Chapter 42
The Best of All Possible Worlds
Chapter 42
At the end of the sixth day, Voltaire and Celestia lay down on a slope of the Coppenbrügge’s foothills to watch the sunset. Neither of them said a word as it progressed.
“Well!” Celestia finally exclaimed as the twilight began to fade. “That one was pretty good.”
“Hmm,” Voltaire said. “Not as good as yours, though.”
Celestia gave him an accusing look. “You’re just trying to flatter me,” she said with a frown.
In the darkening sky, a distant point of light began to grow.
“I am not!” Voltaire said, sitting up. “That sunset right there was an impersonal activity, the interaction between an immense natural process and the peculiar nature of the atmosphere on the horizon. A good sunset might be caused by a distant forest fire that puts dozens of people out of a home, while a bad one might be caused by weeks of clear skies that help crops to ripen. Your sunsets, on the other hand, are deliberate works of art, and are a direct reflection of your mood. The melancholy you hide from the ponies always shines through in those moments.”
Celestia put a hoof to her cheek in thought. “Well maybe they’ll start getting cheerier in a few years. My sister’s coming back to me, and I think this time it will be handled correctly.”
The light grew into a fireball, which streaked above them to hit the far side of the mountain.
Celestia closed her eyes and swung her head around a few times, before stopping in the direction that the meteorite had landed. “I have its location,” she announced as she opened her eyes.
“Great!” exclaimed Voltaire, jumping to his feet. “Let’s go right to it!”
“Right now?” Celestia asked with a smile as she rose to her hooves. “It will be too dark to navigate. It’s not like anybody’s going to stumble across it in the next few hours. We shall go in the morning.”
“Aw, but I wanted to go now!” the human protested.
“Are you that impatient to hasten the moment when we will permanently part?” Celestia asked sadly.
“No,” Voltaire replied, “but I’m no good at waiting, and there’s no way I’ll get any sleep tonight.”
“Well perhaps in that case we can move on to the next card game you were going to teach me. Cribbage, I believe it was?”
“Ah, cribbage,” Voltaire said with a growing smile. “I’m sure to beat you at this one!”
~ ~ ~
“How do you do it?” Voltaire asked fifteen hours later, as the two set out to find the meteor.
“Oh, I’ve always been fond of games,” Celestia said, taking to the air.
“Now that’s not fair,” Voltaire said, pouting.
Celestia flew low over him in a circle. “I’m staying with you instead of racing ahead, so I don’t see how that’s unfair at all,” she observed.
“Let me get on your back, and we’d get there a lot faster,” Voltaire countered.
“I only had you on my back before because we were in public view,” the alicorn said. “You’re heavy.”
“I am a twig compared to most humans!”
“Then I shall institute a ‘no riding policy’ for humans and my ponies,” said Celestia with a half-smile.
“But this will take forever!” Voltaire whined.
“Patience, dear Voltaire, patience.”
~ ~ ~
Five hours and one lunch break later, the human and the alicorn had finally found the long trench in the earth that terminated in the black rock from space.
“Are you sure that’s it?” Voltaire asked. He looked around to see that Celestia had backed off by six feet.
“I’m sure,” she said.
“What are you doing back there?”
“I don’t want to get any of that stuff on me.”
“It looks pretty harmless to me,” the human observed.
Celestia shook her head violently. “You are looking at the most potent source of magic on this world, in some ways even more powerful than the Elements of Harmony. I think it’s the life essence of a god.”
Voltaire walked around the lumpy black rock, taking it in on all sides. Suddenly he froze. “I think you may be right,” he told the alicorn, “because this sky stone has a face.”
Celestia carefully walked around to Voltaire’s side of the meteorite to study the mostly buried visage. “It’s another Discord!” she exclaimed. “Or a creature with at least a family resemblance to Him. But this one seems almost calm. Like He knew the fate that was coming for Him, and accepted it.”
Voltaire crouched down and remained in that position for several seconds, noting that the face looked rather horse-like, but the carbonized skin resembled that of a dragon. “Perhaps this, err...draconequus was Discord’s mirror opposite,” he speculated, “giving His life to prevent Earth from becoming like Equestria did under the Lord of Chaos’ reign. Or else He got so bored of torturing mortals in this dimension that He willed himself out of existence, and yet even a piece of His body is fated to make humans and ponies miserable. I just wish I knew for sure,” he added with a sigh. “I much prefer to know if the gods I meet are benevolent or malevolent.”
