Charter-Princess Twilight Sparkle was mildly surprised to find the ‘grinder’ room of her castle empty. There was always some scientist in here, observing the magitechnical apparatus as it attempted to locate new universes connected to Equis Vitis.
She approached the machine and laid a hoof on one of its edges. The grinder had the shape of a barrel with a reverse funnel seated on top, the device only barely taller than Twilight. Most of the magical crystals and electrical wires were contained within the barrel, though a couple snaked out the bottom and along the floor. The front face of the grinder held a single screen, continually cycling through dimensional coordinates it attempted to connect to, usually projecting a big red X to indicate failure.
Twilight knew it was missing universes – it wasn’t being powered by a green diamond, so it wouldn’t know if any of the universes it was trying were just too far away to connect to. Twilight contemplated taking one of the diamonds just to see, but that would be frivolous. Plus, the two they did have were doing important things. One was still at the Hub, working the primary Mirror Portal, while the other was at the Nexus Universe they had discovered a couple months ago, powering a much larger and more successful grinder machine. This little one in Equis Vitis was essentially just a hobbyist’s version of the real deal.
They still owed Chancellor Fluttershy of Equis Concretion for allowing them to use their diamond.
As a single check mark flicked across the grinder’s screen for a second, indicating a success. Twilight found herself pondering the diamonds. They were non-magical power sources that had been found only within dimensional devices – and they had only seen two of the spheres. One’s origin was a mystery, having been recovered by the Concretion in the early days of its construction, and the other she herself had picked up off the ground on the day this whole adventure started…
It had been how many years now? Five? She was sure it was more than that, but it was getting hard to keep track of time with all the dilation she experienced. She might have actually spent six years exploring, even if only five had passed here, for all she knew. Sparky didn’t have a good working theory of time dilation between universes yet, unfortunately.
All of this, because of that one sphere… Who had made it? Who was that man of light? Who was the unicorn chasing him? Why had they only run across scant pockets of multiversal individuals? Twilight went over the list in her head. There was Vriska, Rick, the Doctor, Thrackerzod’s people, maybe the Stars, and whoever it was in the University of Doors. But none of them had used the diamond to get around. Luck, gun, blue phone box, rituals, whatever strange cosmic thing the Stars used, and doors.
She got the feeling there was something much bigger out there. She’d been getting that feeling a lot lately, with alarming rapidity. She was beginning to fear it was an omen. She found herself wondering what could be worse than the horror of Majora…
An error code flashed across the grinder’s screen, returning Twilight’s attention to the machine. Error: Connection Will Not Disengage.
Twilight raised an eyebrow. That was odd – portals would only refuse to disengage if they were being held open from the other end. Twilight prodded the grinder with her magic, latching onto the microscopic portal that was used to test the connection validity. She hooked it up to the power running through the castle and expanded it until it was large enough for her to walk through.
Through the portal was a sight that made her choke on her breath.
There was an identical room on the other side. Nothing all that unusual, except there was a grinder machine in there, one of the exact same design. Standing over this grinder was not a version of Twilight – it was Charter-Princess Twilight sparkle, complete with uneven coat, windswept mane, and metal-lined ears. The only differences the other side of the portal had were the other Twilight’s orientation away from the portal and the error message on her version of the grinder. Error: Recursive Connection.
“What in the,” Twilight said, taking a steps back. The other Charter-Twilight must have detected something - a change in the air, a difference in lighting, or a vibration in the floor - because she turned around and locked eyes with Twilight. They stared at each other for a solid minute, making the portal into almost a perfect mirror, the error messages being the only means of differentiation.
Just to make sure they weren’t looking at a mirror, both Twilights glanced behind themselves at their grinders – yep. The error messages were different. They locked eyes with each other once again.
“What is going on?” They said at the same time. Then they both facehooved. “Oh come on, really? We didn’t start in the same position, why have we synced up? Okay, before we can continue, we need to find a way to break the cycle. Hitting won’t work, it’ll just make us upset. Oh! Here we go, just read the error on the other side of the mirror! A difference! Ahem. ERROR-“
The two spoke at the same time. The ‘recursive connection’ Twilight finished first. “Okay, so we broke that. Good. Now, the big question, what is going on here?”
The original Twilight glanced back at her error message. “It looks like my grinder connected to your universe while your universe tried to connect to itself?”
“That doesn’t make any sense, why would the grinder try to connect to the universe its in!?”
“The universe was moved? The Nexus altered the connection coordinates, it’s not beyond possibility.”
“But what feat of engineering would be required to move an entire universe in… Whatever it is the universes are in.”
“A mystery. How about we perform an experiment?” the original Twilight took out a dimensional device. “How about I try to dial my own universe, see what happens?”
“I’ll do the same.”
They did. The original Twilight’s device gave the Recursive Connection error, while the other Twilight’s created a portal that led right to the original Twilight’s universe, creating two portals.
“Okay,” the original Twilight said. “Strange. For some reason your devices seem to think this is home. So… I don’t know what this means.”
“This means you get ‘original’ dibs and I get ‘other’ dibs.”
“We need to find a way to differentiate ourselves from each other…”
They both had the idea in quick succession, but other Twilight acted first. She summoned a marker from the downstairs of her castle. She scribbled a big black X on the grinder, and then a matching X on her front left hoof. “There.”
“You are Twilight-X?”
“Yep. It’ll work for now.”
“I know.”
“I know you know.”
“This is silly.”Twilight blinked. “So, now that that’s out of the way… Twilight-X. Can I come to your universe?”
“By all means,” Twilight-X said. “Let’s see if we can put our two heads together to figure out what’s going on.”
“We’ll blow away all the competition,” Twilight said, stepping through the portal. “…I’ll leave it open. Don’t want to change any more variables than needed.”
“Mhm. Here’s what we know. We know that we are Charter-Princess Twilight Sparkle, and we’re probably identical. We should probably test that. What names do your friends go by?”
“Nova, Renee, Flutterfree, and Pinkie is still Pinkie, forevermore.”
