This portion of the anthology starts with me about to throw a rock at a cat in a tree. Since I’ve read an article regarding quantum physics and having a foal making a decision based on rolling a pair of dice as the most logical way of whether or not that a “Realist” quantum probability exists, it lead me out to the outskirts of town, rolling a pair of dice and getting ready to toss a stone at a cat in a tree. Then, before I could make a curveball towards the singing feline, I heard a knock. Putting the predictable outburst in the comment section on hold, I turned around to find the door of my classroom right behind me.
“It’s open,” I called out.
The knob on the door jiggled a little before the door swings upwards, detaching itself from the doorframe and floating up into space. Walking through was a student of mine, Sandbar, who stuck his head and watched the door going up towards the stratosphere. He then took notice of me. “Mr. Discord? What are you doing?”
“Being bored,” I replied, tossing the rock over my shoulder and missing the tree. “Unless you have some better idea of how to spend my time.”
“Well I don’t know about that; however, I do have something that I’m curious about.”
This might be promising.
“That being…?” I asked, waving a paw at him to get to the point.
“Can you explain to me what the whole Fate or Free Will thing is about?”
Ah great, another complicated subject that I have to explain in plain Equestrian.
Then again, I don't have anything better to do…
“And why would you want to know?” I asked.
“I don’t know…” he shrugged. “Just something that I’ve heard about, you know, with some mythologies saying that we’re doomed by fate and others saying that they want to express freedom of choice. So, I thought I’d come and ask you to help clarify some things.”
“Very well.” I rubbed my paw/talon together. “So, what do you know about the subject?”
“Not much really.” He told me. “All I know is that either we all have a choice in who we want to be and do, or that choice is an illusion and everything we do or are about to do is set in stone.”
“Ah yes, the constant battle between Libertarians and the Determinists. With perpetual arguments that continue on even after the author of this story dies.” I slithered over to my student. “If anything, from my point of view, this debate is actually kinda funny to me.”
“Really?” Sandbar raised an eyebrow. “Why’s that?”
“Well, before I can get to that, let’s take a closer look into what this whole debate is all about.” To this, my toe tapped, and a movie screen, a projector, and a couple of lawn chairs popped out of the ground. “You like superheroes?”
Sandbar blinked. “Well… yeah?”
“Take a seat, I wanna show you something.”
So laying back and pulling on a cord to turn off the sun for a few minutes, the projector turned itself on. “Ah Supercolt,” I sighed as we watched the buff stallion on-screen with his red undies on full display of his costume while beating up some aliens. “The pony of steel. Faster than a speeding arrow. More powerful than the Friendship Express. Able to leap over Sunbutt in a single bound. And the most overpowered thing to ever exist.” I turned over to my student. “So from what you can see, is Supercolt responsible for making his own decisions?”
“What are you talking about?” he asked. “In this, yeah, he can make his own decisions.”
“Even to do something naughty?”
He frowned. “He could. I mean, in here, Supercolt could make bad decisions. He didn’t have to defeat aliens in here, he could be dating Lotus. Yet, here he is, beating up aliens.”
“Alright, and how about this.” Looking back at the screen, the image of the hero punching an alien in the face froze, zooming out to a where a pen was touching upon his shading. It went further back until we could see an artist at work at his desk. “So in this, is Supercolt able to make his own decisions?”
“No.”
I grinned. “Oh? And why not?”
“Because here, Supercolt isn’t real, he’s just a character that the artist made up and is making a comic about. What he does is in that artist’s hooves.”
“Funny how quickly you changed your opinion,” I commented.
He rolled his eyes. “C’mon Mr. Discord. Even I know that Supercolt is a fictional character, he doesn’t exist, so this argument doesn’t hold any weight.”
“No?” I asked before the film suddenly changed. This time, it was to us looking at… us watching the movie in real-time. Sandbar had to rub his eyes as he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. From what was on the screen, it was shot from behind, giving the infinity effect on the screen as it was us looking at an infinite amount of us’s. He looked over and back to the screen several times – even waved a hoof out to see the screen copying his every move.
“What the hay am I looking at?” he asked.
“Now.”
“What?”
“We are looking at now.” I gestured over. “Everything that is happening now is happening now.”
Sandbar looked at the screen, scratching his head. “This is so weird. How is this happening?”
