//------------------------------// // 19. News Travels Fast // Story: Inevitabilities // by Sharp Quill //------------------------------// Steve was hunched over his notebook computer, typing and clicking away. Twilight watched, eager for the answer. The time had come to plan their trip back in time, to witness who or what had bound the magic leak to that Pinkie Pie doll, using one of Star Swirl’s binding spells. Sounds of the front door unlocking and opening competed with the sounds of typing. “I’m home,” Meg proclaimed. “We’re in here,” her husband replied. She entered the living room and stopped upon noticing Twilight’s presence. “How was work today?” Twilight asked. “Will we be back in operation soon?” “Just about, I think,” Meg replied. “My office is back in one piece, anyway. You can start replacing the stolen magic generators and enchanted crystals. Something to make my office unbreachable would be nice.” “It’ll need a strong magic generator to power it, but I think that could be done.” Several of those enchanted crystals ought to be made; this home could use one too. “Lucky for us there’s no shortage of radioactive waste to power these things.” Meg approached the coffee table. “By any chance, do you know anything about an enchantment on A. K. Yearling’s shawl?” Twilight looked up in confusion. “Enchantment what now?” Meg slid her purse off her shoulder and set it down on the table. “Her shawl is enchanted to disguise her cutie mark. Only works if it’s in contact anywhere on her body.” “Okay…” Twilight scrunched her muzzle, searching her memories. As far as she could remember, Daring was either not wearing it at all, wearing it and thus hiding her cutie mark, or dramatically tossing it off. As her attention had never been on the disguised explorer’s flank during the tossings, she’d never have noticed the disguised cutie mark during the brief instant the enchantment was still active. “What does the disguised cutie mark look like?” “A quill in an ink pot, just what you’d expect for an accomplished writer.” “No, I didn’t know—but it’s not something I’d notice if I wasn’t scanning for it.” Which she fully intended to do the next chance she got. As “Yearling’s” cutie mark was not public knowledge, she decided it must have been something recent. She’d have no reason to hide it, quite the contrary, if she’d always had that enchantment. But that rather depended, on second thought, on how the enchantment worked. The shawl might require prolonged physical contact with the cutie mark to set up the illusion, even if it could then be maintained with contact elsewhere on her body. That was right up Trixie’s alley; maybe she’d have some insight into that magic. “Well, it fooled Andrew and company,” Meg continued. “They’re now totally convinced Daring Do’s fictional and that Daring Don’t got it wrong.” Meg went to the kitchen. “You might want to keep that in mind the next time someone asks you about that episode.” Twilight clenched her teeth. Why couldn’t she run that past me first? What if the enchantment hadn’t work in this realm? A possible solution came to her: claim it was all a dream Rainbow Dash had one night, and somehow it got re-interpreted as actual events by the cartoon. Would Dash go along with that? Could she trust her not to mess it up if she did? “By the way,” Meg shouted from the kitchen, “Daring now thinks somepony used the Smooze to destroy all evidence of ancient humans in your realm—except for what we found, lucky us—and she’d like to talk to him once we got the speech synthesizer working.” A pause. “Yes, she found out about that. Somehow.” Twilight wasn’t sure which annoyed her more: Daring pulling that cutie mark disguise on the humans or coming up with this Smooze conspiracy. And how did she find out about the synthesizer anyway? Not that it was a royal secret or anything, but even so… it wasn’t as if she’d hung around Ponyville. “Well, I didn’t tell her.” “She admitted that. Also said she didn’t find out from Rainbow Dash. But she wouldn’t give up her source.” As annoying as it was, it didn’t alter the facts. Daring wouldn’t make that claim about the Smooze without good reason. “We need to get that voice synthesizer working sooner rather than later, but for now let’s stick to the matter at hoof.” She returned her attention to Steve. “Any estimate yet?” He continued typing for a bit longer before looking up. “I think we can get it down to a few minutes. But that’s still too long. We’ll need an enclosure of some sort to protect us.” “Are you sure? Teleportation is virtually instantaneous.” “This isn’t teleportation, or at least not that kind of teleportation.” Steve leaned back in his chair. “Normal teleportation works by first creating a wormhole. The far terminus must first cross the intervening distance, which it does essentially at light speed. The wormhole itself does not stretch as this happens, so it brings two distant points essentially adjacent to each other. You pass through it in zero time, for all intents and purposes. The