It was almost time to leave. Meg made one last check of her computer. To her total lack of surprise, the program to crack that mysterious message was still running. It hadn’t yet found the encryption key.
It seemed so long ago that she had gotten that message at the Ed Sullivan Theater. As hard as it was to believe, with everything that’s happened, only a little over a week had passed since that day.
Out of desperation, she had resorted to doing a brute force dictionary search, including the usual “clever” misspellings, combined with various personal information. It was going to take a long time to exhaust all the possibilities.
Too long.
And if the key was a random string of bits, like it should be…
Maybe in a century or two a magical quantum computer could crack it effortlessly. All she had to do was to convince Twilight to crack the encryption once it was possible, in that hypothetical distant future, then travel back in time to give her the decrypted message. It could be left on the bookshelf, under the infamous Pinkie Pie doll.
Well, why not? Meg reached up and lifted the doll with one hand and felt around for the message with the other.
Nothing.
She slammed the doll back down, its adorable smile unperturbed. There were any number of possible explanations, ranging from the impossibility of magical quantum computers to Twilight refusing to do it. Whatever. Why was irrelevant; it hadn’t happened, so it won’t happen. There was no point in bringing it up with the alicorn.
She checked the time on her phone. It was close enough. She put the phone in her purse and left.
Meg hadn’t been sure who’d be at the meeting. Andrew, obviously, since it was being held in his home. Joe, his second-in-command was there too. Only one other was present, Elaine the head of PR and Marketing. They were three of the four that Twilight had brought to her castle.
Barely had she sat on a sofa around a coffee table that Andrew got down to business. “Any feedback on our auction items?” he asked.
Nope, it wasn’t going to go smoothly. She put on a weak smile. “Things… have been happening, and there hasn’t been a chance to look into that yet.”
“You mean that break-in at the D.o.E., where you work?”
Meg looked at Elaine, shocked by her question. “I never mentioned where I worked.”
“My brother, Eric Tanner, works there too. You know him, don’t you?”
He’s your brother? That was news to her. And it was obvious from her tone that she was really asking something else, and the answer to that question was Tartarus. “He never mentioned he was a brony, or that his sister helped run a convention,” Meg carefully said.
“Oh, he’s no brony,” Elaine said. “I was surprised he had taken that job, once I found out what it was about. But…” Words failed her for a moment. “I haven’t been able to reach him since that break-in. It’s like he vanished. Maybe something happened to him…?”
Meg stalled for time. “Did you talk to the police or the FBI?”
“I did. Neither had anything to tell me.”
Of course not. All anyone would say publicly was that an investigation was ongoing, without a word about the captured perpetrators. The news channels had already moved on from the actual crime and onto the work that was being done there, the application of magic here on Earth—work that had until recently been classified, then not publicized, and now front page news. Neither Meg nor her co-workers had talked to reporters, and not from a lack of trying on their part.
She wasn’t in a position to tell her anything about her brother either. “I wasn’t there when it happened.”
“I’m sorry,” Elaine said, lifting her hands to her face. She lowered them a few seconds later. “Didn’t mean to hijack the meeting.”
She hadn’t challenged her claim to have been elsewhere when it had happened. Meg would pass that bit of information along, for what good it would do; whatever her brother had got himself involved with, Elaine didn’t seem to be a part of it. “It’s okay,” Meg told her. “It’s not irrelevant to this meeting, unfortunately.”
“Could someone clue us in?” Joe asked.
Meg turned to him. “You haven’t been paying attention to the news, have you?”
A light shrug was her answer.
“We were doing research into how magic can be used to solve problems here on Earth. Our offices were ransacked. I can’t go into details, but this very much concerns the Equestrians. Which means it concerns President Serrell.” She then turned to Andrew. “Trust me, this all concerns the subject of this meeting.”
“Auctioning off Pinkie’s cupcakes?” he asked with raised eyebrow.
“And if protesters show up condemning the ‘special ingredient’ of her cupcakes?”