“Give it a second,” I told him, conjuring up a bowl of popcorn, “the answer is coming up.”
While we watched, the camera zoomed out of the way, dissolving into a void of white when suddenly words in Times New Roman appeared as it continued to zoom out even further to a screen that was describing this scene and even further back, notes about today’s lesson. And further back to a computer screen that has the image of a sand dune at night with blue folders on the left side that were right next to a Google Chrome with three Microsoft icons including Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. Those blue folders that were squished together between those icons and the typing words read “School Notes,” “Traveler’s Story Co” and “Backgrounds.” It continued to zoom out to a point of view shot of fingers typing away at a laptop keyboard, a blue shirt, and behind the screen, orange walls with various objects including a TARDIS on top of a tower of books, a black-and-white painting of mountains, an open closet that was in a mess, a music stand, and a large wooden walking stick with the face of a native carved into it.
I turned over to Sandbar. “What the actual buck am I looking at?”
“The story,” I told him, “from the point of view of the author that’s writing my words as I speak them. Oh! Since we’re here, watch this.” I cleared my throat. “Cantaloupe, Rabbit, oxymoron, Citizen Kane is overrated, three-point-one-four under the sea… underwear, Christmas, nebula, ndugjkdrklufgenwdskfajgnkjscgijsodnfkojnvjah. See.” I waved over to the screen. “Isn’t this fun?”
Then I noticed it said the words:
Hey Discord, stop messing around and get back to your obviously traumatized student. Plus, I think someone is already writing a long comment about me breaking the fourth wall again.
I rolled my eyes. “Fine, fine, Mr. Killjoy.” So I returned my attention to my student, who by now was curled up in a ball, rocking and muttering the phrase, “I think therefore I am,” over and over again. Well, at least we’re off to a good start. “You seem nervous at this idea. Why?”
He shook his head.
“C’mon, you can tell me.”
It took him a good five minutes or more for him to respond, and in the meantime, I turned off the projector and switched on the sun. I waited for him to stop rocking and giving a billion-mile-long stare. “I don’t want to think about it.”
“Why?”
“Because… if everything is already planned out for me, then are you saying that I don’t have any say in what I wanted to do? I have no say in how I want to improve my life? The friends I wanted to be with? The cutie mark I got, is that something that I worked hard for, or because something wanted me to? That I’m nothing but a puppet for something else? That my life is personally being controlled by something that I never once had a say in? I don’t want to think about it… It’s a really scary thought.”
“Oh, what do you know, a pony that can get easily spooked over something that isn’t in their control, just like with any other being that happens to have a brain that jerks their irrational side around like a puppet.” I said, turning to the reader, “Determinists, take notes.” I returned my attention to him. “Sandbar, look at me. You can have your extensional crisis later, for now, you need to ask yourself a more important question in all of this.”
He did look up, “A-And what’s that?”
“Why?” My student tilted his head like a confused puppy. “Why would anyone declare that we are all free or all enslaved by fate? Why would someone fight to the death over the idea that we’re either making all this up as we go or that all of history is nothing more than a written novel where there’s a clear beginning, middle and end? Isn’t it a little strange? Isn’t it a little curious? Or even, is it a little…” I leaned in, “funny?
“So… why do you think that is so?”
“Uh…” Sandbar shifted his eyes, in search of an answer but it was clear on his face that he was struggling to find one. “Because it’s… true?”
An annoying buzzing was heard as I pressed a red button. “Wrong-o. This entire debate has been going on for so long, that many have forgotten why these ideas were formed, to begin with.”
“Huh?”
“To put it in plain Equestrian for you. This whole fight becomes much more intriguing and relatable if you change the question: is the idea of Free Will or Fate more or less relevant… to you.”
“Me?”
I nodded. So I lead Sandbar off set and onto a tropical beach, before he could ask how we got there, I answered: “You see, depending on how you see your own life, one of these arguments could offer you up as a… well, putting your life into a frame, so to speak. Where this all comes from, is from comparing the ideas of two, different levels of psychological mentalities.”
“Which are…?”
“On the one paw,” I led out my right arm, “you have aspiration. These are the kind of folks where they grew up with such levels so high, they’re convinced that everything about life is easily changeable as long as they make it so. They’ll be the first to tell you that they can achieve anything at all simply by exercising their will power. That they could become anything they want as long as they work hard enough or develop the right skills to accomplish it. From careers to income, relationship and prospects, these things are obedient to their decisions to change.”
