Old Wounds (2)
Luna, quite understandably, asks for a few moments alone with her sister. No sooner have they stepped out into the main basement than a purple blur gloms on to my foreleg.
My heart twists up. Poor little guy — he shouldn't have had to see that. I sniffle and wrap a comforting leg around his shoulders, nuzzling the top of his head, fumbling for words.
He squeezes my leg a little tighter, and throws his other claw around my withers, resting his head on my shoulder. "I-it's gonna be alright, Twilight. We'll fix things. We'll find a way."
I can't help but laugh, which comes out as a hiccup. He's trying to comfort me? "Thanks, Spike. I appreciate the sentiment."
"I mean it. We'll make her see. Maybe you're not the Twilight Sparkle I know, but … but you're still Twilight, and you wouldn't destroy the world. You never, ever would. She's wrong."
"Yeah," I lie, trying not to think about The One Loop, and oh stars I can't do this. I told one tiny little lie at the beginning of my mutual looping with Celestia, and it snowballed into everything falling apart — the Elements of Harmony themselves kicking Honesty to the curb, and Celestia trapping and brain-ripping me — and now I'm stuck in a basement with two goddesses on the verge of war while Chrysalis destroys Equestria outside. My teachable moment about lying while looping? It didn't go far enough.
"Well. I mean …" On the other hoof, I have to lie about The One Loop now, don't I? If I'm honest it justifies Celestia's suspicion, and the instant I become more dangerous than useful she resets and destroys me before I can even respond.
But even without knowing about it, she thinks I'm a bigger threat than Chrysalis. There's no win condition for me, is there? Save Equestria and get backstabbed by my mentor, tell the truth and get murdered, or walk away and let Chrysalis destroy my friends and my home for good.
The full weight of it hits me, and I cling helplessly to my faithful assistant, feeling tears leak through the dam of my eyelids as my emotions spiral out of control. "I can't do this, Spike. I, I can't. Sweet stars, oh stars, I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
"We'll fix it," he repeats, hugging me fiercely, and I collapse bawling onto his shoulders, feeling him stagger and brace under my weight, not even caring, just needing some friendly touch. "I'll fix it," Spike whispers. "I promise."
"You can't." It's hopeless. It's entropy, the cold and cruel and uncaring truth of the universe; everything falls apart. You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't even change the game.
"Because of all the timey wimey stuff, you mean? When you reset it gets un-fixed again?" Spike pulls his head back to look into my eyes. "Then I'll have to re-fix it harder. I don't know anything about time magic, Twilight, but I'm going to live for a long time and I can study. Once I figure it out, I … I can go back to before it all began and stop things from going wrong in the first place."
My blood freezes.
"Wait. You can what?" I grab him by the shoulders. "No. Don't. Promise me you won't."
"Huh? But —"
"PROMISE me. Pinkie Pie swear," I say, desperately hoping she still does that in this timeline. "That you'll never, ever mess with history. That's what caused this in the first place, and I will NOT let you be the one who ruined everything."
"But you need —" Spike says, but stops dead at my expression. He swallows. "Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye. But I've got to do something, Twilight. I can't let this happen to everypony."
I let out a breath. Crisis averted. That mystery looper has a lot to answer for, and the last thing I want is for this to be one of those situations where the well-intentioned time traveller accidentally creates the disasters of her own present. If it is, then at least this way it's not on Spike's head.
But that thought gets my mind going. None of this would have happened if that mystery looper hadn't changed history. And a loop that's changed once can be changed again, right?
"Uh, Twilight?" Spike says. "You're getting your idea face."
"It's not hopeless," I say slowly.
"Well, of course not. I thought that was the whole point of time magic? You get to go back and try it again?"
"Yeah. But right now, resetting from loop to loop isn't going to help me, not while I'm stuck at the mercy of somepony who can't trust me." I wipe my cheeks with a pastern, sit down, and frown in thought. "I can't win, I can't break even … but I can change the game. I know I already have, once."
Spike looks at me blankly. "What do you mean?"
"I left Canterlot with the Elements, and …" I trail off as I look at the shelf with the darkened jewelry. "Oh." Well, that's a non-starter. "But there is somepony — or someone — out there who can upend everything. Give me a fresh start, or maybe even change it back to when I was the only one looping. I just need to find them, and get them to help." I glance at the door to the main basement. "Which means surviving long enough to do some travelling. Which means getting Celestia to trust me … at least for now."
Spike nods. "We'll talk to her. I'll talk to her."
"That won't help. We'll need to talk in a loop she remembers." I tap my hoof to my chin. "But, actually, I think I've got that covered." Based on Celestia's reaction during the first of the two loops I died from an aneurysm — which was T-27, I think? It's only been a few resets, and I'm missing our loop numbering already — the "Whitetail" codeword that Harmony gave me should do the trick.
Of course, that would mean once again moving forward based on a lie. I stifle my queasiness. I tell myself I can use that as a fallback plan if things go pear-shaped; for now, since Luna warned us that Celestia might cause a paradox by resetting, I can talk to her in safety, and that will give me a shot at convincing her legitimately.
Plus, answers. Answers are good.
The door creaks open, and the princesses walk in. Luna looks … the only word I can use is "disappointed." Her back is straight, her neck upright, and she's walking with measured steps, but she's staring at the floor with a distant expression on her muzzle. Celestia, behind her, is trying as hard as possible not to exist — walking with shuffling, silent hoof-falls, eyes fixed on Luna's tail, head and ears lowered. She looks as bad as I feel, and despite all she's done to me, I can't help but feel a twinge of sympathy.