“Well, that’s the whole thing about being a mortal,” said Celestia with a shrug. “No omniscience means we will never know if this object landing here was part of a bigger plan, or a complete accident.”
“So now what?” Voltaire asked uncertainly. “Will you be able to destroy it?”
“It won’t be easy,” the alicorn replied. “No force on Earth or Equestria will be enough to do the job. But I know what to do, when the time is right. Until then...” and she stepped even further away from it.
“What about me?” the human protested. “I’ve got to make a pencil out of it!”
“Voltaire, the worst that will happen to you is that your hand will fall into Equestria.”
“Coward,” Voltaire muttered jokingly to himself. He kneeled down next to the large rock and opened the knapsack he had carried out here with him. Removing the garden trowel, he set to work digging into the head of a god. For an all-powerful creator and/or destroyer of worlds, He sure had a spongy cranium.
~ ~ ~
After a couple of crumbling failures, Voltaire succeeded in creating a pencil from what was once a lock of hair of the fallen god. “You know, this looks exactly like the magic pencil Genevieve and I handled,” he said, holding it up.
Celestia carefully trotted forward to examine it. “No it doesn’t. It looks completely different!”
The human and the alicorn spent a moment looking at each other in confusion before reaching the same non-conclusion: “That’s just creepy.”
~ ~ ~
Voltaire looked up at the sky. “Okay, Genevieve, we’re ready!” he announced in a loud voice.
With a sudden whooshing sound, a flat vertical circle of blinding light appeared floating in the air before them. From out of it stepped the goddess Genevieve, and then it snapped shut into nothingness behind Her. Voltaire noticed that there was a fuzzy ball of golden light floating beside Her, about the size of Her head.
Without saying a word, She stared at the space between them and blinked. This caused another glowing portal to appear at the level of the human’s waist; this one was oriented horizontally instead of vertically, and was much smaller in size. While the glow of the ring itself remained, the light from within the circle faded, providing a view to the space on the other side.
Peering down into the ring, Voltaire saw himself sleeping in the cell of the insane asylum—it was the night before he would have drawn his way into Equestria with the magic pencil, only in this reality he didn’t have that pencil.
With the room’s door closed and no windows anywhere on the floor, it was impossible to tell what time it was. In fact, the light streaming in from outside the portal was the main source of illumination for the indoor scene.
The juxtaposition of dark cell with late afternoon mountainside was enough to start Voltaire tipping forward, losing his balance.
He was suddenly righted by a tug of magic.
“Oh, no,” Celestia said, “we’re not starting that again!”
With a shake of his head, Voltaire recovered himself. He picked up his homemade magic pencil, and dangled it over the hole in space and time. “Death from above!” he said playfully, as he released the pencil point downwards towards the sleeping Voltaire’s chest.
The portal winked shut just as the Voltaire from 1751 was about to look through it at his counterpart.
~ ~ ~
“Kneel, Voltaire.”
The human looked over at Celestia, to see that she was presenting her bowed head to Genevieve.
Voltaire shrugged. “Alright, I’ll trust you,” he said, doing as she did. “This time.”
Genevieve gently raised a hoof, and somehow drew a ball of light out of each of their heads, yellow for Celestia’s and a dull green for Voltaire’s. “I will give these to your alternate selves,” She told them, “and then My duty to you will be at an end.”
“So those are our memories of the reality with You as a goddess?” Voltaire asked, rising back to his feet.
“They are,” the donkey replied.
“And whose memories are those?” he asked, pointing at the ball of light She had brought with Her.
“Those are Blue Belle’s,” said the goddess.
“We won’t be needing those,” said Celestia staring down Genevieve. “I never want her remembering those things.”
“She won’t give you a choice,” Genevieve told her sadly.
“Let me be the judge of that,” the alicorn replied. “Give her memories to me, and I’ll be the one to decide whether to break her or not.”
“Very well.”
Celestia used her magic to pull the ball of light into herself.
