The Ponyville Library contained a lot of books. This should come to no surprise to anypony that actually knows what a library is, but it is still a fact worth registering, as when a pony in Ponyville needed a book on a certain subject, it would for a start visit the library.
Cheerilee needed to check out a couple of books about ancient Romane history, because the school board had added it to the lesson plan for the first time this year, and while she considered herself well-read in history, it certainly couldn't hurt to refresh her memory on the matter a little. After all, 'Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis even a filly that's wise', or howsoever that old saying goes.
“Hello, Twilight! Lovely day, isn't it?” she greeted as soon as she had entered the library.
“It sure is! Rainbow Dash and her team have surely outdone themselves today,” Twilight greeted back, looking up from her desk that was littered with quills and surprisingly neatly stacked sheets of paper. “What can I do for you?”
“I was just looking for books on ancient Romane history and I was hoping you could help me.” Cheerilee eagerly looked around the library. The Ponyville Library truly was a tremendous well of knowledge, allowing the old and the young alike to quench their thirst for knowledge. She should force her students to come here more often.
“I love Romane history! Did you know that all our modern racing tracks are still modeled after the hippodromes of ancient times?” Twilight shared.
“Um, yes I did. I was hoping you could tell me where I could find some books on the subject,” Cheerilee bashfully informed.
Twilight blushed a little. “Oh, sure! They are right over there.” She pointed to a bookshelf at the far end of the library.
“Thanks!” Cheerilee said, leaving Twilight to whatever she had been occupying herself with. It wasn't the first encounter between them that was little more than awkward, and by Celestia, it wouldn't be her last.
Over by the shelf she immediately began to examine the numerous titles at hoof. Many of them were interesting although a bit peculiar: “How to host your own bacchanalia”, “Caligula and the first monkey consul”, “Destroying Carthage, or 101 ways to use salt you'd have never thought of yourself”.
Despite their odd titles, she decided she would check all of them out and with a quick sweep of her hoof she cleared the entire row. It was only by chance that she looked back at the now empty shelf and noticed the strange horseshoe symbol that was attached to the wood. She immediately dropped everything to examine it more closely.
It would have been a plain, regular horseshoe, if it weren't made of what looked like brass, or copper, or something of the likes, which would be way too soft to sufficiently support a fully grown pony, and the fact that it was nailed to the back of a shelf. To further determine its purpose, Cheerilee reached out her hoof to touch it.
Immediately a secret compartment opened, revealing a single, diligently cherished book, surround by dust, cobwebs, and a lot of dead spiders. Now even more curious to what all of this was about, Cheerilee grabbed the book.
She looked it over from all sides. The strange tome didn't have a title nor any other clue to what its contents might be. Not knowing what else to do, she simply opened the cover and started to read:
Cheerilee had opened the book at a random page and started to read a random passage. Confused as to what she had just read, she closed the book to ask Twilight about its strange substance.
Cheerilee closed the cover. That was certainly an odd coincidence. A book with no title, hidden in a secret compartment within the library, containing a character called Cheerilee? And another called Twilight? This had to be more than just a mere coincidence, maybe a cruel prank on her. She didn't know why, but she felt a very strong urge to walk over to Twilight and question her about this oddity.
“Twilight, could I ask you about this…” As soon as Twilight looked up, she grabbed the book from Cheerilee's grasp with her magic and tried to hide it behind her back. “…book. Twilight, what are you doing?”
“Nothing. I'm doing nothing.”
Cheerilee raised an eyebrow at Twilight. “That strange book sure doesn't look like nothing.”
“There's nothing strange about this book. This is a library. There's a lot of books in here,” Twilight defended herself.
“Yes, but I assume only this one has our two names in it.”
“That's just a coincidence. There's nothing to it.”
Cheerilee's eyebrow elevated further.
“All right, all right. I admit it. Spike has written some fiction about us and didn't want anypony to find about it.”
Cheerilee's eyebrow elevated even further.
Twilight sighed. “Okay, I have written fiction about us and didn't want anypony to find out.”
