The Miracle
There's a ringing in my ears, when I shouldn't have ears. On a primal level, I know I should be dead. Yet, somehow I am not.
"Welcome back," calls a soft, if unfamiliar voice.
My vision takes a little longer to return, but that's no surprise: vision requires more physical energy for the brain to process than audition does. So if you're, oh, let's just say, being clubbed to death by your best friend, you're more likely to stop seeing things before you stop hearing them. Of course, this doesn't apply in my case, because a single blow was all it took. But the same fact holds true in reverse.
I struggle to move. I find that I'm in yet another hospital bed, and my foreleg is in traction again. This makes for a total of five knockouts in half a week, which, though very impressive, is not something I've ever wanted the bragging rights to.
My bandaged forehead throbs painfully, but it's my heart that hurts the most. I squint as my vision slowly returns, and I see a distinctive golden aura everywhere at once as my glasses are levitated onto my face by somepony. My sight is still bleary, but it's obvious that the pony beside me is none other than Princess Celestia.
As a talented mage, I've met Princess Celestia several times before. It was always in a formal setting, and she always exuded this kind of otherworldly peace. She's smiling at me now, very sweetly, her pastel-hued magical mantle billowing through her mane and tail.
All the other times I'd met her, I was star-struck. But not this time. Her flowing grandeur and gentle demeanor are irritating, and they feel pompous. This pony taught Twilight to be a princess, Twilight chose to end my life, and now here she sits with a soft smile on her pretty little face.
I want somepony to blame, and I won't allow it to be Twilight. So it's either Celestia or me, and I can't handle me at the moment.
"Meperidine," I demand, and she hoofs me the squeezer, which I gratefully tap.
"You've been in hospitals a lot recently, from what I hear," says Celestia. Her voice is soft and soothing, which I want to find annoying, but I can't. "You deserve the relief, but please take care with your doses. It is surprisingly easy to become addicted."
"Too late," I say. "That squeeze wasn't for physical pain."
"I understand," says Celestia, with a small sigh. "Fortunately, there are other ways to alleviate psychological trauma, at least in the long term."
I snort. "I know a spell to do it, but I'd sooner die than cast it again." I say that actually hoping I get in trouble for knowing the proscribed spell. I feel small and dead inside, despite the drug euphoria now filling my core. I want to suffer. I'm not entirely sure I understand why.
Celestia's head gently bobs in response. "I want you to live, Moondancer. Still, I'm glad to hear you say that. I don't know how you learned Dividere Mentem. I don't believe in censoring inquiry without just cause, so that particular spell is illegal for some very important reasons. I'm sure you understand this, now. Later, preferably with your consent, I intend to wipe part of the formula from your memory. I have already done so for Twilight and myself."
"Yourself?" I ask, shocked. "You did something to keep yourself from casting a spell?"
I can hardly believe what I'm hearing, but I'm starting to realize that maybe, just maybe, underneath all that polished charm Princess Celestia might secretly be a real pony.
Maybe.
"Oh, yes," she says, and a wistful look crosses her muzzle. "I removed it from my mind a very, very long time ago, and at the time I also put up other barriers to ensure I would not relearn it. I probably should have destroyed it, but it's difficult to bring myself to ruin any brand of knowledge. Regardless, while it is true that our decisions are best ruled by adherence to facts and logic, it turns out that emotions are, in fact, a very important component of ethical decision-making."
"You also covered up time travel of the third form, didn't you?" I accuse. "And actually, I guess it turns out Twi and I don't know what that is after all. I suppose you'll tell me that information is forbidden for good reasons too?"
Celestia waves her head gently from side to side. "I'm afraid I lied to Twilight about that, because I feared the two of you were working on something very dangerous. I figured it might spook her into slowing down. In truth, there's no such thing as a third form of time travel, to the best of my knowledge," she says. "That idea was a distraction I slipped into textbooks written long ago to make it appear that there was a more powerful kind of time travel. It's the second form that is dangerous. Fortunately, that magic is very difficult to master because it requires communing with the Tree of Harmony. But the point of the ruse was my hope that ponies like Starlight Glimmer might give up on learning the second form, and try to pursue a dead-end spell instead."
"Clever," I say. "But disturbingly sneaky."
"I admit it was a questionable plan. I'll probably never know how well it actually worked, since those cases would be the ones we're spared from," she says. "However, I fear I must return to the matter at hoof: Twilight's actions."
"Her... oh, right. Eh. I don't know anymore," I say. "I can't really fault Twilight for what she did. Maybe if she hadn't had that emotion spell up, but even then I can't blame her decision."
It almost feels like I have the spell up now, I realize. I'm sure waterworks are on the horizon, but at the moment, everything just feels empty and numb.
