The door to Meg’s prison opened. Her accommodations had improved considerably since her arrival. Her captors had built a makeshift room inside the warehouse and even put a half-decent cot in it, upon which she was lying on her back. No toilet in that room, of course. Or shower. Or change of clothes. A man came inside carrying her dinner.
“You can’t keep me here forever,” she ritualistically stated.
There was no answer as the man placed the tray on the small table. They had grown tired of repeating their intention to swap her for the ones who, she had informed them, were by then “probably” in Tartarus.
It was time to start wrapping things up. “They’ll never agree to it, you know. They refuse to believe you have me, right?”
“So they claim.” The man spun around at the door. “Then we’ll make them believe, and for your sake you’d better hope that won’t be necessary.” He took a step towards her. “Any suggestions how to persuade them?”
Meg swung her feet over the side of the bed and sat up. “How about I escape and tell them myself?” Not that she’d actually tell anyone in this time period, obviously, but that wasn’t the point.
The man barked a laugh. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Meg shrugged. “Believe what you want. I know a thing or two about magic.”
He counted off on his fingers. “You don’t have a horn, you don’t have enchanted crystals, and there is no magic in this part of the warehouse.” He counted off his fourth finger. “And you’re still here.”
Thereby proving assumptions were dangerous. “So what happens when someone opens that door and I’m not inside?”
Agent Reubens was dead serious, that much Twilight could tell. “What leads you to think this incident is of magical origin?” She had no reason to doubt that it was—Serrell would not lightly ask for her assistance—but she needed something to go on.
“They couldn’t give a good description of what was happening, basically because nothing like it had ever been seen before. A warehouse in the industrial section of town has… imploded? Air is rushing in from all directions. At the center of it all… they can’t really describe it. All they know is that nothing that goes in remains intact. And it’s getting bigger.”
It sounded oddly familiar, but she couldn’t place a hoof on it. “What precisely happens to objects that go in?”
“I couldn’t tell you. We need to get there ASAP. I suggest taking a shortcut through Equestria. A convoy will be waiting in Sunnyvale to take us there.”
Which wasn’t Tracy. “How long will it take to drive there?”
“This late, around an hour.”
Maybe use the portal? But she would return to Ponyville, and the portal was in Canterlot—and she had nothing prepared to transport the humans. The hour, maybe longer, drive would have to suffice. “Okay.”
“You go on without me,” Yearling said. “I don’t see how I could be of assistance.”
“Wait a minute!” Kyle shouted. “How long will you be gone?”
Twilight threw him a scowl. “This is a tad more important,” she said. “You’ll just have to do without me.”
“I quite agree,” Andy said. “I wouldn’t mind offering my own assistance, but a ‘shortcut through Equestria’ is not an option for me.”
“What does that even mean, a short—”
Twilight invoked the return spell, transporting herself and the two agents to her private residence. “I’ll be back in a second.” She teleported to her bedroom and retrieved a pill—no, two pills—and got her phone, so she could message Meg—and teleported back downstairs. “We’ll go back to the hotel first to retrieve our luggage. That shouldn’t take long.”
“No objection from us,” Fowler said.
And that’s what they did. A few minutes later they were back in Equestria. “Spike!”
A head poked through the railings above. “Yes?”
It seemed silly at the time, but Twilight was now so glad Spike had insisted on having his circadian cycle adjusted too. “I have a message for Luna.” After giving it to Spike, along with some details supplied by the agents, she turned to them. “Where in Sunnyvale?” she asked. She had put down her luggage; the agents held on to theirs.
“The Department of Energy office, in the parking lot behind the building,” Reubens responded.
Twilight swallowed the second plaid pill and took them there. It was night, of course. Three vehicles were lined up, ready to go. “The middle SUV,” Fowler said. Lights began flashing on the other two.
After the agents put their luggage in back, all three took a seat inside the spacious vehicle and the convoy departed.
Naked. The TV camera leered at her, herself being the only person in the Senate chamber who forgot to wear something. None of the others seemed to notice or care, least of all the one holding her leash.
A leash counts as clothing, right?
