First thing next morning I went to see the vet. She wasn't actually called that, but she was a medic specializing in large non-pony animals, sentient and otherwise, and I didn't feel quite right thinking of her as a xenobiologist. And since Doctor Fluff called herself a vet, a vet she was.
She looked at my horns, checked my teeth, prodded my udder, did a few unmentionable things around back, tested my reflexes, and so on. All the while she kept up a constant chatter of near-nonsense that went in one ear and out the other, but was distracting and calming - probably the whole point.
When she was done, she told me I was a healthy heifer, that I'd never given birth (so at least I didn't have to worry that I'd left a calf behind somewhere), and that while naturally a cow didn't start giving milk until she was a mother, there were a fairly common set of spells for dairies - one to start milk, another to stop it, and some more complicated ones. Apparently I hadn't been taking proper care of myself the past few days; I was supposed to eat for six hours a day and chew cud for eight. My milk production was down because of that - with my breed, age, and health, I should be milked three times a day, producing six gallons, or fifty pounds, of milk daily. She mentioned that twelve pounds of milk makes one gallon of ice cream - so I tried thinking of my production as being 32 pints of ice cream per day... and it was still just very weird. Another detail I learned then was that I could keep track of my output as I was milked by counting - there were three hundred fifty squirts in a gallon.
When she was done she sent me along to an optometrist... and in less then an hour, I had myself a pair of glasses which improved my vision tremendously. It wasn't perfect - it seemed I was astigmatic, and it would take a while to make lenses for that - and there was still an odd optical effect on all the edges I looked at, but now I could actually make out faces instead of blurs of colour. The frames were thick and clunky, but fairly strong - I might even be able to put them on and take them off with my own hooves.
With all that out of the way, it was time for my daily milking - well, according to Doctor Fluff, my first milking of the day. I checked in at the royal dairy, and got a personal account set up. On Earth, milk cost about a dollar per litre at the store, and if I was going to be making 6 gallons a day, that was around the equivalent of twenty-five dollars a day, which gave me a rough comparison for how much a bit was worth.
I tried not to think about the fact that this very evening, the Princesses might be eating 'my' cheesecake.
I tried waiting patiently, chewing cud, silently counting squirts, and listening to the gossip of two cows who were in at the same time I was. They were gossiping, mostly about a new bull one had met who wore a nose-ring, and who'd worked in a bullfighting ring and at a rodeo - apparently, all very scandalous behaviours.
I tried not to think about the fact that the cow to my left, who was brown, seemed to be producing chocolate milk.
Finally, now that my time seemed to be my own - at least until the next time I needed to get emptied - I went in search of Micro Scope.
"So if we want to measure the speed of light accurately, we'd not only need as accurate a survey as possible between the mountain-tops, but also as accurate a clock as possible, to determine how fast the disc is spinning." Sure, it was a nineteenth-century experiment, and with trains and occasional blinkenlights, Equestria could be described as having nineteeth-century technology... but with magic thrown into the mix, it was hard to match their development with a precise Earthly parallel. I continued, "So it can be done - but it would take the two of us at least a few days to put together. Let's call that a backup plan."
"You have something easier in mind?"
"I do - and, in fact, your cutie mark is what made me think of it. I'd like to take a look at some very small objects in water, such as pollen grains that give off dust, on the order of three ten-thousandth of an inch, under as powerful a magnification as we can manage. If we can see them, I believe I can make certain predictions about the overall statistics of their movements..."
I was stealing from the best - Einstein himself used this process to, eventually, show that Brownian motion was the result of atoms jostling the particles around, the size of those atoms, and that heat was kinetic motion of those atoms... and if the results were what I hoped, and if I could re-derive the same math, I should be able to prove that my memories contained useful details. And if I were proven wrong... well, I could always ask Doctor Fluff about asylums. Hadn't there been a pony in a straightjacket in a recent episode, when Rainbow Dash had been in a hospital?
That evening, after sunset and third milking, Princess Luna asked me to join her - not in Night Court, but in private again. Where I discovered a platter of various vegetarian foods, sweet tidbits - and, yes, cheesecake. Luna, naturally, chose to float a plate of the latter to herself, and ate forkfuls as we talked.
"I have learned of things which I have decided to impart personally to thou.
"Before you continue, Your Highness - may I ask a personal favour of you?"
