Monarch HQ, October 10
10:52 AM — 15 hours after the Fracture in Time
Given the building’s overall modernity, the walls of the facility proper were less sterile than Starlight had expected. No bare chrome surfaces here. A few paintings and pictures dotted the walls here and there. Hardly an art gallery, but at least it felt a bit welcoming for the ponies working there. And there were ponies; Starlight didn’t know what they were doing, but she passed plenty of ponies. Running here, walking there, carrying this, drinking or eating that. It looked a lot like any other office job. Except for the fact that nopony spared a second glance for the prisoner under armed escort.
Starlight’s guards (all four of them, one on each corner) were silent, no matter how much she pestered them. They kept looking straight and walking on. Every now and then, she’d get a “be quiet” nudge, but it was always light. Eventually, she just gave up. Escape never crossed her mind; there was no way she could hope to get out, not in the middle of a building she didn’t know the layout of with undoubtedly more armed guards patrolling it. Tough luck.
It wasn’t long before they reached a solid-looking door flanked by two more guards in a more deserted part of the building. One of them opened the door to reveal a room that reminded Starlight of nothing more than an interrogation chamber. Stark walls, ceiling, and floor, very brightly lit, no furniture except for a table and two chairs right in the center. All that was missing was a one-way mirror.
Serene was sitting in the far chair already, still with that infuriating grin. She waved Starlight over. “C’mon in! You wanna talk, don’tcha?”
One of Starlight’s guards lightly nudged her. Not seeing any other option, Starlight entered the room. As she sat down in the empty chair (no restraints), the door boomed shut behind her and clicked as the lock engaged.
Starlight looked at Serene.
Serene looked at Starlight.
Starlight decided to break the ice. “Hey, Serene.” It was all she could say.
Serene didn’t lose her smile. In fact it went up a few notches, from “smug and in control” to “almost friendly”. “Hey, Starry,” she said. “Long time. No see.”
“It hasn’t even been a day for me,” said Starlight. “And don’t call me Starry.”
Serene laughed. “Whatever you say, Starry. And I know! Only a day, right? Ain’t like that for me. Not at all. I mean, when do you think I went when Promenade fell apart?”
Starlight pushed the tip of her hoof into the table and swiveled it back and forth. “I… I don’t know.”
Serene’s grin dropped. “I saw the End of Time, Starlight,” she said quietly. “It’s not a time meant for mortals. It’s… indescribable. It should not be.” She looked off into the distance. “Timelines overlap and collide. Events are caught in loops, repeating over and over and over. Events happen before the actions that cause them. And… and there are… things that exist between seconds. They didn’t like me. I… I’m lucky to be alive.”
She swallowed and twitched, like she was pulling herself back together. “I found a way back. Followed notes from myself, actually. Directed me to that time machine. Don’t know whose it is. Never tried finding out. Doesn’t matter. But I couldn’t come back to now, not after seeing that. I needed to prepare. So I went back further.”
She leaned back in her chair. “It’s only been a few hours for you, Starry, but for me, it’s been seven years.”
Seven years. Seven years, living the same thing over again. Some of the most turbulent seven years in Equestria’s history, to boot. It was hard for Starlight to wrap her mind around it: that Serene, who she’d only missed for a few hours, had missed her for years. Knowledge of time travel, having done it herself, didn’t make it any easier. “What did you do with that time?” asked Starlight
“Founded Monarch,” Serene said. “Made investments based on future knowledge. Grew fast. Attracted the best scientists I could. We need all the time we can get if we’re going to find a way to fix the fracture.”
“Fix it?” Starlight scoffed. “You’re the one who caused it!”
“Oh, boy. We got an amateur over here.” Serene leaned forward. “Remember how I said paradoxes can’t happen? How any attempt to change the past will only make it happen?”
“That doesn’t mean you need to-”
“Think about what that means. If I didn’t break the time machine, somepony else would have. It had to break, if all of this was going to happen. I can’t go forward if it doesn’t break. I can’t found Monarch if I don’t go forward. The machine doesn’t get funded if I don’t found Monarch. But the machine got funded. Ergo, it breaks. And I’d rather be active than pulled along by the current, so…” Serene shrugged. “Yeah. I broke it. It was going to break, anyway.”
Which struck Starlight as an incredibly flimsy, even petty, justification. To avoid all this, all she had to do was not break the machine. Breaking the machine because it was supposedly “going to” break was like justifying murder because everypony dies eventually, right? Serene was just casting blame off of herself. Not even on anypony in particular; she was just saying, “The universe said so.” It was like she was implying there was something forcing her to do it.