A sharp yank made her yelp. “Bad pony. That is not the correct answer.”
What was the question again? It had somehow slipped her mind.
“I think that’s enough of that.”
The arrival of Princess Luna brought clarity. The question remained unremembered—for that matter, nor could she remember the “incorrect” answer she had given. Par for the course; it was a dream. She scanned the chamber with new clarity. “Could we have a change of venue?”
The leash thankfully dissolved away. Recalcitrant dog, indeed. Rarity could be blamed for that bit of imagery. Only three more days to the real thing. Meg again scanned the chamber; everything else remained the same. Senator Routledge waited, patiently, yet uninterested in the uninvited alicorn.
“I would first like to take this all in, if you would not mind.”
The hearings had been put on pause. It no longer held power over her. “Getting rid of that leash was enough, I guess.” Meg rubbed her neck with a hoof. “Are you here just for the nightmare, or was there something else?”
“The latter, unfortunately. President Serrell has asked for our assistance. Twilight is even now on her way to a town called Tracy.”
No reaction from the senator. He was a figment of her dream anyway. He could only react as she would expect him to react. “Wait, Tracy? As in California?”
“You know of this town?”
“Well, we’ve driven through it, stopped at a gas station. It’s on the way to the Sierras.” A blank look. “Mountains with a lot of tourist destinations.”
“Ah,” Luna said. “It appears there is a magic incident taking place there.”
“What kind of incident.”
“That is unclear.”
And would obviously remain unclear until Twilight could get there and investigate. But why Tracy? “Too bad I wasn’t involved sooner. I could’ve taken them right there. Well, to Tracy, if not the precise location of the ‘incident.’”
“Then I ask that you go there now. The message from Twilight states that Steve’s special talent may be of use.”
That didn’t sound good at all. “But how would I find it, especially at night? There’re a lot of square miles to search.”
“I was given an address. Would that be sufficient?”
“Exactly what I need. I hop over there, go to the address, come back, and return with Steve.”
Oh.
“One small problem: I’m out of plaid pills.”
“I shall personally deliver some to you right now. Wake up.”
Meg awoke to a dark bedroom, her husband in bed next to her. “What time is it?” she mumbled. She looked at the clock on the nightstand, its hands enchanted to softly glow. Almost two in the morning.
Luna would be there soon.
She sighed and gave Steve a prod with a hoof. “Wake up.”
It took a harder prod.
“What…” he groaned.
“An emergency. Luna will be here any second.”
His horn glowed and a light switched flicked on. “Did you say Luna was coming?”
“I am here,” proclaimed the princess from outside the bedroom.
“Be there in a second!” Meg shouted. “Get the short version from Luna while I get ready,” she said as she rolled out of bed. Her phone was on the nightstand. There was a message from Twilight. It had the address in Tracy. Tapping it brought up the location on a map. A few miles from that gas station? She put on the phone holder Rarity had made for her and put the phone against it, letting the magic lock it in place.
She was as ready as she was going to be. Leaving the bedroom, she found a plaid pill floating in the air waiting for her. “I didn’t know you had your own supply.”
“Twilight gave them to me before she departed, so that I may visit President Serrell.”
Right. How else was Serrell in that room? Twilight was in Greece at the time.
She was wasting time. “Should be back in a few minutes.” She went for the pill.
“Wait. You need the address.”
“Already have it.” Meg held up the leg with the phone. “Twilight messaged me.”
Steve waived a hoof. “Go already.”
Meg went. The gas station was open but idle, as to be expected at this time of night. She brought up her phone, checked her orientation, and leaped into the air. The ground fell away. Maybe that flight training wasn’t a waste of time after all. It wouldn’t be long before she got there.
Once she got to a cruising altitude of a half thousand feet, she focused more on the map on her phone than on the ground. What was she supposed to be looking for down there anyway?