He looked askance at that. “Really?”
“During Twilight’s talk show circuit debut, the nutcases were outside protesting the coming Conversion Bureaus. Are we prepared to deal with crap like that?”
His mouth worked soundlessly.
“Will the convention center want to deal with it? The local authorities?”
Andrew found his voice. “We haven’t had any pushback… yet. But depending on how this plays out, perhaps it would be wise to prepare for that possibility.” He bore an overly eager smile. “If lemons are in the forecast, best be prepared to make lemonade.”
Meg wasn’t sure if he was being too optimistic—or she was being too pessimistic. It was hard to be otherwise when your relatives were being dragged into it.
“So, for now, let’s assume the show will go on.” He addressed Meg. “Any update on the Daring Do book signing tour? Like, uh, who will show up to do the actual signing?”
The actual question being asked was rather hard to miss. “I haven’t heard anything.” It was true; technically, she didn’t know which alter ego would show up. “But I can’t imagine recent events are helping.”
“Just come out and say it,” Joe said.
Meg put on an enigmatic smile. At least it was better than talking about break-ins or kidnappings. “I have met the author of the Daring Do books.”
Andrew rolled his eyes. “Obviously that must be the real Daring Do, or there wouldn’t be a need for all the mystery.”
Meg was prepared for that. “Not necessarily,” she said. “A. K. could put on a Daring Do costume as a marketing gimmick.” It wasn’t a half-bad idea, actually, now that she’d said it. Make the “costume” a bit less than convincing, and “act” like Daring instead of “being” Daring. Perhaps she ought to suggest it to her.
If the book signing tour happened at all.
“You’re serious,” Elaine said to the two Secret Service agents in the room.
Twilight answered for them. “You can blame this on me, if it makes you feel better.”
She thought it over, and assented with a nod.
Meg handed her the tablet. Pinkie Pie’s stern visage stared from its screen.
Elaine gulped. “Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”
“Your Pinkie Promise has been duly notarized.” The party pony instantly brightened. “Gotta go! I’ve got a superific birthday party to plan for Dinky!”
Pinkie pronked away from the camera. Spike took her place and with a roll of his eyes closed the connection. Elaine handed the tablet back to Meg then turned back to the agents. “Where’s he being held?”
Agent Fowler pointed at Twilight.
Elaine turned towards the pony.
“He’s being held in Tartarus, along with his four co-conspirators. I can take you there right now.”
“What?!”
Twilight sighed. “I’m sorry, but you need to understand,” she began. “The office was being ransacked when we arrived—me, Sunset Shimmer, and Moondancer. When I confronted them, they pointed a gun at me and tried to take me prisoner, believing I had no magic. They were wrong, unfortunately for them.”
“Eric doesn’t even have a gun!”
“He was elsewhere in the building,” Twilight admitted. “I brought them all back to Equestria. I threatened them with sentencing them for their crime against an Equestrian sovereign, hoping they would cooperate with the agents here in exchange for being returned.”
“They wouldn’t budge, including Eric,” Agent Reubens said. “I was authorized to let them cool their heels in Tartarus. If you could get your brother to cooperate, he can come back with us. He won’t go free, right now, but we’ll be more than happy to cut a deal with him.”
Elaine violently shook her head. “No! This is crazy. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“He was an active participant in the looting,” Twilight softly told her. “He was the inside man.”
“There’s more,” Meg said. “They are adamant that they kidnapped me from my office. It’s an idiotic lie, as I was in Las Pegasus at the time—”
“I saw her off at the Ponyville train station myself,” Twilight said. “But they did have her key card, somehow, and used it to access a restricted room, a room your brother did not have access to.”
“I can only assume Eric somehow stole it from me before I went home on Friday.”
“No. Please, enough.”
Silence reigned as Elaine processed it all.
“Just… just take me to him.”