"Twilight Sparkle speaks very highly of your intellect. I suspect you might have figured things out already?" says Celestia, intoning it as a question.
I nod my aching head. "It's pretty straightforward. Twilight and I discovered that if the chambers worked the way they seemed to work, we would have already produced a slew of universes where Equestria was doomed to some disastrous outcome," I explain. "Then she realized she had the opportunity to go back in time and rig it so that the experiments were actually time travel of the first form all along. So she kidnapped me and took me back through the failsafe chamber. When I woke up, she kicked me out of the chamber but stayed inside of it herself. Once she ended up at the start of this mess, she destroyed test chamber two, then cast magic into the chambers to make it appear like symmetry had been broken when it actually hadn't."
"You are correct. In doing so, Twilight saved countless otherwise-identical Equestrias by preventing their existence in the first place, which is a probabilistically preferable outcome. So all of the events took place here, in this Equestria," says Celestia.
"Yeah, that was the payoff. Then after several days of shenanigans, she met me when I came out of the chamber and tried to kill me. Then, thinking she'd succeeded, she dropped the emotion spell, felt guilty, and tried two or three times to undo her own plan by changing events—namely, my actions—without directly confronting herself. It makes perfect sense, in retrospect. Obviously, her attempts were in vain. I rebuffed her each time, because I didn't understand who she really was or what she was trying to do," I say. "But I'm surprised that when she still had that cursed spell up she didn't plan more effectively to keep me dead."
"She tried to. In order to ensure her success, Twilight also destroyed 'chamber zero' before she traveled with you through the failsafe chamber, which I believe Twilight mentioned was chamber three," adds Celestia. "Since she had already destroyed chamber two, and your body traveled through chamber one after she attacked you, there would be no way to return to the past again to save your life."
"But then... how in Equestria am I still alive?" I ask, dumbfounded. For a brief moment, the mystery is almost enough to numb the emotional pain.
Celestia smiles, but the smile quickly fades. "You know, I've known Twilight Sparkle for almost all of her life," she says, staring momentarily out the side window. "And I've personally lived through centuries, as you certainly know. In all that time, I don't believe I've ever seen a pony more distraught than Twilight was when she came to me yesterday, begging for her punishment. She needed to be restrained and sedated. Twice, actually. It was most fortunate I recognized the stripe was on the wrong side of her mane, although I did have another clue. If Twilight is feeling up to it, she can tell you about that one herself."
I sigh. "Well, I guess at least she feels bad about what needed to be done. But I don't know if she should. She made the logical decision," I say. I try to make it sound sarcastic, but it really isn't. I mean it, and it hurts.
"That's exactly what I told her," says Celestia, and I feel a sudden knot in my stomach.
"Wow. You really are kind of a bitch," I say, my already-sparse filter damaged by the emotional pain as much as the drugs. I immediately regret it, but then almost as immediately, I take back the regret.
Momentarily, Celestia looks shocked, and maybe even angry. But then that soft smile returns to her mouth, and she lets out a short laugh. "Yes, I... I suppose I've earned that one," she admits.
I don't really know what to say, so I just look away from the princess as tears begin to stream down my cheeks.
"However," she continues, "the logical choice is not always the same thing as the correct choice."
I wipe my eyes with a hoof and turn back to face her. "What? No, that's false. Killing me was the right choice. I'm worthless compared to an innumerable amount of Equestrias! Tartarus, I'm even worthless just compared to Twilight," I say, my voice catching in my throat.
"I most emphatically disagree, Moondancer," says Celestia, suddenly wearing a stern frown. "In Twilight's partitioned emotional state, she forgot the true lesson she learned from her second encounter with Starlight Glimmer. Yes, it may be true that she and her five friends were destined to save our world, and certain critical points in history are more important than others. But everything we do matters, my little pony. Every friendship is essential to the future of our world, and that is not an exaggeration, as I hope you will someday learn. In particular, your friendship with Twilight may—and very likely will—be equally important to the fate of Equestria. At least, it will, should you one day choose to continue it, after what she has done to you."
Celestia telekinetically hoofs me a box of tissues, and I start to dry my eyes. "No... I won't believe it. There's no way that I'm as important as Twilight is."
"But you are," says Celestia in contradiction, smiling gently down at me. "Just look at the mess a single avenue of your research made in the space of a week, and tell me that your actions don't have an impact on the future of Equestria."
I smile, despite myself. "Okay," is all I can say for the moment, and she patiently waits for me to dry my eyes again. My glasses keep getting in the way because I can't hold them up with magic—it hurts my forehead too much to try. "So, how am I alive, again? The suspense is murder. Um, pun not intentional."