One mile. Another mile. Oh. Meg put her leg down. In the distance were a perimeter of cars, lights flashing atop them. A rather large perimeter. At least a thousand feet in diameter. She doubted there were that many police cars in the entire city. Inside that perimeter a few flood lights had been set up, with another turning on as she watched, illuminating… the remains of a large building? It looked like an implosion, the walls crashing inwards. But there didn’t seem to be enough stuff, and what about the ceiling? In the middle… she couldn’t make sense of it, like darkness through a funhouse mirror. If only the sun was shining.
How close should she get?
Who was in charge down there?
If Twilight had her phone with her, and evidently she did, it would be best to call her. But she could anticipate what the alicorn’s first questions would be. She came to a hover well above the perimeter and prepared to take a picture. Before she took it, she realized she was drifting over the perimeter. There was a breeze here. She was pretty sure there hadn’t been one at the gas station. It was easy enough to correct for. She took the picture.
Unfortunately, to send it, never mind make a phone call, she had to switch off her magic bubble’s invisibility, for it did not make a distinction between radio and visible light. This high up in the night sky, she figured it was safe enough.
After sending the picture, she called Twilight.
“Meg, you’re there?”
“You got the picture, right? Where are you?”
“I got it. I was hoping you’ve been there before. Hard to make out what’s there in the center; I’ve already seen drone footage. I don’t recommend you getting much closer without me. I’m about fifteen minutes away. Is Steve there yet?”
“Not yet. I have to be on the ground to fetch him. Who’s in charge down there?”
“Agent Reubens here. FBI is in charge. I’m in contact with the head of operations there. Look for a flashlight waving about.”
Meg scanned the area below her, but did not see such a flashlight. She began to circle the containment area. “Looking for it,” she said. “They won’t try to arrest me, will they?” She’d just return to Equestria if they did, but that would defeat the purpose of her being there.
“They will not. A state of emergency has been declared. The president has made it clear that ponies are to have free rein within the containment zone—all ponies.”
A state of emergency. Is it really that bad? Some would question the wisdom of giving free rein to ponies. Some would claim ponies were somehow responsible for this emergency—because magic, right?
She flew over the assorted media, bathed in their own pools of light. Of course they’d be here. No waving flashlight down there, she was glad to see. “The press is here,” she warned into her phone.
“We know,” Twilight replied.
Of course she knew; she was in the loop via Reubens. There was probably little she could tell her she didn’t already know.
She found herself drifting towards the perimeter again. That breeze kept shifting direction. It was pulling her lower too. Easy enough to correct for, but something about it didn’t seem right. Oh, right. It’d be obvious if not for the sleep deprivation getting to her.
The anomaly was sucking in air. Where could it all be going?
There. The waving flashlight. Meg began her descent. “Found it. Going in for a landing.”
A few seconds later: “They’ve been informed.”
Nice to know I’m expected. Meg wasn’t sure if she was being sincere or sarcastic. Not being able to descend that steeply, she spiraled down, making sure to spiral down outside the containment zone, breeze or no breeze. Rainbow Dash, of course, would’ve dived straight down and pulled out at the last possible second to a perfect touchdown. Meg doubted any amount of training would enable her to do likewise.
She made her final approach. The flashlight pointed right at her. Despite what Reubens had said, she hoped that’s all that was pointed at her. It certainly made it difficult to tell who she was approaching.
“I’ve landed,” she said to Twilight over her phone—but more to let them know she was in touch with others—and to them, she said, “Do you really have to shine that in my eyes?”
The flashlight switched off. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the lesser illumination of the nearby street lights. There were three G-men—none of whom were pointing a gun at her. A promising start.
“Sorry,” the flashlight owner said. “I’ve never seen a flesh-and-blood pony before. You’re really a former human?”
Here we go again. “Right now I’m not human.” So they knew who she was, and still no guns pointed at her.
“Can the smalltalk,” said another. “I’m Special Agent MacAuley, the one in charge here. There’s supposed to be a unicorn with you?”
“I’ll be back in a minute with him.” Meg invoked the return spell.
Luna was still there. “I was beginning to be worried.”
“Is that Luna I hear?”
Meg lifted her phone and put the audio on speaker. “She’s here, Twilight. Anything you want to tell her? Make it quick. I really should get back ASAP.”
