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// 13 Downtown Equestria 
// Story: This Time for Good 
// by iisaw 
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As with the library, Twilight thought it unwise to venture out into the city. As with the library, her resolve didn't last. Windfall didn't have much to do while Twilight studied and calculated, so she spent a lot of time staring out of the magic window in the bedroom, her wings twitching. 

"Look," Windfall said on the third day after their escape, "We can't alter the future any more than we have already, so what would be the harm of stretching our wings a little?" 

Twilight pushed herself back from the big desk in the library where she had laid out all her papers, scratch sheets and drawings, and rubbed her eyes. "I don't see why not, but we need to prepare a bit before we go out."

Windfall frowned. "How? Canterlot looks like the most civilized and peaceful place imaginable."

"Well, for one thing—" Twilight cast a spell, and something like a gramophone horn appeared on the desktop. It began to spew gibberish. "That's the live sound of a crowd of ponies in Parliament Square. And no, before you ask, I don't know if Parliament still exists or not, but the plaza does."

"What language are they speaking?"

"Probably Equish, but Future Equish, so I'll have to prepare a translation spell for speech the way I did for the text in these books." She indicated the piles surrounding her. "We need a disguise spell, too. Or at least I do. Going out in public looking like a miniature version of Her Monsterous Majesty would be a bad idea."

Windfall chucked at the thought. "I bet her subjects would all be too afraid to say anything!'

"Possibly, but let's not put it to the test." Twilight thought for a few seconds. "Maybe we ought to see what the fashions and hairstyles are like now. I'd like to be as unobtrusive as possible."

"Another sneaky spell for spying?"

Twilight gave the pegasus a sour look. "I think a telescope at a window would do fine." She summoned up a little refracting scope and tripod, and sent Windfall up to the clerestory where there were several suitable windows overlooking the city. "Get it set up at a good spot and I'll join you as soon as I complete the matrix for the translation spell."

Twilight was double-checking her calculations when Windfall leaned over the railing of the upper level a few minutes later and called down to her. "Something weird is going on out there, Princess! I think you ought to take a look at this."

Twilight immediately teleported to Windfall's side. "What is it?"

"See for yourself," Windfall replied, and pointed to the telescope.

Twilight automatically ran her magic over the scope, checking that it was seated properly and that the tripod was stable, then bent over the eyepiece. "Interesting fashions," she said. "Either ponies have naturally become more colorful, or dye-jobs are common. I don't… Wait."

Windfall watched her tense up and knew that she'd noticed the same thing that had caught her own attention. Twilight swiveled the telescope a few degrees and refocused it. Then she repeated the action a second and third time, pausing just long enough to briefly examine the ponies in her field of view. Then she slowly straightened up and looked at Windfall. 

"They don't have any cutie marks!"

The pegasus nodded. "Yep, and most of them are emphasizing that fact."

Twilight blinked in puzzlement. "What do you mean?"

"Take another look. Even the ponies wearing skirts and capes and stuff like that have got them cut so that their haunches are still visible. I saw one mare that was almost completely covered with a long cloak and hood, but there was a circular cutout over her thigh where her mark should've been."

Twilight bent over the eyepiece again and saw that Windfall was right. As she looked closer, she noticed something else. She stepped back and motioned Windfall to the scope. "There's a striped orange and yellow unicorn mare, blue mane, with a light blue skirt, heading toward the big building with the griffin statues on either side of the doors. Look carefully at the cutout area!"

Windfall did so, nudging the telescope slightly from time to time to keep the hurrying pony in her field of view. "Something's not right about the skin on her leg. It's sorta—wrinkly?"

"I think it's fake." Twilight said. "I think she's got a patch of faux fur wrapped around her thigh under the skirt to hide her cutie mark."

