A Queen's Perspective - Correspondence

by gerandakis

Of Magic and Alchemy

Dear Queen Twilight,

I really enjoyed what we did tonight. The girls all had fun at the sleepover and Rarity, Fluttershy and Sonata independently asked me to tell you that you make 'an adorable drawing'. Seriously, they all used those exact words.
Anyways, I wanted to ask about that whole 'causal loop' thing you mentioned, what exactly happened there?
Hoping you're alright and there weren't any side effects to your transdimensional bookwalking,

Sunset Shimmer

---

Dear Sunset,

No side effects I could see at least.
But to answering your question:

This happened before I became a changeling. It started about three months before the wedding-incident that kicked off that whole chain of events. Back in those days I was into scheduling. And I mean really into it. I was scheduling everything! I even scheduled my panic attacks.
That night I was panicking because I had made a schedule for the next month but hadn't left any room to make a schedule for the month after. So I was basically up all night trying to reorganize my schedule to fit it in. It was about sunrise when there was suddenly magic happening in the middle of the room, and then suddenly there was a duplicate of me. She said she was from next Tuesday morning. She was a complete mess. Scars, messy hair, an eyepatch, torn black clothing, you get the idea.
She tried to tell me something but I kept interrupting her with questions. Eventually she managed to stop me but before she could tell me what she wanted the spell ran out and she was sucked back into the future.
Basically what happened afterwards was that I freaked out thinking there was some big disaster happening soon. I tried all I could but in the process I started becoming just like her, the scar from a papercut when a scroll hit me in the face. A bandage from when a flowerpot hit me on the head. The eyepatch when I hurt my eye trying to monitor everything and using a telescope during the day.
I took all of those to mean that I had failed to avert the disaster. In the end I thought the only way to save everything was to stop time. So I snuck into the Canterlot Archives in the night before Tuesday with Spike and Pinkie (that's where the black clothing came from) when a guard spotted us in front of the Starswirl the Bearded Wing, I freaked out completely, but he just happily greeted me and unlocked the door for us. So we went to searching. We didn't find anything and shortly after sunrise Celestia walks in a wishes me a 'happy Tuesday' (Is that just something she does and I never realized? When I came over to get my crown back, your side's Celestia wished the students a 'happy Thursday').
So eventually I figured out that I just shouldn't worry about the future so much. At that moment Pinkie pops in and shows me a scroll for a spell to travel back in time for a few moments. Guess what I used that for.

What Future-Twilight was trying to tell me was not to worry about the future so much. Unfortunately I didn't realize that until after I was back from the past.

Anyways, that's how I went back in time and created a causal loop.

Hoping you enjoyed the story,

Your friend Twilight Sparkle.

---

Dear Twilight,

I most certainly did. So you actually traveled through time. Cool.
Say, did I tell you about TV? Because that causal loop reminds me of something I've seen in a TV-series. They called it a Pogo-Paradox, a causal loop in which an act of time travel to prevent an event instead causes it.
Anyways, what does time travel feel like?

Let me know if anything happens,

Sunset

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Dear Sunset,

mainly it feels really weird. It's powerful magic, of course, so to the caster it first of all feels exhausting, it has the other typical side effects of that too. A static charge in the air, that weird taste in your mouth. I guess you know what that feels like. Other than that it's mainly confusing, the equine mind isn't really designed to comprehend time travel.
That aside I'm getting kind of excited, it's only a few more days before my first clutch enters their chrysalides. From then on it's only two months until the first of my children will be fully grown. I wonder what genders they will choose.

Hoping all is well on your end,

your friend Twilight

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Dear Twilight,

hold on what?! What do you mean 'choose a gender'? How can they choose that? I feel like I'm missing some context here. Anyways give them my congratualtions, and best wishes from me and the girls.
That aside, I guess I should have expected it to feel like that. By the way, people here know that taste too, and they have a name for it, they call it ozone. It's something to do with the air changing when large amounts of energy travel through it.