“Just surprised, that’s all. I should arrive in a few more minutes.”
Plaid pills floated over to Meg and Steve. “Be careful, Twilight.”
“I will, Luna.”
Steve walked over to Meg, pill in mouth. Meg nodded. A few seconds later, she was back in Tracy, this time with Steve at her side. “Switch off the invisibility,” she told him. “On the count of three… one… two… three.”
“I don’t believe it,” the third one said.
“What I don’t understand,” MacAuley said, “is how you can come straight to Tracy, while this Twilight had to drive all the way from the coast.”
Missed opportunity is what it was, but Meg chose instead to say, “Magic doesn’t always make sense.” Especially when it was Discord’s magic.
He waved a hand at Steve. “So what is it you unicorns do?”
Steve took a few steps to the zone. “In this case, investigate.”
Meg caught up to him. “Twilight said not to get closer until she arrived.”
He stared at the anomaly. “No argument from me.” He closed his eyes and lit his horn.
Seconds passed. “What’s he doing?” MacAuley asked.
“Investigating,” Meg answered.
Steve reopened his eyes. “I can’t sense anything from here. I either need to get closer or I need a much larger magic field. You think Twilight has a generator with her?”
Meg shrugged. “If not, we can go back and get one. Sounds safer than getting closer.”
“You don’t want to get too close to that,” MacAuley warned.
“Why?” Steve asked. “What happens?”
“You notice this breeze?”
“Yes.”
“It gets stronger the closer you get, like it’s sucking the air out.”
Like? “Is the air being sucked into it or not?” It sure seems like it.
“Beats me. And it’s getting bigger. That’s why it’s an emergency.”
“Have you sent a drone in there?” Steve asked.
“It didn’t survive.”
“I see.” Steve continued to stare at the anomaly. “I’m beginning to have a clue as to why Twilight wants me here.”
“Which is?” MacAuley asked.
“I’d rather not say yet. Twilight should be here soon.”
The convoy came to a halt. Agent Reubens opened the door and got out, leaving it open. Twilight jumped out and scanned the area. There. She began trotting towards the two other ponies present. Beyond them was the containment zone.
Once she was close enough, Steve called out a question to her. “Do you have a generator on you?”
Twilight nodded. “In my saddlebags.”
“How big a bubble can it create?”
She considered the anomaly. “Not that big. We’ll have to get somewhat closer.” A possibility came to her as she reached them. “Unless it’s maintaining a sizable magic bubble of its own.”
“How likely is that?” Meg asked. “I mean, magic presumably created that, but is magic needed to maintain it?”
“We don’t know what it is,” Steve said.
“Only one way to find out.” Twilight turned up the generator to maximum output.
Meg grimaced, stepping back a few feet. “That brings back memories.” She stepped back a few more. “That’s concentrated magic, all right.”
That would’ve been after the leak had been closed, Twilight remembered. When Discord was pushing all the magic remaining in the hyperspatial tube back into Equestria. She hadn’t experienced it herself, though Celestia had found it “bracing.” Twilight wasn’t finding the generator’s concentrated magic unpleasant in the least. Was it an alicorn thing?
“I don’t feel anything,” MacAuley said.
The other two humans looked at each other and shrugged. “Me neither,” said one of them.
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Twilight said, “not being magical creatures. You okay, Steve?”
He experimentally lit his horn. “It’s… interesting. Not exactly pleasant, but I can deal with it.”
“Then give it a go.”
The unicorn closed his eyes and put his special talent to work. Twilight put to work her own magical senses.
“Is this going to take all night?”
“Perhaps,” Twilight admitted. “I’m not sensing anything from here.”
“Me neither.” Steve ducked under the yellow tape marking the perimeter and kept on going. “How far should we advance?”
Twilight caught up to him. “As a first approximation, whichever comes first: the wind gets too strong, or one of us senses something.”
Steve grunted. “If the latter, I do hope that happens before the point of no return. You do know that drones sent in there cease to function, right?”
“Actually, no. At what point does that happen?”
“We’re nowhere near that point—yet.” It turned out that Special Agent MacAuley had been following them.
