I was granted my request. A minute later, they brought me a bundle of scratch paper in a kind of notebook and a sharpened pencil. The doctors and my visitor left me, closing the curtains all around to leave me alone with my silence. The first thing I did was to draw staves before I could write more of the Requiem. At last, my mind was coming back to me and the notes were finding their way back with the original ideas demanded to be recorded.
Only, once I’d drawn enough lines, I had to pause to think about where to begin again. The Lacrimosa was nothing but a skeleton and I was sure that the beginning fugues could be improved. And there were several movements that I was sure could be set down, but I had so many ideas I didn’t know where to start. I admit that I don’t know how long I stared at the blank paper like a painter trying to see the image on canvas.
Perhaps it was my alien surroundings, or that I couldn’t see the natural light from the window, or perhaps I didn’t have so much as a clavichord with me, but for a long time I couldn’t bring myself to sketch out a single note. There was something not only wrong, but something missing that was keeping my mind from focusing, and try as I might I couldn’t put my hoof on it.
That was when I heard a door opening and several hooves come marching in. These steps were not like the doctor’s or his assistants’, for there was a metallic clank that followed every step. “Hello?” I called out. “Who’s there?”
“It’s been a long time, Wolfgang Moztrot.” Instantly I knew whose voice it was. The curtains in front of my bed were drawn aside like that of a theater, letting me see the Sun Princess herself and her seemingly equally immortal guards. Of course, I was surprised at this. It had, for me, been years since the last time Celestia had ever wanted to see me.
“Princess,” said I, “you will have to forgive me for not bowing. As you can see I’m in no condition to do so.”
“The doctors told me that you would need bed rest for about a week,” she said. “Still, it has been too long since the last time we saw each other. In fact, I’m rather grateful that you came back.”
I tilted my head, “Grateful? The last time we met, you kicked me out of court because I joked that you were so respected that you could squat down, drop your royal feces on the carpet and no noble would blink an eye at it.”
While the guards flanking her were shocked and disgusted, Celestia gave a deadpan sigh, “Yep, this is definitely Moztrot. Look, I have much on my mind now that you are here, so if you could please hear me out -- without saying something that you may regret.” She cleared her throat and began, “Wolfgang, I’m sorry.”
I blinked, “For what?”
She sat down on her haunches. “For unintentionally ruining your life. Moztrot, at the time I was persuaded by some members of the court to not give you an official royal position, nor raise your salary when your family needed it the most. Everything that drove you into the gutter with no regard to the glorious works you’d produced. I’m sorry for not giving praise to your operas, concertos, and symphonies, for not calling them what they deserved to be called – masterpieces. I’m sorry for being manipulated and misinformed of how I was causing you and your family to suffer. Moztrot, I didn’t know the truth until it was far too late, and for all the pain I have caused you, I want to do everything in my power to make it up to you.”
This time I carefully angled my upper half on the crooked bed. “Are you saying that… you’re going to help me from now on? Really help me?”
She nodded, “For the effort, you put into such divine music, you deserved much better. And as I’ve said, I do want to make up for my transgressions. Can you forgive me?”
“If that means that I’m getting a higher salary then yes!” I grinned happily, “At last! Things are changing for the better! Oh, wait until Constanze hears about this! This means we can move back to a much better place for our colts and…” I trailed off when I saw the apologetic look on her face. “What?”
“Didn’t Sunburst tell you?” she inquired. Her ears were folded back and eyes filled to the brim with concern. “Moztrot, the world has moved on since the last time you left us.”
“Pfft!” I waved a hoof, practically giggling. “Oh, that nonsense? I mean really, I have been gone for two-hundred-and-sixteen years! Now I tell you, if you’re behind this, then I must say well done! These doctors and that Sunburst character are indeed the finest actors I’ve come across. Quite convincing, saying that I’m in the future with a straight-”
“This is not a prank,” Celestia interrupted. “Wolfgang, even if this was, I would have called it off by now already. It’s true. You are indeed in the future.”
I raised an eyebrow, “Prove it.”
