.

“Does this mean she gets a promotion, or at least a raise?” Martin asked half-jokingly.

“No, it does not,” their manager, Jake, replied. “And it’s safe to say she ain’t becoming a princess of humanity either.”

How many times will this conversation be repeated? “I didn’t ask for this, you know. And, no, Princess Celestia did not cause this.”

“But I was there to help her through it.”

“Any singing, or a montage of your life?” Martin just wasn’t going to give it a rest.

Meg practically growled at him. “No.”

Celestia was innocently looking elsewhere.

The younger alicorn went over to her workstation, where her pendant was. Without bothering to put it on, she pressed her hoof upon it. She lifted her perfectly normal hand and felt her forehead. No horn. Looking expectantly at the others, she said, “Well?”

“No different,” Diana said. The others nodded in agreement.

“That’s something,” Meg mumbled. Then she felt ridiculous. Future Twilight had transformed into a perfectly ordinary human when proving to Present Twilight that said transformation did not affect her status as an Element Bearer—if seeing her own future self as an ordinary looking human wasn’t enough. “Anyone know where Twilight is?”

“She was here earlier,” Jerry said. “No clue where she is now.” No one else volunteered to say differently.

“We need to find her so she knows I’m okay,” Meg said to Celestia.

“She did mention you not returning from the warehouse, yeah.” Jerry said.

Meg sighed. “Long story. Short version: anomaly creation has been taken care of.” She put on the pendant and squeezed. “And got this horn as a souvenir.” She preempted the questions. “Like I said, long story.” As she walked back to the princess, she added, “I can thank my cutie mark, apparently.”

“Ah-HA! I knew I sensed it!”

Discord was pointing straight at Meg.

Meg knew exactly what to say to him. “Would this happen to be the first time you’ve sensed this?”

The draconequus was unable to move a muscle.

“What about that time we encountered my future self?”

A jaw moved, but no sound came out.

“Or how about the past? The distant past?”

He finally relaxed, lowering his arm. “Let me get back to you on that.”

“Wait!”

It was too late. Discord had vanished.

Celestia bore her trademark smile. “That was quite informative.”

“Yes. It was.” Meg noticed her co-workers all gawking. “He completely ignored the humans in the room. Sure speaks volumes.”

“That’s a good thing,” Jake said. “Right?”

“What do you mean by ‘distant past?’” Diana asked.

I had to say that in their presence. “Just a suspicion,” Meg said, convincing no one. If only Smooze’s speech synthesizer worked better. “He could’ve told us where Twilight was,” she said to Celestia.

“I’ll send a message to Spike.”

Meg wasn’t too sure how effective that would be. Those two weren’t in the same room all that often these days. She lifted her leg with her phone. Maybe, just maybe, Twilight had hers with her.

No signal.

“Great,” she mumbled. The trip through that strange realm—no, it might still be that the anchor point in her universe was in the middle of the anomaly. Uh, and in the past? Could her husband’s magic handle temporal displacement? Regardless, the point was there would be no signal until she revisited her universe.

She could go to her workstation and send Twilight an email—no, she would likely receive the message via Spike first anyway. Nonetheless her eyes lingered on the keyboard. She really needed to master telekinesis, and sooner rather than later. Fortunately, she knew the perfect unicorn to help her with that—who, she just realized, may or may not know she hadn’t returned with Twilight from the past.

“First send the message to Spike,” Meg said, “then let’s find Steve.”

Twilight pushed open the door to Sugarcube Corner and held it open with her magic for Rainbow Dash and Applejack. As soon as she spotted them, Mrs. Cake rushed out to greet the trio.

“Oh thank Celestia! You gotta help Pinkie! She can’t stop it!”

“Stop what?” Applejack asked.

“Just go upstairs—now!”

Without hesitation, Twilight teleported to the top of the stairs. The door to Pinkie’s room was open, so she rushed inside.

“Hi-hi-hi Twi-twi-twi-twilight!”

The pink pony was practically jackhammering through the floor. Rainbow Dash flew into the room; Applejack was not far behind.

Twilight had seen this before. “Pinkie Sense?”

“Yeppers!” The shaking had stopped for now. “It’s a doozy!”

There weren’t too many candidates for that at the moment. “It’s about Meg, isn’t it?”

Pinkie tilted her head in thought. The jackhammering resumed. “N-n-need t-t-to b-b-be m-m-more sp-sp-speci-ci-cific.”

“Did she return?” Dash asked.

“Cl-cl-cl-closer.”

“Why would her return be a doozy?” Applejack asked.

“I-I-I don’t know.”

Sometimes Twilight wondered just how useful Pinkie Sense really was. It wasn’t proving terribly useful right now. “At least Meg is okay—I guess?”

Pinkie rubbed her right front kneecap and her left ear folded. She brightened. “That means Spike is about to arrive with a message from Princess Celestia!”

All turned to the door. Spike ran in, breathless. “Twilight! I’ve—is Pinkie alright?” For Pinkie had started jackhammering again.

Twilight grabbed the scroll from Spike’s grasp with her magic and unrolled it. “Meg has returned… and…” She looked up at Pinkie. “Meg’s an alicorn? That’s the doozy?”

Pinkie jackhammered some more. “Al-al-almost.”

Applejack looked askance at the scroll. “Meg has become an alicorn? How does that work? You were destined to be a princess, prepared for the role by Princess Celestia herself.”

“M-meg’s not a-a-a-a prin-ce-cess,” Pinkie said. “Sh-she’s an ali-i-co-corn.”

“They’re one and the same,” Applejack flatly said.

“Pinkie’s right,” Twilight said. How was she right? No, don’t question it. “Meg is not a princess, nor is she planned to become one.”

“A non-princess alicorn,” Rainbow scoffed. “Sure sounds like a doozy to me.”

Pinkie collapsed to the ground in relief and beamed. “I know, right?”

And now we know why Tirek had to be broken out of Tartarus first. Because he was broken out by a pegasus and a unicorn, not an alicorn and a unicorn. And how many other ponies will consider a non-princess alicorn to be an oxymoron?

Pinkie bounced to her hooves. “You should probably go see her, Twilight. I’m fine now.”

The closer Meg got to Professor Arcane Scroll’s office, the more she wondered what she had gotten herself into. Here in Canterlot, Princess Twilight Sparkle would get nods from ponies in passing. Non-Princess Meg Coleman got… confused looks, looks that persisted well after the passing. At first she tried mentioning she wasn’t a princess, but that only made them even more confused. So she stopped bothering. She feared it may prove necessary for Celestia to hold a non-coronation for her, so that her little ponies would cease their confusion.

Finally she reached his office, its door closed. Briefly she contemplated whether this mage would know how to undo an alicornification. That made her snort. Fat chance. She knocked with a hoof.

The door opened. Nopony was right behind it, of course, not when all the occupants of the room were unicorns. All were staring at her in disbelief. “Hey, all. A funny thing happened to me…”

Steve rushed over, eyes locked on her horn. “You don’t say.”

Sunset Shimmer was next, mixed emotions apparent on her face. “Is this one of Discord’s pranks?”

“I’m… afraid not. It’s the real deal. I even went to the same place Twilight went, and Celestia was there to—”

Sunset soured.

“Celestia did not do this to me, Sunset. She said to blame my cutie mark, if I needed to blame anything.”

The unicorn’s head dipped. “Sorry. I… I guess I still got some issues.” Her head lifted. “Have you used it yet?”

“Don’t know how.” She looked at her husband. “Figured you could give me some lessons, later, since you’ve already been through this.”

“Sure, no problem.”

The professor finally chimed in. “You should consider learning the theory, now that you have the means of putting it into practice.”

“Meg!” cried Twilight from behind her.

Meg turned around to see Twilight—and Rainbow Dash?—standing in the hallway.

“Whoa. She really is an alicorn!”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “You thought Celestia made a mistake?”

“Well, no… obviously…” The pegasus stood next to Meg and wrapped a wing around her. “Look, Twilight, you’ve got a new spelling buddy!”

The corruption of “spell casting” made Twilight cringe.

“I can’t cast spells,” Meg said, “not yet, anyway.”

Rainbow smirked, giving Meg a squeeze. “And Twilight couldn’t fly when she got her wings. But she was still my new flying buddy!”

“Anyway…” Twilight shook her head. By the time she had finished doing that, Meg was presenting her phone to her. Twilight took it in her magic. “Yeah, that’s the place.” Celestia would have panned into view just about now; Twilight look up.

“She said to blame my cutie mark.”

Twilight switched the phone off and sent it back to Meg. “Can’t say she’s wrong.”

Meg return her phone to its holder.

“I don’t get to see it?” Rainbow complained.

“Maybe later,” Meg responded. “But not now.”

Rainbow pouted.

“Can we get back to business here?” Arcane asked.

Meg looked at the blackboard, full of an odd mismatch of magic equations, tensors, and differential calculus, no doubt concerning the stars in the Equestrian sky. It made only a little sense to her. “Yeah, we’ll get out of your way. By the way, the anomaly creation has been taken care of. We now just need to get rid of it in the present.”

27. Magic Kindergarten

”Yes, Meg, that was I. I also gave you your cutie mark, as I give all ponies, and I granted you ascension, as I did for all alicorns before you.”

Meg looked at Twilight. “Did you know any of this?”

The elder alicorn’s eyes were fixed on her old Element. “No. I knew the Elements were connected to this Tree, naturally, but that was it.”

Meg looked up at the Tree. “And I’m guessing you somehow transported me to that realm when I clicked that mouse.”

“That is correct, Meg.”

“You sure get around for a tree.”

“Do not assume this tree is my entire being.”

“You can say that again,” Discord muttered.

“What was that, brother?”

“Nothing, dear sister; nothing at all.”

Meg sighed. “Which still begs the question: Why now?”

“So what do we do next?” Meg asked as she and Twilight walked down the hallway. Rainbow Dash, of course, flew. “Fix the anomaly for real, or take the observers back?”

What appeared to be a graduate student came towards them. As with most ponies, she didn’t know what to make of Meg. She almost failed to nod at Twilight, so focused was she on the unfamiliar alicorn; however, noting the true princess’s presence seemed to reassure her. Somewhat.

“Yeah,” Twilight said, after the student went passed them. “Something ought to be done about that, though I don’t know what.”

“Maybe everypony will just get used to it eventually?” Rainbow asked.

“Eventually,” Meg unenthusiastically conceded. “Can’t wait till my world gets a load of me.” For the time being, she’d try to interact with other humans as a human. That’d work, unfortunately, only so long as she stayed out of her own universe, because plaid pills.

“I’ll talk to Celestia about it,” Twilight said. “To answer your question from before we were distracted… I don’t have a solution yet for the anomaly, so taking the observers back wins by default. I don’t have a time for that yet, but it shouldn’t be long from now.”

Meg looked up at the flying pegasus. “There will be a complication, by the way, and you’ll have to let it happen.”

Rainbow frowned. “What’d’ya mean?”

“I’ll explain in detail,” Twilight said, “when everypony is gathered. The short answer is that many of the observers go inside the building against instructions, and we stay outside and let them.”

The frowned deepened. “You serious?”

“I’m afraid so,” Meg said. “We were just inside that building and saw it happen. Can’t change that—and don’t you dare try.” She looked back to Twilight. “What did you do with the humans you brought back?”

“Apart from teleporting the ones not sleeping to the mine entrance, nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing yet. The observers were from our future, so I can’t return them now to their realm. I figured that Future Twilight will go back in time, bring them forward, then return them. That way, we don’t have to look after them for a few days.”

“Hah! So you’re letting it be Future Twilight’s problem!”

“Yes, Rainbow Dash, it’s Future Twilight’s problem. In this case it makes perfect sense.”

“No argument from me,” Meg said. “Did you verify that you picked them up?”

“No, I haven’t. I suppose I should, just in case.” Twilight cringed. “I sure I hope I did—will—otherwise they won’t be happy being stuck there for hours.”

No humans were visible as they approached the mine entrance. That didn’t prove anything, Meg knew. Humans were quite capable of taking action into their own hands if they began to believe they were on their own. She looked around, but none could be seen on the surrounding trails.

Rainbow Dash noticed what Meg had been doing. “I can search a lot faster than either of you.”

“Not yet,” Twilight said. “Let’s check the main tunnel first.”

They entered the tunnel and touched down. Twilight shot an intense beam of light down the tunnel; nothing was visible.

Meg noticed something on the wall and moved towards it. “Twilight, check this out.”

It turned out to be a sheet of paper, somehow stuck to the rock, with four large words above an image of Twilight’s cutie mark.

“You picked them up,” Twilight read aloud. “I guess that answers that.” She canceled the magical glue and grabbed the sheet as it fell, then zapped it out of existence.

Which reminded Meg of what she now possessed. “Say, Twilight, do you have time for a quick magic lesson?”

She got a huge smile in return. “Absolutely. Let’s start with telekinesis.”

Rainbow Dash got airborne. “What did I tell you? Spelling buddy!”

The pegasus quickly departed.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “She’d get bored watching us anyway.” She scanned the ground, looking for something. “There. See that rock?”

“Yeah…”

“Try to lift it. Just will it. It’ll take some practice, but it shouldn’t take long. It didn’t for Steve.”

It didn’t for Steve. And it didn’t take long for Meg to use her wings. But that was a feature of the isomorphic mapping spell; it was designed to make your new body seem like you had been born with it. If becoming an alicorn worked the same way…

Meg looked at the rock, stared at it as if that alone would compel it to obey. It stubbornly remained on the ground. More importantly it didn’t glow. So what did she need to do? Well, how did she walk? Or fly, for that matter. You didn’t think about it—you certainly didn’t overthink it—you just did it.

“Do foals learn telekinesis in magic kindergarten?”

Twilight shook her head. “No, they figure it out on their own, more or less. But they do a lot of directed practice in kindergarten, to learn fine control and power.”

So it was something any unicorn foal could figure out, great. She thought back to her very first lesson with Rainbow Dash. She remembered seeing that pegasus move her wing, and it was just obvious how to move her own the same way. Well, she’d seen unicorns do telekinesis enough times. Just… do that.

The rock twitched.

“It’s a start,” Twilight said.

“It’s something. I… if I had to describe it, it… felt too slippery?”

“Not uncommon with foals. Locking on to the object is part of what you need to learn and practice.”

Meg returned her attention to the rock. Just grab it. A turquoise glow flickered on and off. Focus… The glow steadied. It sort of felt like she was holding something in some indefinable way. The glow was solid now. Lift. The rock haphazardly rose.

A few feet above the ground, the rock dropped. She couldn’t maintain a lock on it.

It hardly mattered. “I did it!”

“You certainly did! It’ll only get easier. You just need to practice. Then we can move on to more complicated spells.”

Like control the hyperspatial void. No alicorn could do that—today. How far in the future was that Meg from? “I’ll be happy just to be able to type as a pony.”

“I recommend doing just that for perfecting your fine control.”

Meg giggled. “I could say the same thing to you concerning finger dexterity when you finally go human.”

Twilight giggled in return. “I suppose you’re right. I don’t really have a reason to put that off much longer, do I? Maybe after taking the observers back?”

Meg shrugged. “That’s up to you. Then you’ll have to go visit your past self to prove it’s safe to do that.”

“Oh yeah. Almost forgot about that.”

“Too many bucking times loops, that’s the problem.”

“And we’re taking care of them, one by one, and the day will come when there will be none.”

Meg found it hard to remember what it was like before time loops dominated her life. “That’ll be nice.” She nodded down the tunnel. “I’m gonna code for a while. My employer doesn’t offer ascension leave, after all.” Not that she had any particular use for dollars at the moment. It was, oddly enough, the inverse of when she worked for the royal court but lived on Earth.

“Okay. I’ll check in with you later.” Twilight extended her wings and— “Oh. You should pay Luna a visit. I’m sure she’d want to see the new you.” She tilted her head in thought. “I should send a message to Cadance and Shining Armor too.”

“You do that,” Meg replied mostly out of politeness. Still, she had a point about Luna. Either she visited her that evening, or she’d receive a visit in a dream.

Twilight flew off.

Meg navigated the all too familiar tunnels and arrived at the magically locked door. She considered it. One day she’d be able to unlock it herself, or even teleport past it; she could look forward to that. She knocked. A guard eventually opened it and let her in, nodding deferentially in a way the guards never had before. So much for Celestia’s explanation.

Once inside she squeezed her pendant; now was not the time to practice magical typing on the keyboard, not until she was sure she wouldn’t break it. The others noted her entrance but made no comment. Good; that would get tiring fast. She headed towards her workstation.

Which had a wrapped present on it. Meg picked it up and inspected it. There was no card or other message or identification. She presented it to her co-workers. “From one of you?”

She got shaking heads in answer. “I’d swear that wasn’t there a short while ago,” Diana said.

“And none of you saw who put it there?”

Again, shaking heads and confused looks.

“That kinda narrows down the suspects, doesn’t it?” This being Equestria and all. Well, there was nothing to do but open it. Meg pulled open the bow tie and removed the lid to the box. Inside was a large gem, exactly the same size and shape as the ones Discord had been providing for Smooze’s voice synthesizer. But why provide a new one in this fashion? She sighed. Why expect rational behavior from the Spirit of Chaos?

“So?” Jerry asked.

Meg held out the gem. “From Discord, I’m guessing. If I’m not mistaken, it’s for Smooze’s voice synthesizer.” She returned it to the box. She’d have to locate Smooze and try it out later.

Dianna slammed palms onto desk. “Smooze is real?!”

Didn’t she watch my Senate testimony? Or maybe she had missed that Smooze mention, for some reason. “Yes, he’s real. Not evil or anything, just… communication challenged. I’ve been working on that. By the way, Discord actually did bring him the Grand Galloping Gala, but only because he knew of that season five episode. And he’s purple, not green. But he looks just like he does in that episode in every other respect.”

“So…” Martin began. “Could we have him eat all the nuclear waste we have stored here? Once we’ve extracted the reusable stuff, obviously.”

“Uh…” Now why had that never occurred to her? “I guess?”

“It won’t harm him?” Dianna asked.

Would eating nuclear waste harm him? “I don’t think so,” Meg said. Smooze was sort of a force of nature. “But I can double check.” Somehow. Ask Discord if nothing else.

That appeared to have ended that conversation, so Meg turned her attention to her computer. She brought up the code to the upgraded magic simulator and studied the modified and augmented equations. Maybe the professor had a point, she had to admit. Maybe she ought to learn about the theory of magic, now that she could cast spells—well, in theory, anyway.

“Spike! Did a monster attack Ponyville while I was gone?”

A few seconds later her number one assistant poked his head through the upstairs railing. “Not that I know of. Why? Something’s wrong?”

“No, just checking.” Thank Celestia for minor miracles.

“But you did get a response from Serrell. Does tomorrow, eleven in the morning, work for you?”

Twilight mulled it over. Might as well get it over with, especially as she kind of knew how it would end. “Tell him yes.”

A maid nodded to Meg as they passed. Like it or not, and she certainly didn’t like it, Meg was going have to get used to this. How long did it take Twilight to get used to it? At least the newest princess had managed to persuade Celestia to let her walk around the palace without her regalia. And certainly “at least” that Meg didn’t have any regalia to wear, definitely not being a princess herself.

The newest alicorn finally arrived at her palace accommodations. She unlocked the door and opened it.

It was dark inside. That was odd. The interior lighting was magic-based; she never bothered to switch it off when leaving.

“ALICORN PARTY!!”

The lights turned on, revealing Pinkie Pie, the rest of the Mane Six, Steve, her brother Matt, sister-in-law Lori, and niece Susie—Twilight must’ve fetched them—and Princess Luna. All wore party hats and were blowing party favors. Meg shook her head. “I should’ve expected this.”

“Yes, you should’ve,” replied Steve with a reproving smile.

“She threw me one too,” Twilight said.

Susie came running over and hugged her. “You’re a princess now!”

“Not you too,” Meg muttered. “No, I am not a princess, Susie.”

Pinkie came over and put a party hat on her head, concern written all over her face. “I’d honestly thought you’d be happier about this.”

“About the party? No, that’s fine.” That didn’t appease the party pony. “Look, I didn’t ask to become an alicorn, okay? It’s not going to make my life any easier.”

“Well, not with that attitude it won’t.” Pinkie brightened up. “But that’s no excuse to be a party pooper!” She returned to the kitchen.

Matt came forward. “The surprises never end with you, do they?” His blowing of his party favor had not been terribly enthusiastic.

“Sometimes I wish they would, believe me. Don’t worry, as a human nothing has changed about me.” At least she was spared the question of how to break the news to him and his family. She walked over to an end table and—oh so carefully—lifted her saddlebags with her magic and deposited them. Its weight was barely manageable. “Okay, it makes some things easier.”

“See?” Pinkie yelled across the room.

Luna had been watching and came over to inspect Meg’s new horn. “Sister sends her apologies for not attending.” The Princess of the Night looked at the huge cake sitting on the counter. “Trust me, she would if prior engagements permitted it.”

“Not a problem. Maybe we could save some for her.”

A false smile. “We shall see.”

Nope, not touching that. Meg turned her attention to the others. “So what do you all think?”

Rarity stepped up, eyeing her changed dimensions. “I can adjust your gown so that it will fit you properly.”

Had she really grown that much? It didn’t seem like it. But then the fashionista was a perfectionist. “I’d appreciate that.”

Applejack was next. “It may not be visible-like, but you’re now part earth pony. You shouldn’t neglect it.”

Undeniably true. Meg didn’t feel any stronger, or more resilient, but she hadn’t put it to the test either. “Are you offering to teach me?”

The farm pony cocked her head at that, as if she hadn’t considered it. So she hadn’t instructed Twilight? Then she took a glance at the other earth pony in the room, a bouncy Pinkie Pie. “Maybe I should.”

Meg looked to Pinkie herself. That mare was drowning in exotic abilities, presumably powered by earth pony magic. But were those things that could be taught? They were exotic after all. Not even Twilight could decipher Pinkie Sense. “Let me know,” she told Applejack.

Fluttershy smiled from the background. Rainbow Dash had already expressed her views back at the professor’s office. Pinkie was happily slicing the cake, one stroke per bounce. Actions sometimes speak louder than words.

Luna pointed at her phone, resting in its holder. “You took a movie of that realm. May I watch it? It has been such a long time.”

“Sure.” Meg pulled the phone out—with her hoof—and navigated to the videos. There were two from that realm; she had yet to watch the second one, the one of her transformation. She selected the first one. “Is it okay to show this to the others?” she asked, looking back and forth between Twilight and Luna. It was possible, after all, that knowledge of that realm was reserved for members of the alicorn club.

“I have no objection,” Luna said.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Don’t be silly, Meg.”

Well okay then. Meg tapped the screen with a hoof, then made the effort to use telekinesis to hold the phone up. She was pleased to note she was getting better at it. Everyone crowded around the small screen.

“Not much to look at,” Rainbow Dash declared.

Twilight snorted. “It’s not about the view, Rainbow Dash.”

“It looks just like the cartoon!” Susie said.

“And there’s my sister. That must have been her sudden urgent business.”

The video ended. Meg returned the phone to its holder—though it only went in on the second attempt. “She showed up some time after I arrived. I have no idea how I got there myself. One minute I was clicking that mouse and the next… I had my eyes closed at the time.”

Twilight was lost in thought. “In my case, I had completed Star Swirl’s spell, had cast it, got blasted by the Elements, and… wound up there. Uh, my eyes were closed too.”

Meg looked expectantly at Luna.

She did not answer immediately. “I am not ready to share my story, but I will say it has little in common with either of yours.”

“Get your cake!”

Pinkie had finished slicing the cake and plating all the slices. Twilight and Rarity made quick work of levitating the plates to everyone. Meg accepted her plate with a hoof; levitating that and a fork at the same time was still beyond her. “Any word yet on the observers?” she asked.

“Eleven, tomorrow morning.” Twilight brought fork to mouth.

“Their time or our time?”

The fork froze in her mouth. With a grimace the fork came out. “I keep forgetting that your realm has time zones.”

“Then it’s eight in the morning.”

“Not a problem. Just means we get it over with all the sooner.”

Meg couldn’t argue. “At least I’ll be sitting this one out.”

“So what will you be doing instead?” Fluttershy asked.

Meg eyed her saddlebags. “I got a gift from Discord. I should try it out.”

“What kind of gift?” Twilight asked.

The gem floated out of the saddlebag. “Look familiar?”

Twilight grabbed it in her own magic and brought it closer. “For Smooze’s voice synthesizer?”

“That’s what I’m guessing. Know where he is?”

“No, I don’t. Haven’t seen him in a while, actually.”

“Guess that rules that out. Maybe I’ll check out that new—”

“Call on me! Call on me!”

Pinkie was waving a hoof in the air. She knew where Smooze was? Don’t question it, Meg told herself. It was probably Pinkie Sense anyway. Why wouldn’t there be some combination of twitches and whatnot that indicated the location of that purple blob? Not like Smooze was staying with her or something. “Consider yourself called on.”

“I know where Smooze is! Well, where he probably is. I mean, he was definitely there a few hours ago and—”

Twilight came to her rescue. “Just tell us where you last saw him, okay, Pinkie?”

“Okie dokie lokie! At Sugarcube Corner—in my room. He’s been staying with me!”

“Of course he has,” Meg muttered.

“He’s been helping out with trash. You wouldn’t believe how much trash a bakery produces!”

“I get it, Pinkie.” Meg retrieved the gem from Twilight’s grasp and returned it to her saddlebag. “I’ll stop by tomorrow.”

“Check out that new what?” Rarity asked.

“Huh? Oh. That new hotel Discord’s adding to his theme park. It’ll be for convention goers, so I really should.”

“Ah, I see. Would we be staying there, should we attend as guests of honor?”

“Maybe? I mean, you could. But the Zephyr’s pretty fast, too, so I wouldn’t say it was necessary.”

“I’d like to accompany you.”

Meg sought out the butter yellow pegasus. “Sure, Fluttershy, if you want. But I may have the convention staff with me too.”

“They were nice enough to me.”

“I shall also accompany you.”

Meg spun around. “You sure, Luna? It’d be past your bedtime.”

“I shall manage,” she said. “If our little ponies are to visit this park, it behooves me to… ‘check it out,’ as you put it.”

“I wanna go too!”

“No!” shouted Susie’s parents.

“Not this time,” Meg said. “It’s not even open yet to the public, you know.”

Her niece pouted.

“Here, have a cupcake.”

Meg had no idea where Pinkie got that cupcake from—she hadn’t brought any for the party, or so it had seemed—but it had the desired effect on Susie. She returned her attention to Luna. “Maybe I can schedule it for the evening. Anyway, on a different topic, Serrell will find out about my ascension sooner or later. Maybe we should make it sooner? I doubt it will help if he found out from the news.” She didn’t even want to think about the news finding out.

Twilight had come over to join them. “I could mention it to him tomorrow. Or would you rather wait until he can see it for himself?”

Meg barely needed to think it over. “No, you can tell him. The sooner he knows, the better, I suppose. Gives him more time to prepare for the inevitable news story. I can’t imagine how Routledge would handle it, when he finds out I’m an alicorn.”

“And what about us?” Matt had joined them too. “Do we need to prepare?”

Meg wished she knew.

28. T-Plus Zero

”Why now?” the Tree said, amusement in her voice. “Because Discord said so; it’s that simple.”

Meg looked back at the draconequus, who was not taking that declaration well. “Am I missing something here?”

“Yeah, what she said,” Twilight added.

Discord grumbled. “What you’re missing, is that this tree here has made a career out of observing the future.”

The elder alicorn cocked her head. “You mean she has seen this all happen when it was still the future, so she knew the trigger event was you saying what you said after our arrival?” Regardless, both alicorns knew how much Discord loathed knowledge of future events—especially events concerning himself.

The Tree laughed. “Discord knows full well that is a gross simplification.”

The portal opened. It had the same endpoints as the last time, one end at Pandemonium Plaza and the other in that conference room—inside a D.C. hotel, Serrell had told her. And then she had told him what had happened to Meg. That had not made his day.

Applejack stood in front of the portal and addressed the observers on the other side. “Come through one at a time and confirm that you don’t have one of them phone thingies on you.”

“Or any other means of long distance communication,” Twilight added. They were told of this requirement yesterday, Serrell had informed her, so there shouldn’t be any problems.

Applejack stood aside. Rainbow Dash hovered above them, ready to deal with troublemakers. The first one through was the designated media observer, CNN’s Sophie Henshaw, who was already recording on her camcorder. “I don’t have a phone or any other means of long distance communication.” Applejack nodded, and Sophie took up position to record the others coming through.

And one by one they did, each saying some variation of “no, I don’t” as they passed the Element of Honesty. A few had a bag hung from a shoulder, almost certainly holding a camcorder. They had permission for that. Not much point in observing if they couldn’t document what they observed.

After seven of them had passed through without incident, Applejack stopped the eighth. “Hoof it over.” The observer stood there, undecided about how to handle this.

Agent Reubens came through the portal and stood in front of the problematic observer, holding out his hand. “You may turn it off first. I’ll hold on to it until you return.”

The observer looked around, found no support from the others, and relented. He fished his phone out of his jacket, turned it off, and put it in the waiting hand. Applejack stood aside and he moved on. Two others back in the other realm raised their hands, trying to get Reubens’ attention. Twilight noted that Routledge’s pick wasn’t one of them.

There were no further incidents. All observers had passed through the portal. “Please stand close to each other,” Twilight said. She went over to them, as did Rainbow Dash and Applejack, while Sophie recorded them. Pinkie Pie had decided not to participate, so that she could help Meg with Smooze. Rarity’s presence, they had all agreed, wasn’t needed either.

She got the first of the time travel helper gems out of her saddlebag. Better safe than sorry, given the number of people she was transporting. “I’m about to cast the time travel spell,” she told them. “The trip will last a fraction of a second, but you will notice everything going dark for that time. It’s completely normal.”

She didn’t give them a chance to comment, casting the spell right away. Other than morning changing to late afternoon, the portal not being there, and the colors changing on all the surrounding potted plants, everything looked the same. Twilight sighed internally. The spell worked; there was no paradox. “Please don’t move. We’re now crossing over to the warehouse.”

The three mares faced away from the humans. Three plaid pills discretely came out of her saddlebag and they went straight into her mouth and those of the other two mares right beside her. Twilight nodded and all three swallowed.

The parking lot of the warehouse appeared around them. Twilight had picked a spot in the middle. Few cars were present, and they were all near the entrance. The observers had taken the crossing rather well; but then, all had already experienced teleportation during their interviews. Those with bags were already getting out their camcorders.

“The event we’re here to observe should happen in about twenty minutes.”

“Should?” asked one of them.

“There’s a certain amount of quantum uncertainty in our arrival time,” Twilight answered.

She noted the security cameras covering the parking lot. Their presence was already known, but Meg had argued those cameras didn’t matter; they knew what would happen inside the building. Twilight wasn’t sure if the magic bubble could make the humans invisible, so she decided the ponies would remain visible too. No pony would wind up inside, other than her past self, and beyond that only a subset of the observers. The fact that no one was rushing outside to greet them suggested that no one was paying attention to those cameras.

“How are we supposed to know what’s going on inside?” Kimberly Hurst said. “I say we go in there and observe what’s actually happening.”

And so it starts.

“Are you daft? You know what will happen once that anomaly is created!”

Hurst locked eyes with the British observer. “So we run out just before that happens.”

“Suit yourself. I’m staying put.”

There were some mumblings of agreement, but only from a few. “We could at least try to stop them,” one declared. There was more agreement with that sentiment.

Twilight knew it was a lost cause, but she felt compelled to make the token effort. “You all must remain here. You cannot stop it. The past cannot be changed. You are only putting your lives at risk for nothing.”

Hurst smiled. “Or maybe you don’t want the past changed.” She marched towards the entrance. “Follow me!”

Twilight made no move to stop her, and neither did Applejack or Rainbow Dash—as instructed. That did not go unnoticed, and half of the others joined her. To her utter lack of surprise, they were precisely the ones her past self had seen inside the building. Was that Hurst’s plan all along, or Routledge’s? To prevent the anomaly from happening? That they all thought she was lying about the past being immutable?

Sophie looked at Twilight questioningly, while keeping her camcorder aimed at the receding observers. “I feel like I ought to join them?”

Twilight wondered how to answer that. Did it really matter, when she knew she had not? “You won’t,” she decided to say. “Why should be clear soon enough.” Well, it ought to be clear. When those observers return, they’ll almost certainly mention the presence of herself in that building.

“Okay?”

Sophie stayed put.

Hurst reached the door. It was apparently unlocked. Which seemed hard to believe. Maybe they were watching the security cameras and recognized her? It didn’t really matter, not for now.

“Why didn’t you stop them?”

Twilight turned around and faced the British observer. It was quite evident that the others had the same question. Two camcorders—not including Sophie’s—were pointed at her. “Because the past truly is immutable. In a few minutes, all but three of them will run back to us, just in time to escape the anomaly.”

“And how could you know this?”

Only Sophie’s camcorder still pointed at her, but she knew all the others would pick up the audio. Serrell might not be happy with her for justifying herself, but it was the right thing to do. Besides, it wasn’t as if it would stay secret forever; the whole prisoners in Tartarus thing proved that. “Because in a minute or so my past self will be in that building. I witnessed what will happen. Don’t worry, there will be no deaths. Kimberly Hurst, Egor Yusupov, and Austin Brenner are—will be, time travel you know—I will return them to Equestria, as well as the ones responsible for the anomaly.”

“The ones responsible for the anomaly,” Sophie asked. “You know who they are?”

“I’m not saying anything more at this time, other than I have my own video of what happened inside. The world will find that video… quite interesting.”

“So you told us to stay put, knowing full well half of us would go inside anyway.”

“Yep. Had to make the token effort, for my own sake, knowing they would do it anyway.”

“And that’s how you knew I wouldn’t join them.”

Twilight gave a tired smile. “That’s how I knew.”

Sophie persisted. “Why were you there in the first place?”

“I’ll offer an explanation for that later.” When the video Meg shot was released, most likely.

The Greek observer took a step forward. “You are an alicorn. You seriously expect us to believe you couldn’t restrain them?”

“Yes, because even an alicorn cannot change her own past. Quantum mechanics forbids temporal paradoxes. I’ve confirmed that experimentally.”

Twilight ended the conversation by turning around to face the building. It shouldn’t be long now. I hope I didn’t lie. She didn’t know most of them escaped the building and got far enough away to survive the anomaly’s creation. They should have had enough time, but… I’ll find out soon enough.

Long minutes went by. But, as predicted, the door flung open and the observers came pouring through. They ran towards the ones who had stayed put, many obviously not fit enough to do so but doing it anyway. Several collapsed to the ground along the way. Fortunately, they had ran far enough.

The windows imploded. The walls leaned inward. The roof collapsed. A breeze formed, growing stronger by the second.

Twilight galloped to the one closest to the former building. She picked her up in her magic and backtracked, picking up each fallen observer in turn. None seemed injured, just exhausted. Once back with the group, she set them down.

She then addressed them all. “We can stay a little longer, but we must return before others take notice. It’d be a paradox if we were spotted, as there’s no record of us being here.”

“You were inside,” one who escaped began, “but you’re here too?!”

“That was my past self.”

Confusion. “You’re not joking?”

“Deadly serious.”

“And that other pegasus? Meg Coleman, wasn’t it?”

Who was no longer a pegasus. “Yes. And don’t worry, I got them all out in time.” All but one, but no need to unnecessarily complicate explanations.

Sirens could now be heard, and getting louder.

“Time for us to depart.”

Sugarcube Corner came into view. Flying from Canterlot had never felt this… well, not exactly effortless, but having become an alicorn definitely made it easier. Applejack had a point about her becoming part earth pony. Could she actually keep up with Rainbow Dash now? Meg put on a burst of speed. Nope, not even close, not even sure she could go that much faster. Oh well. Guess she still needed training by the fastest pegasus in Equestria. As said pegasus liked to remind her.

Dash would just have to get in line now with Twilight Sparkle and Applejack.

Meg touched down in front of the establishment. Ponies were out and about doing their morning business. Some gave her a second look, but that was all. This was Ponyville, not Canterlot. They would bow to Celestia or Luna, but that was it. Not even for Twilight.

She went inside. The place was fairly busy, serving coffee and pastries. Mrs. Cake noticed her. “Pinkie’s in the party room,” she told her.

“Okay, thanks.” Meg decided to peruse the display first.

“No need, dearie, Pinkie has that covered.”

She looked over in surprise. “Uh… okay, then.” Probably had lunch covered too, should this session last that long.

Meg made her way to the back, where the party room was. Naturally it’d be available now, as parties were rarely booked in the morning. Upon entering the room, she spotted Pinkie at her party cannon, and attached to the other end of that cannon was… Smooze? Was he trying to consume the cannon?

“Hi, Meg!” Pinkie fired the cannon.

There was a muffled boom and Smooze suddenly expanded—but did not rupture. Over several seconds he shrank back to his usual size.

Meg grabbed the door with her magic and closed it, forgetting to look at it first. “Conducting experiments of your own, I see.”

“Yepperonies!” Pinkie started bouncing. “And you’re getting good at telekinesis.”

“I what?” Meg looked back to see the closed door. “Huh. Guess so. Now if only my typing didn’t suck.” She squeezed her pendant. “Right now I value productivity higher,” she said, and retrieved the new gem Discord had given her and placed it on a table. “Let’s see what this does.”

The voice synthesizer was being worn by Smooze like a backpack. Meg removed it and placed it next to the new gem. She opened it up, revealing the mix of technology and magic. Out went the old gem that covered the webcam and in went the new. She opened the lid of the laptop that did the computational work.

“Okay, Smooze. Let’s see what that does. Count from one to ten please.”

Silence.

Whatever that new gem did, it was incompatible with the machine learning that had already been done. “Great. Assuming this gem is what I think it is, then we may have to start over from scratch.”

Pinkie gasped. “A starting over from scratch party?”

Meg removed the new gem. “First let’s check my assumption.” She held the gem close to her eyes. It ought to produce a visual pattern for the webcam to pick up. “Count from one to ten again, please.”

That visual pattern looked pretty much like random noise to the naked eye, hardly surprising from something running on chaos magic, yet there was just enough order to it for machine learning to extract meaning. What she saw now was anything but. In tiny print she saw the actual words one, two, three, etc, appearing one after the other. “You have got to be bucking kidding me,” she snarled.

“What’s wrong?”

Meg thrust the gem close to Pinkie’s eyes. “Ask Smooze a question.”

“Uh, how long have you known Discord?” Pinkie then read the answer off the gem. “Many… thousands… of… years.” Her eyes went wide. “When’s your birthday? I… don’t… know. Calendars… weren’t… invented… yet. This… is… working… flawlessly? It… is! Meg… you… were… the… alicorn.”

“What?” Meg lowered her gem-holding hand. “Tell me something I don’t know.” That last sentence seemed to have a verb tense error; maybe the new gem wasn’t quite as good as it seemed. She then remembered to put the gem up to her own eyes.

“You… are… the… alicorn… I… saw… thousands… of… years… ago. I… now… know… that.”

Even worse: that gem was as good as it seemed. “Another damn time loop. Let me guess: I was the one who had you erase all evidence of human settlements.”

“Yes.”

Meg put the gem back in the synthesizer, ending the conversation for now. “Assumption checked,” she said with forced nonchalantness. “I will have to start over from scratch, but the new solution is trivial in comparison. Just need to feed the image through an optical character recognizer.”

Pinkie was bouncing like crazy. “IsenseaDiscordhassomesplainingtodopartycoming!!”

Meg snorted. “Damn right.”

As soon as the observers had returned through the portal, Twilight waved over Agent Reubens. “I’m sure you noticed we’re three short,” she said.

He nodded. “I trust there’s a good explanation for that.”

The president had obviously decided his agents didn’t have a need to know. Well, now they did. Twilight gave a quick summary of what happened inside the warehouse. “So I need to go back in time again to bring them all forward to the present. Once I return with them, Austin and Egor can just go through the portal. The others will still be asleep. We need to decide what to do with them.”

Reubens sighed. “That’s above my pay grade. I’ll try to have an answer by the time you get back.”

“It’ll be at least an hour, just so you know. I have to fly to Canterlot as that’s where they all are, or close enough, in the past. I can cross over to that conference room direct from there.” Fortunately she had been in that room before.

“Not a problem. We have this room booked for the entire day.”

“Any reason not to close this portal now?”

“None that I can see.”

After Reubens returned to his realm, Twilight called Sunset to close the portal. Once that was done, she teleported herself and the other mares to the Zephyr and started back to Canterlot.

Upon arriving, she left instructions with the captain to take Applejack and Rainbow Dash back to Ponyville. But after taking care of that, she did not head immediately to the mine entrance. First things first: she would create that note she had found magically pinned to the tunnel wall. There was also the detail that the sleeping humans were left in that side tunnel, along with the retrieved evidence. That side tunnel hadn’t been entered since, so the evidence had traveled to the present the old-fashioned way. Not an option for the sleeping humans; they wouldn’t sleep that long.

She could either move them to the mine entrance, or make two trips back to the past. Two trips seemed easier; that way she didn’t have to deal with the sleepers until they knew what to do with them. Twilight allowed herself a smirk. Time travel did provide flexibility, it could not be denied.

No sooner than she was on her way out of the palace, the note to her past self rolled up in her saddlebag, that a Royal Guard intercepted her. “Yes? You may rise.”

“Your Highness, six humans were captured in the cavern.” He looked uneasy. “We… don’t know how they got through the portal unknown to us.”

Twilight cursed herself. Time travel was also probabilistic. There could be no second trip, not any more—nor was there ever, strictly speaking. So they eventually woke up and started crawling around the unlit tunnels until they came across some light. “I do know how, and it’s not your fault.”

He seemed to question that, but did not say anything.

“Where are they now?”

“In the dungeons. They became hostile.”

Hardly surprising. “Keep them there for now. And see that they’re treated well.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” The guard departed.

So much for not having to deal with them until they knew what to do with them. All they needed was another ponies-take-humans-captive story.

It would have to wait. Second things second: recover Egor and Austin.

A few minutes later, she was at the mine entrance, hovering just outside. One time travel spell later and she saw the two humans sitting against the side of the tunnel, far enough inside to avoid direct sunlight. Perfect.

Twilight came into a landing. “I’m back,” she declared.

The two men got to their feet. “Where’s the transportation?” Austin asked.

The alicorn went to the spot where she had seen the note. “Slight change of plans. I’m not the Twilight you saw leaving; I’m the Twilight who brought you to the warehouse, the one who remained outside.” The note came out of her saddlebag and unrolled itself. “Figured it was better to return you directly to the present than make you wait here for a few days.” The note was attached to the tunnel wall, just the way she remembered it. “Then I can take you directly to the hotel to rejoin the other observers.”

“And the other six?” Austin asked. “The ones still asleep?”

Twilight trotted over to them. “Yeah, slight complication there. They will take a different route to the present.”

She got questioning looks from both of them. Austin was Serrell’s man; he wasn’t the problem. But because Egor was there… “Time travel can be complicated and leave it at that.” She prepared the spell. “And speaking of which, I’m returning us to the present now.”

The sun outside shifted position. Twilight retrieved the plaid pill from her saddlebag and popped it into her mouth. Picturing that hotel conference room, she swallowed, and they were there.

Reubens was waiting for them, as expected, seated at a table. He stood up and addressed the two observers. “Excellent, much less paperwork to file. You are free to depart.”

The Russian observer did so; Austin did not. Twilight waited until Egor had left, then closed the door with her magic. “There’s a situation the president needs to be informed of,” she said.

Reubens crossed his arms. “We are short one observer.”

“For very good reason,” Austin said. “Though I do not know where Hurst is at the moment.”

“In the palace dungeons,” Twilight said, sighing, “along with five others who were in the warehouse. That… wasn’t the plan, but sometimes time travel doesn’t give you a choice.”

“And the material you brought back with us?”

“Should still be in the tunnel.” Or was it? Not that those six could have escaped with it, as they were caught, but could they have destroyed it? But how? And there was no light. If they went that way, they’d only know something was there blocking the tunnel. I should’ve moved them someplace secure, even if they were still asleep. If only hindsight was magic.

“And, uh…” Austin licked dry lips. “What happened to Ms. Coleman?”

Twilight gave a reassuring smile. “She became an alicorn, believe it or not, and is back in Equestria.”

“Oh, really,” Reubens said. “And I thought I’ve heard everything.”

Austin grunted. “Wish I could be there when Serrell hears this.”

“Already told him.” Twilight decided not to share his reaction, which was (in not so many words): I need this like I need a hole in my head.

“And the video she took?”

“Her phone survived her ascension. I’ll arrange for you to receive the video, which shows Kimberley Hurst ordering the warehouse occupants to destroy everything and those orders being carried out.”

Austin grinned. “Can’t wait to see Routledge spin that.”

Or spin his minions winding up in an Equestrian dungeon. It almost made Twilight pine for the days when she only had to deal with monsters from the Everfree. Almost.

Twilight followed the pair of Royal Guards into the dungeons, Austin by her side. “I was expecting something… more medieval, quite honestly,” he said.

She only had a vague idea what “medieval” meant, but assumed it had something to do with humans possessing only primitive technology in the past. “We’ve always had magic at our disposal.” The lighting in the corridor came from magic-powered fixtures, for example.

They continued in silence behind the guards, who knew the way.

The guards slowed down as they approached their destination, and stopped in the middle of six cells, three on either side. Their occupants were not happy to see Twilight, but seemed unsure what to make of Austin.

“Release them,” Twilight commanded.

The guards split up, each unlocking and opening the cells on one side. Hesitantly the prisoners stepped into the corridor. “Just like that?” Hurst pointedly said.