“What did Pinkie call herself once last week on Tuesday?”
“Palaloozalala. That’s not a fair question, I could have – oh, right. If I didn’t remember correctly, but you did…”
“Bingo! So, we are exactly the same. Actually…”
“Were you thinking in depth about the diamonds and getting existential in the grinder room?”
“Yes. And then the Error message popped up, and that’s where our experiences diverge.”
“Oh this is so fascinating! Your grinder apparently tries to dial your own universe, while mine dials yours and can’t close for some reason. But when you try to dial home, you dial my universe…”
“Wait, hold on,” Twilight-X said, waving a hoof. “All universes need to have a unique coordinate system. Let’s both try to dial Earth Vitis.”
They did, and neither of their devices made the connection.
“There’s no connection to it from here,” Twilight said, rubbing her chin. “That’s fascinating… What could this mean?”
At that point, Spike (or, more accurately, Spike-X) ran into the room. “None of the dimensional devices are working Twilight! They all give errors and – oh.”
Both Twilights started talking at the same time. “Yeah, we’ve probably got something to do with that. Ugh, now we’re talking in sync again. Say the other’s name on three, two, one.” They separated themselves by a simple use of an ‘X’.
Twilight continued talking. “I think this means something… bizarre, Twilight-X. Your devices don’t work unless they want to connect to my universe. It’s almost as if they’re calibrated for my universe, and think they are in my universe. I would say it was my universe that moved, but we can see it through that portal. Which means…”
“This universe is a copy of yours!” Twilight-X said. “And it had to be made the moment your grinder connected to it… That may be why your portal couldn’t close, it needed to stay open to copy the universe.”
“What did? What is it?”
“I have no idea! I mean, I should probably be literally freaking out right now that I’m just a copy of you that didn’t exist a couple seconds ago, but I’m just too excited about what this might mean. We may have come across something that can build universes! Get some insight into how universes came to be, what they mean, and perhaps form a more coherent theory of what the multiverse actually is!”
“I’m calling all the scientists!” Twilight said, pulling out her phone and turning on her ears. She was too excited to register the pain. She levitated the phone over into her universe, the original, so not to cause conflict with ‘universe X’. “This is Charter-Princess Twilight Sparkle calling Hub Laboratories. I’ve got something amazing for you!”
“Twilight, this is the second time you’ve called this mo-“
“I found a universe that copied my universe. I’m standing next to a perfect duplicate of myself! Say hello, Twilight-X!”
“Hello!” Twilight-X said. “You should really come over here, I think this universe is about to have a dimensional device connection ordeal. Also a bunch of existential dread that hasn’t hit me yet. Just get everyone you can, we’ve got to check this place out!”
“…We’ll be right out.”
Twilight hung up the phone and turned off her ears. “This is going to further our multidimensional theory so far!”
“I know! And now there’s two of us to do things! We could swap places on adventures and other stuff, like Pinkie does!”
“But what about your friends?”
“Oh, right, they do exist… We could just make two teams! Or… Yeah we should think about this later, after we actually know what’s going on.”
“Which we don’t.”
Spike-X coughed, the motion of his body drawing their attention. “So… Should I just tell Ponyville that they’re all copies, or… something else?”
Twilight-X blinked. “Right. For now, tell them we’re getting the top scientists to work on the connection problem, and that we’ll have something to tell them about it by the end of the day, but they need to be patient for now.”
Spike nodded. “Got it.” He ran down the stairs to deliver the message.
Twilight and Twilight-X rubbed their hooves together. They both mentally cleared their calendars, even though only Twilight actually had a calendar to clear. Today was to be a day of extreme science!
~~~
A couple hours later, Twilight and Twilight-X were sitting in a the throne room of Universe-X filled with a handful of scientists from across the multiverse. Corona, Carter, Sparky, some alicorn from Equis Cosmic by the name of Alabaster, Starbeat, and a handful of others.
“So…” Twilight began.
“…What do you have for us?” Twilight-X finished. They hoofbumped.
Corona looked at her clipboard and bit her lip. “Well, we’ve got some good news, and some bad news, and the bad news is really, really bad.”
“It’s mostly bad and confusing news,” Alabaster said.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
Carter cleared her throat. “The universe we are in is a direct copy of Equis Vitis, down to the finest detail of memory. However, that is only the physical attributes. Clearly, the connections and placement in the multiverse are different, but there’s more. Using some of our more outlandish methods of analysis – many of which were obtained by analysis of the Nexus universe – we have determined that this universe exists ‘overtop’ of something we’re calling a framework. We have no idea what this framework looks like, if it looks like anything, but we do know its function. It takes connections formed to it, holds them open, and copies the information from the connecting universe into this one.”
Corona spoke next. “The obvious problem being that whenever you connect to this universe from a universe it isn’t already connected to, it overwrites whatever universe was here before. I hate to say it, but the grinder destroyed a universe by connecting to here, and we’ll never know what it was.”
Twilight and Twilight-X stared in horror, their excited expressions gone. They spoke at once. “Ensure the coordinates to this universe never get onto the Directory, and expunge whatever report the grinder sent automatically. We can’t afford to chance this universe being wiped out.”
Sparky nodded. “On it… Charters.” She pulled out a data pad and began making the necessary adjustments.
“Never disengage the portal that the grinder first made,” Alabaster added. “We don’t know if the universe vanishes when there’s no more connections or not.”
“We do have some good news,” Starbeat said. “I figured out enough of the framework to instill a virus spell within it.”
“What?” the Twilights asked.
“Well, I ‘cheated’ in a way. I have a ‘stop’ spell in my inventory that I’ve set to activate whenever the framework activates. Clearly the framework will need to draw a lot of energy to overwrite a universe, so I just told my spell to tap into that energy to stop time whenever the framework activates.”
The Twilights understood this. “So, when it activates, you’ll stop it?”