Cheerilee raised her eyebrow so high, that it seemed to become detached from her face. “Twilight, how long do you think I've been a teacher? I can tell when somepony is lying to me and you're about as truthful as Apple Bloom when she told me that her dog Winona had not only eaten her homework, but Sweetie Belle's and Scootaloo's as well. How about telling me the truth for a change. Come on, what's the big secret?”
Twilight looked all around the library for a way out of this precarious situation. Having no such look and giving up, she looked down in disappointment and sighed again. After taking a quick peek into the book she seemed much more reassured, as if she now knew what she had to do.
“I will tell you about the book, but you have to make sure you really want to know,” she said.
“Yes, I really want to know.”
“Even if it could drive you mad? Even if it contains life-altering truths never intended for ponykind?”
“Okay, now I just have to know.”
“But you also have to promise not to tell anypony else.”
“For Celestia's sake, Twilight, tell me already!”
“All right, I will.” Twilight cleared her throat. “One fateful day, I think it was Friday, I was having a little... um... well... episode after I've been visited by myself from the future-”
“Hold on a second. You've been visited by yourself from the future?”
“Yes, that was quite a busy week. But that's a different story. I'll tell you some other time. Anyway, as I was saying, I was facing an issue with my future self, when out of nowhere Cerberus attacked. Luckily with the help of Pinkie Pie's ball, I was able to lead him back to Tartarus where he could continue to guard the evil creatures of the underworld. But that wasn't all that happened on this little trip. Just as I turned around to leave the gates of Tartarus behind me, I fell into a sinkhole.
I don't know how long I was falling, but it must have been pretty long. By the end I could feel the Coriolis force pushing me to the side of the shaft. I almost thought this would be the end of me, but luckily I remembered a variation of a levitation spell I've once read about that allowed me to decelerate my fall to a non-lethal velocity before I landed.
When I reached the ground, before I even got a chance to pick myself up, I was greeted by an old, humpbacked mare, while two other, similarly looking mares were sitting beside her.
'Welcome, Twilight Sparkle! We've been expecting you,' she said.
Naturally I had a lot of questions. 'Who are you? How do you know my name? And how could you have been expecting me, if I just fell down this hole by chance?' I asked.
'The answer to that is simple,' she said. 'My name is Lachesis and these are my sisters Clotho and Atropos. We are the children of Ananke, otherwise known to you ponykind as the Fates. And it was your fate to fall down that hole and meet with us, Twilight Sparkle.'
Of course I was skeptical. 'Do you really expect me to believe you are the fates?' I asked.
'Of course not, but we could cut somepony's thread of life and kill him if you want to,' she said.
'No, no, you don't have to kill a pony just to prove a point.'
'Good, because we couldn't anyway, because it was never fated to be. But at least now that you believe me, we can talk about why you came here in the first place.'
'Why did I come here?' I asked.
'Because we have a very special gift for you.' Her sister Clotho suddenly stood up and hoofed me a book. 'This is the Book of Fate and it is yours to keep. This book contains the fate of every pony that lives, has lived, or will ever live. Everything that is, has been, or will be is in that book,' Lachesis said.
'But isn't the book much too small for containing the entire existence of the universe?' I asked.
'You might think so, but it isn't.'
'But if I know about the future, can't I alter it?'
'No.'
'But what am I supposed to do with this anyway? It seems rather ill-conceived to me to give a pony the Book of Fate in the first place.'
'We thought so too, and we were going to discuss this subject, but we decided against it and just do it, because it was fated anyway and any debate on it would have just been a waste of time. But now make haste, Twilight Sparkle. You have already spent enough time down here. You have to get back to the surface.'
'How do I do that?' I asked.
'That's easy. You just have to use your teleportation spell and you will be up there in no time. Literally.'
'But the surface seems so far away. Are you sure, I can make it?'
'Yes, of course I'm sure.' Lachesis turned to her sisters. 'Can you believe those mortals? Not one of them gets this whole concept about fate and destiny.' She turned back to me. 'Yes, you will make it. If I say you can teleport back to the surface, you can take it to the bank. And now go!'
And without another moment of hesitation I closed my eyes and used my teleportation spell to get back to the surface. When I first opened my eyes again, I thought it was all a dream, but I still had the Book of Fate with me.