time it takes for the terminus to reach its destination is on the order of microseconds, at most, so you don’t notice that passage of time either. “Time travel could theoretically work that way, but not in practice. The distance to travel one year through time is a lightyear, so it’ll take a full year for the wormhole terminus to reach its destination, and the poor unicorn attempting it must keep the spell active the whole time. And even then, once the wormhole has been established, there are quantum mechanical reasons why it’d immediately collapse.” He waved his hands around. “It’s due to particles looping through it, back in time, an all-but-infinite number of times, because there’s a nonzero probability of that happening, and every particle simultaneously takes every possible path, no matter how absurd, until its wave function collapses.” His hands dropped back to his lap. “Well, that’s all conjecture until someone actually creates such a wormhole. “This spell does not create a wormhole. What it appears to do is to carry the travelers in a separate bubble of spacetime. It splits off from the rest of the universe at the point of departure, follows the worldline of that point towards the past, then merges back into the universe. I’m not sure how that prevents hitchhiking virtual particles, but it evidently seems to solve that problem; even so, the sheer distances involved create others.” “I didn’t perceived the passage of time when I previously time traveled.” Steve leaned back in his chair. “We won’t be traveling back a day or even a week. This time it’s a few years; that’s lightyears of distance. The spell incorporates massive time dilation, but not that massive. Unless you know how to improve it…” Twilight frowned. “No, I don’t.” A lightyear was six trillion miles of distance. It was still difficult to think of time as literally equivalent to distance, never mind so much distance. “Could this enclosure be magical in nature?” “I suppose,” he said, shrugging. “If you think you could keep it up the whole way. That spacetime bubble will have nothing in it but what we bring with us; it’s a hard vacuum. We’ll need to have enough air to last the trip, and it wouldn’t do if you passed out on the way.” Ouch. She hadn’t thought of that. It was only a few minutes, though. They wouldn’t need that much air. “A physical enclosure risks being discovered. I mean, I know it wasn’t, but that’s because we would take steps to prevent it, and this will be complicated enough as it is.” Meg returned from the kitchen, holding a tray of refreshments. “You were there, so you know best.” “Correction: I was there until I went through the Mirror. We’d be arriving well after that point, unless you want to spend a few days keeping out of sight at Canterlot High. I do know Cadance kept it under guard while I was on the other side.” Meg placed the tray on the coffee table. “We didn’t get caught—or if we were, we managed to talked Cadance into keeping it a secret from you. That must count for something.” “Or Discord did something unusually helpful.” Everyone looked at Steve. “It could happen.” “I already had a brief conver—” Meg’s phone rang, interrupting Twilight. After briefly checking the screen, she said, “It’s Matt,” and accepted the call. Twilight couldn’t make out the words Matt was saying, but he had few to say. “I’ll turn it on,” Meg said. “Twilight’s here and I’m sure she’ll want to see it too. … No, I can’t say anything more; you know the drill. … Okay, bye.” She grabbed the TV remote and turned it on. It was tuned to CNN; she did not change the channel. There was a panel of a half-dozen people, discussing something. “—of prior contact between our two worlds—” Meg pressed a button and the video went into reverse. “Let’s see if the DVR still has the beginning of this.” When a breaking-news graphic appeared, she pressed another button. “The deciphering of a long-dead language is rarely news outside of linguistic circles. What makes it different this time is how this particular language, used by the ancient Minoans many thousands of years ago, was finally cracked. It turns out the language exists in living memory after all—in Equestria, of all places. “We’ve assembled a panel of experts—” Meg paused the DVR. “Just wait till they find out whose ‘living memory’ it is.” “How do you think they’ll react?” Twilight asked. Steve looked up from his computer. “In a way that maximizes ratings,” he cynically threw out. “They’ll certainly have more talking heads like these,” Meg said, pointing a finger at the TV, “pretending to know what they’re talking about.” She shut off the TV. “So when do we enlighten them?” Twilight wanted to see more, but didn’t object. “Serrell wants them to chew on it for a day or two, then make it known that I’ll soon be releasing a statement. It’ll end with the press conference in Tartarus, of course. I’m already making arrangements for that.” She bore a sheepish smile. “It’s, uh, not something they’ve ever had to deal with before.” “I bet,” Steve