"Ah, yes. Well, after I managed to get all of the information out of Twilight, I asked her to stop and think very carefully if there were any remaining options that could possibly save you," she says. "As it turns out, after taking your failsafe chamber back to the beginning, she ended up correcting for every detail except one."
"Which one was that?" I ask, still very curious even as I lie here drying my eyes with tissues.
"She neglected to dispose of your body after you sent it back in time. It was the one loose end she forgot to tie, probably because even in her broken emotional state she wouldn't allow the thought to cross her mind," says Celestia. "Once we realized a piece was missing, she unraveled the rest in short order, then set upon a second quest in the hope it could save your life. That hope was far from certain, but she clung heavily to it."
The gears in my head were turning more slowly than usual, but they still turned. "Twilight must have gone back in time again to cast something that would make it seem like I was dead... I guess somewhere between the time she knocked me on the head, and the time we discovered me. But in order to rescue my body, she would have needed to go back even further," I say. "And that's the problem: she had already used the failsafe, and destroyed the only chambers that could have taken her back that far. The Twilight with the emotion spell was inside chamber three the whole time all of this was going on, chamber one had my 'dead' body in it, and chambers zero and two were destroyed. There shouldn't have been any way for her to travel back a second time."
"Are you certain?" says Celestia, raising a brow inquisitively. Then she sits quietly as I try to decrypt the final piece of the mystery.
It finally hits me. "Oh my Stars. After Twilight inserted the IV bag into chamber zero, we never performed experiments in chambers zero and one at the same time, so... she could have alternated chambers and used them both as a combined failsafe—that's it!" I say, with a genuine laugh. "She took chamber one back to a time before chamber zero was destroyed, then waited ninety minutes and took chamber zero back the rest of the way! Twilight, you clever bucking mare," I say. "So she was in chamber zero when chamber one was being used, and chamber one when chamber zero was unavailable. As well as being Robo-Twi in chamber three the entire time, of course. That's awesome."
"I thought you'd appreciate that," says Celestia. "She went through an incredible amount of trouble to save you, Moondancer, and it has taken a substantial toll on her emotions. For lack of a better way to say it, Twilight Sparkle is a wreck right now. However, none of this excuses her trying to take your life."
I pause a moment. "Wait, she's not in trouble, is she?" I ask. "I used a forbidden spell on her! I'm at least as guilty—"
"Shh," soothes Celestia, gently tapping my muzzle with a shining golden shoe. "It's all right. While Twilight is not absolved from the responsibility of her actions, she has definitely suffered enough, and in the end, you did survive. Luna and I shall not attempt to punish her further. Besides, I also share some of the responsibility for Twilight's actions. I've been pushing her very hard lately out of concern for whether or not she is ready for these exact sorts of difficult situations. Instead, I should have been providing her the emotional support she needed to gain confidence in her own abilities."
I let out a deep sigh. "I'm really glad to hear you say that. Twi's been meaning to talk to you about the pressure, and I was ready to chew your ear off about it if she didn't," I say. "But, um... what would have happened to Twilight if I hadn't survived?"
Celestia takes in a deep breath. "I don't really know, and I'm glad I don't have to consider that case. Powerful mages like you and I, as well as our friends, tend to get into situations where standard moral imperatives don't always apply in a clean-cut manner. And there's certainly no legal precedent by which one could evaluate the relative importance of saving alternate universes. But the rule of law still applies, as much as it can," she says.
I just nod and listen to her as I blow my nose.
"Last year, Twilight annihilated several dozen semi-sapient clones of Pinkie Pie without even batting an eye," she adds, with a small sigh. "I agree it was the best solution from a utilitarian perspective, but morally speaking, where can one even begin to weigh these sorts of choices? I don't know the answer, but I never did have the heart to tell her one of them escaped her notice."
"Being a mage and having friends at the same time is more complicated than I'd originally hypothesized," I say.
Celestia gently nods in agreement. "All that aside, I want you to understand that you aren't obligated to forgive her, Moondancer, even though you are in truth the only pony who can. Not today, certainly, and not ever, should you choose."
"Well, my schedule's free at the moment, so... I guess today works best for me," I say with a sheepish smile. I barely notice a tension leaving Princess Celestia's muzzle, a subtlety I wouldn't have been able to pick up on before spending so much time with Twi. I can tell she's relieved, and I can understand why. I've already forgiven Twilight, but I'm sure she's hurting much more than I am.
Celestia stands and walks to the door, opening it a crack, and whispers something as she exits. I can hear somepony sniffling, and then, very slowly, Twilight Sparkle creeps into the room. Her head is bowed, her ears droop back, and she's crying drops onto the hospital floor.