"Is everything alright?" I ask, pulling back from my hug with Spike, standing straight and gently coaxing him to move behind me.
"We had a brief conversation regarding the behavior she feels is appropriate for resolving difficulties while looping," Luna says. "Brief, because neither of us shall remember it; but if she is to be saved from the mistakes which ruined me, it must begin with now."
That seems like a good opening. I swallow and brace myself. Get some answers. Get her to trust me. Change the game. I need to be the bigger pony here, for both of our sakes.
"Listen … Princess," I say, voice faltering. I take a deep breath and continue. "I can't believe that you're so fundamentally different from the Princess Celestia I know that there's no way to fix what's wrong here. I screwed up history something awful, and what you told Luna to do to me was —" I stop myself from saying 'unforgivable' — "indefensible, but the Equestria you rule still looks an awful lot like mine. It's a peaceful place full of happy ponies. Twilight Sparkle's still your student and the Element of Magic. You love your sister — look at what you went through to redeem her. You are good, I know it, and you're trying to make the world a good place. That's why it hurts so much that you …" I force myself to say it. "That you tortured me. And that you almost fought your sister in order to … to lie to me, and use me like some tool. I would have been willing to forgive you for a mistake, but this goes way beyond that." That slips out before I can stop it, and I mentally kick myself.
Celestia looks away. "I'll understand if you don't believe me, Twilight, but the apology I wanted to give you truly was sincere. I was fully aware I did something wrong as my only possible means toward a greater good. It was a choice between you and the entire world. I wish I had had any other option."
"But you did," I say, feeling tears brimming in my eyes. "You always did. Why didn't you talk to me? I could have explained. I'm not evil, Princess, I …" Oh, stars, if I start crying I won't be able to do this. I squeeze my eyes shut and force myself to breathe. "Why didn't you talk to me?"
"Because to give you a single chance at diplomacy would also have been to give you as many chances at sabotage as you needed," Celestia says. "If you had been hostile — and I should point out that you can be a threat even with the best of intentions; but plausible evidence suggested you might actively be working against me — then you could have repeatedly reset until you found the perfect lie to allay my fears. To tip my hoof before taking action would have left me with no chance of action at all. When looping is involved, the tiniest hesitation in a plan might as well be a crack in a dam."
Once upon a time, Celestia's voice echoes, I convinced myself that something very, very wrong was necessary …
I hear the click of sollerets approaching me, and open my eyes as Luna brings a hoof to my shoulder. "She has much to reconcile with you, Twilight, but please do not fault her for entrapping you," she says quietly. "Had she not been able to catch me wholly by surprise with the Elements of Harmony a thousand years ago, the land would yet be in eternal night. It is true — with loopers, the middle ground of diplomacy is fragile, and fraught with consequences worse than those of overreaction."
"And yet it's all we have left now," Celestia says. "So, Twilight, here we stand."
"Here we stand." I take a few moments to steady myself. I can't do this right now. I need answers and trust, and calling her on the false necessity argument will leave me a wreck while getting me neither. "Let's go back to the basics. Why can't you trust me? I need that story."
"Tell her," Luna says immediately, turning back to her sister. "Withhold nothing. It is our only chance of learning the truth conscionably."
Celestia nods. "Alright. You're already aware of Starswirl the Bearded's prodigious comprehension of time and mind magic, far beyond our own. But neither you, nor anypony else, know the details of his downfall. We've kept them silent, both for safety's sake, and to give him the legacy he deserved." She paces over to the lifeless Elements of Harmony. "Shortly before he … turned … he devised a spell to examine our future. What he saw — and shared with us, in increasingly cryptic and deranged terms — was the complete destruction of our world. His last sane act was to eradicate all possible trace of the knowledge which it appears you possess — both the records of an entire empire and the memories of its people. His first insane act was to attack us with what he still remembered of it." She looks up at me grimly. "Your mere existence is an existential threat, and though I don't know the exact mechanism of our doom, the signs are clear enough. That you have either been hiding your knowledge from us, or are unaware of its significance yourself, implies a trap we cannot afford to spring, and there is only one certain method of defusal."
I shift uncomfortably. "Luna said something about that, too. The Crystal Empire was the grave of a world-ending secret. Is that what happened to Cadance in this version of history? She discovered it and went mad?"
"Most likely, but it's difficult to say," Celestia says. "She was mad when we found her — but she did clearly rule over the Crystal Empire, once, and knew its secrets."
"Found" her? But Cadance was born just a decade before me, right in Canterlot! I need to know that story — that's a major discontinuity — but first, speaking of discontinuities … "Be that as it may, there is an exceptionally simple fact here I literally cannot believe you overlooked. I'm from a version of Equestria where none of this happened. In my history, Starswirl disappeared without a trace near the end of his life and, as far as I can tell, didn't have a thing to do with the Crystal Empire. You're judging me based on your history, when the very first thing we determined is that I changed something huge to get here."
Celestia glances at Luna, who narrows her eyes. Celestia sighs. "I had been afraid that calling out the inadequacies of your story would let you refine it and further obfuscate the truth … but at this point, if that's your goal, it's already too late to stop you. So: The logic you mention, coupled with the second spirit Luna detected within you, was the key flaw in your tale."
