//------------------------------// // The Measure Of Mares // Story: Team Quantum // by Impossible Numbers //------------------------------// Minuette and Twinkleshine had already set up in the main park of the city. On the distant pathways, joggers jogged, picnickers picnicked, and students stole benches from each other every time one got up to put something in a bin. What they had set up was… “You’re sure this isn’t going to fall to pieces?” said Twinkleshine, eyeing up the thing warily. “Or explode?” “Of course!” Minuette’s voice had a metallic echo from somewhere deep in the mechanism. “It’s absolutely failsafe!” Twinkleshine took a deep breath. She’d never fault Minuette for her enthusiasm, least of all because the very idea of saying a bad word made her feel faint, but incorrect terminology was a different matter. “That means it won’t hurt anyone if it does fail,” she said patiently. “What it shouldn’t do is fail in the first place. It should be fail-proof.” “It is!” Minuette fiddled with something deep in the mechanism. “You’re not looking for an excuse to go back to the drawing board, are you?” “I like the drawing board. The drawing board is nice and safe. The drawing board won’t get us kicked out of university if we blow something up.” “Oh, you theoretician you!” said Minuette cheerfully. “Trust me, I’m a natural. Applied chronometrics isn’t that different from applied continuum, uh, metrics, thingy. You know? Hey, we should coin a new term for what we’re doing! We’re pioneers!” Once more, Twinkleshine looked around as though expecting a tutor to materialize from thin air, frown-first. True, she’d complained that the current university model was stuck indoors all the time, and yes, if they twisted her forelimb – she whimpered at the thought – she would have admitted that she’d suggested, ever so carefully, that they should indeed have a portable model instead. She’d even wiled away a few happy hours calculating and double-calculating the specifics of the machine. She liked the machine in theory. It was only the machine in practice that made her sweat. Or maybe that was the sun; didn’t they say that white unicorns like her burned more easily in sunlight? More than ever, she wanted to go back indoors and read books about stars. She’d catalogued quite a few stars in the Zodiac Galaxy, and they were full of interesting things like Cepheid variables and main sequence binaries and X-ray pulsars packing their own delightful personalities and quirks. None of which worried her as much as Minuette smiling near machinery. Minuette banged her head and drew back; such was her good mood that the only sign of concussion was a slight glassiness about the eyes. “How about Twilight today, huh?” she said with usual bonhomie – or rather, given both the etymology and the species, “bonchevalie” – “Trying to be all get-out-more.” “Yes, I wish she didn’t. It’s not natural. I liked her better when she just gave orders.” After a moment’s thought, Twinkleshine added, “Well, OK, no I didn’t, but at least I knew how to deal with her when she just gave orders. All this ‘trying to be outgoing’ stuff creeps me out. When she does it, I mean.” “I like the new Twily!” Moving around the machine, Minuette ran an eye over the panelling. “But it was a bit weird, yeah.” “Yeah.” “Uh huh.” More joggers cantered past, and these ones glanced their way. Twinkleshine stepped sideways so as to remain hidden behind the device until they passed. “I do miss the old days, though,” said Minuette, who’d stopped at the user interface. “This used to be so much fun. Everything was fresh and exciting when it was just the four of us.” Glumly, Twinkleshine nodded. In truth, she’d known all along that anything as big as the Equiverse project wasn’t going to be left to a bunch of students forever. Highly advanced students, maybe, but they hadn’t reached that level at the time. Pride flickered in her chest at the thought. They’d been precocious. That was a word to treasure forever. But over the years, more undergraduates had peeked through the door or asked the tutors what was going on, and any student could smell a quick and easy credit boost from a mile off. Although most actual project newcomers broke away like poorly engineered parts through sheer pressure, some had caught up with the original team, who had survived by roping in small teams to make one big team. Alas, somewhere along the way, things had gotten very crowded in the labs… “Twily’s not the only one acting weird,” said Minuette, drawing up some blueprints and checking them against the interface. “Lyra says she wants to drop out.” “What!?” Twinkleshine spluttered. “Lyra!? But… why!? She can’t! When!? Where!?” “Too much pressure. That’s what she told me. Oh, I feel so bad for her! I told her she could talk it out with us, but she says she’s got to do things herself.” “But why?” “I dunno. I didn’t like to ask.” Minuette’s eyes widened. “Please don’t tell her I told you. She