Twilight glance behind her. Reubens and Fowler were beside him. They would be the president’s eyes and ears, she knew.
One hundred feet.
One fifty.
Two hundred.
The breeze was gaining strength, becoming outright wind. Air flow ought to quadruple in speed as the distance was halved; that seemed to be happening.
Two fifty.
Three hundred.
“Stop,” Steve commanded. “I’m picking something up.”
Twilight strained her magical senses. “I’m not.”
“So what is it?” MacAuley asked Steve.
“Something is messing with space-time. It’s… expanding in there. That’s what’s sucking the air in, newly created vacuum.”
“So how much air will it gobble up?”
“Potentially? All of it. Unless we stop the expansion.”
The agent digested that. “Would that destroy a drone?”
“Maybe? Depends how fast the expansion is… would rip it apart.” He shook his head. “No. If it was that fast, it would be pulling in air a lot harder… wait…” Eyes closed in concentration. “I think time is being dilated in there too. That would slow down the air flow. Could also mess with the drone’s remote control, even if it stayed intact, by doppler-shifting the radio waves.”
“Is there a way to compensate for that?”
“Theoretically? Sure. The Huygens probe that was part of the Cassini mission to Titan had to do just that. But it’s tricky; though the probe was engineered to do that, an oversight almost doomed the mission. Drones for use on Earth aren’t engineered for that, and I very much doubt they can be quickly modified to handle it.”
Maybe without magic. Twilight knew of spells that could compensate for time dilation; her fear was that such spells were the cause of the anomaly before them. But how could humans know of Star Swirl’s work, never mind use it? For now, they were only unfounded fears. No need to share them yet.
“I’m surprised a pony would know of that.”
Steve let his horn rest and turned around to face MacAuley. “I’m the other human-turned-pony, if you must know. I also happen to have a Ph.D. in Physics from Stanford, so you may trust that I know what I’m talking about.”
The agent threw up his hands in submission. “Fine, so now I know.” Still, a smirk. “But I bet you didn’t learn how to use that horn at Stanford.”
Steve sighed. “No, I certainly did not.”
“I taught him, if you must know.” Twilight stared at the anomaly. She needed to uncover the spell work that created it. Only then could she figure out how to end it. “I’m afraid we’ll have to get closer.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” MacAuley said. “The wind is bad enough here.”
A valid point, but there were ways of dealing with that. “Steve, how much farther until space-time becomes… unhealthy?”
“Between another two and three hundred feet, I’d say. I can definitely stop us before that point was reached. The real problem is this wind. It’ll overpower us well before that point.”
It had already done that to most of the interior of the former building. The concrete floor was holding up well enough—except right under the anomaly itself. Concrete would not effectively resist being pulled apart by space itself expanding.
“I can request a suitably heavy vehicle,” MacAuley offered, “and have it anchored.”
“How long will it take?” Reubens asked.
“More hours than I like.”
“I don’t think it’s wise to wait that long,” Twilight said. “A shield spell combined with a telekinetic anchor should suffice.” She cast a slightly porous shield and the wind faded to a mild breeze—only to be replaced, as demanded by this realm’s insistence on balancing the books, by the strain of transferring its force deep into the ground.
MacAuley looked around at the translucent bubble enclosing them all. “Amazing.”
“You get used to it,” Fowler remarked, offering a smirk of her own.
“You sure you can keep this up?” Steve asked.
Twilight checked the generator. The drain was high, but several pounds of U-235 held an incredible amount of energy. “The generator’s good.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
Was the strain that obvious? “I’ll manage.”
Our lives depend on it.
They started walking.
“I’m not sensing anything anymore,” Steve said.
“The generator was already maxed out,” Twilight said. “Powering this spell has shrunk the magic bubble somewhat.”
“Not by much, I hope. I can’t tell if we’re dangerously close without it.” He examined the ground ahead of them. “Though I suppose it ought to be visually obvious too.”
Fortunately the lights illuminating the anomaly weren’t directly behind them, so their shadows didn’t obscure the ground. They kept on advancing, step by step.
