Twilight Sparkle and the Enigma of the Ancient Tome

The ponies stared at the special page. Besides the number 100, the only thing it featured was a large gray rectangle. It occupied the entire page, save for the large page margins. In fact, there were 8 pages with rectangles: numbered from 100 to 110 (exclusive). Upon closer inspection, Pinkie and Twilight noticed that the rectangles weren’t really gray, but rather composed from incredibly small black and white squares. The squares of each rectangle all had the same size and were neatly aligned into a grid. Each axis of a rectangle fitted no less than a hundred squares.

“What’s this?” Pinkie asked. It seemed that her curiosity overcame her fear of dark magic.

“I don’t know,” unemotionally dropped Twilight, “I don’t see any patterns… First these odd page numbers, and now this mess! It doesn’t make any sense. This is pure chaos!”

“Looks and feels like it, doesn’t it?” said a new voice that could not be mistaken for anything. In the same moment, a couple of black dots appeared in the zeroes of the page number. These oddly looking pupils first gazed above, at the rectangle, and then at the ponies. “But for the keen eye, it is nothing but…” The eyes started popping out from the old tome, quickly followed by the head and the paw. The rest of the draconequus’ body followed suit.

“Discord! Were you secretly spying on us?” shouted Twilight.

“Did you make that book evil?” Pinkie asked angrily.

“Oh, why would you hurt my feelings with such accusations, my dear little ponies? My heart breaks from hearing such words…” Discord shed an overly exaggerated, but genuine tear; his body momentarily became translucent to reveal a cartoonish heart split in two. “Don’t you know that I hear whenever anyone utters the word chaos? I just can’t ignore it, especially when somepony prepends The Word with pure! Quality chaos in Ponyville that is not of my making is just so exceptionally rare and I would never miss an opportunity to witness it firstclaw.” Twilight and Pinkie just stared at him. “However, what you have here is definitely not it.”

Twilight’s expression became puzzled. “What makes you say that?”

Discord scratched his chin. “How about a little science lesson? This you certainly did not expect! As I was saying, if you look very closely, you will start noticing patterns. Any object with any sort of a pattern becomes at least a little bit predictable. Pure chaos, on the other talon, is completely unpredictable. Let me show you.”

Pinkie was quick to interject, “Don’t you dare, Discord!”

Draconequus gave her a neutral, joyless expression and remarked, in a slightly bored voice, “Don’t worry, you will be safe.” With these words he clapped his upper limbs. As soon as he moved them apart, the ponies saw something they hadn’t seen before.

“Introducing… pure chaos!” stated Discord with pure joy. Both Twilight and Pinkie tried to stare at whatever just appeared before them, but they just could not focus their eyes. Their heads spun at the incoherent mess of colors. On a void-black background, green, white, red and blue dots flickered with violent speed. Ponies could not even tell whether the dots were close to their eyes or far from them. It was actually neither, since every dot could only be seen by one eye. “As you may see,” continued Discord, “it is impossible to guess where the dots will appear and what colors they will have. Any guess is no better than any other guess, because they could appear in literally any configuration, no one more likely than another. Pure randomness; pure chaos.”

“Make it stop!” Twilight’s voice came from a place of utter discomfort. “My head will explode!”

Discord certainly did not want to torture the ponies; their reaction caused him dismay. He hasted to close the window to pure chaos and uttered as if in a hurry, “And this is why I am careful with how much chaos I create. What fun is there in just causing you pain and making you lose your sanity?” Pinkie Pie fixed him with an angry gaze.

Having seen just how distressful it was for them, Discord felt bad for what he did. Every villain’s reformation is a process; and in that second two paths — two ways of action — appeared in Discord’s mind. Taking one of them would make Fluttershy happy, taking another — sad. Discord managed to muster the courage to choose the right one. “Oh, I shouldn’t have opened that window. Pinkie Pie, Princess Twilight Sparkle, I… ~~I am sorry.~~”

Twilight, still recovering from the headache, was the first to respond. “Apology accepted. What? Princess?”

Discord was more confused than Twilight. He’d suddenly appeared to become very small, while somehow still occupying the same physical space. “Oops, sorry, that’s another timeline… What season is it here anyway?”

Pinkie’s grudge for Discord already started to dissipate (especially since he apologized so nicely), but she was still confused by everything that just happened. Nonetheless, she was eager to answer this simple question. “Spring!”

Discord’s apparent size returned back to normal. This answer was something he was expecting, but not something he was looking for. “Nevermind.”

The trio stayed in silence and stillness. This started to become unbearable for Pinkie, but Twilight finally stepped in. “Could you please tell us what are the patterns of these gray rectangles? And why are the page numbers so odd?”

Discord somehow wore both the smile and the frown at the same time. “My dear little ponies, the time will reveal it all; I don’t want to mess with the time. Enough chaos caused by me today already… Also, speaking of time, check out my new wristwatch! I love how it fits on my paw and especially I love this button. One simple press and…”

Discord’s body was being violently sucked into his watch. “Wait!” and “See ya around” propagated through the air, being responded with a simple “Goodbye!” The watch first devoured the entirety of its owner and then sucked itself into itself. Instead of becoming infinite due to recursion, the watch instead became incompatible with reality and simply vanished.