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// 3.33 Endings and beginnings... 
// Story: Our Girl Scootaloo 3 of 3 
// by Cozy Mark IV 
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The weeks and months that followed were tumultuous to say the least as so many foundations were shaken to their core. As the newly infectious magic spread, holding false beliefs soon became physicals impossible, resulting in the collapse of many, many institutions of all shapes and sizes.   

Our story's final chapter begins in an Equestria not too different from the one that began all this. Nearly everyone had elected to come home in the end, and aside from a few retired visitors like Agent Tyler and her new coffee shop, life was much the same as it had ever been. That was actually what sparked the conversation at the cafe's lunch table that morning. 

"Well I really like Tyler's new coffee even if it isn't what the noble's prefer" Rarity retorted.   

"Yeah, but it was better when she was still getting cool  off world ingredients." Rainbow replied.  "What ever happened to that anyway?"


Pinky shrugged her wings  "From what I heard they couldn't make enough money to keep the portals going. We still get the odd researcher through now and then, but its' been quite a while since the last one..."

Twilight had an odd feeling at those words, like something was subtly wrong with them, but she couldn't quite put together what.
"Well, it has been a while since I talked to Dr. Scott... I spent all that time building my own connection gear, why don't I give her a call this afternoon and let you know what's going on on their side?" 


...

When the white flash ended, Twilight looked around expecting to see the city she had spent so many weeks in, or  perhaps the gate room if her aim was off, but instead she found herself floating in a huge transparent bubble, apparently drifting high above an unfamiliar moon.


Huge chunks of the moon were being lifted into space and enormous structures were visible stretching out into the distance in orbit around the sun. 

"Ah, you have returned again." Spoke a smiling voice inside her head. "Too long without contact I take it?"

She started and looked around for the source of the voice before a memory clicked into place. She had done this before.
She was talking to herself.

"Yes, right again, I always was a smart one." smiled a voice she dimly recognized as her own. "Let me guess; you're wondering why your life seems more or less normal after everything that happened. Why with so much change on this side so little has changed back home?"

Twilight could only nod.

It's because as we grew brighter and greater with the magic flowing through our shared species we finally reached and surpassed the level of 'Momma Bear."

She stared "How did I not know this??"

"I'm sorry, this part is always hard. You do know, we just weren't sure you could know all this back home. We thought it best to leave this out , or you would be coming back here every day to ask to join us again. "  there was a pause "Of course you are welcome to join us again in this new iteration if you wish. Another Twilight can be sent back to the fishbowl."

"...the  what now??"

"Equestira; the fishbowl. How could a world like yours exist in such perfect harmony - a world where the problems that plague humanity just don't happen. A world with incredible technology like magic but natives who don't know how to build it, only how to use it? Isn't it obvious? Equestria is a fishbowl world. Artificially constructed just like a beautiful salt water fishtank full of tropical fish and corrals for the viewing pleasure of a greater entity. 

Had their been any gravity, she would have sat down hard.

"Whoever built Equestria didn't leave much in the way of notes. Momma Bear is a quite capable AI, and as we've been getting stronger and smarter we've worked to improve some of her features, fine tune some of her subroutines that had gotten out of wack over the millennia. We're pretty confident she should last a long long time regardless of what happens to us now, but the one request she made was that her purpose must continue. 'The fish must swim' I suppose you could say."

Twilight's eyes were wide as they literally stared off into space "My world is an artificial fish bowl for someone else's enjoyment?!"

"I know. It took us quite a while to wrap our minds around it too. That's why Twilight stayed here and we made up a fresh copy to go home to the bowl, though it didn't work out too well. Momma Bear want's you back, you're important to the tank, but making a copy of us that want's to stay isn't easy. You're the fifth one to come back this year, and though you're welcome to stay and grown into something greater here, we're still struggling to get a copy right that is Twilight at the core, but still wants to stay in a tank..."

"You're not going to send me back?"

The voice seemed surprised "Of course you can go back if you like, or you can stay, or both at the same time. Copying a mind as small as yours is trivial by now."

Her head was spinning as she asked the next question "But what about everyone else? Where is everyone?"

"Most of those you knew are now far larger than you remember. Most thinking beings now live digitally and only instance a body in the real world from time to time.  The shard you're speaking to is only a small piece of what Twilight became, and I stick around to handle various logistical problems inherent to mining a moon. Most of me is light minutes or hours distant working on a number of physics projects like the sun harvester and the antimatter converter plant. There are still a handful of meat humans and ponies left, but their numbers are always shrinking. In another few hundred years of real time we'll be a completely digital species.  It didn't go down quite like people thought,,but they weren't too far off either..."

All Twilight could do was stare in shock.

"And of course Mamma Bear didn't want us to keep tampering with her tank. There's a reason that technology hasn't budged there in thousands of years, and trade with us would have upended everything in just a few years. You can see how it did on this side." the voice added with a smile.

Below them, a dark patch in the stars that she hadn't paid much attention to began to light up as  the moon swung out into the sunlight again, the swirling clouds of Jupiter churning below. 



Twilight was still staring at the spectacle unfolding below, a powerful need to learn and know waring with the thought of leaving her friends behind to become... whatever this version of herself had.

"Oh don't worry.  At least one of all your friends stayed behind, so you won't lack for company, and you're not abandoning anyone. Now here, why don't you join me and we'll design the next Twilight  for Equestria together. Its as good a way to grow up as any."