"It's not a 'flaw' because I'm still not lying," I say defensively, then force myself to take a slow breath. Keeping myself from turning this into an argument is taking everything I've got; how stupidly ironic that, after all the looping I've done, I can't afford to replay through this to say what needs to be said. "And it looks like, for us to get anywhere, I need to convince you of that. That means figuring out the source of the contradictions here."
Celestia nods, not looking at Luna this time. Progress? "Twilight, think about the history you remember growing up in. For instance, you told me after returning from Skyrend Mountain that you remembered Mi Amore Cadenza foalsitting you."
"Just to be clear — here she didn't?" I interject.
"Heavens, no. Now … I know the exact spell you cast to begin looping. That spell merely preserves the contents of the loops in which you died, and restores them to you when you reset. It leaves completely untouched your memories from before you cast the spell."
We've been over this. "And I wasn't looping as a foal. So … if I had triggered a change in the past during one of my loops, like we first thought, then both before and after I cast the looping spell four days ago, I would remember this past, without Cadance as a foalsitter." I think this is starting to come together.
"Correct. In fact, if you were any possible version of Twilight Sparkle, you would remember our past — unless the second consciousness in your body unstuck you in time as the Nightmare did Cadenza."
Right there, where I said this was starting to come together? I lied.
But I have to stay focused. Stick to the trust issue. "Let me stop you there, because — as Luna pointed out repeatedly — the Elements protected me. You know that I'm Twilight, and that there's no Nightmare here."
"All I know is that the Elements were explosively disabled while a foreign consciousness was operating within the Bearer of Magic's mind."
"Celestia," Luna says, voice dark with warning.
"Hers," Celestia adds hurriedly, gesturing to me as she looks at her sister. "And if she could call upon the power to do that, she could just as easily have arranged your deception." She glances between us. "It's the only explanation I've found. So please offer a non-contradictory alternative — accounting for a second, foreign consciousness being drawn into Twilight Sparkle's body when a mere time loop spell is cast, and Twilight herself having her memories overwritten in ways the spell itself is incapable of."
"I do not have one," Luna says immediately. "But a failure to understand should not preclude acceptance."
"Even when our continued existence is at stake?"
"Especially then. When the stakes are so high, we must confront that which confounds us with open eyes, and be prepared to follow the truth where it leads."
Celestia shakes her head and sighs. "Luna, for your sake I've probably already doomed us by being honest about my suspicions. I draw the line at discarding them until there is some glimmer of hope beyond the contradictions."
I clear my throat. "Then let's find one."
"I've tried. Believe me, I've tried. But I'm listening." Celestia shifts her body to face me full-on, sitting on the ground and staring at me intently.
My mind starts racing in five different directions at once. No pressure. "Uh, for starters, saying 'any' possible version of Twilight is ruling out a lot. Couldn't some previous version of me back before the changes have seriously glitched up their time spell and, I don't know, screwed it up badly enough that me-Twilight accidentally swapped loops with here-Twilight? That would also explain the explosive feedback when I cast the spell."
Celestia's response is immediate. "That doesn't match the story you told, doesn't explain the second presence, and time loops don't work that way."
"I. Uhhh."
She ticks a forehoof at ninety-degree intervals around the circle of her other upturned hoof, visually counting off the possibilities as she rattles through them. "You can't be from our past brought forward, or I would remember the interactions with me that you claim. You can't be from our future brought backward, or future-you would have remembered all of current-you's time loops the first time that future-you ever cast a loop spell. You can't be the Twilight of a different loop, or you'd simply have differing memories within the loops, and we run into the remembering-the-past dilemma. You can't be from different loops' past or futures, same reason. That leaves unstuck in time: yanked from a failed branch of our history which no longer exists to anchor your spirit, and reinserted here by some saboteur to unknowingly overwrite your more innocent self. Who's the second presence, then, the quiescent one along for the ride? The one who selected you, brought you here, and is controlling you. Unless that presence is the Elements — which makes no sense, since they already have Bearers here and could have exerted far more direct influence with far less hassle — the only entities with the power to manipulate time and mind to that extent are the Nightmare; Discord, who's neutralized; or some heretofore unknown remnant of Starswirl, who's dead. Even if it's somehow one of the latter, they're insane tyrants bent on our destruction."
It's cold comfort that Celestia has thought this through in a lot more depth than I did, because now I'm starting to worry about myself too. Is there some weird Nightmare sleeper agent thing going on? Is that why the Elements acted so strange, giving me a loop to follow that not only made no sense but broke my brain?
I try to shake off that unease. There's got to be something we're missing. "Okay. Um. The Elements," I think out loud. As good a place to start as any. "When Harmony gave me The One Loop …" and made me lie to Celestia … "I wondered if it was a test of some kind. So … maybe all this is a test? My presence here is clearly impossible. Maybe none of this is real and I'm stuck in a simulation."
Celestia raises an eyebrow. "No offense, Twilight, but I think your version of me let you read one too many philosophy books without proper supervision."
I feel my cheeks heat. She's right, that was just silly. And if I'd thought for a few seconds before shooting my mouth off, I would have remembered the big clue right away.
"Sorry," I say. "But that does remind me of something I saw when talking to Harmony — another me. Princess … your sister told me that, back when you thought I was the Nightmare, you thought the second presence was Twilight. But she said that since I'm Twilight, that's impossible. Why?"
Celestia puts her hoof to the bridge of her muzzle. "Because our timeline can only have one of you. Really, Twilight, do we have to have The Talk about lexually transmitted malaise?"