Windfall looked up from the eyepiece. "I think you're right. So she's hiding her mark, then wearing a skirt over the disguise to reveal it? I gotta tell you, Princess, that is all kinds of messed up"

Twilight tapped her chin thoughtfully for a moment. "It means that, not only do most ponies lack cutie marks, it is socially unacceptable, maybe dangerous, for those few that are exceptions to call attention to the fact."

"Messed up," Windfall repeated.

"Yes," Twilight agreed, a grim expression settling on her features. "And I want to know why. C'mon, let's get down there!"

"Okay, but—"

Twilight lit her horn and a pulse of magic washed over them both. Windfall felt a general shiver that was much more pronounced around her pelvis. She glanced back, and sure enough, her cutie mark had vanished, and her subdued coat had changed into a rather garish pattern. "The new color's kinda wild. Is it—" Another burst of magic hit her in the head, and her ears and mouth tingled fiercely for a second or two. 

Twilight looked much the same except for the absence of both cutie marks and wings, and the addition of pink polka dots to her coat. "Try not to use idiomatic expressions. If you've never teleported before this might be a bit disorienting. Brace yourself."

"Don't worry about—"

The two mares disappeared in a burst of magical light.

Damn, Windfall thought as they reappeared behind one of the huge griffin statues and she staggered slightly while regaining her balance. The bookworm doesn't let her feathers get dusty when she's on a mission!

Twilight glanced around to see if anypony had seen them appear, but she had chosen the secluded target area well. She leaned forward and peered around the big granite wing toward the street. "She's coming. Let me do the talking."

Windfall gave a grunt of acknowledgement and followed Twilight as she stepped out from behind the statue and into the path of the orange and yellow striped unicorn.

"Excuse me! Could I talk with you for a moment?" 

The unicorn mare gave a slight gasp at the unexpected interruption. Her examination of the two strangers definitely included quick glances at their hindquarters. She began to back away. "I… Just leave me alone. Please!"

"Don't worry," Twilight told her. "We won't hurt you. We just want to talk."

The mare looked confused by that, but sighed and rolled her eyes. "Sure. Whatever. Go ahead and stack rocks."

"What?" Windfall asked Twilight out of the corner of her mouth.

"Idioms," Twilight replied shortly. "Always tricky." Then to the mare she said. "We're new here. We've come from a long way away and we just want some information."

The mare looked at them suspiciously. "Why don't you just ask the Oracle?"

Twilight gave her a genuine smile. "That's just the sort of thing we need to know! Where can we find the Oracle?"

The mare blinked in disbelief. "You're kidding, right? This is the weirdest stacking… Are you new at this?"

"No, really," Twilight continued. "We don't know about the Oracle. We don't have one where we come from."

The mare actually laughed at that. "Turn your eyes around backwards! She's right there!"

Windfall glanced over her shoulder. there was nothing but the empty space between the back of the griffin statue and the wall of the building.

Twilight stopped smiling. "Please. We're far from home and we're lost and confused. We need somepony to help us."

The mare looked more confused than ever. "Okay, this is the weirdest scrape I've ever heard of, but I'll burn the chits to find out…" Her eyes lost focus for a second and her lips moved as if she were whispering to some pony. After a moment she shook her head and muttered, "That's impossible. Recheck and amplify!"

She stared at a spot over Twilight shoulder for another moment and then her expression changed to one of confusion and fear. "Who are you ponies? How are you doing this?"

"We just want a little information—"

The sound of the city abruptly changed. The low rumble of thousands of hooves on pavement suddenly ceased, and the white noise of hundreds of conversations vanished with it. The unicorn mare's expression of fear turned into sheer terror, and she frantically looked around her, searching for something.

Twilight and Windfall looked down the broad avenue in front of the building to see everypony in sight standing perfectly still, except for the pegasi who were hovering in place. All their heads had turned toward the spot where the three mares were standing.

"Oh—" Windfall said in a world-weary voice that carried much more meaning than her two short words, "—shit."