With a nod of Her head, Genevieve opened another glowing portal. “I’ll open the second portal after the consequences of delivering these have settled out.” She gestured at the balls of memories remaining beside Her.
Two seconds later, the human and alicorn were once again alone on the slopes of the Coppenbrügge.
~ ~ ~
The winter sun swiftly set. It began to get bitterly cold, so Voltaire volunteered to make a fire. This task was completed far too quickly, leaving still more time to wait.
During this time, Celestia sat quietly, while Voltaire paced incessantly.
Finally another portal appeared, a small one, floating right above Voltaire’s head. From it dropped the magic pencil.
“Death from above!” cried out the voice of the Voltaire from 1751, just as the portal winked out of existence.
“Hey, no fair copying me!” the 1740 Voltaire countered. “Well, that was anticlimactic,” he commented as he picked up the pencil. “What happens now?”
“What happens is that this timeline ends,” said Celestia with a sigh. “I just need to destroy this enchanted graphite, and our purpose would have reached its conclusion.”
“So we’re going to die?” Voltaire asked nervously.
“We have become superfluous,” Celestia explained in a serene tone as she closed her eyes. “Our new selves have our memories, and the consequences of allowing two of any individual to exist at the same time are quite dire. If it were not for Geneveive’s protection, one of us would have probably blown up by now.”
“And are you sure you’ve thought this all through?” Voltaire asked carefully, holding up the magic pencil he had just retrieved from himself, from the version of himself that would survive while he would die.
“What do you mean?” Celestia asked.
“Well, forgive me for playing Devil’s Advocate, but what would happen if you used this pencil to fix up a few of your mistakes before letting Celestia #2 take over? Maybe there’s a way for the griffons to figure out who they really are without slaughtering themselves. And maybe there is a way to save your sister.”
Celestia shook her head firmly. “No,” she said, “no second chances for me. I am blessed to have seen and done as well as I have, and I simply have to accept that I cannot do better. If I take that pencil to correct one thing, what justification is there to prevent me from using it again, and again, and again? And after that, what’s to prevent me from stopping the new timeline from replacing this one?
“Your condemnation of the Goddess Genevieve was entirely apt, and would with justice apply equally to me if I were to start using that instrument to bend the rules: The ponies would become dependent on me, and would end up as little more than toys for my amusement. I cannot take that pencil, for any reason.”
“But the griffons!” Voltaire pleaded.
“Do you have a better answer?” Celestia asked, honestly hoping that he did. She continued speaking when he failed to say anything. “If I had never helped Duke Thunderwing, then the griffons would have continued under the despotic thumb of the dragons. Who’s to say that would not have ended in a bloody war of revolt, or even annihilation? The revolution that we got appears to be dying down, or so I sincerely hope. One generation of bloodshed, and one generation of atrocities before that. I wish I knew how to eliminate that much, but I think even with the wisdom of a goddess that I would be unable to manage it.”
Celestia caught the way that the human looked covetously at the pencil in his hand. “And what of you? Would you be any better at resisting the lure of having your every wish granted, were I to take that pencil and draw whatever you bid me draw?”
Voltaire sighed. “There is only one thing in my entire life that I have truly regretted, and I have long since realized its uselessness.”
“You would have me bring back your Émilie,” guessed Celestia.
“She was not meant for this time,” the human said with a sad shake of his head. “Her entire life, she was ridiculed for doing things that the world thought belonged solely in the realm of men. And in the end, I failed her like every other man, or woman, she ever met. But I firmly believe that she would not have lived in a later century if she had been given the choice. She told me often how lucky she felt that she might provide an example, no matter how feeble, for the generations of women to follow, that they should know what might be possible because she had tried it first. Even her failures she hoped would become inspirations to future would-be Émilies.” In a lower voice, Voltaire forced himself to continue. “I would, if I could, reverse my own stupidity so that at least when she died, she wasn’t surrounded by her enemies. But if doing so would have prolonged the emotional torment that was her life, then I think in the end it was for the best.”
He tossed his homemade pencil atop the meteorite and turned away. “Let’s get this over with,” he muttered.