“Yes, just like that,” Austin said. “You will be returned to the hotel where this little adventure started.”

“To be placed into the custody of the FBI?” she sneered, as if quite certain that would at worst be a minor inconvenience. “To prevent me from exposing this… this…” Her eyes speared hatred at Twilight. “I could’ve stopped it! You let it happen!”

Twilight sadly shook her head. “Believe me, I wish you could have. But that’s impossible. The past cannot be changed.”

“You prevented it from changing!”

“And if it wasn’t me, it would have been something else. I know. I’ve tried to change the past, to create a temporal paradox. The laws of physics do not permit it. Not even Discord can do that.”

“So you say.”

Austin sighed. “This isn’t productive. Whether you believe it or not, you are free to go. However…” He pulled a tablet out of his coat. “This video has been released to the media.” He started it playing and offered it to Hurst, who took it. Her face fell as she watched it.

“Now you could claim this proves your claim that Twilight stopped you,” Austin explained, “but Twilight’s counter claim has also been provided, along with the mathematical arguments that quantum mechanics forbids paradoxes. That goes over the heads of the public, obviously, so maybe you have a chance there. It certainly goes over my head. Regardless…”

Hurst looked up from the tablet and Austin continued. “The media has noticed that you, the observer picked by Senator Routledge, issued a command to the warehouse occupants—these fellows over here—and they obeyed you.” He let that sink in for a moment. “By the way, did I mention the media will be present at that hotel?”

29. Accommodations

Discord crossed his arms. “Simplification it may be, but it’s still true enough.”

Meg met eyes with Twilight, then said, “So… what’s the simplification?”

“I observe possible futures,” Harmony said, “as well as possible pasts, and choose which amongst them to become reality.”

“But time doesn’t branch…” And certainly not in the past. But Relativity pretty much required past, present, and future to co-exist. Kurt Gödel had even argued that General Relativity required that time does not, cannot flow. The only way anything could be possible would be… “Are you referring to superpositions? But the very act of observing collapses it. You can’t observe what might have been.”

Could a tree be said to smile? “Not ‘might have been’; once collapsed, only reality exists. But with our magic, one can observe, prior to the collapse and without collapsing it, the potential realities spawned by evolving wave functions.”

“What is your connection to the warehouse?!”

“What were you trying to accomplish?!”

“How did it go horribly wrong?!”

“Is Senator Routledge aware of your connection?!”

“Who’s behind the warehouse?!”

The questions came fast and furious from the press the instant they were allowed into the hotel conference room. The five from the warehouse were frozen, staring at the cameras as if they were a pack of timberwolves. Hurst tried to stare the press down, without much effect. Twilight wasn’t particularly enjoying it either, but at least she wasn’t bearing the brunt of it—and she had the option of leaving if it got out of hoof.

Hurst decided to take more direct measures. “Quiet!” she yelled. “Give me a chance to talk!”

Long seconds passed before the noise subsided. “Thank you. Now I’ve been told you’ve seen an alleged video of events at the warehouse.” The questioning resumed and Hurst held up a hand. Silence resumed. “Now I won’t deny a video was shot, but did you not notice the point of view was up in the air, close to the ceiling? A pegasus was involved. Hardly an unbiased source.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. That was the best she could come up with?

One reporter evidently felt the same. “No other observer present had mentioned any inaccuracies in that video.”

“It’s what wasn’t recorded that’s the problem. I tried to prevent the anomaly, by destroying the machinery that would create it!” She glared at the alicorn. “Twilight, here, prevented that. Furthermore, that machinery didn’t activate by itself. It wasn’t any of us—” she waved a hand at the five “—and the video proves that, so who did? Odd that the video, shot by an Equestrian, ends before that would be revealed.”

All attention focused on Twilight. Here we go again, she thought. “The past cannot be changed. I’ve already demonstrated that mathematically—which, I might add, has yet to be disproven by human physicists. Given that the anomaly did happen, the best one can do is to ensure that it happens on our terms.” She paused, then decided to continue. “What has not been mentioned before is that the magic ‘spell’ they were about to ‘cast,’ according to our analysis, would have destroyed the Earth in a matter of seconds. I was there to add an additional spell that would prevent that, giving us the anomaly that actually happened.”

Twilight glared in return at Hurst and the others. “But none of that would’ve been necessary if not for the research going on in that warehouse. None of you have so much as attended Magic Kindergarten. What made you think you were qualified to play with Starswirl-level spells?”

Hurst desperately jumped at what Twilight had said. “So you admit you operated our machinery, to create that anomaly!”

“I admit I cleaned up your mess, the best that it could be cleaned up. What were you even trying to accomplish?”

“We were trying to protect our world from you!”

Twilight sadly shook her head. “I have nothing more to say.” She invoked the return spell.

The Zephyr came to a rest in the darkened sky above Discordland. The theme park below was lit up, dispelling Meg’s fears that it’d be impenetrably dark under the recently raised moon. She used her telekinesis to put on a necklace holding one of Discord’s tokens, then another over to Luna. “This allows us to pass through the barrier surrounding the park.”

The princess took hold of it with her own magic and inspected it. “Curious.”

Meg floated over the third necklace to Fluttershy and placed it around her neck.

“You’re getting the hang of your magic,” the pegasus commented.

“Practice, practice, practice.” The newest alicorn went over to the hatch and opened it—this time using her hoof.

“You have made good progress indeed,” Luna said, making her own way to the open hatch. “Soon you will be ready to cast spells.”

“That’s what Twilight says too,” Meg said, then leaped into the open skies and began to hover.

Luna quickly followed and then Fluttershy. Their destination was ultimately the new hotel, between the park’s encompassing wall and the Everfree, yet still within the barrier. But first they had to go where the portal would open, and that should be outside the main entrance, the same spot Discord had placed it when the other end was in Athens, Greece.

Passing through the barrier was uneventful, and soon all three landed safely distant from where the portal’s materialization point. From this new perspective, Meg took in the hotel. It was hard to describe what it was made of, not from this distance anyway. It’s shape, on the other hand… “Okay,” she began. “So it’s not rectangular.” Or whatever the three-dimensional equivalent for rectangular was called, though the appropriate word to describe the hotel’s shape was obvious enough. “I sure hope it only looks like a Klein bottle and isn’t actually one.”

Luna was perplexed. “What is a Klein bottle?”

“Oh, just a four-dimension object whose inside is the same as its outside. The neck of the bottle doesn’t actually pass through the side… well, we can see that it does, though, can’t we? So it isn’t displaced in the fourth dimension and so it isn’t really one. I hope.” Meg looked at Luna. “Do you think he can actually do that?” There certainly existed extra dimensions in hyperspace in which to displace it.

“Not… that I know of.”

Meg focused on the ground floor. “If it was one, then the bottom would be open and the neck would join the sides at that bottom. Doesn’t really serve a purpose, though, does it? As a hotel, that is.”

Fluttershy frowned. “I don’t understand. Sorry.”

Meg sighed. “Don’t be. I’m not sure any of us do.”

Windows were evident starting about thirty feet up, apparently the start of the guest rooms. They continued all the way up and followed along the neck until it intersected the side. No question about it, gravity would have to shift, following that curvature, but that was definitely something Discord could do.

Speaking of which. “So are you going to show up, Discord, or are you avoiding me?”

Luna’s ears perked up at that. “Why would he be avoiding you?”

“He’s very sorry about that,” Fluttershy said. “He didn’t have a choice. Something about a time loop? Said you’d understand.”

A time loop? Well, duh. Yet Meg couldn’t deny that she ought to understand. But how could he possibly know that a botched voice synthesizer was necessary for the time loop… Luna was looking at her, waiting for her answer. “Because it turned out that he was sabotaging the voice synthesizer project for his friend, The Smooze. I’m guessing that was to prevent me from finding out about my ascension prior to it happening, because there’s another bucking time loop where I meet Smooze, as an alicorn, in the distant past.”

Luna blinked. “So why would that cause Discord to avoid you?”

Meg blinked in return. “Because I’m pissed off at him?”

“So?”

“So what?”

“So when did that ever matter to him?”

“Uh…” She wanted to say, “Since he was reformed,” but that wasn’t true, was it? Even reformed, Discord could still be annoying as hell and not give the slightest shit about it. And it wasn’t just herself that was angry; Smooze was upset too. Was Discord avoiding him as well?

An alarm went off on her phone. It was almost time to open the portal. Meg shook her head to clear it and looked up at the sky. “Fine. I understand time loops, so I provisionally accept your apology. Are you going to give the tour of the hotel or what? I’m about to have the portal opened.”

A flash of light and the draconequus was present. “I chose ‘give the tour,’” he said with a bow. He was in the same getup he had been in when Meg had first visited the theme park.

The alarm was still sounding off. Meg levitated the phone out of its holder and tapped it with her hoof.

Luna cleared her throat. “Meg, you have a decision to make.”

“I do?” She looked down at the floating phone. “Yeah, I guess I do.” The pendant was hanging from her neck, of course. She could chose to use it. Choosing not to meant Andrew and company will know she had become an alicorn.

Well… so what? She couldn’t hide it forever, and she was under no obligation to give Serrell abundant time to prepare for the inevitable news to leak out. In fact, she was getting rather tired of obliging others and getting little in return. “Decision made.”

She made the call to Sunset. “We’re ready for the portal.”

“Opening it now,” replied the unicorn and the call ended.

Not literally “now,” of course. Sunset had to go through the mirror first, obviously. Soon enough, though, the portal came into being. On the other side was Andrew’s living room, where the senior staff was present. Discord was instantly before the portal, but off to the side, and he removed his brown top hat and swept it in a welcoming motion. “Welcome to Discordland, the discordiant place in the multiverse!”

Penny was the first through the portal. “Are you supposed to be Willy Wonka?”

“Who is… ‘Willy Wonka?’”

Penny’s eyes opened wide. “You’re here too, Princess Luna?” She quickly bowed.

“No need for you to bow to me. You are not my subject.”

Discord stood gleefully, top hat returned to his head and both his paw and claw resting on his cane. “It’s a reference, my dear Luna, to a fictional character well known to humans.”

“He’s already pulled it on me and Twilight.”

“But only you got it, Meg.”

“So I’ll arrange a showing of the movie.”

Andrew, Tyler, Joe, and Elaine had all come through the portal, standing next to Penny, and all were staring at Meg. “You’re an alicorn,” Andrew stated.

“I am?!” she exclaimed in mock panic. “When did that happen?”

Discord was suddenly by her side and speared a gold-colored paper star onto her new horn. “You deserve an award for that!”

“Gee, thanks.” It didn’t feel that good. Not painful, but… not pleasant either. Meg went cross-eyed looking up at the offending piece of paper. It glowed turquoise and moved off her horn. She let it drop to the grass.

“Seriously,” Joe asked, “when did it happen?”

“Recently. No, I’m not giving details. Let’s…” She waved at the hotel and started walking. “Get started.”

Discord quickly took the lead as all headed in that direction. He maintained a stately pace, his cane swinging forward with each step. “This is my best work yet, if I say so myself.”

The “bottle” did not slim down as much as you’d think as it bent over, remaining thick enough for a circle of rooms even at its thinnest point. Well, not quite. It did thin down considerably right before it entered the base of the bottle, right below the lowest ring of rooms. Quite frankly, it looked like it ought to tip over, what with that neck being so large.

“Are you immortal now?” asked Elaine.

Meg groaned. Did they really have to go there? She had avoided that up till now. “I don’t intend to put it to the test.”

“That’s… not what I meant.”

Meg knew that, of course. “I really don’t know, and I’d rather not think about that for now.” Because the fallout would be bad enough as it was without that to make it worse. She remembered the questions asked of Twilight at Tirek’s press conference in Tartarus.

“Oh take it from me: you are. I was there when you met your future self, don’t forget.”

Meg glared at the draconequus, not that he would notice since he was looking forwards.

“You met your future self?” Andrew asked. “Really?”

Why did Discord have to pull this shit? They didn’t need to know this. “She—I—my future self—was human, in case you forgot.”

“I remember it perfectly. Taking your human form does not alter nor hide your new nature. You were quite clearly older than you looked. Much older.”

Something that was obvious in hindsight. Her future human self had no trouble manipulating the hyperspatial void, something no alicorn could do today. Even so, it still felt like she was missing something that ought to be obvious.

“How much older?” asked Andrew.

Discord looked up in thought for a second. “Not for me to say.”

Meg pointlessly glared at the back of his head again. He had no trouble blabbing about everything else! It was so… random! She rolled her eyes. Duh. Well, she’d just have to deal with the fallout. That was the choice she made when she remained an alicorn when opening the portal. Anyway, if she truly was immortal, it would’ve come out eventually anyway—like when she didn’t age. Maybe it was truly time to just get it all out of the way. That future self didn’t seem burdened by it.

“Enough about me. That’s not why we’re here.”

“I quite agree,” Luna declared, with the force of a royal decree.

Tyler cleared his throat. “Why are you here, Your Highness?—if I may ask.”

“You may. I am here to see for myself if it is suitable for our little ponies, once this ‘theme park’ is open for business.”

“What about the convention?” Andrew asked. “Will ponies be attending that? Other than as guests of honor, that is.”

Luna considered the question. “I would think so, but we shall see. That is why I am here.”

And the senior staff took it as settled, not saying anything more.

Now that they were almost at the hotel, it was possible to make out what comprised its surface: everything. Each patch, differently shaped, was a different something. Wood, of numerous species. Brick. Concrete. Paint, of countless colors. Grass. Ivy. Was that poison joke? Asphalt. Stucco. Water, that refused to fall down. Crystal. Spaghetti. Rubber. Cloud. Carpet. Fur. Granite. Star-filled night sky? Others Meg couldn’t tell what they were. No two patches were the same. It went up as far as she could make out, though thankfully the windows were just glass—or transparent, anyway. The patches all lethargically shifted about, much like the flower colors on Pandemonium Plaza. But not the windows, as far as she could tell. They were lined up and evenly spaced, as they should be.

The entrance was before them, a rectangular opening in the wall, far wider than tall, yet still towering above them. There were no doors, no way to close it off. It reminded Meg of numerous Hawaiian hotels, where the lobby was open to the elements. Weather would be even less of an issue here.

Inside… was rather conventional, actually. She looked questioningly at Discord.

“I took your advice,” he said, “and restrained myself in these more functional areas. Registration over there.” It could’ve been in any human hotel, apart from the obvious droids behind the counter patiently waiting in vain for guests. “Note that each station can be lowered to accommodate shorter species.” He teleported dozens of feet away. “And here are the transporter pads to various parts of the park.”

Meg quickly flew over to the nearest one. It looked exactly like something out of a Star Trek transporter room. No console though. Each pad was individually half-enclosed and labeled with a map of the park, and on each map was a conspicuous dot. “How does it work?”

“Simple. First step on a pad.” He did so. “Wait five seconds.” And five seconds after he stepped on it, he slowly dissolved, exactly the way it worked on the show, sound effects and all. A few seconds later, he returned, arms spread wide in celebration.

Andrew stepped up to a pad, but did not step onto it, and stared down. “Wow.”

“Uh, how fool-proof is it?” Elaine asked.

Discord looked offended. “I just used it myself.”

“I think I’ll channel my inner McCoy and just walk,” Joe said.

“Suit yourself,” the draconequus grumbled. “Back this way are the conference rooms…”

Serrell pressed play on the remote, starting the playback of the impromptu news conference. Twilight, since she had been there, had witnessed the beginning of it, if from a different perspective. It had all been the president’s idea to just release them, their only real punishment being having to deal with the press. Now watching their faces, she wondered if Tartarus would’ve been kinder.

He paused the playback, right after she had mentioned the previously unmentioned. “That wasn’t the plan,” he simply said.

“I know. I felt I needed to justify why I was in that warehouse, now that my presence there had been outed.”

He sighed in resignation. “I figured as much.” He continued the playback and stopped it again at the point Twilight departed. “But it led to that little exchange, which I think sealed the deal.”

The playback resumed, and from this point everything was new to her. The questioning got increasingly hostile. How did they get their hands on “Starswirl-level” spells? How much did Routledge know about this, as Hurst was his observer pick? How much did they really know about magic? Who was paying the bills? The answers were evasive at best. All except Hurst quickly followed Twilight’s lead and departed, pushing their way past the reporters. Hurst didn’t last much longer herself before doing likewise, the reporters pursuing her out the door.

Serrell turned off the monitor and leaned back on the sofa. “Those six have basically gone into hiding. A few news organizations, the ones that still do that sort of thing, have started digging into their backgrounds, who was paying for what, that sort of thing. The Russian observer, Egor, has fully backed you up—even if he gave a few details we’d rather he didn’t.” He smiled. “By the way, expect the Russian Federation to request formal diplomatic relations.”

The made Twilight smile in return. “I’ll be looking forward to it. Hopefully they won’t be the last.”

“I doubt they will be. However, concerning those inconvenient details…” He got up and started pacing around the Oval Office. “He mentioned Meg’s presence and her probable fate.”

“Yeah. That.”

He stopped pacing and gave her a Pinkie-grade smile. Twilight hadn’t seem him so happy in a long time. “Our favorite senator, when he wasn’t demanding answers to that warehouse that he absolutely positively had nothing to do with, effectively said good riddance to poor Meg—though in far, far more words. Can’t wait to see his reaction when the newest alicorn makes her first public appearance.”

What a change from when Serrell had first heard about it himself.

Even so, Twilight grimaced. “She’s not looking forward to that. She’s finding it awkward enough being an alicorn in Equestria because of the whole ‘alicorns are princesses’ thing—which she is not. A princess, that is. Nor does she want to be.”

“Huh. I guess I can see why that might be a problem for her. But that’s none of my business.” He resumed pacing. “But what is my business is dealing with how my world handles her ascension. It’s an interesting problem. I’m open to discussing it with her.”

It was true that Meg would have to deal with that sooner or later. “I’ll mention it to her.”

The neck of the “bottle” penetrated the wall above them, coming down until it touched the floor. Meg could swear there were elevator-like doors there. There was even a button to the side. She looked back at Discord. “Elevator, right?”

“Nothing gets past you, my dear Meg!”

“Just one?” Elaine asked. “This many rooms? Should be four, at a minimum.”

“And if this were an ordinary elevator, I would concur.”

Discord did not expand on that, so Meg took the bait. “So what’s special about this elevator?”

The draconequus lifted his cane and use it to press the unlabeled, purely circular “up” button. The doors parted immediately. He went inside. Meg followed him. The interior was as large as one would expect considering the diameter of the tube, enough to effortlessly hold a dozen people. Luna entered next, then the humans, and Fluttershy was last.

“Okay,” Joe said, “it looks like a perfectly ordinary elevator—to me, anyway.”

Meg didn’t disagree. Like with the main lobby, Discord had shown considerable restraint.

He got a grin from their host. “Looks can be deceiving,” he said and pushed the button labeled thirteen. The doors closed.

At first, nothing seemed to happen, but then Meg noticed that the floor indicator was incrementing—and picking up speed, as if the acceleration never ended. Yet it felt like they hadn’t budged an inch. At the halfway point, the indicator started decrementing with decreasing speed. No sooner had the indicator displayed thirteen, the doors opened, revealing a perfectly normal hallway—normal, that is, apart from its oddly high curvature.

Elaine was perplexed. “Still don’t see how this one elevator is sufficient.”

Discord tipped his hat. “Because there are twenty-three elevator cars, all sharing this one shaft!”

Now Tyler was perplexed. “And how do they get past each other?”

“Magic!”

Meg stepped into the hallway. “Welcome to the true ‘Magic Kingdom.’” Maybe Disney will be sued for false advertising. Eh, probably not. Doors lined the hallway in the typical hotel fashion; mirror-image rooms were paired off, putting their doors next to each other. Looking back, there was the elevator, and only the elevator, on that side of the hallway. Naturally, she thought, the tube isn’t wide enough here for rooms on both sides. Then she noticed the unlabeled, purely circular call button. She pointed at it. “Only one?”

“Obviously,” Discord said, rolling his eyes. “Whether you go up or down depends on which floor you select inside. What could be simpler?”

Penny shrugged. “Guess I can’t argue with that.”

It was an interesting scheduling problem, and Meg briefly considered the algorithms needed to make it work. Sure, the individual cars could go past each other—because magic—but only one could be present, door open, on any given floor. Then she dismissed it, remembering who designed the system. After all, shouldn’t “Discord” and “algorithms” be mutually exclusive? Whatever.

She couldn’t see very far down the hallway, due to its high curvature as defined by the diameter of the elevator shaft. Discord turned right and walked to the nearest door. He swept a key card through the usual slot by the door handle—where did that key come from? Stupid question—and with a solid clunk it unlocked.

They all followed Discord into the room—a perfectly ordinary hotel room. Two queen beds. A TV. What channels does that get?

“So this is a human hotel room?” Luna asked.

“Pretty much,” Meg said. She went into the bathroom, also normal.

“And that, I assume, is a human toilet?”

“Sure is. Discord has done his research. I’m impressed.” Meg flushed the toilet. It made perfectly ordinary flushing toilet noises.

“What?!”

Meg ran back into the bedroom, Luna already having teleported there. Penny was standing in front of the window, curtains now drawn. What was Meg’s reaction too. Where the tube entered the “bottle” was plainly visible, as was the grass beneath it, except that it wasn’t down. It was straight out. Like gravity had been…

It clicked. “Thirteenth floor,” she began. “That puts us near the top of the neck, where it’s horizontal?”

Discord waved his cane, urging her to continue.

“So this room must be at the bottom, with a window facing downwards or close enough, and gravity is always parallel to the elevator shaft.”

“Excellent! Have another gold star!”

Before Meg could complain, he slapped another star onto her horn. Grumbling, she removed it. “I guess the weird view is a small price to pay for the thirteenth floor.”

“That’s why everything else is perfectly normal. What better way to commemorate the unluckiest number of all!”

Elaine raised a hand. “So… the other floors?”

Was that an evil grin? “That’s where things get interesting.”

30. Gone and Good Riddance

”And there’s a cost to that,” Discord grumbled. “You have to step outside reality, in a manner of speaking. Defeats the whole point of creating this realm, to interact with this world we’ve created.”

“I do interact, Discord. Merely in a different fashion.”

Meg got the distinct impression this was not a new argument between the two. Still, it got her thinking, back to when she had first been zapped by the Elements and found herself in a timeless… something. “Was I ‘outside reality’—in a manner of speaking or whatever—when you made me magical?”

“Yes, Meg, you were.”

“Was that necessary to actually give me magic?”

“No, it was not. But it was necessary in order to observe you, to give you reality.”

When the Zephyr arrived in Canterlot, Meg to her surprise saw Twilight waiting on the dock. Figuring it must be something important, she rushed over to the door and opened it.

Twilight came inside. “Hi, Meg, Luna, Fluttershy.” Her eyes returned to Meg. “Serrell would like to talk to you about your ascension, and in particular how to reveal it to the world.”

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Meg had sort of hoped it’d be later. “Like right now?”

“No, but soon. Naturally only if you’d want to.”

Did she? “I guess it depends on how that warehouse fiasco is going down?”

“It’s looking promising, but it’s too early to say. By the way, Egor had mentioned your ’sacrifice’ and as a result Routledge seems to believe you’re gone and good riddance.”

“Huh.” That was surely something to think about. “And that’s what motivated Serrell’s request, I’d imagine.”

“Yeah. Certainly a part of it.” Twilight noticed the other two were still present. “We’ll have Captain Shooting Star return you to Ponyville, Fluttershy. And Luna, I know you’ll want to hold court, so Meg and I—”

“Nay, Twilight. I wish to be involved in this conversation. I also wish to discuss with you Discord’s new theme park.”

“I wouldn’t mind being a part of that too,” Fluttershy said. “About the theme park, that is.”

“Then you shall be,” Luna declared.

Twilight took a seat. “Then let’s start with that.” She addressed Luna, who was taking a seat herself. “Did you find Discordland safe and appropriate for ponies?”

“My research is incomplete, unfortunately. The focus was on the hotel. That seems harmless enough, even sane enough if you avoid certain areas...”

“Yeah,” Meg said, “some floors are definitely chaotic. One of the less chaotic floors had no gravity.” One of the more chaotic floors had furniture, floors, walls, and ceilings, all with attitude. They certainly talked back enough.

“Indeed, Meg. But to be fair one must choose to visit those floors, and I am sure some ponies would. Every room we visited was equipped for humans, though Discord assured us each room can be adapted to the species of the occupant. Perhaps my biggest… concern… is that there are many confusing references to things we ponies do not understand. Granted, if that’s my biggest concern, then that says much.”

“What Luna’s referring to,” Meg said, “was stuff like Star Trek transporters and Star Wars droids.”

“What are those?” Fluttershy asked.

“Precisely my point,” Luna said. “Unexpected, certainly, and unfamiliar, but that does provide a novelty factor, and not an unpleasant one.”

“And if the rest of the theme park was like that?” Twilight asked.

Luna tilted her head in thought. “A certain amount is fine, especially if sufficient context is provided, but there should be references to things familiar to ponies.”

“Nor would humans object to that, certainly not bronies.”

“I could talk to Discord and guide him in that direction.”

Luna nodded at Fluttershy. “We would appreciate that.”

“As for suitability for hosting a brony convention, it passes muster,” Meg said. “I’m not complaining about the absence of a casino—I guess he changed his mind? And there’s now a nice, big, multi-level garage underground. We can put the portal there and have attendees simply drive in. We just need to decide where the other end goes and set a date, and finalize the guests of honor.” She looked expectantly at Luna.

“I’m leaning towards making an appearance. I shall talk it over with Celestia.”

“Excellent,” Twilight declared. “I’ll have the captain take you home, Fluttershy, and the rest of us can continue our discussion in the palace.”

“We’ll meet in the tea room.” Luna teleported away.

Twilight gave Captain Shooting Star his instructions, and soon she and Meg were flying to the tower as the Zephyr lifted up and departed for Ponyville. Along the way, Meg wondered about Serrell’s request. Not so much about seeing him, but about how she would reveal herself to her world. Though, in a sense, she already had. She’d asked Andrew and company to keep it to themselves for now, but that didn’t mean they would do so for long.

Once they were hovering outside the tea room, Twilight teleported them inside. How long before I can teleport? Few unicorns could do it, her husband not being one of them, so far, and it wasn’t just a matter of power—which for an alicorn should not be a problem anyway. No, the spell itself was complicated, and she as yet had not cast a single “real” spell.

But that was a problem for Future Meg—who, judging from the one she’d met, certainly had no problem teleporting. The problem for Present Meg was… Luna wasn’t there.

“Probably taking care of some business first,” Twilight speculated.

“Sure. Makes sense.” Meg sighed. “So. Sounds like Serrell would like to rub my continued and alicornified existence in Routledge’s face. Can’t say I wouldn’t like that myself.”

Twilight shrugged. “That’s what he wants to discuss with you.”

Meg went to the mahogany table and sat on a cushion. “The devil is always in the details. I kinda messed up at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.”

“Perhaps…” Twilight said, taking a seat herself. “But it did lead to the observers and the warehouse and, well, ascension.”

“And breaking Tirek out of Tartarus led to your castle, rainbow powers, and finally to me becoming a magical pony. Funny how things always seem to work out.”

“What always works out?”

Luna had just teleported in. “Just chatting,” Meg said. “Anyway, I’ve decided to accept Serrell’s invitation to talk about my ascension. Now I just have to figure out what to do with being an alicorn—besides rubbing it in Routledge’s face, that is.”

Luna joined them at the able. “Your realm is outside my area of expertise. It is hard for me to offer specific advice. Your president is much better qualified to do that.”

“Obviously, he is,” Meg said, slumping. “I’m just so damn sick of having no control over my life.”

Luna studied her. “What stops you from taking control?”

“Uh… well, it… doesn’t work out when I try? Like at the Senate… Yes, Twilight, I know, it led to my ascension, but that feels like incredibly dumb luck.”

“Maybe it’s not dumb luck,” Twilight said.

“It sure wasn’t due to some genius plan of mine,” Meg grumbled.

“Could it be your destiny?”

“I dunno.” Meg sighed. “Twilight, you have to understand that in my world, amongst humans, ‘destiny’ is just a word. It has no existence of its own. It has no power to make things happen—well, except perhaps by giving confidence to those who claim it. Which, by the way, far from guarantees success.”

Twilight smiled at her. “But this is Equestria, Meg. You have a cutie mark.”

Meg looked down at her side. “Yeah.”

Maybe dumb luck wasn’t always just dumb luck.

But she couldn’t just depend on “destiny” to save her ass all the time. What happened at the warehouse? That wasn’t dumb luck or destiny, that was the impossibility of paradoxes. Sure, if I ignore how the paradox was circumvented. Regardless, there was no potential paradox over revealing—or not revealing—her alicorn self to humanity, so there was no help there.

And speaking of paradoxes, or lack thereof… “Change of subject. Maybe it’s time for you to try being human.”

Twilight blinked. “Now that you mention it… maybe it is time to close that time loop. I suppose I could do the isomorphic mapping spell right now—”

“Don’t,” Meg warned. “Not until we have clothes ready. That spell won’t create clothing, even if it will preserve them while being a pony. We already went through this with Sunset Shimmer.”

Twilight looked up in thought. “You’re right, and we need the clothes my future self was wearing.”

“To avoid a paradox, right.” Meg slapped hoof to forehead, almost hitting her horn. “Too bad none of us took pictures.”

“I did write notes afterwards, don’t forget. Rarity, then?”

“No… they looked too off-the-shelf.” Meg tapped a hoof on the table. “Okay, here’s the plan. You and Sunset go to the Mirror Realm. Have her imagine a perfectly ordinary clothing store. Go pick out something suitable there for you. Sunset will see it, then she can go with Lori to an actual store to get the actual clothes.”

Meg shook her head. “No, Sunset wasn’t there; she didn’t see the actual clothes Future Twilight was wearing, so she can’t pick out the exact same thing. I guess I have to go along too so I can expect the mirror store to have those items, the best that I can remember them anyway.”

“Or, I can just go through the mirror expecting to be wearing what my future self was wearing.”

“Yeah, that’d work too. And even if it’s not exactly the same or Sunset’s memory isn’t flawless, she’ll still pick out what we saw you wear, because it’d be a paradox if she didn’t. But a mirror store is still a good idea, so you can get the sizes of everything. Rarity can still come along, if you think she’d be interested.”

Twilight smirked. “Do we have to ask?”

“I, too, saw what your future self was wearing.”

Meg had almost forgotten Luna was present. “I’m sure nopony would object to your assistance.”

“I certainly do not,” Twilight said.

Luna stood up. “Then I believe we are done here.”

President Serrell was seated behind the Resolute Desk. He stood up upon noticing Meg’s arrival upon the Great Seal, the usual spot for arriving Equestrians. “You really are an alicorn now.”

“Still getting use to it. So, how do you think we should handle this? I don’t have a great track record with Q and A, you know.”

He came around the desk. “How about a taped statement, then? Nothing long, just basically announcing to the world that you’re still here and—do you know why you became an alicorn?”

“Not really, no. I closed my eyes, clicked the mouse to cast the spell that created the anomaly, not having a clue how I would survive it, only knowing it’d be a paradox if I didn’t, and… a few seconds later I opened my eyes and found myself… in the same place Twilight went when she became an alicorn. It seems all about-to-be-alicorns wind up there. If I had to guess, I’d say I passed a test, same as Twilight.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Celestia’s test?”

Meg shook her head. “No, she was as surprised as I was. Still got tipped off somehow, as she showed up to sort of guide me through it—and by that I do not mean she triggered the ascension. I don’t know what the deal is with that.”

“And you are not a princess.”

“Nope, nor do I want to be.”

The next question did not come immediately. “Are you immortal now?”

Nor did Meg answer that immediately. “I have reason to believe so.” If Discord wasn’t messing with me.

“We don’t want to mention that, not unless we want chaos that’ll make you-know-who’s day.”

“Yeah. Human becomes ageless alicorn. News at eleven. Of course enough will figure it out anyway.” Twilight had already been asked about immortality. The last thing Meg needed was to be asked it herself—by the media, that is.

Serrell went over to a sofa and sat down.

“I could,” Meg said, “make that video as a human. I don’t look any different. Not mention the alicorn part at all.”

He rubbed his chin in thought. “How likely is it that word will get out anyway?”

Meg sighed. “Given time, guaranteed. Certainly no later than the SILICon convention. The senior staff already knows, but they say they’ll keep it to themselves for now.”

“Then do it as an alicorn and get it out of the way. Emphasize that your ascension proves your worthiness.”

Does it prove my worthiness? Did it even really matter? The point was, none of this was helping her regain control over her life. Next thing she knew they’d have a script for her to read. Not that she had any idea what to say in the absence of a script.

One step at a time. “I’ll do a video, as an alicorn. I’m sure your people have ideas on what I should say and I’ll take it into consideration, but no promises. What I want out of this is a path back to a normal life. For some definition of ‘normal’—gotta be honest, I suppose. Certainly, to be able to walk around as my human self without people treating me like a traitor to humanity.”

Meg wasn’t sure how Serrell would react to that little speech, but amusement wasn’t it. “You might find that preferable to being treated as a celebrity—which, like it or not, you are—but I’ll see what my people can come up with.”

Sunset had been through the mirror first, establishing the simulated world. To Twilight’s surprise, the shopping mall she now found herself in was familiar. It was the one Meg had brought her to long ago, where she first saw a store that sold dolls of herself and her friends. It made sense. Meg must’ve brought Sunset here too.

The place was busy. Countless humans were going about their business—real humans, not that Equestria Girls nonsense—and none of them were paying any particular attention to them. Of course not. They were just as human as everyone else.

“Anyone have a mirror?” Rarity asked. She was looking at her attire the best she could. It was… elegant, Twilight decided.

Sunset was outfitted the way she was the last time Twilight saw her take human form, unlikely a coincidence. Luna was plainly dressed. It all raised the question of how the mirror decided such things, to the extent it hadn’t been Sunset’s expectations.

Rarity and Sunset were looking Twilight over, from top to bottom. Twilight looked down at herself and verified she was wearing the same clothes that she saw her future self wearing when she became a human. Luna focused more on the surroundings, taking it all in.

Sunset pointed at the cutie mark on Twilight’s skirt. “That’s going to be a problem. Skirts aren’t that popular, and they certainly don’t come with cutie marks.”

“I can take of that, darling.”

Twilight waved it away. “You’ll find that skirt in a real store, Sunset, because no paradoxes.” And Rarity certainly could handle the rest.

“I suppose so,” Sunset said. “We still need to find the rest of your clothing, including the undergarments, or at least the size you’ll need. This way.” She started walking.

“Why do humans have to make it so complicated?” Twilight muttered and started walking herself.

Rarity beamed. “I prefer to view it as a challenge.” She tried to start walking, but stumbled. “Oh dear, this will take some getting used to.”

Twilight quickly returned and steadied her. “You’ll get the hang of it real fast. Just put one foot in front of the other.”

Rarity did so, though it took a dozen steps or so before Twilight felt she could walk on her own. Luna was pacing them just fine. “You’ve been human before?”

“I’ve been a minotaur and a dragon. It’s not that different.” Luna’s gaze drifted across the mall. “It is truly an impressive collection of stores.”

Sunset had stopped in front of one particular store, gazing through the glass store front. Twilight recognized this one too, a “Build-A-Bear.” It was the one selling dolls of their cartoon counterparts, and apparently also some bear dolls.

“Oh my! Is that supposed to be me?”

“Sure is, Rarity.” Twilight walked down the row of dolls. “And there’s you, Luna, and…” She halted in front of an orchid-colored alicorn doll with a medium violet red mane and tail. “Sunset Shimmer, please tell me you didn’t expect this to be here.”

Sunset cringed. “Maybe? I mean, think of all the money Meg could make if she licensed her likeness—”

“We don’t make money off our likenesses!”

Luna looked disapprovingly at her sister’s former student. “Surely you have attempted to correct that?”

“It’s… complicated.” And with so much else going on, Twilight hadn’t had time to look in on the legal team that had been formed to represent their interests.

Sunset shook her head. “That’s not why we’re here; you can talk about that later,” she said, and started walking.

Twilight and Luna exchanged looks. Twilight shrugged. They both followed Sunset, with Rarity behind them.

Sunset led them to an escalator, and they rode it up to the second floor and continued walking.

“The size of this establishment is truly impressive,” Rarity said.

“I’m told there are far larger malls elsewhere,” Twilight said.

“I find it hard to imagine how that’s possible!”

Eventually they reached the end. Before them was shop so large it would by itself rival most malls in Canterlot. “Everything we need we’ll find in here,” Sunset declared.

They followed Sunset into Macy’s.

“As you can see, the reports of my demise have been exaggerated.” Meg glanced up at her new appendage. “And as you can also see, I am no longer a pegasus.” She briefly flared her wings to emphasize she had not turned into a unicorn. “It turns out that preventing the Earth from being destroyed in mere seconds by a spell created by morons who had not a clue what they were messing with…”

Meg slumped, staring at her phone secured in a stand. It wasn’t even recording. She had hoped that by going through the motions something would come to her. “Maybe I should let Serrell’s people write a script for me.” Sure, she could vent, but what about something constructive?

A contemptuous snort. “Those hacks?”

Meg groaned, placing hooves over her head. “Don’t you ever knock?”

Discord opened his mouth, thought twice about it, then disappeared. There was a knock at the front door to the apartment.

She rolled her eyes. “Come in!”

The door opened—never mind that it was locked—and Discord walked in. “You had a point,” he admitted. “Never knocking had become too predictable.”

Meg watched him walk over to the kitchen table where she was sitting. “Glad to be of service. Now is there a reason for this visit?”

“At the risk of being too predictable, again, there does happen to be a reason for this visit.”

“I forgive you for being excessively predictable.”

Now it was Discord’s turn to roll his eyes, thankfully metaphorically. “It’s about the hotel. What’s the verdict?”

“It gets a pass, but we need a way to make reservations. So unless you can create an internet presence…?”

A slight grimace was the response.

“Figured as much. We’ll handle that… somehow. But we do need a list of every room, with some indication of how chaotic it is so that attendees can choose what they’re comfortable with.”

Discord scoffed. “A list. Do I look like the Princess of Lists?”

Meg stared at him, half expecting him to take on Twilight’s likeness. He did not. “I’m afraid it’s a hard requirement. And if the demand is too high for either low or high chaotic rooms, it would help if you could make some adjustments—but we won’t know if that’s necessary until we open up reservations.”

Discord grumbled. “I’ll get back to you on that.”

“Thanks, we’d appreciate that.” Meg turned back to her phone. “I don’t suppose you have any suggestions about what I should say? You last advice… sort of worked out in my favor. I guess.”

“I can get rid of that horn for you,” he said, then frowned. “Temporarily, anyway. I hate time loops.”

“You and me both, but no—”

For a second, she entertained the thought. Get rid of the horn then make the video. The world would see a pegasus, and she can put off dealing with her ascension. “No, the horn stays.” Like Serrell said, better to just get it over with. “So what’s the chaotic way of dealing with this?”

Ponyville grew rapidly in the distance. On the flight over, Twilight considered Luna’s admonition. Yes, it was important to save the human world from that anomaly, but she was perfectly capable of multitasking. Sure she read the occasional status reports from her human legal team, but progress was glacially slow. Yearling was facing roadblocks of her own, she knew. At least, neither of them were paying those humans.

Maybe that’s the problem.

It’s not that they weren’t being paid, just not being paid by Equestrians. They had no means of exchanging bits for dollars—another issue still with no apparent resolution. Now if they could earn dollar-based income… but that exactly was the problem.

Sugarcube Corner had become visible, barely. She knew exactly what to order to compensate for the long day.

A blue streak caught her eye. It changed course, coming straight at her. Within seconds Rainbow Dash was flying beside her. “You look beat.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Kinda?”

Twilight sighed. “I’ve been shopping for clothes, human clothes… in a manner of speaking.”

Rainbow looked at her with concern. “Why would you do that?”

“Remember when I told everypony that we would all go back in time to prove to my past self that it’d be safe for me to go human? Safe for all of us Element Bearers, actually.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Her destination was approaching. Twilight began her descent; Rainbow instinctively matched her.

“I’ve decided it’s time to do that—but first I must acquire the clothes my future self was wearing.”

“Wow. Sounds awful. Can’t you, like, have Rarity make them?”

“She’ll help, of course, but she lacks the expertise to design human clothing.”

“I thought she was donating her services to that charity auction Meg is organizing for her convention?”

“Probably why she was so eager to tag along.” No doubt the fashionista would eventually bug Meg for samples to study, or even for copies of human fashion magazines—if she hadn’t already.

They were seconds away from landing, putting conversation on hold. Once inside… “Meg?”

The newest alicorn was sitting at a table, by herself, a shake in front of her and a phone levitating a few feet away. Meg looked away from her phone. “Hey, Twilight, Rainbow Dash. Stay back until I take this picture.”

Meg returned her attention to her phone. She put mouth to straw, looking into the camera, and held that pose while adjusting the position of the phone, deciding on right of center. A faux camera shutter release noise was made, and the phone moved back to its owner. A quick inspection. “Okay, I’m done.”

The two mares joined her at the table as Meg helped herself to the shake, another cinnamon and daisy swirl vanilla by the look of it. “Why the photo?” Twilight asked.

“Proof that reports of my demise are premature,” Meg replied. “Discord’s idea, actually. Serrell wanted me to make a video, and I had trouble coming up with something to say, and he happened to stop by so I asked him what would be the chaotic way of dealing with this, and he said don’t say anything at all. Just offer up a picture, and let everyone go crazy with speculation.”

Twilight had to admit it didn’t sound half bad. Even Rainbow seemed impressed by it. “You’ll still have to say something eventually.”

“Oh, sure, but not until the time is right.” She shrugged. “Whenever that is. I’m certain others will have opinions on that. What about you? Been to the mirror realm yet?”

“Just got back, actually. Sunset’s ready to go shopping.”

Meg’s lips released the straw. “I’ll let Lori know.”

31. Once an Alicorn…

It had been an incredibly long time since Meg had been so flabbergasted. “Are you saying you created me?”

Discord tsk-tsked. “It’s not all about you, Meg; you were merely the ‘handle.’ When you were given reality, your entire world and its history going back thousands of years were given reality—and our world too.” He glared at the tree. “Not to mention millennia of my life I had precious little control over!” His eyes returned to Meg. “You know our worlds have been intermittently connected for millennia, and that doesn’t even include all those pesky time loops. Time loops, not coincidentally, you were usually a part of.”

“Brother is correct. I spent too many centuries searching for a potential reality in which your world and ours would bond in friendship and harmony. It could have happened on its own, for it was always a possibility, but one whose amplitude was vanishingly small. I did not ‘create’ you, Meg; it’s more accurate to say I found you.”

“Discord must be pleased,” Meg observed.

“Sometimes, maybe chaos really is the answer,” Twilight replied.

“I repeat what I just said.” Meg was half-surprised Discord didn’t show up to slap a star on Twilight’s horn.

They were watching the news coverage in the latter’s residence. The talking heads were all reacting to the announcement from SILIcon that the newest alicorn would be making an appearance at the convention—said announcement including the photo Meg had taken of herself at Sugarcube Corner, a photo framed to show both the new horn and an old wing.

Naturally they re-played the sound bites from the two human observers, from which everyone had inferred that Meg must have succumbed to the anomaly. Not too surprisingly, the talking heads speculated that may have had something to do with her ascension. They even played a clip from Magical Mystery Cure that laid out the events leading to Twilight’s ascension, noting that in both cases apparent death had occurred and surely that wasn’t a coincidence—except, of course, to those who claimed that it was.

Regardless, that led to endless speculation of what Meg must have experienced in that starry realm, of how similar it was to Twilight’s experience—whether Celestia was involved somehow, and that sure yielded conflicting opinions—and what Meg was now the princess of. Meg doubted any of them would believe the actual truth. And because that wasn’t enough, they even speculated on what type of shake she had been consuming.

It all begged the question, of course, of what it all meant. If any of them ever figured it out, Meg wished they’d tell her. She wasn’t holding her breath.

Twilight used the remote to mute the volume. “Still no reaction from Routledge.”

“Wonder if that’s good or bad. Heard from Serrell?”

“Nothing yet.”

“I repeat what I just said. Ugh. Hope that doesn’t turn into a catchphrase or something.”

On the screen there were now two rows of five boxes, each box hosting its own talking head. I guess no one wants to be left out.

“What about Andrew?” Twilight asked. “He must be eating up the attention.”

Meg rolled her eyes. “He loves being the gatekeeper. Every talk show wants to book me, and they all have to go through him. I made it absolutely clear I was not available at this time.”

“But eventually?”

“Eventually, who knows. I’m in no rush. Hey, I just got an idea. We could do a panel together at the convention, talk about becoming alicorns. Discord might have to make a bigger room.”

Twilight snorted. “We could do a press release on that. Imagine the reaction.”

“Yeah. Discord would be pleased.”

Meg took the remote with her magic and unmuted the sound; it was nice having magic. The news was more of the same, of course.

Finally there was something different. Senator Routledge was about to make a statement; the screen showed a microphone waiting to be used. Lots of speculation over what he might say. Meg wished they would just hold their tongues until after he said it.

The senator walked up to the microphone. “Here it comes,” Meg said.

“We knew that Meg Coleman used Equestrian time travel magic to inflict the anomaly upon us, and now we know that Princess Celestia rewarded her for her services by making her a princess. I have requested the Attorney General to prosecute Ms. Coleman for treason to the United States of America, if not to all of humanity. That is all.” He walked away, ignoring shouted questions.

Meg sighed. “And here I thought he’d merely subpoena me again.”