"There is more than one of me, though. I saw it!"
"I am reluctant to question the evidence of your senses," Luna says, "but my sister is correct. Becoming unstuck in time, and then reinserted at a moment when another Twilight Sparkle existed, would cause the timeline to overwrite one of you to avoid paradox. You would be lost entirely, or replace her consciousness entirely." She shrugs. "You say you saw this when you spoke with the power behind the Elements of Harmony? Perhaps it was not entirely a literal experience."
I'm not going to let it go that easily. "I met myself before, though, when I time-traveled a week back to the past —"
"And there was only one of you then — just with your timeline kinked to briefly intersect itself," Celestia says. "Yourself from the future would still be you inside your brain, not a separate consciousness. At any rate, the evidence has already ruled out time travel."
"Okay then." I tap a hoof to my chin. I know what I saw, and I know I'm onto something here — but we're still in "that's impossible" territory, so I need to think further outside the box.
"I believe Twilight Sparkle has raised an excellent point," Luna says while I ponder. "We would be far closer to the truth of this matter were we simply to reset, separate her from her companion spirit, and discover its identity."
"Uh …" Resetting? Bad idea.
"We would," Celestia says, staring at me, "but Twilight doesn't seem to be a fan of that idea."
I feel my face heat. "I am, but not yet." I consider for a moment, and honesty seems harmless: "I'm just as curious as you are, but this is the last time I have a guarantee that we'll talk about the answers we find." If something's wrong here and that spirit isn't another Twilight, anyhow. A second Twilight would exonerate me, but my doubts are a little too scary right now for me to leap blindly at that chance. The voice of reason nags at me: How could a second Twilight Sparkle exist, if any possible version of me is treated by the timeline as identical?
… By this timeline as identical.
"Hmm," I say, rolling the thought around in my head. It's crazy, but … "I can't help but notice when you were ruling out alternate-loop Twilights, you didn't even mention parallel dimensions."
"Because that's impossible," Celestia says without hesitation.
"One, would everypony stop saying that word, and two, since everything about this is impossible, would you stop treating that as self-evident and explain what in Tartarus you mean?"
She sighs, exasperation creeping in. "Even if parallel dimensions exist, there's no way to get another Twilight into our timeline. Like Luna just said, we can only have one of you."
"But that thing about overwriting almost seems to fit what we know, and parallel dimensions would fill in the gaps." An idea takes coherent form. "If I'm from, not just another timeline branch, but a place where something fundamental is different, I might have been drawn to this dimension's Twilight by her jerry-rigged looping spell, which was crude enough to identify us as identical — but the timelines didn't match closely enough for my consciousness to overwrite the original's, and so your Twilight is also left behind. I know the idea's kinda out there, but you're being suspiciously knee-jerk about denying it."
"It's not denial, Twilight, it's Starswirl's Seventh Law. One of the most basic foundations of applied tempomancy. If you know enough to cast a time loop spell, I refuse to believe you don't know it inside and out."
I frown. "I'm pretty certain the Seventh bans nothing of the sort."
She's briefly silent. "Right. You remember a different history; your numbering might have changed. Which one is the equation that defines the difference in thaumic potential between two anchor points in temporal branchspace?"
I turn to Luna. "Princess, should a memory charm be safe for me?" She nods, and to triple-check, I sift through everything I remember of a few loops' worth of intensive research way back at the beginning of all this. "That would be the Ninth, and I still don't follow your logic."
"Really, Twilight? You of all ponies need this explained?" Celestia raises an eyebrow. "It's obvious from the equation. D(t) equals the inner branch product of A1 and A2, divided by the product of H1 minus P1,2 and H2 minus P2,1."
In the corner of my vision, I see Spike's eyes glaze over at the math. I'm equally thrown, for a different reason. "Uh … you lost me just past A2."
"The divisor is the product of both timelines' branch height minus their temporal prominence."
"Prominence measures the relative divergence of two anchor points from the latest common branch point they share," Luna adds. "If the branches are, so to speak, on two different trees, then the prominence would be equivalent to the entire height. Thus, you would twice divide by zero."
"Resulting in infinite thaumic feedback the moment any connection to a parallel timeline is established," Celestia says, "and a runaway feedback loop resulting in the immediate and complete destruction of both universes. In laypony's terms, our existence rules out any sort of connection which would lead to us speaking to a parallel you."
I shut my hanging jaw and finally manage to clarify. "It's not the math that lost me. Just to be clear, this was sane Starswirl's work, right?"
Celestia and Luna exchange a glance. "Of course," Luna says. "Though near the end. And it has been borne out ever since by test upon test."
"Because in my history, all evidence suggests that he disappeared while testing the Ninth, but the world survived long enough to create me. And, more importantly, the version I learned has no divisor at all."
The room goes silent except for the ticking of the clock.
"I know we're talking right now about a number of things that aren't as impossible as they seem, but that's extra impossible," Celestia says slowly.
"The laws of magic are fundamental descriptions of the underlying principles of reality," Luna says. "They do not change from place to place — even dimension to dimension, if the dimensions are cross-accessible. Your suggestion that Starswirl's Seventh Law is different in your history makes no more sense than saying that … let us suppose … if one were to fly to Qilin, light were to take up space, and a well-lit room were to be half the size of a darkened one."
I hold up a quill and a scroll, and grin widely.
"Yes," I say, "it's impossible. But, at long last, we have a testable impossible."