“Yes. The downside to the spell is that it stops everyone else in it. And I’m not sure it’ll activate quickly enough to prevent universe destruction. It will prevent the framework from ever activating again, afterward. That’s assuming the spell can perpetually draw energy from it…”
“Basically, there’s a lot of assumptions and unknowns involved in what Starbeat’s done,” Corona said. “It’ll probably do something to stop the framework, but the effectiveness is questionable at best, and even at its best it's going to have unfortunate side effects. So it’s probably best to just not activate the framework at all. Keep this universe the way it is, don’t overwrite anything.”
“We probably should prepare an evacuation just in case,” Carter said. “You never know if someone might accidentally tap into this universe and activate the framework.”
Twilight turned to Twilight-X “You’ll need to evacuate the whole planet. And the universe, if the Stars are willing. …I just realized we probably copied Stars here. I wonder what they’re going to think about that.”
Twilight-X nodded. “I’ll write to Princess Celestia and organize the evacuation procedures. We should be able to start moving some ponies at the end of the day.”
“I’ll grab my friends, see if we can help move everyone,” Twilight said.
Twilight-X smiled. “Don’t bring too many over, we can’t be that risky or confusing. Remember, we have just about everypony you have, we can be organized. Well, in Equestria anyway. Getting Tauryl to evacuate will probably take a few weeks…”
“So we just have to keep anyone from dialing this universe for a few weeks.” She glanced at the room of scientists. “So long as nobody knows this place exists, that should be easy. Still be on watch, though. Can’t be careless about this.”
“Now might be a good time to mention this…” Starbeat placed her Beat sensor on the table. “I am getting the highest Beat readings I have ever gotten in my entire life now. The ambient Beat in Equis Vitis has skyrocketed far beyond its regular value, and it was high to begin with. Something is going on with this universe.”
“Could it be that this universe uses the Beat in some way?” Corona asked.
“Possibly,” Starbeat said. “I cannot say for certain. I certainly have no way to use the Beat, or even understand what it does. I can tell you when it’s here, and it’s definitely here. A lot of it is.”
The Twilights smiled at her. “Well, what you’ve told us is still very helpful Starbeat. We know more, and that’s important.”
Starbeat’s bracelet started beeping furiously. She blushed a deep red and rammed her head into the table, grunting. A few seconds passed, and the beeping stopped.
“…You okay?” Corona asked.
“I’m fine,” Starbeat said, lifting herself out of the Beat-stricken stupor. “Twilight, Twilight-X? You might want to go do those things you needed to do before I try to buy you chocolates or something.”
“You’re getting better at resisting it-“ the Twilight’s began.
“The positive reinforcement is not helping!” Starbeat moaned. “I am finding the way you two talk at the same time very attractive right now. Pleeeaaaase just get to what you need to do.”
The Twilights smiled awkwardly and then teleported away.
“Relief…” Starbeat said, laying down on the table and sighing.
“I wonder what it’s like to be you, sometimes,” Corona said.
The bracelet started beeping again. Starbeat started ramming her head into the table over and over again. The scientists quickly filed out of the room, concerned that the higher Beat levels may have been exacerbating Starbeat’s condition.
~~~
Twilight-X was not kidding when she said they could handle it. It had been scarcely an hour since the announcement for evacuation had gone out, and already ponies were forming lines and troops. Nopony had evacuated yet – they were waiting for the entirety of Ponyville to organize before moving anypony, so as to minimize panic. They had done all this with almost no help whatsoever.
That said, Twilight still brought a few friends over to help, even if it was less about helping and more about a certain novelty she wanted ponies to experience.
Flutterfree and Fluterfree-X were working on getting all the animals ready to evacuate. Naturally, the animals would come second after ponies, but that didn’t stop the Flutterfrees from preparing for the eventuality.
They had already been herding rabbits for about ten minutes when Flutterfree said it. “This is bizarre.”
“Try being a clone,” Flutterfree-X said. “I apparently didn’t exist a few hours ago. Nothing I experienced was real…”
“Oh, it was! It really happened, all of it! And all your friends are with you!”
“I guess so. Though the other universes weren’t copied…”
“But they’re still out there. We can share friends, Flutterfree,” Flutterfree said. “I don’t mind sharing.”
“Are you sure you don’t?” Flutterfree-X asked.
“Anypony we might want to ourselves was copied. Though you – we – I – Celestia, this is confusing… You know I’m not interested in anypony now.”
“Yeah,” Flutterfree-X said, getting more rabbits aware of the situation with some simple wing gestures and a soothing smile. “I guess I’m thinking more about what this means. If ponies and entire universes can just be copied… What if we’re eventually able to do that sort of thing with ease? How would we use it for good? Could it be used for good? Or just evil?”
“Going deep already?”
“I’m you and I’m existential, think about it.”
“I just did. Good point.”
“I just…”
“Want to figure out what everything means, if you’re actually making a difference, or if the multiverse is just too big for your kindness to even show up?”
“Yeah. That. What if our kindness does nothing?”
“I… Well I always tell myself that we’ll keep raising ourselves higher until we do do something. Or that I’ll be satisfied doing small things.”
“But that always seems lackluster.”
“It may have been okay before we started exploring, but now it’s not. There are horrors out there we can’t fix.”
“But we have to try.”
“Yeah. …It’s our curse to try and fix everything, isn’t it?”
“Not the worst curse I can think of.”
“Starbeat’s is worse.”
“It definitely is.”
After that, there was silence.
“Do we really have anything to talk about?” Flutterfree-X asked. “We’ve had the same experiences, we already let out our pent-up existential stress…”
“…And any ‘new’ ideas we have will just be the same ones the other is having offset by a few seconds.”
“I already know we’re pondering how things are going to work in the future with two of us.”
“And the answer is to make two teams.”
“And that Pinkie’s swapping habit will be a mess.”
“And that it’s just going to be confusing.”
Flutterfree-X shook her head, guiding a bear to a clearing filled with other bears. “I can only see this getting worse and worse with time… What if there are other identical versions of us out there that aren’t copies?”