All is well here, for the moment at least, hoping your end is fine too,

Sunset Shimmer

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Dear Sunset,

I guess some explanations are in order, huh? Changelings, especially queens, are experts in the field of alchemy. We can use alchemy to change ourselves to a great degree. One of the easiest changes to make is changing a drone's gender. (I'm saying a drone's gender for two reasons. Of course queens are female by default and that can't really change. But altering drones and altering queens are also two entirely separate fields of alchemy.) But I don't really feel comfortable making that choice for my children, so most of them are female for now.
I guess this would be a good time to go into the lifecycle of a drone. From the moment an egg starts incubation, it takes three years and three months for a drone to fully mature. One month for the egg to hatch, three years of gradual maturation as a nymph and 2 months of rapid maturation in a chrysalis before the drone hatches for the second time, this time fully grown.
Now the decision I've made is to let my children choose their gender when they'd be undergoing an alchemical change anyway, so during their development from a nymph to a fully grown drone. From what they told me so far (they still have a few days after all) Aegis wants to stay female but the other three are switching to male.
I'm researching a few other things. For example, I'm thinking about making specialized strands for various professions. Not unheard of to be honest, but other queens mainly use different strands for their soldiers and keep the rest of their drones relatively universal.

Give my greetings to the girls, and tell them the 'Future first squad of Queen Twilight's Jevruun Vruningee' as they call themselves say thank you,

Twilight Sparkle

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Dear Twilight,

that's good to know. And that's also really adorable, and really sweet of them.
What kind of variants are you working on? Do you plan a farming variant? If you did it would be great if you could manage to give them some form of earth pony magic, that could really help with their work. The girls find it really weird that your children can decide their gender. Hay, I'm used to magic and I find it weird.

Anyways have fun with your children growing up,

Sunset

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Dear Sunset,

thanks for your suggestion. I did some research and giving a strand limited earth pony magic may actually be possible. It may take me quite a while to work it out, but it would be definitely worth it.
That being said, I'm writing you from the bridge of the S.G.E.V. Ashes of the Phoenix. This airship was designed as a last ditch evacuation vessel but mom is having it refurbished and giving it to me as a colony ship. That's an immense gift, the Phoenix is the largest ship Stripped Gear has. I can hardly believe she's giving her to me.
I know the girls wanting to become Queen's Guard may seem cute now but they'll start military training in less than two months now. That's not even five days on your end.

I'll let you know if anything interesting happens on my end.

Your friend, Twilight.

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Dear Twilight,

I had an interesting experience today. I tried analyzing how the girls' magic works over here.
That was not a good idea. At the end of the day I've been buried under spectral apples, shot with balloons and butterflies (not at once), entangled in wires and literally splashed with rainbow paint out of a computer screen. Not to mention that I still have no idea how magic works over here. This was not a productive day.
That being said, congratulations on getting a colony ship, I guess that'll come in handy in founding a hive.

Wishing you the best when magic is inevitably on the loose again,

Sunset Shimmer.

---

Dear Sunset,

you just had to jinx it, didn't you? I'm writing you from aboard the Deception I'm headed for Ponyville with a few squads of my brothers and sisters. A few hours ago we got word from Canterlot. Celestia and Luna have vanished, and Ponyville is being invaded by some weird vines from the Everfree forest. But we already knew something was wrong before that. The sun and moon being high in the sky at the same time when no eclipse is scheduled is a pretty big giveaway.
Hoping we can figure this out,

Twilight Sparkle

Comments

[DavisSentoV5]

My brain hurts from that gender swap explanation

[gerandakis]

9005158
Did I overcomplicate it that much?

[DavisSentoV5]

9005201
Yep

[gerandakis]

9009054
Well, yes, what do you think I based this off of? I even used the same name.

9009061
Glad to have your attention.

Also: did you just read the entire series in one afternoon? You're a seriously fast reader.

[Wilddog88]

Actually the type of paradox in the show is called a bootstrap paradox. It’s a loop with no start or end.

So why does Twilight panic? Her future self failed. So the question is now how does future twilight know? Because she lived it. And that cause of that is because of future twilight.

Future Twilight fails to warn>current twilights to fix everything> Twilight starts to become the future twilight> Twilght panics> Canterlot> Twilight is her future self> Tuesday> Celestia> pinkie finds the scroll> Twilight uses it> she fails to warn.

See it’s a loop because it causes the whole cycle to start. The paradox you say is the one where it has no loop