Twilight Sparkle and the Enigma of the Ancient Tome

Three ponies stood around the round table in Twilight’s library. Twilight was the first to speak, “Maud Pie, Doctor Hooves, I am so glad you could come here today. How was your trip?”

“It was delightful, Twilight. As soon as you told me about the book and the research you did on it, I knew that we might be on a cusp of discovering something extraordinary, an ancient invention that has been lost in time. Sending things back in time would be great, but losing things there? Not on my watch!.. Can there be anything more exciting than recovering this piece of science history? It is my pleasure to be invited!”

Twilight smiled and said, “I am happy to hear this. Maud, and how was your trip?”

Maud looked in her eyes and said, “It was ok.”

Twilight’s mirror neurons caused her smile to melt a bit, but she fixed it up almost immediately. Twilight understood what Maud’s words meant — that she was happy to be there and to help her friend. “Nice you could come.”

“As I mentioned, I was researching this book for a couple of days. I am pretty confident that it is a manual to create some sort of a contraption, but I could not quite figure out what is this contraption for and what are the materials that should be used. Also, I am not sure what to make out of these schemes. Doctor Hooves, you are the best engineer I know; I hoped that you could help me figure it out.”

Doc was flattered. “I am happy to help you!”

Twilight passed the book to Dr. Hooves by hoof. He opened it and proceeded to look at the pages.

“Oh, of course!” gasped Doc after he skimmed quarter-way through the book. “These are all wire diagrams! Look, every geometric shape always has the same number of wires connected to it, there are inputs and outputs on each diagram, and most importantly…”

He was interrupted by Pinkie Pie rushly opening and jumping through the front door, this time without even knocking. “I am so sorry! I am late! Am I late?”

“Pinkie! But why…”

“Maud told me that you have a super-secret sitting book-studying meeting at your library and so I brought some charms with me!”

Before she learned about the meeting, Pinkie actually planned to go to the Sugarcube Corner and eat some muffins. However, the mystery of the old tome still loomed over her head; her hunger for answers was not yet sated. Plus, she still hadn’t gotten over her fear of missing out.

Seeing Pinkie come unannounced and declaring the meeting secret was not something that Twilight expected, but it wasn’t something unexpected either. “Thank you for the charms. This meeting is not actually a secret, you can stay if you want,” said Twilight, not thinking much of it.

This was just what Pinkie hoped for. She promptly joined the other three beside the table.

Doc continued. “This contraption is certainly unlike anything I’ve ever seen! The layout of different diagrams, as well as the geometrical shapes’ placement, seems to suggest that those diagrams are parts of a whole. Even more so, in some places it appears that a diagram includes earlier diagrams, sometimes even multiple copies of diagrams! The sheer complexity of it all is mind-bending. From what I see, it is the most similar to either a pulley system, or an electricity appliance,” announced Dr. Hooves.

Twilight’s face glowed like a lamp. “An electricity appliance! This certainly matches the words of the book! Take a look.” She promptly opened the dictionary, courtesy of Blue Monocle; then swiftly opened the old tome itself at the page 0. Forgetting for a second that her friends did not yet know how the language works, she started reading. “Action many, tool, of know-exist… inverse for, sun… uh-h-h… alive thin.” When she got a puzzled look from her friends, Twilight realized that an explanation of what they just heard was in order.

It took some time, but eventually all five were on the same page, convinced that “sun alive thin” meant active energy of something thin (which meant, of course, electricity).

Twilight suddenly got chills on her mane and said with uneasy agitation, “Wait, I think there are five of us, aren’t there? But I only see me, Pinkie, Maud and Doc. Did I forget that somepony else came here?!” Each pony then heard a voice that appeared to originate not from the outside, but from within their heads. “Perhaps there are indeed five of us, or maybe your mind just got wrapped in a bit of chaos,” it said.

Pinkie started to angrily scold the ancient god. “Discord, stop messing with us! You said you were reformed! You can’t just mess with ponies like that!”

“Oh, come on, what harm is there in a little prank? We are friends after all.” One finger snap later, Discord was now present next to the table, joining the other four. “I just wanted to check on you.”

Twilight, the responsible, answered. “Hello, Discord. Thank you for caring about us, but we are alright.”

“How wonderful! What you don’t know is that you four are about to step on a path of impending disruption. And as you may know, disruption is an older cousin of chaos. You have a very large older cousin I might say.” On the last sentence, Discord’s lips desynced from the sound that he supposedly produced. Maud was the only one who managed to read from his lips: ”The time awaits for the rocks to think.” This sparked Maud’s curiosity, but she did not feel the need to tell the others, since nobody asked her directly. Doctor Hooves merely raised an eyebrow, Twilight and Pinkie didn’t seem to have noticed Discord’s trick at all.