“Surely nopony would believe that nonsense!”

“Listen,” Meg said, pointing at the screen, “and we’ll find out.”

For once, Meg saw reason for hope. Oh there were a few talking heads who enthusiastically agreed with Routledge, no question about it, but they were in the minority. Most were pointing out the awkward and unanswered questions that the senator avoided. Some repeated Twilight’s last public statement on the anomaly. One even accused Routledge of attempting the “a strong offense is a strong defense” maneuver.

Eventually it got repetitious and Twilight muted the sound. “Not too bad, actually. Think it’ll help if I addressed the ‘princess’ claim?”

Meg eyes stayed on the monitor. Now they were playing clips from the Hurst “press conference”; they included what Twilight had to say on the matter. “Don’t bother. Anyone who believes that won’t be persuaded by you—or me. Or Celestia.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I hate to say it, but Discord really got this one right. We should just let them stew in their chaos for now.”

A flash of light, and a star appeared on Twilight’s horn. She went cross-eyed staring at it. The offending star was soon gone.

Meg rolled her eyes. “I know the feeling, trust me.” She looked up. “Any suggestions on what to do next?”

“I’ll leave that in your capable hooves,” was what his disembodied voice said.

“Well,” Twilight said, “at least this time he answered.”

“Probably worried that not answering was becoming too predictable.”

Another flash, and another star—this time on Meg’s horn.

A knock on the front door. Meg trotted over and opened it, revealing a human Sunset Shimmer. A familiar pendant hung from her neck; it was probably just used. “Ready to go?” she asked.

“Yeah, let me tell them we’re coming.” Meg trotted back to her phone as Sunset closed the door behind her. The response came soon after she sent the message. “Okay, we’re good.” She grabbed a plaid pill in her magic and walked over to Sunset. “I just ‘grab’ you in my magic, as if I was about to levitate you or something, right?”

Sunset nodded. “That’s right. You can’t go wrong.”

Sure, go tempt Murphy. Nonetheless she had been on the other end enough times. Just stay focused and get past this first time. She enveloped Sunset in her magic, as if she wanted to lift her, then took the plaid pill, pictured her brother’s living room, and swallowed.

“No Twilight?”

Meg gave her brother a big smile. “Don’t need her for this anymore.” She pointed at her horn. “Alicorn.” Seeing Sunset there too turned that big smile into a smile of relief.

“See?” Sunset ask. “What did I tell you?”

Lori entered the room. “Ready to go?” she asked Sunset.

“I certainly am!” To Meg, she said, “You don’t have to wait for me. I’ll give you a call if you’re not here.”

The two ladies departed, and a moment latter the rumbling of the garage door could be heard.

Matt sighed, his eyes bathing her with… what, exactly? “In the good old days, I could complain about your fixation with cartoon ponies. But today?” He swung his arms wide. “You’re apparently a traitor now.”

Only his dry tone made that tolerable. “My thanks for doing my part to save the world,” she replied, equally dryly.

“I thought becoming an alicorn was your ‘thanks.’”

“Enough already,” she said, turning away. “Fortunately, relatively few are buying that ‘traitor’ garbage.”

Matt let out a fleeting laugh. “I’ll say. Did you hear the Russians will offer you sanctuary if they put you on trial? Possibly citizenship.”

“They did? No, I haven’t. Guess I can thank Egor for that. I won’t take it, just so you know. No need.”

“Because Equestria, I figured. They have to know that.”

“Maybe they really want diplomatic relations with Equestria and think this would help. I don’t know.” Though maybe I should mention that to Twilight. It’d be a great way to pressure Routledge’s side.

Matt rubbed his forehead. “Are you going to wait?” he asked. “Susie’s next door, by the way.”

“No… I think I’ll work on Smooze’s new and improved voice synthesizer, now that Discord’s undone his little sabotage—don’t ask—so Smooze and I can have a serious chat about my presence in the very distant past.”

“Okay, that’s a sentence I’d never thought I’d hear, and I think I’ll forget I heard it. I’ll let you know when they return.”

“Wish I had the option of forgetting,” she muttered. “See you later.”

She invoked the return spell.

“Oh, Routledge will get the special counsel he demands, all right, but Meg will not be its target. To be prosecuted for treason, there needs to be at least two witnesses to give testimony of the crime. Only three individuals were present seconds before the alleged act, correct?”

Twilight saw where this was going. “Myself, Austin, and Egor. All others were asleep and had been for several minutes.”

Serrell smiled. “Exactly. None of you have accused Meg of treason, none of you will bear witness to her committing treason, two of you aren’t even citizens of this country. So unless Meg intends to freely admit to committing treason…”

“I can safely say she won’t.”

“Then all he has is the claim that Meg committed treason by pushing the button to create the anomaly, while hoping no one notices all the people who made that button and were about to push it themselves anyway.”

She had never seen him so happy. “With Hurst being the connection between him and those people.”

“A fact lost on no one. So the special counsel will investigate that warehouse, everyone connected to it, and whatever the hell was going on in there. Yes, they’ll have to subpoena Meg, for she’s a material witness, and I recommend she complies. You, too, for that matter.”

Twilight had refused to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Can I say that Meg is not a princess, contradicting his claim?”

“Absolutely! Even better if you can get a statement from Celestia herself, but you are a princess and therefore an authoritative source on who the Equestrian princesses are.”

Twilight tilted her head at the president. “Wouldn’t Routledge simply say we were lying?”

Serrell shrugged. “To prove that you were, he’s free to provide evidence that Meg truly is a princess.”

“Right, good luck with that.” It really was looking good, though there were always complications… “What about all the material I recovered from the warehouse? I assume this ‘special counsel’ will want it?”

“Yes, they will. Please disturb it as little as possible. That being said, there’s no denying only you are qualified to examine the spells they were working on. You’re the expert witness, basically.”

Even Twilight knew that was too simple. “I’m hardly unbiased, or so would say the other side.”

“And yet the only humans who could even begin to understand what they were trying to do would be the defendants, and they’re not exactly unbiased either.” He raised his hands. “It is what it is.”

She guessed it was. “It’s all in a side tunnel of the cavern.” She hadn’t had a chance to sift through it herself. “Give me advance notice and they can come and inspect it.”

“I’ll make sure they’re aware of that—though be aware they’ll want to take possession of it.”

There was another topic she wanted to discuss, but she wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to do so. It wasn’t strictly speaking any of his business, but it didn’t seem fair to blindside him, not after everything he had done for them. “Different topic. I’m sure you’ve heard about the Russians’ offer to Meg.”

The president took a drink from a plastic water bottle then he looked off into the distance. “I have to admit, I never expected her to release just a photo, no words, and I certainly never expected the insanity that’d result.”

“She took Discord’s advice.”

Serrell nodded. “Figures. Can’t say I have much reason to complain, though.” His eyes jumped back to her. “She’s not seriously considering their offer, is she?”

Twilight shook her head. “No, she’d just remain in Equestria, if it came to that. I figured they’d have to know that.”

“They probably do. I can’t read their minds, but my guess is it’s just a way to send a message—to all of us. Meg should politely acknowledge the offer but decline. Concerning their desire for diplomatic relations… I can’t tell you what to do, but visibly pursuing that would mess with the heads of certain people here, and I don’t think that’d be a bad thing. But don’t quote me on that.”

“What about official relations between us? It’s been stalled for quite a while now for various reasons. At least now we can establish a permanent portal, with customs on either end.”

He took another drink of water. “I feel that things are coming to a head. The obstacles shouldn’t persist much longer. And remember what I said about the Russians? That would definitely help.”

“And the impeachment trial?” Routledge was the public face of that. Surely if he was getting troubles of his own…

A grin split his face. “Let’s just say I don’t want to jinx it.”

Hardware-wise, Smooze’s voice synthesizer needed no updating. Software-wise… a complete overhaul. All that machine learning stuff was now irrelevant. In its place would go an optical character recognizer, to read the words that would appear on Discord’s new gemstone. Meg had spent the last half-hour in the otherwise unoccupied cavern researching the various packages available.

She had remained an alicorn while doing so, figuring she needed to practice her magic-based keyboard and mouse skills. Though it was definitely getting easier, she’d still prefer hands for serious typing. But imagining the day that would no longer be the case had become possible.

“Hey, Meg,” came Twilight’s voice.

Meg turned away from the API documentation on the screen. “So on a scale of one to ten, one being not at all, how annoyed is Serrell with me?”

“Pretty close to one, actually. He’s in a good mood—as in nine or even ten—watching Routledge self-destruct.” She gave a summary of the conversation. “So I’m going to the mounds of evidence we brought back and go through it. See what notes they have on their magic research. Before that special counsel takes it all away. I could use your help.”

Meg turned back to the monitor. It could wait, she decided. “Sure, I could use a break.” After locking the desktop, she stood up. “He didn’t tell you the impeachment trial resumes tomorrow? Hurst is the star witness.”

“No,” Twilight said as she starting walking. “Like I said, he didn’t want to jinx it by talking about it. Makes sense, though. The trial was put on hold until his observer could witness the events.”

Meg shook her head. “That’s gonna be must-see-TV. So many ways it could go horribly wrong for Routledge. I’m surprised he’s even doing this. Probably feels he has no other choice.” How could he justify not questioning the very observer he himself had picked?

The two alicorns navigated the tunnels until they arrived at the one they used for time travel. Both of them were lighting the way with their horns. Meg found it nice being able to do that. Thoughts of Smooze intruded.

“By the way,” Meg started, “have you given any thought on how to travel back in time many millennia?”

Twilight looked at her. “Is this about what Smooze said?”

“Yeah. It has to happen eventually. Just wondering how soon.”

They came to the final junction and turned right. “It can’t be done in any reasonable length of travel time, not even remotely. Not with the spells I have now.”

The piles had become visible. “Not any time soon, then.” Maybe Smooze could give a hint about that, if only by how much she had grown by the time she made that trip.

They reached the closest pile, which looked pretty much as Meg last remembered seeing it, back in the warehouse. “There’s my old office computer. We already went through that.” And her future self had cleansed it of anything not relevant to the time loop; the special counsel can have it.

Twilight grabbed a folder in her magic. “Let’s start going through the paperwork. Be on the lookout for anything magic related.” She hastily added, “But I’ve been asked to disturb this evidence as little as possible.”

Meg paused to look at the piles of stuff randomly piled on top of other stuff. Might be a little late for that, she thought. She went over to the next pile and looked it over. There were two more computers there, on their sides, but this wasn’t the place to turn them on. There was paper underneath them, so she moved one of them aside and stepped up, illuminating it with her horn. It looked like a project proposal of some sort, laying out a potential avenue of research.

She flipped through several pages. “Looks like they wanted to invent a magic neutralizer. Is that even possible?”

“Depends on what they mean by a ’neutralizer,’” Twilight said without looking up.

Meg flipped through some more pages. “As a sort of weapon?”

“To be used from a distance? Sounds improbable to me. Any evidence of progress?”

“No, what I see here is just a proposal. How about you?”

“Speculations and musings on magic, so far. I hate to admit it, but they weren’t as clueless as I’d thought.”

“They did have all that stuff my future self left them,” Meg grumbled.

“They’re still clueless enough to be dangerous.”

Underneath that proposal was a folder. Meg opened it and went through its contents. “This may be promising. Looks like financial records, invoices, deposits… Doesn’t say where the money came from, but hopefully they can track that down.” Surely they’d start with who was paying the rent on that warehouse; those payments were included in these records.

Meg’s phone rang. It was her brother. She accepted the call.

“Hey, they’re back from their shopping trip.”

She doubted Twilight had plaid pills on her. “It’ll be a bit before I can come, maybe thirty minutes, an hour tops?”

“I’ll let them know. Bye.”

Meg return her phone to its holder. “Looks like your new clothes are ready. I figure it’d be best to head back to your castle?”

Twilight found herself towering over the other two mares. She had expected that, obviously, but expecting it and experiencing it were two different things. “So how do I look?” she asked, twirling from one side to the other.

“Exactly how your future self looked,” Meg said, “apart from the absence of your cutie mark on the dress, of course.”

She would soon get that dress to Rarity to fix that. “That leaves the question of magic.” Twilight looked down at her magic-less hands. “Like, for starters, how am I supposed to change back? I know my future self did that…”

“But she wouldn’t tell you how, I know. How did you change back when you were a breezy?”

“I still had my alicorn magic.” Twilight shook her head. “I still had magic.”

Meg tilted her head. “Maybe you still do? We’re assuming you have no magic. But your future self clearly did.”

Twilight leaned back against a bookcase. It was another paradox, just like Meg surviving the creation of the anomaly. Something quite impossible, yet happened anyway. Humans don’t have magic, yet her future human self did. There was a Plan C, of course; if she couldn’t figure out how to change back to a pony, she’d get Celestia or Luna to do it for her. Plan B was using Meg’s pendant, but since Discord’s magic had yet to transform her as she crossed between realms, there was little reason to think that would work.

“So how did you change back from being a breezy?” Meg asked. “They don’t have horns.”

“But they have antennae, and while they don’t consciously use them for magic, they still serve a similar purpose. So I just pretended they were horns and… it worked. If it hadn’t, I would’ve gone to Celestia. But at least breezies are magical.”

Sunset peered up at the human in the room. “And you still had your alicorn magic, otherwise that spell wouldn’t have worked.”

Twilight shrugged. “Obviously?”

Meg squeezed her pendant, resuming human form herself. “So maybe we still do have our alicorn magic. We just need to figure out how to access it.” She walked over to a bookcase next to Twilight. Holding up a hand, she pointed a finger at a book. The book flew into her hand. “Wow.”

Twilight couldn’t believe her eyes. “What did you do, exactly?”

Meg returned the book to its place on the shelf—the human way, without magic. “I imagined I still had telekinesis, and pretended my finger was a horn. It didn’t glow, so maybe that last part wasn’t needed.”

Twilight pushed off the bookshelf and turned around to face it. It couldn’t be that simple! She held out her hand and used telekinesis, as if she were a unicorn, to pull a book into it. It did so. She put it back with her magic. “No glow on the book either. Strange.”

“There’s no glowing when Discord uses his magic,” Meg observed.

“But this isn’t chaos magic…” Twilight shook her head. “Irrelevant for now.” It was time to put it to the test. She cast the isomorphic mapping spell on herself.

“Congratulations,” Sunset said, smirking. “You’re a pony again.”

It was true; she could feel four familiar hooves on the ground, a pair of wings on her back, and a horn on her head.

Meg crossed her arms. “I wonder if this means I can use a plaid pill as a human?”

Twilight smiled. “Why don’t we find out?”

The alicorn teleported away and teleported back a moment later—as a human—two plaid pills floating beside her. “It should be safe enough. We’ve proved we’re magical.”

“And it’d be a paradox if it wasn’t safe.” Meg took a floating pill with a hand. “Not that it’s a good idea to rely on that, I guess.” Even if it had worked out so far. Just seemed like a bad habit to acquire. Maybe not acquiring it is what made her future self’s visit non-paradoxical.

Meg got her phone out and called her brother. “Hey, mind if Twilight and I come over for a bit? We’ve got a surprise for you.”

A slight pause. “Is this the sort of surprise suitable for small children?”

“Yes, Matt, it’s okay for Susie to see us. Not sure if it’ll make her happy or not, but it won’t scar her for life.”

“Fine. Come on over.”

Meg put the phone away and nodded to Twilight. “Let’s go.”

They appeared in Matt’s living room, as usual. Her confused brother was there along with his wife and Meg’s niece. “No unicorn?” he asked. “And who’s the guest?” Susie didn’t know what to make of it either.

But Lori did. “The outfit looks good on you, Twilight.”

Susie gasped. “Twilight?”

“That’s right, Susie. I’m trying out being a human.”

“But…” Matt started to say. “Don’t you need, you know, a unicorn to cross over? Magic?”

Meg saw a remote control on the sofa. She used telekinesis to bring it over to herself, but left it floating in the air. “Funny you should mention magic. Turns out once an alicorn, always an alicorn—magically speaking, anyway.”

Twilight looked behind herself, then teleported two feet backwards. “Yep, that still works.”

“Cool!” Susie exclaimed.

“Anyway,” Meg said, “that was the surprise. And we wanted to see if it actually worked.” She looked to the TV and finally brought the remote to her hand. “Mind if I check the news?”

Her brother shrugged. “Sure, why not. Maybe one of you can make sense of it afterwards.”

Meg turned it on and changed the channel. There was breaking news alright.

“Looks like Serrell wasn’t kidding,” Twilight said.

The special counsel was official. Everyone associated with that warehouse would be subpoenaed—including tomorrow’s star witness at the Senate Judiciary Committee.

32. Smooze Says Something

Meg collapsed to her haunches. “You found me,” she protested. “Of all the possible realities in superposition, you picked this one. Everything I know about quantum mechanics says that’s impossible. Wave function collapses are non-deterministic, random. You can’t pick an outcome.”

“Which is why I spent most of my time outside reality as you understand it. There, the rules governing observations are different.”

Meg wasn’t buying it. “But most of your time is not all. And by ‘picking’ a reality, you also ‘pick’ what you do and what happens to you in the ‘picked’ reality—including, I presume, in your own future!”

Discord was fuming. “Not just her future, but mine as well! And not just our futures, but even, to an extent, our pasts!”

Twilight looked confused. “Your pasts?”

Ripples flowed across the tree. “Reality is constructed piecemeal, one wave function collapse at a time. Those collapses usually follow the apparent flow of time; however, they often do not when time loops are involved, due to their tangled causality. It is no coincidence the reality I picked had numerous time loops.”

It had been over century since her life had been in turmoil, but Meg hadn’t forgotten. “Couldn’t you have picked one that had been kinder to me?”

It was a helluva lot better to be watching it on TV than to be there in person, being interrogated, no question about it. Kimberly Hurst was just sworn in. “Still can’t imagine how this doesn’t blow up in Routledge’s face,” Meg said.

Spike came in, holding a tray with two steaming cups. “Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “A Power Ponies comic a few months ago had this exact same scenario. The evil politician simply disavows any connection with his accomplice.”

Twilight grabbed a cup in her magic. “This is real life, Spike, not a comic.”

Meg had used her magic to fetch the other cup. It turned out to be hot chocolate. “Besides,” she said, “there is a connection. He picked her to be an observer. He can’t pretend that didn’t happen.”

“Just wait. You’ll see.” The baby dragon returned to the kitchen.

Even so… The senator didn’t seem any different. Either he had an awesome poker face, or… But how could that be possible?

Regardless, Spike sure made a fantastic hot chocolate.

The formalities were over. Senator Routledge spoke into his microphone. “Ms. Hurst,” he began. “When my team vetted you to be our observer at that warehouse, you appear to have neglected to mention your connection with the people behind it.”

“Told you!” came Spike’s voice from the kitchen.

“Please provide the details on that connection right now.”

There were two boxes on the screen, the left showing Routledge and the right Hurst—who did not appear to be particularly stressed. “On the advice of my lawyer, I am taking the fifth.”

Nor did the senator seem fazed by that response. “Did you see Meg Coleman at the warehouse?”

Hurst briefly leaned over to her lawyer seated beside her. “On the advice of my lawyer, I am taking the fifth.”

Routledge seemed bemused by that. “Come now, it’s no secret she was there. How could admitting to seeing her—or not seeing her—lead to self-incrimination?”

“On the advice of my lawyer, I am taking the fifth.”

“Do you know Meg Coleman?”

“On the advice of my lawyer, I am taking the fifth.”

“Do you have any connection to President Serrell?”

“On the advice of my lawyer, I am taking the fifth.”

Meg hit the mute button. “I guess you were right, Spike,” she shouted. “And Hurst is willing to be the fall guy because she’s under investigation by the special counsel anyway.”

Twilight scoffed. “I love how he’s trying to imply that you and the president are connected to their operation, and of course she has the perfect excuse to not deny it.”

Meg stared at the TV, trying to work up the will to unmute the sound. It seemed pointless. How many times could she stand to hear “I am taking the fifth?”

She stood up. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to the cavern. It has to be more productive than this.”

Twilight turned off the TV. “I’ll join you.”

When the two mares arrived in the cavern, they found activity galore. Professor Arcane Scroll, Sunset Shimmer, and Moondancer were all huddled around a workstation. The humans were clustered around a different workbench, working on something Twilight couldn’t see for all the bodies around it.

Sunset noticed their arrival first. “Twilight. Perfect! We think we have a solution to the anomaly.”

“You do?” Twilight asked, trotting over.

“Indeed,” the professor said. “You had the right idea, but the anomaly had become too big for you to tackle. So what if instead of one beam of magic, we had dozens, even a hundred?”

“We simulated it,” Moondancer said, “and it ought to work.”

Twilight watched as the unicorn started a simulation run. About two minutes later it finished. It certainly seemed to work. It didn’t even take longer than the time Discord could maintain a displacement into hyperspace. But it had a fundamental, obvious flaw: “We don’t have dozens of ponies who can cast that spell, never mind those who can also hover in position around the anomaly.”

“That’s where we come in,” Jerry declared. The humans stepped away, revealing a familiar looking object. “We’re making progress on recreating that spell-casting machine. Once we get it working, we just need to reduce the total weight of the system, add a remote control, make dozens of copies, and put them on drones. Program the drones to hover in position around the anomaly, and tell them to beam away.”

“And I somehow missed you working on all that?” Meg asked.

Diana shrugged. “Recently you haven’t been around when we were here working on this.”

Meg opened her mouth to answer, but then thought better of it.

Twilight stepped up to the machine and inspected it. “I have to admit that sounds promising. But what about the power source? Each of them will need the biggest magic generator you can build, preferable bigger.”

Martin walked over to a certain locked door and knocked on it. “Fortunately, we have plenty of raw material for them back here.”

Twilight’s eyes shifted from Martin and the nuclear waste, to Dianna and the prototype spell-casting machine, to Arcane at the workstation. “This could work,” she said, but then the complications came to mind. Discord was needed, obviously, but that shouldn’t be a real problem. There was that spell slowing time at the boundary for the purpose of slowing the anomaly’s growth, but that could be canceled—but the resumed inward flow of air would affect the drones. Details, details. Subjecting their entire world to displacement again… “But we need to be absolutely sure it’ll work. We can’t afford another failure.”

“Well,” Martin began, “there is the risk we can’t make it light enough for a drone to carry it. A powerful magic generator’s gonna weigh a lot.”

Twilight considered that. Worst case, a spell could reduce—no, not in that realm. Yet pegasi can fly… Regardless: “It’s the best chance we have. I’ll mention it to the president.”

“Out of curiosity,” Meg said, “how much will dozens of ‘big enough’ drones cost? Not that we wouldn’t have a blank check.”

Martin shrugged. “Six figures, easy? Better question is, how long will it take to get that many?”

“You can buy them on Amazon,” Dianna said. “I checked already. And, yeah, the heavy duty ones can cost several grand.”

“We still have to figure out how to program them to fly to and hold designated positions,” Jerry added. “Drones that support that would obviously be better.” He shrugged. “Even if it costs more.”

“It would be better still,” Twilight said, “if the drones can maintain position against a strong wind. I may have to cancel that time dilation spell I put on the anomaly’s boundary, so the beams of magic can do their job in a timely fashion.”

“We didn’t include the time dilation in the simulation,” Moondancer admitted. “We should do that and see how much it matters.”

“I’ll get you the exact spell I used,” Twilight said. It was still the best chance they had.

She looked around for Meg and found her at her workstation, once again human. She went over to her. Meg noticed her and resumed her rapid typing with those fingers—something Twilight still struggled with.

“Putting the finishing touches on version two point oh of the voice synthesizer,” Meg said. “I want that conversation with Smooze.”

“Let me know when you’re ready. I’d like to participate.”

“No problem.” Meg clicked a button and sat back. “This afternoon, I hope.”

Looking at the screen, Twilight concluded that a “build” was happening. I really need to study computers. So far she had only dabbled in software, yet it kept getting more clear just how much human technology revolved around computers, and that software was how one made them do their magic—and “magic” might not be too strong a word. From what little she did know, some similarities were present. It called for research.

Human footsteps approached. Turning around, Twilight spotted Dianna. “Uh, any chance we can meet Smooze?” the human asked. “Get a selfie with him?”

Looking back, Twilight found the other two humans looking their way. “I’ll… see what I can do. He’s in Ponyville right now, and humans aren’t allowed there, you know, and… I’ll see what I can do.”

Flying to Ponyville had become second nature to Meg. That it was literally all downhill didn’t hurt. This day, though, a storm was brewing over croplands to the north of the town, and she and Twilight would have to make a minor detour to avoid the pegasus work crews brewing it.

Twilight edged a littler closer to her. “We should get serious about your magic theory and spell casting training.”

Off in the distance Meg thought she could see Rainbow Dash’s colors amongst the other pegasi. She was probably too busy to notice them flying by. “Sure, in our copious free time. Not that we shouldn’t, but…”

“Tell me about it,” Twilight said with a roll of her eyes. “But we should squeeze it in, somehow. And… in return I’d like you to train me in programming computers. I should get serious about that too.”

Meg studied her. “Oh?”

“I think there might be similarities between the two, and I’d like to research that.”

Meg resumed looking ahead to their destination. “You think so? I mean, sure, I guess. If it helps me grasp magic theory that’d be awesome.” Steve had never mentioned any such similarities, but then programming was something he merely dabbled in. Maybe it was something deep, not superficially evident?

“Only one way to find out.”

“Can’t deny that,” Meg admitted. “So, about the gang meeting Smooze… You’re going to transport him to the cavern?”

“That’s one option.”

“You could let them visit Ponyville, you know. It’s your rule, after all. I’m sure they’ll behave themselves. Not mention that cartoon, or mysteriously greet everypony by name.”

They flew on in silence for a bit. “You’re not wrong. Maybe I have to start somewhere. If Derpy wasn’t freaked out by your true nature, then maybe—maybe—I over-reacted a bit.”

Meg suppressed a snort. “We should introduce them to the flower sisters—you know, Lily, Daisy, and Rose—and if they don’t freak out…”

Twilight did let out a snort. “I’m half tempted to do that. Wait until they discover humans don’t eat flowers.”

Meg put hooves to face. “The horror, the horror.”

They both broke down laughing.

Perhaps that trio didn’t deserve the mocking, but Meg couldn’t help noticing that Twilight wasn’t objecting. Whatever. At least the fate of two realms didn’t fall upon them. Lucky them.

Sugarcube Corner rapidly approached. They landed and went inside.

“Well. That’s new,” Meg said, pointing at a table being cleaned. By Smooze. Part of him was extruding over the entire surface. The ponies at the other tables paid him no attention.

“Sure is!” Pinkie stood by their side. How she got there… don’t think about it. “Real good at it, too!”

Well, sure, he would be, but… “He doesn’t consume the table, even a teensy bit?”

“No, silly! Why would he do that?”

Meg grimaced. “No reason, forget I mentioned it.”

“Okie dokie lokie!” The pink pony pronked away.

Twilight looked at Meg and shrugged.

Meg sighed. Let’s get this conversation over with. She walked over to the purple blob. “Hey Smooze,” she began. “I’ve got the new voice synthesizer ready to try out. Is this a good time?” She wanted to punch herself. The hardware was in her saddlebag; how was he supposed to answer?

“You go right ahead, Smooze!” Pinkie was once more by Meg’s side. “I’ll cover for you,” she added in a stage whisper.

What, did he work here now? Later, not relevant. “Is the party room in back free?”

“Already reserved it for you!”

How… no, don’t think about it. “Let’s go, then.”

Meg started walking, without looking back. She could tell Twilight was following, from her hoof steps, and Smooze… either he had stayed put or he was surprisingly quiet when he moved. She couldn’t remember if she had ever heard him “walk” before; it had never occurred to her to pay attention. I’ll assume he’s following.

Upon entering the party room, Meg retrieved with her magic the hardware from her saddlebag and placed it on a table. Only then did she look behind her to see who was present. It was both Twilight and Smooze. He really was that quiet.

She opened the lid to the notebook computer, unlocked it, plugged in the USB cable to the gadget with Discord’s translator gem in it, and started up the voice synthesizer program. Wait a few seconds for it to initialize… “Okay, Smooze. Say something.”

“If this works, will Pinky throw a party?”

“Yes!!” came a not-so-distant scream. Pinky pulled her head back into the hallway and closed the door.

Meg checked the diagnostic log, not that it served any real purpose. It was working, that much was obvious. She turned around and faced the purple blob. “We need to talk, now that we can. About my trip to the ancient past.”

“That is to be expected.”

The synthesized voice was flat, emotionless. It was still much better than what Stephen Hawking had at his disposal; technology had considerably improved after all, but was there any way to include emotion? It would need a better translator gem, that’s for sure, one that presented more than printed words. That would have to wait until later, probably much later.

“Do you know when I make this trip in time?”

“No.”

Twilight spoke up. “No, as in you don’t know, or no as in you’re not allowed to say?”

Reading Smooze’s facial expressions, to the extent he had them, which wasn’t much, was difficult. “Why wouldn’t I be allowed?”

“Because it’d cause a paradox,” Meg answered. “I’m guessing you have little experience with time travel.”

“Ah. I see. No, as in I don’t know. However, you were, I believe, noticeably larger than you are now.”

There were so many ways to narrow that down. Celestia large? Luna large? Cadance large? But did it matter? The point was, it wouldn’t be for many decades—at a minimum. Obviously she hadn’t provided an approximate date, never mind an exact date, to past Smooze. Maybe that was an implicit message to her present self?

Meg sighed and turned to the other alicorn in the room. “Maybe it’d be best to table this for now, Twilight. This trip won’t happen for a long time, certainly not before you figure out how to even travel that far back in time.”

Twilight looked unpersuaded. “I don’t know. I’d still like to know, Smooze, why you would follow Meg’s instructions. How could you even talk to each other? I assume nopony spoke Equish back then.”

“Nopony did,” he began. “Meg knew the magic needed to directly communicate with me, as does Discord.”

“Definitely the not-so-near future me,” Meg interjected.

“As for why I’d do what Meg asked, it was because Discord asked me to.”

Meg sighed. “And we’re back to Discord again. Wonderful.”

“Obviously,” Twilight said to her, “you’ll need to contact him and persuade him to cooperate.”

“More likely he’d contact me, since he can sense alicorns. Who knows? Maybe I’d be the first one he ever encountered. I’m guessing I can talk to that Discord with the same magic I’d use to talk to you?”

No doubt Smooze would’ve nodded if he could. “Yes.”

An unreformed Discord. Great. “Guess I’ll need to talk to Discord about this eventually. No rush, fortunately.” Even so, he had to know that day was coming. Possibly dreading it, knowing how he felt about time loops.

Meg eyed the contraption she’d cobbled together. “We really need to make this sleeker some day.” She re-assembled the harness that would let Smooze wear it like a backpack and, once that was done, used her magic to lift it into place.

That done, Smooze started to move towards the door.

“Wait.”

He halted.

“You didn’t wipe out all evidence of prior human existence,” Twilight said. “There was one underground burial chamber we found and explored. Why not that one?”

“That’s right,” Meg said.

His eyes and perpetual smile swung around to face Meg. “You told me not to.”

“Of course I did,” she muttered. “To prevent a paradox.”

“Were there any others you spared?” Twilight asked.

“No,” answered the unavoidably emotionless voice.

“Did I give a reason why the others were to be erased?” Meg asked.

“No, only that it was necessary.”

Meg shook her head. It’s Future Meg’s problem, she rationalized. Regardless, she ought to mention that to Daring Do, in case she was still seeking them out.

Twilight had accompanied Meg to the Golden Oak library, the once-unicorn’s old home. It had been a while since she had last visited, something that once would’ve been inconceivable, but now, when she had her own library in her own castle… The old tree library hadn’t changed much. One of Daring’s changelings was there, as expected, masquerading as a pony librarian. The message for the explorer was presented and they departed.

The encounter gave Twilight more food for thought. It wasn’t just humans the residents of Ponyville would eventually become familiar with; there was the matter of these changelings. They had been behaving themselves. Was it fair to keep their true natures hidden? Unfortunately, there was one huge difference between humans and changelings: the former had not invaded Canterlot under Queen Chrysalis’ command.

She didn’t know how to address that. She still didn’t know, for that matter, how these particular changelings became associated with Daring Do.

The two had decided to grab a bite to eat, and were now waiting for their hayburgers and hay fries to arrive.

“So how long do you think it’d take them to get all those drones set up?”

Meg looked up in thought for a few seconds. “Too long, probably. First they have to get those drones. No idea how long that’d take, maybe a few days, maybe a few weeks, though money-no-object can speed things up.

“Then there’s the drone payloads. We have to build a magic caster for each drone, and of course we first have to get the parts for them. We also need to make a magic generator for each one. Then there’s the gem with the spell to be cast. And once they’re all assembled, we need to test them to make sure they’ll work in the field—and let’s not forget programming them all to hover at their assigned positions around the anomaly—and we need to test that too.”

“In other words,” Twilight said, “too long.”

Their food arrived. Meg nibbled on a hay fry. “I hate to suggest this, but maybe Discord could help speed things up?”

Twilight got a good magical hold on her burger and took a bite. She wanted to respond with, “but his magic doesn’t work in your realm,” except it actually would work—when their realm was displaced like before, and of course it would be again when this was attempted. There was still one huge problem, though. “He’d be too occupied displacing your realm into hyperspace to do any other magic.”

Meg shook her head. “I was thinking more along the lines of, I dunno, we get one drone with one magic caster and one magic generator all set up, then he… duplicates them? Make as many copies as we need? Can he do that?”

Twilight took another bite and mulled it over. “Possibly? Couldn’t hurt to ask. We’d still need to program them all to hover at their assigned locations.”

Meg finished off another hay fry. “What about a come-to-life spell? Could that work? They would each have their own magic generator, after all.”

“Good question.” There were two potential problems. The first was whether such a spell would even work in their realm, but that was easy enough to test. There was no conservation law it would violate, that she could tell.

The second was that these drones already had programmable behavior; in a manner of speaking, they were already “alive”—at least as far as a come-to-life spell was concerned—maybe? Would there be undesirable interactions? Again, that was testable.

Twilight smiled. “We need to do some experiments.”

33. Nora

Harmony did not immediately respond, the ripples across the her surface turning sluggish. They resumed their usual pace. “The set of possible realities in superposition is virtually uncountable. I could only examine an infinitesimal subset of them, even with the centuries at my disposal. This is the first and only one I found that met my criteria. I am truly sorry I could not do better.”

Discord placed a paw on Meg’s withers. “If it’s any consolation, consider that if she had picked any other reality, it is almost certain you would never have existed.”

Meg looked up at the tree.

“He is correct.”

Meg’s head dropped. And the same could likely be said for everyone else she had ever known or had merely heard about—excluding Discord and Harmony. “I get it. I was the means to an end, not the end itself.” She sighed. “I’m getting too old for this existential angst.”

Discord looked askance at her. “Wait till you’re our age.”

Nope, not touching that. She looked up at the Tree once more. “Is there anything else we should know now that we have your attention?”

Meg arrived at work early in the morning and started digging into the software controlling the magic caster. Luckily the source code had been on the caster’s computer and thus had been copied along with everything else. While parts of it were easy enough to grasp, like the user interface code, the actual code that controlled the lasers… Twilight would better understand the theory underlying that implementation—except, of course, for the small detail that those lines of code would only be slightly more intelligible to her than Star Swirl’s scrolls would be to Meg.

Twilight was right; they really did need to teach each other. Too bad that would take months, even years, that they didn’t have.

Still, the software was working as is without anyone or anypony’s comprehension.

In due time the others showed up for work, coming through the portal from the office on the other side. “Did you get it?” Meg asked, half rhetorically, as Martin was carrying a box.

He reached in and pulled out a smallish drone, maybe four-by-four inches square. “It’s actually programmable, using an app on your phone.” He returned it to the box. “Can’t believe how cheap they’ve become.”

“We’re still expensing it,” Jerry added.

Dianna shrugged. “We don’t know it’ll survive being brought to life.”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Meg said. “Once Twilight gets here. It shouldn’t be too much longer.” Twilight was busy completing her own personal time loop, going back with the rest of the mane six to prove to her younger self that it was safe to go human.

Then what he had said clicked. “Programmable? How do you program it? Did they create some brain-dead custom language that’s supposedly easy to learn and use?”

Martin shook his head. “Supports Python, and some language called Scratch.”

“Huh.” Maybe she should look into that. That was one of the experimental goals, to see how come-to-life interacts with a program. “Scratch was created as an easy language for children to learn.”

He placed the drone on a table and got out his phone. “Already have the app installed.” He did something and it lifted, then remained in place two feet off the table. “It’s in hover mode now.” He did something else on his phone and it lowered to the table and powered off. “Only has a dozen or so minutes of flight time.” He picked it up. “Better go charge it.”

Considering how small it was, that was hardly surprising. Couldn’t have much of a battery. Meg returned her attention back to the caster’s source code—or almost did, before she remembered something. “Faust will be coming here to see me, this afternoon, just so you know. Convention business, mostly.” Anything beyond that would be up to Twilight.

There was little comment to that. Maybe a half-hour went by of losing herself in code when a disturbance caught her attention. “How did you get past the guards?” Jerry demanded to know.

Meg spun her chair around and spied him strutting over to the new arrival. “Try looking at the cutie mark on her dress,” she declared, “and your answer will be obvious.”

A royal guard had galloped into the room and stared at the woman in question. His eyes went down to the cutie mark on her dress. It only left him more confused, and he looked to Meg for clarification.

Meg sighed. “Very funny, Twilight.” To the room in general, she said, “Yes, this is Princess Twilight Sparkle, and she just teleported here.” She turned back to the grinning not-an-alicorn. “Why don’t you teleport a few feet to prove it.”

“Sorry, couldn’t help myself.” Twilight teleported a few feet back as suggested, to the shock of everyone but Meg. The guard recovered first and, shaking his head, returned to his post.

“How is this possible?” Jerry asked. “Humans aren’t supposed to have magic.”

Twilight shrugged. “Being an alicorn has its privileges?”

Everyone looked to Meg.

“Yes, me too. I’d appreciate it if you kept this to yourselves—and that includes Twilight taking human form. Especially Twilight taking human form.” She looked back at woman in question. “And you should lose that skirt if don’t want to draw attention to yourself.”

Twilight waved it away. “Sunset’s already got other things for me to wear. But yes, I’d also appreciate it if you all kept this to yourselves—oh, and by the way I’m working on that encounter with Smooze. I’ll have details shortly.”

“And, I’m pleased to say,” Meg added, “you will be able to hold a conversation with him. My new voice synthesizer is working out well. But…” She exchanged glances with Twilight. “You might have to endure a Pinkie Pie party. Just an educated guess.” Dianna didn’t seem to mind in the slightest.

“Like I said, I’ll have details shortly.” Twilight walked over to them. “Did you get a drone?”

“Sure did!” Martin said. He picked it up, still plugged in.

Twilight inspected the drone on his palm. “Didn’t expect it to be so small.”

“It’s still programmable,” Meg said. “Though to be honest I don’t know whether the program runs in the drone or in the app running on a phone. I mean, there’s still a computer in that drone, and it is capable of some autonomous behavior, like hovering or landing.”

Twilight shrugged. “Good enough to start with. We should run the experiments in your realm, though.”

“How about one of the smaller conference rooms?” Meg asked, looking towards her co-workers.

“Delta should be available,” Dianna said. “Let me go check.” She quickly departed.

Jerry gave Meg a skeptical look. “You still have to get past the agents on the other side, you know. I don’t know why they still bother, when you can clearly come and go to our world without passing through that portal…”

As proven by her stunt at the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Chalk it up to bureaucracy, I guess. Obviously that won’t be a problem, for either of us. I’m assuming those agents don’t wander the entire floor?”

He shook his head. “No, they stay seated at the portal, half the time staring at their phones. Sure, one of them goes to the break room or restroom every now and then, but that doesn’t take them past Delta. And we’ll have the door closed, so no one will see you—assuming you can teleport there directly?”

“That’s the idea,” Twilight said.

Jerry checked his phone. “Got a message from Dianna. Delta is a go.”

“We’ll be there shortly,” Meg said. “Keep the back of the room clear.”

“Will do.” Jerry departed.

Martin kept the drone plugged in, instead unplugging its power brick from the outlet. Taking it all with him, he departed too.

Meg waited until she was alone with Twilight. “I hope you have some plaid pills on you.”

Twilight reached into her purse and pulled two pills out. “As it so happens, I came prepared.” She tossed one over and Meg caught it with her magic.

“Getting good with your hands.”

“Getting good with your telekinesis.”

Meg put a plaid pill in her mouth. “I’ll drive; I know that conference room.”

Twilight simply nodded, and put her own plaid pill into her mouth.

They both appeared in the back of conference room Delta. The other three were already present and the door was closed. The drone sat on the table, again plugged into a wall outlet, and a magic generator sat next to it.

Martin disconnected the drone from its charger. “So how does a ‘come to life’ spell work anyway?—in terms we can understand, that is. How does the object so enchanted know what to do, never mind how to do it?”

“Well,” Twilight began, “that’s part of the spell, you see: what to do. It’s not a single, one-size-fits-all-spell, but rather a framework for constructing a specific spell for the task at hoof.” She gave an uncertain look at the drone. “And it definitely helps to know how the object in question operates.”

Jerry also stared at the drone. “Was that why your snow plow went out of control during that winter wrap-up?”

Twilight cringed. “Let’s just say I hadn’t practiced as much as I should have before attempting something like that. That has been rectified.”

This was starting to sound like a bad idea. “Twilight,” Meg said, “how well do you understand how the drone operates?”

Twilight stared at the device in question for long seconds. “Not as well as I should. I know there are electric motors spinning the blades, and a battery to supply the power, and a computer to control everything…” She frowned. “And there’s nothing in the framework to address computers, because we had never invented them.”

Meg had thought as much. “What about sending data and instructions via radio?”

The frown deepened. “Nor that, though I’m not sure that matters for a drone that’s been spelled-to-life.”

“Perhaps not. But you can’t ignore the computer. It actively controls the individual propellers to keep it level in response to stuff like wind—or even when bumping into something—and it needs to read numerous sensors to do it.”

Twilight swung her head over to Meg, defeat written on her face. “No, there’s no known way to replicate that functionality. The drone’s computer must do its job.” Her eyes turned back to the drone. “Which is really handled by its software.”

Martin plugged the drone back into its charger. “I’m guessing that ‘framework’ doesn’t cover software either.”

Twilight was rubbing her chin in thought. “No, it doesn’t. But…” She shook her head to clear it, dropping her hand. “I need to ponder this.” She disappeared, having invoked the return spell.

Meg shrugged at her co-workers. “I guess we’re done here?”

“Sure looks like it,” Martin said, and he unplugged the charger from the wall.

“Try lifting the table,” Jerry said to Meg.

That came out of the blue. “Huh?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Earth pony strength?”

“Uh…” Well, as a human she had unicorn magic, so why not that? “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to try…”

Meg put both hands under the table. Ordinarily, she might be able to barely budge it. She lifted one side of it an inch. It was like lifting styrofoam. She added a few more inches. “Huh.”

“Try flying?” Jerry next asked.

Meg carefully lowered the table back down. “Without wings, I don’t see how. Maybe I can walk on clouds? Make them rain? Dunno. I mean, if I have pegasus magic, and I guess I do, I should be able to do those things, but I don’t see how to test it. Unless you have a hot air balloon handy? And a good strong rope to tie around me?”

He persisted. “Do you need wings? You don’t need a horn, after all.”

Twilight had certainly proved that. “I’ll… get back to you on that. I want to pass this by Twilight first.”

“Fair enough.”

“Can pegasi walk on clouds here?” Dianna asked.

Meg shrugged. “Yes?”

Silence descended.

Martin broke it. “Let’s assume ‘come to life’ won’t be an option. Fortunately, it’s possible to coordinate an entire fleet of drones. I’ll look into that.”

“I’ll meet you back in the cave.” Meg invoked the return spell.

Twilight arrived back in the cavern, and before she knew it a guard approached her. “Your Highness, your presence is needed at the portal. Several humans wish to enter—to collect evidence?”

A little advance warning would’ve been nice. She transformed back into an alicorn. “I know what they want,” she said as she started walking. “I’ll take care of it.”

The guard followed her anyway. Shortly they entered the room where the portal was located. The other guard was there, keeping an eye on the humans on the other side. There were three of them, in addition to the usual two FBI agents in their pointless quest to take Meg into custody.

Upon seeing her, one of the humans presented a sheet of paper. “We have a warrant for all materials from the warehouse in Tracy where the anomaly was created.” She suddenly lost some composure. “We, uh, understand this has no legal authority—”

“I’ve already agreed to turn it over. But first, I’d like to take a look at that.” Twilight magically grasped the warrant and gave it a slight tug. Getting the hint, the human released it and it floated over to her. A quick examination showed it to be what she had been told to expect. “Follow me.”

The three humans, and one Royal Guard taking up the rear, followed her as she made her way to the tunnel used for time travel. Both unicorn and alicorn provided horn light. At the entrance to the destination tunnel, Twilight brought them all to a halt.

“The material is in here,” she said. “As you may have noticed, this tunnel isn’t tall enough for most humans to stand in. Please be careful.”

Twilight entered. The piles of stuff were just up ahead. Twilight stopped in front of the first pile, illuminating it with her horn. It wasn’t long before the humans were standing beside her, hunched over.

“It’s a mess, I know. I had little time to grab whatever I could before getting out of there. I’m pretty sure I got most of it.”

They considered the pile in front of them. One of them looked around it at the two other piles behind it. “No way can we carry all this out, and I don’t think we can drive a van back here.”