grunted. Meg sat on the sofa, next to Twilight. “Let’s stay focused.” It was no secret she wanted to get to the bottom of that doll, not that Twilight didn’t. “You were about to say something about Discord when we were interrupted?” Twilight cleared her throat. “As I was about to say, I already had a brief conversation with Discord. He admitted he would notice if his future self popped into the present but, if at all possible, he would also leave his future self alone. Immutable knowledge of his future ‘harshes his vibe’ as he puts it. He hates being locked into a predetermined sequence of events.” “Doesn’t that beg the question?” Steve asked. “Did he notice his future self popping in to the present?” As if she hadn’t thought to ask that. “He refused to say. Even being asked was obviously distasteful to him.” “But he’s coming with us, right? We need him, unless you’ve learned how to get to hyperspace.” “I have learned how, but we still need his magic. I can’t handle the raw magic of hyperspace, not yet.” She grimaced at the memory from a few months ago. If Discord hadn’t been with her… “I’ve already tried. Celestia or Luna could handle it, in theory, but they lack the experience and the time to acquire it. So Discord it must be, and fortunately he has agreed to accompany us.” “He refused to say, huh?” Steve smirked. “You’re sure about that?” Work was returning to normal. Meg locked her new desktop computer and left her office. She walked through the corridors, passing by a few recently vacated cubicles on her way to the secured testing vault. Eric Tanner had been terminated, naturally, not that he had ever showed up again. Additional background checks had led to a few others being “strongly encouraged” to find other employment. There should be no more inside jobs. It was time to get it back in operation. Sunset Shimmer would be waiting for her in the vault. It was also time to sound out her feelings about breaking Tirek out of Tartarus in the past. Meg still hadn’t a clue how to do that. She arrived at the vault. After making sure no one was nearby, she swept her key card past the scanner and was awarded with a satisfying clunk. She pulled open the reinforced door—and stopped. Sunset was not the only pony in the vault, never mind that she wasn’t supposed to be a pony. Meg rushed in and closed the door. She cut to the chase. “Why is Derpy here?” The gray pegasus answered. “You’re Meg, right?” What was the point of denying it? That she was even here… “That’s right,” she said. “The same Meg you knew as a pegasus in Equestria.” “I, um, wanted to ask you a question about the birthday party. The princess said it was okay.” Here? Now? Meg turned to Sunset. “And why didn’t ‘the princess’ bring you over?” She couldn’t have; that’s why Sunset wasn’t human. Not that Twilight would have stayed long; she had been counting on that. “She needed to be in Canterlot,” Sunset said. “That’s all I know. She did grant Derpy permission. Figured this vault was a safe enough environment for a quick question.” Safe from other humans, in other words. Regardless, the mailmare had never expressed any interest in coming to this world. And here she was. Seeing Meg in her original form. Something Twilight would not have been unaware of. Meg got down on her knees and put on a smile. “By all means, ask your question.” Derpy’s wings twitched in nervousness. “It’s about Dinky’s birthday party.” “Okay. Go on.” “Well, now that we know Susie can come, Dinky wonders if the party could be held here, in this realm.” “I, um, that’s… an interesting question.” Meg ran her hand through her hair. “It’s certainly not physically impossible, but, uh, I’m… not sure where it could be held.” “Don’t you have places like Sugarcube Corner?” “Well, yeah, sorta, but they’re awfully public places and that really isn’t a good idea right now.” “You mean it could actually be dangerous?” “Not necessarily, but, yeah, there’s some risk. News travels fast in our realm—you can’t believe how fast—and, well, it might be a problem.” “I see.” Derpy’s face drifts downwards. “Because everypony here knows who we are. They’d want to meet us.” How much did Twilight tell her? “There are other options. Let me look into them and get back to you. Any other questions?” Derpy looked at the closed vault door. “Could I take a look outside?” The chaos that would cause would make Discord’s day. Sunset spared Meg the burden of explaining the situation. “It’d be highly disruptive. No pony has been outside this vault while humans were present.” Ignoring one notable exception, Meg did not say. “The reasons for that are somewhat outdated, but it’s not in Meg’s power to change the rules.” “Not even the princess?” It wasn’t clear if Derpy meant whether it was within Twilight’s power to change the rules, or that she could leave the vault when humans were around. Meg decided it didn’t really make a difference. “Twilight has no authority here,” she pointed out. “She’s not our princess.” Derpy grimaced in embarrassment. “How silly of