Starlight Glimmer's excellent plan

Step 3: crack the cryptic

[Excerpted from Starlight's personal diary]

It's been about a week. No visits from my future selves. What-so-ever!

The spell is tricky as heck! It is no use!..

Urgh... I'll have to devise my own spell. That's decided!

I'll simply learn things from the original.

So Starlight got to work.

To travel through time is fairly easy: everypony does it. Forward. Toward the future. So that should be the easy part of time travel.

But how do I jump back to the past??? The spell is silent!

Weeks passed. Starlight kept researching day in and day out. But the spell wouldn't budge. It was as though it was written in another language! Which... it was, admittedly. In the language of magic. Starlight understood it, but the process... it eluded her.

Sure, she could weave spells, but then she could describe the process in the language of many -- the language regular ponies spoke everyday. But how did one time-travel? What was the process? That was the question. She couldn't describe it and therefore couldn't change it to work in her favour.

And then one day Starlight noticed something. It was a one-time occurrence, but something about it felt important. The spell mentioned some sort of branching. Starlight had thought it meant conditional branching for the spell's actions. But now she thought it had to deal with the branches of time.

...for if the future is not really predetermined and my dear free will does mean something -- necessary to succeed -- then isn't future like kind of, sort of... a bunch of branching paths?..

If my choices mean anything, then I have multiple paths, and that means, future can't be determined! I have to choose correctly.

After I have chosen... Well, I know the path to my destination, and if I can walk backwards in time, I can choose to do the same.

Oh gosh, isn't this how the spell works?! By predicting my choices and conspiring?! Must be it!

...So... I guess, when I jump to the past, the spell guides me to some sort of specific past. But if I can cast the spell any time to jump to any past (well, not too far back, but still)...

Maybe, there is something to predestination...

Darn it!

But now I see it. It walks branches, and if I can replicate that behaviour, then I can devise a spell that doesn't try to conspire against me!

Well, it doesn't branch much. So work has to be done... Busted!

Oh my gosh!.. If future me's ever visit me again and tell me something -- the question is not whether it's been predestined! No!

The question is: what kinds of limits are there for the information I receive from the future?!

Indeed, if I can learn one particular thing from the spell -- why can't I learn another?

It means, I could learn anything! ANYTHING, I say!!!..

Possibilities are endless!..

And if that's true... the branches of time must be truly numerous!

It must pre-exist.

That was the shortest entry in Starlight's journal so far. Yet its meaning was tremendous.

Starlight was busy working. She was sitting behind her desk and writing, devising a spell of her own. The latest thought was sudden, but very important.

The concept of predestination wouldn't allow Starlight to relax, plaguing her mind. Even with the choices it baffled her, how the original spell was so wired against changing the past. But now she understood. She understood everything and was now scratching away, working on her new spell.

She paused and smiled. Yes! The possibilities were endless -- she just needed to unlock them.

And that was what her new spell did.

Well... She hoped she had it correctly...

She rose from the chair and took the new spell. It was time to try it out. Alright... There went...

This is a bust. I'm making a note here: huge FAILURE!!!

Now scraps of paper were everywhere. Look at what you've done, Starlight!

Maybe, not everything is lost yet... Because that original spell does unlock possibilities. It works, and it HAS to unlock them! However all the possibilities are in the future... Maybe, if I time-travelled forwards?..

Let's see. The plan is as follows:

Set current date;

Time-travel to the future;

Once there... or rather then?.. get out of the house;

Find somepony;

Ask them the date;

If it's the same... Hm...

Ask time as well.

New and improved plan:

Set current date and time;

Time-travel to the future;

Check the clock;

Find somepony outside;

Ask them of the date.

Now I can know, whether I've time-travelled!

Let's do this!

And Starlight proceeded to cracking the cryptic... She needed to change the spell so it flung her forwards, not backwards. But without knowing, how to command the spell to go either way, she was at a loss. Nothing seemed to work, and Starlight despaired...

She was trying without much hope to change something in the spell to work in her favour, when she noticed something else that had eluded her previously. One single line in the spell. Translated to the common language, it read: "Invoke time machine". It was easy to miss, since it was obfuscated, just as the spell itself, but it was there. And it was interesting. How did one "invoke a time machine"?

Starlight scanned the spell to see references to the time machine, but there were none... Oh!.. For a second there Starlight forgot to breathe.

It was contextualised! Throughout the spell the time machine was implied!

Starlight immediately zipped to the chair and started writing an analysis. She copied the invoking line verbatim... and as she analysed... she saw it. Now she truly got it!.. O-o-oh!..

The spell used a time machine interface that was somehow available, to make the improbable happen -- to unlock the possibilities!

And it was time to learn, how to use it. That would be the next step of Starlight's excellent plan.

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