As if her words had been a signal, every pony in sight (and by the sound of it, many more) began rushing toward them. But there was at least one exception: The one they had been talking to had jumped behind the other griffin statue, and was trying to hide beneath one of the stone wings. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she was shivering in terror.

Windfall had her eyes on the approaching pegasi. She was quickly evaluating their approach vectors and deciding how she would deal with the first to arrive, when Twilight shoved her back behind the griffin statue and there was a bright, disorienting flash. Then they were once again standing next to the telescope in the library.

Twilight immediately went to the scope and bent over the eyepiece. Windfall had to make do with what she could see through the window. It was obvious that the ponies below her weren't behaving normally, even though they were no longer all charging headlong toward the building with the griffin statues out front. Most were searching the area in a very thorough and coordinated manner. The pegsi were flying multi-level patterns, covering every bit of the location that could be seen from the air. The rest were poking their muzzles into any space that could conceivably hide a pony.

"They've found our mare," Twilight said without looking up from the telescope. "Huh. That's odd."

"What?" Windfall's sharp eyes could just make out the bright color of the mare as she stepped out from behind the statue, but not much in detail.

"I think she triggered all this insanity somehow, but the other ponies are ignoring her."

"D'you have any idea what's going on?"

Twilight finally looked up from the eyepiece. "Not a clue," she said, almost cheerfully. "But that intensive search going on down there is a bit of good news."

Windfall frowned and then realized why. "It means they don't know where we are, and they don't know we teleported or they wouldn't be concentrating the search in just that area."

Twilight gave her a smile. "Exactly correct! You've got a lot more between your ears than just muscle, Windfall."

Windfall snorted, but was secretly pleased by the compliment.

"Would you keep an eye on the goings-on, and let me know if anything changes?" Twilight asked, as she headed for the stairs to the lower level of the library.

"Sure thing, Princess. What are you going to be doing?"

"I think I'd better look into some of the books that aren't thaumotechnical manuals. Nothing beats direct contact, but things are strange enough here that I think we should get a better academic grounding in the current culture before we try going out again."

Windfall nodded. "Sounds reasonable," she said, and turned back to the telescope.

She was amazed at the thoroughness of the search as it expanded out from the immediate area, and was absolutely astounded when it stopped. About an hour and a half after it had begun, the ponies who had been moving in precise patterns suddenly went back to seemingly normal activities, all at the exact same time.

Without looking away from the city below, Windfall called down to Twilight to let her know of this new development. "It's like somepony barked 'Dismissed!' on a parade ground! They've just gone back to shopping and walking and… huh. They've gone back to the cafes, too, but the waiters are taking away most of the cold food."

"Makes sense," Twilight called up to her. "I think I may have found an explanation, or at least a root cause. Come on down."

Windfall took one last look out of the window and then hopped over the railing and glided down to the main floor. "Whatcha got, Princess?"

There were dozens of books newly added to the piles around the big desk, but only one big one floated in Twilight's magical field. She turned it around and floated it over for Windfall to read.

The pegasus squinted at the cover. "Well, it's mostly gobbledygook to me, but the word Oracle is readable, even if the 'a' looks a little funny."

"Sorry," Twilight said, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing on the bridge of her nose with a hooftip. "I forgot you didn't get the textual translation spell. Funny thing; that's one of the very few significant words that haven't changed much from our time. Another one is hippopotamus, for some strange reason."

"Focus, Princess," Windfall said, smiling.

Twilight gave her a smile in return. "Right. So, the title is Project Oracle: System Evaluation and Expansion Proposal."

"And now I know just about as much as I did a minute ago. Can you give me a summary of what it's about?"

"It's the reason most of the books in this library are at least several hundred years old. The Oracle is a magical information storage system. When this book was written, it had nodes that ponies had to go to in order to ask questions. But one of the proposals in this book is to implant miniature versions into ponies in order to provide instant access."

"Access to what?"

"Everything!" Twilight replied. "Evidently, the sum total of all knowledge was put into the system somehow, and now any pony can call it up just by thinking about it. It made books—" Here she paused and her face took on a pained expression. "—obsolete."