wanted me to keep it a secret.” “Oh. Did she?” “Promise you won’t tell!” “I promise, I promise. I don’t know why you are telling me, though.” “You’re my friend. It doesn’t count if I tell you,” said Minuette, fully confident of this traditional response to the secret-keeper’s conundrum. “Then don’t tell Lemon Hearts. She doesn’t reason like that. Or Moondancer… though I guess Moondancer won’t care either way. Actually, yeah, tell Moondancer. That’s a safe place for a secret, if ever there was one. Or tell –” Twinkleshine clamped her mouth over the next name that tried to slip through her lips. That one was not a safe place for anything, let alone a secret. That one had views. A small crowd was gathering on the path nearby. Even over several yards and the trickle of the nearby canal, she heard their murmuring. “You sure you’re doing that right?” Twinkleshine said suddenly. “Yeah, why?” “I’m sure the display shouldn’t be orange.” “That’s OK.” “No, it’s not. I know what orange means. It’s close to red.” “But it’s also close to green. Relax. I’ll switch on all the detectors, Little Miss Scaredy Pants –” Minuette giggled “– and then we’ll know for sure whether it’s good news or bad news.” Twinkleshine’s brain uttered a very rude word, and she had to stifle her own gasp. A pony like her should not know words like those. They were not the words of a good pony. She didn’t like saying them in private, not even when quoting someone. Doing so suggested a lack of moral fibre. “You’re being very reckless,” she said, risking an impatient stamp of her hoof. “Twily says that you have to have dangerous physics on your side if you don’t want dangerous physics on the other side.” Like most things Twilight said – namely when translated through Minuette’s less refined vocabulary – this made Twinkleshine say, “Pardon?” “I’m sure Twily knows what she’s doing. She is a Postdoctoral Researcher –” “So are we!” “– on the Esteemed Unicornian Scholarship Fund,” Minuette recited, and then she beamed as though pleased to have remembered all those long words. “Not just anyone can get that. It’s not like the old days when we spent weeks writing on chalkboards. This is the real stuff.” Twinkleshine sniffed haughtily. She’d applied for the fund at one point. “That ‘writing on chalkboards’,” she said in a treble of trembling outrage, “was a series of highly precise cosmological calculations at the cutting edge of fundamental quantum tunnelling and gravitational wave theory! If it wasn’t for my – If it wasn’t for our calculations, you’d never have gotten this far!” Flapping her front hooves, Minuette turned at once to attend to her. “I know, I know! And I’m really, really grateful. I am. Truly.” Only when Twinkleshine had forced her squeaky fury back down did Minuette add, “But you gotta admit this is where the fun is! Don’t you think it’s exciting?” The crowd was growing now. News had gotten around over the last few months – accompanied by far more rumours, speculations, and crackpot conspiracies than Twinkleshine was happy with – and they were probably waiting to see if a black hole would pop up and swallow everything. It’d be something to chat about over lunch. “Shall we?” Minuette waved at the crowd. One or two ponies waved back, but most simply chuckled or whispered amongst themselves. “We’ll get into trouble,” said Twinkleshine. It was a good line, and she knew it would be proved right sooner or later. Minuette nudged her gently. “Come on. When this works –” “If this works.” “When this works, we’ll be taking another great step for the future of science!” “Physics and cosmology, to be precise.” “What could go wrong?” Twinklehine took a deep breath. “I don’t mean actually say what could go wrong, silly. Oh, Twinkleshine, you worry too much. This will be the greatest day of our lives!” At a burst of laughter from the crowd, Twinkleshine winced. “They won’t forget it, at least.” “That’s the spirit!” And Minuette reached for the big red shiny button, and pressed it as though picking a latte on a coffee machine. There should have been a bit more decorum, Twinkleshine felt. The world’s first Lambda Likelihood Locator went “ding”. “Um,” said Twinkleshine. “Shouldn’t we wait for…?” Minuette shook her head irritably. Right away, the crowd fell silent; they were probably practising their reports for the main course at lunch. The show was about to begin. A landing pod of a machine, or so it looked: the Lambda Likelihood Locator trembled and rattled on five metal spindles for legs, each atop a pair of brick-thick wheels. These strained to hold up the quivering sphere, large enough to be co-opted as a carriage if anyone had wanted to sit among so many wires and pipes, and if anyone could be found who was five millimetres thick. Pulsing like curved strip lights, three doughnut-shaped “ears” projected from the upper half, so perfectly arranged – Twinkleshine allowed herself a flicker of pride – that from overhead they made an exact