As Twilight tilts her head up and looks at me, I'm actually frightened by the responsibility. In her eyes, I can see her waiting for a death blow, as though I have the power to kill her where she stands with a single word. And the scary thing? I probably do. But I also know I wouldn't let that happen in a trillion iterations.
"Muh-muh, M-moon, I, I..." she stutters and chokes.
I sigh. "Get over here you big dork," I say, with enough of a smile that she knows, and she runs to me.
I can't reach out to her because the forehoof on her side is in traction, but after she's close enough to bury her face in my lap and sob maniacally, I can at least pet her mane with the good one.
"I'M S-SO SORRY," she moans, though it's hard to hear with her face buried in the blanket on my belly.
"It's okay," I say, because it is. "I forgive you."
"I d-don't d-deserve it," she says. My horn isn't helping at the moment, so I share the tissue box with her by hoof.
"No, I think you do," I say. "You can't get rid of me that easy. I'm in this for the long haul."
"Why?" she asks, trying to mop the tears from her cheeks.
I fear saying the wrong thing, but I decide to follow Applejack's wisdom. "Because I love you," I tell her. "I can't stand to see you suffer like this. Also, it helps that that teacher of yours always knows just the right thing to say. Um, I definitely don't have that talent, so I really hope I'm not screwing this up right now."
She hugs me awkwardly. "You're not," she says. "And I was so wrong, I just—you're not less important to Equestria than I am, Moonie. You're just as important as I am, and to me, you're more important."
I wipe away a tear or two of my own. "Oddly enough, I think I'm starting to gravitate toward that theory myself," I admit.
"I, um, I might need to clean myself up for a while, and m-maybe cry some more. Then I can come back and we can talk," she says. "Oh Stars, I'm so happy you're okay."
I shrug a little, or at least do the best approximation I can with one foreleg unavailable. "I am too. To be honest, I'm still pretty shaken up, though. I might need some therapy," I say, in all seriousness.
"I'm sure I will," gasps Twilight between sobs.
"Well, maybe we can go together?" I offer, gently stroking her forelock. "I don't quite understand about the 'love' thing yet, but I think we can figure that out together too."
Twilight just smiles up at me and wipes her eyes. Celestia was right, she looks absolutely terrible. Yet somehow, that smile on her face is easily the most beautiful sight I've ever witnessed.
"This is off-topic, but did you find out who backed me?" I ask.
"Oh! Princess Celestia did," she says. "She funneled the bits through Manehattan to hide her tracks. We needed an accomplice in Manehattan we could trust, so I connected her with Rarity's close friend and associate Coco Pommel."
"But that was long before I first turned on the machine," I say. "How did you go back even further?"
"I didn't have to. I had Rarity use a modified version of Star Swirl's spell which allowed her go back in time a few weeks and deliver a note to Princess Celestia where I told her I needed her to loan Coco Pommel an extravagant amount of Equestrian bonds for research purposes, which I promised to pay back," says Twilight. "Granted, that last part was a lie, but Celestia has the bits to spare, and it also gave her a clue that I was involved in time-based shenanigans."
"Hmm, creative. Wait—isn't Celestia sore about wasting millions of bits on my doomed project?" I ask.
"Not at all. She doesn't care about money. She cares about ponies," says Twilight, in a simple, matter-of-fact voice. Then she nods and hands me back the tissue box. "I'll be back in a little while, but in the meantime there's somepony else who needs to talk to you. Thank you so much, Moonie."
"No problem, Twi. And hay, if our friendship can survive attempted murder, I think we're pretty much doomed to be friends for life," I say. By some miracle, we both manage to giggle through the tears. Twilight walks out of the room, and I breathe a huge sigh of relief as my guard drops. Social interaction can burn through a lot of calories, especially when you really care about the outcome.
I assume my sister is next, or maybe Lemon Hearts or one of my other friends, even though I'm not really in the mood for more company. I'm taken entirely by surprise when Princess Luna enters the room.
"Three princesses in a row?" I ask. "That's got to be a record."
"You would seem to be a very important mare," says Princess Luna, with a wry smirk. "And to think, I was interested in befriending you prior to all of this recent madness. I must be an excellent judge of character; it would no doubt behoove me to become well-acquainted with a mare of your stature, Moondancer. Perhaps you are even a pony upon whose withers the fate of Equestria may someday burden."
"I don't know about that," I say. "I don't want to be a hero, especially not after all this."
"Alas. I regret to inform you that your response is precisely what a hero would say," she replies. "We rarely have much freedom in that, I fear."
I roll my eyes. "Gee, what chance does that give me?"