The Gates of Tartarus loomed before them, embedded high on the side of a mountain cliff. However much Twilight wished she could have used her portal spell, it only granted passage in one direction: inside. To leave, they’d have to pass through these gates anyway. The Zephyr would remain here, docked against the wide, level protrusion in front of the gates, waiting for their return.
“To be honest,” Agent Reubens said, contemplating the widely spaced bars comprising the oversized gates, “it doesn’t look all that escape-proof.”
Nor were there any guards present. There did not appear to be any way to open the gates, but that hardly mattered. A pair of elephants, side by side, could have passed between those bars.
“Looks can be deceiving.” Twilight trotted up to and through a pair of thick bars—easy enough to do in their inactive state, as they currently were. But Star Swirl the Bearded had designed the metal and crystal composite used to upgrade the gates many centuries ago. They would be quite impassable when the need called for it.
If somepony realized that the need called for it, as the Tirek incident had reminded everypony. How Cerberus had left his post, never mind how he wound up in Ponyville hundreds of miles away, was still unknown.
Twilight stopped and turned around. “It’s perfectly safe.”
Meg landed in front of the gates and walked through; Twilight had warned her about flying through them. Next, Reubens walked through like he was taking a stroll through a park. Fowler was looking up, taking in the entirety of the structure. “Isn’t Tartarus supposed to be deep inside Hades?” she asked.
Meg was having none of that. “Just go with it,” she said. “We already know that Greek mythology is wrong about many things.”
But it’s right about so many others, Twilight thought. How that could be was still an unsolved mystery.
“I suppose it’s just as well,” Fowler said, her gaze drifting down to the ponies on the other side of the bars. “The entrance to Hades is supposed to be guarded by hydras.”
“H-Hydras?” Elaine stuttered.
Twilight took a few calm steps back to the entrance. “Don’t worry. The nearest hydras are in Froggy Bottom Bogg, hundreds of miles from here.”
Fowler put a hand on Elaine’s shoulder. “The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can leave.”
She shivered in the warm sun. “Right,” she said, trying to convince herself. “Have faith in the alicorn princess.” She took hesitant steps forward, Fowler remaining by her side. “Why couldn’t this remain a cartoon,” she muttered.
Twilight’s equine ears had no problem hearing that. She, herself, had begun to wonder if contact with the human realm was worth the trouble. It would be so easy to have Discord dispose of those plaid pills, and for her to forget that their realm had ever existed. She glanced at the pegasus behind her. No reason they couldn’t be offered a choice—if it should come to that.
Elaine and Agent Fowler continued walking until they joined the others, on the other side of the gates. “So now what?” the agent asked.
They were in an enormous cavern, seemingly natural. At the far end, not all that far away, was a gigantic opening in the floor. Twilight began walking towards it. “Follow me.”
They did. The ground gently curved into the hole. As they got closer, the entire cavern seemed to rotate, always keeping “down” perpendicular to the ground. That did not go unnoticed by the others. “I assume there’s a logical explanation for this,” Fowler said, looking around in bewilderment. “And please just don’t say it’s ‘magic.’”
“Tartarus is a realm of its own, joined to our own realm at the Gates,” Twilight explained. “It’s what makes escape impossible—almost impossible—that and the fact that magic is very weak here.”
Which was why she had warned Meg not to fly through those bars. Flight wasn’t impossible, but it was difficult enough that it might as well be.
The throat at the back of the cavern was the opening of a tunnel comfortably wide enough for an ursa minor. They continued walking along the curved path. Long after the daylight from the other realm had faded to nothing, the interior remained evenly illuminated by means unknown, illumination that casted no shadows upon the solid rock around them.
“I’m pretty sure we should have returned to our starting point by now,” Meg said, her pegasus sense of direction telling her they’ve made a full circle. The tunnel’s curvature had been unvarying, the downhill gradient in front of them always getting steeper. Yet somehow the ground remained level as they “descended.” It was as if the tunnel was rotating in the opposite direction as fast as they walked.