equilateral triangle. Crowning the whole ensemble was the revolving dish, because any futuristic device worth its weight in gold had to have a revolving dish on top. Both of them checked the interface. Still orange. “It’s a shame Rarity isn’t here to see this,” said Twinkleshine. “She has such a lovely eye for detail.” Now it was Minuette’s turn to frown. “Twinkleshine, you’re a great friend, but Rarity? Really?” Twinkleshine knew her own face was turning pink; she burned across her cheeks, though that might also have been the sun. “There’s nothing wrong with Rarity.” “She’s an art student! She shouldn’t even be on this project.” “Every science project needs an artist.” Twinkleshine wrinkled her muzzle. “We should’ve let her design this. It wouldn’t hurt to make it look less… primitive.” “It’s sciency!” “Yes, but sciency in a very primitive way.” “What?” “You know, it’s how ponies fifty years ago thought the future would look. Too much steel and too many silly sticking-out bits.” Minuette’s mouth was a tight line. More gently, Twinkleshine added, “This is a beautiful moment, though. At least it works.” Never far from cheeriness, Minuette nodded. “Yep. It does work, doesn’t it?” “This is a very important step. What do you think we should do next?” Finally, and thankfully, Minuette lost all tightness in her face and the beaming smile came back. She levitated a camera. “One for the album?” she said. “Splendid.” Twinkleshine allowed herself a small giggle. “Let’s call it: Best Friends Taking the Revolution to the City. Make sure you get the crowd in.” “OK, then! Smile!” Yet as soon as Twinkleshine sidestepped around her – to get the crowd in – and the camera aimed, a more frantic beeping broke out. They looked at the machine. Pulsing lights pulsed faster. The dish spun more urgently. Worst of all, the orange display had turned red. Minuette dropped the camera. “All right! Excitement time! It really does work!” A cold premonition seeped through Twinkleshine’s mind as she watched her friend read the details on the screen. She whimpered. “Please tell me it’s not –” she began. “It’s in the park! What luck! If we hurry, we could catch it! See? I told you this was the best bit!” “Yes. That. Please tell me it’s not that.” Twinkleshine groaned. While her excitable friend pushed against the mighty machine and a few wheels squeaked, she looked sadly at the crowd. Beyond them, joggers jogged, picnickers picnicked, and students stole benches. Suddenly, she wished she was one of them. Yes, she thought, please give me the chalkboard any day of the week. At the top of another tower, the one called Apollo’s Peak, Moondancer talked to a box. No ordinary box, admittedly: this was a box containing all manner of switches and flashing lights and sizzling circuitry, and the paper pouring out of the slot spoke back using complex messages only she could understand. But her side of the conversation was – apart from the rapid typing she did without thinking – largely non-technical. “They asked me out! To a party! At this time of year! I put it to you: who in their right mind wants to waste time on all that sort of small talk when the project’s nowhere near completion yet? It’s only me and Twilight who really keep it going. If it was up to the rest of them, we’d be even further behind than the Alpha-Omega team. Then we’d look silly!” The box did not hum while it worked, because Moondancer wouldn’t have stood for it if it had. She’d built the thing herself, after getting impatient with the technical team for taking too long. She called it her thinking box. In fact, computing devices did exist already, though they didn’t attract much attention and were largely playthings for unicorns. According to The Compendium of Odd and Trivial History, one century ago, a mare named Loveless had grown tired of her fellow unicorns constantly making sloppy mathematical errors on paper and had built a machine to do it for them. She’d operated on the principle that mushy brains produced mushy results, so hard brains produced hard results. Upon completion, the machine had made three mistakes for its first test run. So, Loveless had decided with the kind of unstoppable certainty only a Moondancer could love, the important thing was that it had made those mistakes efficiently. It made a kind of sense. Somehow, if a pony made a mistake, that was just a sign of ineradicable frailty in pony nature, but if a machine made a mistake, that was just a minor bug that’d be easy to fix. Right now, Moondancer knew how Loveless must have felt. Machines sometimes went blip, but at least they listened to her instructions. And to her complaining. It was nice to complain to something that wouldn’t make a fuss. “I don’t think any of them really take it seriously,” she said to the thinking box, which she half-considered naming after Loveless as a sort of tribute. “Oh, Twilight tries, bless her. And I’m sure Twinkleshine does, though…” She sniffed, which in her