Luna smiles. Ironically enough, I find her personality much warmer than her sister, but I can finally sense the sisterhood between them. "And now I have you present as a captive audience, so you can no longer escape my introductions."
I chuckle. "Heh, thanks."
"Allow me to 'cut to the chase scene', as they say. You are a remarkably powerful mage, Moondancer, despite your young age," she says. "In our brief meeting from before, I believe you had informed me that you are new to the magic of friendship?"
I sniff dismissively at that. "Yes on being clueless with friendship, but I don't know about the 'powerful mage' bit. I enjoy magic, but I'm no Princess Twilight Sparkle."
Luna huffs. "Twilight Sparkle is still learning, just as all ponies do. You know, she has yet to fully understand that she has grown beyond the framework that my sister has laid for her," says Luna. "She continues to compare herself to Princess Celestia in an unrealistic fashion, as though her constant approval is still necessary. After all her lessons in friendship, Twilight still lacks confidence in who she is. Her mentorship of Starlight Glimmer will be a worthy challenge for her."
"She'll get there," I say. I don't really know, though. "She's going to mentor Starlight? Yeah, I guess that makes sense."
"Moondancer. My point is that Twilight cares for you because you are your own pony. Your self-worth should not be yoked to her shadow, as hers remains tied to that of my sister."
"I know," I say. "This... thing we just went through finally opened my eyes to that. But like you said, I'm pretty new to friendship."
"Ah, yes! On that remark, I am reminded of the primary purpose of my visit. I shall put it in a straightforward manner. My sister gets to have a personal protege. Now, even Twilight Sparkle has a protege in Starlight Glimmer," she says. "I am, quite frankly, gripped by the bonds of avarice, and I intend to remedy this injustice forthwith."
"You mean..." I say, afraid to draw the conclusion prematurely.
"Moondancer, I would have you as my personal student," says Luna.
"I... I don't know what to say."
"Oh. You should say 'yes'," Luna informs me.
"Um, then, yes!" I say. "And you know, I could probably use this as an opportunity teach you a thing or two about quantum mechanics, if you like."
Luna grins. "Excellent! You know, every good mentoring relationship requires learning on both sides. This is something my sister is presently rediscovering," says Luna. "I believe that she and Twilight Sparkle will both grow a great deal from what has happened this day."
"I certainly hope so," I say, sniffling as I try not to cry happy tears. Today's been maudlin enough already.
"Now for the time being, I think it would be best for you to remain in Canterlot, but your friendship assignments will frequently require travel to Ponyville," she says. "The friendship that you share with Twilight Sparkle is of particular academic interest, and shall require further study, in depth."
Then Luna winks at me, and I blush like a firestorm.
"I think I can manage that," I say, and I dab my eyes again.
With that, Luna bids me goodbye and leaves me to my thoughts.
I won't allow myself to be unrealistic about my future. I know the path will be hard at times. Hopefully it'll never, ever be this hard again, but on occasion there will be fights, and misunderstandings, and mending of fences anew. Wherever my friendship with Twilight ends up taking me, I'll embrace it: the good and the bad together. I think she's—no; I think we are worth it.
After all, friendship is about sacrifice—on both sides of the equation.
I think I can live with that.
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Well. This was an interesting, well-written, and thoroughly confusing story. I could use a sort of timeline map thing to keep track of all the time travel. Still, I enjoyed the ride.
And MD as Luna's student seems like a neat story in itself. Much more straightforward, at least.
Yay!!!!
I am very, very happy that you chose to include this chapter. A wonderful and brilliantly clever capstone to a wonderful and brilliantly clever story. Thank you very much for it.
I absolutely loved this story. Its been wonderful treat that I have gotten to look forward to for the last six months. Thank you for that. Thank you for writing Moondancer so well right along with the bit of romance between her and Twilight. Given your talent for writing her I do hope Moondancer might show up in more of your stories in the future. There really isn't enough of her out there let alone of this quality.
The story was unique and a treasure in its own right. Not many would attempt such a complex set of events with the same thoroughness you did. I'm sure it took a lot of work and the fact you did that to give us a story is yet another thing I feel I owe you a thank you for. That and the addition of the last chapter turn this story into one of the best out there in my opinion. Please write more Moondancer. :)
I'm grateful you gave Silver-Linings a story that made him so happy. He's more than just my best friend he's my spirit brother and anything that brings him a ton of happiness brings me a lot of happiness, too. Thank you for this story. I look forward to reading more from you especially Moonlight because you write Moondancer and Twilight so well.
This was a gigantic clusterfuck of confusing, but i really enjoyed it. Like, far beyond confusing.
Only Twilight Sparkle could have a math formula as a murder motif.
Have fun explaining that, no, the fact you're talking about time travel and alternate universes isn't why you're here to see them.
