I was curled up on the carpet in my bedroom, idly leafing through the fake Journal. To pretend I was reading it would be a gross misrepresentation of facts, for I had already gone through every single word, picture, and ink blot with a magnifying glass. Despite that, I was not one step closer to understanding the mysterious author than I had been on the day I first opened it.
Instead, my thoughts kept drifting back to the crystal castle in the North, the Elements, safely locked in a glass box on the other side of the room, and our adventure. The adventure that started with a completely unexpected invitation to a wedding, occupied the better part of a month, and involved events both wondrous and terrifying. This trip had to be extended far longer than any of us had anticipated, throwing everypony’s schedules into complete disarray that still had us reeling.
The number of tasks that Sweet Apple Acres had accumulated that simply could not be done without Applejack was such that, upon discovering it, she sternly stated that she would not be available for anything short of preventing a certain end of the world for at least a month more.
Rarity, upon opening the door of her boutique, found a small mountain of discreet missives, requesting the possibility of getting one of the Spirits of Hearth’s Warming dresses, on top of Moondancer’s order, which has been made face to face. She sunk into work and “borrowed” Spike with no apparent intention of “returning” him until summer. Or sticking her nose out the door for longer than it takes to greet the mailmare, for that matter.
Fluttershy’s animals were getting restless without their landlady and rebelled against Caramel, whom she’d hired to keep them fed, which escalated into barricades and illegibly scrawled placards meant to imitate political slogans. As a result, Fluttershy was likewise occupied for the immediately foreseeable future. Her animal friends would only permit her to venture out into the market when accompanied by a bear, for fear of her getting called away on an important mission again.
Rainbow had a few choice words to say regarding the performance of her weather patrol in her absence, which went on rather loudly and for a while. It culminated in an abruptly rescheduled rainstorm, that left huge puddles all across town, which still haven’t dried.
Pinkie had her party schedule overflowing to make up for every little thing she missed, and that was about to become a roller-coaster for the legends. Many socially important events occurred in our absence, chief among them the long-awaited birth of the Cake twins, and now, the little Pound Cake and Pumpkin Cake occupied the entirety of their parents’ time, leaving Sugarcube Corner exactly one Pinkie away from closing down.
The coursework I had to make up seemed a light burden in comparison to what everyone was going through. Even Mary, who didn’t have a schedule to start with, did not come out unscathed. Before leaving for Canterlot, she’d managed to subscribe to just about every national daily newspaper, and a staggering number of other periodicals. Upon our return, she had to enlist the help of Zecora to drag the accumulated cartload of paper into her house in Everfree, because mailponies would not deliver to either of our two Everfree residents, claiming that the mail service area stops just past Fluttershy’s cottage.
All of this had left me alone with nothing but books for company this evening, and while this is a state I typically find very comfortable, after a week spent in constant contact, with the Elements sharply highlighting our respective presence in each other’s minds, I could not help but feel lonely and distraught.
And now I feel like I’m being watched. That presence somewhere behind me, the sheer pressure that heats up the air.
“I never stopped watching, just so you know,” Rika declared.
I turned my head slowly to look at the dark figure reclining on the stairs to the upper level of the room, her arms folded in front and propping up what had to be her teats, covered by the impenetrable black cloth. Needless to say, I was quite certain I hadn’t heard her saying hello… But just like before, I was sure I never heard her say goodbye, either.
“Well, if you didn’t,” I started, “would it be too much to ask you to explain yourself? Now would be a good time.”
“Oh?” she raised an eyebrow at me.
“I know that you deliberately set Fluttershy up to find out about the upcoming changeling invasion,” I stated. Rarity was quite graphic when describing the conversation at lunch that brought this to light. “She was agonizing over it for the entire week! What do you have to say for yourself?!”
“It was an opportunity,” she smiled. “I took it. If I didn’t, Mary would not have told you a thing, the mainline commits would get applied, and all of your friends would abandon you for Chrysalis. Would that make you feel better?”
“You don’t know what would happen!” I snapped reflexively.
“Do you presume to know what I do and don’t know, Twilight?” Rika asked, distorting her face into a grimace. “Really, truly?”
“Even assuming that you were correct,” I reluctantly conceded, “this was simply cruel of you.”
“I kind of expected she would run crying to you first thing, you know,” Rika shrugged. “It’s not my fault she decided to bottle it all in and be the responsible one.”