opinion summed up the state of Twinkleshine’s affairs better than any litany of flaws could have done. “But the others just see it as a brand new game.” The box continued its mysterious operations. “Don’t get me wrong… Well…” Guilt stopped her for a moment. Funny: she never felt guilty if her “friends” actually took offence, but merely imagining them do so was another matter. Perhaps, she suspected, ponies were easier to sympathize with at a distance. Still held at bay by guilt, Moondancer glanced up at the photos on the wall. They were an odd thing to find in a place like this, which was overrun by mechanical devices and books that needed re-shelving. Somewhere under all the dust and paper piles, presumably, was a bed and desk. Only the chair remained unswarmed, because she had to sit on something, and books had proven too inconvenient. The photos were Minuette’s gifts. At the time, Moondancer had pretended to throw them away. Still, there had to be a corner of her life where they could exist. “They’re good ponies. I’m sure of it.” Seconds passed before her staring became uncomfortable, and she returned her gaze to the box. “But –” she sniffed again “– they don’t take it seriously. Even Twilight’s got it into her head that dragons are involved somehow. And they call her a respected physicist! Talking crank like that!” Agitated, she adjusted her spectacles and ran a hoof down the front of her jumper. Moondancer always wore a jumper, regardless of how much she sweated during the summer. Thermoregulation was just a tedious distraction. She opened a drawer, and was pleased to find the notes on Calabi-Yau spaces. All arranged alphabetically, of course, and carefully marked with coloured ink at the top-right corner. Quantum mechanics deserved the special treatment, after all. Once, the subject had been chaotic, and now it was tamed, and would soon be trained to jump through hoops. Chaos was the enemy. Outside her door, chaos spread like a disease throughout the world. Ponies were the worst carriers; they actually seemed satisfied with – she shuddered – taking life as it came. They never gave a thought for the purity of accuracy. They even said things like “take a break” or “relax” or “the work’ll keep”. Relax? Didn’t they realize that a shockingly high 34.76% of the day was often wasted sleeping? She knew; she’d timed herself every night for a month and then run a statistical analysis on the results. Nowadays, she tried to cut it down to 16.67%, and only because the 0% project had ended with her falling off her chair during a lecture. No, she had enough relaxation already. It wasn’t as if she’d never tried to have fun. For instance, she’d bought that Smarty Pants doll at Twilight’s request. Sure, it was now sitting in the corner and rotting under the dust, but she’d spent money for the cause of frivolity. At least that was something. In here, in the shadows, she felt safe. The world was unclean. This room was a ward kept spotless. Finally, the thinking box – Loveless – stopped. The paper lay asleep, its squiggles dormant but waiting for her gaze to conjure mathematical dreams with a glance. She muttered under her breath as she read them. To her own surprise, she smiled. Her muscles ached through lack of practice, but the broad conditions were met. Delight crept up on her. “Twilight, you genius,” she murmured. “Perhaps you were onto something after all. OK…” A few seconds passed while she ferreted around for a pen. Funny: she could buy tons of everything else and never lose it, but pens came and went as though they were sporadically exploring the world beyond and following their own timetable. Twilight had once joked that pens sneaked off to another universe when they thought no one was looking. Soon, she was scribbling more calculations on a separate piece of paper. “No,” she muttered. “I thought it was too good to be tr – Wait! If the resonator’s slightly out of sync, then I can fix that. There must be something wrong with the space-time intake valve.” She ran a few calculations through the thinking box. More paper rolled out. What she’d seen, even she couldn’t fully understand. Everyone had tried finding a way of travelling through the multiverse, but so far they’d only seen random windows accomplish that, and they were untamed. No one had figured out how to control them. The first pony to do so could change history. Moondancer wasn’t interested in history. No, the first pony to control the windows would be the first pony to control the windows. There was no point adding prizes to the event. The event did not serve her; she served it. Now she knew what Twinkleshine meant when she’d talked about her “shuddering before the universe”. Moondancer was shaking with nerves. She’d cracked it! She was sure she’d cracked it! Travel among the worlds! Oh, there’d be a few minor niggles to clean up. That’d take the best part of two days, but all of that was just the mathematical equivalent of mopping up. What