Higher Beings

by Mangetsu

Drawing Lines

Designing a way to browse the books in a library is quite difficult once you start to up the scale of things. I would hope that one day the small scale library that I ran in Ponyville becomes much bigger than what it is. The current method of organizing books was to separate them all by subject, but that made things hard to organize in relation to different topics, or interrelated topics. Sometimes, you'd have to walk all the way across a library to access a book, because it happened to be of mostly the same topic but not precisely, as it also belonged to another and it got filed under that topic instead whenever it was brought in.

"If only there was a way to organize information outside of three dimensional space..." I pondered to my blackboard, which had several proposed methods of solving this issue on it. "If books didn't take up physical space it'd circumvent the issue of physical locomotion, and things could be sequentially organized by an additional digit in the labeling system indicating ever further subsets of topics, and we could keep an index of those without physically separating them and inconveniencing ponies. But even random topics can be interrelated in small ways, and a book could be written on those connections... so it's hard."

Spike stared at the piles of books laying around me that I had isolated as the greatest offenders to this puzzle. Most were related to geography. It was actually a deceptively sticky subject that wove its way into many different topics and so they were flung all over the library for the most part. The dragon tilted his head up to me.

"Well Twilight, why don't you just separate geography out as its own topic and have a separate number for those? That'd make the most sense."

I sighed, not expecting Spike to be understanding. "Well Spike, that doesn't solve anything because then to read about the geographical impact on say... weather, you'd have to go over to the geography section. Which splinters things even more."

"It sounds like you're honestly fighting against how books work." He replied.

The idea crossed my mind that perhaps I was... maybe. It was a curious sentiment. However my pondering was interrupted by a tap at the door. Mentally putting a pin in what I was doing, I steered myself to the front door of the library. I straightened my mane with a brush before opening the door. The sight of a rather tired looking orange farmhand greeted me, not wearing her typical straw hat. Her mane was a bit off, and it was very peculiar for her to not have her face protected from the sun. I didn't conceal the surprise in my voice as I spoke.

"Oh hey Applejack! What brings you here?" I asked, my eyes scanning her face for any clues as to why she was out of sorts.

She seemed relieved to see me. The orange mare began looking around at the streets of Ponyville as she spoke. Nobody was around as it was due to rain soon, so I didn't understand why she was acting as if she'd be overheard.

"Heya Twilight, I just wanted to talk to you about something. It's pretty important so... um, could I come inside?"

Without hesitation, I stepped aside to allow Applejack into my abode. With the door shut behind her I pulled up a side table and two stools for us to sit on. She clearly needed some tea too, so I figured I'd get some of that once the conversation was underway. Once we were seated, she began in a tone that tipped me off that something might be wrong. Her voice was full of anxiousness and worry. As if something was eating at her.

"Today I went to Canterlot. A rushed trip. Lun-" She tripped on the title. "Princess Luna called me up there for something she said was important. I thought that, shoot, I should hurry if it's important royal business. So I went up there and she told me something that I just don't know how to feel about and I was wondering if y'all would hear be out about this."

After waiting for a proper moment to interject, I decided I would urge her to calm down.

"Applejack, I need you to slow down. So, Luna called you up to Canterlot. You talked about something and it's bothering you. What is it? You can say whatever you want. Just y'know, be more specific."

There was a long pause as she took a deep breath in... holding it... then exhaled slowly through her nose. A bunch of tension left her shoulders as she did this. From what I could hear she was at least more relaxed. Not less bothered by whatever she was about to say, but at least more relaxed.

"Luna told me about something that I haven't heard about. It... sort of has me worried. She told me that a long time ago, that unicorns and earth ponies hated each other, and that they did weird mind control stuff if ponies broke the law and other nonsense. I couldn't believe it really. Something about the way she was saying it all made me trust her though."

I slowly blinked, thinking to myself. That didn't make much sense... as far as I knew Equestria's past was peaceful all the way through its unification and later expansion. The idea that perhaps there had been some sort of tension between the unicorns and earth ponies seemed a bit ridiculous to me.

"That's... pretty strange Applejack. As far as I understand Equestria's history, the earth ponies improved their farming capabilities, medicine and education, and unicorns flourished because of the increased agricultural output. They complemented each other, they didn't fight."

Applejack shook her head at me. "She told me that they fought a lot, and both did some awful things to each other. She says Celestia just went back once it was in the history books and took it out."