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Jesus tap-dancing Christ on a pogostick I thought this couldn't get any more complicated. I really should have known.
I feel like I'm missing things that I would need another 5 degrees in philosophy and/or quantum physics to truly understand.
My head hurts. Not because I don't understand, but because this is all rating about a 9.9 on my WTF-ometer.
My brain feels like Button Mash after his milkshake drinking contest. xD
We almost need an intermission-style chapter, wherein Twilight breaks the 4th wall and *tries* to explain any of this to the audience, lol. With a few interuptions from Pinkie, just because she can. ;) (j/k)
Awesome work, as always!!
Disappeared testing the ninth rule?
Well. Now I'm imagining Starswirl in Equestria Girls. As a technicolor Urkel. Thanks for that.
Also, please let Twilight punch Celestia in the throat on some loop.
Calling it now - This version of Starswirl deliberately lied about the equation in order to suppress... something, not sure what yet.
It's a fairly effective way to hide the truth. No-one's game to try and prove you wrong, since anyone who tries to test it runs the risk of destroying their entire universe in the process.
Yay! The next chapter will be an early birthday present for me
This is my belief and you cannot take it away from me.
4277581 Your avatar is just about the most appropriate thing for your comment.
Huh, in spite of what everyone else is saying, I'm following Twilight and the story as a whole perfectly.
Especially since I've read the rest of the original trilogy. This whole thing is the result of a botched attempt at going sideways to avoid the loop, and accidentally snared another version of Twilight instead. The quiescent personality is the other Twilight, but their memories and individuality are bifurcated. In what is either severely bad luck or incredibly good luck, she can even test whether or not she's got a potentially terrified other-Twi in her head, who's likely been trying to contact anyone before anything goes wrong, as she saw inconsistency after inconsistency jeopardize the survival of all timelines connected to hers.
As for the 'the two selves are utterly incompatible and would wipe out one or another' idea, it's entirely possible that it's a soul fusion, which would provide both memories, personality tweaks, etc. but would not allow the less-dominant personality to rise without aid from the more dominant personality. And if the already-looping Twilight was fused to the just-started-looping one, then her personality would almost have to be more dominant, simply because it has more development and force behind it.
Anyhow, I'm rambling after spending all night awake, and it's now 6am for me.
I can't wait for the next chapter.
Okay, that's it. I'm jumping ship.
Horizon, buddy, I'm sorry, but I am so fucking lost here. Things are so jumbled and confusing that I couldn't make it past when Celestia started "ticking her hoof at a 90-degree angle." I have no idea what they are talking about, what they could be talking about! You have twisted things around so much that even though I read the last three chapters again prior to reading this, I have absolutely no what the fuck is going on, or even what might be going on!
You went full Timey-Wimey, dude, and unless someone makes a full-on Cliff Notes for this as it goes, I just can't keep reading. Every chapter just gets more and more complicated, and it only seems like it will get worse. Which sucks, because I truly enjoyed the first act, with plain old time looping, but this is just too much.
No down-vote, but I'm retracting my follow. Sorry.
But... If twilight has been looping for about two years than when she removed the elements she killed the first looper
then the new looper whent and did something difrint lay because he or she lived so long thy can't remember how it went but because twilight was looping she cept her memory's and then when the new twilight was using the spell she was replaced with the original twilight these she remember everything because she is a original
To but this in laymans terms... Star swirl is immortal and he lived very long then twilight. Started looping thou ether died befor the elements killed him or the elements didn't destroy the whole the how world but by moving it she gave the explosion of golden death what it needed to kill him that's why he went insan and told Luna and Celestia that the end of the world was gonna happen
so star swirled changed the flucher. but twilight remembered and all star swirld did was make the in invasionhappen later oh and it's why he vanes he'd in the original timeline
4277875
no their minds did not merg the second mind in their if their was one is the elements and when star swirld respawned it was the same dimension he just declaird that it wasint posible and went insan from the futue so he stoped looping and commuted suicide instead of disapiring and made celestia and luna loopers
Pleas correct my if I'm wrong and sorry for triple posting because I'm using a ipad
So Twi's Starswirl crossed over to this dimension, overrid Cel's Starswirl (or merged with) in such a horrible way that he decreed it as impossible while he still had his sanity intact.
Naturally the extra mind (if merged) led to his mental destruction.
4277793
I don't know if it's been maintained to this point, but a number of readers did establish a wiki-like writeup for this. Keeping an eye on it might help.
Still, I'd encourage you to stick it out. Trust me, I'm hella lost after this chapter too, but I'm just trusting the author to have a pay-off in the works...whatever it is. :)
Worst case, at least swing back in when this story is finished. That way, you'll know that there is a definite end to read towards. ;)
Feels like we're slowly crawling out of the incomprehensible mess at this point. I have LESS questions after this chapter.
Well, this certainly explains why Celestia refused to believe the truth. I assume (H1 - P1,2)(H2 - P2,1) usually equals one, otherwise the rules really are different between these two universes.
Judging by the comments, it might have been a better idea to focus more on the alternate history than the math... but on the other hand, Celestia probably wouldn't have tolerated such a thing. She'd feel like she was being played for a fool.
Also, nice End of Ponies reference.
I look forward to more.
4277793
The long and short of it is that local Twilight managed to drag an alternate version of herself into the timeline, alternate Star Swirl may have hopped inside his local analogue's mind and claimed what he did was impossible so no one else would try, and Twilight is about to do science to prove that she isn't evil. Basically, think Quantum Leap meets Sliders.