me to forget that.” “Don’t worry about it. If you really want to see more of this realm, you can visit me some other time.” “I think I’d like that.” The pegasus looked around the room at all the scientific equipment. “What do you do here? If I may ask…” Not that Meg wanted to pressure Derpy to leave, but this was taking up more time than she’d like. She’d give her a few more minutes. “We’re researching the use of magic in our realm. We don’t have any—at all. It’s the basis for trade between our worlds. We get your magic, and you get our technology.” “Like what?” Meg got back on her feet. She had to draw the line at open ended questions like that. “I’d be happy to answer that some other time, but Sunset and I need to get to work.” Sunset gave Meg a strange look, but she remained silent. “Sure, I understand. Thanks for answering my question. I’ll talk to you later.” Derpy invoked the return spell and vanished. Sunset went over to a box and opened it, revealing a collection of crystals. “I know that was unexpected, but if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were trying to get rid of her.” Meg couldn’t really deny that. “This just isn’t the time or place. Believe me, I’d be more than happy to entertain her some other time.” “Are you going to show her that Derpy doll of yours?” Sunset was telekinetically moving crystals one by one to a shelf, each one tagged with a description of its enchantment. “Did Twilight mention that to her?” “I don’t know. I wasn’t present when Twilight revealed your true nature to her.” Which meant she’d have to ask Twilight about that before inviting Derpy to her home. But that was a problem for Future Meg. Present Meg had her own problem to deal with. “Mind you,” the unicorn said, “I don’t see what the big deal is.” Another crystal joined the others on the shelf. “I like my doll. It makes me look so cute.” It was now or never. But would Sunset pass on whatever was said to Twilight, even if asked not to? The direct approach seemed ill-advised. “Change of subject,” Meg began. “You know that Tirek escaped from Tartarus a few years ago, right?” Sunset paused emptying the box. “After the fact, obviously. I wasn’t tuned in to Equestrian current events at the time. Why do you ask?” “After visiting him in Tartarus, it got me wondering, that’s all. All I know is that he somehow did it after Cerberus went missing. And how did that dog wind up in Ponyville anyway? He had to have crossed hundreds of miles.” She gave Meg a curious look. “Quite honestly, you’d be better off asking Twilight.” She resumed unpacking the box. “I’d imagine there was an investigation, and she’d know its conclusions, if any. As for me, I haven’t a clue.” The results of that investigation were classified, and Meg had no need to know—certainly not one she could admit to. It seemed safe bet that those results did not include the involvement of either herself or Sunset Shimmer, which meant that the investigation had no answers for those questions. That lack of answers may even be why it’s classified. Or maybe I’m getting cynical. Whichever, it didn’t seem the right time to mention Sunset’s alleged role in his escape. When would be the right time? she pondered. She had no idea. What if she didn’t believe it? A private meeting with Tirek would go a long way towards convincing her, but how to arrange that? Twilight would be there too; they wouldn’t otherwise have permission to be there. It was a fluke that Meg had been alone with Tirek, and there were no longer any human prisoners to distract Twilight. A smaller box floated out from inside the bigger box. “These are for your office: a replacement magic generator, a sonic barrier, and this one is what you asked for, a spell that prevents unauthorized entry. It needs to be attuned to you.” Meg reached out for it, welcoming the excuse to drop the subject. “I have to touch it, I presume?” Sunset’s horn glowed. “Touch it now.” She did. The crystal pulsed yellow in response. “It wouldn’t hold out long against a trained unicorn, you should know, but luckily they seem to be in short supply around here. It also needs to be attuned to your office; we’ll have to take care of that at a later time.” “I’m also guessing it won’t stop a pony from crossing over directly from Equestria to my office?” “Obviously, the spell is oblivious to the existence of hyper dimensions.” Meg supposed that deficiency would—should—get fixed some day, but for the present it met her needs just fine. Twilight gazed into her teacup. The ritual of tea making had not calmed her nerves. Celestia should have arrived by now. It was rare for her to be so late to her own meeting. She gazed out the panoramic windows at distant Ponyville below, the weight of her crown bearing down on her head. It was so tempting to set it down on the table, but Celestia could walk in at any moment. Wearing it would become a habit in due time, Celestia had assured her. Her mentor was no hypocrite, she had to concede that. It was hard to remember the last time she