“But what’s wrong with that?” my student asked.
“On the surface, nothing much. It’s a beautifully naïve idea. It’s the kind that motivation books try to cram into your head until blood shoots out your nose. However, if left unchecked, if they find things don’t go as they hoped, then they’ll have a conniption over the fact that it didn’t go according to plan.”
I stopped and pointed. “For example: take this colt right over there.” He looked and his eyes went wide at the sight of seeing his younger self in front of him, but his past self doesn’t notice us. We watched as he and what I assume to be his family helping out baby turtles crawling towards the sea. “This little guy is lucky enough to have a choice in which determines his own destiny. As we’ll see here.”
The younger Sandbar looked over his shoulder to notice three other baby turtles going the other way. He looked between the barrier that his family had constructed and the few that were crawling in the wrong direction. A moment later, he got up to gallop over before the birds nearby could catch them, turn them around, and follow them towards the ocean. So busy with this, that he didn’t notice that he earned his cutie mark.
“So, why did you do that?” I asked my student. “Out of all the things that you could have done, like staying with your folks with a whole bunch of other turtles, why did you go off to save those few?”
“Because… well…” Sandbar took a moment to find an answer. “I wanted to. I saw those little guys going the wrong way and nopony was noticing. If I didn’t do something, those turtles wouldn’t have a shot at life.”
“But by making that choice, you got your cutie mark at… I don’t know, saving sea turtles or something. You could have gotten a cutie mark for pretty much anything else. Surfing, sunbathing, be a contestant on Survivor even, yet, you go out of your way to save these few animals from becoming some bird’s meal.”
“It was a wakeup call for me, Mr. Discord.” He told me. “My cutie mark stands for being selfless. To think of others in their time of need. And maybe I could only help a few, but it makes all the difference in the world to them.”
“Ah-huh,” I lifted my claw that was glowing. “And suppose I would offer you to change this so that you would get a cutie mark in something else, would you?”
Sandbar recoiled at the suggestion. “What! No! I would never give up what happened to me for anything. This helped me shaped to become who I am.”
I put my continuity changing spell aside. “I see. But I must point out that this came out because you were given a choice. But what about a time when you didn’t have one?”
“No! I’m not going!” We snapped our attention towards a Sandbar from the not-too-distant past inside a home with ocean memorabilia. The past Sandbar clearly upset at an older stallion with dregs in his mane stomped his hoof. “I was going to go into surfing, dad! And suddenly you’re sending me to a school without asking me?”
His father sighed. “Sandbar, I promise that this will be good for you. From what I could gather, the School of Friendship is what you need now more than ever.”
“Why?”
“Because… I’m getting worried about you.” He said, putting a hoof on his shoulder. “There aren’t many ponies your age around this part of Equestria, and I know that you want to have a connection with those that are at your level. If anything, I think this will be a huge investment for you in the long term. You’ll be surrounded by students your age, and I’m told you’ll get to meet a wide range of characters that would give you a variety.” His son sulked. “I know it’s not what you want, but I think it’s something you need.”
“Dad…” The younger Sandbar frowned, “I had plans and…”
“I know, but all I ask is to trust me on this. All I ask is that you would at least give it a chance. Can you do that for me?”
He sighed, “Fine… I’ll try, but I won’t forget that you did this without me saying yes to it.”
As he stormed off, I turned to my present student. “So even when you weren’t given a choice, would you change it?”
Sandbar shook his head. “No. Turns out, dad was right about the school in the end. I did get to meet my friends and even got to meet you.”
“Flattery won’t get you anywhere with this lesson,” I told him. “But here, you were quite upset. You said so yourself, you had other plans. You were going to do something else than attend Princess Bookworm’s school. Why?”
He shrugged. “Because, as the other me said, I had plans. I was going to take up surfing. Stay by the sea, you know? I was comfortable where I was. However, looking back now, Dad was right in taking me out of that and giving me something that I didn’t think I needed – friends. Real, relatable friends that cared about me and I do the same for them.”