Another ten feet.
And another.
“I’m sensing it again.”
“And I’m still not.”
The anomaly was now close enough to reveal some details. It seemed to be spherical in shape, maybe five or six meters in diameter, but it was hard to tell given the darkness. It didn’t reflect any of the lights, nor was it opaque to them. Lights on the opposite side were visible, but oddly distorted. It seemed to be resting in the crater that it created, but the bottom of it could not be seen from this angle. Flying would solve that, but it wasn’t an option with the others dependent on her shield.
Despite the shield, the breeze was picking up strength as they got closer. On second thought, flying above the anomaly wasn’t an option even if she had been alone. Maybe Rainbow Dash could avoid being sucked in; herself, she wasn’t so sure. Twilight decided against tightening the shield; better not to hide the danger any more than necessary.
There.
Twilight went a few more feet then stopped. “The ambient magic has changed. This anomaly is generating its own magic field.” But how? If Steve was right, any magic generator originally inside there had been ripped apart.
“What about active spells?” Steve asked.
“Working on it.” There must be an active spell involved, if only to generate this field. She closed her eyes and focused her magical senses, searching.
“Twilight… not that I want to rush you or anything, but the sooner we go back the better.”
“Almost there…” Having to keep up the shield spell and the telekinetic anchor was not helping.
“I’m serious. I think your magic generator is adding power to whatever is going on in there.”
Is it? She switched tracks, tracing the flow from her generator to the anomaly and… “Got it. Let’s get out of here.”
No one had to be told twice. “So what’s the verdict?” MacAuley asked as he ran after the trotting ponies.
My worst fears confirmed. “I know what spell caused this. What I don’t know is who could’ve possibly cast it here—or why.” Precious few could have cast it—and she refused to believe that her future self had done so. There was no conceivable or justifiable reason for doing this.
The yellow tape marking the perimeter approached. On the other side of it Meg had been waiting patiently, looking half-asleep. Twilight slowed to a walk and dropped the shield spell.
Ruebens took a moment to catch his breath. “I think I can answer the ‘who’ part. We have some leads that The Section had set up shop here, but we didn’t know precisely where or for what.”
“But it’s becoming easier to guess,” Fowler added.
“What’s this about The Section?” Meg asked.
Her husband answered: “It’s possible they might be involved with this.”
“Great,” Meg muttered. In a normal voice she said, “The wind picked up strength while you were there.”
It wasn’t by much, but a pegasus could be counted on noticing something like that.
Steve was looking at the anomaly. “It’s grown visibly larger too. I was afraid of that.”
The others turned around to see for themselves.
“Shit.” MacAuley glared at Steve. “What do you mean by that?”
“We were supplying it with additional power.”
Twilight cringed. “He’s right.” That was how she tracked down the spell. But she was still missing something. “It was already growing, before we arrived, correct?”
MacAuley carefully answered, “That’s right.”
She turned to Steve. “Then where does that power come from? It’s safe to say they were using the magic generators they stole from the Department of Energy. Would those be up to this, if they were even still functioning?”
“I have to say no. And we have a bigger problem.”
“And what would that be?” MacAuley asked.
“It’s safe to assume magic will be needed to fix this. That means getting a magic generator near the anomaly. If we’re unlucky enough, we’d need a sufficient quantity to encompass the entire anomaly.”
Twilight supplied the conclusion. “And we now know it ‘feeds’ off any generator in close proximity.”
“Exactly. Though since it maintains its own magic field, a small generator may be sufficient.”
“Maybe that’s part of the solution. Figure out how it’s doing that and block it, starve it of magic.”
Steve didn’t reply immediately. “Be careful. Magic may be what’s stabilizing it. Starving it could be catastrophic. You said you know what spell caused this, right?”
“I do.” Her head sagged. “It’s a variation of Star Swirl’s space expansion spell, similar to the spell used on Celestia’s high security vaults. But it’s been incorrectly cast.”
“So you know how to fix this,” MacAuley stated.
Twilight stared into the abyss that was the interior of the anomaly. “Not yet.”