she needed now was a cup of really hot tea, and – Through the excitement, she saw a red light flashing. On the desk. Her safety alarm. Someone was in the tower. Moondancer’s swivel chair squeaked. She faced the door. Firstly, no one could get into Apollo’s Peak without a key card. Only thirty ponies had the right level of clearance. Secondly, Moondancer had added her own special twist. Most unicorns knew barely enough magic to perform simple psychokinesis, but she’d learned better spells from Twilight. The only way to trip her safety alarm would be to also get past her magical locks. The ones leading up to her room. Heavy footsteps thudded along the passageway outside. A fist knocked. One. Two. They knocked harder. Three. Four. Or were they trying to break in? Moondancer’s spine was ice. The thought rose to the top of her mind: They broke through the magical locks! Like it was nothing! Even Twilight would’ve struggled! Now the knocking became a vicious thudding. Whoever was behind the door, they seemed keen to get in. Or to break in. Silently, from under a heap of open mechanical textbooks, Moondancer levitated a wrench, which just goes to show that even a magical genius can sometimes come up with badly thought-out ideas. “Who’s there?” she said. Metal ripped. She saw the door start to buckle. “I’m warning you!” Shaking, she raised the wrench, wondering far too late if she needed to know the right technique for an effective swing. The door bent so far it ripped along the middle. Red scales flashed through the gap. Then the lot tore away from the hinges. Dust bloomed up where it fell. “No, not my premium grade vault doors! You monster!” Moondancer waved the wrench threateningly at the dust cloud. “You’ll have to pay for that, you know! I still have my copy of the invoice!” Thuds – clear, heavy, floor-cracking thuds – came closer. A shape shifted among the settling dust. “You’re not allowed in here! This is a restricted area! I won’t give you another chance – My books! Look what you’ve done to my books!” Nearby, a pile of reference books toppled. They’d taken hours to organize. The thought occurred to her that she had more pressing matters than a sudden mess. She swung the wrench. A clawed hand grabbed it mid-swipe. Her mouth opened and closed. She backed away and hit her rump against the desk. Moondancer’s mind raced about for a counterspell. To her horror, none came. But she must have memorized hundreds… The claws squeezed. Then they opened, letting the crumpled remains of the wrench tinkle on the ground. By now, the dust had utterly cleared. Outstretched wings loomed over her. Claws stretched towards her face. Oversized teeth grinned at her from a muzzle of blazing red. Even through the spreading fear, Moondancer’s curiosity leaped out. “A dragon!? You’re a dragon!?” “No kidding, little pony,” the dragon said in a deep voice. “And there was me thinking you were the smart one.” Curiosity switched to desperation and ran on. “How’d you get so big!?” “I work out.” The claws touched her face. His grin cut further across his snout. Both eyes glowed with the fires of delight. She said, “Are you a different species?” He paused. “What?” he said. “A different species.” Nervously, she adjusted her glasses. “Only the common dragon, Dracosaurus regalis, doesn’t have wings, and their proportions tend to be neotenous, as opposed to your more developed body proportions.” He drew back slightly. “More developed? Wha?” “And you don’t have the traditional diamond-tipped tail. I don’t know what the technical term would be for the spikes on yours – possibly a primitive thagomizer – though of course I’m assuming Dracosaurus regalis isn’t polymorphic. It could be you’re a subspecies, or a close enough species within that genus to be ambiguous, but the… uh… the, uh…” Her gibbering ran down and collapsed under his blinking. He clearly hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about. Then he remembered himself and stalked forwards again. “Too smart for your own good, aren’t you, little pony?” She’d bought time. Her supercharged spell welled up and all at once she fired. It was textbook. It was high-class magic. On anything other than a dragon, it would have worked. But the monster caught it in the claws of one hand. Instantly, he swiped and shredded the cherry-coloured flames as though smashing a bonfire with his fist. Bits of the room burst into flame. The bang cracked the windows. She yelped and covered her eyes against the flare of light. “Get back!” she shouted. “I’m warning you!” “Who’s gonna make me, pony?” Flames crackled. More book piles toppled onto the ground. Overwhelmed by the heat and by his rising laughter, she raised her hooves, and peeped out in time to see his hand smother her glasses. “Leave me alone! You’re insane! Don’t you realize I’m trying to revolutionize mmff mmff mmff MMMMMFFFF!” “Shut up,” was the last she heard him say. “You’re only lucky I need you alive, little pony…”