Can someone simply the second law or whatever? It makes no sense to me.
4278052 The amount of feedback you get when traveling between two timelines is bigger the longer ago they diverged. I don't know what the As represent. Twilight's version doesn't have this property and Starswirl vanished when testing it, so maybe the 'infinite' feedback doesn't destroy the universe like Celestial expects but does something else?
It can't be an entirely made up rule because Luna says it's been tested (although obviously not at the universe destroying level)
4277581
I'm finally starting to feel like shit's making sense, actually
4277793
that was just her counting on her fingers that she doesn't have.
4278212
SCIENCE!
4278236
Um... Yeah, I got that part. It's everything she said that made my brainghrfsdjkbfdjofsldgfsdjkg
4277951 I really think the science should have happened in this chapter because a(a) ending on the technobabble is frustrating, and (b) no one is going to remember why they're testing something by the time the next chapter comes out.
Unless somepony's been messing around with long-term split timelines, that divisor must be near to one for any tests that have been run... so as long as Starswirl was the only one to do that sort of long-term timeline research, he could easily have hidden his modifications. It might even be that he'd changed some of his other laws to more perfectly hide his alteration... adding in a term to cancel out with the divisor when used in conjunction with his Second Law (if so, then Twilight might benefit from writing out all of Starswirl's Laws for Celestia to double-check).
Starswirl's vision of the end of the universe might also be foreshadowing; a hint that Twilight will somehow restore this universe to the history she remembers, destroying it in the process.
4278230
I do understand what's going on (mostly), it's just that it's so dense that I'm paranoid I'm missing something. I'll probably still feel that way even when it's finished to be honest - not that that's a bad thing. It's the sheer mind-bending complexity of this that makes me like it so much.
I love these brain teasers!
I really like thinking and lately this has been the only thing that makes me think. Thus, favorite.
4277782
thank you for putting all of that into english. I was following along well enough until they brought up all the equations behind the temporal-mechanics. or at least I thought.
So, it's being renamed to the Third Suggestion of Thermodynamics, then?
In other words, Starswirl blew up the Crystal Empire library and wiped the memories of the crystal ponies. The reason Twilight thought there was something odd about the Sombra Luna produced in the dream-place is because he looked different to the Sombra she met, because this timeline's Sombra used to be Starswirl.
...I'm not sure what that does for the whole idea of Sombra being the unknown looper. Possibly destroys it entirely, since there doesn't seem to have been a real Sombra at all in this timeline.
He's clearly linked to what happened though, and since Cadence is also linked, having appeared a thousand years before she was born, and since knowledge of the Crystal Heart appears to be the thing Twilight knows about that Celestia was testing her for which could end the world, a solution does occur to me. Kind of crazy, but I thought thousand-years-ago Cadence and not-Sombra were kind of crazy when I guessed them too.
The Elements-on-a-train could have blown up the Crystal Heart before resetting Twilight. Something about this might have unstuck Sombra and Cadence in time (explaining why Starswirl apparently picked up Sombra's personality and Cadence is explicitly described by Celestia as unstuck). Since this would imply that the Crystal Heart is the key to changing the timeline again, Starswirl's warning about [probably] the Crystal Heart leading to the end of the world could be entirely correct, since Twilight could use it to change the timeline again, ending the world that way - this would even make Celestia's paranoia about Twilight's knowledge of the Crystal Heart leading directly to the end of the world even without malice on her part accurate. I guess it isn't paranoia when the crazy things you're worried about are true.
Neither Luna nor Twilight address it (though Twilight acknowledges it as being a false argument), but once Twilight was inside the inescapable Euthanatos-proof barrier, Celestia could have safely discussed the matter without torturing Twilight.
If I'm understanding everything correctly, D(t) should be calculatable for moving Twilight's loops from looping starting in the evening in the library to looping starting in the morning in the vault. If they calculate D(t) and then measure it to be much larger than they've calculated, Twilight's proposition will be given a very large piece of supporting evidence. If D(t) is exactly as predicted, it would be very strong evidence that Twilight is wrong about having come from a far-away timeline. The hypothesis is finally falsifiable!
I've already wondered if the reason Spike now says "Well, that sure didn't work." instead of "Well, that didn't work." is that the explosion has been bigger since the timeline changed, so that's probably weak evidence already that Twilight is correct, and will be proven right when this is tested.
i579.photobucket.com/albums/ss235/orpheon/patrickconfused.png
I'm curious why people are downvoting 4277623. Is it the suggestion that this be done within the story? I'd actually considered doing a remarkably similar "Ask Looping Sparkle" type thing — but, I should specify, as bonus and/or filler material, not within the story itself.
4277793
Sir, Jake, sir: You've been more than fair to this story — sticking with it long past the point of braincramp. I'm sad to see you go, but I don't want this to be a chore instead of a joy for you, and I can't promise this will get better, even when the changelings return in another chapter or two. Too much of the story is wrapped up in deconstructing loop psychology and loop mechanics. Thank you for giving it multiple chances, and Godspeed.
I'm reminded of a similar exchange over on Thou Goddess — in which I remarked: "Clever incomprehensibility, I am beginning to suspect, is the fundamental basis of my style." That's not always true, but I do often ask a lot from my readers, in hopes that I can provide deeper payoffs to reward the effort.