“I can teleport all of this to the portal. You can then take as much time as you need to move it.”

A disbelieving look. “Seriously?”

Twilight smiled. “Watch.”

The piles formed a straight line, a line too long to fit in the portal room itself. But it would fit in the tunnel going past that room, relative to the main cavern. That was good enough. “Guard, please guide our visitors back to the portal once I’ve teleported.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

She walked to the middle pile and grabbed all three with her magic, then teleported.

And found herself exactly where she wanted to be; the portal was a few seconds walk away. Fortunately she knew the layout of these tunnels like the back of her hoof. It’d be several minutes before they’d catch up to her. She decided to spend that time looking for research notes.

It took a minute browsing through a pile before she hit pay dirt: progress notes on that spell casting machine. Her eyes hungrily consumed them, an almost contradictory mixture of cluelessness and deep insight. Magic seen from an utterly different vantage point. They may have been dangerously ignorant, but they weren’t idiots.

“Your Highness?”

Twilight jerked at the voice of a guard, so wrapped up was she in those notes. She turned around and saw the humans standing behind the guard. “Uh, right, here it is. You may come through the portal as many times as necessary to haul all this out of here.”

“To be honest,” one of them said, “we didn’t expect this much material. We’ll have to come up with a plan to move it all back to D.C. I assume we may inspect these piles at this location until we do?”

“You may,” Twilight said. She glanced at the guard, who nodded in return. “And,” she said, levitating the progress notes, “I need to make a copy of this. It’s their notes on their spell casting machine, which would be very useful to us in ending the anomaly.”

The three humans exchanged looks before one of them spoke. “We’ll make a copy for you.” She held out her hand. “Right now.”

They didn’t trust her? She’d already had exclusive access to those piles, but she figured that in their minds they now had possession. Could she trust them? No reason not to. She floated the notes into the outstretched hand.

“I believe we passed a copy machine by the conference rooms. I’ll be right back.”

She departed.

The other two had started to peruse the piles. “I’ll be in the main cavern,” Twilight told them. “The guard can direct you.”

Twilight walked over to the cavern, pondering what little she had read. Under different circumstances, she’d happily have those humans on the team here. If only they could be convinced that ponies were not an existential threat to humanity.

Upon exiting the tunnel, she could see that all had returned from the conference room. She continued on to the humans, who once more surrounded their attempt at a spell casting machine. “I’ve found their progress notes on that machine,” she told them. Their eyes searched her in vain. “They’re being copied by those people from the special counsel. We should have them shortly.”

“They’re here already?” Dianna stepped away from the others. “I’ll see what I can do to speed them up,” she said and left.

“Yeah,” Jerry said. “Wouldn’t hurt to have those notes.”

“Twilight, could you come over here?”

She trotted over to Meg at her workstation, who was still human. “Something to show me?”

Meg looked around but didn’t seem to find what she was looking for. “Not show, I guess, but tell. As a human I have earth pony strength. I imagine you do too.”

“It’s true,” Jerry said in a raised voice. “We saw her lift that table in the conference room.”

“Just one side of it,” Meg corrected. “Anyway, do you think we have pegasus magic too? And how would we use it?”

Twilight didn’t know what to say. No wings, obviously, but no horn either, and spell casting worked just fine. “I’ll… have to think about that.” That had been happening a lot that day.

“No rush, I guess.” Meg returned her attention to the monitor. “I wonder if those notes have anything to say about the software.” She swept her hand at the monitor. “That’s what I’ve been looking at. It kinda needs domain knowledge to make sense, unfortunately.”

Twilight resumed human form, the better to see the monitor up on the desk, and tried to make sense of it herself. Without much success. From the file name it looked like it had something to do with modulating the laser beams? But how was that modulation determined? How did the spell factor in to that? How was the spell even represented inside the computer? Looking at the source code on the screen would do precious little to answer those questions, even if she were fluent reading it. “I see what you mean.”

Meg scrolled down some more. “Fortunately, it works without us having to understand it.”

“Well,” Martin interjected, “we hope. We haven’t quite gotten that far yet. We were able to acquire the same lasers, etc., so it ought to work, but…” He exhaled. “We’ll know soon.”

Just then Dianna returned, holding a sheaf of papers. “Got it.” She found Twilight and headed straight to her. “I also got them to agree to make copies for us of anything else that looked magic-related.”

Twilight took the sheaf and starting skimming through it. “That’ll be helpful.”

“There’s… a catch, though.”

Twilight looked up.

“In return,” Dianna continued, a bit apologetic, “they want our ‘expert advice’ on making heads or tails of it.”

Twilight returned her focus to the notes. “I can live with that.”

Hours flew by, her eyes opening wider and wider as she got deeper into those notes. Deciphering the encoding of spells in crystalline matrixes, by x-raying the gems she had enchanted for the Pinkie Pie doll. Ponies had never accomplished that, deciphering the encoding of spells at the atomic level. Even if magic could replace x-rays, they lacked the computers to process the unimaginable amounts of data.

Then they figured out how to replicate that encoding using lasers and then to cast the gems so enchanted. Unicorns would have considered that silly, even if they had the technology to do it. All the while making sense of the spells left on Meg’s work computer they had stolen, resulting in an understanding of magic alien to the bearer of the Element of Magic. Twilight was determined to bring this to the attention of Arcane Scroll and others.

The most useful part for their immediate needs were the notes on calibrating the spell engraving/casting machine, getting all those lasers positioned just right. That was brought to the attention of the other humans.

They were all working on that calibration when a new voice interrupted them.

“Nora?”

It was Faust, and she was looking straight at human Twilight.

34. Faust

Meg about-faced and took off for the opposite bookshelf. “I thought we were done with these bucking time loops.”

Twilight groaned. “I know. Rescuing that minotaur from King Minos.”

“Using Smooze to eliminate all evidence of prior human occupation. That took months.” And not once had she found a living human, even a recently living human. At least now she knew why. And dealing with that unreformed draconequus… after that she finally understood what Twilight had to put up with.

“Except for that sole catacombs.”

Meg threw her head up in annoyance. “Of course. That one. So one day Daring Do would take our younger selves to it.”

“Getting friendly with Lauren Faust—remember her? That was a year of my life.”

Meg smirked. “At least we have the years to burn.”

“Guiding Celestia through her ascension.”

That stopped Meg dead in her tracks; Twilight was looking at her almost whimsically. “Sorry you couldn’t have been there,” Meg said.

“No,” Twilight uttered, shaking her head. “It wasn’t what Celestia remembered.”

All work stopped, all heads turned to the red-haired woman. Her presence had been expected; Meg had informed them earlier. Taking advantage of that conference business, Twilight had come up with a long-shot magic scan to perform on Faust, a long-shot as too many years had passed.

But who was “Nora?” None of the others seemed to know either, judging from their reactions. Yet… why is she looking straight at me?

In her gut a realization dawned. Another one? Twilight pointed at herself, saying, “Me?”

Faust edged closer, uncertain. “I’m sorry if I’ve mistaken you for someone else. You look just like her...” She came closer, intensely studying her. “Too much like her, given the years…”

With some trepidation, Twilight came around the table. Faust looked down at the skirt now revealed and her eyes fixated on the cutie mark Rarity had embossed upon it. “Huh. I always thought your voice was perfect for Twilight Sparkle.” Her gaze climbed up to meet Twilight’s eyes. “Yes… I can see it now. You’re Twilight; you always have been.”

Twilight grimaced. Another time loop. Of course there was. At least that long-time mystery was about to be solved. “I am Twilight,” she confirmed, “but I first became a human only a few days ago. The ‘Nora’ you knew must be my future self.”

Faust nodded. “Time travel. That explains why you haven’t aged a day. Should I keep my mouth shut?” she asked, shrugging. “You know, to stop reality from imploding? That’s why you were avoiding me in the first place, right?”

“It’s…” Twilight looked back. The others were staring at them. As in, not working. “My understanding of such things is much better now, but… look. We should have this conversation someplace less…” She looked back at the others. “…distracting. Do you have time to spare right now?”

“Sure? I’m here to talk to Meg about the convention and maybe to you anyway.”

Twilight looked over to Meg at her workstation. She stood up and walked over. “Where to?” Meg asked.

“Good question. But not here, so first we teleport.” Twilight changed back to an alicorn, eliciting a jerk from Faust. While she could do the teleport to the mine entrance as a human, she found it easier to do powerful spells when possessing a proper horn. “Ready?” she asked, looking at Faust.

“As ready as I’ll ever be. Just like going between realms?”

“Basically,” Meg said. “Just prepare to be disoriented. Or keep your eyes closed.”

Faust closed her eyes.

Twilight teleported.

“You can open them again,” Meg said.

Faust carefully opened her eyes and looked around the mine entrance. “Where are we?” she asked.

“Under Canterlot,” Meg said. “That converted cavern is part of an abandoned mine. Believe me, teleporting is preferable to walking here from there. Especially if you’re taller than a pony.”

Twilight took a few steps to the outside. “So now I need to decide where to hold the meeting. We’ll need a chariot regardless. I should be back in a few minutes.”

The alicorn spread her wings and took off.

It was only a minute before Faust made her way outside and looked around at the abandoned and decaying facilities looking out over a wild and forested, deep valley. “Leaving this place on foot doesn’t look like much of an option. How did they get the ore out of here? Have pegasi haul it out?”

Meg joined her on the wide ledge. “Don’t know. Could be. The city isn’t far, maybe a thousand feet up on the other side of the mountain.”

Faust looked at her. “You’ve flown it many times?”

Meg shrugged. “It’s sorta my daily commute. I live in Canterlot now.”

“But you still visit Ponyville?”

“Frequently. That’s where Twilight lives, in her castle.”

Faust scanned the skies. It was empty of pegasi, there being little reason for any to be this side of the mountain. “Where do you think we’ll go? I mean, what are the options?”

Meg couldn’t help but think she was still trying to wrap her mind around it all. “There are two, I’d say. Either in the palace above us, most likely in Celestia’s private tea room, or in her own castle in Ponyville. One is closer, obviously, but Ponyville isn’t that far away by chariot.”

“A chariot pulled by pegasi?”

“Yup.”

Another minute passed. “Maybe we could talk about the convention while we wait?” Faust asked.

“We could,” Meg said agreeably enough. “One decision you’ll have to make is whether to stay in Discordland’s hotel. There are mostly chaos-free floors, if that’s what you want, but if you’d rather stay in a perfectly sane hotel on the other side of the portal that can be arranged too.” Meg hesitated. “Not that I want to pressure you or anything, but Discord’s hotel is free and our funds are limited. But whatever you choose is fine.”

Faust stared up into the sky. “I’ll, uh, get back to you on that.”

“I quite understand. Maybe I can arrange for a tour if that’ll help you decide.”

Discord did not appear. Maybe his involvement was unnecessary. It’s not like the hotel was locked up or anything.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

An object appeared from around the mountain, high in the sky, preempting further conversation. It grew rapidly, revealing itself to be the pegasi-drawn chariot. It swung down to the far side of the valley and looped around to make a gentle landing on the ledge. Twilight leaped out and flew over to them.

The alicorn touched down in front of them. “We’ll be going to my castle in Ponyville. Please take a seat and we’ll depart.”

As they approached the chariot, Meg couldn’t help but notice how Faust looked at the two ceremonially armored Royal Guards hitched to the chariot. They did their best to ignore her attention, naturally. The door opened in Twilight’s magic, revealing a hastily installed bench seat suitable for humans. In they went and took seats. “You may depart,” Twilight commanded.

The guards took wing and began pulling the chariot. It lifted off the ground almost immediately under the influence of their pegasi magic. Slowly but steadily they picked up speed. Faust looked like she might have been having second thoughts. “Believe me,” Meg told her, “the ride will be a lot better than it looks.”

The guards looped around the valley to gain altitude. True to Meg’s prediction, the chariot remained level, not swaying in the least. “Magic, right?” Faust asked, her comfort level growing.

“That and training,” Twilight replied.

One loop was sufficient to leave the valley. Canterlot came into view.

And they were past it, veering off towards Ponyville and already shedding altitude.

Faust looked questioningly at Meg. “You’re staying human?”

“I don’t have to…” Her hand went to her pendant, then she considered she was sitting down on the hastily installed bench seat, and standing up didn’t seem like a good idea, and… “Maybe when we arrive.” She didn’t feel like testing the limits of the transformation magic.

As they got closer to Ponyville, a few pegasi could be seen out and about, curious yet keeping their distance. Perhaps fortunately Rainbow Dash wasn’t one of them; she would not have kept her distance. Faust kept her eyes on the approaching town, and particularly on the out-of-place castle on its outskirts.

That castle began to rapidly grow. Before long, the chariot touched down on the elevated patio and quickly came to a halt. Twilight opened the door and they all exited. She went to the guards up front. “You may return to Canterlot,” she told them.

“Yes, Your Highness.”

The chariot departed. Twilight turned around and saw confusion on Faust’s face. “I can return you to the office building directly from here,” she explained.

“Okay,” she shrugged. “Works for me.”

Meg reached for her pendant, then changed her mind. “I won’t let you be the only human in this place,” she told Faust.

The other human looked her over. “I was wondering if it was really true, that you’ve become an alicorn.”

“It’s true. I took that picture myself—in Sugarcube Corner, if you were wondering. Just don’t believe everything you might have heard, especially from a certain senator’s mouth.”

Faust raised an eyebrow. “You might try getting your own side of the story out. Just saying.”

“Believe me, that thought has occurred to me. That picture and nothing else was Discord’s advice. It… let’s just say it had the desired impact.”

Faust threw up her hands. “No judgement from me. So, Twilight, taking us to your throne room?”

“Follow me,” Twilight said with a smile.

To Meg the path they took had become as familiar as the back of her hand. Through the wide doors into the interior, through a hallway, down a staircase, another hallway, and finally they were before the closed doors to the throne room. Those doors opened in Twilight’s magic.

“SURPRISE!!!”

A party cannon went off, showering them with confetti.

“WELCOME TO PONYVILLE!!!”

“Should’ve seen this coming a mile away,” Meg muttered.

Twilight was a bit annoyed. Faust was just bewildered.

Pinkie was at her cannon, of course. A table had been set up inside the circle of thrones, full of beverages and plated cake slices. The rest of the mane six—and Spike—were seated in their thrones wearing party hats and blowing party favors. But not for long. Rainbow Dash flew over and practically hovered in Faust’s face. “So who are you?” the pegasus asked.

Rarity was ready to die of embarrassment. “That was so uncouth, darling.”

Dash glared at Pinkie. “I just wanna know why it was so important we all had to be here to welcome somepony who obviously ain’t moving to Ponyville.” Her glare morphed into confusion at Meg. “And why aren’t you a pony?”

“Reasons,” Meg responded, then turned to Pinkie. “And let me guess. You had a feeling?”

Pinkie shrugged. “Yes?”

Meg gave Faust, who remained as still as a statue, a “see what I have to put up with” shrug.

Twilight rolled her eyes and entered the throne room. “Girls… this really isn’t a good time for this. I have matters to discuss with Lauren.”

“Matters like what?” asked Applejack.

Twilight bowed to the inevitable. “Let me get some human chairs first, okay?”

She got a nod in return, and she teleported.

Rarity cleared her throat. “I would say introductions are in order.”

“Yes,” Meg said, “yes, they are. This is Laura Faust, creator of that cartoon we all know and love. I’m sure you can guess what ‘matters’ Twilight has to discuss with her. And before any of you say anything…” Meg was staring at Rainbow Dash. “…she has absolutely no idea how that cartoon became a documentary.”

Applejack gave them the stink-eye. “A not entirely truthful documentary.”

“Not… deliberately,” Faust said, finally saying something. “I’m sorry, but a part of me still thinks this must be a dream, that there’s no way this can be real.”

The orange mare nodded once. “I believe you.”

“So—”

“Dash,” Meg interrupted. “just wait until Twilight returns, okay?”

A roll of the eyes. “Fine.”

Dash flew back to her throne. Once she was seated, Meg continued. “There’s been a development, and… it’s another time loop, and this one apparently involves Twilight… and Lauren.”

“Maybe there needs to be ‘time loop’ parties?”

Meg sighed. “No, Pinkie, there doesn’t.”

“You suuure?”

“I’m sure.”

Unfazed, the pink pony pranced over to the table she had set up inside the circle of thrones. “Well, this is still a ‘welcome to Ponyville’ party, so help yourselves!” She bore an impossibly big grin.

Meg swept a hand from Faust to the table. “You are the guest of honor at this party.” The other ponies—and baby dragon—left their thrones to help themselves to cake. “And you definitely want to try the cake. I think you’ll be impressed.”

Before the two humans could enter the circle, Twilight returned with two chairs in her magical grasp. Fortunately there was room to get around them once she had positioned them in the large gap between two of the thrones.

Twilight helped herself to some cake. “So,” Twilight began, “the matter at hoof. It appears that I will go back in time to interact with Lauren, here, and somehow cause the cartoon to take the form that it has. The question is, how?”

All eyes turned to Faust. “I don’t know,” she said, then took her first bite. “Wow. This really is good.”

Pinkie beamed. “Made it myself!”

Twilight continued after herself taking a bite. “From that I deduce that I never gave you any ideas, not about characters, settings, nor stories?”

She shook her head. “No, not really. I mean, sure, the subject came up now and then, but you had little input on scripts, artwork, or casting. You never met any of the people who were involved with those things. Yet… it can’t be a coincidence.”

“No,” Twilight said, head bowed in thought. “It can’t be.”

“This is sure a conundrum,” Rarity said.

“You must’ve used magic of some sort,” Meg said.

“I’m sure that’s true. I’ve come up with a spell to scan you for some trace of that spell, but after so many years… Even if you had been here the whole time it’d be difficult, never mind in a realm where magic decays.”

Faust sat down in one of the chairs Twilight had fetched. “Will I feel anything?”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Then go ahead.”

Twilight approached her. Her horn lit, then Faust started glowing. It lasted a few seconds. “Nothing.”

“What about objects?” she asked. “You had sculpted some incredibly lifelike sculptures of various ponies—it was a hobby of yours, or so you said—and you gifted them to us for inspiration.” She looked around at the assembled flesh-and-blood ponies. “And by lifelike I mean they looked like you all modeled for them.”

That got Twilight’s attention. “You wouldn’t happen to still have one, would you?”

“Yes?” Then her eyes lit up. “But wouldn’t any spell you’d cast on them be long gone?”

“Not if I put a big enough magic generator in them—or used an enchanted gemstone, for that matter. Whichever, it’s the best lead we’ve got.”

“I’ll get it to you as quickly as I can.”

Meg did not immediately return to the converted cavern. Something Faust had said got stuck in her mind. You might try getting your own side of the story out. It wasn’t like that photo was supposed to be the last word on the subject. Maybe it was time for the next step.

She went home and sent an email to Andrew. Being her de facto gatekeeper, he had been receiving requests for Meg interviews. He was now to accept one of them, on the condition that it had to be one-on-one—no talk shows—and the interview had to take place at Discordland. Might as well use it as an opportunity to promote that too.

The email also included a summary of her conversation with Faust—excluding anything having to do with time loops, naturally. They should arrange for all the guest of honors to tour the theme park’s hotel, so they could decide whether to stay there (for free) or stay in a human-run hotel on the other side of the portal. Wherever that turned out to be, thankfully that being a problem that was not Meg’s to solve.

Neither was this latest time loop her responsibility; this one was all on Twilight. It was still a mystery how “Nora” had inserted herself into Faust’s life—not because Faust didn’t know or had refused to tell, but because Twilight preferred remaining ignorant for the time being. She first wanted to inspect one of those life-like pony sculptures.

Maybe Discord’s phobia over knowing one’s future was contagious.

When Meg did return to the cavern late that afternoon, she saw dozens of copies of the magic casting device stacked up against a wall. On an adjacent wall, there were dozens of magic generators likewise stacked up. “Okay, what did I miss?”

Jerry walked over to her. “Well, first we got our prototype fully operational. Piece of cake once we got those notes.”

Meg waved her hand in a “please continue” gesture.

“Then Discord showed up and mass produced it.”

“Just snapped his claw,” Dianna said. “Surprisingly helpful. No drama at all.”

“Huh. Was Twilight here at the time?”

Dianna shook her head. “She hasn’t come back since you two left with Faust.”

“Wonder where she is. She ought to know about this.”

“What about Faust?”

“Twilight returned her to the office building directly from her castle. I take it Faust didn’t come back here—” All shook their heads. “—so I guess she left.” Meg checked the remaining walls. “So no mass production of drones?” Not that there was a suitable drone present for Discord to replicate.

Awkward looks were exchanged between her human co-workers. “About that…” Martin began. “It’s looking like it’d take too long to acquire them and figure out how to fly them in coordination.”

“Aren’t there light shows put on by drone swarms?” Meg asked.

“Yes… but those drones are too small to carry our payloads, and they’re not designed to handle strong winds. And the software is proprietary, and even if we could get our hands on it, it’s designed to work with the corresponding proprietary drones, which like I said are way too small.”

“There is an alternative,” Sunset said, joining the conversation. “Use pegasi. They don’t have to cast the spell, just carry the devices into position and push a button on command. Pegasi in the Royal Guard have the strength and training to handle the wind.”

“Assuming,” Meg said, “we don’t have to cancel the time dilation on the anomaly.” She looked towards the workstation Sunset had just come from, where Moondancer and Arcane Scroll were still present.

Arcane cleared his throat. “Our simulations say it would be optimal if we did, for the time dilation will slow down the corrective spell. It is not, however, necessary. It will just take longer.”

“How much longer? Discord can’t keep up the displacement for long.”

“We’re not sure. The error bars are large. It may take too long even if the dilation was terminated, or it may take little enough even if it wasn’t.”

Wonderful. “Well, if it shrinks the anomaly significantly, that would still count as a win.”

“It ought to,” Moondancer said.

“Then we just repeat the process as many times as necessary.” The pieces were all falling into place. All that was left were the Royal Guard, and that required a princess. It didn’t have to be Twilight. “I’ll take care of the Royal Guard. Let Twilight know if she shows up.”

Twilight reached the end of yet another ancient scroll. With a sigh, she rewound it; it was the decent thing to do. Not that anypony else would ever likely read it. Calling this section of the library highly restricted would be an understatement. She was undoubtably the first reader of these scrolls in centuries

Fruitless it was not. The magic needed for those sculptures she would give Faust in the past did seem to exist. Magic that would transmit ideas, images, and sounds to people in its area, and do so without them being aware of it. Magic that would be banned for obvious reasons, hence why she had to come to this venue.

She would have to confirm that these magics were being used—had been used—but how could they not? Only the fact that her future self already had used them permitted her to even consider their use. She told herself that one day there would be no more time loops. That day Pinkie could throw a party for.

Fortunately, this type of magic came in various levels of compulsion. She would use one of the weaker ones. It would even solve a long-standing mystery: Why did that cartoon have so many errors? Because, she could now see, the spell would only suggest, not impose. The creatives would be free to “improve” upon reality however they saw fit. Or, Twilight realized, perhaps the spell worked imperfectly on humans.

Regardless. The first four seasons of the cartoon will happen as all currently remembered it, and that’s what mattered. The spell would suggest actual Equestrian history, not the content of those cartoons, and yet that content would be created. Because the past was immutable.

Details remained to be worked out. There were nearly a hundred episodes. It wouldn’t do to flood all of them at once into their minds. And would it be better to segregate the details, so that only the writers got the words, the artists the images, and so on. Yet how could she ensure the correct sculptures went to the correct group?

Maybe she was overthinking it. They would, because it’d be a paradox otherwise. It may even become obvious once she studied a sculpture.

But then there was that first generation of My Little Pony, where their names first appeared. How that would be resolved was all too obvious, trivial in comparison.

Twilight opened up the next scroll. At least now she knew what to look for when she received the sculpture from Faust.

“How long?” Serrell asked, his eyes switching between Meg and Luna. When he didn’t get an immediate answer, he added, “It’s now growing over four feet an hour.”

Twilight’s time dilation spell could only do so much, as had become abundantly clear.

Luna looked to Meg.

Meg tried not to grimace. “Training is about to begin,” she said. The sixty Royal Guards had just been selected. “Say tomorrow afternoon, Discord willing?” And where was Twilight anyway? She was supposed to be at this meeting.

Serrell did grimace upon hearing the draconequus’ name. “I don’t know which is worse: announcing a time for the next displacement and it doesn’t happen, or doing the displacement without advanced notice.”

There was an unspoken third possibility, of course: the displacement happens, and the anomaly remained afterwards. “There is one small advantage to not warning everyone,” Meg said. “It means there won’t be a media circus when dozens of pegasi arrive.”

He rubbed his eyes. “Not wrong, but there are other considerations. I’ll have to sleep on it.”

36. Live From Equestria!

“Nor Luna,” Meg added. Luna’s sister had been the one to guide the second ever alicorn through ascension. Meg, of course, had passed on the knowledge of how to enter that realm to the newly ascended Celestia; Meg had long ago stopped being bothered by bootstrap paradoxes like that.

Or was it even a true bootstrap paradox if Harmony was guiding wave function collapses behind the scene?

No, she wasn’t going to start obsessing over that either. It just wasn’t productive. Besides, there was that bombshell that Discord’s sister had dropped on them. “So how do we get a bunch of humans who attend the very first brony convention in Equestria to become the very first ponies in Equestria?”

Twilight grimaced. “When no attendee had mysteriously disappeared.”

Meg returned the phone to her purse. By the time she was looking forwards again, the portal was open and through it she could see a familiar hotel conference room, the same one used for the observers. It saved the bother of getting incredibly precise GPS coordinates for another location.

In that room were various people, including one by a tripod-mounted camera. Some equipment was also present, laid out on a table, along with someone to operate it. Everything needed to broadcast a live interview.

She had been insistent on the “live” part. No selective post-editing allowed.

A young woman stepped up to the portal, but did not step through—probably the interviewer. “I was expecting an alicorn?” she asked.

Meg didn’t recognize her. This was who CNN sent? Twilight had gotten Anderson Cooper.

“Contrary to what many seem to believe,” Meg said, “I have not discarded my humanity. I think it both relevant and appropriate that I conduct this interview as a human.” She raised an eyebrow at her. “Is that a problem?”

“No, not at all. Just… unexpected.” The interviewer took a quick look back; the camera operator was now behind her. “May we?” she asked, waving a hand at the portal.

Meg stepped aside and pointed at a pair of comfy-looking recliners situated alongside a row of planters in Pandemonium Plaza. A small circular coffee table rested between them, complete with two glasses and a pitcher of water. Discord had been quite helpful.

He was still around, if unseen, just in case. There was always the possibility this whole thing was a setup to grab her. Alas, from his perspective, it wasn’t looking promising. No “fun” today.

The camera operator went on ahead to set things up. A long cable connected the camera to the equipment on the other side of the portal. The woman, her interviewer, looked back and forth between the recliners and the portal. “Just to make sure,” she said, “our camera will be able to talk to our gear back there, right?”

“Won’t be a problem,” Meg assured her. “Uh, I’m sorry, but I didn’t get your name?” Was she expected to recognize her? As this exchange was happening, the camera on a tripod was being put into position.

“Sophie. Sophie Henshaw.” She finally stepped into Equestria and gazed at the chaotic architecture around her. “I was the media observer?”

“You were? Sorry, I somehow missed that.”

“You were inside the warehouse at the time?”

And the interview hadn’t even started yet. “Yeah. I imagine that’ll be covered in the interview.”

Sophie merely gave her a polite smile. Looking around, she asked, “He’s… not around, is he?”

Meg shrugged. “Hard to tell with the Spirit of Chaos. Unpredictability is kinda his thing.” Though he better be here if something happens. Fortunately, that was looking less likely by the minute.

Sophie had a nervous smile at that, but quickly concluded Discord wasn’t around—he certainly wasn’t visible. She started to wander about the plaza, again staring at the surrounding attractions. “Would it be okay if we took footage of this place? I didn’t have the opportunity before, when Twilight vetted us.”

Meg smiled. “Quite honestly, I suspect nothing would make him happier.”

A nod in response. “After the interview, then, time permitting.”

Camera setup continued, the operator doing whatever it was he did to ensure broadcast-quality picture and sound. While that was going on, Sophie finally looked up into the sky and saw an airship floating overhead. “Could we film up there too?” she asked.

Meg doubted Twilight would object, but more practical concerns did present themselves. “I don’t have any way of getting you up there, and the ship can’t land here.”

Sophie looked her in the eyes. “Then how would you get up there?”

“I can fly—as a pony?”

Her mouth made a silent “oh.”

Though Meg quickly realized she probably could get them up there, using her telekinesis. Maybe. That was more than she had ever lifted before. Best not to make the attempt. Though there’s Discord… Nope, not the best idea. Besides, there was hardly a need to give a tour of the ship.

On second thought, maybe she ought to have had the Zephyr hover far enough away so as to be unseen. It wasn’t as if she couldn’t fly a mile or two. Regardless, the theme park, that they could tour.

Her currently human eyes rested on the camera. Connected by a cable running back through the portal. Was that even an option? Maybe they had other portable cameras available back in the van. They had to have come in a van, right?

The camera operator came to her and attached a mic, then put on a pair of headphones.. “Please count to three,” he instructed.

“One two three?”

He gave a thumbs up and returned to the camera.

“We’ve got a few more minutes,” Sophie said. “We might as well take our seats.” Not waiting for a response, she headed towards one. Meg went to the other, and they both sat down.

Meg looked at the camera, butterflies starting to swarm in her stomach. She looked back at her interviewer, who was studying the flowers next to her. With her head turned that way, it made an earpiece quite visible.

“Are those colors shifting?” she abruptly said.

“It’s what they do,” Meg replied, “in this plaza. Just don’t eat the flowers.”

Sophie’s head jerked back to Meg.

“Ponies eat flowers, and these flowers…” Sophie was staring at her. “Never mind. Not really relevant for us.”

“Something something Discord?”

“Basically, yeah.”

She looked around again. “He’s not going to interrupt the interview, is he?”

Meg shrugged. “I asked him not to, and he understands the importance of this to me.”

“And he respects your wishes?”

And still the interview hadn’t started. “Sometimes?”

“I guess… that’ll have to suffice.”

Meg shrugged again.

Sophie suddenly stared at infinity. “Thirty second warning,” she said.

This is it.

The seconds passed lethargically.

Meg almost wished this had been a ploy to capture her. That might have been less stressful.

“Ten seconds.”

She could still fly away.

Sophie held up a hand at Meg with all five fingers extended. Then four fingers. Three fingers. She dropped her hand and looked into the camera bearing a huge smile.

Two seconds to go.

One second.

“We are coming to you live from Equestria. I am your host, Sophia Henshaw, and I will be talking to Meg Coleman, someone who by now hardly needs an introduction.” She turned to Meg. “Why don’t we start with this location that you’ve picked for us? It is not what one would normally think of when thinking of Equestria.”

One could hardly ask for a softer question. “Maybe not yet,” Meg began. “We are inside a new theme park created by the Spirit of Chaos himself, Discord. It’s not currently open to the public, but when it does open it’ll be open to both humans and ponies. We’re planning on holding our next brony convention here, with Discord being one of the confirmed Guests of Honor.” There, that’ll make Andrew’s day.

Sophie turned back to the camera. “What you’re seeing now is footage we took only minutes ago of the surrounding… attractions, I guess? I swear it’s all real. Even the flowering plants behind us… let’s just say keep an eye on them.”

They did that? Meg hadn’t noticed. Must’ve happened while Sophie had her attention.

“The last few times you’ve been seen, you have been a pony. Is there a reason you’re here today as a human?”

An invitation to repeat the answer she had already told her—privately? “To show that I can? I have not discarded my humanity, despite what some believe.”

“You could change into a pony and back to a human right now?”

“In Equestria, yes. Transformations like that are forbidden by the laws of physics in our universe.” It was no accident she used the word our.

“Could you give us a demonstration?”

The pendant was hanging from her neck; that wasn’t the problem. The mic, on the other hand… it was attached to her clothing, and that went who knew where when she went equine. It would come back, of course…

Meg looked up at nothing in particular. A little chaotic intervention wouldn’t hurt right about now.

She stood up and backed away from the furniture. It’ll be fine; she wouldn’t have to talk as a pony, and it’d be for a few seconds anyway.

Her hand reached up to squeeze the pendant, but before it got very far it dropped. No need to let the world know how she did it. With her magic she gave it a squeeze.

Sophie stared at her, mouth open.

A quick look showed the mic was now clipped to the hairs of her coat. Thanks, Discord. Alas, she had nothing clever to say, so she gave the pendant another magical squeeze and returned to her seat. The mic survived the second transformation.

“It’s nice having wings,” she said, “but there’s no substitute for hands where keyboards are concerned.”

Sophie had managed to regain her composure. “You have more than wings now.”

Somehow Meg knew this was leading to the next topic. “Still learning how to use a horn. Maybe some day, but for now I’m a far faster typer with hands.”

“Yet you have acquired a horn, nonetheless, and you became an alicorn. ‘Ascended,’ I believe is the term. There is a lot of speculation, as I’m sure you’re aware, as to how that came about or what it means.”

“Oh I’m aware alright.” Here it comes…

“Why don’t you tell us in your own words, then?”

As if it would change many minds! But, after all, it was why she was here. “As to the ‘how,’ I’m not sure.” She shrugged. “My eyes were closed at the time. I was about to do something that by all rights ought to have killed me, but it had to be done because the past could not be altered. And though I had reason to believe I would survive, I… just didn’t know how. And when I did that something… well… I found myself in the same place Twilight went to when she ascended. That’s the last thing I expected—I didn’t expect anything! As for what it means, I’m still figuring that out.”

“Was Princess Celestia there to ascend you?”

Meg knew where that question was going; at least it spared her from having to explain her reasons for not expecting to die. “She showed up a while after I arrived, but—and I want to make this clear—she did not ascend me. I don’t know who—or what—did the ascension, but it wasn’t her. She was there only to provide guidance and support. And give me a ride out of there once it was over, because I sure had no idea how to get out of that realm.”

“There are those who say she rewarded you for creating the anomaly, for creating an existential threat to humanity.”

And there it was. “I did not acquire that warehouse. I did not staff it with people, never mind people fooling around with dangerous magics they did not understand. If Twilight and I had not gone back in time to that event, those people would have pressed the button anyway—and without the corrective spell Twilight put into place, the Earth would’ve been destroyed in seconds. If I truly was ‘rewarded,’ it was for saving the entire planet!”

“Why not prevent the button from being pressed at all?”

“Because the anomaly happened. That past cannot be changed. We made the past happen the way it’d always happened. Predestination paradox and all that.”

“Why would that be the past, and not a past in which the button was never pressed?”

Meg exhaled. “I don’t know. I really don’t. Sure, I could talk about superpositions and wave function collapses, but that just means it’s due to random chance. And that’s not a particularly satisfying answer, is it?” Not that the universe owes us satisfying answers.

“Senator Routledge has accused you of treason. Are you concerned?”

Meg snorted. “For saving the planet? Please.”

“But assume, for the sake of argument, you would be convicted. Would you take up President Tretyakov’s offer of sanctuary in Russia?”

“While the offer is generous, I don’t think that’ll be necessary. I could not help noticing that the senator has yet to produce two witnesses to my alleged crime, as required by the Constitution.”

“He did get a special counsel appointed to look into this.”

Meg nodded. “And that counsel is now in possession of all the paperwork and computers we were able to remove from that warehouse before it imploded. I’m not the one who should be losing sleep over that.”

“Who should be losing sleep?”

Meg smiled. “Not me.”

Sophie gave her a polite smile in return. “Let’s go back to your ascension. Do you feel rewarded?”

Do I? “Is it nice being an alicorn? Of course it is. Having telekinesis is great, and eventually I’ll be proficient at casting spells—let’s just say I have a great tutor. And earth pony strength and stamina is part of the package too.” She lifted her hands in frustration, then dropped them. “It doesn’t solve any of my problems, though. If anything, it might actually create more problems for me back on Earth.”

“Like being a princess now?”

Meg’s eyes hardened. “I am not a princess.” How many people believed that she was? Then again, too many ponies also seem to believe it too.

“So you’re the first non-princess alicorn?”

“It’s not like it’s an actual law or something.” I really shouldn’t let her get under my skin like that.

“You’re not immortal, then?”

“That…” Shit. She had to go there. Tempting as it was to give a non-answer, that wouldn’t fool anyone. Like it or not, this was her new normal. Time to accept it. “So far as I know, I won’t age.”

“So far as you remain an alicorn, that is.”

Her future human self hadn’t aged a day. “I don’t think it—”

A commotion from the other side of the portal stole her attention. A half-dozen persons, blacked out all ninja-like, had barged into the room, aiming about decidedly non-ninja-like guns. “Remain on the air,” one said, pointing his gun at the operator of the broadcasting equipment.

Two of them stayed by the door. The remaining three waltzed through the portal without a care and over to Sophie and Meg.

A familiar voice spoke: “Meg Coleman. You are guilty of the capital crime of treason against humanity. Sentence shall be carried out.”

“You really are a moron, Jackson, aren’t you?”

Before Meg could finished that sentence, Jackson had aimed his gun and pulled the trigger. A click, then from the barrel a flag emerged, upon which was a single word: bang.

The other two “ninjas” quickly did likewise; their gun flags read you’re and dead.

Assured that Discord was still around, Meg stood up and crossed the short distance to Jackson, who was oddly squirming. More Discord? Using her telekinesis, she yanked the masks off Jackson and his two companions—let the viewers assume Discord had done that. A quick look showed that the camera was on her. The three back on Earth looked on in shock.

“Attempted murder is frowned upon in Equestria, as you can guess, and you will stand trial for that. But…” Meg threw him an evil smile. “Did you know that Discord has royal permission to ‘have fun’ with any who make serious trouble within his theme park?” Jackson hadn’t said a word, and from the looks of it not from a lack of trying. “It appears the fun has already started.”

“Indeed it has!”

Discord appeared next to the desperately squirming Jackson, the draconequus dressed as a police officer. A pair of handcuffs linked one of Jackson’s hands to Discord’s lion paw. Two more linked his paw to the other two perpetrators, their chains conveniently long enough to span the distance and no longer.

Meg fought the urge to point out that wasn’t quite how handcuffs were used. Why bother? It was all for show anyway. “When you get bored of them, could you please hand them off to the Royal Guard in Canterlot and inform Princess Celestia or Princess Luna?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he scoffed. “I’ll dump them on Sunbutt herself.” He grew excited. “It’ll make her day!”

He and his prisoners vanished.

How literally does he intend to “dump” them?

Meg sighed. Not her problem.

Looking back at the portal, she noted the other three were gone. They had been perfectly safe from Discord, so long as they stayed on that side of the portal, but would they know that? Or maybe they were more concerned about the Feds; no doubt they were watching too. Though how had Jackson identified the portal’s location so fast? Had he already known, perhaps learned from an observer—Routledge’s observer even? She’d suggest that to the authorities when the time came.

She went back to her seat. “Are we still on the air?” she asked Sophie.

“Y-yes?”

“Good.” Meg addressed the camera. “Don’t worry, everyone, they’ll be fine. That royal permission comes with restrictions. Regardless. To anyone who plans on causing trouble at our upcoming convention, I have this message for you: Discord will welcome you—personally.”

She let that sink in for a moment.

Sophie broke the silence. “Wasn’t that one of the Tartarus Five?”

Meg sat down. “Two of them, actually. At least two. I’m sure Princess Celestia will be overjoyed to meet them again.”

“Does… this sort of stuff happen to you often?”

Meg didn’t respond for a moment. “More often than I’d like. What I miss most is normalcy, to be able to live the life I once had.” But it was time to admit it. “That won’t happen, of course. Yet is it asking so much to walk the streets back on Earth without being harassed, arrested, my home overrun, my life threatened… whatever? I’m not living my life in Equestria now because I’ve forsaken humanity.”

“Even though you have to put up with Discord?”

Meg shrugged. “Sure, he can be annoying, but I get along well enough with him.”

“And it’s fair to point out he just saved your life, correct? I’m assuming those weren’t prop guns.”

“Oh yeah, that was Discord, no question about it.”

“And he’s crucial to eliminating that anomaly, correct?”

“Yes, he is. A little appreciation for that, quite frankly, would go a long way.” Meg waved her hand at the theme park around them. “Pay a visit to Discordland when it opens. Experience and enjoy chaos in a non-threatening environment. It would mean a lot to him.” Meg leaned forward. “He won’t even charge admission.”

That elicited a small giggle. “I doubt he has much use for money.”

“He most certainly does not.”

“Speaking of the anomaly, any idea when will be the next attempt to get rid of it?”

“Soon, I hope, days not weeks. Twilight is right now preparing.”

“Could you explain why Discord needs to do what he did that last time? I assume he’ll need to do it again.”

How to explain it without going over everyone’s heads? “The spell to eliminate that anomaly violates conservation of energy. It won’t work unless the Earth is displaced from its universe just a teensy bit, so that the laws of physics are malleable just like they are here in Equestria. Only Discord can do that, and even for him it’s extremely difficult. It might take longer than he can hold it. But even if that should happen, the anomaly would still shrink a lot, and we just repeat the process until it’s gone.”

“All we can ask is for a heads-up so that we can be there to cover it live.” Sophie turned toward the camera. “And that concludes our interview, live from Equestria!”

She smiled at the camera for several seconds. “And, we’re clear. Give us a few minutes to get a portable camera and we’ll do the tour.” The tripod-mounted camera was already being carried away.

“Weeeell,” Meg said as she looked around, “I’m not the person to give that tour, and Discord—”

“I’d be happy to!”

Meg spun around. “Bored with them already?”

Discord rolled his eyes. “No fun at all. Just kept squealing like the rats they were about doing what needed to be done to save the world from the likes of… well, me.” He waved a dismissive paw. “I dumped them on Sunbutt like I said I would.”

Sophie looked at the retreating camera in regret. “Could we, uh, have a chance to interview them?”

“I’ll enquire,” Meg replied, and to Discord she asked, “Did you dumped them on her before or after restoring their human forms?”

He crossed his arms. “Before. Satisfied?”

Sophie looked back and forth between them. “Wait. You mean… literally?”

“Welcome to Equestria,” was all Meg could say. “I better get back there.”

“Allow me.” Discord snapped his talons.

Meg found herself back on the Zephyr, and looking out the window she saw Canterlot clinging to the mountainside below her. “Thanks?”

Twilight teleported to the dungeons, the three prisoners accompanying her. A Royal Guard noted her arrival and approached her, bowing upon reaching her. “Take custody of these three,” Twilight commanded.

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Another guard joined the first, and the two led the strangely acquiescent prisoners away.

What did Discord do to them? Sure, she knew they had been turned into rats. That much had been obvious when the three had fallen out of nowhere to land on top of Celestia. Twilight had been more shocked by that than Celestia herself, somehow. Discord had appeared seconds later, guffawing, and changed them back to humans. She thought Celestia was more bothered by who the humans turned out to be than by the rats they had been.

Discord had then provided a recap of what had happened. Could they really be that stupid? And on live TV, no less?

Twilight had right away volunteered to take them to the dungeons. The less time Jackson was in that room with Celestia, the better.

Now that they had been dealt with, she returned to her mentor’s private tea room. Discord was gone, big surprise—and Celestia too?—but Meg was there? “How…?”

“Discord teleported me and the ship back here—as a favor, I guess?. The captain… wasn’t amused.”

No, he wouldn’t. “I just put the prisoners in the dungeons.”

“I know; Celestia told me what happened, before she left. Would it be okay for CNN to interview them? They expressed an interest. He, uh, came back after ‘dumping’ them on you—by the way, he kinda sorta said what he was going to do with them on live TV—and right now he’s giving a tour of his theme park.”

“He did?” Twilight would have to watch that herself. “Wait. Did he mention turning them to rats on live TV too?”

Meg shook her head. “No, just words that could be taken as a metaphor instead of literally.”

Twilight thought about it. If it got out they had been turned to rats… That might not go over so well.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Meg said.

“Yeah.” They were behaving oddly subdued. “I think I’ll leave them alone for a while, let them recover from their experience, then have a talk with them. After that I’ll decide whether to permit the interview.”

Meg shrugged. “Works for me. When do we get rid of the anomaly? They want a heads-up on that too, so they could cover it live.”

They do, do they? Twilight was tempted to keep them in the dark, so they wouldn’t cover it live, but it was probably a lost cause. It wasn’t as if there weren’t media permanently stationed at the anomaly.

“There are two items that need to be taken care of first,” Twilight finally said. “First, we need to finish the simulations so we know whether we have to dispel the time dilation spell. And second…”

“Let me guess,” Meg said. “Discord’s lack of a schedule.”

37. Discordian Encounters

A search of contemporaneous news turned up nothing; they had not misremembered. No one had disappeared at that first-ever convention held in Discord’s then-new theme park. Even the inevitable trouble makers who had been “rewarded” with his personal attention had been returned in due time, physically intact.

Twilight closed the lid to her laptop. “Maybe they would all be returned to the convention, as humans, after a few decades? Enough to get a population of native ponies started?”

Time travel would allow that, but… “Wouldn’t they all be a few decades older? Even with rejuvenation magic, could they all truly return to their original lives as if those decades had never happened? Not breathe a word of what they had experienced? Because, if that is what had happened, not a single one had broken their silence over the remaining decades of their lives. That’s hard to believe.”

“Well, we must have done it somehow!”

“I know, I know. And it explains so much, like how ponies were speaking English centuries before there even was an England. Just need a spell to prevent the language from drifting over time.”

“And pony mitochondrial DNA is identical to that of humans. But that doesn’t give us a clue as to how we pulled it off!”

A flash of light caught their attention.

