//------------------------------// // 09 Exception // Story: PONY Legacy // by RBDash47 //------------------------------// Twilight slid to a halt against the base of one of the computational stacks, groaning as the rough-hewn stone floor scraped her hide. She pushed herself up, ready to scold Dash for her rash behavior, but saw nothing—her friend was gone.   “Rainbow?!”   Luna looked horrified. “That device—it fired a blast of energy and she… she dissolved.” The princess turned to Twilight. “It would have hit you, had she not intervened. What is this? Some new teleportation spell?”   Twilight reined in a spasm of panic and pushed herself to her hooves. “Celestia’s notes didn’t say anything about this. But she wouldn’t create something that… destroys ponies. Rainbow must be okay, wherever she is.” She moved back to the master console, inspecting the display, mentally retracing her steps. “I ran through the princess’s commands, re-entering them one at a time to see what they did. There was nothing suggesting a computational engine could affect the physical world, so I didn’t realize… Okay, new assumption: any command I enter here could result in an interaction with the physical world in some way, so I need to be more careful in my experimenting with her system.”   “Agreed.” Luna stepped closer. “Twilight…”   “Yes, Luna?”   “What happened to Rainbow Dash must also have happened to my sister.”   “I have to think so. And it would be logical to assume they’re both in the same place.”   “But that place must not be in our world. There is no force known that could have prevented Celestia returning to Canterlot.”   “So,” Twilight thought aloud, “some sort of alternate plane of existence or reality…”   Luna nodded to the display. “Perhaps she’s in there. And now Rainbow Dash as well.”   Twilight almost laughed before she caught herself. “Luna, that… doesn’t make any sense. ‘In there’ is a string of ones and zeros, infinitesimal surges of power along tiny metal circuits. How could a pony be in there?”   Luna shrugged. “I do not know. This area is as indecipherable to me as unicorn magic is to a pegasus. But I do know two things. All my senses tell me Celestia is here, inside this room, yet I do not see her. And magic takes many forms.”   Twilight frowned at the strange cylindrical device, still humming slightly as its blue glow faded, and wondered. She shook herself abruptly and turned back to the console. “Okay. Objectives: one, determine which of the commands I entered is specifically responsible for… dissolving…” Twilight frowned. “Disintegrating?” She wrinkled her nose and her ears went back briefly while she thought. ”…dematerializing Rainbow Dash; two, determine if any other available commands are capable of interacting with the physical world, in the interest of our safety; three, determine where Rainbow Dash is now, which should hopefully lead to four, determine where Princess Celestia is now; five, determine how to get them back. Simple.” “Is it?” asked Luna. “Well, probably. Hopefully?” “Then please, begin.” A few moments of frantic work later, Twilight sat back and nodded. “Okay! I suspected as much, but it’s good to know for certain. The last command I entered, right before Rainbow disappeared, was the one that actually caused her to disappear. It was the activation command for the device behind us—referred to here as ‘the Gateway’—and several of the previous commands were responsible for routing power to it and actually turning it on.” “Can you deactivate it?” “Yes, I think so. Once I do, we should be safe—I won’t enter those commands again, and it’s not possible for this thing to turn itself back on. Stand over there, just in case.” Luna stepped back, watching the device closely, as Twilight entered a few commands. The faint hum that had emanated from it dwindled to nothing, and the princess turned back to Twilight and the master console, ignoring the Gateway as the light behind its gems faded to darkness. “I’ve also browsed the embedded library of available commands, and as far as I can tell, no other commands are capable of interacting with the physical world.” Twilight blew out a sigh, part relief, part stress. “So I think it’s safe to start digging a little deeper. The system should log everything, it’s just going to be a matter of finding the logs we need.” “And you believe these logs will include the location of Rainbow Dash and my sister?” “I have to think they will. I have to hope they will, otherwise I’ll have absolutely no idea where to go from here.” Twilight worked in silence for a few minutes, as Luna paced back and forth behind her. Finally, she spoke. “It’s… strange.” “What?” “I… I think you were right, Luna.” Twilight looked up from the console. “I think Rainbow and Princess Celestia are both inside the computational engine, somehow. According to the logs, the Gateway sends any information it collects to a single book inside the system called Station.” “Book? There are books inside these boxes?” Luna glanced around the room. “Not a physical book in the traditional sense. It’s a metaphor the princess adopted when she was laying out the organizational structure of her system. A book in this context is a… a collection of related data. Think of the Royal Archives: you have books within shelves within stacks. A book is the smallest organizational unit, but related books can be grouped together on shelves, and related shelves can be grouped together in stacks.” “I see. I think I see. And what does the Station book do?” “It’s a very small book, relatively speaking. Only a few lines of code inside it. But those lines of code route inbound data to a much larger book, called Arrival, which is itself contained in a huge shelf inside a gigantic stack. There’s a channel for outbound data from a different book, Portal, in that same stack. It’s… it’s exponentially larger than any stack I have in my system in Ponyville. If it were a real, physical library stack it would be bigger than every library in the world combined.” Luna looked taken aback. “My word. All within these boxes in this room?” “Yes. And Station routes outbound data from itself back to the Gateway.” “Meaning?” “Meaning I think the Gateway is capable of analyzing and breaking down and storing physical objects, including living things like ponies, and transmitting them through the Station into a massive simulation, many times the size of the simulation of Ponyville I’m running back home. Do you remember when we first arrived, there was