“Nobody knows…” Flutterfree said, looking into the sky.
“It’s hard to talk about anything with yourself.”
“I think that might just be a thing we have.”
“And that will clearly go away once we’ve all gotten a couple weeks of different memories. But we’re just so close right now.”
“This isn’t even really a conversation, it’s just us saying what we’re both thinking, over and over.”
“And over.”
“And over.”
They blinked. “Idea, I take west side, you take east. Then we’ll talk about what happened!”
Flutterfree smiled. “That sounds like a great idea.”
~~~
Renee and Renee-X had already finished packing up Renee-X’s clothing line, which was exactly the same as what Renee had in her Boutique. They had gotten over the initial confusion a while ago, and were now sitting at a table, drinking tea.
They had already perfected the art of ‘talking’ without really saying anything. Renee would raise an eyebrow, Renee-X would chuckle softly and wave her hoof in the air, and then Renee would blink slowly and shake her head. The conversation would continue with Renee pulling her hat back slightly and narrowing her eyes, only for Renee-X to flutter her eyelashes, to which Renee reacted with an expression of disgust.
Sweetie Belle-X passed by them, blinked, then shook her head, deciding she wanted no part in this. “I’m going to line up for the evacuation. Please, only one of you show up.”
“Of course, dear,” Renee-X said. “Though I give no guarantees about which one of us it would be!”
Sweetie Belle rolled her eyes and trotted away. The moment she was out of sight the two Renees burst into jovial laughter.
“This is on the top ten weirdest days,” Renee said. “So surreal.”
“Think of what it’s like for me – oh wait! You are!” Both of them found this immensely humorous for some reason, perpetuating their laughter even further.
“Oh what ever shall we do? The absurdity of the situation worms its way under our hats and into our minds, deviously crafting ways to bring forth just one more chuckle, peep, or – dare I say – guffaw!”
“Guffaw!” Renee-X couldn’t stop herself from letting out a loud, rowdy, guffaw.
“Darling, how unladylike!” Renee said, chuckling.
“It’s just you and me and nothing else,” Renee-X said. “An opportunity to try on any sort of look with no issues! Laugh however you want!”
Renee opted to laugh like a deranged hyena that was gargling flubber while choking. The laugh stopped short, bringing on a stark silence to the two unicorns.
The silence was interrupted as they started laughing again.
“This…This should be what Pinkie is doing, not me,” Renee said. “Stars, I do not laugh this much!”
“You do today,” Renee-X observed. “I think we’re just cutting loose as it were. Pretty mild, considering, but still fun. I think.”
“I think as well, and I think that you’re thinking about what we could do with two of ourselves.”
“Pull a twin switcheroo gag. Later, of course, now is a bad time.”
“What about creating dresses twice as fast – wait, no, I don’t make dresses that much anymore.”
“Good cop bad cop on a reluctant politician?”
“Too cruel for the moment. Though file that away for future ideas. Er…”
“Hrm…”
“You know, you think you’d be able to figure out what to do with yourself if there were two of you easily.”
“Yeah. But I – we – or something – are drawing a blank. Huh.”
~~~
Nova-X and Nova touched horns, attempting to create a magical feedback loop in their magical energies and utterly destroy the second law of thermodynamics with their impressive mastery over all things arcane.
Instead, they made an explosion between themselves.
“Seventeenth time’s the charm!” Nova called.
“You bet it is!” Nova-X said. They tried again – and exploded again.
“Eighteen?”
“We’ll never know unless we try!”
It took until attempt thirty-eight before the feedback loop stopped perpetuating itself.
Nova blew on her horn. “Okay, X-me, we need to try some other combo spell that could only be conjured with two nearly identical minds.”
“One that does not involve the mind-reading echo chamber.”
“Clearly not, that’d just be an utter disaster for everypony involved.”
“Oooh! I know!”
“The infinite moonshot manticore mouthdive!”
“Oh, I could get Trixie! …Actually, bad idea, she’d try to take over.”
“But we can invite the Trixies later! For now, we need to summon a manticore from nothing.”
“Easier said than done.”
“Psh, both of us can do it if we work together! I take left side you take the right.”
The two of them began meshing atoms together from the air into the shape of a manticore, complete with yellow fur and red mane. Ten minutes later, they were finished and ecstatic.
Then they realized they hadn’t sewn the two halves together and the fleshy mass spilled into two piles.
“Ech,” Nova said, taking a few steps back. “That was a really bad idea.”
“We even got the skeletal structure wrong,” Nova-X said.
“I don’t think that’s a spleen…”
“We suck at this.”
“Clearly.”
“New plan! I shoot lasers, you catch all of them, then we measure how much power we’ve accumulated!”
“By vaporizing the fleshy mass?”
“What else!?” They did as they planned – Nova-X created a bunch of magic lasers and Nova caught them all with pinpoint precision, gathering every last little bit into a single point of energy and then unleashing it on the fleshy mass that was supposed to be a manticore.
“Can we do something with time dilation?” Nova-X asked.
“We shouldn’t but we’re going to anyway because when else are we going to get this opportunity?”
“Next week.”
“Shoosh, you’re not supposed to be cleverer than me.”
“Awwww, but I want to be!”
“No, I want to be!”
Nova-X tapped a nonexistent watch on her leg. “We need to do time dilation stuff.”
“Right. You, in the future, blast energy back to me- WOAHOH I guess you did that.”
“Oh, I did. I should start now.” She lit her horn and sent some magical energy a few seconds into the past. “There we go.”
“Kinda scary how we can just do that, huh?”
“I wonder if we can convince Twilight to let us use the map to see if this universe had a past…”
“While I’m one hundred percent convinced that would be amazing, we don’t want to destroy time again.”
“Yeah. Maybe we ask after we finish this evacuation. Send the magic to my future now.”
“On it.” Soon, the two of them had a closed time loop of magic flow from one to the other.
“…What do we do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Huh, something in a few seconds is going to interrupt the flow.”
“It is?”