Thanks for a thoroughly interesting read.
And thank you for this happy ending. I'm not particularly a fan of tragedy, and was rather concerned the story was building up to exactly that. Nice save there. Whoever said you can't have high stakes drama, a dark twist, and (apparent) murder, AND eat your "happily ever after"-cake too?
...and yes! DI-A-GRAM! DI-A-GRAM!
orig11.deviantart.net/01ed/f/2012/085/a/3/rainbow_dash_is_excited____by_filiecs-d4qr8me.gif
So in the end, it was a closed loop, with extreme-rationalist Twilight deciding to turn an open-ended situation into a predetermination scenario.
I wonder if Princess Celestia recognised that Twilight had somehow travelled back in time with her reversed-body, or just picked up on that she looked odd and asked her about it.
Technically, since Twilight took steps to make certain it was a closed loop, that also means she framed Starlight Glimmer for the majority of the story. Hopefully Starlight doesn't hear about that, because that's not a way to start a teacher-student relationship
I see you included the bit about Pinkie from last week's episode.
Im a sucker for a good time travel story and this is a good time travel story.
On the one hand, you really did a great job having it all make sense when explained. On the other hand, it was so convoluted that I don't feel it was reasonably possible to guess at before the reveal, and things got so out of hand that you couldn't get a grip on even a part of what was happening; all kind of dings against a nice mystery, because you want to feel the answer could be grasped at before being told.
I think the stakes were also a bit too low, strangely enough. The ethics of alternate realities are a bit abstract, and it honestly never felt like anyone other than Twilight and Moondancer were at risk or involved; the "Starlight" theory never felt believable and it seemed all the problems were both self inflicted and strictly personal.
I had trouble seeing some of the "graphs" described, which made it difficult to keep up in the midgame with how the time travel theories went; I think a picture of the graphs might improve comprehension, and it would be neat to include anyway.
Luna at the end seemed tacked on needlessly; Moondancer's job prospects afterwards aren't something we worried about when it came to the details of her "happily ever after".
All that said, I enjoyed reading this. I hope TSJ's mysteries will make more sense earlier in the plot than this, but time travel is confusing at best and you wrote a good time travel plot. I'm glad I finally read it.
Have you ever seen the movie Predestination? If you like Time Travel plots that all come together at the end it's pretty good.
This story broke my brain.
Good, but it broke my brain...
Um, not to be that guy, but I HAD kinda guessed some of it.
Specifically, I'd guessed that the pony who had originally sabotaged the project was either Moondancer or Twilight, and that the reason would be love. I was leaning more towards Moony that Twi, and more because I thought she would need to do it to make the whole thing take place (which I guess kinda is the reason in a way) so that their love could develop, because without the project there was no reason for them to do so.
So I dunno, maybe a quarter of the way there, if you're feeling generous? The whole pay off though with emotion unzombie Twi being a chamber ninja to pull a switcheroo with the bodies though, that was inspired.
Good story. Would eat here again.
Not bad, but it's like 50% technobabble and, outside of the romance, Moondancer barely DOES anything outside of getting the IV to Appleloosa.
You know the science aspect of the story is well executed when it has helped me better understand Primer.
Hats off to you for satisfying a hunger I didn't know I had.
7412820
Disagreeing with a timeline somepony posted for Primer was the inspiration for the science aspects of the story, actually. There needed to be a deterministic way to predict what would come out of the box, even if it was highly chaotic and incorporated quantum noise.
It took me longer than I expected to finish this story. And in the end...
The plot is somewhat confusing and the twists are all over the place but it's satisfying seeing interactions between Twilight and Moondancer. Also it's good to be caring of others.
Plus for the ending. I should probably give it a second chance, so I can process the entire information about, but overall it was worth it.
I won't deny that a lot of the science flew over my head (though I grasped the general points), but this was still a gripping story. The first... uh... Moonsparkle that I've read, too, and a sweet one it was (unfortunate guilt and delusions of inadequacy aside).
7850326
The plot twists will be understandable to the reader, even if they become lost in the technobabble "flavor" moments.
So having finished this, I think your comment above (7414588) about Primer being a core inspiration explains a lot. I didn't actually like Primer. :( I have to admit there were stretches of this story where I basically gave up and waited for an explanation; as Moondancer notes, a lot of times there just isn't enough information to go on, and that's not even getting into how much the details of the particle physics were beyond me.
That said, the last chapter was a very welcome one. Celestia's hint of a nonexistent forbidden third magic to distract ponies from the second was satisfying, and the double-failsafe (3 and 0-1) was definitely clever. Abusing time loops to add hidden context to the past and produce a good outcome consistent with a previously observed bad situation is pretty much the best possible use of time travel. I can't really say that I consistently enjoyed this, but I'm glad I read it.