As an alicorn, Twilight shared that sense; she also understood why this time it had failed. “The two realms are next to each other in hyperspace. This tunnel is displacing us through extra dimensions. We’re about halfway through.”
They hadn’t gone a dozen steps before the next question came. “How does gravity work in this tunnel?” Elaine asked.
Twilight searched for an answer. “I don’t know,” she said, having come up with nothing. “The illumination’s a mystery too. There’s much we don’t understand about this realm. It just… exists.”
They continued on in silence, the illumination becoming more reddish-orange the further they went. A minute later, the view opened up to a subterranean world—not that “subterranean” was technically correct, there being no surface world to be under.
A gigantic, three-headed bulldog came charging at them. All except Twilight stepped back from the oncoming onslaught. Cerberus halted in front of the alicorn and his middle head proceeded to slather her in saliva. The other two heads glared warily at the others.
“I missed you too,” she struggled to say. Cerberus had a big tongue. With her magic she kept his affection at hoof’s length. “They are with me,” she declared, wings flared in royal display. “You are to grant them passage both in and out.”
The other heads relaxed. Cerberus turned around started walking back to his cot near the guard station, his tail wagging.
“Isn’t he supposed to have a serpent’s tail?” Fowler asked.
Why she kept insisting on the inerrancy of that mythology was beyond Twilight’s understanding. It had been proven erroneous enough times, after all. “No, he’s supposed to have a dog’s tail,” she replied. “Please don’t bother the minotaur guards with questions like these.”
They came to the end of the tunnel and entered the large cavern. Numerous passages lined the walls, each as wide as the tunnel they had just traversed. Even from where they stood, it was obvious that some of those passages went up and others went down.
In the middle of the cave was the guard station, and a short distance away Cerberus was lying on his enormous cot. An armored minotaur was already coming their way. Twilight went forward to meet him. Once they reached each other, the guard bowed. “Your Highness,” he said, ignoring the humans and pegasus behind her.
“We shall be visiting the human prisoners,” Twilight said. “I already know the way.”
The minotaur bowed once more. “Understood.”
Twilight led them to one of the downward-sloping passages, which led to the region of Tartarus in which Tirek was imprisoned.
As they walked across to the passage, two of Cerberus’ heads idly watched them walk by; the third head was snoozing. One head usually was asleep. They took turns. It was how he guarded around the clock.
The passage threaded its way through the solid rock, going ever deeper—not that it felt that way. As before, “down” was perpendicular to the ground. This tunnel, however, was as straight as an arrow. Every now and then, other passages branched off of it.
Twilight took one of them, a passage that “descended” even faster. “Only a few minutes more,” she told the others. No other passages branched off of this one. They reached a bend, and on the other side of it was yet another cavern. Most of the ground within was occupied by buildings, each seemingly carved from a single block of rock. High above them, additional buildings covered the ceiling. Scattered throughout the interior were wide pillars connecting the top and bottom. The opposite end of the cavern was difficult to see, it was so far away.
A guard station was next to the opening. One of the minotaur guards came to meet them.
Twilight repeated her earlier statement. “We shall be visiting the human prisoners,” Twilight said. “I already know the way.”
The guard bowed. “Understood.” He returned to his station.
The alicorn set out into the interior on a path leading straight to the nearest pillar. “Not much farther,” she assured them.
The pillar was rectangular in shape, far wider than it was thick, looking like a humongous I-beam, thicker at the very ends. At its base, it spread out to form a curved ramp that met the road. Twilight didn’t slow down as she reached it.
The others stopped. “Are you crazy?!” Elaine gasped.
Twilight kept on walking. “Nope.” The cavern rotated around her as the ever shifting gravity created the illusion of level ground. She didn’t stop until she was standing on the pillar. There she waited, looking up—for the others were now the ones standing on a vertical plane.
Meg moved first, holding out her wings just in case. She looked around her as she climbed the ramp. “It’s just like that first tunnel,” she said, folding back her wings. She trotted the remainder of the way to join up with Twilight.
