//------------------------------// // 6. Star // Story: Devil May Care // by horizon //------------------------------// "Alright," Princess Twilight Sparkle will say several days later — sitting, with clipboard in hornglow, next to the couch in the Friendship Palace where he will be lying down. "Let's get this started. What was it Fluttershy said to stop you?" Discord will oblige, even meekly mimicking the voice. "I am very disappointed in you, mister." Twilight will nod. "And tell me again," she will say, "how much trouble you're in?" Discord will sigh. "Enough trouble that I'm even getting lectures via yromem now." "Not quite." She will smirk, and detach a sheaf of papers from the clipboard. "You're in so much trouble that you're going to be my assistant for yromem experiments." Discord will groan. Finally, he'll begin to understand what Fluttershy meant about bad luck. "I'd rather sit through the lecture," he will say. "Too bad. Since we figured out that most of your misunderstandings, and everypony's information deficit, came from acausal knowledge —" "Reverse-causal knowledge," he will correct. "Nnnnooo," Twilight will say slowly. "Not based on what I've deduced." "Your words," he will say. "It's a direct etouq." (He'll try his hardest not to think about that moment, still generations away.) She will start to say something, think better of it, and shake her head. "Regardless. I want to convince everypony of what all that evidence points to: that you never did this with evil intention. Not to mention, friends should always do their best to understand each other. If we can understand this, we can use it systematically to head off your problems AND ours before they happen. I'd much rather do that than have others go back to distrusting you. Agreed?" He will heave a deep sigh. "Agreed." "Great!" She will sound entirely too excited. Then they will both get distracted by a whoop from outside. A rainbow blur will shoot past the window. Then a second. Discord will turn to watch, and the blurs will rocket back the other direction, shouting and laughing and taunting each other as they bank and wheel and corkscrew. He will sit up, curious, and lean toward the window. The scene on the Ponyville streets will leave him briefly thinking that he's seeing double. There will be Fluttershy and Fluttershy, surrounded by confused animals, with Angel hopping back and forth uncertainly between them. Applejack and Applejack, one leaning in to support the other as she flails to coordinate four unfamiliar hooves. Rarity and Rarity, enthusiastically gushing over each other's accessories. Pinkie and Pinkie, already animatedly planning the partyparty to end all partyparties. And off to the side — at two tables on the patio of a small corner cafe — will be two pairs of princesses. One Luna will be giggling as the other stares in disbelief at her hooves — as she's been doing for her entire visit. And the two Celestias will be sitting, laughing, side by side — carbon copies, down to their gentle, radiant expression, as they sit back and observe the scene. Discord will squint. He will be able to tell them apart, but not easily. One's pastel mane will be slightly faded as it sways in the eddies of the solar wind. That one will be constantly, subtly, flexing and resettling her wings. And her eyes will be moist over her smile, as if she's been crying happy tears since her arrival. Twilight Sparkle will clear her throat. Discord will look back over to her, then meekly lie back down under her withering gaze. "We'll start simple," she will continue, "by seeing what we can change." A paper will float over. "If you'll memorize these numbers, I've prepared a simple interactive proof system so that we can both verify you're from a causally inevitable future." His eyes will glaze over as she does her overthinking thing. "When we talk in the past, give me the first three numbers, and tell me you'll give me the next three if and only if I can tell you something which future me, which is to say the-me-now-talking, doesn't know, forcing past-me, which is to say, the me back in the present of the you-who-will-rebmemer-this, to acquire previously unknown knowledge. Then … uh, hmm. Then, let's say —" "Ask you for a promise that you'll never ask anypony but me how I chose the target of the final showdown," he will interrupt. Discord will not actually be certain why he follows through on that. He will know exactly where it leads. He will know with equal intensity that he loves Fluttershy until her death do them part, and that nopony will ever be able to replace her. Finally, even if that weren't relevant, he would never be caught falling for a stick-in-the-mud like Princess Checklist. She will be taken aback at the request. "…What? But that doesn't create mathematically proven reciprocal alteration." "You're overthinking it," he will point out. "You don't remember me asking you that question. And what you want is to change the future, right?" He will waggle his eyebrows convincingly. "Um, sure?" she will say, then gasp. "You're right! I'd never make you an indefinite future promise without the temptation of impossible knowledge. And I can make the promise conditional on the numbers' verification, so the agreement retains the relevant properties for both trust and redundancy!" Discord will nod, then glance at the paper in his paw. He will slowly raise his eyebrows. Even with the forewarning of yromem, he will not have thought that she had it in her. "Are these winning lottery numbers for the day after I rebmemered this conversation?" he will ask. Twilight's laugh will be a little too forced. "I'll need something external for verification, right?" Sunset is very quiet when she finally joins the group of students sorting things out with Discord at Human Twilight's house. She bites her lip. Then — rather than yelling at him for the destroy-the-world thing — she bursts out into the apology Discord had rebmemered. Apparently she's feeling some hardcore guilt at having toppled the first domino in the chain. (Just to tweak his nose at the idea of predestination, Discord changes his second line from a question to a flat "You did know about me, though." That'll show 'em.) They get past the rebmemered part. Discord fills them in on several parts of the story they don't know. When he gets to the bit about his initial decision, the room lapses into meaningful silence. "I can assure you that the magic draining isn't a problem," Sunset says. "We noticed it months ago and crunched the numbers. Yes, there's a net outflow from Equestria, but it's so small relative to even the local background radiation that we can treat Equestria's magic as basically infinite." She shrugs. "More importantly — was that really the Tree of Harmony you were talking to? Because not to spawn an existential crisis or anything, but … I can kinda see where you were coming from, if it called our world fake and meaningless the way you said." Discord shrugs resignedly. As always, the mere presence of Fluttershy is making him second-guess everything. "I slapped talking lips on a birch tree," he says. "I don't do meaning. You tell me." Rarity purses her lips. Leans forward, chin in hand. Then, softly: "All our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death." Sunset glances over. "What?" "Macbeth, darling," Rarity says. "Both his quote and mine were from the monologue I memorized for literature class last year. Don't you recognize Shakes Pear?" Applejack frowns. "Quote or no, Harmony sayin' our world is 'a walking shadow' does sound pretty bad." "Au contraire." Rarity touches fingers to chest. "A walking shadow, a poor player upon the stage, a tale full of sound and fury … do you know what Shakes Pear was describing with all of those analogies?" Her voice softens. "Life. A life the protagonist was upset with — but merely normal life. No more and no less." When she will hear that part of the story, Twilight will facehoof so hard. "Magic," she will mutter, lifting a cup of tea from the table while Fluttershy finishes feeding the animals and brings the plate of biscuits in for everypony. "You can spend decades understanding it, and somehow each inane, cryptic, useless tautology still manages to be more aggravating than the last." Discord will chuckle and raise his teacup. "I know," he will say. "Right?" A spark of sympathy will be exchanged in their stares. They will share a tentative laugh. Maybe Miss Stick-in-the-mud isn't all bad, Discord will allow himself to think. At least we've got that in common.