"Thou may ask."
"I have developed a headache over the day. Would it be possible for you to not use the Royal Canterlot Voice this evening?"
"That- That is entirely reasonable."
"Thank you, Your Highness. Please, go on." I nibbled on a few of what appeared to be candied flowers.
"I have- I have been passed some of the reports from those ponies who are investigating thy appearance. The news is not good. There have been a number of disappearances of cattle along the boundaries of the Everfree Forest in recent years. Some match thy description. At least once, an entire herd vanished. While efforts have been made to search for and recover them, they have, generally, been concluded to be enslaved or - permanently missing."
"You mean deceased, don't you?"
"I do. I hope that this is not distressing to thou, but if thy memories contain a clue as to how you survived when others did not, or how thy escape was managed - then I assure thou, that nothing of thy actions would be held against thou."
"It's not - that is, my memories aren't about anything like that." I thought about telling her what I did remember - that I was from another world, where this one was nothing more than children's entertainment, her very voice used as a gag - and wondered whether that would alter her actions, causing her to do things other than what she'd been shown doing on the show - and if that would affect the connection between Equestria and Earth - and decided that the benefits were outweighed by the potential risks. At least for now. So I said, "I think it's in both of our best interests if I do not tell you much about them right now."
She tilted her head at me, and set down her empty plate. "Odd. Thou truly believes that."
"I do." My brow wrinkled. "And your horn was not glowing - you weren't casting a spell."
"Not of the unicorn sort, no. But thy kind has long been associated with my sphere - and while it shines on us both, that connection can be enhanced, in certain ways."
"Does that mean that I can also tell how truthful you are being?"
A flash of white teeth, a gleam of dark eyes. "Were I to try to deceive thou, while I am doing so... perhaps you could determine the means. Accurate memories or no, thou seem to be capable at solving problems."
I hazarded a guess, "You were watching the windmill test?"
"Merely the final portion. I still do not understand the point of it - any unicorn can create a brighter light, for longer, without requiring lodestones and wires in a complicated arrangement."
"Old saying: 'The wonder of the dancing bear is not how well it dances, but that it dances at all.' The point was not to create a practical light source - it was to see if any light at all could be made. Once the principle was proven to my satisfaction, there are all sorts of potential improvements - though I don't know if an air-pump designed to create soda-water can really create a sufficient vacuum for my purposes." I frowned. "And just because those improvements can be made... does not necessarily imply that they should be."
"Why not?"
I started to answer, stopped, frowned, and considered... and re-considered... and finally said, "I seem to be faced with a choice. On one hoof... Equestria is a society that has, if reports are accurate, existed for thousands of years, with one or two immortal alicorns guiding matters for the long-term. I'm reasonably sure that over the centuries, the two of you have learned a number of secrets which you hold tightly, rather than reveal them to everypony."
"That is a... reasonable conclusion," she said, hiding her mouth behind a cup of tea.
"On the other hoof... in order to achieve any of my significant goals, such as extending my lifespan, I need to learn all sorts of things - so many, that it would be impossible to learn them all in time if I had to research them myself. I need an entire community of ponies, cows, and other folk who are interested in searching for the truth, and who have a stable enough society to perform that search, without having to worry too much about being enslaved or eaten. And the side-effects of that knowledge... are very unpredictable. And whatever positive benefits of that knowledge - there will be negative costs, as well. Those costs may be minusucle compared to the benefits, but pretending they don't exist at all would be irresponsible."
I waved a hoof. "For example, instead of a windmill, I could use the spinning of a water-wheel; and more efficient water-wheels could be made by building a concrete dam, allowing for many more applications... but also carrying the risk that the dam would break, and the reservoir created by the dam would change the landscape - and if the system worked in one place, it could be applied in many others, multiplying the effects, both good and bad."
"If thou discovered thou did not like the bad effects, could thou not take the knowledge back into secrecy?"
"That's not-" I started, then paused. "I was about to say that that's not how knowledge works - but I'm not entirely sure that's true. Given the changes to a pony's mind that can be done with a 'want it need it' spell, or with love poison... then it's at least possible that the genie could be stuffed back into the bottle."
"Those are an... interesting selection of examples."