“Look, we’ve still got a time machine,” said Starlight. “It’s simple, we can fix this.”
Serene started frowning, almost snarling. “No, you can’t.”
“But all we need to do,” Starlight said, “is something that’ll keep you fr-”
Serene slammed her hooves on the table. “YOU CAN’T!” she screamed, standing up from her chair. Her voice, formerly rock-solid and assured, was suddenly quavering. “You really think I haven’t tried to change things? To warn ponies? I’ve tried, believe me! Even after I founded Monarch! I’ve tried over and over and over and over and nothing ever works! I’d give both left hooves to be able to change the past! But you CAN’T!” She dropped back down. Her breaths were sounding like sobs. “I tried to tell the Royal Guard about Nightmare Moon. I got funny looks. I tried to tell them about Discord. I got funny looks. I tried to tell them about the Changeling Invasion. I got funny looks.” She looked up at Starlight, blinking a lot. Her voice was flat. “I knew they were coming. I did everything I could to tell the best ponies how to stop it. Net result? Jack squat. After that, I… I gave up. Except for one time. You remember Tirek?”
“Yeah.”
“You remember how terrified you were of him? How helpless he made you feel?”
“Yeah.”
“I was determined I wouldn’t go through that again. A few weeks before it happened, I marched right into the throne room and demanded an audience with Celestia. The guards wanted to know my business. I told them about the psychotic centaur that would escape Tartarus and steal magic from ponies. You know what they did? Go on. Guess.”
Starlight didn’t answer.
“Guess,” hissed Serene.
Starlight cringed backwards. “They… didn’t believe you?” she whispered.
Serene laughed hollowly. “Even better. I was thrown out of the palace. I tried again, and was thrown out again. I tried one last time, and got myself slapped with a restraining order and told I’d be chucked in an asylum if I ever showed my face around there again. And then… And then he arrived. You think it was bad the first time? Try going through it again, knowing it’s coming, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
When she spoke again, her voice was even flatter. “And then, grasping at the last straw, I said to myself, those’re big things. Things you never had much agency in to begin with. Change something smaller. Something personal. Something that won’t matter much to Equestria at large. And you know what? I had just the thing.” She started staring off into the distance. “Two years ago, it was near Hearth’s Warming, and I was out shopping. I saw this filly bolt out into the street and nearly get run over by a carriage. She was alright, but… Well, I’ve never liked seeing kids in danger. I’d stop her from running out. It was easy. It was simple. If I could do that, I could stop the first experiment.”
Her eyes started growing watery and she started blinking a lot. “On the right day, I found the street. I kept my head down so I wouldn’t be recognized. And… and I found her. She was unsupervised, nopony paying attention to her. Perfect, I thought. I… I walked up to her, and…” She rubbed her eyes with a hoof. “She was alone. A stranger walked right up to her. She panicked. She… bolted out into the street… and nearly got run over by a carriage.”
Tears started flowing from Serene’s eyes and she buried her face in her hooves. “Th-the one thing I t-told myself I’d d-definitely fix. I-if I could ch-change that, I c-could stop time f-from ending. B-but I couldn’t. Just one change. One. A-and I couldn’t d-do it.”
In spite of her situation, Starlight couldn’t help but feel pity for Serene. She’d never seen a pony so utterly broken before. She looked back on everything that had happened to Equestria over the past seven years and tried to imagine changing any one thing. Her mind said it was easy. But that was what Serene had thought, wasn’t it? But if she’d genuinely tried and failed… It’d be enough to drive anyone to despair. She couldn’t help it. She reached out her hoof to comfort Serene.
Time ending is her fault. Serene may have not been able to convince anyone of the coming disasters, but she made this one. She chose to break those crystals. This is all her fault.
Starlight withdrew her hoof.
Look at her. Even if she’s wrong, she’s still crushed. The only thing that keeps her going is the belief that she can fix the End after it happens. As far as she knows, she’s got the weight of the world on her shoulders. Could you handle it?
Starlight reached out her hoof.
She chose to capture you and Sunburst rather than explain things. She sent assault teams after you. She hasn’t tried to fully explain herself to anyone or present proof. She’s so wrapped up in herself that she shuts out other avenues of possibility.
Starlight withdrew her hoof.
She doesn’t think any of that would work, and she has good reason to. How many others could know the kind of work she’s doing? There aren’t that many other avenues of possibility to look at.
Starlight didn’t reach out.
Instead, she took a deep breath and quietly said, “You can change things.”
Wiping her eyes, Serene sat up straight and muttered, “Haven’t you been listening? You can’t.”
“You can. I’ve seen it.”