“Aaaand you just lost your focus, there it goes.”
“Oh. Right.” The two unicorns chuckled.
“Why are we so eccentric?” Nova asked nopony in particular.
“I have no idea, I just know that it’s fun. I’m sure we’ll calm down later and do some more calm, rational magic building.”
“Probably.”
~~~
Pinkie stared at Pinkie-X.
“Sooooo…” Pinkie said. “Lots of ka in the air today.”
“Yeah, there sure is a lot of the stuff buzzing around! Big things coming soon, this time only on Songs of the Spheres! Stay tuned for what will be for some the biggest shift of all, and for others just be very ominous. Or both! Probably both, let’s go with both.”
Pinkie nodded slowly. “I think they probably already know this isn’t going to end well.”
“Yeah… An entire universe that can just be wiped away with the push of a button.”
“Everything’s just been a bit too cheery for a while.”
Pinkie-X looked at Pinkie with pleading eyes. “Can’t we keep it cheery for a little longer? I’d… I’d like that.”
Pinkie chuckled softly and wiped her eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, we can do that. So! Pinkie-X, we can’t throw a party because that’d interrupt the evacuation, so what do we do?”
“There’s a mountain over there. Let’s mess with something and turn it entirely into ice cream.”
Pinkie whistled. “DISCORD! ICE CREAM MOUNTAIN, STAT!”
Discord-X appeared and snapped his fingers, turning the mountain into ice cream. “There you are, my adorable pink apocalypses.” He vanished in a puff of magic.
“Oooooh boy, he used the word,” Pinkie said. “Pinkie-X, calm, deep breaths-“
“I AM CALM!” Pinkie-X shouted. “I AM VERY STUPIDLY CALM who am I kidding I’m not calm…” She pulled Pinkie into a hug. “I’m scared.”
Pinkie took a breath. “I know you are. You know, we could probably…”
“Do you want to risk retribution?”
“If you want to.”
“I do and don’t! And I… “ She glanced at a point in empty space. “Look, we need to talk about this without them watching. I… I just can’t do it like this.”
Pinkie nodded, pulling a remote out of her mane and hitting the fast-forward button.
~~~
Twilight-X looked at Twilight, Renee, Flutterfree, Pinkie, and Nova, standing in front of the portal to Equis Vitis. Twilight-X smiled. “Thanks for your help, but they need you on the other side to receive the refugees now. We’ll be ready in about fifteen minutes to start moving.”
Renee nodded. “Of course, dear. Come on girls, we’ve got stuff to do!”
Pinkie bounced through the portal, her smile smaller than it normally was. Nova, Renee, and Flutterfree followed.
“I’ll catch up!” Twilight called after them. “I think I’ll stay behind for a bit, see how the evacuation starts off.”
Pinkie looked at Twilight and smiled. “Goodbye then! Have fun!”
“See you,” Twilight said, waving. She turned around, looking at the grinder room again. She could scarcely believe it wasn’t her castle. But there it was, the X on the grinder itself, telling her this world was just a copy. A perfect, beautiful, interesting copy, but a copy nonetheless.
She saw Twilight-X head out to the balcony. Twilight moved to follow – she wanted to have another conversation with herself. They’d started to diverge more and more over the last few hours, and now Twilight felt as if she were finally talking to somepony who wasn’t her, and that felt good. It felt like there was a new friend to make, a new pony to learn about. It was a nice feeling.
Twilight took a step through the doorway that led to the balcony – and then she was somewhere else.
She was in a library. It was night time, and the shelves were lit with soft candles. The books came in all colors, shapes, and sizes. There was a single window in front of her, showing the brilliant sight of a night in a universe far from her own. She saw stars moving out there, shifting like they were part of some extremely distant fabric. Their colors shifted between pink, purple, and blue, filling her with a strange feeling of calmness.
“Do you like it? Not the most spectacular night sky I’ve seen, but one of the more soothing.”
Twilight turned around to see me. My appearance was by no means something special – I was a purple alicorn, much like herself, with a significantly more traditional manestyle. I had no metallic ears, I had no uneven coat, and my eyes were much older than hers. I was currently sitting at a desk, writing in a book. I finished my sentence, closed the tome, and looked at Twilight with a calm expression.
She looked down at the one feature besides my gaze that differentiated me from all the other Twilights in the multiverse – the eye affixed to my chest. It was a peculiar artifact, made mostly of a smooth white stone outlined in jarring, black metal. The pupil was a single slit, and several prongs that may have been confused for eyelashes could be seen penetrating into my body.
“Who are you?” Twilight asked.
“I am Twilence,” I said, speaking the truth.
“Why am I here?”
“I wanted to talk to you for a moment, here, in my own personal corner of L-space,” I said. “So I inserted you into this place temporarily. After we are done you will be returned to universe-X as if no time had passed.”
“Did you make the universe-“
“No, I have not activated the destruction of universe-X, nor will I ever be responsible for such a thing. When you return, it will be as you left it. Stable.”
“How did you...?”
I sighed. “As much as I would love to discuss the finer points of connection theory with you, Twilight, it would not be right. I’m meeting you far too early as it is, but I convinced myself that I could make an exception.”
Twilight nodded, sitting down. “I think I understand. You’ve been watching me, haven’t you?”
“For longer than you realize. My story – my song - is closely intertwined with your own, believe it or not.”
“Your song?”
I let myself shake my head and smile – so young. “We all have a song. Songs like yours and mine ring out across the fabric of existence, while others just make a little peep amongst the waves. But everyone has one.”
“…These Songs actually mean something, don’t they? What?”
“You know I can’t tell you.”
“Am I allowed to ask any questions here?” Twilight said, frustrated.
“You can ask as many as you want. I wouldn’t expect answers though.”
“Then why am I here?”
I looked down at the closed book on my desk and shook my head. “Because I am a flawed pony, Twilight. And I let myself just bring you here. I wanted to tell you some things, show you some things, but now I’m having second thoughts…” I bit my lip.