had seen Celestia without her regalia. It was a few more minutes before Celestia arrived. “I’m terribly sorry, Twilight,” she said as she entered the room. She closed the door behind her and cast a rapid-fire sequence of security spells; Twilight could barely keep up—it was an impressive set of spells, too. “You know how the griffon ambassador can be.” She certainly did. “Let me guess. They’re still demanding access to the humans?” Celestia took a seat and filled her teacup, rolling her eyes as she did so. “They’re quite convinced we intend to monopolize all contact with the human realm.” And the minotaurs were probably thinking the same thing, if less vocal about it. Offering them and the griffons their own plaid pill dispenser—ignoring the question of whether Discord would make more of them—was just too risky. “I could look into getting them their own human phones. Steve would have to use his special talent on them, of course, but then they could talk freely to the human governments. It may be enough to satisfy them for the time being.” “That’s worth investigating.” Celestia sipped her tea. “On the other hoof, I’m surprised we haven’t had more contact with the other human nations.” “That’s because most of them aren’t sure we’re real yet, and the rest think we’re the creation of the American government for some inscrutable purpose, either computer graphic simulations or bio-engineered creatures.” Twilight sighed. “It’s that cartoon, of course.” “Indeed. I encourage you to take full advantage of the upcoming press conference in Tartarus to convince them all of our reality.” Whether that’d be sufficient was a good question, given the effectiveness of her appearance on a late night talk show. Too many would dismiss it as Hollywood special effects. Having seen a few examples of their craft, she could understand why. Twilight set her teacup down. “As important as this may all be, this isn’t why you called me here.” Not with all those security spells she’d used. “No, it isn’t.” Celestia set down her own teacup. “It has come to my attention that you have begun research into the origins of our realm.” How? Twilight had told nopony. Only Arcane Scroll might have suspected, and she couldn’t believe he’d mentioned it to Celestia, assuming he even had the opportunity. All she had even done was browse a highly restricted section of the archives. There was only one scroll she could find that touched on the subject, and that was little more than a litany of reasons why the Discordian Era made it all but a pointless waste of time. That’s it, she realized. That scroll must have been magically tagged somehow. It hadn’t occurred to her to check. “Yes?” she admitted. There was no point denying it, and it was within her rights as a princess to utilize those archives. Celestia gave her a serene smile. “If any pony could pierce the veil of chaos and uncover the secrets of our realm’s genesis, it would be you.” So this was why Celestia called her here on short notice and used every spell in the book to guarantee their privacy? “I can’t wait to hear what you discover,” Celestia continued. “I do ask that other ponies not be involved, not before it becomes clear that you have, indeed, made real progress.” It was becoming a bit clearer. “And if I should make real progress?” Celestia took her time sipping tea. “I have to be honest with you, Twilight. I encourage the Discordian Era narrative for a reason. Research of this nature has, in the past, led to… counterproductive speculations.” “But if I successfully ‘pierce the veil of chaos,’ it won’t be speculation; it’d be hard scientific facts.” Her mentor look down into her tea, avoiding her eyes. “Even then, I’m not sure. It depends on what you find.” She looked up. “Ponies have lived happy lives not knowing. Would knowing truly make them happier?” Thoughts of human religions came to Twilight, with their mishmash of creation stories, mostly contradicting each other. Ponies have avoided that, thanks—as she now knew—to Celestia’s efforts. “Perhaps… not.” “You need to trust me on this, Twilight; I speak from hard-earned experience. Please come to me first with any discoveries.” It didn’t take her long to decide. “Sure, I can do that.” Celestia rewarded her with a smile as she lifted her teacup. “May I involve Meg and her husband? They already have the human perspective on such things, and there’s something I want to try with Steve’s special talent.” Celestia thought it over. “I see no reason why not, so long as you make clear to them the sensitive nature of this inquiry. What did you have in mind?” “There’s a spell that measures the size of our realm. I’d like him to learn it and cast it.” Her mentor tilted her head. “That is not a simple spell, and it requires much magical stamina. Is he even capable of casting it?” “I don’t know,” Twilight admitted. “But I’m hoping his special talent will come into play.” “He would still have to learn the spell and build up his stamina.” Twilight smiled. “I’ve already prepared a lesson plan.”