“My turn! My turn! It's my turn now! I get to ask the thingy a thingy!” The ecstatic pink pony was bouncing like a foal (or a Pinkie Pie) on Hearth's Warming Morning.
“Yes Pinkie. Yes, it's your turn. You can ask it a question if you Just. Stop. Bouncing.” Twilight said in an effort to calm her friend down. She almost regretted doing this because Pinkie did indeed stop bouncing. Unfortunately she stopped while still in mid air, something that always bothered the physicist in Twilight.
Pinkie gently floated to the ground, ignorant to her defiance of gravity and its effect on her friend's mental well-being. The mare rushed over to the 'What If' machine and stuck her head completely inside the phonograph horn and said, “Oh my gosh! What should I ask? There are so many what if's and could be's and would be's and should be's and what not's and why for's and whither to's and ooh I just can't decide!”
Rainbow Dash perked up, “Well, if you need more time to think about it I coul-”
“Oh! I know what to ask!” Pinkie cut the pegasus off, who pouted with a huff. Taking a deep breath the party pony asked, “Oh magical mystery movie machine, what if we all lived in a fan fiction?”
The mechanism whirred to life and the flickering light filled the projection screen. Sitting down to view the show the six friends saw an image of the backs of six mares sitting in front of a screen watching an image of six mares watching a screen of etcetera. In fact the etcetera went on forever.
Twilight slowly tuned her head around, relieved to only see the basement wall behind her. Her on screen counterparts also turned their heads and were equally relieved. Tuning back she lifted her hoof in the air, and sure enough the other Twilights did the same.
“Well, this is weird.” The purple mare said. This statement was proven true by the echo effect coming from the machine's speaker. It was as if a million Twilights were speaking simultaneously, the nightmare of anyone who had ever been at the business end of one of her lectures.
“Oh. My. Gosh!” a wide eyed Pinkie exclaimed, “This is the coolest thing ever! And listen, we sound all funny! Echo! Echoo... eCHoo... eeeEChooo...”
Pinkie collapsed in a fit of giggles, while most of her friends were still too dumbfounded to react. She then got up and raced to the back wall of the basement, staring at it with an excited grin. “This is so cool! Woo, wooo, woo, wooo.” As the mare moved her head in and out, the face of the Pinkie on screen bobbed closer and further with each 'woo'. What was most unnerving for the audience though was the fact that the projected Pinkie seemed to be staring directly at them.
“Oh oh! I know! I know!” Inspiration struck Pinkie. She about-faced and lifted her rump, wiggling it at the wall behind her giggling, “Look at my butt! look at my butt!”
And indeed, said butt was on the screen for the world to see. This image left the five seated ponies struggling with embarrassment, and several other emotions they found deeply confusing.
“Ooo, this'll be the best trick!” Pinkie backed away from the wall, and with a bounding leap ran straight for it. Just as Projected Pinkie went as far as she could go, Solid Pinkie tore through the silk screen, landing on her back hooves with a proud “Tad-ah!”
The seated mares screeched and fell backwards. Twilight had had enough of this, clutching her pounding chest she shouted, “Pinkie! What the buck!”
“What? I've always been able to break the fourth wall, but this time I was actually able to break through the fourth wall.”
Twilight was about to yell at her friend some more, when a cold feeling of dread washed over her. She turned around, hoping against hope that there would be nothing there. There was nothing there. Or rather, there was her basement wall, and in it there was a hole that contained nothing, it was filled to the brim with nothing. Twilight gazed into the outer void, the space between space that mortal eyes are not meant to see. Then the Earth shook.
Space inside the library twisted and convulsed, like the death throes of some animal. The ponies screamed as time and space tore themselves apart. Twilight grabbed Pinkie by the shoulders and shook her as she cried, “Pinkie! You didn't break the fourth wall, you broke the BUCKING UNIVERSE!”
“Oopsie.” Pinkie said with an apologetic smile.
With that Twilight was sucked into the void. She was propelled through a tunnel of color and light, her physical body was stripped away, leaving her mind in a world of pure sensation. She became aware of what was around her and realized she had been here before, or someplace like it. It was when she had traveled back in time, the split second between disappearing and reappearing had been like this. But she was not traveling through time, she was traveling outside of time. Outside of time, outside of space.
“My Goddess, it's full of etcetera.”
Then all sensation stopped. Sight returned, and she gazed upon the universe. The entire universe. She focused in on the Earth and saw it as it is, was, and shall be. Time is not linear when viewed from the outside, it merely is, just as space merely is. All at once the planet before her was a ball of molten rock, a lush fertile paradise, a dead planet, a primordial sea, a frozen wasteland. She saw it orbit a strange sun which disappeared for unknown reasons. She saw Celestia's sun form and begin and end its orbit. She saw herself, fetus, foal, filly, mare, she was all of them. She would have seen even more if it wasn't for the damned monolith.
Darkness.
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“My turn! My turn! It's my turn now! I get to ask the thingy a thingy!” The ecstatic pink pony was bouncing like a foal (or a Pinkie Pie) on Hearth's Warming Morning.
“Yes Pinkie. Yes, it's your turn. You can ask it a question if you Just. Stop. Bouncing.” Twilight said in an effort to calm her friend down. She almost regretted doing this because Pinkie did indeed stop bouncing. Unfortunately she stopped while still in mid air, something that always bothered the physicist in Twilight.