Divergence - An Essay on Consensus and its Relation to the Greater Reflections Multiverse · 9:39am Feb 27th, 2020
So I wanted to take a little bit of time to examine the events of Consensus within the broader scope of the greater multiverse that I’ve somewhat built up. This discussion attempts to contextualize Consensus in the context of Reflections, which is the multiverse-hopping story which I wrote between Substitute and now.
Naturally, this essay contains some spoilers for both Divergence and (to a lesser degree) Reflections. All spoilers are unmarked. Proceed with caution.
To briefly summarize the model used in Reflections, the observable multiverse stems from a single moment of time, which is more or less immediately after King Sombra’s defeat. As such, his defeat is constant across all timelines.
We must first make clear how the world of the Crystal Ball Trilogy fits into the multiverse of Reflections, especially as Reflections also (supposedly) encloses the universe of the show plus the universes of other pieces of fiction, like the Fallout: Equestria-verse, the Quiververse, etc.. In the scope of Reflections, each of these universes is some timeline where things have gone differently. The difference between the events of Feedback and the show are simply that Twilight did not go to Canterlot in the show, thus preventing the entire plot. I made great strides in designing Feedback and Substitute to slot in perfectly into the universe of the show, but I think it is obvious now that they are not quite the same; however, we can definitely argue that, up until this point in time, they have been very close neighbors.
We examine the moment of King Sombra’s defeat and build from there. In the universe of the Crystal Ball Trilogy, at the moment of King Sombra’s defeat, other things must necessarily exist, namely the seal underneath Canterlot, the alternate timelines, and the infinitely many layers. We must carefully define this, as the other realities in the greater multiverse are themselves alternate timelines. We must reconcile this. Reflections itself offers a solution by stating that the alternate timelines seen in the Crystal Ball Trilogy are part of a single system comprised of multiple interacting Equestrias; that is, we have one single entity. This extends to other realities such as the human world and the mirror universe, as there is one of each per Equestria. Finally, we have the infinitely many layers. We thus get three orthogonal directions; timeline, world, and layer. And for however large this system is, it is still one single system. Reflections treats it as such, defining this system to be a single timeline, and it also defines how Crystal Faire, the dimension-hopping deuterologist, interfaces with this.
But now we must extend this picture to the rest of the multiverse. By virtue of these seals and alternate Equestrias and infinitely many layers existing at the time of King Sombra, these things must necessarily exist in each variation of what comes afterward. This means that they necessary exist in the universe of the show, the universe of Fallout: Equestria, etc. A specific example that I can name is the Quiververse, which has taken Reflections to be in canon with it; this means that, within the Quiververse, the seal exists, the alternate timelines exist, and the infinitely many layers exist.
Now, these elements are very unobtrusive and can easily coexist within these universes. Thus, we find no issues; other universes such as the Quiververse will continue to evolve completely untouched by these things, and its inhabitants may very well live entirely unaffected by them in any way.
(I digress for a moment to mention that within all the universes seen in Reflections, there may be some incompatibilities between two distinct timelines. We simply resolve this by noting that the scope of these universes is encapsulated entirely by the text, and those contain no contradictions. The supplementary material, which are the stories themselves, provide a lot of implication for these scenes, and this would be where conceivable contradictions would arise. We thus then say that the universes presented in the text of Reflections are not truly the universes of their respective source materials, but are merely very close variations; a.k.a. they look very much like their sources.)
The real problem comes with Consensus. We realize this on looking at the time of King Sombra, realize the existence of infinitely many layers, and simply move up layers from there to eventually a. pass the events of Feedback, b. pass the events of Substitute, and c. arrive asymptotically closer to Consensus. In other words, given that King Sombra’s defeat at a supposed layer 0 is constant across the entire Reflections multiverse, we must necessarily assert that there is some layer above this which is on the cusp of performing Consensus which is also constant across the entire multiverse. It turns out that, because of the asymptote, there are infinitely many layers with Consensus about to occur.