"Okay," Windfall said, thoughtfully. "I'm not seeing a downside, there."

Twilight shrugged. "As far as it goes, no. But there are a lot of things in the proposals section that are just a bit creepy."

"Like?"

Twilight flipped open the book, briefly glanced at the index and then turned to a particular page. "'Proposed Emergency Override System,'" she read. "'Many ponies have lost their lives in perilous situations where an easy avenue of escape was available, but unknown to them, or when there was an immediate danger that they could have avoided but were unaware of. There have also been many cases where victims have perished because they lacked a simple skill that would have saved them, for example, a pony who cannot swim and therefore drowns in a comparatively small body of water.' 

"'As the communication speed of the Oracle has reached the necessary level to smoothly integrate neuro-muscular control, a system to evaluate threats could be put in place to take over a pony's gross muscular activity and remotely evacuate them from a dangerous situation. The system could also suppress the instinctual flight impulse when panicked fleeing would be the more perilous choice. In the drowning pony example above, the victim could be controlled to swim to safety at the skill level of a professional athlete.'

"'We estimate that implementing this proposal would save dozens of lives per year that otherwise would be pointlessly and tragically lost.'"

Windfall raised an eyebrow. "Oh yeah, there's no way that could be horribly abused."

Twilight nodded. "I think that's exactly what we witnessed in the street down there."

"Okay, but what about the cutie mark thing?"

Twilight shut the book and tapped on it's cover. "Judging by the preservation spell on this, it's over three hundred years old, and it's one of the newest books I've come across in here. I'm betting that ponies gave up on physical books entirely shortly after it was published. None of the other books I've looked at mention anything about adult ponies without cutie marks."

"So it's something that started happening after this Oricle thing really took over." Windfall said. "D'you think it's connected to the threat to all Equestria that ol' Big and Creepy was going on about? What did she tell you in the tunnel? I was too busy getting a good angle on her skull to pay much attention."

Twilight sighed. "There are parts of that conversation I just don't remember, and I think she was pretty non-specific. Not a pony who is accustomed to explaining herself." Her mouth twisted in distaste. "But, I bet the lack of cutie marks is a symptom if nothing else."

"So, if there aren't current history books, we're not going to get much more info unless we hook up with the Oracle somehow." Windfall said, and then hurried to add, "Which is probably a really bad idea."

Twilight nodded. "Even if we found an old style node or terminal that still worked, as soon as we used it, the whole world would know where we are, and the reaction we got down there is a pretty good indicator that the system sees non-users as a threat."

Windfall thought about that for a second and then asked, "So Future You doesn't have one of these implant things?"

Twilight gasped and her eyes went wide in horrified shock. Then, she slowly let out her breath and relaxed. "No… No, she might have an implant. I think I would have gotten one, because instant access to all the world's knowledge is just too tempting. But I wouldn't have the override system, and I'd definitely retain the ability to turn it off."

"And running evil experiments, tormenting, and parting out ponies seems like a good time to draw the curtains to me," Windfall said.

Twilight winced. "Yes, and the disruptor cones around the tank would prevent her from transmitting anything, now." She sighed and put her head down on the desk. "How could I ever have become such a monster?"

Windfall shrugged. "After all this, you're a lot less likely to." When Twilight didn't say anything or raise her head, she added, "And aside from the evil laboratory thing, this place doesn't seem too bad."

Twilight still didn't raise her head and her voice was muffled as she replied. "A world full of purposeless ponies who can be zombified at any time by a jumped-up magical library? Oh yeah, what a paradise!"

"I… I got nothing, Princess. You wanna use your jim-jam to nab us a keg of cider and get hammered?"

Twilight chuckled and raised her head. "You think that will help?"

Windfall shrugged again. "Couldn't hurt."

Twilight stared at her for a long time, a smile spreading slowly across her face. "Why not?"


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