“Our turn now,” Reubens said as he started walking. The other two followed suit.
Once they had all regrouped, they walked across the pillar to what had been the ceiling but had become the floor. “The building on the right, after this one,” Twilight said.
Fowler looked up at the former floor. “Any chance we can get some of our scientists in here to study the wonky gravity?” She looked back at the alicorn. “If it wouldn’t be disruptive to running a prison, naturally.”
It was an intriguing proposition. Being a different realm, the physics could well be different. She’d assumed the “wonky” gravity was due to spells, but magic was different here too. “Not all caverns hold prisoners,” she said. “After all, the minotaurs have to live somewhere. I’m sure something could be arranged.”
“I’m sure Steve would want to get involved with that,” Meg said. “His special talent would be quite useful.”
Indeed it would. It was a reminder that there were, in fact, reasons to keep open relations with the human realm.
They reached their destination. The door was open; immediately inside was another guard station. Only two guards were present.
One of the minotaurs stood up and bowed. “Your Highness, what can we do for you?”
“We're here to speak with the human prisoners.”
“Who are the members of your party?” the seated minotaur asked. Their names would be written down in a logbook.
“These two are Agents Fowler and Reubens, representing the prisoners’ country of origin. This is Elaine, sister of one of the prisoners, and this is Meg, a Royal Advisor to the Equestrian Court.”
That raised a few human eyebrows, to Meg’s chagrin. I’ll deal with that later. Once the names were all recorded, the standing guard unlocked and opened a door comprised of thick metal bars. He held it open as Twilight and the others walked through. The door closed behind them with a thick metallic thud and relocked with a sharp clank.
A deep and carrying voice drifted from far down the corridor. “Is that Princess Twilight Sparkle I hear?” In a mocking voice, he continued. “Am I to receive a precious friendship lesson?”
Fowler pointed down the corridor and in a whisper asked, “Tirek?”
“Yes,” Twilight confirmed in an equally hushed voice. “Ignore him for now.” She had a sonic barrier spell ready in the likely event he wouldn’t shut up.
The corridor went to the far end of the building. At regular intervals, it intersected other corridors. Twilight led them to the second intersection and turned left. It ended in a wall a short distance away. One door was present along the wall, both constructed of metal bars. There Twilight finally stopped.
“Where’s my friendship lesson!”
Perhaps it had been a mistake to put them in the same building as Tirek. Using far more exertion than would ordinarily have been needed, Twilight put up a sonic barrier just before the intersection. Blessed silence was her reward.
Eric Tanner had noticed her arrival. “Tirek really did hear you this time, I guess.” He slid off the cot and got to his feet.
“I have some people who wish to talk to you, Eric.”
He approached the bars. “Who did you bring this time? The CIA?” He turned away. “Still have nothing to say.”
The Secret Service agents stepped into view. “Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s just us again,” Reubens said. “But we did bring someone else.” He waved Elaine over and stepped back.
Eric turned his head and froze.
His sister looked around the cell. “Doesn’t look so bad, really. I was sorta expecting a cage… you know… like the one—” she glanced over her shoulder “—he was in after Twilight defeated him.”
He swept his arms around his cell. “This is reality, not some damn cartoon.” His eyes locked on to the alicorn. “They’re not warm, fuzzy, innocent creatures with nothing but the best of intentions for us.”
“What have I done to deserve this enmity,” Twilight asked, genuinely curious.
His arms fell to his sides. “It’s about what you could do, what you will do. First, you somehow get that cartoon made, to lull everyone into a false sense of security.” He glanced at his sister. “Some drank it up all too eagerly. Now that your propaganda has laid the foundation, you’re here to begin your conquest.” He looked up at the agents. “Your boss is guilty of treason against the human race.”
Meg stepped into view. “So the ends justify any means? Your ‘friends’ kidnapped my niece to blackmail me into getting you out of here.”