This story is the bleeding edge of dense mother-bucker-dom (and Thou Goddess is pretty demanding as well) — the fact that there are not one but two ongoing Cliff's Notes projects, as well as endless discussion in comments, is clue enough for that. (Though I've also got far lighter fare like Princess Luna Picks Up Hitchhikers.)
… Hmm. I should make a little "Brain Engagement" chart ranking my stories, with HR2 somewhere off the right edge beyond "what the hell, horizon". BRB.
4277793
P.S.:
This story will continue to be what it is; I'm committed to the timey-wimey at this point. But as penance, I'll make it a point to go read Under A Luminous Sky. I should do that anyway — seeing as how it was Pony Fiction Vaulted and all.
</plug>
4279143
1. Don't call me sir. I work for a living.
2. It's honestly not a fault of the story, It's just that it makes me feel dumb. Like, most others have at least some grasp of the situation, and I'm just going cross-eyed. So, like many stories before it, I can't help the feeling that I'm just out of the loop because my brain can't wrap itself around some central conceit that makes shit click. Yes, the story is complicated—bordering on convoluted, but you make it work—but I seem to be the only one that is, as we say in The Life, Lima Lima Mike Foxtrot: Lost Like a Mother Fucker.
2. Since you deem fit to peruse my comparatively paltry attempts at storytelling, I shall be reading some of your other works. Hopefully I can find something more my speed.
If I'm being honest, I'll probably end up doing as 4277886 said, and come back once it's complete. That way, I'll have a complete guide to walk me through the hard bits.
So, Spike, you say you'll take this Hard Reset and reset harder?
4279312
Well there's the problem; you're not looping.
</useless comment>
Nice-!!! I really liked that Equestria Girls reference. Also, why did Scootaloo have to lick that banana? Seriously, Horizon.
Cabbage ate that why?
Let's be honest.
Horizon is catering to a very specific, group of readers. He's decided to alienate the others, because... they are apparently not trying hard enough.
I have read thousands of fan-made fiction. I have read and enjoyed dozens of lengthy time-travel stories.
And I would be a big fat liar... if I said, "I understood this chapter."
4279312 Personally, I find that the key to enjoying this story is just to go along for the ride and not bother with understanding anything you don't easily understand.
Because here's the thing: Every bit of looping, every convoluted numbering system, every incomprehensible magical law, every strange impossibility, every last one of those is just a framework for what Twilight feels and does about it. And that part I can understand.
I'll continue to give understanding the timey-wimey stuff the old college try, but when I don't quite, I don't break my brain re-reading and trying, because it really doesn't matter. I don't have to understand exactly what didn't get divided by zero or why in the 9th law, all I have to understand is that Twilight suddenly has science to do, which may actually prove to be a solution to the mess she's in, and that makes her happy.
(And all this is by way of saying no, you're not the only one. I haven't got a bloody clue, but I don't care.
It'll all get explained in ways I can understand eventually, or it won't, and either way Twilight is a great character and I'm enjoying being along for the ride.)
4280153
You seem awesome-sauce.
Unfortunately, Horizon would probably disprove with you. He expects us to analyze the *buck* out of this chapter so we'll feel "accomplished."
He's not to blame. We are.
I sort of get it. I'm not the best at math, but I get everything else.
I are smarty pants. Hee.
4277581 Better add another, just to be sure. You're almost certainly within six degrees of separation from the author.
4279143
4277793
Well crap. I've got my work cut out for me... Quite a bit of ground to catch up on the Hard Reset Helper.
-----------------
Math/Analogy time:
Granted my matrix algebra is rudimentary at best, I'll take a shot at explaining or at least providing an analog.
Basically calculating the energy to travel between two points on a branching line, aye? And if a branch is not connected, you need infinite energy to get from one line to the next since there is no actual path to traverse? (Boom) It's like asking how do I drive from New York to Berlin. You don't. They're not connected by roads. And any connection with roads we could hypothesize between those cities would involve wormhole talk and an amount of energy that would either end in a black hole or a Big Bang.
So what if the trees were connected by definition rather than a caused event? Say, imagine you didn't know the tunnel between France and Britain existed until you took a wrong turn.
Suddenly we have a distance we can traverse by road. And we're not dividing by zero. So no boom.
Probably not an exact analogy but it's the best I've got. The math itself went over my head, but trees went to disconnected databases went to roads. Don't ask me how.
------------------
Chapter theorizing time:
Cadence. Mad? Mad like how Celestia sees Twilight? Found by Celestia and Luna knowing far too much about an empire that is now either lost or so buried by Luna and Celestia that no one can ever be allowed to find it? Hmm... I wonder what a ruler of said empire from a different timeline would feel if she just appeared in the area and learned of its fate.
Oh. Crap.
[Insert vehement cursing here] horizon why? Why? WHY?
A little whisper that started all the way back there and now we're a mere change of subject away from you all but confirming it. Cruel, heartless, sadistic, monstrous! This makes me feel horrible.
Good job...
While I'm with 4279312, at this point I'm too invested; I *have* to know how this all ends... Reading comments and this (as I'm too dumb to navigate the github (which I use myself) project to find the actual bits where they start explaining stuff) is helping me getting everything understood.