There is divergence from the moment of King Sombra, so the probability of the events of Feedback drop down to something infinitely small (but non-zero) immediately afterward, as is the case with, say, the Quiververse. However, the Quiververse would still approach the time of Consensus. We must tackle several questions at this point. Can Consensus even occur like it does or even at all? If the infinitely many layers and timelines are indeed consolidated into one single reality, what results?
The answer to this depends on a variety of factors, and we get different outcomes in each case. It might be exhausting to pick apart every single scenario, especially as some of these factors are thousands of years and thousands of layers apart. We do, however, have a saving grace in the form of Crystal Faire.
To elaborate, Crystal Faire is unable to see any other layers besides layer 0. However, there are other methods of probing layers further down, especially if you ask Queen Adamantine of the unponies for assistance. One of Crystal Faire’s abilities is also a combining of realities, and she may also set filters such that certain scenarios are most visible, and the combined set of realities will contain this scenario. As an example, while Crystal does stuff in Equestria, she may set things up such that certain events occur in the human world (even though she cannot see it), regardless of any scenario which may play out in Equestria. In essence, the only true variable is what occurs in Equestria R of layer 0, which may evolve into the plethora of universes seen in Reflections. (This breaks slightly if events in the human world are affected by Equestria, which happens, but for our purposes, we need not worry about this).
Thus, via Crystal Faire, we can more or less choose how these factors play out and more or less decide what the result it. From an internal standpoint, we want something which preserves the variety of timelines we see in Reflections (which is the entire scope of what Crystal Faire can affect at the time of the story anyway, so it would be in her interest to set as much of everything else to be a constant as she can). From an external, meta standpoint, we want something which keeps the universes we see intact before and after, so that they continue to exist as they are before and after Consensus and conserve the vision their respective authors have for them (something I am sure at least one author will appreciate immensely).
Firstly, we suppose that all layers other than layer 0 will be effectively be set to constants. Layer 0 would be the breakpoint in the multiverse where everything diverges; this layer is free to evolve. Now, the events of Feedback are periodic, with a period of order thousand layers or so. The reality is that there are at most a hundred layers between the defeat of King Sombra and the timeframe of Divergence. And then, an estimate is that the gap between King Sombra and Feedback is somewhere around 30 layers. We must unpack this before continuing. The events of Substitute depend only on the layer immediately above and below it, so it is relatively safe. The events of Divergence depend only on itself, the layer below it, and a layer six thousand years into the past (we note that Divergence also looks at layers experiencing Feedback and Substitute but they do not have any real effect on the train of events). For the latter, the ~-240000 layer may be easily set as another constant, so we may also count Divergence as safe. In addition, we could argue that the events of Substitute and Divergence don’t necessarily depend on the same events happening in the layer immediately below them, as most information travels down the layers; in Feedback we see both directions, and it is primarily this upward direction of information that has Feedback require that it occur both above and below it for it to occur.
We thus assume that layer 30 will be the first to notice that there is a break in the loop, as the events of Feedback can no longer occur. They do occur in perhaps 30 + 1, as they have already happened at the time of King Sombra and are thus fixed. (Reflections actually shows how this discrepancy works via a joint experiment between Crystal Faire and Chrysalis.) These layers may be chosen such they still find each other, whereas layer 0 does not find any of them. They would identify layer 0 as a wall. These layers might then dedicate themselves to figuring out the prospects on Consensus and where they are in the big picture. This could be forced if at least one Twilight, perhaps at layer 29, is chosen to die, thus changing the course of the reality entirely and enabling and motivating such research.
We can assume that these thirty layers might try to contact layers above them who will use the crystal ball for themselves between the end of the timeframe of Feedback and up to the point of Divergence where Sunset and company move the ball’s view to layer -240000, as at that point, the layer below them can no longer communicate with them. As such, a maximum of maybe one hundred layers above the break might become aware of the break. In reality, because of the time it might take for the initial thirty layers to even make contact with these layers, a more realistic number might be closer to eighty.