I nodded. “Since you understand the aspiration part, allow me to introduce you to the other side of the argument – the Defeatists.” With a snap, our surroundings changed into the gray lands of the old Griffon kingdom. To the ruins of the Griffonstone. I continued my lecture by walking by those dumpy houses with Sandbar following behind. “These guys on the other claw don’t see any point to those who have aspiration. To them, they readily declare that whatever responsibility they have is already set into stone by forces outside of their control. Everything is predetermined by their parents, their school, their government, bosses, the news, and so on. That it is all settled by everyone and everything – except themselves.”
“That sounds like a sad way to live.”
“Oh, no doubt about it! The result of this is that anyone seduced by this idea turns into underachievers and pump themselves with enough self-hatred to power the Storm King’s blimps for a thousand years. However, just like how your life was fueled by aspiration, being defeated by life doesn’t just happen. There are reasons why some would adopt that philosophy. For example…”
I pointed, and my student looked over to a sight that made him gasp. In front of us outside of town, was a young Gallus sobbing his eyes out before two stones with the dirt that was freshly covered up.
“Oh Goddesses! Gallus!” Sandbar tried to gallop over to comfort his friend in the past, only to go right through him. Stopping, he turned around, and regardless of what he said or even waving a hoof into him, he was like a ghost. “What the actual hay! This is cruel, Mr. Discord!”
“Why blame me? These are but the shadows of things that have been – as the saying goes.” I told him, walking past the crude shovel. “But I brought you here to make a point, and it is this.” I waved over to the sobbing Gallus. “What you see is an example of the birth of a mentality that the universe doesn’t bow down because you said so. If you were to ask him, he would say that there was nothing he could do to prevent his folks from dying. To try to fight against it was pointless. The prime example of having something be completely out of one’s control.
“So even then, let me ask you, Sandbar, if I were to rewrite what has happened here, would you let me?”
My student was silent for a very long time. He sat down in front of Gallus from the past in deep, uncomfortable thought. “I…” he finally said. “I don’t know. It hurts to see him like this, nocreature should lose their parents like this…”
I raised an eyebrow. “But…?”
“As much as I don’t want him to suffer like this… I don’t know if it’ll be fair for me to make that decision.”
I purred. “Now that’s interesting. Why?”
“Because… even if I want you to undo this… it’ll be no better to leave it in my hooves to change something this significant in his life. For all I know, maybe the Gallus I know, if given the chance, wouldn’t want to change anything. Because if I did, it would be just as unfair to let his parents die.”
“Maybe. But let us look at another situation, where your friend was given a choice.”
The scene rippled and shook until it changed to something of recent history. This time outside of a dumpy house in a dumpy neighborhood where a grown-up Gallus stood before the vulture griffon himself – Grandpa Gruff.
“You’re offering me to do what?” Gallus from the past asked.
“I know, I know,” the older griffon said with a grunt. “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t have anyone go at all. But given how fragile things are, having you be sent to Equestria is our best bet for us.”
“But why me? You could have chosen literally anyone else like uh… what’s-her-name? Gabby? If the point is being sent to a School of Friendship, why not send her?”
“Unlike you,” he pointed, “she has a real job. But if you go, you’ll be provided with food and shelter for nothing. That, and we’d get paid just by you going there and attending classes. I don’t care if you’re forced to recite poetry, or bake cupcakes, or whatever the nimby-pansy ponies do, if you go, you’ll have to just grin and bear it.”
“But-”
“Or would you rather be out in the streets again, especially when winter is coming?”
The two of them went quiet for a long moment.
Then Gallus sighed. “Whatever.”
While Grandpa explained what he has to do, I started walking away. “Now isn’t that interesting?”
My student raised an eyebrow as he followed. “What do you mean?”
“Even when presented with a choice, he acts as if he doesn’t have one.”
“What? But didn’t you hear what Grandpa Gruff said? If he refused, he wouldn’t have a place to sleep or anything to eat and he would be on these streets.”
“True. However, he was still given a choice. He could have said no anytime. Sure, Grandpa Vulture was outlining the consequences, but did you notice that he didn’t force him to make that choice? It’s almost as if the events of the past have a strong influence on whether or not they have a choice that might scar them psychologically for life!” I said, slowly turning towards the reader again. “Libertarians, you better be taking notes too.” Then I returned to my student, shattering the illusion as we entered into Ponyville. “So, make sense?”