Twilight smiled slightly. “You’re still me, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “We are very alike, in many ways. My awakening to the multiverse was just… much ruder. More sudden. In a couple weeks I knew more than you know now. It changed me drastically, suddenly, and not completely for the better. I’m very glad you’ve had years to accommodate.”
“I’m so sorry…”
“You have nothing to apologize for. You had nothing to do with that. I may be partially to blame for exactly how your side of things have turned out, but even then only slightly.”
“…Now I’m really curious.
“And I can’t tell you anything.”
“…What can you tell me?”
I frowned. Then I levitated a book off a nearby shelf. “I can show you something…”
There was a flash of purple magic, and the two of us were somewhere else – or, what we felt was somewhere else. In reality, it was just an illusion, a memory. Twilight saw me, a version of Rarity, a young human woman I knew as Creek, and the woman we both knew as Vriska. All of us were laughing and having fun as we ran away from a gigantic monster made entirely of candy, unable to take the thing seriously.
“…You were the Twilight who told Vriska about me,” Twilight said.
“Sharp mind,” I confirmed. “We were a lot like you. We had no real ‘home’ universe though, nothing to build off of. We had our fun anyway. But… It came to an end one day.” Images flashed by. Rarity waving goodbye. Creek lying dead in a pile of stuffing. Vriska vanishing from a jail cell. Myself, sitting alone at a desk, scribbling in a book.
“Why are you showing me this?”
“I guess I just wanted somepony to tell the story to that wasn’t… Them.” I glanced at the eye on my chest and shook my head.
“…I may not know who they are, but there’s more to it than that. You’re going to show me what happens to my group, aren’t you?”
I smiled. “I’m not completely certain what happens to your group. My sight, while perhaps the strongest sight of all, knows the future waters are murky. But I can show you something of the future.” I cast another spell. There was a city neither of us had ever been to, because it did not exist. It was beautiful – architecture that was impossible, but got around this by existing within numerous dimensions at the same time. Ships flew to and from the docks. Magical and technological lights flashed from all angles.
Then there were the people. Ponies, humans, dragons, robots, plant-creatures, and hundreds of other beings Twilight had never seen before.
“Is this… what we build?”
“One of many,” is all I say.
I shifted the view to the center of a large building. There was a tremendous piece of stained glass on the central window, depicting several individuals. There were many Twilight didn’t recognize – a muscular man with a pink and blue spirit behind him, a dark blue humanoid in a white top hat, and a few others - but there were many she did recognize. Herself, Nova, Flutterfree, Renee, Pinkie, Corona, Toph, Vriska, Daniel, O’Neill… Immortalized in a window that put the halls of Canterlot to shame.
Twilight’s eyes started watering. “We… We do this?”
“You become something much more than you can comprehend in your present state. My Song was a song of understanding – your song will be a song of growth. A Song of Songs. The Song of the Spheres.”
“The Spheres?”
I spread my wings and extended our field of view. We left the illusory universe, condensing it into a spherical bubble. Other universes could be seen. I zoomed out quickly. Billions upon Billions of tiny spheres coalesced together, until they were little more than points of light in nothingness. Further still we retreated, until the universes began to take a roughly spherical shape. We could see two other large spherical clusters of universes, and a significantly smaller sphere in another direction. Dots spread out loosely between the Spheres and around them, but they always stayed near the larger structures.
“It’s… Finite,” Twilight realized.
“Yes.”
“Mind-bogglingly big, but finite.”
I chuckled. “Yes.” I gestured toward the shape of the entire multiverse that stood before us. “That song? That song that has driven this existence even when time itself cannot? That song – that song is the song you are a part of. A very big part, Charter-Princess.”
Twilight beamed. “I… I don’t know what to say, Twilence. Thank you? I…”
“You don’t need to say anything. I just need you to know how much I, and so many others, appreciate what you’ve started here.”
“I… I won’t let you all down! I’ll use this knowledge to give myself determination, to ensure I do what you’ve shown me! That’s probably why you showed me, huh? To ensure that I believe I can do it.”
I didn’t respond to this.
“…Is it time for me to return to Universe-X?”
“Yes, it is. Say hello to Twilight-X for me, would you? She’s you you know.”
“Not anymore. We’re differentiating a lot, and I’m sure this experience will just solidify that!”
I nodded. “Yes. Yes it will…”
“Will we meet again?”
“This will not be the last time Twilence and the Charter-Princess cross paths, I assure you. Our songs are intertwined. There will come a time in this progress that I will come into the open. I await that day with extreme longing. I’m so tired, Twilight. Tired of having to watch and wait.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
“I have no doubt you will. Goodbye, Charter-Princess.”
“Goodbye Twilence!”
And then I sent her to Universe-X. I returned to my desk and opened my book to write in it once more.
I sighed, deeply. That noise had become a habit of mine. A habit I had hoped to lessen by talking to Twilight, but it appeared not.
I once again waited.
~~~
Twilight stumbled into the balcony railing. “Ow…”
Twilight-X blinked. “…Are you okay?”
“The strangest thing just happened. I was whisked away to a faraway universe to talk with a version of myself who called herself Twilence. She had… a lot to say.” Twilight rubbed her head. “I’m not sure I understood all of it, frankly. She was acting a lot like Pinkie does when she knows something she just can’t tell. But… I got a glimpse of the future.”
Twilight-X’s jaw dropped. “No way.”
“Yes way! We’re going to do amazing things that affect the entire multiverse! We are small for now, but we won’t be forever. Not even close to forever. The future is bright, and I have newfound confidence in… well everything!” She hugged Twilight-X for a few seconds. She pulled back, grinning. “Everything feels good, even if I don’t understand everything.”
Twilight-X stared at her. “You have to tell me everything.”
“After we get this evacuation done. It’ll take too long otherwise. You may not have seen me leave, but I was there for a while, and there’s a lot to unpack. Just know the future is bright, and we do make a difference. I think Flutterfree will like to hear that.”