“I wish you great success with this little project of yours; can’t wait for what an amazing result it will produce. But enough of me for now. This is your story, dear ponies.” Discord didn’t feel the need to stay for much longer, for he already influenced the events just enough for them to fall into the desired outcome.

Discord’s image disappeared, in the same way as rubber removes pencil writings from paper. The ponies then got back to analyzing the book, not as much as mentioning Discord. Maybe it was one of his tricks again, or maybe they were just too preoccupied with the book.

Twilight then opened a new topic. “One question remains: what materials are used in this system? The text gave wordy descriptions of some substances, each accompanied with a large symbol. I didn’t see any of these in the dictionary, but they all were present in the schemes. I believe that the ‘substance’ means material. Maud, this is where we need your help. Many descriptions start with words dirt and solid. I think that it means rocks, but I could not understand which rocks the author refers to. Do you think you can help us?”

“Yes.”

Twilight navigated to page 6 and put her hoof next to a piece of text, reading it out-loud: <dirt> <solid> <-of-> <see> <know> <correct> <not>. <-and-> <-of-> <sun> <inside>. <-and-> <-of-> <sun> <alive> <thin> <-inverse-for-> <sun> <outside>.

Dr. Hooves needed to get something out of his barrel. “This sounds impossible to understand! How did you even read the rest of it?”

Twilight was about to say something, but Pinkie Pie was first. “Rock that is hard to tell by eye and shiny on the inside and shines on the outside if activated by electricity.”

Twilight gave Pinkie a blank stare. She only wanted to know one thing. “How…”-ever, before she could formulate it in her head, Pinkie cheerfully continued, jumping a couple of times while talking.

“I love this language! No difficult words and everything is so simple!”

Twilight shook her head a bit, then asked Maud if she could tell what rock it is.

Maud though for a second before replying. “This is sphalerite, one of the main sources of zinc sulfide; a shiny material that glows if electricity is passed through it. Most commonly found in sedimentary environments and hydrothermal veins.”

While the sisters were deciphering the description, Dr. Hooves carefully took the old book with instructions and flipped through some pages. He then announced, “Ahha! This large letter to the left of this description matches the letter inside these boxes on this diagram. On top of that — look! — the boxes seem to be on the output side of the diagram and there are no arrows going away from them.”

Twilight and Doc looked at each other, as if timing their next words. “A display!”

“Great!” continued Twilight. “We now know that this is an electrical device with a display. It is incredible to think that a distant group of ponies living long ago could come up with this design and… also save it in a book! Let’s look at the other descriptions.”

She then read: <dirt> <solid> <-of-> <see> <outside> <tree> <-and-> <blood> <little>. <-and-> <-of-> <sun> <solid> <-and-> <sun> <alive> <substance>.

Pinkie was quick to translate. “A rock that looks brown and a little bit red and that contains electricity material and yellow material.”

Twilight still could not get over how Pinkie managed to translate it so effortlessly; she felt amazing seeing how quickly the pieces of the puzzle fall in place thanks to her friends’ help.

Maud got the clue and named the rock. “This is bornite, a rock with high contents of copper, sulfur and additionally iron. It is commonly found in environments with volcanic activity.”

Twilight could not quite discern the name of the rock. “Bron-yte?”

“No, it’s born-ite.”

“Oh, ok, thanks.”

“It seems that most if not all the wires are derived from this material,” observed Hooves. “They probably want us to make the wires out of copper.”

Pinkie cringed and asked, “Wait, do you actually want to build it? It could be very dangerous! Maybe it will open a portal to Tartarus and suck us in!”

Doc and Twilight looked at her compassionately. “Don’t worry Pinkie Pie, it can do nothing of the sorts. Of course we want to build it,” the engineer claimed enthusiastically, without asking others of their opinion. “Before we do, we can only guess what this machine is capable of!”

Twilight pondered it for a second, but Doc’s enthusiasm was infectious. “This is a great idea, Doctor. Building it would be a great way to honor the Ever-moving unicorns’ legacy. Also, I think some fillies would love to play with this old science device.”

Maud was not particularly enthusiastic at that moment.

The group then continued to decipher the materials. The rest of them took more discussion and time, but eventually they nailed them all. Besides sphalerite and bornite, they also needed quartzite, that should be used in specific places within the wires; ferrite, that should be processed and then arranged in weird circular shapes; and also tree resin, apparently to soak some parts of the device in. On top of that, they deduced that a rock with high contents of silver is necessary to make some weird-looking metal plates.

Twilight finally asked, “Maud, could you please mine the rocks that the book described?”

There really couldn’t have been a different answer, an “ok” as enthusiastic as one could expect from Maud.

“Thank you so much! And for the resin, I am sure Applejack could help us with that.”

Twilight then announced the end of the research session. “I am glad that we made so much progress on understanding this book. Thank you everypony for helping me!”

Twilight gave the old book to Hooves, so he could delve into its intricate schemes. After some rather brief goodbyes, the a-little-bit secret meeting has concluded.