The complex timey-wimey stuff isn't bothering me, but the two chapter info-dump in which the characters do little other than sit around in a room and info dump... right after two chapters of lots-happening-very-little-being-explained... is all a bit jarring when up unto a point there was a very clearly progressing plot (I guess it was moving, and linear, and these chapters feel like a biiiiig intermission, less than an arc of their own). I think these last two chapters have been missing that, for lack of a better term, human touch that your earlier ones did. Tons and tons of actions, but also quite a few moments where Twilight and Celestia talked and shared feelies, staring out over the destruction the princess wrought. That moment in this chapter where Twilight is alone with Spike? Brilliant. It grounded the story for a moment. Maybe if these (recent) chapters had more going on in them between the big moments of epiphany and exposition, it would give the readers time to reorient themselves to the current setting and process what has been going on. And just get to spend more time with the characters doing things, maybe in a different room. I like the way you make them do things!
(Man, I knew if I was stuck in looping hell I'd want to take a breather and go eat some donuts for a few minutes)
4280491 I completely forgot that while reading the explanation thread, I have something to add: it said that (they think) Celestia is setting a reset point every morning so she can anticipate troubles and fix them.
While reading that part (can't find it, it's near the start) I must disagree. Creating a reset point every day is way too dangerous. If events are set into motion weeks/months/years ahead of time, then there simply might be not enough time to create a desirable outcome.
For this I came up with the analogy of quick save/load or save states in video games. These are essentially the exact same things as the anchor points in this story. They allow you to rewind to any point you wish and replay the game knowing exactly what will happen. However, everyone who's used save states (especially common with emulators) knows the pitfall of saving too often. You might accidentally save with no way of preventing your upcoming death.
Here you typically resolve the situation with multiple save states, one state for a known safe location, and another you use for more risky mid-combat saves. However the protagonists of this story (luckily for us, the readers!) do not have access to multi-save-states
Even then this only works so far, as you still need to replay everything that you've reset (Twilight experiences this with operation Hornet's Nest where they go and try to infiltrate the Changeling Hive). With video games you solve this by finding a nice guide to follow to make sure you never miss any of the secrets.
However, inevitably you remember some secret that you discovered yourself (in previous playthroughs, you typically don't start your first playthrough with a walkthrough guide) and lo and behold, the walkthrough makes absolutely no mention of it! Thus casting doubt on the walkthrough fearing you may have missed some secret!
Erhm, my apologies, that went slightly off on a tangent.
4280153 4280224
Actually, I was delighted to hear SPark's comment, and if every one of my readers felt comfortable in taking that attitude I would be able to walk away feeling like I'd done my job.
There's a tiny fraction of readers who have analyzed the story in enough depth to scare me (I say that literally; as much work as I've put in making everything connect behind the scenes, there is enough engagement that I know I'm eventually going to screw something up and they'll catch it), and then there is the vast audience beyond that for whom all of the technical detail is just a sign that I've done the work.
I don't expect anyone, for example, to analyze this chapter's equations. The math should look plausible to mathematicians, and I've spent far too much time making the math look plausible to mathematicians, but the point of the math working is that it makes a point which drives the story. If I wanted to force everyone to dig in as deeply as the top 1% of readers are digging in, I would have left out Celestia and Luna's exposition.
My goal is that, if you come to this section:
And read this:
… Then you can continue on having understood the important 80% of the story, and if you care about the other 20% you can ask in comments, where half a dozen readers will leap on your question before I have a chance to speak up, encouraging me to greater and greater lengths of comment laziness.
(Seriously, though, keep the question-leaping up, y'all. I really, REALLY appreciate the way most questions get answered and most speculation wheels onward without me feeling like I have to step in. It leaves me more time to write.)
So:
This story isn't going to work for everyone. I'm making it dense; those Cliff's Notes fan projects aren't just there for show. But for me to have done my job as an author successfully, I want people to be entertained, even if they're not understanding everything I throw in.
When I see comments about how confused people are, that's par for the course. (I'm writing about multiple intersecting time loops that are only remembered by one looper at a time, and it's supposed to make sense on the first pass?) But when I see comments that it's confusing enough to stop reading, I've failed. (I probably did not make that clear enough in my first response to Jake. Argh. I'm sure I'm sounding self-contradictory here. It's complex. Great, now I feel like Celestia trying to defend herself, explaining and explaining when I should have just shut up and said I'm sorry.)
You're not the only alienated reader this chapter. Honestly, it feels like a weak chapter to me, and I'm probably losing a lot of silent readers out of it too. All I can do is pick myself up, push past the math, and get back to the better stuff.
4280644
*sigh* Yeah, I'm pretty much totally contradicting myself.
1) This story is what it is and it's going to continue on in much the same manner it has in the past
2) The story is too complex and losing readers and I do regret that
The problem is that both of those are true.
I am really identifying with Celestia right now. This is not a good thing.
//shutting up and writing chapter 15
4280558
As the author I agree totally with this. I want so. damn. badly. to get them the hell out of that room, and the trust issue just won't let them. I'm at least glad to hear that the Spike scene is helping. I felt like "argh! adding more words! ARC TOO LONG AND I'M ADDING WORDS!" when massaging it in last week but it felt necessary, and now I can put a finger on why.
Thank you for confirming how it feels from the far side. Next chapter is the breakthrough, and there will be changelings in chapter 16. Colt Scout's honor.
Just for amusement's sake, here's what I see in that quoted bit:
Damn, at first, I thought you were just a genius writer... But now, I think you are a genius with a spectacular and crazy imagination. That kind of mix, leads me to think that you are either ridiculously talented or so smart it covers up any foreseeable flaws. The amount one must do to keep up with you and your thought process... Ugh. I think I need an aspirin.