“So I decided to simply hide it in my dirt-stained mane until I got to the library and put it aside to first figure out what future Twilight was trying to tell me. Eventually, Pinkie discovered it and has been bugging me about it ever since,” Twilight finished.
Cheerilee had a skeptical look on her face. All of this was pretty hard to swallow. “So you're saying that you've been handed a book by the three Fates that can predict the future?” she asked.
“Pretty much, yes.”
“But if that were true and you already had the book at the time, why would you still need to find out about future Twilight? Couldn't you just have read up on her in the book?”
“Well, if you put it like that, I suppose I could have. But at the time I was still unfamiliar with the book and hesitant with its use.”
Twilight's expression grew glum when she saw what her friend was thinking. “You don't believe me, do you?”
Cheerilee burst out in rage. “Of course not! The entire idea is preposterous! No pony in their right mind would believe a story like that.”
Twilight looked at her sourly and nonchalantly turned the book around. Cheerilee read the passage her hoof was pointing to:
“Of course not! The entire idea is preposterous! No pony in their right mind would believe a story like that,” Cheerilee shouted.
“How did you do that?” Cheerilee asked.
“I didn't do anything,” Twilight replied. “I told you, this is the Book of Fate. It already knew what you were going to say in advance.”
“No it didn't! It couldn't! I refuse to believe that!”
“Well suit yourself. I told you the story and if you're unwilling to accept the truth then so be it.” Twilight was about to put the book away.
Cheerilee was still fuming and snatched the book from Twilight's magic before the latter knew what hit her. “I will prove to you that this book can't predict the future. We will look into it and find some sentence and when it doesn't come true you'll have to admit that this book is a hoax.”
She flipped the book open and immediately found what she was looking for:
Whilst at the library, Cheerilee took a bath.
“There!” she shouted triumphantly, flipping the book over so Twilight could see for herself. “There's no force in Equestria strong enough that could make me take a bath in here, when this book already predicted it.”
Twilight looked surprisingly unimpressed. “I know it seems unlikely, but believe me, it will somehow hold true.”
“Well, I won't give it any chance. I'm just gonna stand here, not taking a bath, until you admit I was right and there is no such thing as a Book of Fate.”
“I tried that once. It didn't work.” Twilight's tone of voice was matter-of-factly, purely informative.
“We'll just have to see about that!”
Twilight couldn't scare her, Cheerilee was more than determined. She wouldn't falter! She wouldn't budge! She wouldn't move an inch! She would stand her ground! She would prove herself! She would … be bored out of her mind before this was over. Cheerilee severely underestimated how tedious it would be to just stand in one place doing nothing.
“The book didn't specify when I would be taking that bath, did it?” she asked full of hope.
“Give it time, just give it time,” Twilight answered, not even bothering to look up. She had re-immersed herself into her studies, as she was brimming with confidence.
Cheerilee nervously shifted back and forth. What was she to do? Technically, she could leave the library at any time, proving the book instantaneous, but that would have been kind of cheating. Also, she still wanted Twilight to admit that she had been right all along. No, she would just have to stand their and not do anything, for doing anything would increase the chance that Twilight had indeed been telling the truth about the book, not like that was even a remote possibility.
She raised her arm to check her watch for how much time has passed, only to remember that she wasn't wearing a watch to begin with. Unfortunately, her time-checking coincided with her nervous shifting, causing her to lose balance and tumble through the room. Her stumble was only violently stopped by a bookshelf, that celebrated the successful rescue operation by dropping various books into the room below. One of them managed to hit Owloysius' perch, knocking it over and waking up the bird in the process. Owloysius didn't take too kindly to the sudden disturbance and went down on the supposed attacker, accompanying his retribution with loud shrieks.
Cheerilee immediately covered her head and tried to seek protection from the succession of aerial assaults raining down on her by virtue of hiding behind the bathroom door close by. Just as she was about to grab the door handle to close the door behind her, she slipped on the wet bathroom tiles, sending her head flying through the room, straight into the sink, one of her hooves managing to turn on the faucet.
She felt the cold water slowly running down the back of her mane. It felt like defeat.