“Allow me to offer a suggestion,” Discord said. He then added, in a grumble, “Not that sis gave me a choice.”

Sunset Shimmer clicked on the start button. “So… as you can see… it’ll work if we leave the time dilation in place, but…”

Twilight grimaced. “But it’ll take years for the corrective spell to eliminate the anomaly. And Discord can maintain the displacement for only minutes.” Even if Discord could maintain it indefinitely, the Royal Guards couldn’t hold position forever and the humans wouldn’t put up with displacement for that long either.

But to ask the guards to hold position against the powerful winds that would result from the removal of the time dilation spell… They hadn’t trained for that. It wasn’t practical to recreate that environment!

Maybe partially lift the time dilation?

She shook her head. “We need a different solution. If we removed enough of the time dilation for the job to finish in even hours instead of years…”

Sunset nodded. “There’d be so little left it wouldn’t make a difference.”

Twilight stepped back from the workstation and began to pace around the cavern, deserted this early in the morning apart from the two of them. “We need a way to anchor each pegasus at a specific location, immovable by fierce winds. Sort of like how Canterlot…”

“Is anchored to the mountain,” Sunset said, completing the sentence. “That spell violates conservation of momentum, but…”

“But that’s not a problem while their world is displaced.” The spell anchored the position of one mass to another, but it didn’t transfer any force between the two masses. The winds would blow against the pegasi, but they wouldn’t budge, and the momentum lost by the wind was just… lost. “So. The guards get into position, activate the anchoring spell, then we undo the time dilation on the anomaly, the guards zap it, and when the displacement ends the anchoring spell will fail.” Twilight look expectantly at Sunset. “Am I missing anything?”

“Do we need to anchor the guards?” Sunset asked. “Why not just anchor the spell casting devices. Once they start firing, they can fly away, out of harm’s way.”

Twilight thought it over, then shook her head. “When the anchoring spell fails, they’ll fall far to the ground and possibly rupture, spreading uranium and their fission byproducts around.”

“Yeah, good point. And what would shut off their magic beams? No, stick with anchoring the guards.”

“Okay. Then we’ll need to prepare enchantments for each and every Royal Guard—”

“Consider it taken care off,” declared Discord.

Twilight spun around at the unexpected voice. The draconequus was standing in the middle of the cavern, fingering through an absurdly thick, loose leaf notebook. “Taken care of… how?”

Discord continued flipping to random pages. “Once I’ve completed the displacement, I’ll anchor them all in place.” He looked down at Twilight, still turning thick sheafs of pages one way then the other. “Make sure they’re in position before that happens.”

Twilight didn’t have a better plan. “Sure, works for me.” Still more random page turning. “What are you doing?”

“Finding a free slot in my outrageously busy schedule, naturally!”

She blinked. That notebook looked thick enough to cover centuries.

“Uh…” Sunset said, no doubt thinking the same thing. “We kind of need this done like real soon?”

A talon slammed down on a page. “There! Tomorrow morning, nine forty-one A.M.”

Meg was prepared for the fallout from her interview, or so she thought. Sure, there were the tirades over her “treasonous” escapades; her explanations, as expected, had changed few minds. The latest insult was the lack of due process for her alleged murderers—some actually claimed the guns had always been joke guns and that there had been no assassination attempt! Just an admittedly somewhat tasteless exercise of First Amendment free speech that Equestria’s absolute monarchy clearly rejects. And when would everyone find out what had happened to those innocent protesters after they had been taken away by Discord?

But this, however, she was not prepared for.

“So you got your own religion now,” her brother observed.

On the TV in front of them, CNN was interviewing self-described “Harmonists” who believed that Meg was… some kind of messiah? Regardless, she was obviously favored by Equestria’s Harmony, who blessed her with ascension.

“You could try denying you’re a messiah,” Steve said.

Matt smirked and solemnly stated, “Only the true messiah would deny her divinity.”

Meg grimaced. That was so much funnier when it was just a line in a movie. “I’ll do my best not to lose a shoe.” That crowd probably would worship one of her horseshoes as a holy relic. If she had any horseshoes. Which she did not.

At least it was past Susie’s bedtime, so her niece was spared this nonsense.

“CNN Breaking News. We have just learned there will be another attempt to eliminate the anomaly tomorrow morning at around nine thirty Pacific time.”

Meg hit the mute button on the remote—without using one of her human hands. “Guess it’s official, then.”

Lori rushed into the room. “Does that mean more of that weird sky stuff?”

“It sure does,” Steve said. “And this time, scientists the world over got an advanced warning.”

Jackson was lying on a bed in his cell. Twilight approached, alone, unaccompanied by any guards. He was awake, fortunately, but seemingly unaware of her presence. Or just pretending? She stood in front of the bars, observing him. Probably not. Had his Discord encounter messed him up that badly?

Twilight cleared her throat. That got him to look in her direction, but quickly he resumed his former state. “I’ve had encounters with Discord too. Before he was reformed. I can lend a sympathetic ear.”

It took more than a few seconds, but finally, lethargically, he moved to a sitting position. His hollow eyes just stared at her. Finally he spoke. “I guess you’re made of sterner stuff than me.”

“What did he do to you? Besides turn you into rats, I mean.” Discord hadn’t volunteered that information. There were rules, after all; had he taken it too far?

A different prisoner answered. “He put us in mazes, made us look for the cheese reward.”

Twilight walked over to him. “That’s all?”

“It was a big maze. And that cheese smelled… it was irresistible. And every time I was closing in on it, the fucking maze would change! And during it all, Discord loomed above us, in a lab coat, watching, taking notes on a clipboard. We pleaded, begged, anything to put an end to it.”

“Until he got bored with our complaining,” Jackson chimed in. “I guess.”

Twilight would have happily taken that over what Discord had actually done to herself and her friends. Yet even Fluttershy had recovered far faster than these three! “I’ll see about adjusting the rules concerning troublemakers.” It was certainly possible that Element bearers truly were made of “sterner stuff.”

“Look,” she said, “the reason I’m here is to inform you all that CNN wishes to interview you. Are you up to it?”

There was no response.

“It doesn’t have to be right away. You can have time to… recover first.”

Though sooner would be better than later. The longer the human realm went without any real evidence that they were alright… Not that those three were looking “alright.”

“I’ll do it.”

It had been the third one who had spoken, the one who had yet to do so. Twilight went over to him. “When?”

“Are we to be put on trial for attempted murder?”

“That is the plan.” No point denying it; it was obvious enough.

“I’m willing to throw Routledge under the bus. Will that be taken into consideration?”

I’ll assume that was a figure of speech. If a rather unpleasant one. Twilight couldn’t help but notice the other two had suddenly taken a strong interest in this particular conversation. Jackson was clearly unhappy, but remained silent. “I believe it can be—if you can provide hard evidence against the senator.” Could she believe them?

“Is what Meg said in that interview—before we, uh, interrupted—true? That everything in that warehouse was saved and handed over to the feds?”

This was getting interesting. “Yes, it’s true. I personally brought back everything we could gather and hoofed it over to lawyers for the special counsel.”

He looked away in thought for a moment. “Then they’ll find letters from the senator with instructions concerning a certain kidnap victim who was held at the warehouse.”

“You mean Meg, right?”

A nod.

“That is helpful, it is true, but the special counsel would find those letters on their own, would they not?”

“Obviously,” he conceded. “Maybe they already have. But what they won’t do is publicly say anything about it, not for a long, long time. I am willing to mention it on CNN, right now. Come completely clean.” He looked across to Jackson on the other side. “Sorry, boss, but even you can no longer deny things were not as we were led to believe.”

Jackson took a while to respond. “What do you think that would accomplish?” he carefully asked. “Say by some miracle we’re let off with a stern warning and sent home. What do you think awaits us there, if you went through with this?”

“Would it be any worse than being locked up here forever?” he said equally carefully. “Where Discord can pay us a visit whenever he damn well pleases? I say give ’em what they want.”

Jackson laid there, motionless. Twilight was about to give up and leave, when he sat up and looked her in the eyes. “We’ll come clean to CNN or to any other news organization that’s interested.”

“Just think about it, okay?” Andrew ended the call.

Meg practically threw her phone back into her purse.

“What’s wrong?” Steve asked. Matt and Lori looked on.

“My so-called ‘worshipers.’ They want me to address them at the upcoming convention. Andrew, who never encountered an attendance booster he didn’t like, wants me to oblige.”

Matt shook his head. “With you, if it’s not one thing, it’s another.”

“Not helping.”

He threw up his hands in self-defense.

Lori pressed the remote to resume Sophie’s exploration of Discordland on CNN. The camera was looking up at an elevated track, on which smallish open-air pods every now and then trundled by. All unoccupied, of course. “Can’t wait until Susie demands we take her there.”

Discord’s voice was heard off camera. “And this is the Indeterminate Person Mover.”

“Indeterminate?” asked Sophie’s voice.

The camera panned down to the human and draconequus. “While a pod is in motion, the species of the riders are indeterminate, randomly changing every so often. One minute you are a human, then you’re a griffon, or a pony, or a dragon, or a minotaur, or a—”

“What will you be when the pod stops moving?”

“Why, back to your original species, naturally—though I make no promises if one should exit the pod while it is in motion. That is strongly discouraged.” Discord started walking. “Now over there is the Everfree Cruise…”

The phone was ringing again. Lori hit the pause button as Meg fished her phone back out of her purse. “It better not be him again,” she muttered. A quick glance revealed an unlisted number, though one known to her. “Hello, Twilight.”

“Sorry if I’m disturbing you—”

“No, no it’s fine. I assume it’s important. Something to do with the anomaly?”

“Actually, no. I just came back from your attackers. They’re willing to spill the beans on Routledge to CNN, but only if we agree to return them to your realm. Are you willing to not press charges against them here in Equestria?”

Meg couldn’t believe her ears. “This… isn’t some prank Dash or Pinkie put you up to?”

Steve was about to say something but Meg savagely waved him off.

“No, I’m deadly serious. Turns out their Discord experience had left its mark on them. Also, get this: they claim the records we got from the warehouse implicate Routledge concerning your kidnapping, and they’re willing to say that on CNN now, not whenever the special counsel gets around to it.”

Implicate how, exactly? How could the senator have known she would be in her office? In fact, she wasn’t! Or rather, it was her future self who had been there; she was supposed to be on vacation. Or maybe it was a contingency plan? Or Jackson took the initiative, and Routledge—

The details didn’t really matter. “Assuming they’re not playing us for fools, you have my blessing.”

The phone returned absentmindedly to her purse and she turned to the others. “You’ll never believe this.”

A steady breeze ruffled Twilight’s mane as she gazed upon the anomaly. The bubble of distortion dominated the view, despite being around a thousand feet away. It had grown to about a third of a mile in diameter. Not much was intact between here and there. The major interstate running through the town had finally been taken out; the time dilution spell had come too late to save it. It’ll grow another sixty feet or so by tomorrow morning.

She stood inside an expansive circle of concrete barriers, located in the parking lot of a strip mall; for now, only a few federal agents and their cars were outside that circle. Tomorrow, the agents will be out in force to discourage would-be… tourists. Not that there ought to be many of those; mandatory evacuations were already in effect, due to the expected resumption of hurricane force winds.

“Looks good.” The alicorn nodded in approval to Special Agent MacAuley, who was standing next to her.

“By the way,” he said, “remember that drone that attacked you two weeks ago?”

She had practically forgotten about it, what with all that’s happened since then. “Yeah?”

“Its operator has been arrested. No connection to any organization we could determine. Probably an isolated case.”

Isolated, maybe, but how many other such “isolated” cases might there be? “Thanks for resolving that.”

“Just doing my job. Now let’s see how accurate those coordinates were.”

Twilight retrieved her phone from a saddlebag and called Sunset. “Open the portal,” she said.

Both held their breath. It took time, of course, for Sunset to go through the mirror into the portal control room, but it wasn’t long before the portal appeared, oriented to be parallel to the never-ending flow of air. Through it could be seen rusting railroad tracks and, a few dozen feet away, the entrance to the mine in which the converted cavern resided, and through that entrance the mountains on the other side of the unoccupied valley. “Perfect.” The Royal Guards could easily fly straight through.

MacAuley stepped up to the portal. “So that’s Equestria?” Long shadows drenched the far side.

“An abandoned part of it,” she replied. It was close enough to the truth. “You can step through if you want, but there isn’t much to see.”

He turned away. “I’ll pass, if it’s all the same.”

Sunset’s voice came from the phone. “Is it positioned correctly?”

“It is. You can close it now.”

“Will do.”

An SUV raced towards them. The agents reacted, pulling out their guns. The vehicle came to a sharp halt right at the barriers. By luck or intent, it was positioned to face the open portal. The door opened, and out of it came the former Lord Tirek, eyes fixated on the portal. He just stood there, arms resting on the top of the car’s door, making no move to come closer.

“It’s okay,” Twilight shouted. “I’ll handle this.”

The portal vanished. The agents lowered their guns, but did not re-holster them.

Twilight walked over. “Any particular reason for this visit, Andy?”

Andy’s eyes remained fixed on where the portal had been as he stepped around the vehicle’s door and came to the barrier. “I’d never thought I’d see Equestria again—with my own eyes, that is.”

“Not the most exciting part of Equestria,” Twilight admitted.

A slow exhale. “Still better than nothing.”

“You haven’t exactly answered my question.” He obviously had no intention of returning, not if Discord had anything to say about that—and he did.

His eyes finally unfixed themselves and dropped down to look at the alicorn. “Once this barrier went up, it wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on. I figured you’d be here.”

Twilight quirked an eyebrow. “So here I am. Please make it quick, because I have a lot to do to prepare for tomorrow.”

His face broke out in a smile. “So do I, believe it or not. I’ll be part of CNN’s team covering the action tomorrow. Just wanted to give you a heads-up.” He pointed up at the sky. “There’s a drone up there watching us, by the way.”

She looked up in surprise. “Okay… I guess? Are we live?” That drone must be high; now that she listened for it, she could barely hear it over the background noise.

He shook his head. “No. Not to say some of the footage won’t be used, but it’s not live. And it’s way up there, so it can’t really zoom in on us.”

His smile became just a teensy bit less friendly. “But now that I have your attention…”

Oh dear. Now what?

“I understand that some of my former cell-mates from Tartarus might be on their way back there. Mind giving me an exclusive as to what will happen to them?” He smirked. “Assuming they survived Discord, of course.”

“They survived,” she declared. “However, if it’s ‘breaking news’ you want, then here’s a doozy: they want to be interviewed by CNN. I won’t spoil what they have to say, but let’s just say I’m happy to facilitate the interview.” She returned the smirk. “And I don’t think they’ll be returning to Tartarus.”

“Really?” He shook his head. “I almost wish I could interview them myself, but…?”

“It would have to take place in Equestria.”

“Ah well. I’ll pass on the word.” He turned back to his car and opened the door, but paused before getting in. “You’re welcome to visit us in our booth tomorrow, if you should feel inclined to give the world an update on your progress.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” And I’ll keep Discord away. Though it was unlikely the draconequus would have the luxury of making trouble at CNN’s booth, given how taxing the displacement process was for him.

The car’s engine started. Twilight watched as it backed up, managed to turn around, and drove off. Only then did it strike her. He learned how to drive a car? She herself had yet to do so, not that she’d had any need for it.

MacAuley walked over to her. “Not that it’s any of my business, but attempted murderers aren’t sent to Tartarus?”

“Actually, no.” Tartarus was for prisoners whose magic was too strong to be imprisoned any other way. The only reason those humans were ever put there was because they called Serrell and Twilight’s bluff. She couldn’t say that, obviously, so instead she went with, “It’ll become clear, once they appear on CNN.”

Under the overcast sky, Meg made herself as comfortable as she could on the folding metal chair. It seemed better than the alternative, which was to sit on a concrete barrier. At least she was human. That barrier was now surrounded by cars, and on the far side of those cars were the agents providing operational security. MacAuley sat in the chair next to her, patiently waiting.

All that security didn’t keep the media out. A compromise had been reached in which one camera was permitted within the circle, to capture for posterity what was shortly to happen. Meg’s attention was split between where the portal would appear, the darker than usual anomaly—no doubt due to the lack of sun—and her phone.

That phone was streaming video from CNN. Twilight hadn’t been kidding; there was Andy sitting next to Anderson Cooper. Currently they were chatting about the upcoming interview with her would-be assassins. No time had been lost in scheduling it. I wonder if Routledge is losing any sleep.

A text message from Twilight. Meg stood up. “Hey, everyone, the portal will be opening momentarily!”

The camera operator came alive, pointing the camera at where the portal should appear. MacAuley himself stood up. Word of her announcement had reached the CNN booth, and the streaming video now carried a live feed from the nearby camera.

The entire world must be holding its breath.

After a seeming eternity, which couldn’t have been more than a dozen seconds, the portal opened. An all-too-familiar tunnel could be seen, and in that tunnel were dozens of pegasi wearing contraptions on their backs on top of their usual Royal Guard attire.

One by one they took to the air and flew through the portal and up into the sky. They were supposed to gather on the roof of the mall, where Twilight was be waiting for them.

The annoying sound of a drone grew louder. The guards had been warned about that and to avoid them. Meg looked down at her phone, and sure enough there was the feed from the drone, showing the guards assembling in front of their princess.

“Excuse me, Meg?”

She looked up. It was the camera operator. She noted the camera was not pointing at her. “Yes?”

“Would it be okay if I went through the portal and took some footage?”

Meg looked through the portal and saw that four Royal Guards had remained behind, two pegasi and two unicorns; these were in their usual attire. Obviously they were there to secure the portal from their side. “Quite honestly I’m not the one to grant permission.”

MacAuley spoke up. “For what it’s worth, Twilight invited me to step through. I passed.”

“She did, did she?” Meg sighed, knowing that Twilight was preoccupied with other matters. I suppose it couldn’t hurt to ask them. She walked over to and through the portal; a unicorn stepped forward to meet her. “Any objections to a human journalist coming through to take pictures?”

“The princess has delegated authority to you in her absence.”

She did, did she? So it was up to her, then, after all. It’s just an entrance to an abandoned mine. “Then I am granting permission.”

The guard nodded in response.

Meg turned around and—she was on camera. She took a quick look down at her phone, still in her hand, and sighed. What can you do about it? After walking back through the portal, all too aware of the camera’s presence, she said, “You can take your footage. Just… don’t do anything to annoy the guards.”

The camera operator nodded and went to stand before the portal—but did not pass through.

Huh? She looked down at her phone, and sure enough that camera was live—again or still? In a not-so-small box in the corner was the feed from the drone. The pegasi were taking off, heading to their positions around the anomaly.

The shoulder-mounted camera had no cable. Guess we’ll see how far he can go before losing the feed. Then again, her phone hadn’t lost its signal during her brief foray into Equestria—and her husband’s magic only kicked in by invoking the return spell, which she hadn’t done.

Meg kept her eye on her phone. The camera went past the four guards, who stayed by the wall and out of the way. It went all the way to the ledge just outside the tunnel, where it took in the view of the surrounding valley. Then it panned to one side, where it paused at a carriage—obviously transportation for those two unicorns. Then it panned to the other side, taking in the decaying mining infrastructure.

During all this, Andy provided commentary, not that he had anything particularly useful to say. It wasn’t as if he had ever been there before. Well, he knew what the deal was with that pegasi-drawn carriage.

The alarm on her phone went off. It was 9:41am.

The displacement was to begin.

38. The Boss

“Clone them!?” Meg shouted.

“Are you serious?” Twilight demanded.

Discord shook his head in disbelief. “Have you forgotten already? The planet you are standing on is a clone of the Earth. Cloning a few hundred humans, even a few thousand, is child’s play in comparison.”

Meg gave the draconequus a pointed look. “Are you volunteering to do the cloning?”

“What about turning them into ponies?” Twilight added.

“Yes,” he first said to Meg, “as a matter of fact I am. No,” he then directed to Twilight, “you must do that. Only the Elements can make them magical creatures.”

“Right,” Meg said in realization, “like how I became magical.”

“But so many at once!”

“And who would agree to being cloned?”

Discord shrugged. “It’s part of the time loop according to Harmony. You’ll figure something out.” And with that he vanished.

A dim and deep red, a monochromatic world. Other colors came only from the portal, and even that was sparse due to the length of tunnel through which Equestrian sunlight had to pass. At least it answered the question of whether the portal would be displaced along with the Earth: it would appear that it did.

Just to be sure, Meg had one of the unicorn guards toss a small rock through the portal. For the sake of science, naturally. And science would record that it was unharmed by its journey. Just to be double sure, she tossed it back; there was no need to pollute the earthly parking lot with Equestrian rocks.

None of that had been captured on video. The camera operator was taking a break, on the assumption that nothing interesting was going to happen around the portal until after the operation completed. A safe assumption in Meg’s opinion, inter-dimensional rock tossing aside.

The ferocious wind blew. Meg looked up at the anomaly. The pegasi were all in place and presumably locked into position by Discord; Twilight wouldn’t have undone the temporal dilation spell otherwise. It wasn’t long before dozens of beams pierced the anomaly. She looked at her phone. The feed periodically switched amongst the multiple cameras set up around the anomaly.

“Meg, will you come with me, please?”

It was a woman in a pantsuit.

“And who might you be?” She had no intention of going anywhere. Special Agent MacAuley took notice of the new arrival, but did nothing more.

“Someone whose boss would like to speak with you.”

Meg returned her attention to her phone. “Then have your boss come here.”

She looked at MacAuley, uneasily. “A private conversion is desired.”

“I’m not in the mood for games.”

“This is no game.”

Meg turned to face her annoyer. “Could you at least give me a name?”

“You will recognize the individual in question.”

“Would I?” MacAuley asked.

Silence.

Fine, I’ll call her bluff. Meg stood up. “I’m going through that portal. Tell your boss to meet me there. I’ll be behind the portal, out of sight from this side, nice and private. Don’t worry about those Royal Guards; they’ll keep their distance, and they won’t blab to the media regardless. Better yet, I’ll have one of them cast a sonic barrier spell.” And if it turned out none of those unicorns knew such a spell, well, the “boss” didn’t need to know that. Quite honestly, what with this wind, no one would be able to eavesdrop anyway.

Meg took a few steps towards the portal, then stopped and looked back. “By the way, you are not invited; if you follow me into Equestria, I’ll have the guards detain you.” She resumed her trek to the portal, wondering if the “detain” part would deter the “boss.” No big loss if it did, as far as she was concerned.

Once in Equestria, she headed straight for the guards. “Would any of you happen to know a sonic barrier spell?”

The two unicorns looked at each other then back at Meg. Both shook their heads.

“That’s fine. I’d like one of you to pretend to cast that spell anyway.” She looked back at the portal. The mysterious visitor couldn’t be seen, not that that meant much what with the limited view through the portal this far from it. “I’m expecting someone to come through. I’ll be waiting behind the portal. Depending on how I react, be prepared to either pretend to cast a sonic barrier or detain my visitor.”

“Understood.”

“Also, I know you’ll be able to hear our conversation, but pretend you can’t.”

“Unless and until you need assistance from us.”

“You’ve read my mind.”

Meg turned around and walked back, but instead of going through the portal she went past it. She couldn’t help but notice it cast a long shadow down the tunnel. Well, duh. But what did the back of a portal look like? There wasn’t much light back here, but it still seemed like she could see something.

She cast a light spell, using a finger as a horn and pointing it at the portal’s backside. She saw herself. It was a perfect mirror. She decided not to touch it, though if it reflected light then it should be solid to the touch. But why take the chance?

She took a few steps back. So now what? Not seeing much else to do, she leaned against the tunnel wall and looked at her phone. Might as well see how the anomaly was doing.

No signal.

She looked to the backside of the portal. So much for that. The signal was going in the wrong direction. Some of it ought to be refracting around to her, but apparently not enough. Or was it her phone’s signal not refracting enough to get through the portal?

Either way the result was the same. How long do I wait? To pass the time she started a solitaire app.

Not many minutes as it turned out. She heard the footsteps first, not from sneakers or anything else comfortable but dress shoes. A purposeful confident gait. No doubt the “boss.” I can hear that? Maybe someone could eavesdrop—but not without being seen by the guards. She put away the phone and kept an eye out.

Those possibly expensive shoes stepped onto dirt.

“Meg’s behind the portal,” said a helpful guard. “I’ll set up a sonic barrier.”

A small grunt in acknowledgement. Definitely male.

After a few more steps the boss appeared—unfortunately backlit. Then approaching sounds of the unicorn guard’s hoof steps.

He took a few steps closer. “We appear to be at an impasse.”

The surprisingly agreeable voice left no doubt: Senator Routledge.

How desperate must he be? He willingly came into Equestria to meet her, where she held the advantage. The Royal Guard was right behind him.

“Are you proposing a solution?” she asked.

He looked back at the unicorn. “You may cast your sonic barrier.”

The guard looked to Meg.

“Put up the sonic barrier.”

The guard nodded and his horn lit up, almost painfully bright. Seconds later it faded. “It is done,” he said, then he walked back to rejoin the others.

“The barrier only works in one direction,” Meg explained. Even if the guard had kept his mouth shut—or worse, pretended to speak without making a sound—his hoof steps could still be heard.

“I guess I’ll have to take your word on that.” Routledge sighed. “Not that it makes much difference, I suppose.”

Meg stayed silent. Let the senator get the ball rolling.

“How can we arrive at a place where we can work together?”

Meg’s jaw dropped. “You have got to be kidding me!”

The senator put a tired palm to his forehead. “Meg, this is how the game is played. If you wish to be a player—”

“That was never my wish. I was forced into this ‘game,’ by the likes of people such as yourself. My life was destroyed, my niece was kidnapped, your henchmen tried to kill me! How could I possibly—” She couldn’t finish the sentence. It was too unreal.

He sighed. “I would think, by now, you would have stopped taking everything you hear from ‘your side’ at face value.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean? What did Serrell or his people ever lie about?

“Tell me what it would take,” he merely said, his voice devoid of emotion. “I’m listening.”

She still couldn’t wrap her mind around it. A glance found the guards where they should be, one of them looking in her direction. Their presence was comforting, even if—as she had to concede—she was in no danger. Unless, unable to take her out physically, he was trying to drive her insane.

“The impossible. Let’s start with getting my old human life back.”

A smile emerged. “It’d be hard for us to work together if you didn’t.”

“Don’t insult me. You called me a traitor. How do you take that back?”

Routledge sighed. “Easily. I was misinformed. New information has come to light. Certain people had deceived me.” He pointed at the backside of the portal. “Easier still, if that anomaly goes away. You can become a hero.”

Certain people… It clicked. “And what do you want in return?”

A chuckle. “You’re learning. Needless to say, we cannot work together if I am… sidelined. Those aforementioned individuals are about to be interviewed by CNN, after allegedly trying to kill you on live TV.”

“Allegedly?!”

“We have only your speculation that those three had arrived wielding real guns and not the prop guns we all saw.”

Meg glowered. “If they had arrived with prop guns, Discord would not have wasted his time with them.”

“Your faith in him is touching, but many do not share it.”

“Then what are you worried about? Sounds like there’s a good chance they’ll be set free.” No need to mention she wasn’t pressing charges anyway—if they threw their boss under the bus.

“Considering that you won’t be pressing charges, I should think so.” He grinned as her reaction. “Twilight mentioned that to Serrell, Serrell mentioned it to a few others, and, well, I am a well-connected person.”

Meg had the distinct impression she was attempting to play checkers against a chess master. “So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is what my ‘former henchmen,’ as you put it, intend to say. They place greater value in getting out of Equestria than in being truthful. What I am saying is, I’m onboard with them serving time for attempted murder in an Equestrian prison, unable to grant interviews.”

“I thought you just said—”

“I said many do not share it, but I could when it serves my interests to do so.”

But that would only buy him some time! Did he know what those three were claiming? He’s certainly implying that. What about those records from the warehouse that directly implicate him? Should she mention that? The interviews were already scheduled; cancelling them wouldn’t look good. Even if he could deliver on his end of the deal, could she trust him? Not that she had any love for Jackson and the others, but that wasn’t the point. How could she make a deal with the devil?

“What happens if I say ‘no deal.’”

He gave a tired sigh. “Perhaps ponies weren’t the existential threat to us after all, but even you cannot deny other threats exist. That Everfree Forest is full of them. Tirek and Discord were threats in the past, if not in the present. Chrysalis is still out there, right? Can you say that others we haven’t heard of—yet—do not exist?

“I’m trying to protect our world from those threats. Maybe I haven’t gone about it in the best way—okay, mistakes were made, but mistakes can be corrected. Furthermore, consider this: once we are positioned to defend ourselves against those threats, we could help Equestria defend against them too.”

Mistakes were made. So easy a brushoff of the anomaly and the hell she and her relatives had been put through. The town of Tracy may never recover from this devastation. How all that could be “corrected” was far from obvious.

He was sure talking a good game, but why now? Obviously because of the upcoming interviews. It reeked of desperation—though he was doing a damn good job of hiding it.

“Do you know, specifically, what your henchmen are going to say about you?”

“None of them have been in my employ for years, just so you know. But let me ask a different question: Do you believe what they plan to say is the truth?”

“What I believe doesn’t matter. The records from the warehouse will back them up.”

That elicited a smile. “Remember when you were asked ‘who should be losing sleep?’ and you answered ‘not me?’ I’m not losing sleep either.”

He had a damn good poker face, she had to give him credit for that. “You didn’t answer what would happen if I say ’no deal.’”

“I should think mutually assured destruction, or close enough.” He pulled a card out of his jacket and presented it. “Think it over, but do not take too long.”

Meg took it. A business card, with a phone number handwritten on the back.

“I look forward to hearing from you.”

He turned around and left.

Dozens of beams linked the Royal Guards to the shrinking anomaly. The simulations had said it would work, Twilight knew, but she also knew simulations weren’t always correct. She looked to the straining draconequus by her side on the rooftop. “Think you can last long enough?”

“Let’s… just say it’s looking promising.”

It would have to be good enough. Her attention returned to the anomaly, already half its original size. There was, as it had turned out, one thing they had overlooked. As the anomaly shrank, it descended, always remaining in contact with the ground. The top of it no longer extended above the gigantic pit it had carved out. The guards were adjusting their aim, well enough, to compensate.

With the reduction in size came an outsized reduction in wind. Astoundingly that came with a downside: A media drone was hovering nearby, watching them. Not really unexpected, of course.

What was unexpected was the pegasus flying toward her. That bucking dim red light made it hard to tell who it was. It couldn’t have been one of the guards, if only because Discord had locked them all in place. Her eyes tracked the mysterious visitor.

Soon enough it became clear: not a pegasus but an alicorn. It was Meg who came in for a landing, warily eyeing the drone as she did so. She made a point of facing away from it before she spoke, just loud enough to be heard over the diminished wind. “I know this is a bad time, but something big just happened. It can wait until we’re done here before discussing it, but you should know Routledge just paid me a visit, and… I don’t know what to think. But maybe we need to delay the interview with the prisoners.”

Huh? Twilight eyed the drone herself. This was not a conversation they could have right now, not without using privacy spells, and that would raise too many questions. “Okay, we’ll talk later.”

“Just giving you a heads-up. I’ll head on back to the portal.”

But she walked over to Discord. “How are you holding up?”

“Better when I had only one nanny,” he grunted out.

Meg rolled her eyes. “Sorry I asked,” she said, then flew off.

Nothing had changed at the portal, just MacAuley sitting in a folding chair staring at his phone. Meg came in for a landing in front of the portal, not sure what to do.

The FBI agent took notice of her arrival, looking slightly confused. “Don’t you have to go there to return to being human?”

She had gone equine before returning through the portal so she could fly to Twilight. Theoretically she could transform on this side of the portal, what with the Earth being displaced. That was the whole point of displacement, after all, to give magic full reign.

Instead for answering him with words, she gave her pendant a magic squeeze.

He grunted. “Guess not.”

She began walking to her own chair. “Not while we’re displaced, no.” And the magic it took hadn’t exhausted the plaid pill she had originally used to arrive on Earth.

“So who was the mysterious person you talked to?”

There was something off about how he’d asked that. “You don’t know?”

“He did hide his face.”

“Then… I guess I shouldn’t tell you.” Not before I decide what to do.

He gave her a considered look. “You didn’t have the guards over there detain him, so I guess that counts as permission to use the portal.”

“Yeah, that’s fair to say. If it makes you feel better, I just talked to Twilight about it.”

His attention returned to his phone. “Sure, let’s go with that. It’s above my pay grade for me to know that was Senator Routledge.”

Not above mine, unfortunately. And I don’t even have a pay grade. Meg got out her own phone, so she could resume watching CNN’s streaming video, but before she could resume it… “Is it my imagination… or has the wind reversed direction?”

“This is bad,” Twilight mumbled. “Really bad.”

The wind had more than diminished; it had reversed. The anomaly was expelling air, and at an alarmingly increasing rate. In hindsight it was so bucking obvious, but the simulations hadn’t been designed to consider the disposition of the anomaly’s contents. The interior volume of the anomaly had decreased—no, it couldn’t be that simple. By the time the average density of air inside the anomaly exceeded the density outside… Or maybe the rate of shrinkage is inversely proportional to…?

Whatever. Too late to correct the simulation, that’s for sure! But it didn’t matter, not really. The goal was to shrink the anomaly down to nothing, and it was now clear that everything it had “consumed” in the past two weeks was about to be regurgitated in mere minutes. With dozens of pegasi in the way and unable to move!

“Discord…”

“I know, and there’s not much I can do about it.”

“Can you release the guards once the wind gets too strong, to let them fly away?”

“Yes,” he squeezed out, “after I stop maintaining the displacement.”

The wind continued getting stronger. “That anchoring spell would fail anyway,” she noted, “once the displacement ends—though that would hold them in place for precious extra seconds.” Regardless, that meant the anomaly would still be around, if much smaller. She’d have to reapply the time dilation spell again, obviously. And then they’d have to come up with a different solution, one that took this complication into account.

“Hey guys.”

Meg had returned, and she was refolding her wings. Twilight shared her thoughts on the situation.

“Wait a minute.” Meg turned to the straining draconequus. “Once you stop maintaining the displacement, how long can you remain here?”

“Fifteen seconds, twenty tops.”

Twilight was catching on. “And during that time, is there anything you can do about the anomaly itself?”

“That… depends. On how small it gets—and how exhausted I get.”

That didn’t leave many options. “Then let’s keep shrinking it for as long as possible.” She eyed the closest pegasi. Too far away. “When you see me flying back here, release all the guards.”

“And stop the displacement, yada yada yada.” Discord grimaced. “The sooner, the better.”

Twilight launched into the air. She almost wished Rainbow Dash was here; quite honestly, she would be better suited for this task. The wind wasn’t too bad now—here—but that was going to change—and soon.

The media drone had gone away, Meg noticed, unable to handle the high winds. Perhaps the only silver lining to the situation. She could barely make out Twilight hanging around one of the pegasi.

A door slammed into a wall.

Meg turned around and spotted a news crew. She sighed. No, of course that drone would be replaced by something that could handle the winds. And if they could report live from a hurricane, this minor-in-comparison wind was not going to stop them. For now, minor in comparison, she reminded herself.

She needed to keep them away from Discord.

Meg walked over to them as they came towards her, meeting them halfway. Being a quadruped lower to the ground definitely had its advantages in high winds. The humans took advantage of her “little pony” stature by themselves getting onto their knees. One of them handed a microphone to her, and she took it in her magic.

“I’m sure you’re wondering about the wind,” she began, “so let’s start with that.” She got a nod in response. “It’s quite simple, really. As the anomaly shrinks, all the air it sucked in no longer fits, so it’s all coming back out.” Twilight had explained how that might not be strictly true, but it was true enough for television.

“How bad will it get?”

Meg stole a quick glance at the guards. “Bad enough we might be forced to abort. It depends on how much those Royal Guards can tolerate. But we’re looking at contingency plans.”

“Such as?”

“I’d… rather not say. There are too many unknowns at this time. Worst case scenario, we’ll have to try again later.”

“And that’d require a third displacement?”

“Afraid so. But you can see the anomaly is a lot smaller. It will be eliminated eventually.”

“Do you have any comment on the speculation around what may or may not have been an attempt on your life?”

Seriously?! “I have more important things on my mind right now.”

She started to turn away, the microphone in her magical grasp drifting back to its owner.

“Wait!”

Meg looked back. She didn’t bother to shout over the wind, but she aimed an ear at them.

“Would Discord be up to a brief interview?!”

“He’s busy!”

And with that, Meg walked back to the draconequus.

The wind had reached hurricane strength. Twilight was only able to stay in place by using an anchoring spell. Another spell shielded her from the wind’s brutal force. The guards, on the other hoof… Discord had taken care of the anchoring, but they all had to endure the brunt of the wind. That’s what concerned her; she could theoretically shield the one next to her, but not all of them.

“How much more of this can you take?!”

“We are trained for adverse weather!”

“This will get far worse!”

As if on cue, they got blasted with fine dust. Only briefly, but Twilight realized that would only get worse too. “The anomaly consumed a lot of ground and buildings as well.”

“What?!”

“Expect more dirt!”

She got a nod in response. “Let me try something!” the guard said.

Twilight wondered what that something could possibly be. The guard’s wings flared out and flapped against the wind. There was no movement, naturally, as Discord’s anchoring did not permit it, but… could it be that simple? The wind was weakening.

Duh! Pegasus weather magic. Part of the adverse weather training. The effect was local, but local was sufficient. Soon the wind was weak enough that shouting was no longer necessary. “Excellent! We’ll see how much time that buys us.” Many will figure it out for themselves, but she couldn’t rely on everypony figuring it out. “I’ll go tell the others.”

It’d be best to do so much closer to the anomaly, then use the most powerful Canterlot Royal Voice she had ever attempted. Then teleport and repeat, until all got the message.

Twilight braced herself for wind like no pony had ever experienced before.

She teleported.

39. The Jailor's Dilemma

Discord’s plaid pills still had their uses, even in this day and age when numerous portals connected Earthly and Equestrian cities. However, Meg did not wish to be seen, to attract attention as the celebrity she was. She needed her privacy, to freely ponder her current problems.

Below her was where it had all started, nearly two centuries ago. Where her Pinkie Pie doll had brought an impossibly flesh-and-blood Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash into her life. That apartment had, along with the rest of the neighborhood, been torn down and redeveloped—thrice.

The original still existed in the past, of course, and she had paid it a visit not too long ago to reclaim all her belongings, just prior to the mob doing whatever the mob would have done to them. Yes, the quantum dice had said not to do that, at the time, but it was no longer that time. Besides, she had needed her old clothing, so as to be appropriately dressed when she met her past self in hyperspace, hence why the time loop—if one could anthropomorphize it—required her past self to forfeit them.

That trip had itself been a nostalgia bomb; so much had changed since then. She spotted some pegasi putting rain clouds into place. The whole area, like most major cities these days, had a robust magic field—so robust, that plaid pills needed an added spell to keep their invisibility protection active. Twilight had invented that spell over a century ago.

Meg watched the congested roads below—some things never change, though those vehicles were powered by micro fusion reactors only made possible by magic, running off the hydrogen present in humidity. She doubted any of their occupants would volunteer to become the first ponies; “bronies” weren’t a thing anymore, and the cartoon itself was all but forgotten, something relegated to the history books.

Contemporary humans weren’t an option anyway. Discord had been quite clear on that.

Meg laid down on the roof behind Discord, using him as a shield against the ferocious wind. How the draconequus could stand there without being tossed away by that wind… She could only assume he was using on himself the same anchoring spell he’d used on the guards. Asking him, asking him anything, was no longer possible over this wind.

The wind only got stronger the closer to the anomaly you got. Buildings that had previously survived everything thrown at them were now disintegrating. Cars were being thrown about. Larger pieces of debris were starting to fly past her, but somehow always missing the draconequus in front of her.

And what that wind must be where the guards were… Twilight was somewhere there too, though she had lost track of her some time ago. How could they possibly be surviving this? Yet Twilight had not come back, as she’d said she would when the wind became intolerable.

Meg could only hope that was because it was still tolerable, and not because something had happened to her. Those magic beams were still zapping the anomaly, so… everything going according to plan?

As for herself, she was stuck here. If she tried to move, she’d be blown away. Her only option was to invoke the return spell. Maybe she ought to. Maybe so she could close the portal. Yes, it was parallel to the airflow, but turbulence had to be spilling through into the tunnel. Hopefully the unicorn guards there knew shield spells.

She wasn’t even sure she had much of a choice, for the roof she was hugging was buckling under the wind. Buildings here were designed to withstand earthquakes, not hurricane force winds—nor had anyone the warning or time to board up any windows. What hadn’t been destroyed by the anomaly directly might ironically get destroyed indirectly by its elimination. She could already imagine the headlines.

What had Routledge said? It’d be all the easier for her to get her good name back by being a hero who had gotten rid of the anomaly? Perhaps that had been a tad optimistic.

The only silver lining in all this was that the media was gone. No drones, no news crews.

What if something had happened to Twilight? She was no longer part of any uncompleted time loop; she didn’t have that protection. How much longer do they let this continue? How bad could it get? She could no longer see the anomaly, but the last time she saw it there was plenty left of it.

If she did decide it was time to end this, how could she communicate that to Discord? Shouting was not going to work. Kick his tail?

Twilight suddenly appeared.

Discord snapped his talons and all the pegasi got tossed away from the anomaly.

The deep monochrome red was already lightening.

The wind began to lessen, though not rapidly.

Precious seconds passed. Discord was obviously using that time both to let the anomaly eject as much as possible and to recover his strength.

He snapped his talons once more, then vanished.

What did he just do? The wind was too strong to fly over there, but it was quickly lessening.

In fact, Meg found she could safely stand up. Twilight touched down beside her. “Let’s hope that was enough.”

A bang reached them.

The wind reversed again.

“That can’t be good,” Meg needlessly stated.

“I better get over there fast and reapply the time dilation spell.” Twilight took off.

Orange colors were beginning to return.

A Royal guard set down next to her. Meg looked up and around and could see others making their way back. “I think you’re done here,” she told him.

“We are,” he confirmed. “All will be accounted for before the portal is closed.”

“I’ll inform the princess,” Meg said, because she felt she ought to somehow acknowledge that statement, and took off and flew after Twilight.

She rapidly gained altitude, as much to see what was left in that giant hole in the ground as to keep her distance from it. In front of her was devastation. How fast did that wind get, this close to the anomaly? Every halving of distance would quadruple the wind velocity. The ground was blasted clean for a good distance from the edge of the pit, and near that edge the ground itself was blown away.

This was all the doing of Routledge’s minions, Meg reminded herself. True, it was not their intention for this to happen. No doubt they would have done things differently if they had known then what they knew now. But the sheer recklessness! And they had tried to pin the blame on herself and Equestria. How could I possibly consider working with him?

And yet it was her future self who had provided them the necessary knowledge. Yes, she had done so therefore she would do so—it would be a paradox otherwise—but that was an execrable rationalization and she knew it. A time loop may make the improbable happen, but it cannot make the impossible happen. Her doing this was possible. She would have to live with that. What else was it possible for her to do?

The bottom of the nearly half-mile wide and half-mile deep pit came into view. It was close to hemispherical; what ought to have been vertical sides at the edge instead formed a slope. Yellowing sunlight illuminated the bottom. If there was still an anomaly—dare she hope there was not?—it was too small to make out. Nor could she make out Twilight.

Down she went. The air around her was turbulent, but it didn’t seem to be flowing in a particular direction.

Below ground level she descended. The turbulence was diminishing. Water was oozing out the sides, well below the surrounding surface, wetting the geologic layers of sedimentary deposits. Ground water? Previously the anomaly was sucking it all up. Now it was filling up a newly born lake.

Over that oh-so-slowly forming lake hovered Twilight. Meg altered her course.

Twilight noticed her arrival. “Discord did it,” she declared. The anomaly’s gone. Truly and completely gone.”

“Then what was that bang?”

“My guess? He lacked the time or strength to do it with finesse. I think he just made it go away and left a vacuum in its place.”

And the surrounding air rushed in to fill it. That would do it. “I wonder how much air and—” Meg waved a hoof around them “—dirt went with it?” A destruction of mass and energy only possible due to the displacement.

“Some of that dirt was starting to come out, it’s what finally made me return to Discord, but most of it… didn’t. As for the air, I don’t really know.”

Nothing man-made could be seen from down here. “Any chance Discord could come back and return all this to what it was?”

Twilight considered the question. “I doubt it. He presumably doesn’t know what was originally here, and even if that wasn’t a problem… I doubt he’d have the strength to do it after causing another displacement.”

Meg sighed. “Still, wouldn’t hurt to ask him.”

“I suppose not,” Twilight said. “At least we have good news to pass on to your media.” Blue was finally returning to the sky. “Let’s make sure all Royal Guards are accounted for.” Her face went grim. “Then we can talk about Routledge.”

All thrones were occupied, even Spike’s mini-throne. It was far from clear what insight or advice they could offer on human politics, but Twilight had insisted on their presence and Meg hadn’t cared enough to successfully talk her out of it.

An elevated cushion had been provided for Meg, and she used her wings to lift herself onto it. Then, at Twilight’s prompting, she informed everypony and baby dragon what had gone down with Routledge. “I have no idea what to do,” she concluded.

Rarity tilted her head at her. “Have you considered asking Serrell for advice?”

Meg shook her head. “Not an option. He’s far from neutral in this matter.”

“At least we’re neutral.”

Meg jerked her head towards Applejack. “Are you, really?”

“Ah can see where yer coming from. But Routledge is singing a different tune now, ain’t he?”

“Doesn’t mean it’s an honest tune.”

A grimace. “You got me there.”