Serene blinked several times. For a moment, they seemed to brighten, back to what they’d once been. “H-how?”
Deep breath in. “Several months ago,” said Starlight, “with the assistance of… an external power source, I went back in time to…” She stopped herself and chewed her lip. This was too personal. Why had she taken this route again?
But, somehow, Serene leaped to her rescue. “Do something personal,” Serene said. She waved a hoof. “Details? Don’t matter.”
Starlight nodded. “I… wanted to change something in my favor. And… and when I came back to the present, things were… different. Not in the way I’d wanted, but they were different.”
Serene was staring at her like a kid in a candy store. “You… you swear it? You saw it change?”
Starlight nodded again.
Serene looked distant. Haunted. Like Starlight had explained the meaning of life to her and she was still absorbing it. “Did… did it stick?”
“What?”
And it was gone. Serene’s cynical look was back. “Did it stick? Are we living in the changed timeline now?”
“W-well… no. Princess Twilight changed it back and convinced me to just leave it be.”
After a pause, Serene laughed bitterly. “Shoulda seen that coming. What good is changing the past if the changes don’t stick? You never had a chance. No matter how many changes you make, they’ll all be undone. Always.”
But… Starlight had seen the changes. You couldn’t just sweep all that under the rug. Twilight had undone them, true, but if she hadn’t, if she hadn’t managed to persuade Starlight to stop, they’d still be there. Right? Time didn’t manipulate Twilight’s decisions, she’d made them herself.
“I know that look, and you’re wrong,” hissed Serene. “You’ve seen it yourself. You can’t change time. The End will come, and there is nothing we can do to stop it.”
Serene sounded so animalistic, Starlight scooched back an inch in her chair. “So what’s your goal?” she asked, desperate to steer away from this topic. “If you can’t stop time from ending, then-”
“We fix it after it happens,” said Serene. “Most ponies, they stop when the End comes. You and me? We don’t, not with our excess chronons. Take the basic idea, automate it, boom: stutterproofed buildings, where everypony inside can keep going where the outside stops. A lifeboat in the storm of time. We get the best scientists we can, we find a way to fix the fracture, we stitch the Neigher-Joy fi-”
“So we both want to fix the fracture!” said Starlight. “But then-”
“-why are you fighting me?”
It was like Serene had ripped the words from out of her mouth. That had been almost the exact same question Starlight was going to ask. After all, if their goals were the same, then fighting was stupid. She’d hoped it’d shock Serene into agreeing with her.
She didn’t like it when it was turned around on her.
“Starlight,” Serene said. Her voice had softened considerably. “I know it’s hard for you to accept this. Maybe the big picture is just too big for you. But for the last time, we can’t stop time from ending. You can’t change the past, and for me, it is the past. But that doesn’t mean we can’t fix it later. The only difference between you and me? I’m not chasing a pipedream. So, please. Work with me. Please.”
Starlight stared at a spot on the table. Maybe it’d be easier to just give in. Serene knew what she was talking about, right? After all, she’d been trying to change the past for years; Starlight herself had only done it twice. But those were both failures. If she agreed, she wouldn’t have to run anymore. If nothing else, maybe she could get Twilight to persuade Serene otherwise once she got back from Griffonstone.
But her own experiences with change kept nagging at her. If she hadn’t seen it herself, she’d’ve already agreed to Serene’s pleas. But she had, so she didn’t.
Serene was still talking. “If we’re going to find a way to fix the fracture, we need smart ponies. I’m already working on persuading the scientists, but you shouldn’t discount yourself just because you’re not a chronodynamicist. You’re smart. You’re the only other chronon-active pony we’ve got. You’d be a great asset to us. And you’d be helping to save the world.” Serene grinned, and the chill that’d been there for so long was gone. “You wanna help save the world, don’tcha?”
Starlight drew in a breath and said quietly, “I… I need some time to think it over.”
“How long? A few days?”
“S-something like that,” said Starlight.
“Try to make it quick,” said Serene, “but take your time. I’ll be ready for your answer at any point.” She banged a hoof on the table twice; the door opened and two guards walked into the room. Starlight slowly stood up and walked between them, ready to be escorted back to her cell.
“Starry?”
Starlight halted and turned around.
“If you say no,” Serene said, her voice hard, “do not oppose us. You will do nothing but slow our own solution to the fracture. I won’t like it, but if you keep it up, I will make sure you stop.” Her voice dropped a notch. “By any means necessary.”
Starlight twitched. There was something in Serene’s voice that said she wasn’t exaggerating in the slightest. And after getting attacked at Streamhaven University, it was even harder to doubt. “Okay,” she said quietly. She turned forward and left the room, her guards following.