She grabbed a towel and tried to dry herself as quickly as she could, before leaving the bathroom to confront Twilight, who in turn was busy scolding Owloysius, who was sitting on her stretched arm, avoiding Cheerilee's gaze.
Twilight apologized for him: “Owloysius wants to say he's sorry for attacking you like that. It was only because he was startled when you woke him so abruptly. It won't happen again.”
If there ever was such a thing as hooting in shameful agreement, that was exactly what he did.
“It's okay, I forgive him,” Cheerilee said wholeheartedly.
Owloysius looked up to see if she had been serious, and after a much more cheerful hoot returned to his re-erected perch trying to get some shut eye once again.
“I'm glad that's settled then. I'm glad everything's settled now,” Twilight perceived, again returning to her studies.
“Oh you mean this?” Cheerilee pointed to the bathroom behind her. “This means nothing!”
“If you say so,” Twilight said, choosing to blatantly ignore her friends rising temper.
“Give me once more chance. I'll find something else in this book that won't come true.” Cheerilee had already grabbed the book and was frantically looking for something to disprove.
Every single page, from the very first to the very last, was completely empty.
“What is this?” Cheerilee asked, showing the empty pages to Twilight. “How can all the pages be empty all of a sudden.”
“Oh, that's simple. That's what I've come to call a 'causality contradiction'.”
“What's a 'causality contradiction'?”
“That's when anything the book would say couldn't possibly hold true. You see, if the book told you that 'A' was going to happen, you would make a conscious effort to prevent 'A' from happening, leading to the book making a wrong prediction. But if the book accurately predicted 'not A' instead, you would instead make a conscious effort to perform 'A' this time, again proving the books previous assumption to be false. To avoid this from happening, the book simply doesn't show you anything in the first place.”
“But isn't that exactly what happened the first time around, when it told me I'd have a bath?”
“No, no, no! That was a 'causality loop'. Completely different concept and quite a common phenomenon among time travelers.”
“But if it won't tell me anything, how can I disprove it?”
“You can't. You're not supposed to in the first place.” A smile crept on Twilight's face, that was sly at first but soon turned pitying. “I'm sorry, but that's just how it is.”
Cheerilee needed a moment to think all of this through. “But if I can't disprove the book and everything it said so far holds true, it might really be the Book of Fate, it might really be able to predict the future.” It was a moment in which an epiphany hit her, a clarity of what magnitude this sudden discovery was. “But that means my entire life is already a part of this book. That means everypony's entire life is a part of this book, the entire history of Equestria is in that book.”
“Cheerilee, are you all right?” Twilight was truly worried.
The teacher didn't even seem to hear her friend and continued to brood over the sudden implications that had arisen.“If I'm just a small predestined part of this book, a mere simple pawn in a colossal game of chess, what does that even mean? What does that make my existence? Do I even matter? Do I even exist?
“It's not even 'I think, therefore I am', because all my thoughts are fated and therefor fate's thoughts, which means if I am anything at all it must be fate, but if I am fate I am by definition master of my own fate, which in turn means that I could be anything I want, including being a Ponyville teacher named Cheerilee, which in turn draws me back to where I came from which only permits one sensible conclusion: How the hay can a book like that even exist?”
She grabbed Twilight forcefully by her shoulders. “Help me, Twilight! I don't know who I am anymore! I am nothing! I am everything! I know, that I know nothing!”
The librarian managed to swiftly slip away from Cheerilee's grip, getting some space to think. “First of all, I think you should calm down. Take in a deep breath and try to acquiesce.”
Cheerilee closed her eyes and tried to consciously relax her overly tense muscles. She took in a deep breath, filling her lungs with the precious, life-giving oxygen almost to the point of bursting, before slowly exhaling, ridding herself of that useless rest of nitrogen that clustered in her lungs. She took another deep breath in and another deep breath out. She breathed in. She breathed out. She breathed in. She breathed out. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. In out in out in out inoutinoutinoutinoutinout...
“Stop!” Twilight yelled at the hyperventilating Cheerilee, who stopped all her actions at once. “I think you've breathed enough for now. Maybe you should try something else.”