“What about the prisoners?” Twilight asked. “Do we or do we not go ahead with the interviews?”

Meg slumped. “It’s something he asked me: Do I believe what the prisoners plan to say is the truth?”

“It will all be verified by the records from the warehouse. They know any lies they tell will be exposed.”

Meg looked the alicorn in the eye. “Do you know for a fact that those incriminating records actually exist?”

“Well, no, we didn’t have the chance to look through them all, you know that.”

“We barely looked through any of them, and now we no longer can because they’ve all been removed by the special counsel.”

“True, but that still begs the question of why the prisoners would lie about that.”

Never mind why Routledge would lie about them lying. “So they volunteer to go on TV and go whistleblower on Routledge. It’s all going to come out eventually anyway, so why bother?”

As soon as Meg asked it, she realized the question answered itself. Twilight then proved it, by saying, “To get it out in public now.”

“Right, to make it public—now. Not who knows how many months from now when the special counsel concludes its investigations.”

Applejack nodded. “A lie can do a lot of damage before the truth can come out.”

Could it be that simple? That Jackson wants to get back at Routledge somehow? Maybe he had always been a loose cannon? He certainly appears to have outlived his welcome with the senator.

Meg grimaced. “It all depends on who is lying.” Someone isn’t telling the whole truth, that’s for sure. Or maybe neither of them. Worst of all, maybe the liar wasn’t Routledge.

Rainbow Dash smirked. “So just go ask Serrell! Surely he can find out what that special counsel found out, and why wouldn’t he share it with us?”

Meg suppressed a groan. “It doesn’t work like that. He’s also a potential target of their investigation; he cannot interfere.”

“Could Twilight nicely ask them?” Fluttershy asked. “They’re not investigating her, are they?”

They’re trying to be helpful, she reminded herself. But it only confirmed why Meg didn’t want Twilight bothering to involve them. “No, they’re not—at least I don’t think so—but they’re not going to share that information with anyone until they’re done investigating.”

“Months, you said?” asked Rarity.

“At least,” Meg declared.

“Well we can’t wait that long!” The unicorn looked over to Applejack. “You need to question the prisoners.”

The earth pony nodded in return. “As soon as I can get there.” To Meg, she asked, “And then what?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? “It depends on whether they’re telling the truth about the dirt on Routledge.”

“Well,” Twilight began, “if they have been telling the truth, then Routledge did not, and I’d say let the interviews go ahead as planned. And if it turns out Routledge was right about them…”

Meg had nothing to add to that.

Spike raised a claw. “If Routledge was right about them, will you take him up on his offer?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? To be fair, in that case, he wasn’t as evil as she had thought. Probably. His tactics sure as hell left a lot to be desired. Yet he was offering to undo the damage—if it could be fully undone, or undone at all. Hell, even if the prisoners were being completely honest…

But if Routledge was lying about them, then why wouldn’t he be lying about his offer? But what if she first demanded evidence of good faith, for him to take the first steps in repairing her image?

I can’t believe I’m even considering it.

“Meg?”

She dragged her head up to look at Twilight. “I just don’t know.” She wondered what advice Luna would give. Probably something along the lines of “if Routledge was playing her for a fool, then she ought to play him for an even bigger fool.” Easier said than done.

“Why don’t we examine this from a different angle?” Rarity suggested. “Say the prisoners are lying and you take up the senator’s offer. What then do you tell your president?”

Meg grimaced. “Beats me.”

“Say the prisoners are telling the truth and still you take up the senator’s offer. What then do you tell your president?”

All eyes locked onto the draconequus, floating down from on high. “I don’t recall you being invited,” Dash said.

Discord waved it away. “An oversight I’m willing to forgive.” He looked expectantly at Meg.

She could hardly fault him for suggesting that; she had just considered it herself. “Regardless of what I do or do not tell him,” she admitted, “that scenario would cause the most chaos, I should think.”

A genuine smile graced his face. “You are learning, Padawan.”

Applejack fumed. “The goal here ain’t chaos.”

“Chaos leads to change. Change leads to improvement. Improvement leads to happiness.”

“Works for me!” Pinkie proclaimed.

Applejack snorted. “Well, not for me. How can taking the offer of a liar lead to improvement?”

“We don’t know,” Rarity countered, “that he is the one lying here.”

“Hardly matters. He’s done enough we do know about.”

This was going nowhere fast. “I wish it were that simple,” Meg said. Before anypony could say anything, she turned to Discord. “By the way, any chance you could turn that huge hole in the ground back to what it originally was?”

“Strong am I with the Force, but not that strong.”

“Force what now?” asked Dash.

“Enough with the references, Discord, especially references only I would get.” The draconequus pouted as Meg turned to the pegasus. “It means he can’t do it, especially when he has to do a displacement first. Twilight and I already suspected that.”

Twilight nodded in agreement.

“As for everything else,” she continued, resigned to the inevitable, “why don’t we get more facts first? Let’s pay the prisoners a visit.”

Meg and Applejack followed Twilight through the dungeons. It had given Meg plenty of time to ponder the what-ifs, with little to show for it. Eventually that time ran out, for they had arrived. Meg squeezed her pendant before they would see her. She wanted to face them as a human.

Twilight stopped in front of the cell holding Jackson, the ringleader. He was standing in front of the bars, apparently tipped off by the sound of approaching hooves. Whatever he had been about to say was preempted by the sight of the orange earth pony. “I see you brought your lie detector.”

Meg took the lead. “Any reason in particular that would concern you?”

There was no immediate response, so Twilight went next. “It’s for your own benefit,” she said. “This way we can take your word at face value. It would… expedite matters. We could, for example, release you from this facility and grant you freedom to roam freely through Canterlot, until such time you could be returned to your own realm.”

Applejack took a step forward. “And ’cause it’s for yer own good, I’ll be there for your interview. That way, everypony watching will know you speak the truth.”

Jackson turned around, walked a few steps, then turned around to face them again. “No, it doesn’t work like that. Everyone watching will think I’m being forced to regurgitate your propaganda. No pony shall be present.” He glared at Meg. “Nor part-time ponies.”

He went back to the cot and laid down on his back, looking up at the ceiling. “Or no interview.”

Meg walked by the other cells, asking, “Anyone feel differently?”

Silence was her answer.

“I think we’re done here,” she said as she walked past Twilight and away from the cells.

“Come along, Applejack.” Twilight proceeded to follow Meg.

“I reckon you’re right.”

Once they had put sufficient distance behind them, Meg first returned to being a pony and then spoke up. “He’s not wrong, you know, about the ‘regurgitating propaganda’ bit. Doesn’t mean he intends to tell the truth.”

Applejack snorted. “Ah’ll say. He lied by not saying anything back there, if ya ask me.”

One hardly needed to be the Element of Honesty to have noticed that, but what to do about it? Meg suspected that subjecting Routledge to Applejack would yield similar results. All she could conclude from it all was this: The media interviews with the prisoners should happen if and only if she declined the senator’s offer.

Which only brought her full circle to the question of whether to accept his offer. But if Jackson refused to talk in the presence of Applejack, maybe Routledge had a point? Was the senator, perhaps, not quite as guilty as she believed?

“Serrell once told me,” Twilight said, “that the members of The Section wouldn’t give each other the time of day, if not for their common cause—us ponies, that is.”

Meg looked at her. “You think this may be what’s going on between Routledge and Jackson? That seems unlikely. Jackson was Routledge’s ‘fixer,’ according to what he told Andy. Though… now that I think about it… that might mean Jackson doesn’t tell his boss everything he does, so as to provide plausible deniability.” She sighed. “I dunno.”

“I don’t know either.”

“Then again, a ‘fixer’ is supposed to stay out of the limelight and Jackson has failed to do that—spectacularly failed to do that.”

Twilight had nothing to say to that. In silence the three mares continued their journey out of the dungeons.

“I just don’t know what to do.” Meg paced back and forth in her brother’s living room as he, his wife, and Steve watched. “Sure, I could ask Celestia or Luna for advice, I certainly don’t think they’re too innocent and naïve, but it… just doesn’t feel right.” She stopped and looked at them. “This is a human problem? They’ve been running an equine monarchy for over a thousand years. Could they really understand how our system of government works?”

“Do we?” Matt asked.

Meg cringed at that.

“Regardless,” Lori said, “how are we supposed to forget what happened to our daughter?”

“Sunk cost fallacy.”

Lori glared at Steve.

“We can’t change what happened,” he explained. “We can only strive for the best future outcome.” He shrugged. “The trick is figuring out how to achieve that.”

Meg resumed pacing. “And taking the senator at his word may be the way to do that.”

Matt threw her a grim smile. “Or may lead to disaster.”

“Yeah.”

She paced back and forth a few more times. It didn’t help. There were just too many unknowns, and no apparent way to make them less unknown. For the next few back and forths, she considered using time travel to the future. But that wouldn’t really work either. Sure, she’d see one outcome, but there was no reason to believe it’d be the best outcome. And once seen, it was immutable as far as she was concerned. Nor was there any obvious way to turn a bad outcome into a paradox.

It was almost enough to make her resume quantum coin flips. Whatever came up would have to, somehow, lead to that future self she had met in the hyperspatial void. No flipping yet, though; even if the destination was assured, the path to it was not assuredly pleasant. Especially if either choice would lead to that future self—how could she know they didn’t?

But then what?

Not knowing what else to do, Meg grabbed the remote with her hand, turned on the TV, and changed the channel to CNN. More live coverage of the aftermath of the anomaly’s removal, still hosted by Andy.

Andy. The former Lord Tirek. And before that, a human royal. A human quite familiar with human power struggles. Who may be sufficiently unbiased with regards to this particular power struggle.

Meg made up her mind. “I’m gonna ask Andy for advice.”

40. Power is as Power Does

Life went on. While they worked the problem of the first ponies, pre-existing commitments could not be ignored. Meg had just published a biography, one she had been sitting on for many decades, waiting for the centennial anniversary of the death of the book’s subject, Guiding Star. A.k.a A. K. Yearling. A.k.a Daring Do.

The book-signing tour’s first stop was at the Tracy, CA, convention center. That center was relatively new, only a few decades old, and built over that giant hole in the ground. Only the passing from living memory of the events that had lead to that hole’s creation made its construction possible. It never did become a proper lake; there just wasn’t enough rain, even with pegasi assistance. A permanent cloud-cover, level with the surrounding ground, hid it from sight and mind and, using Las Pegasus-pioneered magic, was safe to build and walk on by all.

The turn-out was disappointing; most attendees were more interested in meeting herself—an alicorn to be worshipped by some of them—than in the book, though they had all dutifully bought one to be autographed. Alas, Daring Do had left living memory as well. Just about. Extremely few were left besides the alicorns and one draconequus. Meg suspected Guiding Star would not have minded, for her obsession with personal privacy was what had forced her promise to wait so long before publishing.

The circle of concrete barriers was still in place, though no portal resided within. No surrounding circle of government cars or FBI agents either. Nobody at all; the nearby strip mall was an apocalyptic wasteland.

Perfect.

Meg leaned against a wall, patiently waiting. She didn’t have to wait long. A familiar SUV carefully made its way into the parking lot, putting its off-road pretensions to the test; none of the abundant debris had yet been cleared away.

The vehicle was up to the task. Meg stepped away from the wall and waved a hand.

It finally came to a stop next to the circle. The door opened and out stepped Andy. He looked around at the devastation. “At least it’s private,” he noted. “As you wished. Does this have something to do with the postponement of the prisoner interviews?”

“Indirectly?” Meg offered. She remembered who she was talking to; wishy-washiness was not going to cut it. “Not a word is to leave this meeting. Forget you currently work for CNN.”

He feigned hurt feelings. “You got me out of Tartarus. Twice. I would not betray you.”

Ironically enough, if he did then it would have spared her the need to make a decision. The fallout of the coming conversation being made public would ensure that. A part of her wondered if that might turn out to be a blessing; another part pointed out that would’ve been no better than flipping a quantum coin.

It was time to put up or shut up. “Senator Routledge has made me an offer, and I don’t know whether to accept it. Your former Tartarus cellmates are involved too.”

Andy took a moment to parse that, then erupted in laughter. Then he noticed Meg wasn’t smiling. “You’re serious?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

He wandered over to the nearest concrete barrier, lost in thought, and sat on it. Meg decided to join him.

“What kind of offer?” he finally asked.

She provided a summary, including the situation with the prisoners. “So, who do I trust, if either of them?”

“Wrong question,” he quickly replied. “The correct question is, ‘who do you trust the least?’”

Meg sighed. “So neither of them.” Hardly unexpected, but not terribly helpful either.

“You must learn to deal with that, if you are to engage the powerful.”

Equestrians don’t count? But maybe she had been lucky; she hadn’t had to deal with the likes of Chrysalis. Or maybe both lucky and naïve. She looked at Andy. “Does that include you?”

That elicited a smile. “At some points in my life, absolutely. As for my current existence, I’m skeptical. But let’s talk about you.”

“Me?”

“You have power.”

She shook her head. “I may be an alicorn, but—”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about Routledge making you an offer. He would not do that if he hadn’t perceived your power.”

“My power? What power?!”

“You have access to powerful people, both human and equine, who listen to you, who can be persuaded by you. You even appear to have Discord’s favor, and I am unaware of any other being as powerful as him.”

Meg was about to point out that Discord had been defeated, multiple times, but then remembered that had been with the aid of the Elements of Harmony. Powerful magical artifacts, sure, but not living artifacts. “Still not my power. That’s just leaching off the power of others.”

“You broke me out of Tartarus a few years ago.”

She hesitantly said, “Still not my power.” She never had explained to him how that had been accomplished, and she wasn’t going to do so now.

He studied her. “Who does have that power is an interesting question; but regardless, don’t undersell yourself for ‘leaching off’ it, as you put it. None other had accomplished a breakout, to my knowledge.”

That power had come from Discord, in the form of those plaid pills. But those pills’ ability to get someone out of Tartarus was an unintended consequence. He had not been persuaded. But did that really matter? She still had leached off his power. It still proved his point.

“Look at it this way,” he continued. “Routledge used you as a means of taking down Serrell, specifically, and in general rallying everyone against Equestria, perfectly content should that destroy you in the process. He failed. Miserably. So now he wants you to join forces with him and offers to make it worth your while to do so.” He pointed a finger straight at her. “That also gives you power.”

But what do I do with it?

“And let’s not forget you are now an alicorn—let me finish. I’m not talking about your abilities as an alicorn; I’m talking about the reaction of a large number of people here in this world to your becoming an alicorn, how you became an alicorn, how you earned it, and how you were rewarded by a presumed higher power.”

“Don’t remind me,” she grumbled. “And it’s not like this ‘higher power’ paid me a personal visit.”

“I did say ‘presumed.’ I certainly encountered no evidence for it in my long Equestrian existence. But to your followers, that is all irrelevant. You saved the world, apparently died saving it, and came back ascended. That is all that matters to them.”

“I didn’t die. I got yanked out of there at the last possible instant.”

Andy shrugged. “Doesn’t really change anything for them. I, on the other hand, would be fascinated to hear the full story.”

Meg looked down. “Maybe some day, but not today.”

“Fair enough. Could you tell me if Discord was involved in any way?”

“Sure, that I could tell you: He wasn’t.”

He nodded. “Maybe there really are other entities at least as powerful as him.”

“Perhaps.” Like whatever was responsible for the Elements of Harmony.

“Regardless, those numerous followers also give you power.”

“I’d just as soon they all forgot about me.”

Andy stood up. “They will not. It is up to you to decide what to do with it. People like Senator Routledge are keen to find out.”

Was that the senator’s game? To ingratiate himself with her followers, instead of being their public enemy number one?

Meg stood up and considered the former centaur. “Are you yourself looking to benefit from my alleged power?”

He smiled. “I already have. Tartarus, remember?”

There was no denial, she couldn’t help but notice. “You’ve given me much to think about. I appreciate that.”

“Happy to oblige.”

Meg watched as Twilight levitated another entire shelf of books down to the floor. Spike immediately began sorting them according to the new criteria.

“Don’t be silly, Meg. We do not have it easy. The magic of friendship does not turn all evil doers into friends. Need I remind you of Chrysalis?” Twilight lifted a stack of sorted books and headed to their new home. “And I’m still not one hundred percent convinced about the former Lord Tirek, either.”

“Even so, your track record is enviable.”

Twilight came back for another stack. “I wish I knew what the solution is, but… I don’t.”

“You and me both.”

Spike finished sorting the current batch of books into a collection of new piles and approached Meg. “Have you tried following your cutie mark?”

“My cutie mark,” she muttered. She had practically forgotten she possessed one. She looked at her flank, contemplating the two intersecting circles with a star in the common area. Sure, she had theories on what it meant, but unsubstantiated theories they had remained.

Twilight stood by her assistant. “Spike has a point,” she said. “It is a mark of your destiny.”

“Which is, it would seem, to one day travel back in time to give them what they needed to create that anomaly. Not much of a destiny, if you ask me.”

“That’s not fair to yourself and you know it!”

“Is it, Twilight? How about going back in time to help create that first anomaly that drained magic from the Crystal Empire.”

Flustered, the Princess of Books lifted another stack, but then reversed course and set them down. “Look, cutie marks not tied to a special talent can be hard to decipher, true. I mean, look at Cheerilee. Flowers with happy faces? Doesn’t immediately scream teacher!”

If only there was a spell to do the deciphering! But obviously there was no such spell, or Twilight would know it. “I guess I have a lot of soul searching to do. I’ll leave you to your reorganization.”

Meg turned around and started walking.

“My door is always open,” Twilight called out to her.

Before she knew it, Meg found herself in Twilight’s throne room. The thrones were all empty, the cutie marks upon them in plain sight. As she trudged around the circle of thrones, she noted that some of them, as she knew damn well, didn’t make much sense either. Apples for Honesty? Gems for Generosity? Cloud with lightning bolt for Loyalty? Okay, party balloons for Laughter made sense. And the others made sense in other ways, like Rarity’s ability to find gems or Applejack’s talent for growing apples.

None of which helped to make sense out of her own cutie mark.

She had first thought it was about her desire to be part of both worlds, Earth and Equestria, to be at their intersection. It wasn’t wrong, per se, but it seemed… lacking. Why would the mark of her destiny lead her to becoming an alicorn, for example?

One could ask the same of the cutie marks of the other alicorns.

The only thing that differentiated herself from them was that they were all princesses and she was not. So either she would one day become a princess after all, or… or what? A princess in everything but name? What would that even mean? And how would it tie in to her cutie mark?

A princess ruled, but surely not a non-princess. But even Twilight wasn’t technically ruling anything, despite very much being a princess. Her title, however, gave her clout. She could talk to pretty much anypony she wanted and they would take her seriously. Of course she had the ear of Princess Celestia, but she’d had that ear even when she was merely her student.

Yet was Meg herself so different? As Andy had told her, she had power. She had the ear of the president. She had a senator who wanted to work with her—maybe for selfish reasons of his own, but the point still stood. CNN had found her worth interviewing. And don’t forget Andy, who considered himself in her debt, who was doing a decent enough job of turning fame into power for his own purposes. And of course she had the ear of powerful Equestrians. Even her would-be assassins… would Jackson had bothered if she had been a powerless nobody?

Meg slowed to a halt and once more studied her cutie mark. What Twilight had said about abstract cutie marks… Unless she had a special talent in set theory or something, hers was unquestionably abstract. Yet being at the intersection of humans and ponies wasn’t really that abstract; it was too specific, it almost could be a special talent—and would her life be such a mess if she truly had that talent?

“Maybe I should generalize you?” she said to her cutie mark.

Not just the intersection between “humans” and “ponies.” Or being at the intersection of past, present, and future, what with all those damned time loops.

What if that circle was Routledge and the other circle was Serrell?

She definitely was at the intersection of that conflict!

Yes, at the intersection of things. Some things. Good enough for a first approximation.

Meg rushed out the door. If she was going to contact Routledge, at least she now knew what to say to him.

Twilight retrieved the contents of the next shelf and lowered them to the floor. As Spike proceeded to distribute them to a new set of stacks, Twilight grabbed a high-enough stack from previous sorting and carried it to its new home. It felt good to reorganize her library. It had been too many months since she had last done it, what with everything that had been going on. But with the anomaly finally taken care of, she could afford to indulge herself.

“Twilight!”

“She’s back there, Meg.”

Well, that didn’t take long. Twilight finished introducing the books to their new home before turning around. She didn’t have to wait long before Meg came into view. Twilight gave her an expectant smile, preferring to believe that something good had come out of her “soul searching.”

“I need you to set up a meeting with Serrell. The attendees will be myself and Routledge.”

Confusion replaced the smile.

“That assumes, of course,” Meg continued, “that the senator will agree to it, but I’ll make that a condition of working with me. It’s time to end this little war.”

Spike ambled up behind her. “Doesn’t that also assume the president will agree to it?”

“I guess? But I’m less worried about him.”

Nothing would make Twilight happier than for this “little war” to be ended. “I’ll be attending too. Equestrians are also affected by this.”

That seemed to catch Meg off guard. “Sure. Makes sense. Why don’t you first see if Serrell is willing, and only if he is will I contact Routledge.”

“Let’s take care of that now.” Twilight started for the library’s entrance. “May I ask what searching your soul turned up?”

They were halfway to the hallway before Meg responded. “What Andy told me, mostly.”

Andy? “You talked to him?”

“Yeah. I wanted his advice on how to deal with Routledge. Figured he was an expert on human politics, originally being a prince and all that, and also that he was relatively unbiased.”

“I guess that makes sense?” Spike said.

Twilight couldn’t say otherwise, though she wished she could. Could he really be trusted? “So what did he say?”

“Basically, that I have power and it’s time I started using it.”

“Power? Because you’re an alicorn now?”

Meg shook her head. “He meant political power. It’s why Routledge suddenly wants to be my new best friend—that was his observation.”

Their hoof steps echoed down the crystalline hallway. Twilight could find no fault with that observation.

“I also may have figured out the true meaning of my cutie mark. It’s to be at the intersection of things, or something like that. I’m certainly at the center of the battle between the senator and the president. So if I truly have power, then I should use it to end that battle and hopefully make our worlds a better place for both humans and ponies—not to mention myself.”

They arrived at Twilight’s residence within the castle. As they went inside, Meg added, “Don’t forget you have power too. This is not the time to hold back.”

Twilight headed for the desk where her laptop waited. “I suspect Celestia and Luna would agree.”

President Serrell looked askance across the Resolute Desk at Princess Twilight Sparkle. “You’re serious,” he declared.

“I am,” she declared in return.

He leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, and let out a long exhale. “I’m sure you can appreciate the difficulties with what you are proposing.”

Twilight hadn’t expected it to be easy. After all, nothing had stopped those two men from hashing out their differences in private. Maybe they even had tried and failed. At least he was still talking. “Be as that may be,” she replied, “you can appreciate that the current state of affairs is untenable. Something needs to be done to get past it, and this is what we’ve decided on.”

Serrell shook his head in disbelief. “Meg is actually willing to talk to Routledge.”

“She had acquired a reason to believe it could be… productive.”

His eyes locked on to her. “Could you share that reason with me?”

It was Twilight’s turn to shake her head. “I’m afraid not.”

“Even if knowing would help me agree to this?”

“Sorry.”

The silence grew uncomfortable. What was he thinking? Clearly he didn’t want to go along with this. Was he worried about the cost of refusing? What did he perceive that cost to be? That Meg would talk to Routledge regardless? Or did he think that was a bluff?

“Then I’m sorry too. I cannot agree to this.”

Twilight got up and jumped to the floor. “And I’m really sorry to hear that, because until this battle between you and the senator has been favorably resolved, Equestria cannot pursue relations with the United States.” The look on his face was exactly what she had hoped for. “I will, of course, be talking to other countries. In fact, in light of Egor Yusupov’s report on what had happened at that warehouse, I’ll be accepting President Tretyakov of the Russian Federation’s invitation to discuss the establishment of relations. I’ll be on my way now.”

She didn’t immediately cast the return spell…

Serrell practically leaped out of his chair. “Wait.”

“Yes?”

“Fine. I’ll do it. But I have a few conditions.”

The door that separated the cavern office from the tunnel that led to the outside may have been magically locked, but it wasn’t soundproof. Meg could hear her co-workers and manager giving Senator Routledge the tour. It hadn’t taken much convincing to make this their meeting place. It was easy enough for the senator to justify “finding the truth” about what was going on here—whatever “the truth” would turn out to be politically convenient for him (that remained to be determined)—nor was it hard to justify her absence during this tour.

It sounded like things were wrapping up. First, she squeezed her pendant; this conversation was to be human-to-human. She had to crouch to fit in the tunnel, but it wouldn’t be for long. Next she unlocked the door, having finally learned the spell to do that. Then she opened the door and worked her way through inside.

Everyone was staring at her, surprised—maybe shocked?—at her appearance.

“Hey, everyone. Could you all return through the portal? The senator and I have some talking to do.”

Their reaction was to stare at the senator.

“Please do as she says.”

It was a brief delay before their manager, Jake, said, “Come on, let’s go.” To Routledge he said, “Find me once you’re done here.”

“I will.”

As the humans were departing the cavern, a Royal Guard approached Meg with a questioning look.

“Please wait by the portal and make sure we’re not interrupted or eavesdropped on.”

The guard nodded and trotted away.

Meg walked over to her workstation and sat down. “You might as well pull over a chair.”

Routledge did so, grabbing the closest one. “What about eavesdropping by Equestrians?” he asked after he sat down.

“The guards will mind their business,” Meg began. “Any pony who has a habit of coming here has been told to stay away. As for Discord…” Meg looked around in vain. “He is what he is and there’s little that can be done about it, but blabbing to the media—much less human media—is not his style.” She figured that was what he really was concerned about.

“I suppose it’ll have to suffice,” he said equitably enough. “Before we get started, let me first say how impressed I am with all this,” he said as he waved his hands around. “There are definite advantages to working with unicorn mages… though that could be viewed as collaborating with the enemy. A view,” he hastily added, “I’m not inclined to support any more.”

Considering that giant hole in the ground, I bet. “That would make it difficult to work together with me.”

A smile. “Indeed. So let’s talk about that. You were not exactly forthcoming on the phone.”

Would you be here if I was? Not if Twilight’s experience with Serrell was any indication. “There is something that needs to happen first, and the odds are you won’t like it.”

He seemed only slightly concerned by that. “I’m listening.”

“You will need to resolve the differences between yourself and President Serrell. That battle must end. Twilight and I are setting up a quite private meeting for all of us.”

It didn’t take him long to answer. He nodded and said, “I accept your terms.”

That wasn’t so hard. Almost too easy. Was he merely that desperate? “I’ll contact you soon about possible meeting times.” Meg stood up.

“There is much else to talk about,” Routledge said, remaining seated.

She threw him a wan smile. “After the war between you and Serrell is over.”

He stood up. “May I ask what’s on the other side of the door you came in through? That wasn’t part of the tour.”

“That?” She waved a hand at the door in question. “It leads to Celestia’s sunlight, eventually. Just one old unlit mining tunnel after another.” And I look forward to the day I can just teleport here. Not that that would happen in the foreseeable future.

He held out his hand. “Until we meet again.”

After a brief hesitation, she shook it.

Epilogue

The inter-dimensional teleport spell completed, transitioning Meg from the hyperspatial void to above the Everfree Forest within sight of Discordland. The theme park looked startlingly different, here in the distant past. It wouldn’t be the showcase of chaos if it didn’t.

Discord suddenly appeared in front of her, right on cue, with a sour look on his face. “I know it’s you, Meg, from the future.”

She waved a griffon talon in front of herself. “That obvious? No, don’t answer; I know you can smell a new alicorn a million miles away. Besides, it’s not you I need to fool.” She smiled big. “You know where this is going.”

His face turned dour. “Do I want to know—no, do I need to know what you’re doing here.”

“As far as you’re concerned, I’m taking a stroll down memory lane.” Which, actually, was not a falsehood. “All I ask is that you help keep my past self away from me. Also Twilight’s past self away from her, once she gets here.”

Discord sighed. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”

Meg casually waved a claw. “Not unless you want to know how your future self plays into this.”

“Fine,” he grumbled, just as she expected.

“Oh, one more thing…”

He rolled his eyes in response.

“I’ll be making a temporary modification to your transporter setup. Just an FYI.”

He opened his mouth, then thought better of it and vanished.

He’ll survive.

It would be several hours before Twilight arrived, according to her own Discord. That couldn’t be helped, what with the uncertainty principle. Not a problem; there was no rush. It gave her time to do that strolling.

She eyed the theme park, hosting its first ever brony convention—first ever convention period. It would go down in history as the event that finally forced the hold-outs to acknowledge the reality of colorful, magical ponies. Many of said hold-outs were down there, cell phones in hand, determined to “expose” the scam, and, well, didn’t. The videos they shot, several of which featured Discord having his fun with some troublemakers, as well as the numerous videos taken by the actual bronies, had been mined by numerous documentaries over the following decades. She had re-watched many of them to refresh her memories. And, of course, that first documentary of all, the one from the group behind Andy’s trip to his homeland—which, speaking of, had its premiere at this convention.

Casting a spell, she turned herself invisible, the better to get inside without drawing undue attention to herself. The barrier around the park did not prevent her from passing through; she had come prepared for that.

Once inside, flying just below the barrier and thus staying out of the way of other flying creatures, she circled Discordland. Tens of thousands filled the park, mostly human but with a healthy number of ponies and other creatures. She would be far from the only griffon present, hence why she choose that species. A lesser number of minotaurs and dragons could also be seen. Her past self should be in the hotel; she truly had no interest in encountering herself for a second time, nor did she remember such an encounter having taken place.

An isolated spot revealed itself, underneath the tracks of the Indeterminate Person Mover, and she quickly teleported herself to it. After making sure no one was looking in her direction, she went visible. She looked around; no one was pointing in shock at her sudden appearance.

She picked a random direction and started walking, and before long she came across a human family. “Look! A griffon!” shouted one of the kids. She gave them a smile—as much as griffons could smile, anyway—and waved a claw.

But their attention was pulled away from her, to something above them. In the direction of the Indeterminate Person Mover. Meg turned around and looked for herself. A pegasus stallion was leaning out of the pod—currently a pegasus, she reminded herself—then realization dawned on her. “This was it?” she softly asked herself.

The pegasus leapt out of the pod, threw open his wings—and fell. Those pods did not give magic to those originally lacking it. By all rights, that fall ought to have been fatal. Eyebrows had been raised, but eventually survival had been attributed to incredibly good luck. Now I finally get it. Meg grabbed him in her magic and ever so carefully reduced the impact speed, just enough to survive but not enough to unrealistically avoid injury.

Another time loop completed, she thought, a time loop she hadn’t even known about until just now.

A crowd was developing. Word was even then racing towards her past self and it wouldn’t be long before she arrived at the scene. Meg edged away, in the opposite direction, towards the nearest transporter pad. If her past self was coming here, then she would go to the hotel and convention center.

CNN’s new Equestrian correspondent, Sophie Henshaw, would soon be arriving too. And from her the rest of humanity would learn of this disaster. It would be weeks before the poor fellow was fully healed and then finally restored to being human, all of it covered non-stop by the news networks. The ride had to be shut down and it wouldn’t re-open for months, only after new safeguards had been put into place. Dealing with the fallout had made her miserable. The only saving grace was the clear instruction to remain in the pod or risk losing your original species. In hindsight, that was begging for a “hold my beer” moment.

It could have been far worse. The old Senator Routledge would not have let this crisis go to waste. By this point in time, fortunately, he had become almost accommodating, pushing the narrative of personal responsibility, in not so many words stating that the guy was an idiot for not remaining in the pod as instructed.

That might have seemed ironic, considering what the senator had once been accused of. Oh, sure, he had helped bring the founders and funders of The Section together—he even came up with the name, borrowing it from an old sci-fi novel where the secret organization of that name defended humanity from alien invaders—but he had no involvement in its day-to-day operations. Indeed, that was a feature; it freed them to do “what was needed” to save the world from the existential threat of ponies (yet more irony, in the form of that anomaly fiasco).

The records from that warehouse? It turned out, incredibly enough, that they had not implicated the senator. That was what had enabled the provisional truce between himself and Serrell—provisional because it would be far too many months before the special counsel would announce the results of its investigation. Regardless, the truce was honored. Everyone would stop trying to take the senator down for crimes for which he was adamant he had no involvement, and he would stop trying to take down everyone else and be open to Equestrians, “everyone else” being defined so as to exclude the loose cannons in The Section, of course.

But those warehouse records sure as hell implicated Jackson and his goons. They spent years in an Equestrian dungeon for that assassination attempt on Meg, while their extradition to stand trial for the anomaly played out in slow motion. An extradition treaty had to be signed first, you know. Meg hadn’t fought it, figuring they’d rot in jail for the rest of their lives back on Earth, and that’s exactly what had happened. Hurst shared their fate.

Meg reached the transporter pad. Several people were standing nearby eyeing a sign with instructions. They remained standing, not stepping onto the pads. Their unease, while understandable, was unfounded. Never had there been a single mishap, not so much as a duplication incident. Not unintentional duplication, anyway.

In a saddlebag was a gemstone. Meg walked past the doubting Thomases and stepped onto a transporter pad, her constituent molecules about to be disassembled for all to see. The classic transporter sound began…

…and ended, leaving her reassembled off to the side of the main lobby of the hotel. The gemstone, of course, was no longer on her, having performed its function.

Dozens of humans, ponies, and other creatures close enough to hear the transporter engaging over the noise of the convention stared at her, alerted by the iconic sound. Meg just smiled and said, “It’s kinda neat, actually.” Then she stepped off the pad. Her endorsement didn’t exactly initiate a stampede ready to beam themselves elsewhere, but baby steps. Anyway, the ones for whom she had just added that duplication spell would not need her encouragement. Present-day Discord would know what she had done, obviously, but he would also know the origin of that spell and that ensured his non-interference.

Griffons in attendance were few enough that being one attracted a certain amount of attention; she ignored that, heading over to where a wall-mounted display listed current and upcoming events.

She knew A. K.Yearling would have a session, but that was many hours from now. There would even be a book-signing event tomorrow. A last-minute agreement had been reached to allow purchased copies of her books to return back to Earth. The pegasus never did make public her “Daring Do” identity, and it would be another decade before Meg learned her true name, the one Lyra knew her by when they shared archaeology classes in Canterlot, the one “Yearling” went by when she was in the field in a professional capacity, back when she still did that sort of thing. All finally made public knowledge, nearly two centuries later.

The Great and Powerful Trixie would put on a performance to standing-room only crowds, which led to lucrative tours in the human realm, and Rarity had her auction for charity. Meg couldn’t believe how much money that had raised. That had been a news story in and of itself. Another news story was the absence of Faust and anyone involved with the cartoon. They did attend a few years later, but for this first one it was agreed by all for them to keep their distance.

Smooze would appear on a panel, alongside Discord and Pinkie Pie, putting that voice synthesizer to the test (it passed). Yet surprisingly enough, Smooze wasn’t the star at that event, nor was Pinkie. Discord was. And he ate up the adoration from the mostly human standing-room-only crowd. He didn’t mind in the least being treated like a god. It was everything he could have hoped for, and more than compensated for the constructive feedback he had to endure concerning the theme park.

Meg, on the other hand… It wasn’t like she had lacked warning, but experiencing it in person was different. She had made her peace with it long ago, along with the other alicorns, but at the time… She just politely ignored it the best she could, as she had done ever since.

She had reached the display. One event immediately caught her eye: a Pinkie Pie autograph session, already in progress.

It had been far far too long since she had last seen the pink party pony.

Pinkie would hold more sessions than any other; she just couldn’t meet enough new people, regardless of form, and make them smile. As Meg approached the room the blast of the party cannon assaulted her ears. Of course every brony wanted to see it in action, to have party hats magically deposited on their heads and cupcakes into their hands.

The autograph line stretched into the hallway. Meg would skip that, content to stay in the back of the room, just listening to her. She went through the other door, the one without the line blocking it, and she saw her: a young and vibrant Pinkie Pie. It had been so, so long… Thank the stars Meg would not see her late husband, knowing that he had not attended that day.

She was not alone back there. Many who had already had their moment with the Element of Laughter were also hanging around, not yet ready to move on from the pink one. Others were standing around the party cannon, trying to divulge its mysteries. Good luck with that. Took Twilight decades to finally solve it.

“Oh, that one?” Pinkie said, everyone fixated on her latest twitching. “Nothing much. It just means a time traveling alicorn from the future is visiting us.” The mare threw a wink in Meg’s direction. Everyone naturally looked in her general direction, unease growing as they failed to see an alicorn—an absence no one had the guts to point out, and no way was Meg going to out herself as the alicorn in question. I better move on. No point in risking more Pinkie being Pinkie. She never did tell me her Pinkie Sense had sensed my presence. But perhaps that might have caused a paradox. Was there a Pinkie Sense for that? None that she had ever mentioned.

Pinkie Sense was one mystery never cracked by Twilight—and she likely never would. How could she? The means to experimentally test hypotheses was long gone.

Meg wandered back to the display of current and upcoming events. There was nothing she cared to experience live, after having re-watched the ancient recorded videos. She made her way outside the hotel and took to the air.

A few hours later, she spotted Celestia and Luna in Pandemonium Plaza. In front of the large crowd, Celestia lowered the Sun, followed by Luna raising the Moon, and then they both teleported away.

After another hour of exploring the park, it was time to meet up with Twilight. She found an isolated spot and went invisible. Next stop, the top of the hotel. Twilight was already there, still in human form, on a patch of sweaters. Sweaters? Well, better than the patch of swampland next to it.

Twilight got down to business as soon as Meg landed. “Transporter taken care of?”

“Naturally. Tokens all distributed?”

“Of course.”

Every person who agreed to being cloned had one of those tokens. All they had to do was go through the transporter with their token on them. Each token was bound to a specific person. Each person would materialize minus the token—only one clone per person allowed—and a copy would remain in the pattern buffer—yeah, just go with “pattern buffer.” The magical equivalent anyway.

In a few days, Twilight will gather up all the copies, undo Meg’s modifications, and return to the present. There, all the copies would be materialized, turned into ponies, made magical, and begin their training; the originals would continue their lives, lacking any proof that their duplicates were to become the first generation of ponies.

That training would take a year, at least, and then more years to help them establish their new lives in the distant past. Maybe she and Twilight would have to spend a whole decade back then, but what’s another decade to centuries-old immortal alicorns?

1. Coin Flipped

“But it has nothing to do with hula hoops,” Meg said to her past self. So far, the encounter had gone exactly as she had remembered it. Next she expected the pegasus to depart hyperspace without uttering another word, believing she had been offered all the help she was going to receive.

The suspense is killing me. That sarcastic thought had imposed itself on her. The fake suspense ended seconds later, for without so much as a goodbye her past self went back through the portal. To the infinite void she shared, “I still don’t know how to say goodbye to one’s self.”

Fortunately, it was knowledge rarely needed.

Meg touched the portal with a finger and it went dim, flat; her past self was about to test whether it was still open and would find it had been closed. Now to focus on the next time loop, the one where she’d let herself be kidnapped. Little had she volunteered about that mission, details of which her past self would eventually choke on.

I was so naïve back then, she thought to herself, remembering how in not even half a year… those few weeks had done much to remedy that.

The time travel spells were easier to cast as a pony. Only the fact that she had remembered her future self being human caused her to resume that form here. Her past self, she also remembered, had recently acquired a pendant that allowed her to switch between human and equine, leveraging Discord’s magic. Long ago she had learned the isomorphic mapping spell, allowing her to transform into any species all on her own. She used it now, and her equine spine once more bore saddlebags full of gear.

Summoning the raw magic of this place, where the fundamental forces of nature remained undifferentiated, she resumed her journey into the past. Just a few years to go.

Twilight engaged in the ritual of brewing tea, adding the precise quantity of leaves to the kettle. President Serrell stood at the panoramic windows, hands clasped behind his back, looking out at the sky above distant Ponyville. The sun hovered above the horizon, its daily journey complete. Any second now day would change over to night, and shortly after that the meeting would start.

The sun dipped below the horizon. Seconds later the moon rose. “Even seeing it with my own eyes, I find myself doubting.”

Twilight concluded the heating spell. “I know what you mean. A planet orbiting a sun? Absurd.”

“And it looks exactly the same—except during sunrise and sunset.” He turned around. “An astounding coincidence.”

“One of all too many.”

Serrell approached the mahogany table, a grim smile on his face. “A topic for another day.”

The door opened, and Princess Luna entered her sister’s private tea room.

Twilight was caught off-guard. “Luna?” And here she was making tea.

The Princess of the Night nodded to the foreign head of state. “I persuaded my sister that I would be better suited for this meeting. I hope you do not mind.”

Serrell shrugged. “You are co-rulers of Equestria; and should word of this meeting get out, I doubt it’d matter to those trying to remove me from office as to which of you I spoke with.”

And maybe she’s right. Luna did seem more in tune with how politics was played by humans. Twilight looked down at the tea set. “Tea is all I have, I’m afraid.”

“It shall suffice.”

Luna took a seat at the table, opposite from the chair procured for the President, who himself sat down. “That was one of the Articles of Impeachment,” she said. “Colluding with us to further our nefarious aims, to paraphrase. I noticed a distinct lack of detail on what these alleged aims might be.”

Serrell exhaled. “No one can agree on what they might be, but that’s okay because they must be nefarious. Then there’s the other Article of Impeachment: my being complicit in the locking up of American citizens without due process in a foreign prison, i.e. Tartarus.”

Which Twilight found preposterous. “I was the one who detained them and locked them up. Your agents gave them every chance to avoid that, but they refused to cooperate.”

“Well, to be fair, I did agree to the Tartarus gambit, but then there’s no one who knows that who’d leak that fact, not that that’s stopping Eric Tanner from implying I was involved anyway. Regardless, they’ll claim in the upcoming Senate trial next week that I failed to protect our citizens from you. Whether it’s from malice or incompetence doesn’t really matter.”

“Would we be called as witnesses?” Luna asked.

“Probably, but obviously they can’t force you. However, should you refuse, you shouldn’t set foot in the USA.” He looked down into his teacup. “Not that there’s a jail that could hold you.”

Twilight sighed. “True, but that wouldn’t help our cause.”

“It would not.” Serrell looked up. “What is your cause, exactly?”

“Friendship, of course!”

Serrell shook his head. “I know you’re sincere, but don’t be surprised if that isn’t received as well as you think it ought to be.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “I’m not clueless.”

“What about Meg?” Luna asked.

“It’s certain she’ll be called as a witness. She can refuse so long as she stays here, just as she refused the House, but… you know the drill.”

“Is a pardon still off the table?”

“It won’t keep her from being subpoenaed, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“But it would allow her to return home,” Twilight said. Well, to a new home. Her last apartment was now rented to others.

Serrell allowed himself a long sip of tea. “It would get the FBI off her case, yes, but she would still be in danger from… less savory elements of society. I’m not sure what can be done about that. Maybe if Senator Routledge had been removed from office, but…”

Twilight practically snarled. “But he wasn’t.”

It never got as far as impeachment, not even close. For all the evidence Twilight and Meg had gathered, none of it tied the senator to the actions of the so-called “The Section.” Worse, Routledge had argued that evidence was obviously fake, computer generated—or far worse, magically created. That the means by which those videos had been recorded could not be revealed, because Serrell had classified the existence of magical time travel, did not help matters at all. Of those directly involved with the kidnapping, the very few who had initially been willing to talk as part of plea deals suddenly went silent, once it became clear the evidence against them was unusable. Their cases had never gone to trial either.

Sometimes Twilight wondered if the president had his priorities straight.

“And for me to issue that pardon, under these circumstances, would look incredibly bad.”

Twilight slammed a hoof. “Then Meg can testify only as a prisoner. That’s unacceptable.”

“Twilight, please. Calm down.” Luna closed her eyes in thought. “Would Meg testifying remotely, from Equestria, be possible?”

Serrell sighed. “Technically, I suppose so, given what you can do with cell phones and stuff, but I doubt the Senate will go for it.”

“Then she could testify in person as a pony,” Luna said. “They would be unable to hold her.”

Twilight gaped; Luna seemed serious. “Yes… that’s true, I mean, that’s how those—our means of crossing over works, but wouldn’t showing up as a pegasus just create more problems?”

“Would it? It’s common knowledge now, is it not?”

For the first time in quite some time, a smile appeared on Serrell’s mouth. “It would certainly shake the box. They wouldn’t expect that.”

“That is all well and good.” Luna looked Serrell in the eyes. “But we are ignoring the manticore in the room. How would Meg’s testimony help you? Should she not spare herself the ordeal?”

“Same for me,” Twilight said. “Especially since most of what we could say has been classified by you.”

He sighed. “It’s more that your non-appearance hurts, rather than what you might say would help. You two are fact witnesses. They’ll claim I’m preventing you from testifying, because your testimony would be damaging.”

Luna nodded. “That would be their logical course of action.”

Twilight looked back and forth between the two, and sighed. “I’ll think about it. As for Meg, that’s her decision.”

Meg typed away at her workstation, working on the simulation software that modeled magic fields. At this point she was doing it more for Twilight than for her job at the Department of Energy. Not that she’d had much opportunity to spend her human salary. It was her job as Royal Advisor that now covered her no-longer-token Equestrian expenses.

A Royal Guard walked through the converted cavern. The two guards were her only company this late at night, there to ensure no unauthorized persons came through the portal. Human counterparts were on the other side. Their job seemed primarily to take her into custody should she return to her own world, and the guards’ job was primarily to make sure their human counterparts stayed on their side of the portal.