“I… guess?” He said, but there was a look on his face as if something was missing. “But what was it that you said earlier?”
“What?”
“That you think that this whole debate thing was funny?”
“Oh!” I grinned, happily chapping. “Now we’re getting somewhere!” I said, handing him a pair of sunglasses. “Here, put these on.”
Sandbar raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
“So that you too may see the truth,” I said, putting a pair on.
He hesitated for a moment before grabbing them and putting the glasses on before looking around, confused.
What we were seeing through those sunglasses was a world that was in black-and-white, but everywhere there were lines upon lines of a golden rope that connected us and everyone. If anything, it looked like the work of a giant spider that had one too many drinks of Applejack’s fermented cider. Here, there were lines that seemed to stretch on for miles limply on the ground. There, there were ropes that tightened like cables on a bridge. My student and I got a good look at ourselves as well, to see the ropes coming out from us where some were pretty loose while others were tightened.
“Mr. Discord? What is this?”
“You know,” I started, “out of all the philosophers out there, the Stoics came the closest.”
“Huh?”
“Once upon a time, back when the Pegasi used to have an empire, they used to print a certain goddess on the back of their coins. She held a cornucopia that was overflowing with crops in one hoof, and a ship’s rudder in the other. They called her Fortuna – Fortune herself. They believed that this goddess, whenever she felt like it, could grant you incredible blessings one moment and then just as suddenly take it all away the next. This belief became influential to the Stoics. So much so, they describe the nature of fate and free will in a famous imagery.
“They say that we are like dogs who are tied to an unpredictable runaway chariot. Our leashes are just long enough to give us some leeway but short enough that we’re never out of the mercy of the chariot. If they fight against it, they will be strangled.”
“Okay…” My student raised an eyebrow. “So, what the hay does that have anything to do with all of this?” He asked, waving a hoof out.
“You see these ropes?” I asked him. “Think of these as our leashes. Every creature living, including gods like myself, and even the author, is tied to a terrible force.”
“Yeah? And what’s that?”
“Consequence.” I answered. “Be it by our own actions or someone else that directly affects us, there’s always a consequence for good or for ill. These ropes you see are things and folks that bind us. The tighter the rope, the more control someone has over us. Even if you get it loose and you have room to choose, even this too can affect your mobility like the dogs and the chariot metaphor.”
“So… You’re saying that the best way to live with this,” my student pointed to his ropes, “is to be passive regardless what happens? Even if it’s unfair?”
“Oh, far from it.” I told him. “What I find funny about this whole debate, is that philosophers have argued for centuries on whether we have a choice or not, that they have completely forgotten an important idea.”
“Yeah?”
I leaned forward and grabbed onto the rope that connected us, tightening it. “Unlike the dogs, you and I have something that they don’t. In that, we do have a choice in how we react when our wills are constricted. Unlike the other animals, we could reason, even guess where that metaphorical chariot will go. We can adapt, even into slavery, to increase our sense of freedom by allowing a good amount of slack between what we want, and what we can’t control. Because of reason, we could adjust our wishes when they are irreversible conflict. For the only choice, in the end, isn’t the events themselves, but choosing how to react to them. And you know what else if funny?”
I asked, letting go of the rope, “Even this, is never set into stone. Even consequence, as powerful as it is, does wax and wane. There’s no such thing as permanent freedom or permanent slavery. Or to put it best,” I said, taking off the sunglasses, “‘Nothing lasts in this wicked world. Not even our troubles.’”
Sandbar took off his glasses. “You know, there’s something oddly comforting in that.”
“Well, I clearly talked long enough.” I told him, “But I think that should cover more-or-less everything.”
He smiled, “Thanks Mr. Discord. So, uh… can you bring the door back? I still have to go to our study group. I’m pretty much late as it is.”
With a whistle, the door popped out of the ground like a toaster. My student thanked me and went through the door.
Now with that out of the way, I flew back to the same spot at the same tree where the same cat was still stuck in. Picking up a stone, I played catch with it in my paw, thinking back to the original problem at the beginning of all of this.
Then, the answer came to me.
“Oh TheGrandNil,” I sang-said, “you ever heard of Schrödinger’s Cat?” I asked, lifting up my paw aiming towards the tree and