“All right, I think I'll just lie down for a minute,” Cheerilee said, already going flat, and quickly rolling up in the fetal position.
Twilight was at her wit's end. Only now, she seemed to get a glimpse of what it must have been like to her friends when she was having one of her 'Manic Mondays', or 'Troubling Tuesdays', or 'Wrecking Wednesdays'. They probably felt just as helpless as she did at that very moment. She couldn't just leave a friend of hers like this, and by herself Cheerilee was definitely not snapping out of it in her current state of mind. The question remained, what could she do?
All the while, Cheerilee was mumbling nonsense into thin air: “Everything is fated. Everything is meaningless. Nothing is sensible. Nothing is real. If nothing is real, I'm not real. And if I'm not real nothing is real.
“But that logic is spurious. Even if nothing else is real, I could still be real, meaning that everything else, all of Equestria, all the ponies, all the history is just a figment of my imagination. Even if I wanted to, could I even escape this reality? And what would I find once I do? There ought to be a reason why I was forced into this phantasm, or why I chose to flee into it. I probably wouldn't like what's on the other side. I would find myself at the unsolvable dilemma of ugly fact versus beautiful fallacy.
“Still, what if this illusion doesn't stem from my imagination but somepony else's, like Twilight's? Or what if it's the product of something else entirely, an outside entity that holds this entire world in its hoof? That would make me a figment of imagination, unreal, fleeting, extinguishable in the blink of an eye, just like the rest of this so called 'reality'. We're all just at the mercy of a despotic, ubiquitous higher force that controls our every move in life.
“Furthermore, if everything is determined by this obscure entity, then all these thoughts of mine as well as all of my agony and pain is also a result of its actions. What kind of twisted mind would send me on a seemingly endless downward spiral of agony and loss of self, a spiral so deep that it has me questioning the very fabric of existence? Completely and utterly at the mercy of a despicable, shapeless mindset? That would be a fate far worse than death!”
Cheerilee stood back up and cried out in anguish:
“All you sages, all you scholars,
all tomes of forgotten lore!
Won't you tell this little pony,
what her fate still has in store!”
Until now Twilight had only been listening with half an ear, but the talk about tomes and fate gave her an idea how to solve this problem, or more precisely an idea where to find an idea to solve this problem. The solution was so obvious that it was beyond her comprehension how she could not have thought of this in the first place.
“Cheerilee, I have an idea what we should do.”
The addressed teacher turned around to face Twilight with new-found hope in her eyes. “You do?”
“I think we should simply ask the book what we ought to do.”
All the hope immediately vanished from Cheerilee, but once she had a moment to think about the lack of alternatives, she decided: “All right, let's do it!”
Twilight opened the book at the desired page and both mares began to read at once:
Thus, the two friends decided that it would be for the best if they simply forgot about this whole incident and swore never to talk about it again. So Cheerilee suppressed all memories about the book from her mind forever and went back to living a happy life.
“That's it!?” Cheerilee shouted in disbelief. “That's the big plan!? Simply forgetting that all of this ever happened!?”
She angrily shot a glare at Twilight, expecting her friend to defend the book, but all the librarian did was smile an awkward smile that seemed to say 'Well, that's how it is. What are you going to do about it?'
Cheerilee completely resigned, in body, mind, and spirit. “I give up! I guess not even Princess Celestia could escape her fate. If the book says I'm supposed to forget about all this, then I better start right now.”
She turned towards the door, ready to leave. “Now, if you'd excuse me, I think I'll hit the hay for the rest of the day. Maybe I'll even call in sick tomorrow. Maybe that would be a good idea.”
“Wait!” Twilight shouted after her, Cheerilee then looking back. “The book said something about swearing never to talk about this again.”
“You're right. I guess we have to do this 'by the book'.” She took in a deep breath before she started. “I swear never to talk about the incidents of today ever again.”
“So do I.”
Cheerilee made her way towards the door.
“Bye, Twilight!”
“Until next time, Cheerilee!”
And with that, she left the library walking straight home, never looking back, any recollections of the book already fading from memory. All would have been well, if it weren't for one simple thing Cheerilee had completely ignored: She still hadn't refreshed her knowledge on ancient Romane history.