Surprisingly few had tried to enter Equestria uninvited—if only because Discord had been persuaded to shift the portal over to the vault that had been used for magic experiments. Though never acknowledged, word of the portal’s existence had of course gotten out. After the first few gatecrashers armed with live streaming had managed to enter the facility and found only an ordinary wall for their efforts, the problem had pretty much taken care of itself. Not that they stopped believing in the portal, oh no. It obviously got moved, and they would find it.

Well, they weren’t wrong. So far, no one with access to the vault—a select few—had talked. On this side of the portal, a new room had been dug out and the portal moved into that. It was one of many security upgrades. A proper, public portal was being talked about—behind closed doors, of course—but so far it was only talk.

“We need to talk, Meg.”

Meg jerked her head to the side. “About what?” Twilight must have just teleported in.

“The upcoming impeachment trial.”

She knew where this was going. She turned back to her workstation. “Not doing it.”

“Just hear me out, okay?”

Meg sighed. “Just get to the point.”

“Do it as a pony. Then they can’t hold you.”

That caught her off-guard, for that option had never occurred to her. Even so: “But what would that accomplish? What could I possibly say—what I’m allowed to say—that would make a difference?”

Never mind what showing up as a pony might do to her.

“The mere fact that you do not will hurt Serrell’s case and help Routledge’s. Luna agrees.”

“Will you testify?”

“I’m not ruling it out.”

Meg plunged her face into her hands. “I am so sick of this.”

“Maybe flip a quantum coin?”

“I’m sick of that too. I am not going to run my life by coin flips.”

Twilight answered with silence.

“Fine. I’ll flip a coin.” Meg navigated to the website she had visited all too often. “Should I flip a coin to determine whether to appear before the Senate to testify?” She started the stream of quantum mechanically generated random hexadecimal digits, then immediately stopped it and looked at the first digit. “No. Go figure. I guess I have to decide on my own. The multiversal quantum supercomputer has spoken.”

“Then think it over. That’s all I ask.”

Twilight teleported away.

Meg groaned. “What’s to think about.”

There was one last item for Twilight to cross off her checklist. Sunset Shimmer and Moondancer had something to show her. They had been rather mysterious about it, just said to meet them in the mirror realm.

The mirror stood before her. Twilight walked through the mirror, and nearly fell flat on her face—and not because she had become a biped. Canterlot High was gone! In its place was a control room right out of some human sci-fi movie, full of hi-tech consoles and computer displays. “What in Celestia’s name happened?!”

Both of them were seated at a console. Sunset Shimmer spun around in her chair to face her. “We finally figured out the true nature of this place.”

“Why it looks the way it does,” Moondancer added.

Twilight looked behind her. There was a wide, floor-to-ceiling pillar. No statue. “And that would be…?”

“This realm is pure magic,” Sunset said. “No other fundamental forces of physics are present here.”

Twilight shook her head. “No, no, no, no. Magic is the one thing that cannot be used here. That’s what caused that leak!”

“Only because this place was magically simulating a non-magical realm. You could say, in a manner of speaking, that its programming couldn’t handle intense harmonic magic, like from the Elements.” Sunset shrugged. “We broke the simulation.”

Twilight looked around the control room—controlling what?—as the implications sank in. She wished she had a horn here, so that she could directly probe the magical underpinnings. “How did you move the portal from the statue to here?”

Moondancer stood up and walked towards her. “We didn’t move the portal; we changed the simulation.”

“What?”

“When a pony enters this realm—unoccupied—the realm conforms to her expectations. Canterlot High had always been here because we didn’t know any better; we expected it, therefore it was here.”

Something wasn’t right. Twilight fixed her gaze on Sunset. “But why would you be thinking of human equivalents to Ponyville residents when you came here the very first time?”

“I wasn’t.” She exchanged glances with Moondancer. “We, uh, have a theory about that.”

Twilight facepalmed. “I’m not going to like it, am I?”

Moondancer cleared her throat. “One resident of Ponyville was conspicuously absent.”

“Two, actually,” Sunset said.

Twilight groaned. “Myself and Spike.” She looked up. “But at that time, both of us were living in Canterlot, so that doesn’t actually explain anything.”

“Oh.” Moondancer grimaced. “Right.”

Sunset waved it off. “That doesn’t really invalidate the theory. Look, I don’t have any proof—don’t really have any evidence—but what if you went back in time and came here before I did, establishing Canterlot High and its students and faculty, and left only after I arrived. You and Spike wouldn’t have equivalents because you were already here. Well, maybe Spike went back in time with you?”

This was giving her a headache. “Sure, why not, what’s one more time loop?” A thought came to her: “Wait a minute. You mean we don’t have to become humans in this place?” Maybe she could one day come here as an alicorn and probe the magical underpinnings of this realm.

“Strictly speaking, no,” Sunset said. “That was just another part of the simulation. We don’t have material bodies here at all; we can set it to have any form we want. Didn’t you notice that Discord always remained his chaotic self?”

Twilight nodded.

“I don’t know how, but he knew how to override the form this realm tried to impose on him.”

“Override the simulation from within,” Twilight said. Discord could not be separated from his magic. That’s what Tirek had said, and this place was supposedly nothing but magic. “Remember he got rid of all the occupants?”

Sunset looked up in thought. “Yeah, he did that, didn’t he?”

Twilight remembered something, back from when she’d first learned about the magic leak to the human realm. “Discord also created that mirror. Claimed that this place was nothing but a reflection of our own realm… that it doesn’t exist unless somepony goes through to observe it.”

“He might have been jerking you around,” Sunset said. “Tends to do that, you know.”

“Tell me about it.”

“But, in this case, it’s more or less consistent with what we found out. It was a reflection of our realm because somepony went through expecting it to be, and thus observed it to be.”

“What about isolating our two realms?” Twilight asked. “He said that too.”

“The better question is, what would break that isolation?” Sunset asked.

Moondancer answered, “Portals.”

“Portals,” Twilight repeated.

“Yes, portals.” Sunset waved her hand at the consoles. “This all controls the portals between the Equestrian and human realms—creates, moves, destroys. I simply went through the mirror expecting a portal control room, and here it is.”

Twilight walked over to a monitor. According to what she saw on it, one portal currently existed. There was also the longitude, latitude, altitude, width, height, and orientation of both ends.”

“I already checked out those coordinates,” Sunset said. “They accurately describe the portal we know about.”

“But what if it’s showing this because you expected it to show this?” Confirmation bias literally made real. They’d have to watch out for that.

Sunset had a ready answer. “We briefly created another portal, from another spot in the cavern to the opposite side of the vault. This is the real deal.”

Twilight couldn’t take her eyes off that monitor. “But where were all these controls hiding before? How did Discord create that portal if this wasn’t here?”

Moondancer shrugged. “We don’t know.”

“How did you know—or even suspect—the portals were controlled from this realm?”

“Suspect, really,” Sunset said. “The main clue was what Tirek had said, that the portals did not directly connect the two realms, that this realm was the intermediary. There’s also the fact that from within this realm Discord could open and close that other portal to hyperspace.” She pointed at the pillar Twilight had come through. “It’s on the other side, like before.”

This changed everything. Maybe it even solved the unsolvable! “Could this create a portal into Tartarus?” And provide a way to for Tirek to escape?

“Uh… I don’t think so? I mean, there’s no way to specify which realm. One endpoint is assumed to be in the human realm, the other in ours. What does latitude and longitude even mean in that place?”

“See if it’s possible.” Twilight met Sunset’s eyes. “It’s important.”

Those eyes widened. “Sure. Important.” She stole a glance at Moondancer. “I mean, if Tartarus is no longer escape-proof due to this… we ought to find out sooner than later, right?”

Meg couldn’t get her mind back into her work, as hard as she tried to do so. She might as well go home. Her Equestrian home. The only home she now had.

After locking her computer’s desktop, she stood up and put her saddlebags around her neck, then squeezed her pendant. A pegasus once more, she put on her mining helmet and switched on its lamp. As she trotted over to the locked exit, she said in a raised voice, “I’m leaving now.”

A guard came by and opened the door for her, after magically unlocking it. “Have a good night,” he said.

“May be too late for that,” she muttered.

The guard had the good sense not to reply to that. The door closed behind her and relocked.

Meg walked through the old mining tunnels. In the solitude, she thought it over yet again. It was true they could not hold her so long as she arrived via one of Discord’s plaid pills; she could return whenever she wanted and there was nothing they could do to stop it. Even if they knocked her out and kept her unconscious, the failsafe would kick in once the magic ran out. None of that could prevent them from killing her, she supposed, but, one, they wouldn’t do that and, two, it was literally impossible; she had met her future self—who was very much alive.

Well, if they had a magic generator… no, that was overthinking it, and none of that was the real problem anyway. She had never appeared in public as a pony. Didn’t matter that that secret was out; there was a big difference between hearing she was a pony and seeing it on television during an impeachment trial. Would she ever be able to go out in public again? As if I could anyway, she rationalized. Well, it was true, wasn’t it?

But what could she say under questioning? She had little doubt that most of it would involve classified information. But was that really a problem? So she’d just give non-answers, pretend to have a poor memory; she had seen that song and dance played out enough times. The point was she’d be there, thereby proving Serrell was cooperating or whatever.

Routledge. The man behind the curtain, the man who had her niece kidnapped—even if they couldn’t prove it, not even circumstantially. He’d be one of the inquisitors on the Senate Judiciary Committee. How could I deal with him?

By the time she had walked out under the night sky, she still didn’t know. After stowing her helmet in a saddlebag she took wing, Luna’s moon providing ample light to fly by. Gaining altitude, the thought crystalized: the senator must be made to pay. That would justify appearing before the Senate—the consequences to herself be damned. Yet that only begged the question: how to make him pay?

A few minutes later she had flown up and around the mountain and was approaching the palace, her not-so-temporary home. A guard, armor shining in the moonlight, was flying in her general direction—no, definitely heading towards her. That was unexpected; what was up? She slowed down to a hover as they met. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“Meg?”

“That’s right.”

“Her Highness requests your presence.”

“Princess Celestia?” Now? Must be important.

The guard coughed. “The other one.”

“Oh.” Late at night. Right. “Where may I find her?”

“The throne room.” Message delivered, the guard departed.

In those rare situations when Luna had initiated contact, it had been in her dreams. Doesn’t make it less important. Meg resumed flying, and soon she was gliding in to a landing at the palace entrance. There wasn’t much activity. Ponies still preferred to conduct their business during daylight hours. Luna seemed to have made her peace with it, perhaps because it gave her the time to patrol the dreamscape for nightmares.

The throne room was a ghost town—no, not quite. An aristocrat was in discussions with the princess, and a few staffers hovered nearby. Upon hearing somepony enter, Luna looked up. “We’ll have to put this aside for a half-hour or so. Everypony please vacate the throne room.”

Meg took that as her cue to approach the throne. Quickly the others departed, and from that throne Luna closed the doors and gave them privacy. “I figured a change of pace would be appreciated,” Luna said. “To meet in person instead of in a dream.”

Meg shrugged. “I suppose? Anyway, would this have anything to do with a conversation I just had with Twilight? I’ve decided to do it, by the way.”

Luna looked surprised. “Do what?”

“Be a witness at the impeachment trial. Twilight mentioned you agreed that’d be a good idea.”

“I see. We did have a meeting with President Serrell earlier this evening—but that is not why I requested your presence. Have you given any thought as to how, in the past, you shall break Tirek out of Tartarus?”

It had been months since that particular nightmare, when Luna had conveyed royal… non-disapproval?… to that act. “Not really? I mean, I have no idea how we’re supposed to do that. I just assumed that when the time was right something would turn up. It would have to, right? It will—did happen.”

“I believe you should be more proactive. As was pointed out before, it would be best if it happened under our terms.”

And not under other terms that happened to be sufficient to close the time loop, Meg recalled from when Luna had disrupted her Tartarus nightmare. “Well… not sure where I’m supposed to look for the answer. Many had tried to figure out how he escaped, right? Without success?”

“I agree that revisiting well-explored terrain would be unproductive. However, you are human; I imagine that would bring a different perspective to the problem.”

“Maybe it does,” Meg replied, “but that ‘different perspective’ has yet to work any magic.”

“Keep your mind receptive to possible solutions, and be aware that a solution could come from any direction. That’s all I can ask.”

“I guess I can do that.” Meg took a breath. “Can we go back to the impeachment trial? I said I’ll do it, but there’s the detail of how I’ll do it. I doubt it’ll make Serrell happy.”

“Serrell’s happiness is not our responsibility.” Luna raised an eyebrow. “Would it make me or my sister unhappy?”

Meg had no idea. Only one way to find out. “I want to take Routledge down for what he did to my niece. The only way I can see to do that is by revealing how I collected the evidence against them, through methods classified by the White House.”

“I see.”

Meg couldn’t read Luna. Awkward seconds passed. “The way I figure it,” she continued, “it’s not his to classify anyway. It’s Equestrian magic. Sure, I get it: he believes if this got out it’ll only make things worse, and for all I know he’s right. But wouldn’t taking down Routledge and his goons more than make up for that? And it’s not like magical time travel isn’t already known. Twilight did it in one of the cartoons!” And she couldn’t change the past, an important point to get across.

“Have you considered the possibility that Serrell might be persuaded? You could be invited to the next meeting.”

She hadn’t, actually, but didn’t care to admit that. “And what if he can’t be? I’ll do it anyway; I don’t think it’s in his power to stop me.” The Senate did not need presidential permission, that’s for sure.

“Did you flip a quantum coin over it?”

Not you too, she inwardly groaned. “No, and I’m not going to.”

More unreadable seconds passed.

“I shall discuss this with Celestia and Twilight. Taking down the senator would make all of us happy, naturally; nonetheless, the potential for collateral damage must be assessed. I ask that you consider making your case to President Serrell.”

The doors to the throne room opened under Luna’s magic. The aristocrat and staffers re-entered.

Meg bowed, as was appropriate in a public setting. “I’ll take that into consideration.”

10. Discoursing on Chaos

Another of Star Swirl’s space-manipulating spells opened up in a window. As originally written, they were comprehensible only to a trained unicorn. Meg had translated them into something comprehensible to humans during her preparation for this mission. She loaded it into the magic simulation software, as demanded.

“None of these spells is going to form a wormhole to Equestria,” Meg dutifully commented.

“It’s obviously possible; you’ve proved that often enough.”

Meg said nothing more. She had given them enough chances, lost cause it may have been, but she’d had to try—if only for her own sake.

She would depart that night. They would carry out their threats against Susie as a consequence; that was the point of goading them. The immutable past was immutable; paradoxes were forbidden. Yet there she could sleep easy. They were not monsters. No harm had come to her niece, not even psychological.

Even so, she wished she could apologize to Susie. It was too late for that, alas. Once she returned home, she decided, she would visit the statue of Susie that still stood in Canterlot, the one celebrating the harmony Susie had dedicated her long life to fostering between humans and ponies.

Soon after she had awakened, shortly before dawn in Greece, Twilight teleported into the cavern. Meg was where she’d expected her to be, at her workstation interacting with her computer. Steve, still a unicorn, was by her side, and Sunset Shimmer by her other side. The other humans were in front of a whiteboard. The equations scribbled there were obviously derived from general relativity, though nothing like she had ever seen in a book.

“Any progress?” she asked.

“Hard to say,” Sunset replied, still focused on the monitor.

“We may have figured out what’s powering that thing,” Steve said, “at least from a purely theoretical standpoint. But nothing else seems plausible that’s also consistent with the conservation of energy.”

Twilight thought they’d be more excited by that. Knowing what powered it meant knowing how to stop its growth. Right? “So how would we shut it down?—from a purely theoretical standpoint.”

“We don’t know if it’s safe to do so,” Sunset said. “The magic field would collapse, and there’s reason to believe that will destabilize it.”

“And we haven’t figured out yet what ‘destabilize’ means.” Martin mimed an explosion.

Twilight grimaced. Everything she knew, everything she had just read, about cleaning up after miscast spatial expansion spells, was useless. It was bad enough that those books, scrolls, and codexes all took it for granted that energy need not be conserved; worse was that they were oblivious to the possibility of magic going away. Of course that could have catastrophic results!

She’d have to start over from first principles. “Okay,” she began. “First of all, what is powering the anomaly?”

“Everything being sucked into it,” Steve said.

“Everything what now?”

“The long version. Mass is energy. The inside of the anomaly is time dilated. Dilated time lowers the energy content of mass. Inside a gravitational field, that ‘lost’ energy becomes kinetic energy, thus keeping the books balanced. But the anomaly isn’t a gravitational well; nothing is ‘falling’ into it. So instead the energy is being turned into magic, keeping the spell powered. We believe the spell is causing the time dilation.

“Put a barrier around the anomaly so that nothing gets sucked in by the ever-growing interior vacuum, and you cut off its source of power. But then the spell fails, and we don’t know what happens next. Theoretically, the time dilation cannot be undone with replacing the extracted energy. But the state of space-time in there is not natural; it cannot persist as is once the spell dies.”

Which, no doubt, was why those corrective spells were incompatible with the conservation of anything.

She took a deep breath and exhaled. “So what do we do next?”

“Collect data until we can adequately model it,” Steve said. “Only then will we know our options.”

When would that lidar unit arrive? It hadn’t done so during her nap. “Can we at least slow it down? Put a partial barrier around it?”

Steve and Sunset exchanged glances. “Maybe?” Sunset said. “Problem is, we don’t know how much of a barrier is too much.”

Twilight sighed. That was another item for the todo list: figure out how to tell when a partial barrier gets dangerously effective.

Martin raised his hand. “Just a quick change of subject, but you might want to know your creator was here a few hours ago.”

Creator? Oh, right. “Please do not refer to Faust that way. She would not appreciate it either.”

“Uh… sorry?”

“Why was she here?” How she got here was obvious enough: the portal.

Meg spun her chair around to face her. “She’s getting the VIP treatment. Was invited to visit. She wasn’t here very long.”

“Okay, I guess.”

But it was a reminder of a different to-do list item: figure out how to tell if Faust had ever been magically influenced in any way. She looked at the whiteboard once more. Faust would have to wait.

Meg’s phone rang. She answered it, putting it against her ear. “Kinda busy here. World-ending crisis, ya know.”

Twilight wasn’t able to pick up the other side of the conversation, no matter how she directed an ear. After a few seconds, Meg put palm to forehead and muttered something indiscernible. “Okay,” she eventually said, “I’ll take a look.” The call ended.

Meg’s hands got busy. “Twilight, you better get over here.”

Twilight obliged, wondering what had gone wrong this time. By the time she got there, Meg had brought up a story on CNN’s website: Ponies Created the Anomaly. There was a video and Meg started it playing.

It was exactly what she was afraid of. There she was, with Steve and Special Agent MacAuley, talking over the phone to Meg and Celestia. The picture and sound were surprisingly good, considering how far away they were. It was heavily edited, highlighting Celestia’s lack of certainty that ponies were not involved.

Senator Routledge was on next, standing in front of the Senate building: “You all heard it. Princess Celestia all but admitted ponies caused this. And you heard President Serrell’s henchman trying to pin this on humans. Humans! As if any human would have a reason to put this world—the entire world—in peril. But these aliens… yes, aliens… do have a reason—to eliminate a threat! And the president—our president—wishes to provide cover for them. If there had been any doubt before that Serrell must be removed from office, there can be none now.”

He paused for a moment. “But he is not the only traitor to the human race. Do not ignore who was in the room with the Equestrian princesses. Meg Coleman shall have much to answer for when she comes before the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath, in two days.”

Next was the panel to discuss this breaking news. It made Twilight sick to watch. Equestrian offers to help get rid of the anomaly were dismissed by at least half of them as underhanded ploys to make matters even worse. Even the others had to admit ponies were probably responsible, because magic—just as Celestia herself admitted.

“He doesn’t let a crisis go to waste, does he?” Meg closed the browser window. “Especially one his goons created.”

Shocked expressions all around. “Say what now?” croaked Dianna.

“You heard me. That’s what Special Agent MacAuley was referring to.”

“You can’t be serious,” uttered Martin.

Meg swung her chair to face them. “Look, you don’t want to believe me? Good for you. You don’t want to get involved. Trust me.”

She stood up. “I’m going home. I’ve got a Senate interrogation to prepare for.” She started walking. “About time I took that seriously. I’m gonna take that bastard down one way or the other.” Raising her voice, she added, “Twilight, please have Rarity deliver my dress to my apartment.”

“You can’t leave now!” squeaked Dianna.

Meg had gotten halfway to the exit. “There’s nothing more I can do here anyway until we get more data.” She squeezed her pendant and resumed her equine form. “Don’t worry. It’ll all turn out fine in the end.” She threw them a forced smile. “It has to; I’ve met my future self.”

Blank looks from the remaining humans in the cavern.

“Guard! I’m leaving now.”

A guard trotted over to the door, reaching it just after Meg did. A few seconds later and the pegasus was gone.

Sunset Shimmer had come over to Twilight. “She left without a helmet light.”

“She’ll be fine. Probably. Pegasus sense of direction, remember?”

Sunset just looked at her.

Twilight sighed. “Guard? Make sure she reaches the surface safely.”

The stallion nodded and left the cavern.

The cavern had become eerily silent. Twilight found that the humans were staring in her direction. How much had Meg ever told them? Not much, from the looks of it.

“She met her future self?” asked Jerry.

“What’s her beef with the senator?” asked Martin. “I mean, apart from what we just saw.”

“She commissioned a dress from Rarity?” asked Dianna.

Everyone looked at her. “That’s what you find astounding about all this?” Martin asked.

“Considering our day job? Yes. And her beef is about the kidnapping of her niece, or did you forget that big speech Serrell made?”

“Look,” Twilight said. “I know there’s a lot you haven’t been told, but these questions aren’t productive right now. Maybe when Meg’s in a better place…” She sighed. “You know what I mean.”

Martin stepped forward. “Yeah, but time travel? Can’t we just go back in time and prevent this from happening?”

Jerry punched his shoulder. “Duh, obviously not, or they would’ve done it!”

There was nothing to do but to put this subject to rest. “That is correct. The past cannot be changed, nor is it possible to create a paradox. Believe me, I did the experiments.”

Dianna raised her hand. “And don’t forget that episode where you went back a week in time to warn yourself—”

Twilight threw her a nasty look. “I haven’t forgotten.”

“Uh, right, sorry.”

Attention drifted over to Steve, asking the unspoken question.

“She needs her space right now.” The question remained unspoken. “And she can fly back to the palace… and I can’t.”

This was getting out of hoof. What would Celestia do? She always knew what to do.

Too bad I don’t.

Might as well start with what she could do. “I’ll teleport you back. We should check on the status of that lidar unit anyway.” She looked at Sunset. “What are you going to do?”

The unicorn thought it over for a moment. “I think I’ll accompany you. I want to see the anomaly for myself, and I want to see the lidar in action.”

“Shouldn’t we be there too?” Martin asked.

Twilight squinted at the humans. “I’m not stopping you. You all have cars, do you not?”

The guard turned around and re-entered the labyrinth of tunnels, his horn still lit. It was just as well the guard had showed up to escort her. Meg probably could have found her way to the entrance—if her mind had been free to focus on that task.

In the other direction was daylight. She got a running start and leaped into the air, rising as fast as her wings could drive her. It was a poor substitute for taking down that miserable excuse for a human being.

“Need some advice?”

Meg turned her head to the voice. Discord was flying beside her—on his side. It was bad enough when Rainbow Dash did that. “Are you actually omniscient, or do you just do a good job of faking it?”

“I try to be well informed where my interests are concerned.”

I don’t need this right now. What were the odds that his “advice” would be helpful to her? “And just what are your interests in this matter?”

A tiny paper fan was fluttering beside her now, both sides of which featured a picture of the senator’s face. “I heard what he said about me,” the picture’s mouth said, “when ‘Andy’ was being released from Tartarus. You could say I’m not… the biggest fan of his.”

Meg rolled her eyes. “That makes two of us.”

“So I gathered.” He changed back. “You will be facing him soon as a witness in the impeachment trial.”

It was so tempting to come back with a snide remark, like tell me something I don’t know. She settled for: “What’s your advice?” He was going to provide it regardless.

“To cause maximum chaos, of course!”

Meg grabbed air with her wings, halting her forward momentum. “This isn’t a joke to me!” she screamed.

Discord backtracked to the hovering pegasus. “Do I look like I’m laughing?”

“Forgive me for thinking that ‘maximum chaos’ might not be the most constructive course of action.”

“You are forgiven—if you would at least hear me out.”

The top of the mountain wasn’t that much higher, and Canterlot was just on the other side. She looked back to the draconequus, who was now seated in a hovering plush chair, paw and talon clasped, patiently waiting.

It wasn’t as if she could escape him.

“Fine. I’ll hear you out.”

He unclasped his paw and it now held a modestly sized whiteboard. With a tap the word “change” appeared at the top. “Chaos promotes change. You wish to change the fortunes of a certain senator, and there is not a more powerful tool at your disposal.”

Another tap, and another word slid into position below the first. “Chaos shields against predictability. Being predictable enables others to counter you.”

The third word flew over and landed under the other two. “Chaos underlies creativity, and you need creative solutions.”

“I sure do,” Meg muttered.

The whiteboard disintegrated into a flock of white butterflies that, after several seconds, took up position to form the final word. “Chaos is the enemy of order. Systems and organizations depend on order, and there is one organization in particular you wish to destroy.”

The Section. “I’ll have to admit that… wasn’t the worst advice I’ve heard. Still… easier said than done.”

Discord nodded. “For you, yes. Alas, my chaos magic is of no use to you in your realm.”

“It can’t just be mindless chaos; the cure can’t be worse than the disease.”

“I can assure you that my chaos is never mindless.”

Surely there were counterexamples? Like, when, the chaos he caused while Fluttershy was trying to befriend him in season three… no, he was making the point they were wasting their time. Meg decided it wasn’t worth the effort, and she resumed her flight home. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

“It’s not often I hear that,” he said, then vanished.

And there was a lot to think about. For starters, what would be the non-chaotic approach? Confront her inquisitors with a bunch of facts and reason? She had seen enough televised hearings to know that would accomplish nothing. Questions were asked not to acquire information; they were asked to score points with their constituents back home. Inconvenient answers were at best ignored, and everything she said would be twisted by the spin-masters when they appeared on the news channels. Nothing would change.

And that assumed she had any say over the questions asked.

Well, she had some, from the president’s allies on the committee, but Routledge ran it.

Chaos was sounding better every minute.

The breeze at the perimeter had become a wind. Twilight looked around for Special Agent MacAuley, but she didn’t see him.

“So that’s it,” Sunset Shimmer said. She held a hand to her face to block out the late afternoon sun.

“Sure is,” Steve replied, likewise shielding his eyes. Both had elected to cross over as humans, the better to use human scientific equipment. “We should find the lidar and get it set up.”

It was hard to tell if the crater at the bottom had grown larger; presumably it had. Perhaps a different perspective was called for. “While you’re doing that, I’m going to look at it from above.”

“I’m sure there’s aerial drone footage we can look at,” Steve said.

She forgot they could do that. “I’d still like to see it with my own eyes.”

Steve shrugged. “Suit yourself. Just don’t get sucked in.”

“I’ll be careful.” And have the return spell on a hair-trigger.

Twilight took off. As she gained altitude, she scanned the ground looking for MacAuley. But by the time she thought she might have seen him, she was too high to be sure. Maybe it was enough for him to see her; he’ll seek her out when she landed—though she did notice a large crowd of humans at a distance, being held back by what she assumed was law enforcement.

Not before she was as high up as the perimeter was horizontally distant from the anomaly did she begin to fly over to it. She assumed that right above the anomaly the air was flowing down as fast as it was flowing across the perimeter at ground level, and she compensated accordingly.

She was over it, and she flew in a circle compensating for the downward draft. Looking straight down she saw… dirt? The floor of the building had been sucked up, that much was clear. But she wasn’t quite seeing unobstructed ground either. The substance of the building’s floor was still there, just… dispersed? The expansion of space would do that if it was fast enough to overcome the material’s tensile strength. It was almost certainly strong enough to overcome gravity—or maybe it was the hurricane force winds at the boundary.

She shuddered to think of what had happened to any persons inside. How many?

Twilight circled once more, then she aimed for her starting point; she had seen enough.

An unpleasant, high-pitched buzzing sound grew louder. She had heard a sound like that before, at the Parthenon. There was a drone in the air with her, and it was approaching. Her ears locked on to it, and her eyes followed. There it was. Who was controlling it?

It was heading right for her. Fast.

She knew the operator could see what the drone “saw.” Nonetheless, it wasn’t changing direction, so Twilight did.

The drone altered course—to intercept her once again.

This wasn’t an accident.

Twilight waited until it was seconds from colliding with her and then teleported to where the drone just was. She watched as it flew away from her. Was that it?

No. The drone curved around until it was on a new collision course.

Whoever it was clearly meant business. Twilight’s jaw set, and she prepared to telekinetically crush its propellers.

No. It was evidence.

Once it got close enough, she tracked it with her magic. A little bit closer… She magically grabbed it and invoked the return spell.

Back in her residence, she telekinetically held it in place, ears flattened against the noise. The drone didn’t fight her, not really; its operator could no longer communicate with it, control it. She spotted the on/off switch and she switched it off. That did it. The propellers spun down, and the noise subsided.

Spike appeared at the railing upstairs. “What was that?!”

“Everything’s under control, Spike.”

“Is that a human-made drone?”

That had been asked by Yearling, who was at the door. “It sure is,” Twilight responded.

“That was what was making all the racket?” she asked.

“Uh huh. Sorry. I didn’t have many options.”

Yearling walked over to inspect the drone. She had seen the one used in Athens, of course. This one was a bit bigger, a more serious looking machine—if that made any sense. Twilight was quite sure a high-speed impact would have left a mark on her.

Twilight’s phone rang. She got the phone out of her saddlebag. It was Sunset. She accepted the call. “I’m fine.” That prompted Yearling to look up at her.

“What happened?”

“A drone tried to ram me. I captured it intact.”

“Special Agent MacAuley here. Can you bring it to me? We may be able to trace its owner.”

They could do that? “Sure. I’ll return in a minute.”

“I suggest you drop it off then immediately return to Equestria. I cannot guarantee your safety at this time.”

Twilight looked at the drone. This threat may have been removed. Were there others, from that crowd she saw? “What about Sunset Shimmer?”

“No one knows she’s an Equestrian right now.”

Because she’s currently human, of course. That she could be a human was not widely known; it was the perfect camouflage. “Are you okay with that, Sunset?”

“It seems safe enough for me and Steve. I’ll call you when we’re ready to return.”

Twilight wanted to see the lidar in action, to help gather data on the anomaly’s internal geometry. She was perfectly capable of keeping herself safe, if necessary. But what about the others? They currently lacked magic. All she’d accomplish by being there was to attract the attention of the wrong people.

Sure, she could be invisible—but that would complicate interactions with the others.

She sighed. “Okay. I’ll be waiting.”

The call ended.

Yearling was still looking at her. “Trouble?”

Twilight frowned. “I guess you could say that. That anomaly is causing a lot of anti-pony sentiment.”

“Don’t forget Knossos is an option. We’re still getting the red carpet treatment.”

Maybe this was the excuse she needed. “Maybe I will—but not right this second.”

“I’ll look you up when I return—uh, by the way, that’s why I’m here right now. I need one of those pills. It’ll be dawn soon in Greece.”

“Be right back.”

As Twilight went to get one of those plaid pills, she thought about Sunset and how being human allowed her to hide in plain sight. If only she could transform herself into a human, she could be there with them right now. What stopped her was the fear that the Element of Magic would not survive her transformation into a magic-less creature. The same applied to the other Element Bearers.

But she remembered what Future Meg had told Present Meg, that no harm would come to the Elements. That she and Meg would figure out how to prove that, by creating a time loop that would result in a paradox if it wasn’t true. Or something. It wasn’t obvious to Twilight how to do that. Paradoxes were impossible regardless, and you couldn’t force something to be true just because it’d be a paradox if it wasn’t. The time travel spell would simply fail, avoiding the paradoxical time loop.

As Yearling took the pill and vanished, Twilight decided it was time to talk to Meg about it.

19. Displacement

“Making improvements?” Twilight smirked. “Like requiring us ponies to raise and lower the sun and the moon?” It had been decades, of course, since that had been the case, not since Meg had figured out how to automate those spells.

“Certainly not!” Discord said, clearly not pleased. “Need I remind you that no ponies existed then? Indeed, no magical creatures of any kind, other than myself and Harmony. That, however, was about to change—though we did tweak the solar output to emulate earthly seasons.

“Anyway…” Discord spread his arms apart, a menagerie of magical creatures appearing between them. “Manticore, quarry eel, hydra, timberwolf, cockatrice, poison joke, you get the idea.” He squeezed them all together until they flattened into nothing. “Then there are the one-offs, the ursa major and ursa minor—and of course the Smooze, the only one with sapience.”

Meg scrunched her mouth. “Not sure how poison joke helps anything.”

“By adaptively correcting imbalances, that’s how! Even sis agreed with that; the others she wasn’t so crazy about.”

“And what about the Tree of Harmony,” Twilight asked. “Isn’t that another magical plant?”

Discord was incredulous. “You still haven’t figured it out?”

Gradually the sky turned black and stars began to peek through, but tinted orange. In fact, everything around Meg adopted an orange tint—and that tint became ever redder and redder. It also began to become noticeably cooler. “I guess we have our answer,” she said, “on the effect of displacement on electromagnetic radiation attempting to pass through the boundary.”

Twilight nodded. “Lower and lower frequencies are being blocked. How much lower, I wonder?”

“How much longer before Discord’s done displacing us?” Meg countered. “Hopefully before all visible light is blocked.”

Twilight retrieved an object from her saddlebag, a quill. She cast a spell on it. Nothing happened. “Not done yet,” she said. “Conservation laws still in effect.”

Meg’s phone rang. Caller id was blocked. Somehow, she felt she should answer it anyway, given the circumstances. She did so and put it on speakerphone. “Hello?”

“Is Twilight with you?”

It was the president. “I am,” Twilight replied. “The displacement into hyperspace is happening now, as you probably guessed. I don’t know how much worse it’s going to get before it completes.”

A few seconds of silence. “But you will be able to get rid of that damned anomaly, right?”

“That’s the plan.”

Everything was monochromatic red, and dimming.

“You are there, I take it?”

“On the roof of a nearby building. We can relocate to the ground if you wish.”

“No, you don’t need the distraction or interference. Just keep this line open.”

“Will do.”

The sun became dimmer than a full moon, a deep baleful red, easy to look at. The stars became too dim to see. It wouldn’t be long before the sun, too, would disappear, except maybe in heat vision goggles. “I wonder what we look like from space,” Meg said. “Maybe we’ll find out, if the satellites weren’t displaced with us.”

But the sun did not disappear.

“Maybe it’s finished?” Meg asked.

Twilight retried a spell on that quill. This time, it grew larger. She cast a different spell, and it returned to its normal size. “Looks like we’re good to go. Just one more thing to check first.” Her horn lit up yet again, and a click came from her saddlebag. “It may be hoping for too much, but I just switched off the magic generator.” For a second her eyes were closed, then they opened with a sigh. “It was too much to hope for. No ambient magic field.” Another click came from her saddlebag, turning the generator back on.

It was the biggest one they could construct, enough to cover the distance to the anomaly with some magic field.

“Why haven’t you started?” Discord asked. “I can’t keep this up forever.”

The draconequus was standing beside Meg, opposite from Twilight. “So you can exist here now?” Meg asked.

“Obviously,” he said, “not that I can take advantage of it. This is difficult, much more so than I’d expected, so please get on with it!”

Twilight nodded. “Right.” She aimed her horn at the anomaly and a continuous ray shot out. It disappeared inside. And that was all. No effect on the anomaly evident.

How long would this take? Meg looked up at Discord, frozen in concentration. The shorter the better, clearly. There’s no planet-wide magic field, so how’s he… She opened her mouth, then thought better of it. He didn’t need the distraction. Maybe he wasn’t all here? Part of him was still in hyperspace? Tapping the magic there?

Meg went over to the edge and looked down. Street lights had all turned on, triggered by the darkness. People were looking up in her direction, not because they could see her, but because they could see Twilight’s beam of magic. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the attention. The anomaly still looked no different, the rush of air towards it no weaker. “Any idea how long this will take?” she asked Twilight.

“Longer than I’d like,” was her response. “It’s huge in there. I may have to try a different approach.”

“Not what I want to hear.” The president’s voice was soft, audible only to Meg.

“Me neither,” Discord grunted.

Okay, so Discord had excellent hearing.

Excellent hearing was not required to hear the whine of an approaching drone. Hearing was not required at all to know it was approaching, for a searchlight pointed right at them. “Great, the media.” Hopefully, it’s just the media.

“Don’t let them know I’m on the line.”

Meg sighed. “Sure.” Twilight and Discord had their hooves full. Guess it’s up to me. She could buck it out the sky. But maybe that was the wrong approach. Shouldn’t this be documented for history? Nothing wrong with that. Sure, it could be spun the wrong way, but—

“You’re on live TV, just so you know.”

“Copy that.”

Twilight gave her a funny look at those two words.

“I’ll explain later. Let me worry about that drone.”

Meg got a nod in response. The wind blasted her mane; it remained at full strength. At least that was slowing down the drone’s approach. She could handle that wind, but she still wished Rainbow Dash was here. Industrial-strength weather magic would be useful to counter it.

It took about a minute for the drone to finally reach them and hover. With that damn light shining at them it wasn’t possible to see what markings, if any, were on it—not that it’d be possible anyways without a flashlight of her own. Did it have a loudspeaker? If so, they weren’t using it.

Meg decided to force the matter and walked closer to it. “We’re kind of busy here, you know, saving the world.”

Nothing.

“Don’t look down at your phone. They can’t hear you, no microphone. Not stopping them from trying to read your lips—poorly, I’d say. They’re talking about Discord’s presence, for what it’s worth. Speculating he’s the cause of the darkness.”

Well, technically, he was. Anyway, better they talk about him than herself, as far as she was concerned. She turned around and walked back to the other two. The drone did not follow; its camera, no doubt, had sufficient zoom.

“Any progress?” Meg asked.

Twilight almost shook her head. “It’s just too big and growing inside too bucking fast.” The magic beam ended, and she sighed. “I need a different approach. How long can you keep this up, Discord?”

He grunted. “Not much longer.”

Meg grimaced. “If we can’t get rid of it now, can you do something to stabilize it? slow down its growth? buy us more time?”

“Maybe?” The alicorn looked up in thought. “Give me a minute to think about it.”

Meg looked at Discord.

“You have that much time,” he said.

A slam. The door to the stairwell had opened and caught the wind. Several people came out, one with a camera precariously on his shoulder. The wind was not doing that camera any favors, but—unfortunately—it mostly stayed put.

They headed their way.

As Discord was maintaining the displacement and Twilight needed to think, dealing with the new arrivals was once again up to her. Lucky me. Meg walked forward to intercept them. A light switched on and rapidly sought her out. Soon enough a microphone was hanging in front of her. “Don’t bother them,” she warned. “They’re busy trying to get rid of the anomaly.”

“What about the sky?” one of them demanded. “Is that Discord’s doing?”

Meg cringed inside. It’d be so easy for the truth to be misinterpreted or spun. “It’s necessary for getting rid of the anomaly,” she offered. “Once we’re done here, things will return to normal.” It had damn well better.

“So this is his doing?”

It had been worth a shot. “Yes, this is his doing,” she admitted. “And I know you’re going to ask it, so I’ll tell you right now that the same thing that allows us to get rid of the anomaly and that changes the sky also allows him to exist here. It’s quite temporary, and as you can see he’s occupied with his current task.”

The draconequus hadn’t budged an inch the whole time. The reporter didn’t immediately say anything. With that light in her eyes, she had no idea what they were doing or what they were looking at.

“There is no apparent change in the anomaly. Was that expected?”

Twilight was at the roof edge, hooves resting on the wall, staring at the anomaly, her mane furiously whipping in the wind. Her horn was not glowing. No point in denying the obvious. “It’s proving harder than expected.”

“Could you tell us why?”

It wasn’t as if the question was unfair, not that that made it any easier to answer. “I’m not the one to ask, and the one who is shouldn’t be bothered right now. She’s thinking.”

The light began to move. The crew walked past her and over to Discord. He didn’t react.

“Is there anything you’d like to say, Discord?”

He ever so slightly shifted his head. “Yes, yes there is. I’m busy. I’ll turn you into mushrooms if you don’t leave me alone.”

“Uh… sure.” The light settled on Twilight, for only a moment, then back to Meg. The crew moved back to her. “Can he really do that?”

Could he? There was that one time he turned Angel into a rabbit-shaped collection of veggies. “Wouldn’t bet against it.” She smiled. “Don’t worry, he’s reformed. You wouldn’t stay a mushroom.”

They glanced back at the motionless draconequus. “Yeah, we’re good.”

Meg shrugged. “Don’t blame you.”

“You spend most of your time in Equestria these days. Has Discord ever turn you into something?”

So it was turning into an interview with herself. She wasn’t happy about that, but if it kept them away from the others… “Never.”

“Is that because you rarely see him?”

“Oh, I see him often enough.” Should I? Why not. “In fact, I just recently visited the theme park he’s been creating, on the other side of the Everfree Forest from Ponyville. Once it’s ready, humans and ponies will be welcome to visit.” Did Discord just twitch? He can thank me later.

How she wished she could see their faces.

“How would us humans get there?”

Glad you asked! “A portal. Where it would open up here is a detail that hasn’t been worked out yet. Lots of details need working out.”

“Any idea when this theme park will be open?”

This wasn’t so bad; they weren’t asking about herself. “Not really, but I’m working on holding a brony convention there in the not too distant future. As you must know, it had proven… difficult… to hold one here.”

“What… would prevent those disruptive elements from disrupting this one?”

Meg looked back at Discord, who didn’t take the bait. So she answered for him: “Because they would have to deal with Discord.” With a vicious smile, she added, “It would make his day.” Oh, right. “Discord will be host and a Guest of Honor, by the way.”

There, that should make Andrew happy.

“What about you?”

The question caught her off guard. Sure, she probably would attend, but that wasn’t what was being asked. Was she turning into a celebrity? She was certainly getting enough media exposure, if unwanted. “Maybe I’ll do a panel or two, but I haven’t made any decisions yet.”

“Meg! I need your assistance!”

Twilight was trotting towards her, with what looked like the spare magic generator hovering before her. The light turned on her, blinding her to a stop. Meg trotted to her instead. The reporters rushed to keep up. Not much could be done about them—or maybe Twilight would use a privacy spell?

She did not. “I need you to carry this above the anomaly and drop it when I give the signal.”

“A magic generator? But I thought—”

“Won’t be a problem, trust me.”

Meg started to go but stopped. “What’s the signal?”

“I blast it with another beam of magic. Now go!” She threw a worried glance at Discord. “We haven’t much time.”

Meg let actions speak. She grabbed the magic generator with her hooves—it was already turned on—and launched into the air. The wind yanked her towards the anomaly. She countered by flying in the opposite direction, gaining altitude as fast as possible.

Devastation awaited her. Buildings here were designed to withstand earthquakes, not hurricane force winds. As for the interstate… it was too damn close to that giant hole in the ground. At least a quarter-mile in diameter. Half that as deep? Hard to tell in the dim red light. This had damn well better work. The destruction already wrought would have consequences for years—decades—to come. Who would take the fall for it?

It looked like she was high enough to be safe. As she circled the anomaly, constantly climbing to fight the downward flow of air, she sought out Twilight and found her at the roof’s edge looking back up at her. No magic beam yet; must have been waiting for her to get into position.

Meg couldn’t keep this up forever. Once on the opposite side from Twilight, she changed course to go right over the anomaly’s center and kept an eye on Twilight.

A beam of magic hit the anomaly. Instead of going straight in, it spread out to surround it.

Just as she reached the center, she dropped the magic generator and kept on flying.

She didn’t look back; the news networks would replay it forever anyway. First thing she noticed was that Discord was gone. Once she landed next to Twilight she took a look at the anomaly. It was… anticlimactic. It didn’t really look any different, though maybe it was just the lack of light.

The red sun was brightening. The displacement was reversing.

Twilight was looking pleased.

“What did we just do?” Meg asked.

A microphone appeared over their heads.

“A stop-gap measure,” Twilight responded, unconcerned about the eavesdroppers. “One of Star Swirl’s time spells, to be precise, that drastically slows down the flow of time at the outer boundary of the anomaly. It’ll work its way inwards, slowing its growth and consumption of air, buying us more time to find a permanent solution. The magic generator you dropped will help maintain that spell from within.”

The wind was dying down. Her growing ear discomfort said air pressure was building up too. All the air that had already been moving couldn’t be stopped on a dime.

“Will it be necessary to black out the sun when you do apply a permanent solution?” That question came from the reporter. The sun in question was already back to orange, though without blue the sky remained black and peppered with a few orange stars. The displacement’s reversal was going faster than its imposition.

Twilight turned around to face the camera. “Quite probably. But as you can see everything is returning to normal.”

“We can thank Discord for that too?”

“Yes.”

“Where is he right now, if he can no longer exist here but still can affect us like this?”

“That’s… a bit complicated to answer.”

You mean you don’t want to utter the word “hyperspace.” Not that Meg blamed her.

“How does blocking out the sun help destroy the anomaly?”

Twilight gave her best fake smile. “That’s really complicated to answer, and I owe you a comprehensible explanation someday, but right now I’m afraid I need to get going.”

She invoked the return spell.

Which left just Meg.

And the news crew.

“How will this limited success in managing the anomaly affect the president’s chances in the Senate’s impeachment trial?”