We now look at layers below. Specifically, we look at Grimb’vltr’s time. Conceivably, layer -239920 might be the first of these sub-layer 0 layers to realize that a break has occurred through either their own means or via communication from the higher layers. It is confirmed that any Grimb’vltr can and does give some communication to their counterpart below them, so once this process starts and they have the information, they can give it to their lower layer selves indefinitely.
We might assume that they would, knowing their full situation with the break and the close implementation of Consensus in layers above them, the Grimb’vltrs may be spurred to come up with ways to a. possibly quench the creation of any new layers or reconcile and merge any new layers beyond that time and b. prepare now only their own layer but layers around the break for a process involving a still infinite (in the positive direction) amount of layers. So we will assume that both of these things happen.
And that is that. The short version of the above is that the layers can determine that a break happens and take steps to account for it.
So now the question is what is the solution that they come up with? We can decide this as well, to some degree. We will look at what we have now.
We have:
- Infinitely many layers on the cusp on Consensus
- A hundred or so layers which are aware that a break has happened and that Consensus is hovering above their heads
- One layer in which a break has occurred and has evolved independently.
- A couple hundred thousand or so layers which are variable but have infinitely small chances of following the Crystal Ball Trilogy; they however will have the mechanics of Consensus built in.
- A few thousand layers in Grimb’vltr’s time that will dedicate themselves to putting things in place.
We will suppose that the last of these will likely involve setting up their own layers to compensate for whatever shortcomings will be introduced in the break from Consensus, namely the magic requirement for consolidating the layers. We could imagine these layers sacrificing irreversibly large amounts of magic to make sure that despite the disparity in the layers which will very definitely come about from the face that layer 0 will not time dilate and thus not be current with above layers at the time of Consensus (we will choose the few hundred layers above it to still time dilate so that they are current), and that layers below it might not necessarily be current with each other.
We now postulate that there was a failsafe built into Consensus on the off chance that quantum mechanics did introduce a break in the loop at some point (this would end up being somewhat true). This failsafe will take care of all layers above the break, consolidating them into the layer of the break. We postulate that the result is the layer of the break. In this manner, the upper layers more or less disappear. This leaves us with the break layer (layer 0), the six thousand variable layers, and Grimb’vltr’s layers.
We now take a radical approach. For the sake of the argument, we now assume that the nature of the break and information pertaining to it is able to proliferate up the layers up to and including layer -1. This is plenty of time and plenty of layers for further systems to be put in place. These layers may then orient themselves in such a way that they reconcile themselves, starting from the layers furthest down and moving up. The could be accomplished using time dilation methods to bring the furthest layer down in line with the one immediately above it. This can be accomplished over any period of time.
In truth, the state of lower layers is often based off of upper layers. Thus, for a lower layer, it would reconfigure itself based on what has happened in a layer immediately above it (which is usually set up to be forward in time from it). This is the essence of the device which keeps the layers in check, as seen in Divergence.
This matters because, assuming this reconciliation of lower layers does indeed happen, we thus arrive at the situation where only layer 0 and layer -1 exist. Then, layer -1 would configure itself to look like layer 0, and then they would reconcile with each other.
Thus, the result is that all infinitely many layers have been reconciled into just one, with the product being exactly the configuration of layer 0.
Phew. This seems to take care of the problem. Perhaps it isn’t the most elegant looking solution in the multiverse, but considering that a break in continuity has occurred, which is not so beautiful by itself, we can content ourselves with a solution not beautiful either. And, truly, this does give us a desired result.
The task is simply to extend this to each and every non-Crystal Ball Trilogy timeline in the multiverse, which is infinitely many. But, again, this is doable, and we may assume that the system is already in place.
Thus reconciles Consensus in the context of the greater Reflections multiverse.
An essay is right.
So here is a question. Can the layers above the break still communicate and potentially influence the layers below the break?
5210551
This is the assumption, yes. Really, the only thing that we have is that no communication could go into or out of layer 0 for a very long time.