He suddenly noticed the air around him getting hotter and hotter, kept from escaping by a crystalline dome that Celestia had summoned into existence around them. The atmosphere shimmered around him as he broke out in a sweat. It was hotter than the hottest summer day he ever remembered, hotter than the ovens at Sanssouci, hotter than the iron-smelting furnaces from his childhood. So hot in fact that he no longer felt anything at all, like his body had been burnt away, leaving only his soul to continue to witness the events around him.
Voltaire tried to look to Celestia, only to be turned away from the gleaming brilliance of her coat. A sort of liquid fire poured out of her eyes as she channeled the power of the Sun through her—Earth’s sun, for her cutie mark gave her control of all stars within a certain range. The light of the Sun was so bright that it merged with Celestia’s white coat, making her invisible.
In the field of pure whiteness, only one object was visible, and that was the alien meteorite. Slowly, it began to glow brighter and brighter, changing color steadily from red through orange, before beginning to fade back to red.
And then Geneveive was suddenly beside her, and added the power of Equestria’s sun to the conflagration.
The meteor’s color began to shift once more, through orange to blue, and from blue to the same brilliant white as everything else.
Suddenly the jagged ball incinerated, accompanied by an unearthly howl of frustration so loud it obliterated Sound itself as the bubble protecting Earth from the alicorn’s spell suddenly blew out like a candle.
The white faded to black, leaving nothing behind of the god’s head, the human, the alicorn and the former god donkey but a scorched hole in the earth.
End Original Timeline
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Woo! So is this the end?
2320823
I said the same thing. I love this story
Dafuq just happened?
Nah, I get it now. Dear god, I would never be able to keep up with that crap...
Well.
... Well.
Well.
2321563
Nope, because Time Travel.
Wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.
2321563
What?
No! This isn't that kind of story. I was just cleaning up some loose ends. (
)
The next chapter is the last one.
So...... Now what? Do we get to see how Voltaire and Celestia act with this new information? Or does it end here?
This is all kinds of timey whimey wobbly complicated stuff
but it's pretty cool! Discord pencil! that's friggin' amazing!
I want to see one of Celestia's sunset...
2321606
Oh cool.
2321603
It's always with the time travel...
2321612
Oh ye of little faith!
Come back tomorrow.
Would have been funny if one of them did explode.
2321327>>2321356
I'm not really sure how a bowl-making spell has anything to do with alicorn ascension, though.
(Because 'amniomorphic' is Greek for 'bowl-shaped', y'see. And yes, this means that Star Swirl the Bearded isn't just Pony Gandalf, he's also a hairy potter.
)
So the originals die. That's really depressing.
2321659
I've never been fond of that particular pun.
You see, I was a pre-med student in college, so "amnio" for me will always refer to the fetus (as in the "amniotic fluid"), which is to say creation. And so "amniomorphic" would mean to change the original shape at creation. Or in other words, a breed-changing spell. That's why when I originally heard Twilight use the term in "Luna Eclipsed", I immediately assumed that it was the spell that turned Celestia and Luna into alicorns.
2321664
I suppose I could have ended the chapter at the moment when the memories were transferred, since there's no subjective way for anybody to know what happened after that.
huh
funny the original 'died' in chapter 42
I'm confused, and sad
I get there's some...sort of time-loop shenanigans going on here, but any chance someone can actually decrypt it all? My head is hurting trying to puzzle it together
I was able to follow the story it was straightforward. THEN GOD shite happened and I have no idea what just happened. Congratulations. I am so confused I feel like I could be Derpy.
2321740
It would have been less confusing if you had ended it there. I'm really not clear what any of this chapter meant.
2322511
These two versions of Voltaire and Celestia made sure that the events of all the previous chapters didn't happen. New Voltaire never lost the pencil, because he had the memories of this Voltaire to let him know what would happen if he did. No Goddess Genevieve, no crapsack Equestria/Donkey-worshipping Europe...
They rectified the mistakes made in their timeline, then destroyed themselves.
I think.
Woah, Group suicide.
I look forward to seeing what events will be allowed to pass, given foreknowledge of what would have been.
Also, Celestia is a pony. Genevieve is a donkey. Different species. Whatever abilities the pencil would grant Celestia, I don't think omnipotence would be one of them.
Well, that conflagrated quickly. . .