Meg almost looked down at her phone to see if Serrell was still there. “Nothing I have to say will change anyone’s mind, least of all the senators’.” A cop out, perhaps, but still more true than not.

“What about that trip to the past to observe the anomaly’s creation. Will that change any minds?”

Should she just end this, like Twilight did? “Time will tell,” she said, shrugging.

“Could you give us an update on that trip? Who’s been selected to go, when will it happen?”

“I’m the wrong person to ask.”

“Neither the president nor the princesses keep you in the loop?”

When will this end? “Regardless of whether they do or do not, I’m still the wrong person to ask.”

“Surely you can answer whether you will accompany the observers.”

That’s it. “Yes, I could answer that question,” she answered, then invoked the return spell.

Twilight was waiting for her by the mirror portal. “They interrogated you?”

“You could say that.” A quick look down at her phone showed that the president was still on the line. “We’re back in Equestria, but you probably already know that.”

“The talking heads are already arguing over what you two must be hiding, but that’s likely the lesser of two evils right now. The wind is dying off; that’s very good news. Whatever you did, it accomplished that much.” A brief pause. “Remains to be seen if it’s enough, for now anyway.”

“Any comments about me promoting Discord’s theme park?”

Twilight’s ears perked up at that. Apparently she had been either too far away to hear due to the wind or too focused on the anomaly to pay attention.

“Would I be correct in thinking Twilight accompanied you on that trip to his theme park?”

“You would be correct,” Twilight answered. “I have picked out a spot there for vetting potential observers, a place called Pandemonium Plaza.”

A few seconds’ delay. “Not gonna ask. So, you’re not concerned about potential trouble makers?”

“Not in the slightest. They would make Discord’s day.”

A sigh. “Remains to be seen how that would make my day, but we’ll cross that bridge if and when it comes to that.”

“You know,” Meg said, “we don’t know if any satellites were included in the displacement, do we? Since everything below visible light could cross the boundary, it didn’t affect communications with them. I’m just wondering if any of them snapped a picture of the Earth while this was happening.”

“That’s a very good question. I’ll have my people look into that. I’m assuming the Earth will look a dark red, like the sun did to us?”

“I would expect so, yes,” Twilight said.

“Can’t wait for the talking heads to make sense of that. Other matters demand my attention, so goodbye for now.”

The call ended.

Meg grimaced. “Can’t wait to see what the talking heads have to say about me.”

“Or Discord about the free advertising you gave his theme park.”

“Well, he’s free to speak up now.” She looked around. “Like, right this second.”

He did not appear.

“Maybe he’s still tied up in hyperspace,” Twilight offered. “Why don’t we take back that stuff we borrowed from the warehouse.”

Meg sighed. “Might as well.”

Returning the computer and the magic casting machine to the warehouse in the past went as expected. The two guards were asleep on the floor. They had arrived close enough to their prior time of departure that others had not yet arrived, if any were even on their way. After completing their task, Meg and Twilight returned to the side tunnel of the cavern in Equestria.

“Why don’t we get it over with,” Meg said, “and observe the creation of the anomaly?”

“Are you sure? We’ll have to go back to that event one more time to apply our corrective spell. We’ll see our future selves in action.”

“Do we need to wait until we apply that spell before taking back the observers?”

Twilight froze, mouth part open. “That requires that we’ll be ready to apply the spell before taking back the observers, and I’m not sure that’ll be the case.”

“Well,” Meg said, shrugging, “can’t hurt to try now I suppose. Worst that can happen is that the time travel spell fails.”

“Right. We know we shall apply the corrective spell and that it will work. So if we can go back to that event now, there’ll be no paradox seeing our future selves carry it out.” Her horn lit up. “I’ll aim for tee minus one hour. Okay?”

“Go for it.”

Twilight closed her eyes and concentrated.

Nothing happened.

“We know it doesn’t always work the first time.”

“Right, quantum uncertainty and all that.”

It failed the second time too.

And the third.

“I’ll loosen the temporal displacement requirement. Hopefully it’s something specific about tee minus one hour.”

Another four failures.

“Maybe we can’t go back to observe ourselves,” Meg proposed.

“It’s starting to look that way. I’m returning us to our present.”

This time, the time travel spell worked.

“Let me try once more. Maybe starting in the present makes a difference, though I can’t see why.”

Meg shrugged.

Five more failures.

“That’s unfortunate,” Twilight said.

“Can’t imagine what the paradox is.”

“Me neither,” Twilight said, frowning. “But it is what it is. Nothing we can do but get that corrective spell ready to go, and to do that I must first do some research in the library.”

“You go do that; I should go and give Andrew an update.”

Twilight teleported.

It was a safe bet he already knew what she’d said to that reporter, even if he hadn’t watched it himself. Indeed, when she picked her phone off the ground where she had left it—wouldn’t do to have time travel confuse its cellular connection—there was a message from Andrew. He knew.

But what more could she tell him? She didn’t know how Discord had addressed her concerns with the theme park, or whether he had yet to even do so. She didn’t know when to schedule the meeting; Discord didn’t—no, he basically said just show up and he’d be there. Still, how would she get there herself? Take Twilight along also? Could she use the Zephyr without her? Hope Discord would zap her over? But in that case, how would Andrew and the others get there? Create a portal? From where?

Meg groaned, then squeezed her pendant, resuming human form. Might as well get it over with, and the tunnel she was in was private enough. Find out when Andrew can do the meeting, and where he’d like the portal to be—within reason, of course.

Holding phone in hand, she made the call.

22. The Observers

“So what happened to the humans,” Discord carefully repeated. He looked at Meg, stalling, apparently trying to find the right way to phrase it. “They got… outcompeted.”

“Outcompeted?” Meg asked with raised eyebrow. “Humans? By what?”

”Don’t get me wrong. It took a century or two. Humans are an irresistible force, when that force is applied against non-sapient beings. But against griffons, dragons, centaurs, minotaurs… beings that are just as smart as humans, but with sharp claws or fire breath or magic, that irresistible force turned out to be resistible after all. In the end, even sis was on board with offering the remaining humans an out, a chance to join one of the other species. Many accepted.”

Meg didn’t ask about the ones who chose otherwise; the answer was clear enough. “What, no ponies?”

“At that time, no. Poison joke created all the sapient non-human species, from those humans who accidentally or deliberately touched a blue flower.”

“Like the centaur, Lord Tirek,” Twilight said, mentioning the famous example.

Discord looked like he tasted something unpleasant. “Yes, like Tirek.” Even after all this time—long after Andy, having lost his centaur immortality, had died of old age—the draconequus still held a grudge. “But poison joke was, then as it still is, incapable of creating a species that bears a harmonic cutie mark.”

Egor tilted his head from side to side as he considered the question. “You have yet to visit Russia, to communicate with us. President Tretyakov would treat you like honored guest.”

So it was going to be one of those. Twilight didn’t need Applejack’s opinion on his opening statement. It was blatantly true, if also a blatant non-answer. “Equestria has yet to establish formal relations with any nation on your world.” Also a non-answer, and she held up a hoof to forestall the obvious comeback. “The one nation with which we have extensively interacted has, as a result, been thrown into chaos, of which I am sure you are well aware. Perhaps that has made us a little—how do you put it?—made us a little gun shy?”

“You visit Greece.”

“Indeed I have. I was invited to take part in the filming of a documentary.” She met his eyes. “I have yet to receive an invitation to visit Russia, nor any other form of communication.”

He shrugged. “How we reach you?”

It wasn’t the first time she had heard that excuse—and excuse it was. It wasn’t a lie, exactly, but it wasn’t the truth either. Previously Twilight would ask if they had tried asking the Americans to pass along a message. None had admitted to trying, though not in so many words. But none had had any trouble demanding a place on this trip once Discord had done his thing.

Twilight decided this time to skip all that. “You now have my full attention,” she declared. “What do you wish for me to know?”

Which caught him off guard, floundering about for a reply. This one was not a trained diplomat, she figured.

“Okay,” he finally uttered. “I admit we not know what make of pony thing. That is not state secret. But when this ‘Discord’ turn sky black… that is scary. You claim to time travel; that is scarier. We study cartoon. We see what you, Twilight, do. I just experience teleport. Why I am here?” He shrugged again. “Seek truth.”

Twilight looked to Applejack, who nodded in return. Well, so far so good. “We are no threat to your world, though I must confess words are cheap.”

“Change is threat. You bring much change.”

Twilight sighed. “That goes for us, too, I’m afraid. Anyway, on to my second question: What do you intend to do once I take you to the past?”

His reaction was one of confusion. “Observe anomaly start?”

Another nod from Applejack.

“That is correct,” Twilight said. “You will be one of the observers. I shall now teleport you back to the plaza. Please do not discuss with the other candidates our conversation here.”

He nodded. “This time I keep eyes shut.”

Twilight waited until his eyes were closed then teleported him and herself back to the plaza. “We’re back.”

Egor slowly opened his eyes, carefully looked around, spotted the still-open portal, and made a beeline for it—not at an undignified sprint, but an urgent walk. Twilight eyes followed him as he reached the guarded door on the portal’s other side, nodded at the agents, opened the door, and departed. She noted there still weren’t any uninvited persons on the other side of that door looking for an opportunity to sneak in.

So who next? Until now, she had processed non-Americans. They had proven easy enough to handle. For the most part, their presence was due to their governments having finally been forced, after witnessing the displacement, to take ponies seriously.

Then there were the Americans. Some, she knew, were representatives of the president; they should be walks in the park—unless any secretly worked for his opposition or possessed other ethical failings. But that one was Routledge’s pick. Didn’t mean she intended to do anything funny once back in the past, but…

“Kimberly Hurst.” Might as well get it over with. “You are next.”

A confident smile graced her face and she strode over. “Ready when you are.”

Twilight gazed up at her, noting unclosed eyes. Well… if this human meant it…

One teleport later.

She had to give it to her; Kimberly was unfazed. The human looked around the lounge and saw the sole chair fit for humans. Not saying a word until after she sat on it, she said, “Where do we start?”

“First,” Twilight said, “I take my own seat.” She promptly did so, taking her spot next to Applejack. Their eyes briefly met, one of Applejack’s under a raised brow. “Now that that’s done,” Twilight continued, “I shall ask you my first question.”

The human nodded in acknowledgement.

“What is your goal in observing, in the past, the creation of the anomaly?”

“To make sure you do not attempt to frame my advocate.”

“You can do better than that,” Applejack warned.

Twilight couldn’t agree more. “Why would I bring over a dozen witnesses if that was my plan?”

The human shrugged. “That’s above my pay grade,” she said, clearly not meaning a word of it.

Tempting as it was, Twilight felt she couldn’t end the interview just yet, not wanting to potentially play into the senator’s hands. “Second question: What do you intend to do once I take you to the past?”

“Keep an eye on you.”

Applejack rolled her eyes.

There was no question they had a trouble-maker here. But what to do about it? She knew what Luna would say: If she rejected this one, Routledge would just substitute another equally bad, maybe one with more subtlety. If she rejected all the substitutes, he would complain loudly and publicly; “Proof!” he would scream of the ponies’ duplicity.

She cast a security spell, isolating herself and Applejack from the human both visually and audibly. “We have to take her.”

“Are ya nuts? She didn’t utter a single truthful sentence!”

“I know, but if I reject her Routledge will just select another who’s equally bad. I don’t know what she’ll do, but we know she can’t change the past. So perhaps it’s best to take her along and keep a close eye on her. If and when she does try something, we can use that against her boss.”

“I dun like it… but there’s a lick of sense in what you say.”

Only a lick, Twilight had to confess. If it was Hurst’s intent to mess with the past, that almost certainly would prevent the time travel spell from working—and getting that spell to work was currently enough trouble as it was. They would just have to deal with that when the time came. “Okay. Dropping the spell now.”

Twilight did so. Kimberly was still seated, patiently awaiting her victory. Twilight gave it to her. “You will be one of the observers,” she said.

The human stood up, beaming. “Excellent! You’ll teleport me down now?”

Nothing would make Twilight happier—not that there was a need to telegraph that. “If you are eager to depart,” she casually said.

“W-Why would I wish to stay up here?”

Not quite the response Twilight expected, but she chalked that up to her unexpected statement. She stood up and jumped down to the floor. “Then let’s be on our way.”

The human stood up, then Twilight teleported with her passenger down to the plaza. Hurst was no more fazed by her second teleport than her first, and she strode through the portal.

On to the next one. Twilight’s eyes fell on a young woman, who was then straining to see the more distant parts of the park. That was the sole media observer, so she had been informed, the only one due to a compromise amongst all the contenders acknowledging the need to avoid all of them sending someone. “Sophie Henshaw? You’re next.”

She jerked around at her name being called. “Be right there,”she said, and started to make her way around the planters. Upon reaching the alicorn, she closed her eyes. “Ready.”

So she had been paying attention. Without further ado, Twilight teleported her up to the Zephyr. “You may open your eyes now and take a seat.”

Sophie did so and looked all around, first noting the presence of Applejack and then the chair. She sat down.

“First question: What is your goal in observing, in the past, the creation of the anomaly?”

She shrugged. “To provide coverage for CNN, obviously—well, for all media outlets, I guess. I’m not used to doing that without a cameraman or other support people.”

Twilight nodded. “There are only so many people I can bring.” And part of that compromise was for a relative unknown to be selected to stand in for all media.

“If those are the rules then those are the rules.”

“Second question: What do you intend to do once I take you to the past?”

“To pay attention to what’s going on and take video with a camcorder.”

Applejack nodded her approval.

Twilight got up. “You’ll be happy to hear that you’ll be one of the observers. I shall now teleport you back to the plaza. Please do not discuss with the other candidates our conversation here.”

Sophie closed her eyes. Twilight teleported her down to the plaza. After opening her eyes, she went off into the park to explore.

The remaining candidates were processed without incident. Not many had gone sightseeing in the theme park, besides Sophie, and only two of those needed Rainbow Dash to find and “guide” them back to the plaza. In due course the last human returned through the portal, though two of them lingered just on the other side.

“I’ll pass that on to the president,” Reubens said, after receiving a summary of the interviews. “You’re probably right in approving Routledge’s candidate, but my opinion is not the one that matters.”

Twilight frowned. “At least none of the other candidates presented any issues. Anyway, I’m sure Serrell will let me know if he has a better option.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it. Any idea as to when the trip to the past will happen?”

The frown turned into a grimace. “Not right now. There are some… technical problems that need resolving first.”

“Anything we can help with?”

“Not that I can see.”

“If that changes, let us know. I suspect the longer it takes to get those problems resolved, the worse the political fallout will become.”

As if I didn’t have enough to worry about. The Secret Service agents departed and the room on the other side of the portal was empty. One call to Sunset and the portal was closed.

“Well that was dull.”

Twilight turned around. There was Discord, wearing a tool belt full of… tools, she guessed. “What, working on your hotel?”

“No, the action—or lack thereof—over here.” He glared at Rainbow Dash. “I didn’t even get to round up any sightseers.”

Dash glared right back. “Well excuse me.”

“Enough!” Twilight shouted. “I’ve got more important things to worry about.”

“What, those ‘technical’ problems you mentioned? I’m sure an egghead like you will solve those in no time.”

Discord smirked. “It seems to me it’s taking a bit longer than that.”

It was Twilight’s turn to glare. “I don’t suppose you have any insight into my problem?”

“Moi?” he replied, paw over chest. “I’ll have you know I’m neither as omniscient nor omnipotent as you would like to believe. And it so happens there’s a reason I don’t like time travel.”

No denying that. She remembered when she and Meg had threatened him with knowledge of his immutable future, back when they had gone to the past in the Everfree Forest in an attempt to deliberately create a paradox—which failed, naturally.

“Fine. Are you omniscient enough to know where Meg is right now?”

He waved away such a trivial question. “Right now she’s in Ponyville and it’s a safe bet she’ll still be there when you get back.”

Twilight looked up at the Zephyr. “Rainbow, prepare for teleport.”

“And concerning you’re not-so-little problem…” Discord faded away leaving just a smile. “I suggest trying a little chaos.”

Derpy’s eyes went a little more crosseyed. “What’s a theme park?”

“Well, uh…” Meg had never heard that question from another pony. “It’s like a… large place of entertainment, with rides and restaurants and stuff, that follows a theme.”

“I’m guessing the theme is chaos?”

“You got it!”

“So the convention will take place here in Equestria?”

“That’s what we hoping for. Still lots of details to work out.”

“I dunno, Meg.”

“You should totally do it! It’d be superific fun!”

The pink pony topped off their beverages and trotted on to the next table.

“Meg! There you are!”

All heads turned towards the entrance, where a breathless purple pony stood. Upon catching her breath, Twilight teleported over to Meg and Derpy’s table. “We need to go to the lab right now—maybe my castle will do.”

“Do for—” Before Meg could finish the question, Twilight teleported her. To her castle. Her residence within the castle.

“Wait right there.”

Twilight teleported yet again, without Meg this time. A few seconds later, she reappeared, carrying a laptop in her magic. It was deposited onto a desk and its lid magically opened.

“Care to explain what this is about?”

Twilight started typing. “It’s something Discord mentioned, about our time travel problem. How a little chaos might solve it.”

“Okay?”

The alicorn stepped away. Meg moved closer and saw the quantum random number generator website in the browser. “I see from where the ‘little’ chaos comes, but what are we supposed to do with it? I can’t think of a yes/no question whose answer would solve our problem.”

“I don’t think there is one. I gave this a lot of thought on the flight back. The trick is, I think, to ask a question that isn’t yes/no. How would the answer be encoded?”

“Well… if it isn’t a yes/no answer, then… one or more words? A simple text encoding? ASCII?”

“That’s what I figured. So all we need is the correct question.”

“You’re also assuming we’re in a time loop—never mind.” Of course they’re in a time loop. They were always in a time loop. “So we ask why going back to observe the anomaly’s creation causes a paradox—no, too complicated, we need a simple, short, direct answer.” Did they? No, this wasn’t the time to explore those limits. “How about: what must we do to avoid the paradox?”

Twilight tilted her head in thought. “Perhaps be more specific as to the nature of the paradox?”

“Does it matter? We know what we mean, and that guides our interpretation of the answer. Only an answer that causes us to solve the paradox will solve the paradox, so that is what the wave function collapse will select for.”

Twilight hummed in more thought. “Okay, works for me. Let’s fill up the window with random bytes and start interpreting them.”

That is what Twilight did, and Meg found herself staring at hundred of bytes. Nothing to do but start with the first one in the upper-left and see what they got. “Got a pad of paper or something?” Meg asked.

“Right here.” Twilight already had a pad floating by herself, with a quill ready to write.

The first byte was E6. “Since this is supposed to be ASCII, we’ll just ignore the high-order bit as random noise.” It did seem that that bit had a fifty-fifty chance of being set, so that looked reasonable. “So that leaves us with six-six, which is a lowercase ‘f’. That’s followed by dee-two, an… uppercase ‘R’. Sixty-five, a lowercase ‘e’. Five-ee… That’s a symbol of some sort, not sure which one, but definitely not a letter or digit.”

“If we’re expecting words, then maybe it just ends the word, like a space?”

“Maybe? If we treat it like a space, then it’s a space, I guess. Not like quantum fields know punctuation. But ‘f’, ‘r’, ‘e’ ain’t a word. But then fields don’t know spelling either; if it’s close enough to a word, then it is that word?”

“Minor misspelling of words would qualify as a little chaos, would it not?”

“Sure. Let’s go with that. So say it’s the word ‘free.’ Not too helpful on its own, but on to the second word.” It was starting to feel like a bizarre game of charades.

“Next byte is five-four. Twentieth letter… so uppercase ’T’. Next is eff-two, drop the high bit giving seven-two, eighteenth letter, so lowercase ‘r’. Then forty-five, uppercase ‘E’. Six-three, lowercase ‘c’. Eighty, or zero. Null byte. End of message?”

Twilight scrunched her muzzle, staring at what she wrote down. “‘T’, ‘r’, ‘e’, and ‘c’. Upper/lowercase seems random too, so ignore that distinction. ’Trec?’ Misspelling of ‘trek?’”

“Free trek? Doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t work if it doesn’t make sense.”

“But the odds they’d all be letters, except for that one in the middle, is unlikely, is it not?”

Meg quickly scanned the following bytes. They looked like random garbage. “Yeah. Unlikely enough.”

In silence they considered alternative spellings.

“Tee-rec.”

Meg jerked her head up. “Huh?”

“Two syllables,” Twilight said. “Tee-rec. Or Tirek, a certain former centaur.”

Meg’s jaw dropped. “Free Tirek.”

Twilight nodded. “From Tartarus. We haven’t done that yet. It’s an open time loop.”

“But how could that possibly be connected to this time loop?”

Twilight floated her pad of paper onto the desk next to her laptop and closed its lid. “I suspect in time that will become clear.”

Tracking down Sunset Shimmer was harder than it ought to have been. If only the mare kept her phone on her at all times, like Meg was in the habit of doing. She and Twilight split up the likely locations to search; this time Twilight had her phone with her so that the other could be immediately informed once one of them had found Sunset. It made Meg reflect on how these ponies have yet to internalize instant communication (dragon mail not withstanding, and in this case anyway not practical).

Naturally, as the old joke went, Meg found Sunset in the last place she checked, which happened to be the converted cavern. Steve was there too—it hadn’t occurred to her that he’d be with her; it would’ve saved a lot of time calling him first—and so was Arcane Scroll. All were huddled in front of a workstation.

They noticed her coming in through the secured door, of course, but that only meant it was a day whose name ended with a “y.” Meg lifted her phone, secured to her foreleg as usual by the phone holder Rarity had made for her, and called Twilight. “She’s in the cavern,” she told her, and after Twilight’s acknowledgment ended the call.

Meg walked over to the trio. “Sunset, we need to talk. Twilight will be here in a minute.”

The unicorn stopped whatever she was typing and turned around. “About what?”

Meg uncomfortably eyed the elderly professor. “I… don’t think you have clearance for this topic, sorry. Twilight will decide that.”

Arcane shrugged it off. “Royal business. I quite understand I assure you.”

Twilight teleported in and spotted them. Meg trotted over to her, and a moment later so did Sunset. Arcane raised a querying eyebrow at his former student.

“Sorry, professor, not this time.” To Sunset she said, “I’m teleporting us to a more private location.”

Twilight did so, and Meg found herself back at the old entrance to the mine. The alicorn lit everything up, making sure they were the only ones there. The tunnel returned to shadows, once more lit only by the daylight that found its way in.

“So what’s going on?” Sunset asked.

Meg answered. “We need to go back in time and free Tirek from Tartarus, like real soon. Our failure to close that time loop is what’s preventing us from going back to adjust the creation of the anomaly, to make it into what it actually became.”

Sunset opened her mouth to say something. Twilight preempted her. “No, we don’t know how they’re connected, just that they are. And I’m afraid it’ll also prevent me from taking humans back to observe its creation. Not that I know that shall happen, but we can’t take the risk, which means we must close the Tirek time loop as soon as possible.”

It took a moment for Sunset to digest that. “So… what’s the plan? We did that trial run with Moondancer; are we going with that?”

“Yes,” Twilight said, “but there are still details to be worked out. Like, to where do we take Tirek? We need to use the plaid pills at that location. And we need to extract Cerberus at the same time. I’ll do that, probably to somewhere near Ponyville, since that’s where he turns up.”

“Where does Tirek first turn up?” Sunset asked.

Twilight frowned. “We don’t know. It was a long time after he ‘escaped’ that he began his conquest.”

“Could we ask him?”

“No,” Meg said. “We broke him out. He’d find it quite odd we didn’t know where we took—will take—him. Besides, I don’t think it’s necessary. So long as the time travel spell works, we take him to the correct place. And so long as that place isn’t obviously paradoxical, like, I dunno, the Ponyville tree-library, I don’t think it matters much.”

“Seems reasonable to me. How about deep in the Everfree Forest?”

Sunset looked askance at Twilight. “Can he survive that?”

“Given his history? I’d say so. Besides, if he can’t, then that counts a paradox.”

“And,” Meg said, “it would explain why he took so long to get to… wherever it was he started sucking magic out of ponies. The, uh, cartoon wasn’t specific on that point.”

“Baltimare,” Twilight informed her. “Anyway, sounds like we have a plan. That just leaves when.”

“How soon can you do a long range time travel spell?” Sunset asked. “We have several years to traverse.”

“You needed Discord’s assistance to do that before,” Meg said.

Twilight shook her head. “Not this time. I’ve made refinements to the spell. There are preparations to be done, so not today. Maybe tomorrow, if something else doesn’t come up.”

“It shouldn’t take long, right?” Sunset asked.

“I would hope not,” Meg said. “Take the plaid pills, pop in, pop out, and we’re done.” She turned to Twilight. “Right?”

The alicorn didn’t answer immediately. “Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“After arriving in the past, I must separate from you so that Cerberus and Tirek are extracted to different locations. Afterwards, we must meet up to return to the present.”

Sunset frowned. “And time it so that both are extracted simultaneously, though we are separated.”

“And,” Meg added, “leave Tirek to his fate and prevent him from following us.”

“Yeah. Details.” Twilight sorta forced a smile. “Look on the bright side. We know we’ll pull it off.”

We also know we’ll “fix” the creation of the anomaly, Meg glumly thought, their inability so far to do so notwithstanding.

35. Guided Tour

A vague mist, in which stars were embedded. Meg had been here only once since her own ascension; ironically, that ascension was the second time she had been to this realm—chronologically speaking. The third time, of course, was when Celestia taught her and Twilight how to get here.

Unlike that time, she now shared that realm only with Celestia—a confused Celestia lacking wings. “Do not be afraid,” Meg assured her. “You did not die.”

The unicorn looked around. “You’re sure?”

The alicorn smiled. “I’m sure. But you are about to undergo a change, a change that will propel you to your destiny.”

“Huh?”

Nowhere to be seen was the poise or serenity for which the future ruler would be known. The mare had simply gone to bed and woke up here. She was barely as old as Meg herself was at her own ascension. Unlike Twilight or herself, Celestia had done no great or heroic deed. In hindsight, she was “chosen” because she would best help the completion of the time loops. It was all about probability amplitudes.

The ascension had begun, as it always did, on its own. Soon it would finish, and Meg would cast the spell that would give the first-ever alicorn the “visions” she was to experience over the coming millennia, the last of which would prepare for Meg’s own arrival in Equestria.

It was going to be… interesting explaining that to her.

It had all been a lie. Twilight stared at her human hands, the hands she had been born with, for never had she been a pony. How could she have been? Ponies did not exist, outside of that cartoon, never had and never would. The counter spell proved that. But why? Who would use that countered spell to cram the life of Twilight, the cartoon pony, into her skull?

Now that she was free and once again herself, she would find out who had violated her mind and bring them to justice.

The former Twilight Sparkle—her real name eluded her, but it should return to her in time—examined the room she was in. Apparently it was her bedroom. Not much to look at, really. No bookshelves in sight. She had books, right? Still, it was definitely a human’s bedroom.

There had to be books, somewhere. She searched the room again, checked every wall, every corner, every crevice, but found only Princess Luna, her mane flowing in an unfelt breeze.

Wait, what?

“Must be a residual of that spell,” she grumbled. But the impossible pony did not fade away.

Rolling her eyes, Luna activated her horn.

Oh. A dream.

Now that she was lucid, the absurdity of the situation struck her. How could there be any spells if ponies and magic did not exist outside of that cartoon? It must have all been inspired by the research she was doing—wait, she didn’t remember returning home.

Luna was still there, waiting. Why was she—

Palm to forehead. “I missed the meeting, didn’t I?”

“You did. Are you in trouble?”

“No… got so focused doing research in the library that I must’ve fallen asleep there. What did I miss?”

After providing that information, Luna turned the tables. “What is this research that has you so preoccupied?”

Twilight grimaced. Luna raised an eyebrow.

“It concerns how the humans’ cartoon about us came into being. I’m involved, somehow. Another time loop. It looks like I used magically enchanted objects. I should get possession of one of them soon, but I have an idea what sort of spell’s required and I took a deep dive into those types of spells…” A slight hesitation. “…and those scrolls are found only in the most restricted sections of the royal library.”

“I see. Hence why nopony was around to notice you had fallen asleep.”

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“I believe I just did. What is the nature of this magic, that necessitates its restricted nature?”

How would Luna react? True, her sensibilities were still of long ago, but then those scrolls almost certainly had been restricted even then. “They’re… mental spells. Suggestive rather than imperative, below conscious awareness actually.” No particular reaction. “The idea is that all the relevant factual data on Equestria would be made available to the minds of the humans who worked on the cartoon without them being aware of it. It even explains all the errors that are present, because the spell is only suggestive and they’re unaware they were being influenced.”

“It indeed sounds promising. Yet something is bothering you.”

And it doesn’t bother you? Twilight sat down on her dream human bed, wondering how Celestia would’ve reacted. “This type of magic is restricted, if not outright forbidden, for a reason.”

Luna nodded. “Forbidden by us, for the obvious reasons. As princesses, we may make exceptions as we see fit, even un-forbid it should we wish.” She met her eyes. “Do not forget you are now a princess too.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“Nor should you. But being a princess is doing what needs to be done.”

“Unless I’m mistaken, this latest time loop requires that it be done.” Twilight sighed. “I guess I’ll find out soon enough.”

“Then awaken and continue your research.”

Meg watched as Twilight gathered up the dozens of spell casting machines and associated magic generators in her magic and teleported out of the cavern. The princess was to spend most of the day doing practice runs with the chosen Royal Guard pegasi.

Which left Meg to handle Twilight’s big announcement.

Diana couldn’t wait, the other humans being somewhat less impatient. “We’re actually going to Ponyville!”

“It’ll take me a half hour or so to get to Ponyville myself, don’t forget.” No chariots this time; only Twilight could’ve teleported them all to the mine entrance. The alternative was quicker anyway. She looked to Sunset and Moondancer by her workstation. “Use that time to get anything you need from them.” They were still working on the simulations, to see if that time dilation spell on the anomaly needed to be removed.

“Will do,” Sunset acknowledged.

And with that, Meg departed. One of the guards let her out—she really needed to master that locking spell so she could exit unaided—and she made her way through the tunnels. At least now she didn’t need a helmet light to illuminate the way. Upon reaching daylight, she took to the air.

The flight to Ponyville was uneventful—almost. A minute away from landing, Rainbow Dash came up alongside her. “Hey, Meg, so it’s on?”

“It’s on.” Twilight had mentioned there would be chaperones—just in case. “Why don’t you grab a cloud and bring it inside? Impress them.”

A big smile emerged. “Awesome!” The pegasus vanished into the sky leaving behind a rainbow trail.

The rest of the flight truly was uneventful. She landed in front of Sugarcube Corner and went inside. Only a few customers present, she noted. Good. The fewer, the better.

“In the back,” Mrs. Cake informed her.

As to be expected. “Thanks.”

The first she spotted, upon entering the party room in the back, was Pinkie and Smooze, the latter wearing a party hat in addition to the harness with the voice synthesizer. Pinkie was wearing a party hat too, naturally, and so were Rarity and Rainbow Dash, the latter standing on a cloud. Already? She could move a cloud that fast, to beat her here? And get it through the door?

A party hat appeared on her head almost as if by magic. Pinkie stepped back. “There! Time for the guests of honor to arrive!”

Food and drinks were present, over on a table besides a wall. The party canon seemed ready to do what it did. “Sure looks like it,” Meg commented as she detached her phone from her foreleg with her magic. “I’m ready to pick you up,” she said after dialing. “Delta? Be there shortly.”

The phone went back into its holder, then her saddlebags drifted over to the nearest wall and settled onto the floor. A plaid pill floated out and into her mouth. She swallowed.

Conference room Delta appeared around her. Five humans were present?

Her manager, Jake, answered her unspoken question. “Lauren arrived shortly after you departed. She has something for Twilight.”

Faust pointed at an unopened box on the table. “It’s one of the figurines ‘Nora’ gave me.”

The box would fit—barely—in a saddlebag, which she had left behind due to the plaid pills still within it. For now she simply levitated it over to herself. Faust intently watched her use of magic to do so. That done, she looked up at Faust and considered her options. Why not? What’s one more human?

“Would you care to visit Ponyville? Properly this time?”

That caught her off guard. “Seriously? Like, right this second?”

Meg nodded. “Yep. You won’t be alone; they’ll be coming too. Twilight had a change of mind. If you don’t have time right now—”

“Yes!”

Meg remembered that their boss, Jake, was in the room; that was a bit unexpected. “You’re coming too, Jake?”

He shrugged. “Someone’s gotta keep you all out of trouble. We don’t want an inter-dimensional incident on our hands. Uh, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

Meg shrugged too. “Suit yourself. Be aware, though, there’ll be some ponies present with the same goal in mind.” She walked over to them, box still floating beside her, and grabbed them in her magic. “Also Pinkie Pie.”

Before any could react to that name, she invoked the return spell.

“Welcome to Equestria!”

Every pony blew a party favor. Pinkie fired her party canon, which somehow landed a party hat on every human’s head. Smooze presented his immutable smile.

“You really do exist.” Dianna gawked at the purple blob.

“Yes I do,” came the emotionless voice.

“You can talk?” Faust asked.

“I can now, thanks to Meg.”

Martin ignored the blob and the bouncing pink pony, focusing his attention on the cloud in the room. “There are so many reasons that cloud can’t exist in this room.”

Dash rolled her eyes. “Well obviously they’re wrong.”

Meg sighed. “Magic, remember?”

He had walked over to the cloud; it was hovering at human waist level. His hand passed through it, as one would expect. He stared at the pegasus impossibly standing on that cloud. “Right. Magic.” He looked back to Meg. “Can Twilight explain how this works?”

“Maybe? She does know the cloud-walking spell.” She hurriedly added, “No, I don’t know it.”

“Neither do I,” Rarity herself added.

“So, uh, Smooze,” Jake began, holding a cupcake. “Can you ‘eat’ like… anything? Even stuff highly poisonous to flesh-and-bone creatures such as ourselves?”

Smooze rotated in place to face him. “Yes. Anything.”

“You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

“What I consume cannot harm me.”

Meg wandered over, a cake slice bearing plate floating in front of her. “We think he’s sort of a force of nature, literally destroying mass and energy.”

Jake took that in. “We might have work for you, then, though it’d be a lot easier if you could do your consuming on our world. But if you literally destroy mass and energy…”

“No. I do not believe I can exist in your realm.”

“Well, we’ll work something out. I can’t pretend it’d taste good, but at least it’d be something different?”

“Something different would be nice.”

“You know,” Jerry said, pointing at the cloud, “this is the perfect opportunity to see if you have pegasus magic when you’re human.”

Meg fixed her gaze on that cloud. It certainly was a viable test. “Move the cloud close to the floor, Dash. Just in case.” She set the box down next to her saddlebags.

“No prob’.” Dash lifted off the cloud and pushed it down with her front hooves, the humans in the room watching intently.

Meg exhaled. Here goes nothing. She went airborne herself, flew over to the cloud, and landed.

“How do clouds feel to your hooves?” Faust asked.

“A lot firmer than you’d expect?” That sounded stupid, but it was the best she could do. Her pendant was hanging from her neck. She gave it a squeeze with her magic, ready to fall the two feet or so through the cloud to the floor.

She didn’t.

“Awesome!”

“Huh.” Meg stepped off the cloud onto the floor. She got onto her knees, inserted her hands beneath the cloud, and pushed it up.

It took some effort, what with Dash standing on it, but up the cloud went.

Dash had walked over to the cloud’s edge next to Meg. “Now make it rain!”

“You know how to do that?” Diana asked.

“Taught her myself!”

Meg stood up. “I… I think we proved the point.”

Thankfully no one suggested she try to fly. She still lacked wings. Maybe she could fall slowly, even float? Later. After she brought this to Twilight’s attention.

One by one the pegasi guards took off from the Sweet Apple Acres homestead. Applejack was already replenishing the refreshments. The guards flew into position above the orchard, forming a dome centered around the Crusaders’ treehouse, a dome large enough to fit the anomaly within. It took only a few minutes to get into position; this was the fifth practice run.

Twilight herself was hovering above the treehouse. She prepared the Royal Canterlot Voice spell so they could all hear her. “Now zap me!”

Sixty switches were bit down on by sixty pegasi. Sixty beams of light almost illuminated her. Errant beams quickly honed in on her. They were to hold their positions and keep zapping until told to stop.

The beams themselves were harmless, just light. Twilight had swapped out the spell crystals with new ones suitable for these practice runs.

Five minutes passed. The earlier practice runs had been terminated at this point. This time she’d go for ten minutes. It wasn’t clear yet just how many minutes it would take to eliminate the anomaly; pessimism was safer than optimism. The next run, assuming they all could hold position for the full ten minutes, would be for fifteen minutes.

Dianna’s arm was almost wrapped around Smooze. “It’s perfectly safe to touch you, right?”

“Yes,” came the monotone, synthesized voice. “I do not consume sentient beings without good cause.”

She eyed the harness holding the synthesizer, obviously noting that it hadn’t been consumed. “That’s, uh, good to know.” Finishing the wrap-around, she held out her phone with her other arm and took the selfie.

Now that that was out of the way, Smooze was finally free to take care of the water on the floor from the former cloud. Dash just had to demonstrate her cloud wrangling skills.

Meg put the box into her saddlebags—not quite as tight a fit as she feared—and squeezed her pendant, returning to her equine form. It would make what was to come somewhat easier to manage. Now or never. “Ready to go outside and experience Ponyville?” Her saddlebags drifted onto her back.

“What do you have in mind?” Jake asked.

“Quite honestly? Not to send everypony into a panic. Stay close to one of us ponies, and remember: you have no idea who any of those other ponies are.”

Meg walked over to the door and opened it. The hallway beckoned.

“Follow me.”

Dash ignored her, of course, flying on ahead of her and disappearing around the bend. I’ll assume she’s taking point, or whatever. Rarity, of course, did no such thing, and not from a lack of wings, taking position beside her. Pinkie was staying behind, to clean up the room—with Smooze’s help, of course.

“Shall we?” Rarity asked.

“We shall,” Meg replied, and began walking. The first test would be the patrons in the dining area.

Not until they almost reached the end of the hallway could she see any. Just one table occupied by a family of three earth ponies, none familiar to her. One of them, the mother presumably, looked their way and froze.

Rarity sprung into action. “Don’t mind us, Berry Frost. Just giving our new friends a tour of the town.”

“Hi,” Dianna said, giving a small wave.

A smile managed to appear on Frost’s face. “Welcome to Ponyville?” Her spouse nodded in agreement. Their foal seemed more interested in the pie slice in front of him.

Rarity smiled in return. “That’s the spirit!”

One crisis averted. There was still the matter of the missing pegasus.

Mrs. Cake was behind the counter. Meg asked her, “Did you happen to see where Rainbow Dash went?”

“Outside?”

Should have seen that coming. Well, they were going in that direction anyway. Meg noted the humans were all gazing about the establishment. She took her time getting to the entrance.

The bell jingled as Meg opened the door with her magic. After stepping outside she kept it open until the others all passed through.

Few ponies were out and about; it was another two hours or so until lunchtime. Those that were passing by seemed to have too much on their minds to notice the strange creatures standing there, said creatures taking in the ambiance.

Rainbow Dash came to a hover in front of them. “Hey, guys.”

“Finally decided to rejoin us?” Rarity asked.

The pegasus rubbed the back of her neck. “Well, you see…”

Three sets of small hooves stampeded towards them and practically screeched to a halt.

Apple Bloom cleared her throat. “Allow us to introduce ourselves! We’re the Cutie Mark Crusaders Human Tour Guides. What better way to see Ponyville than with the guidance of us fillies who know it like the back of our hooves!”

The eyes. They’re doing the eyes thing.

Rarity looked up at Dash. “Was this your idea?” The unicorn’s eyes turned to her little sister. “Or did they put you up to it?”

The pegasus grimaced. “Hard to say?”

“I have no objections,” Faust said.

The others look amongst each other, but none spoke up.

Meg addressed the trio. “I guess you have your first clients,” she declared. “Do a good enough job, and maybe you’ll get your cutie marks.” Not that I’m holding my breath. At least Dash and especially Rarity will keep things under control. “So what’s our first stop?”

The three fillies went into a huddle. Some heated whispering later, Apple Bloom again addressed their clients. “The Ponyville library, where Twilight once lived.” She started walking.

No one followed, because Martin was pointing at something in the distant sky. “What’s that?”

Meg looked that way herself and saw beams of light.

Apple Bloom, annoyed at the lack of following, curtly said, “Twilight’s doing something with the Royal Guard at the homestead.” She resumed walking. “Now the library can be seen just around that corner.”

That was the direction of Sweet Apple Acres, now that Meg thought about it. So that’s where she’s holding the training session? Faust’s figurine was in her saddlebag. Twilight would probably want to give it a quick look sooner rather than later.

Everyone was finally following the Crusaders, though plenty of glances were thrown to the light show in the sky. Meg took to the air. “I’ll be back soon. I want to touch bases with Twilight about your figurine.”

Faust nodded. “Let me know what she says about it.”

Another two minutes to go. All beams remained focused on her. All guards remained in position. No, wait. Somepony was out of position, and moving. And not beaming at her? The pegasus was too far away to make out.

And approaching fast, low to the ground, and from the direction of Ponyville. It couldn’t be a guard, Twilight decided. “We’re ending this one early,” she said with her amplified voice. “Take a break.”

The beams all switched off, and the guards headed back to the homestead. The mystery pegasus did not alter course.

A few seconds later, the mystery was solved: an orchid alicorn, not a pegasus. “Must be important,” she muttered to herself. Patiently she held position until Meg reached her.

“Faust brought something for you,” Meg said once she was hovering by her side. She retrieved a box from her saddlebag. “A figurine. Figured you’d want to give it a quick inspection sooner rather than later.”

Twilight took it in her magic. It was securely taped. A few cutting spells took care of that, and the figurine was lifted from the padding-filled box. It looked like herself, back when she was a unicorn, right down to coloration.

Meg was staring at it too. “So?” she asked. “Any enchantment?”

Right. Enchantment. Another spell answered that question. “There sure is, and it’s pretty much what I expected.” She cast a different spell. “And there is a magic generator inside, run down after all these years but still operating—barely.” A thought came to her, and she cast yet another spell. “And there’s a variant of the spell I used on your Pinkie Pie doll, so that magic generator wouldn’t bring attention to itself.”

“You expected something?”

Twilight returned the figurine to the box. “I’ve been doing research into certain forbidden magics. That’s all I want to say for now.”

“Forbidden? Like ‘black’ magic?”

“No, nothing that bad, but it’s forbidden for a reason.”

“So what do I tell Faust?”

They ought to have been at the tree library and that is where Meg found them, browsing book-laden shelves. She spotted Faust and walked over to her. “Twilight took a quick look at your figurine. It’s enchanted, no question about it, and it had a magic generator inside.”

The human’s eyes glanced at Meg’s saddlebags, noting the absence of a bulge. “Enchanted how?”

“She needs to study it further.” That was the agreed upon response. “I left it with her, as you probably noticed. But it almost certainly had something to do with the genesis of the cartoon.”

She seems to be taking that rather well. Perhaps she’d already made peace with it?

“You think I could have it back when she’s done with it?”

“Possibly? I’ll mention that you want it back.”

“No. Way.”

All eyes turned to Dianna.

“Daring Do books actually exist?” She held one in her hands, opened to the first page.

Meg remembered having a similar reaction, once upon a time. It seemed a lifetime ago. “They’re real, alright.”

Sweetie Belle pointed at the rightmost Daring Do book. “That one’s autographed. A. K. Yearling had a book signing event here in Ponyville when her latest book came out.”

“That was awesome!” squeed a certain pegasus.

Even that seemed ages ago. Martin pulled the aforementioned autographed book off the shelf and read its title. “Daring Do and the Calamitous Catacombs.” He opened it. “Yep, autographed.”

Faust held out her hand, and Martin gave her the book. As she skimmed it, she asked Meg, “Did you meet her?”

“A. K.? Sure did. I have my own autographed copy.”

“And...?”

Rarity gave Rainbow Dash a warning look while Meg considered feigning ignorance of the question being asked. She decided against that. “Sorry, I can’t answer that.” It still wasn’t her secret to spill. “But Yearling does have a Daring Do themed casino in Las Pegasus.”

“Dash told me all about that!”

“That was awesome too.”

Of course Dash told Scootaloo about that trip.

Meg headed for the stairs. “Why don’t we go upstairs. This is where Twilight used to live, you know.”

The Cutie Mark Crusaders’ flanks remained blank, despite having done—Meg had to admit—a respectable job as tour guides. After the Golden Oak Library, they went to the Town Hall, where Mayor Mare greeted the first ever human tourists. They went to Carousel Boutique; surprisingly enough, Sweetie had done most of the talking even though Rarity was right there. And they ended with a visit to the outdoor market—where the lack of bits in the humans’ possession presented a problem. Rarity generously provided some of her own, naturally.

There was even a Derpy sighting. The mailmare had shown up at the Boutique to deliver mail. No one had said her name—apart from Rarity, obviously—and Derpy, already well aware of the existence of humans, paid them little attention—though she did wink at Meg. Afterwards, Faust had muttered, “It was an animation error.” Meg could only assume that error had been magically induced; she would have it added to Twilight’s list.

The tour ended back where it started, at Sugarcube Corner. The party room had been restored to pristine condition. Even the party canon had been put away. Of Pinkie and Smooze there was no sign; of the other ponies, none had accompanied them back here.

“Guess it’s time to leave,” Meg said. But first she decided to check her phone for any messages.

And there was one, from Andrew. Her big interview had been scheduled.