a series of numbers on the display?” “Yes, a rather long series.” “It was an uptime counter. A clock that keeps track of how long the simulation has been active without interruption. It’s been running for over ten years, since just before Princess Celestia disappeared. I think you were right. I know you were right. Celestia and Rainbow are both trapped inside a virtual world, and the Gateway isn’t a one-way street—it’s possible to bring them back!” Twilight kept speaking as she worked, her magic dancing across the panels of the master console, text spilling over the display. “Back home I have my display rigged to provide a view of my simulation of Ponyville, and my simulation is running in ‘real time’—events in the simulation occur at the exact same speed they would occur in the real world.” “I understand.” “But Princess Celestia has taken advantage of the fact that a computational engine is capable of operating at much faster speeds, and her simulation is running one hundred times faster than realtime, so my usual visual representation would be a blurred mess.” Luna leaned in to peer at the display, gasping in shock. “That means Celestia has been inside for over a thousand years, from her perspective.” With a wince, Twilight said quietly, “Yes, she has.” “Oh, sister…” Luna sighed and bowed her head, shaking it slightly as she murmured almost too quietly to hear, “Not you too…” Twilight paused for a respectful moment before clearing her throat and continuing. “I’ve, ah, created a top-down representation of Celestia’s simulation—sort of an animated map—that will let us see where everything in the simulation is at any given time, and where programs and users have been recently as trails behind them.” She tapped a control and the display changed to a map of Equestria. “I don’t understand,” said Luna. “I thought you said this was a map of Celestia’s simulation.” “It is. I built a simulation of Ponyville. She built a simulation of her—your—the country.” Twilight tapped another control, and areas of the map lit up. “The population of the simulation isn’t nearly accurate. There are many more ponies in Equestria than are represented here by artificial programs. All the major cities, townships, and landmarks are here, with very few changes. Celestia’s spent all of her time recently right here, which I don’t understand; it’s the middle of nowhere.” Twilight indicated an area in the mountains west of Canterlot. “Rainbow appeared in Canterlot here, went to the stadium here, then somehow jumped straight to Celestia’s location. Since then they’ve both returned to Canterlot, and are now on their way out of the city on a train that doesn’t exist in the real world. They seem to be headed for an in-simulation structure in the Badlands that also doesn’t exist in the real world, but does map to the Portal book we found earlier.” “So they are trying to leave, to return to this world. Will they not need the Gateway to be active?” “You’re right—I’d better power it back up, I’ll just have to be careful to not actually activate it from our end.” She entered a few commands, and behind them, the Gateway hummed back to life, a soft blue glow lighting the space. Twilight returned to studying the map and frowned. “Look at that—there are programs rearranging themselves, following Celestia and Rainbow.” A swarm of orange dots was shifting, following the two blue dots towards the Portal, leaving many blue dots behind in and around Canterlot. And ahead of them… “There are several large orange dots between them and the Portal,” Luna observed. “What do the differences in color mean?” Twilight gulped. “Hostile programs. Those are very large hostile programs.” Fear rose up in her, fear for Rainbow and Celestia, and she forced it back down. “We must do something to help them! Can you not simply… delete these hostile programs?” “Too risky. I can’t guarantee that simply removing them wouldn’t have any consequences. There could be dependencies I don’t know about, I could accidentally remove other programs from the simulation matrix…” She frowned and tapped the edge of the console thoughtfully. “No, removing things is too risky…” Her eyes widened and she glanced at the Gateway. “But adding them—!” She spun back to the console and started typing furiously. “Twilight?” Luna looked from the unicorn to the glowing cylinder and back again. “Twilight! You cannot be serious. Would we not be better served by you remaining outside the System? Working at the problem from here?” Twilight shook her head, her eyes never leaving the console’s display as she keyed. “I’m fast, but I’m not that fast. A minute to us is a fraction of a second to them! Tartarus, I could already be too late…” Streams of code poured across the display. “I am still not convinced this is the best course of action,” Luna said reluctantly. “We don’t have a choice. They’re headed straight into a trap and they might not have any idea, and now there are more hostile programs catching up from behind. It's not possible to forcibly extract them without corrupting the System. They need to return through the Portal and they need my help.” She punched in a command and the Gateway began to charge, just as it had some fifteen minutes ago before it had dematerialized Rainbow Dash. It felt like so much longer. In a way, it has been, she thought. Rainbow’s been inside for over a day now, from her point of view. She checked over her shoulder, making sure she was positioned in front of the Gateway, then looked to Luna, who was standing a safe distance back. “At the upper edge of the map here I’ve added a new display. There are three indicators, one for Celestia, one for Rainbow, and one for me.” The princess saw three glowing squares: two green, one amber. The Gateway’s hum whined louder, and she raised her voice to be heard over it. “Once I’m inside, mine will go green too. If anything happens to any of us, our light will turn red. If that happens…” Twilight swallowed. “Well, I’ve added what I think will act as a failsafe system. I haven’t had any time or way to test it, of course, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t work.” She laughed nervously. “What does it do?” “No time!” She glanced at the map, then at the Gateway, nearly all the rings were lit. “Just trust me! If any of the lights go red, hit this control.” Luna gazed at her solemnly. “Good luck, Twilight Sparkle. Bring them back to us.” Twilight nodded, entered the final command, and felt as though she’d been struck by lightning.