Her horn gleamed a golden glow as the curtains on all sides of me was opened, revealing the room in its entirety for the first time. It was a small, plain room with smooth checkered tiles, sterile white walls, a painting of clouds in a boxy metal frame, and a window that let most of the light into the room. Celestia asked if I could walk; however, as I carefully sat up, I hissed at the stinging pain in my side. So Her Highness used her magic to gently carry me out of my confinement, with the metal staff and its bag of water dragging behind me. She showed me the world beyond the window. At first, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary as the structure of the surrounding buildings looked as I remembered, at least at first glance.
However, the longer I stared, the more details I noticed, of how… off everything was. First, it was the ponies that walked about; there wasn’t a single powdered wig in sight. Their clothes, while simplified, were nearly the same design for stallions and mares. The lampposts looked as if they were made entirely out of glass for there were no candles in them. A mare walked by with disks over her ears, bobbing her head like a bird. Overhead, a balloon of great mass flew by silently and smoothly through the air. Carriages went by with the drivers and their cars in yellow uniforms; they looked like bees in a field of flowers.
I looked at the Princess, confused. “What is all of this?” I inquired, “It looks like Canterlot in form but in the details it… it is as if something is not quite right.”
“Look at the room around you,” Celestia pointed out, “particularly at the lights.”
I did so. Now seeing the room as a whole, I found that not only the lights above my bed but across the entire ceiling were somehow embedded flatly into the ceiling in rectangles. They were sterile, cool, and flickering; for a moment, I couldn’t comprehend how fire could do such a trick. Then Celestia’s aura pushed up one of these rectangles to reveal a see-through panel, lowering it to show twin tubes that were glowing.
“These are called light bulbs,” the Princess explained. “They are powered by electricity, a system that has been in place for nearly a century.” She turned to me, “Want more proof?”
At that moment, I couldn’t process any more. As much as I tried to use reason to find some fault, something to dismiss what my own senses were seeing, it all looked so real. Too real. I would be an outright fool to deny it. So I ended up shaking my head and she lay me back down in my bed, dumbstruck. A condition that I rarely found myself in. The reality of the situation filled the room, drowning me.
“But… But Princess, if this is true… then that would mean that… everypony I knew is…” My voice was choked by emotion and my eyes became misty with tears. Celestia immediately embraced me with her white wings. As much as she tried to comfort me, my ears became deaf as the realization appeared to me as if written in stone: my whole family, friends, enemies, students… were gone. The world I knew, that I wrote for, that I played in, was dead.
My world had ended the moment that I had awoken.
Needless to say, I cried, sobbed and wailed like a child. I hiccupped in tears, letting my eyes run waterfalls onto the bedsheets. All the while, Celestia held me like a sympathetic mother, whispering that everything was going to be alright. But, I’m embarrassed to say, my emotions disagreed ferociously.
The sense of time had escaped me completely; for I all cared, it could have been minutes or days. But when I finally showed signs of calm, she let go of me. “Wolfgang,” she said softly. “I and all of Equestria are here now to help you. After all, you have left behind, we owe a debt to you in regaining your happiness. If you need something, ask away.”
I remembered sniffing before replying, “I want my family back.” Yes, it was an impossible request, but in such a state it was what I could think about.
She hugged me one more time before telling me that she had a gift for me. Through the door, an unusual keyboard was brought in that had only a wide range of keys and two round plates at the ends. Celestia told me that she knew that, while she couldn’t remove my grief, she did know how to deal with it. The keyboard she presented was an “electrical piano.” After pressing a button, she depressed a key that she told me resembled strongly that of a grand piano (whatever that meant). While the tone did sound off to me, I did thank her Majesty before she left the room, promising to return tomorrow.
Celestia was right in one regard: in times when life became cruel, I had my music as a close friend to offer me solace. My hooves stretched over the keyboard, my memory walking backward to a particular sonata. It was the one I wrote after Mama died; now the Andante cantabile con espressione melody brought forth a new idea to my imagination: the faces of my wife and children.
Even while my tears blinded me, my hooves played on for an audience of one.