“Yeah, she has been a little overwhelmed by it all as of late. She takes care of herself pretty well, but you know how she is. Still a Fluttershy at times.”
“I wonder what Pinkie thinks of what happened, or if she already knows about it. You know, I got the distinct impression that Twilence might have known more than Pinkie. She…” Twilight shook her head. “Yeah, no time to talk about that now, we’ve got to evacuate the universe.”
“Evacuating an entire universe… Ponyville today…”
“…tomorrow, the world!”
“Or the next city,” Twilight-X shrugged. “This is going to be a slow process. Weird, considering how well it went. We started, what, only a handful of hours ago?”
“Well, it was before noon, and it’s evening now, so… Yeah, handful of hours.”
Twilight-X glanced out at the skyline. The sun probably should have set already, but Celestia-X was drawing it out so the evacuation could have light for the next hour. It was a truly beautiful array of colors. She could see everything from red to blue in the sky, and it was a beautiful sight.
She didn’t care if she was part of some clone universe, this place was her home, and it was beautiful.
“Evening…” Twilight said.
“Hrm?”
“I like the word,” Twilight reiterated. “Evening. It means a lot too. Here I am, standing at the Eve of something great, and brilliant, about to close a chapter on my life. It’s also related to Twilight and… Great Celestia, I think I’ve found my name.”
“Evening?”
“Evening, Eve for short. Probably should come up with a last name to go with it… Corona didn’t though, so...” Twilight put a hoof to her chin.
“You sure?” Twilight-X said. “Because, you know, I might want to be Evening.”
“Oh. Riiiight, we’re the same. Hrmmm…” Twilight rubbed the back of her head. “We can flip a coin later, winner gets to keep it.”
“If we decide we want to.”
“True. I guess we might think of something else. But it just seems… perfect, you know?”
Twilight-X smirked. “Yeah. That’s why I want it. It’s the perfect name for us. And we can’t just both have it since we’re already so similar.”
“The point is to differentiate.”
The two sat in silence for a moment, staring at the elongated sunset.
“I worry, sometimes,” Twilight-X said, suddenly. “Remember the Spectacularium?”
“Oh, that thing. It was… Yeah, I remember.”
“It told everyone something about the future. It told Renee she would find love, it told Pinkie it couldn’t answer her question, and it told us…”
“We wouldn’t outlive our friends.”
“Yeah. I always thought we’d get to make them alicorns, or something, eventually. But… I’ve been remembering…”
“Some things the Pinkie Sage said. About all prophecies being ruined by dimensional travel.”
“Yeah. That. What if the Spectacularium was unable to take everything into account? I… I don’t want to be alone.”
Twilight sighed. “I know what you mean. We could only take so much comfort from a prophecy. They could easily mean one thing or another…”
“And be vague. It might mean some friends or only certain friends.”
“And whatever it actually means we probably won’t figure out until it’s obvious.”
“Yep.”
“Why’d we ask the Spectacularium that question again?”
“Uh… Don’t think we did. I think it just saw what we wanted to know the most.”
“Oh. Right. …What ever happened to the Spectacularium after Armonia was sealed away, anyway?”
“Why you looking at me? I have no idea! You’re the one who talked to the mysterious ‘Twilence’ and has extra information!”
Twilight looked down at Ponyville. “Yeah.” She took in a deep breath. “This is a beautiful sight. Even without the stuff Twilence showed me, Ponyville… Ponyville is amazing.”
“It’s changed so much.”
“I hope this beautiful world never gets destroyed, for any reason. We’ll protect it, any way we can.”
“You’ve got that right!”
The Twilights hoofbumped and then embraced. Then they glanced into the castle. Next to the open portal to Equis Vitis was a clock, telling them it was a minute until the actual evacuation started.
“Time to round them up,” Twilight-X said, spreading her wings. “Coming?”
“I think I’ll return to my-“
Then it happened. The moment that had been building up since the time the first portal was opened. The entire fabric of reality shook. Twilight and Twilight-X fell to the ground, only to find that the ground felt off somehow. It shook again, sending shivers into their very souls.
Outside, they could see it. They could see the sky start to peel away – the beautiful colors destroyed like they were nothing but paper. The Sun began to lose chunks of itself. Evaporating. Dimming. The landscape outside began to rupture with tumors. Mountains exploded – but didn’t unleash any substance, just dissipated into this shards of matter that might as well have been paper, paper that quickly disintegrated into nothingness.
They would have been dead right then and there, for the framework was prepared to rewrite the entire universe in a single second. Everything would have been paper-like shreds then nothing. But Starbeat had placed a spell – and that spell was triggered. A loud ticking sound that the Twilights recognized from their previous adventures across time came from the throne room, where the Map was. A spherical magical shell spread out around the castle, altering time, attempting to freeze it in place as it let out a swift tick, tick, tick sound.
It didn’t stop time – but it would have been bad for them if it did, for then they wouldn’t have been able to move. As it was, they could. And they had a slight edge on the speed of the framework, because the open portal was bleeding a regular timestream into the universe.
They moved like molasses, pushing their legs and wings as hard as they could. Every handful of seconds, one of their hooves would hit the ground, and a low thud would ring through their bodies. The ground beneath them would shake, flaking a bit of substance off as they moved, but they themselves remained stable.
As time went on, the motion of the alicorns only slowed. Yet, their minds – their minds ran in overdrive. They tapped into some force beyond themselves, something that knew their very lives were hanging in the balance. There was no way their brains could have perceived time at this slow of a rate, but they did anyway. It was an impossible event, but such things happened at times of this much importance.
The world fell out from behind them, revealing the structure of the framework. A metal room, much like the Nexus. It was only the size of a city block, but it had contained the entire universe. A few lights slowly started to blink as the machinery realized there was an open portal, time dilation, and remnant of the universe that had been wiped. A beam of green energy shot forth as time approached full stop…
~~~
Twilight – and Twilight alone – fell through the portal. She turned to cheer on her counterpart, maybe pull her out with magic – but the portal snapped shut in her face. Twilight got to catch a glimpse of herself screaming in agony.