Ooo, "howl of frustration"? Sounds like Celestia made the Right Decision(tm).
2321740
I like that idea better, or maybe just having Voltaire and Celestia turn into the orbs to be absorbed/combined with their past selves? Something where they cease to exist through non-violent means.
2321921 I knew I was right about that [As I recall on a test it said tell your opinion on Voltaire, and I asnwered he was a Hypocritcal Weenie!!!]
Oh, no fair! You don't get to introduce something as mysterious and exciting as the meteorite turning out to be a dead draconequus right before the story ends! That's too cool to not be followed up on! You can't do that!
Can he do that?
Please, someone, tell me he can't do that?
Soooo... who exactly was that meteorite? How did they become a meteor in the first place? Will we ever know?
2324701
Well, he uh, did.
2324701 Yeah, that's gonna keep hanging itself up in my mind. Who was this being and why was it on earth? I mean it was apparently more powerful than even the EoH
As for me, this story went from complex to convoluted real fast. Time travel is confusing as hell with just one copy of characters. Not too mention I've always hated that lame ass "Let's undo everything that just happened so noone will remember it." stunt.
2325617 2324701
Well, that's the point, isn't it? This story is about how not being a god is better than the alternative, and one of the drawbacks of not being a god is not always knowing what's going on.
As a matter of fact, not even I really know what happened. That way, I leave myself open in case I think up something really good a year or two from now.
Besides, I like stories where the author doesn't tell me everything. It gives me room to make up my own answers and fan-sequels (hint, hint).
2325686 I also find that gimmick aggravating. Not to mention, given the more plausible versions of fictional temporal mechanics, it's impossible to do anyway. Causality will not allow for such an erasure without leaving changes. Remember "Back to the Future". Time was set back on its original course, but there were significant ripple effects of the tampering. We see that also in many episodes of Doctor Who.
Erasing the 'butterfly effect' is like trying to catch every photon streaming from the sun: there are simply too many variable to intercept.
It's one reason I tend to avoid time travel in any of my ideas, other than comedic ones that play upon the absurdities of time travel. Inevitably, you end up with contradictions when you start playing with it too much. Like the way the Weeping Angels were ruined conceptually in the previous Doctor Who season. "Angels Take Manhatten" was terrible. I don't know what Moffat's been smoking lately, but the story quality has been in steep decline.
(Mr. Tardis Reviews on Youtube agrees with me!) 
2321664 Well, we can just go back in time again and stop them from killing themselves! And then bribe the architect! (Curse of Fatal Death ref!)
2325889 Pfft. I'm a god. I know everything. And it's fan-fuqin'-tastic!
*Super Kami Guru Alondro, the Almighty Deux Ex Insert, trolls the multiverse FOREVERRRRRRR!!!*
(Dr. Strangegod, or How I Learned to Stop Being Emo and Love God-Moding)
2325889 PS, I stole the pencil.
Time travel is depressing. Nothing good comes of it.
2326172 Nail. NAAAIIIIIIIIL.
And that ending!
>And who’s memories are those?
whose, not who's
Isn't the counterpart from a decade earlier In or making his way to Prussia by now?
Again, this is the Voltaire from Equestria and therefore the oldest of the Voltaires in this chapter, right?
Edit: I forgot to mention that I don't find it sad at all (well almost) that they died, cause they're still alive. Also, Voltaire could have just asked Miss Donkey god where the head came from. He may be a mortal without the power to find out, but she isn't.
2656417
I'd advise opening Chapters 42 and 43 in separate tabs and searching for for the phrase "Death from above!" in both.
And the 1740 Voltaire is mentally older than the 1751 Voltaire, but physically younger.
And yes, he could have asked Genevieve and gotten an answer. Too bad he didn't think to do that. Speaking as the author, though, that graphite head is my sequel bait if I ever decide to write a true sequel to this story, and for that reason I deliberately refrained from explaining it, in hope that a truly awesome explanation would eventually occur to me. (See, not even the author is a god in this story!)
Oh. Well, I know this is not really the whole story... But... That's just horrible... What a terrible ending...
2393943 I saw a bird. It was pretty. Kick its ass!
Oh my god, so far so good so sad.
Very humble