I binged through this entire story at 3 AM, and I feel like I've been beaned over the head with an unabridged theoretical physics textbook. I love it.
(Is there a temporal flow-chart graphic to go with this story I can look at? I got the chain of events but it would be interesting to see)
7850447
This is WAY after the fact, and you probably don't care, but here's an explanation.
There are four fundamental forces in the Universe: gravity, electromagnetism, strong (the force that binds nuclei so protons don't scatter apart), and weak (the force that causes radioactive atoms to decay). The weak force is the only one which doesn't preserve CP symmetry. Not preserving CP symmetry means the weak force acts differently on two particles of opposite spin that are otherwise identical. On one of those particles, it does the opposite thing as time evolves (it takes A to B instead of B to A), because everything preserves combined CPT symmetry. This is why "CP symmetry breaking" is synonymous with "T symmetry breaking": you can alternatively think of it like time is not going in the right direction when both charge (matter vs. antimatter) and parity (clockwise vs. counterclockwise) are reversed together.
What does this mean in laypony's terms? Nature has a hoofedness!
(As in right hoof versus left hoof.) Put another way, even though there's no fundamental difference between "left" and "right", there IS a fundamental difference between "clockwise" and "counterclockwise"! One is not simply the reflection of the other. But you can only see this effect way down at the quantum level. Initially, nopony imagined that this could be true, and the scientists who proved that it was true won the Nobel Prize.
In a rough way, this is part of the reason why particles and their corresponding antiparticles aren't perfectly symmetrical. If forces did treat them in a perfectly symmetrical way, there wouldn't be hardly any matter in the Universe: almost all of it would annihilate (cancel out) and become energy instead. (This isn't perfectly accurate—weak CP violations don't fully explain the problem of matter-antimatter asymmetry in our Universe. But the general gist is correct.)
I'm still confused by quite a bit. Why did Celestia fund the project in the first place? What was the relevance of Twilight's spell to see the memories of corpses?
And this ending with Luna taking Moondancer on as her student comes off as quite rushed to me.
8485038
Princess Celestia funded the project to complete the loop, based on information about what would happen that Rarity sent her. Otherwise it wouldn't be time travel of the first form, which is the least dangerous approach to the situation.
The spell had two roles. The primary role was to illustrate that Celestia had been pushing Twilight too hard. The ancillary role was to make the reader think Moondancer could have been killed in the penultimate chapter, but that isn't a critical element.
I agree the part at the end could have used some lead-up elsewhere in the story. Do you think these need clarification?
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The thing with Celestia I'm just gonna chalk up to me not understanding the time travel logic.
The spell just seemed like a red herring to me. It got mentioned so many times that I expected it to play a bigger role in the story.
I think this was accomplished with just its first mention.
I didn't get this at all. The spell didn't even come to my mind when the penultimate chapter ended.
As for Luna, I think it does deserve some sort of lead-up. Even MD being jealous of how much private tutoring Twilight got from Celestia would help to build up MD's ending with Luna.
I don't think I'm smart enough to fully comprehend this story, but I love it all the same.
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I'm in the middle of revising it actually, but you've seen most of the changes if you've read it today. I'm adding another two diagrams to it (added one a day or two ago).
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I started reading it yesterday, and finished it tonight. I did see the first diagram, and because of that, I though it was odd that a later similar scene didn't have one. I guess this explains why, though.
8544421
Actually that was a little jab at the unnecessary detail lol. Glad it helped at least.
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The detail was relevant because if it had been the right-hoof page, there would remain information on the back of that page about what was apparently 'censored'... which would not make logical sense. And Moondancer has attention to unnecessary details.
Missing a 'the'
Hah.
8566224
Most of the heat bleed comes from the air conditioning system.
Hence the fins on the top of the structure.
8566521
You've picked up on a very subtle clue that a certain theory proposed later in the story is false. I wasn't certain if anypony would get that or not, but check back again after you finish the story.
8566521
Its past; Moondancer's future. Future might make more sense there, though. I'll mull it over.
That troll things with time travel of the third form and Twilight's death spell are surely a touch of genius!
And new diagrams are really nice and useful.
Best story ever!
Well, this has to be the most complicated closed-loop time travel story I've ever read.
Great decision on adding the flowchart, as I probably would've given up trying to parse the text to get a grip on what really happened. Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.
On the whole, I enjoyed the mystery aspect of the story, though I have to echo the sentiment of some here that it looks way too convoluted to give the reader a fair chance at guessing what's happening. Most of the quantum stuff flew over my head, too. Still, their friendship was nice to see, and it combined with the Starlight misdirection and danger provided enough tension to keep me interested all the way through.