Renee, Nova, Flutterfree, and Pinkie ran into the room. “What happened?” Renee shouted. “We heard a scream!”
Twilight took her dimensional device out and dialed universe-X. “The universe was destroyed, that’s what happened!” She said through tears. She opened the portal, revealing the Nexus-like machine, trapped in a bubble of frozen time, unable to reconstitute a new universe.
“Nova, time dilation bubble, now,” Twilight ordered. Nova did as asked, surrounding them all in a field of normal time so they could walk in the frozen world on the other side. The ponies that weren’t Twilight felt dwarfed by the tremendous room, not quite realizing that it had somehow contained the space of an entire cosmic universe within it only a few seconds ago.
“Find a way to reverse it…” Twilight muttered to herself. “There has to be a buffer in here somewhere…”
Pinkie was suddenly in front of Twilight. “Twilight, stop.”
“Get out of my way Pinkie!”
Everypony turned to stare at Twilight with surprised expressions. Pinkie didn’t take the outburst personally, she just moved to the side obediently.
Twilight could barely see through her tears. She teleported herself to the central pillar in the room, a structure three times larger than herself. It was covered in white metal strips that snaked in intricate patterns, patterns that looked like they were supposed to move – but naturally couldn’t in the plane of frozen time.
Then Twilight saw it. The portal that had connected to this universe and forced the reboot. A portal through which two individuals she recognized stepped out.
“RICK!” Twilight bellowed, teleporting right in front of his face, screaming with the loudest Royal Canterlot Voice she could muster. “WHAT DID YOU DO!?”
Morty held up his hands. “T-Twilight? W-W-What!?”
Rick was unimpressed. “Look, princess, I just did what I was supposed to do. Connect to this place, duplicate a universe. Or that’s what was supposed to happen. What the fuck did you do to this place? You froze it?”
Something snapped within Twilight. She flared her wings, pulled back her head, and lit her horn with a dark, black power.
Worry crossed Rick’s face for a moment. He reached for something in his labcoat.
Before the universe could see if Rick could have deflected unfiltered dark magic from the Charter-Princess, Pinkie appeared between them. “TWILIGHT! STOP!”
“HE KILLED AN ENTIRE UNIVERSE, PINKIE! A UNIVERSE OF US! THERE WAS A YOU OVER THERE! THERE WAS… THERE WAS!”
Pinkie hugged Twilight, crying herself. “I know. She knew. This was always going to happen. That world was not meant to stay.”
“That’s... That’s stupid!” Twilight shouted, dropping the Royal Canterlot voice. “I was told that we were going to do great things! I was told the multiverse would care! This isn’t great at all! This is horrible! We failed! We should have moved faster… We should have dropped all organization…We should have… We…”
Flutterfree grabbed Twilight by the shoulders and Stared at her, shocking Twilight into a calm state. “Twilight, we stopped this universe from ever creating or destroying another universe again.”
“I could fix this,” Rick muttered.
Pinkie drew a scythe out of nowhere. “Rick, I swear to all the Tower, that if you so much as try to activate this universe again, I will find you, and I will kill you.”
Rick took one look at Pinkie and decided she wasn’t bluffing. “All right Morty, looks like vacation in twin-town is cancelled. Let’s gooo-“
“Really Rick?” Morty said, throwing his hands out. “We just destroyed a universe! I didn’t know that was going to happen! How is – wait, nevermind, I know how it’s okay. Because you’re fucked up in the head!”
“Your point?”
“Morty… Take your grandfather and go,” Renee said. She glanced at Twilight.
“Morty doesn’t take me-“
“Rick Sanchez,” Renee stated in an official tone. “You are no longer welcome in the dimensional lands under the protection, alliance, or purview of Equis Vitis and its allies. Do I make myself absolutely, one hundred percent clear?”
Rick narrowed his eyes. “You don’t know who you’re declaring war on, unicorn.”
“I’m not declaring war. I’m just making sure you know never to come back. Do you understand!?”
“He understands,” Morty said. “For what it’s worth, I apologize, though I know that’s stupid and probably just makes you hate me more. I, uh…” He sighed. “Look, it’s rough out there. You girls… You take care of each other.”
“We always do,” Flutterfree said. “…For what it’s worth, thank you, Morty.”
Rick mumbled something to himself.
Nova glared at him. “Get the hell out of here.”
“I’m going, I’m going…” Rick said, opening one of his green swirling portals.
Morty looked to them. “I’m glad you survived Majora.”
“Thanks,” Pinkie said, forcing a smile. “You’re a good kid, Morty.”
“I try,” Morty said, following his grumbling grandfather through the portal.
It closed; leaving the five ponies alone in the room that was a universe.
Twilight wiped her eyes. “Th-thank you. Thank you all. I…”
“It’s okay,” Flutterfree said, wiping her own eyes. “We’re always going to be here for you, Twilight. We didn’t vanish with that universe.”
“…I think… I don’t think I’m Twilight anymore. I…” she stood up tall, glaring at the pillar in the center of the room. “I am Charter-Princess Evening Sparkle. Or… Eve.”
“…Was that what she chose?” Flutterfree asked.
“Yeah. Yeah it was.” Eve stood up and wiped her eyes. “…Let’s go home.”
Pinkie did the honors of opening the portal. The five of them stepped through, once again in the grinder room.
The five ponies slowly trotted out of the room, heading for the Map – where they would no doubt talk for hours about what had just happened.
Eve lingered in the grinder room for a few seconds.
She glanced at the grinder itself. Smooth, clean, and working as it should.
She glanced at the bottom of her left hoof. It was dirty, worn, and now slightly wet from all the stress of the day. But it was still visible.
An ‘X’ made in permanent black marker.
She looked at the grinder again, just to make sure it didn’t have an X on it.
Eve gulped. She cast a spell on her hoof, removing the X forever.
Charter-Princess Evening Sparkle trotted after her… friends, tears rolling down her cheeks.