I’m not even sure telling her to apologize is worth the trouble. I’m not certain she understands the concept. This… I imagine this is what talking to Discord would feel like, if he wasn’t bent on crushing my ego into the ground and was just a neutral observer. Mostly neutral. Mostly observer. There is something she wants, I’m sure of it, I just don’t really understand what it is. Let’s try that angle.
“Why did you do it?” I asked. “What were you hoping to achieve?” I wanted to ask if it was even worth it, but left the implicit question hanging in the air.
“Oh,” she replied, smiling widely, all teeth on display, “but it was worth it. Damned if I know how she did it, because that is supposed to be impossible, but I’m pretty sure that Mary is your author, now. Has been even before she opened this book. Not figuratively, either, she isn’t simply deciding your future.”
I felt the hairs of my mane start slowly curling up and willed them to stay in place. Right, Lyra mentioned she can hear thoughts if you think in words. This is going to be even more uncomfortable than I imagined. “And you don’t see the logical contradiction in that?” I asked.
“I do, that’s why it’s impossible,” Rika agreed, hopping off the staircase and landing in front of my face in one swift motion, forcing me to turn around as she flew over my head in a graceful arc. I flinched, looking up at her. “Especially because I know that she has never even heard about Tirek or Moondancer, but here they are. Tell me, what, do you think, is the probability that in a randomly selected Equestria, ponies are speaking English?” Rika asked.
I carefully closed the Journal and moved it out of the way in my magic, so that she wouldn’t step on it. “Equish,” I insisted.
“Same difference,” Rika dismissed, crouching before me, which at least meant I didn’t have to look straight up at her. “What is the probability? Take a guess.”
“Wait,” I wondered. “I was sure that all books would be in that English of yours. How else would Mary read them?!”
Rika giggled, stretching out before me on the floor. “Seriously, Twilight. So suppose you’re reading a book about alien alicorns who meet Equestrian space pirates, do they all speak English too?”
“Equish!” I insisted again.
“Equish, whatever,” Rika waved a hand. “Do they or don’t they?”
I considered the question seriously. “Well, I would assume the alien alicorns have their own language, or they wouldn’t be very alien…”
“Would you ever hear them speaking it?” Rika pressed, pushing her head towards me and nearly bumping into my horn.
“Depends. Sufficiently advanced alien alicorns would find it easy to learn Equish if they needed to,” I replied, not giving any ground. I’m nowhere as sensitive to random invasions of personal space as I had been a year ago. Rika is still unnerving as all hay up close, with this faint smell of petroleum, and eyes that look like intricately painted glass, but now that I know what to expect, I am not going to be shocked. I never expected that this would be something to thank Pinkie for, but credit where it’s due.
“Most stories come with a translation lens, you see,” Rika grinned. “There is nothing in the universe, except words. If the characters can’t talk to each other, they have a problem. But if the reader can’t hear what the characters say, there’s no story. With your tree, the probability of a visitor finding a completely alien language and mysteriously acquiring the ability to speak it, or simply having a translation spell cast on them is about 80%.”
“This would never work!” I exclaimed. “All translation spells require the caster to competently speak both languages they translate between.”
Rika chuckled. “How fortunate that you didn’t need one then.”
“What would you do if translation was required but wasn’t possible, though?” I wondered.
“I’d trigger the translation lens, Mary would notice and try to chew me out about it, but eventually settle down, because she knows that talking to you is more important,” Rika declared. “It’s pretty easy.”
“If it’s so easy, why is not needing it proof of anything?” I asked. “Extraordinary claims like that need solid evidence, and I don’t see how this is evidence of anything at all!”
“Ah, but that’s just the first one!” Rika grinned. “Speaking plain English is mildly unusual, but hardly unique. But then, if I collate everything else… The usual Chrysalis is a melodramatic, cardboard idiot, only dangerous because she has an army of fanatics at her beck and call. But not here. Here, she turns out to have had a complicated, multi-stage plan, and when getting desperate, she unleashes an apocalyptic gamble.”
A gamble that, upon reflection, failed in a large part because Trixie, of all ponies, ended up in the right place at the right time. I had not been pleased to discover just how closely we brushed the end of the world. “Is that supposed to be a good thing, somehow?” I asked. “Because the way you talk about it seems to imply you think it is.”
“It’s supposed to be a true thing,” Rika tossed back. “Then, your brother, who so rarely rises above being ‘a pretty boy for Cadance’ – don’t look at me like that, Twilight, it’s true – is suddenly efficient, when in the mainline, he gets saved by you so often, that he is the first to acknowledge how ridiculous that is.”