Nice one.
that was one HELL of a read lol
Even with a diagram, my head is still spinning, trying to comprehend everything. Maybe if I had another diagram of the whole set of timelines and universes.
8604808
The big reveal was that there are no alternate universes at play; the events happened all in one universe.
8606329
One universe after all was said and done, but during the story, I think there were multiple alternate universes that - at the end - were nullified.
Follow up to 8568890: it's
The Goddess of Books and Friendship heard my prayer!
thumbs.gfycat.com/ShoddyMilkyCrownofthornsstarfish-small.gif
I think reading this story broke my brain. It may not be a bad thing, though.
My theory going through this was that CPT symmetry was being preserved because C was preserved but P and T were not.
Because I, like everyone else on Earth, don't really understand quantum mechanics, I'm still not sure if that is even theoretically possible.
"Depths" that can't be elaborated on in a story with a Teen rating.
Wow! I haven't added a story to my Top Favorites list in a long while, but this one certainly deserves it, and not just because I'm a particle physics fan-boy!
I really fell in love with your version of Moondancer and thoroughly enjoyed her first-person narrative, even when you pulled that dirty trick and made me think the story was the product of Twilight's Reading the Dead spell!
It worked even better/worse on the kindle, because I had no idea there was another chapter to come.
Also because I read this on my kindle, the diagrams didn't survive the translation to MOBI format... but your text descriptions were clear enough that I could follow what was going on, even though I had to scribble down diagrams in a notebook to get the whole thing.
I usually dislike time travel stories (in any media) because it is so easy to cheat or hand-wave away problems... but (as far as I can tell) you were meticulous about your logic, and that made me very happy!
TL:DR Wonderful story: Thank you so much for taking so much effort in writing it!
I started reading this years ago and only just now came back to reread and finish it, and, holy shit, this was so much more than I thought it was (it also wasn't nearly as dark as what I feared the first time around, lol).
Just, everything here is so engaging, inspired, and dramatic that I read it all in one sitting!
I've actually fucked myself over staying up so late, but it was worth it.
Also, their couples' therapist is going to lose their mind.
10177460
Here it refers to the ability of ponies to use hooves as though they were hands. In my headcanon earth ponies have superior hoof dexterity but it isn't restricted to them.
I knew it, the whole Starlight really was a red herring from the start.
I was completely wrong about who Moondancer's sponsor was, though. Her donor's alias of "CP" seemed too clever to not have it be a reference to CP symmetry. It even ended far more happily than I would have thought. Twilight's spell, and the scene where she drunkenly kissed Moondancer made me think this would not end well for them at all. I'm still thinking that that particular Twilight was a future Twilight.
All in all, I have mixed feelings. On one hand, Moondancer and Twilight's evolving friendship and relationship is consistently compelling. Moondancer's internal monologuing is wonderful as well; I love the way she's characterized, even if she's just a little dense. Twilight using a double failsafe to save Moondancer was ingenious, as was Celestia's making up a third form of time travel as a red herring. But the big issue is, it's just so confusing for most of the the way through. I have a rudimentary idea of the physics (and chemistry) in this story, but it was still too much. I don't mind a bunch of technobabble if I can make some sense of it, but the way it's presented doesn't lend itself to that. At times, it felt a little like a physics textbook took the place of some of the dialogue. I still don't fully understand why Robo-Twilight thought that killing Moondancer was absolutely necessary to create a closed loop in a single universe. Because of that, and how confused I was until I got to the diagram, the final chapter didn't really hit as hard as it could have. I was glad they were all okay and progressing their relationship, but I was a little more disinterested than I expected. My mind was tying itself in knots figuring out the exact sequence of events of Twilight "killing" and then saving Moondancer. I liked that the time travel runs on its own consistent logic as far as I can tell (far too many time travel stories don't!), but it's difficult to discern what is going on. In the end I still enjoyed the story, but the convoluted physics and time travel bring it down somewhat.
You can has review!
Oh,,,, oh my god- I need a moment. ohmygod
This is easily one of the best time travel stories I've read. The sciency stuff went over my head near the end, and I still don't understand why the dress wasn't flipped at the sub-molecular level, but That Does Not Matter. This story belongs among the best
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The parity switch was done via an enchantment cast on the magic transducer that supplied the rooms with energy, and so had nothing to do with the time reversal effect. I think emotionless Twilight hints at a magical solution to that when she first has the epiphany.
This was one of the best things I've ever read on this site, or at all, to be honest. That's my opinion, in any case.
Colored by my personality and my experiences.
There's really nothing else to reasonably say.