"If you say so. Right now I'm thinking of 'Not every change is an improvement, but every improvement is a change' - and that I only have a few decades to try to arrange the necessary changes. But that presupposes the question - is finding out how to avoid death, for myself and anyone else who acquires the knowledge, worth the cost to society as a whole?"
"Did thou not previously state that the continuation of life as a whole was more important than any other consideration?"
"That sounds like something I'd have said. But I'm not sure that's the level of negative consequences involved - and there is another important detail I haven't even mentioned yet." I looked at her - really looked, at the four-legged, six-limbed creature, whose horn was glowing to telekinetically manipulate a teacup, and who at least plausibly was capable of manipulating entire celestial bodies. "Such as whether you and your sister will allow me to make the attempt in the first place; or if either of you believe that your own long-term goals would be better served by, say, putting me safely out to pasture somewhere, where I would live out the rest of my days doing nothing more than turning real estate into milk."
She didn't say anything to that, simply took another sip. Then she set the cup down, and looked at me - really looked, with the moon shining down through the windows on us both. "Thou seemst to enjoy puzzles. And thou hast claimed that shrinking means travel through time is a possibility." I blinked at the change in topic, but she was the celestial monarch, and entitled to her eccentricities; so I just nodded for her to continue. "Let us say that there is a spell, which can permit the caster to travel back to near where they had been standing a week before, for the span of a minute or two, before returning to the time from whence they came. The riddle is this: what is the best use that such a spell could be put to?"
"With that information - I'd say none at all; the danger of changing the past and erasing the future, replacing one set of people with a near-identical but very different set, or even worse, causing a paradox which means the entire universe disappears and never existed at all in the first place - far outweighs any possible benefit."
"Assume that that is not a danger - that what happens, happens."
"I would want to be very sure about that. Moreso than simply accepting even your word on it. But assuming that... then whatever benefits can be made, can be made greater by overcoming its limitations. Say, by casting the spell repeatedly, to travel back further."
"Say that any caster can only use it once in their lives."
She seemed to be getting awfully specific about the details of this spell, a fact which I filed away for later consideration. "Then set up a relay. One caster waits for a caster from the future to appear and deliver a message; and then they cast the spell themselves to go back further, to relay the message even further back - possibly all the way to the first pony who became part of the relay."
She had been lifting her cup to her lips, but it paused, half-way. "Go on."
"You would have to assume there would be the occasional interruption, so a lack of a message from the future doesn't necessarily imply a disaster - but if, say, you'd gotten a set of messages from the next year or so, and none from after... then it might be worthwhile to be a bit cautious about events immediately after the last message."
She was starting to give me a look, but I didn't notice at that point, as I cheerily went on. "Of course, it would also help if nobody else knew you were getting accurate messages from the future, so it would be worthwhile going to significant efforts to hide that. Partly, to emphasize that you consultat various oracles and prophets, whether they actually work or not, in order to offer some plausible explanation for actions you take which make the most sense if they are based on future knowledge. But also by concealing the existence of the spell itself, and its use - even from the ponies using it, if they can cast it without knowing its effects. For example, by hinting to them that they are part of a secret long-distance communications system. And whether or not they know the spell, the knowledge of what the messages they carry mean should be concealed from them. For example, the early selves of the ponies who are to be tasked with a message could be made to wear blindfolds and earplugs, so they neither see their future selves nor hear the message; and perhaps even hidden inside a box, so their future self does not see their past self. And the message itself could be encoded, such as by writing some books where a given set of numbers corresponds to a given meaning, and having the messengers memorize the numbers without knowing what those numbers mean. You could even-"
"STOP!"
My jaw closed with a clack of teeth - and I saw the glow of Luna's magic around it... and realized that she was now standing on all fours, with her wings flared, glaring down at me. She somehow both whispered and used the Royal Canterlot Voice at the same time. "This is not the time, nor the place, to speak of such things. Had I known what thy answer would be, I would never have posed the question. Thou are not to speak of any of our conversation - I must awaken my sister to consult with her."
I felt a tingle in my tongue, accompanied by a glow from inside my mouth - which, as I discovered, seemed to be a spell preventing me from talking at all, limited to the sounds a cow from Earth could make. Luna strode out the door, and at her words, a collection of guards came in to start staring at me.
Welp, I figured, I'd really stuck my hoof in it that time.
With nothing better to do, I started chewing my cud - and wondered if that was what I'd be doing for the rest of my life...