What she suggested was possible, I would admit. It was something that could possibly occur. It was within the realm of feasibility. However I had yet to see a proper motive for such a thing. What would be the point in something like that? And even if it was covered up, what bearing did it have on the present anyways?

"I think that something like that is a little bizarre coming from Celestia. Even if she didn't have a good reason, which I'm sure she would for something so critical, what does it matter when it comes to the modern day? Even if bad stuff happened in the past, I don't think it has much of an effect on how things are right now."

Applejack looked at her hooves. Gears were clearly turning in her head; hopefully having been set in motion by my comments. She then replied to me, sounding slightly less unsure.

"Well what Luna told me was that Celestia thought it might hurt the reputation of unicorns. Like, it'd cause issues between us and such to have all that in the past. So she got rid of it."

To me that seemed fairly wise of Celestia. After all, this was something that occurred hundreds of lifetimes ago. It was tension that was so long removed from the present day it practically didn't even matter, but it could still cause unrest if anypony were to draw upon it to cause issues. I trusted Celestia to make that sort of decision. She was the sole ruler of Equestria for a thousand years. I might bring it up with her sometime later as a brief talking point, but I overall agreed with her course of action. By the tone of Applejack's voice, this had been a serious issue that needed to be addressed in some manner.

With the utmost confidence, I replied. "I think Celestia was probably right to take whatever happened out. Harmony is more important than a perfect record. If I was a few years younger I wouldn't be saying that, but I have faith that Celestia knew exactly what she was doing, and was probably wrestling with the same philosophical dilemma you're having right now."

Applejack bit her bottom lip. I could tell the orange earth pony didn't want to admit I was possibly right. It was contrary to character to admit that lying was correct, ever. That much I understood more than anything. With the utmost patience, I watched her slowly puzzle out her response.

"Well... Twilight, I think that... instead of pulling things out, ponies should be able to make decisions on their own about these sorts of things. By just sorta brushing that stuff aside, I feel like maybe you're telling ponies how you should feel about the past. Instead of letting them decide on their own. It feels like lying."

I had a feeling she would come up with that sort of answer. After all she wasn't just the Element of Honesty. She was also among the most bull-headed of anyone in Ponyville.

"Well, do you think lying is okay if it's for the good of everyone?" I asked.

"I don't think so, because that's making ponies make decisions that aren't true. Making ponies draw up their feelings and opinions on stuff that's not real. Plus it makes your side look right instead of letting everypony decide for themselves."

My eyes diverted to the stairs, where Spike was probably sitting, waiting for us to be done conversing as he overheard everything we were talking about. I then looked back to Applejack. She had good points, but personally... I disagreed. Especially when it came to Celestia. I trusted her more than about anyone else, and if she had foresight that this could cause issues again in the future that warranted the removal of these things from the history books, I was in favor.

"Even if Candle Dust was responsible for abusing her magic to make her students better at schoolwork a thousand years ago by highly morally questionable means, there's no good reason for that to cast a shadow on what we do today as civilized ponies, with lots of well working laws and investigative tools to tell whenever such magical abuse happens. It's not something that, in my opinion, should impact the lives of ponies that may as well be a different species by this point. We're more harmonious, sensical, and have a much better understanding of what makes a well functioning society by this point."

Believing I had made my point, I turned to the stairs to call for Spike. "Since I know you're there, can you get us some tea?"

Applejack looked at me with a very conflicted expression. However as I watched her... the expression turned from conflicted to anxious yet again. Except this time it was even worse, eyes widening as realization dawned on her. Only after I thought about it a moment did I realize.

She had never mentioned Candle Dust to me. I was supposed to be feigning ignorance.

Author's Note:

Comments are immensely appreciated, they help guide me and give me motivation!

Comments

[Akanonra]

Oh boi

[Admiral Q Ponyform]

Twilight. You and Celestia just don't get it. A kingdom based of lies is doomed to failure.

[kingsmen]

F in chat boys

[FanOfMostEverything]

It feels really wrong to have Twilight support this level of historical revisionism, even when considering her Celestia-sized blind spot. Though if I had to guess, it seems she's already discussed the problem with Celestia, especially given the "If I was a few years younger" comment. Celestia still knows all those compulsion spells, after all, and unicorn resistance came from using those same spells all the time...

One thing: Twilight's internal musings on whether or not Celestia would have done this don't mesh with her knowing that she should be feigning ignorance about it. Why would she wonder about the existence of the conspiracy if she's already a part of it?

That being said, this is quite good thus far. Looking forward to more.