//------------------------------// // An experiment goes wrong // Story: Always Another Day // by XavierMendel //------------------------------// Pinkie skipped through town, humming a song to herself as she mentally checked off another item on her list. “Invite Applejack to tomorrow's Only 294 Days Until the New Year Party party... Check!” Last on the list, Twilight Sparkle, the smarty smart pants unicorn! Pinkie tapped her head on the door and waited. It opened, and Twilight yanked her in. The library was filled with books that lay strewn about across every surface, each open and waiting to be read. Typical Twilight. “Pinkie, perfect, you're just what I need!” “Did you need cake? Ooh, or did you need cupcakes? I'm really good at making cupcakes. Sometimes I even put-” “Not now, Pinkie, I need you for an experiment.” Pinkie had never gotten to be used for experiments before. Well, not since Twilight tried to disprove her Pinkie Sense, but that was just silly. “What kind of experiment?” “A magical one. Ever since I found that spell to temporarily travel back in time I've been obsessed with finding something a bit more practical. Well, it turns out Starswhirl the Bearded had similar ideas, so he created a spell to send the user into the future for about the same time.” Pinkie just stared. “Uh, right. I'm going to send you into the future, and you're going to tell me how it was, alright?” “Okie dokie lokie!” Twilight activated her magic and assembled a few items into the center of the library; eight mirrors, chalk, and a stopwatch. The stopwatch was tied around Pinkie's neck, and the mirrors and chalk arranged into two intersecting diamonds, each with four mirrors facing the center. Pinkie stood at the center of all this and, naturally, started making funny faces at the mirrors. Twilight cleared her throat. “Right, so. The stopwatch is set to noon exactly. Whenever it reaches noon and 20 seconds the spell will wear off and you'll be brought back. Then we can get results. You ready?” “Ready, captain!” “Then let's do this.” Twilight's horn glowed a faint purple. The aura began to get stronger and larger, with beams shooting out and into the mirrors. They showed afterimages of Pinkie no matter where she looked. Something dawned on her at the last second. “Oh, Twilight, I forgot I wanted to invite you to my-” SWOOOSH “- party...” Pinkie looked around the library. The mirrors were gone, along with the intricate chalk drawings. Even the books had been put back. Other than that, though, it didn't seem much different. “Twilight, are you here!? Twilight!?” Nothing. Not one sound. Come to think of it, she couldn't hear birds either. If this is noon, Fluttershy should be practicing her songbird chorus. Usually you can even hear Rainbow Dash doing tricks overhead. Nothing. Nah, no reason to overreact. She decided to take a look outside. Maybe it's just a quiet day? She trotted over to the window with a bit less in her step. It was gone. Not the window, the outside. There was nothing out there but darkness. Was that light somewhere in the sky? “I don't like this one bit.” The stopwatch started ringing, which made Pinkie jump. Time to go back! SWOOOSH Pinkie was once again back in the familiar library with Twilight overhead. She looked absolutely ecstatic. “So, how'd it go? What did you see? Was I there? What's wrong?” Pinkie didn't wear any sort of look, and that was what gave her confusion away. Any time Pinkie doesn't look happy is truly a strange time. “Well, Twilight, it was weird. It was... empty.” “The library?” “No, the library was fine. It was everything else. Everything was gone.” Now it was Twilight's turn to be confused. She couldn't blame her, after all. “What do you mean 'gone'?” “Well, it's kind of hard to explain. There just wasn't anything outside of the window. There were no sounds, Twilight. No birds.” Twilight rushed off to her blackboard and began writing formulas and other words she didn't understand on it in chalk. Pinkie just sat there, thinking. “I think I've figured it out,” Twilight said after a long time. “The spell wasn't powerful enough. It only captured the future of the library, not the outside world or its inhabitants. That must be it.” Pinkie, of course, had no clue what she was talking about. She nodded anyway. “Still,” she continued, “I wish I could figure out why that happened in the first place. Maybe I should give Ditzy's friend a call... No, I can manage. It's all fine.” Pinkie gave a sigh of relief. Though she couldn't understand it, she knew Twilight could, and that it'd work out. “Well, see you later, Twilight! Good luck on your sciencey things.” Twilight was too engrossed in her books to notice her leaving. She's used to it. She continued her morning, preparing ingredients for the party and deciding on decorations. Only thing left to do was cut and freeze the cake for tomorrow. She got up her special party cake kit and headed downstairs. She didn't see Poundcake playing on one of the stairs, and tripped. She plummeted down the stairs shortly before her now airborne materials. The knife was what caught her attention. She barely realized what was happening before she hit the floor with a large gash through her neck. Her vision blurred, and she looked up at Poundcake, who seemed ready to cry. She gave a last smile, and it all went dark. She was standing outside Sugercube Corner, handing out party favors to everypony. Wait, this wasn't right. Didn't she just... No, it couldn't have. Must've been a dream, silly! She handed out the rest of the party favors and went inside. Ponies were having fun, dancing and playing the usual games. Pin the tail on the pony wasn't making an appearance this time, being replaced with Twister and Fish of War. Call it a trial period. She bounced toward the center of the crowd, ready to have fun. … After a long day of partying and the usual cleaning, Pinkie was left alone in the shop. The foals were out with the Cakes doing some after-party shopping, so the silence was deafening. The silence. She remembered that endless silence from the library, and