I chose to bite back everything I had to say and keep listening, because it was pretty certain she had a whole list.
Indeed, Rika was not stopping. “And don’t forget Cadance herself, who does miracles in the name of love, Trixie, who can give you a run for your money, Royal Guard who actually put up a solid fight, despite being a fancy police force… Even Sombra is a mad genius, whose only failing was that he expected Celestia and Luna to be pragmatic, when they chose to be noble.”
“Is this going somewhere?” I inquired. The statement regarding Sombra in particular was very confusing.
“Individually, all of this is not exactly unique,” Rika replied, edging into my personal space again. “But what are the chances, that randomly picking a book off the shelf, Mary would find an iteration of Equestria where everyone is competent?”
She’s working from a fallacy. “Exactly the same as any other random combination of competence and incompetence,” I stated, gently pushing her away with the tip of my horn. “Assuming all the variables are independent, and I don’t see how they could possibly be related.”
“Really?” she said, looking scornfully at me. “You know what Mary hates the most in the world? Idiots. ‘Against stupidity the gods themselves,’ and all that. She says that competent people can be trusted to act in the name of some goal, noble or ignoble. With them, altering history is a problem of picking the ones to support and motivate, getting them a few lucky breaks. But every idiot is stupid in a unique way.”
Do I really have to explain basic math? “If I roll six dice, and they all come up sixes,” I said, “actually getting six sixes is not more or less probable than any other combination just because I want that result to happen!”
“Just so you know, I don’t actually care if you believe me or not,” Rika smirked, leaning into my direction again. “But I told you. I don’t believe in coincidence.”
“Does the universe change to accommodate what you do or do not believe?” I wondered, pulling back slightly. It might. That would be utterly terrifying.
“If it knows what’s good for it,” she suddenly answered in a serious, almost threatening tone. “Look at the brighter side, Twilight,” she added, standing up, almost flowing upwards from the floor. “A story where a magical girl doesn’t just sacrifice herself to save people, but becomes their very way of life is a rare treasure even among the five quintillion books. You should be happy you get to live in one, wherever you think it actually came from.”
I was about to wonder just how uncommon she believes our world to be, really, but she never gave me a chance. Instead, she turned around and made a step, fading into the bookshelves and leaving me alone again.
I sighed.
She really did remind me of Discord. And no matter how nasty he was, how annoying, how determined to exploit our weaknesses and grind us into the dirt, I could not deny he had some very deep insight into the virtues that make us. “Twists and turns are my master plan. Then find the Elements back where you began.”
Not the worst heuristic. Maybe I really should retrace my steps and start again from the beginning. And while this quest began right here, in my library, with Mary’s deceptively simple question regarding a popular snack, there was the next step, one that left avenues unexplored. The Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters.
I reached for the shelf where I stashed the books recovered from the castle library and sorted out the cookbooks, all fifteen of them, spreading them in front of me. Evidence that sandwiches existed in the pre-classical period would not really clear anything up, but it might provide me with an unexpected lead.
Upon closer inspection, the first cookbook was very familiar, looking almost like a prior edition of the famous “Book of Tasty and Healthy Food,” first published centuries later, rediscovered and reprinted numerous time since. I never knew that seminal work itself had a prior source influencing it so deeply, but here I had one. Interesting, but not it.
The next three books were likewise unusual, but hardly pertinent. One listed as many as thirty distinct ways of cooking oats. Another described a ridiculously complicated and expensive-looking recipe for Olivier salad. The only thing it had in common with what we call Olivier salad now were the titular olives.
The fifth one was in Griffish, and was titled “To serve pony,” which nearly convinced me that I made a mistake when picking it up. It only took me about ten pages to realize that I did not. Ew. Griffon scholars insisted that books like this one were a myth!
The sixth cookbook was hornwritten, barely legible, in Pony Latin, and looked more like somepony’s set of private notes than a book anypony meant for wider consumption. Next to a tasty looking recipe for éclairs, there was a whole page devoted to describing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, specifying the precise variety of bread, size and shape of pieces, as well as quantities of the peanut butter and jelly. The jelly was absolutely required to be peach.
Éclairs. The Journal mentioned Star Swirl’s skill at making éclairs. On a hunch, I cast Haycartes’ Argument for Illusion on the book, and the lines dissolved before me, revealing hastily scrawled Old Ponish in the same horn, even more illegible than the cookbook was.
By Jove, I think I’ve got it!