Elaine gasped. “They did?”
His eyes went wide, but only for a second. He looked down at the pegasus in disgust. “So it’s true. You literally have become one of them.”
“How about you answer the question,” Elaine demanded.
He looked away. “I guess they’re willing to do what needs to be done to save humanity.”
Elaine grabbed the bars. “You guess? Will you listen to yourself? You think ponies are bad? What about your associates? How did you even get mixed up with that crowd?”
Eric sat down on his cot. “Why are you all here? To make an exchange, us for the girl?”
“Nope,” Fowler said. “Thanks to Twilight, she’s already been rescued. Everyone involved in that kidnapping has been identified.”
“I’m not sure I believe you. What’s the point of coming here then?”
“If you’ll just cooperate,” Elaine shouted, “you can come back with us, to Earth!”
“We’re willing to offer you an immunity deal,” Reubens said.
Eric laid down, taking his time to answer. “A jail is a jail. I have to admit, this isn’t what I expected from Tartarus. It’s not so bad, for a jail. Even that Tirek fellow isn’t so bad, once you learn to tune him out.”
So much for imprisoning them next to Tirek. The Tartarus and Tirek cards had been played, and the round lost.
Meg walked away. “I’ve heard enough,” she said just loudly enough for Twilight to hear. She went through the sonic barrier and around the corner.
In that direction was Tirek’s cell. Twilight was tempted to join her. It was conceivable the humans had mentioned things in the centaur’s presence, though admittedly it was a long shot that Tirek would share such tidbits with them. But first she had one last angle to play. “They can’t hear you—your co-conspirators that is. I’ve put up a sonic barrier.”
Meg walked towards the mocking voice, her hoof steps only egging him on.
“I can’t wait for my friendship lesson!”
She had no idea what she’d do once she reached Tirek’s prison. There was nothing she cared to say to him, and it was rather unlikely he had anything to say that she would care to hear. It was out of curiosity, mostly, that she wanted to see the vanquished archvillain—that and to be anywhere other than that… traitor?
Traitor to what? His workplace? To the United States? To the Earth? No, in their eyes they were trying to save it all from the pony apocalypse. Anything to accomplish that was justified. Wasn’t it a common sci-fi trope to go back in time to kill Hitler as an innocent baby in order to prevent the atrocities he’d commit as an adult? That time travel didn’t work that way was beside the point; it was the principle that mattered.
“Hurry up! The anticipation is killing me!”
How could they be convinced the ponies were no threat? That the cartoon was not some sinister propaganda created by the Equestrians?
But how did she know it wasn’t? That the ponies hadn’t been feeding her a pack of lies, using her as a pawn in their plans? Even if Twilight was too naive to pull that off, Celestia certainly could. Was that the real reason she was so quick to make her a Royal Advisor?
It still made no sense. They couldn’t colonize a world that lacked magic. Nuclear magic generators were far from sufficient, both in terms of the amount of magic they could produce and of the types of magic permissible in the human universe.
“I can’t wait to be reformed, like my old friend Discord, so that I too can go free!”
Meg reached the end of the corridor. Following the voice, she turned right. And there he was; beyond the bars stood Tirek. He was tall, even by human standards, and well-muscled, but he was little threat to anyone behind those bars—assuming his magic-stealing ability had been neutralized. It had to have been, by the realm of Tartarus itself if nothing else; that’s what made it a good prison.
For a change, he looked more like how a mythological centaur ought to look. The upper torso and head were completely human. No horns, not even stubs, projected from his head. He looked southern Mediterranean, with olive skin, his face lacking any bovine or equine features. However the cartoon depicted him in his defeat, in the flesh he looked quite young and healthy.
Tirek got one good look at her and started laughing his head off.
“I fail to see the joke.”
He pointed a finger at her, still laughing. “You’re not Twilight.”
“And that’s supposed to be funny?”
His laughter finally subsided. “It has been a long time, Common Ground.”