it gave her shivers. This action felt weird. That's funny, she wasn't wearing that stopwatch a moment ago. She checked it. “10:59:40”. Weird. Maybe Twilight will know. So she trotted off to the library once more. This time upon arrival she found a note. “To whom it may concern, I'm helping Fluttershy through some research right now. If you need a book, just write your name and its title on the sheet inside after taking it. Be sure to leave the library clean for other ponies. Sincerely, Twilight Sparkle” “Well that just won't do!” So after a quick change of direction, she set out for Fluttershy's cottage. About halfway through the journey, which took the pony very close to the Everfree Forest, Pinkie spotted what all ponies fear: a bear. Not just any old bear, either, but a black bear. Not to say there's anything wrong with black bears, but it's common knowledge that black bears are quicker to anger and much more violent against ponies. Pinkie tried her best, but got caught in its attention. And boy, did it seem mad. The bear started lumbering closer to her, giving off a roar. Pinkie, on the other hand, broke into a gallop toward the cottage just over the horizon. Another bear, the female, came out from the woods and blocked her path ahead. “It must be sweets. I smell like sweets!” She didn't have any time to make a plan. The close roar made her spin around just in time to see the huge bear's claw coming right at her. She closed her eyes and hoped for the best. Pinkie sat on Fluttershy's couch, reading through a book about bat migration. This can't be right. She should be dead, or at the very least seriously injured! Could she have ran here? “Girls,” Pinkie asked the two other ponies, “what are we doing?” They looked at each other oddly. It was Fluttershy who spoke. “Oh, um, you and Twilight offered to help me research bat migration, remember? Bats suddenly disappeared this morning, and I can't seem to find an explanation.” “No, I mean, what am I doing here? How did I get here?” This time it was Twilight's turn to speak. “What do you mean? You walked in, asked what we were doing, and offered to help. Don't you remember?” Twilight looked at Pinkie's chest and gasped. “Pinkie, where did you get this stopwatch!?” “That's what I came to ask you about! It appeared on me after... some stuff happened. Twilight, I'm scared. What does it mean?” Twilight looked down at the clock. “09:59:40”. “I... I don't know,” she stammered. “This is the same clock I gave you, and it isn't moving. But I thought I had it back at the library... Wait, 9:59:40? It should read 12:00:40. This doesn't make any sense.” Fluttershy asked, quietly, “what are you two walking about, um, if you don't mind me asking?” Twilight answered, “I did a time travel experiment using Pinkie Pie and it appears to have some strange properties. Pinkie, has anything odd happened lately?” Pinkie wanted to tell her, but she couldn't. What if Twilight thought she was a crazy pony? Twilight seemed to sense this. “Don't worry, Pinkie, you can tell me, no matter what.” “Well...” she started, “two things happened today.” “Yes..?” “I, uh, died.” She felt bad when she saw those stares. The reaction could've gone worse, she supposed. “W-what exactly do you mean that you died?” Twilight had a lot less color in her face as she asked. “Well, I was preparing for the party earlier, and I fell down the staircase while carrying my party preparation kit. I landed on my knife. But then I was outside handing out party favors! It was like nothing happened. And just a few minutes ago I was outside and got attacked by these bears, but now I'm just sitting here reading books!” With these words she pushed a few books off her couch onto the floor. Fluttershy winced at the noise. “Alright,” Twilight carefully said, “I'm not sure exactly what's going on, but I'm sure we can fix it. We just need to get to the Canterlot library and figure out what went wrong.” There was an answer that Pinkie liked. “Sure, Twilight, let's go as soon as we can. The quicker we figure this out the better.” Twilight turned around. “Can you handle the rest of the research, Fluttershy?” “Oh, I'll be fine. You two go and get whatever it is figured out. I'll be here if you need me.” “Well then, let's go!” … Pinkie and Twilight arrived at Canterlot via a short balloon ride, and quickly made off for the Royal Canterlot Library. Once safely inside the Starswhirl the Bearded wing, they began looking around for anything and everything related to the problem. Their search of time spells brought them to time-related disasters and paradoxes. “Hm, accidental life tampering is mentioned briefly in one of his earlier works, but nothing afterward. It's a huge blank spot. He refers to it as 'chronological immortality'. Hmm. Let's see if I can...” Her horn glowed the familiar purple, and books and scrolls began to fly off their shelves and circle around in the air. Words flickered and brightened, and eventually all but one scroll made their way back to their original spot. The lone scroll was titled “Localized anomalies and other errors in time.” Twilight began to search through it until she found the section she was looking for. “It says here that certain time spells can lock the subject into a specific set of events through time, despite whatever actions they take to prevent the line from occurring. The effects on actual events is unobservable and largely irrelevant, but that should the pony happen to die, they will be moved forward slightly in the time stream as if it never happened. He called this effect 'chronological immortality' because so long as time is observed, the pony will live.” Pinkie sunk down on her hind legs. It's hard to take news like this in all at once. “Pinkie,” Twilight said softly, “maybe we should go get something to eat and think this over.” “Yeah, that sounds good,” she said weakly. They left the library as it was and headed toward the kitchens. A bright aura surrounded the scroll, and it floated over and unrolled toward the opposing door where the elder alicorn princess stood. “Hmm...”