//------------------------------// // 12. Knossos // Story: Imperatives // by Sharp Quill //------------------------------// Canterlot High was before her; Meg had made it a point to expect whatever was already there, so this wasn’t her doing. Off in the distance, over to the side, a volleyball game was in progress. One of the players had unmistakable rainbow hair. Twilight hadn’t failed to notice. “He held nothing back, I see.” “Yeah,” Meg replied. “Not hard to figure out who he’s with.” This intervention was overdue. Twilight shielded her eyes with a hand and looked around. “So where do we start?” Meg pointed at the game. “Start with Rainbow Dash?” Twilight gulped. “Nope, not awkward at all.” The Twilight from the future cleared her throat. “Yes. We’ll get on with this right now.” She glared at her companions. “The sooner the better.” “Hey!” Dash protested. “I didn’t do anything!” The Twilight of the present wondered why she’d brought them. “Why did you bring them?” Meg asked, apparently wondering the same thing. “That will be clear in a minute,” Future Twilight said. “But first thing’s first.” Her horn lit up, then she no longer had a horn. Twilight stared at the human now standing in front of her. Long, black hair. About the same height as Meg as a human. A skirt with her cutie mark on it. This is what I’d look like as a human? It wasn’t that different from her mirror realm form, just with proper human coloration. Assuming she wasn’t looking at a changeling. Yet she recognized the isomorphic mapping spell in action—nor was there a cascade of green fire that marked a changeling’s transformation. On second thought, it made her wonder how that mirror “knew” what that mapping spell would produce. While this was all persuasive, it wasn’t proof. “And back again.” The human was once more an alicorn. Wait. How was the spell cast again? Yet it indisputably was—by an allegedly magic-less human. A smile. “You’ll figure that out.” Twilight groaned. “I know. I remember groaning too. But that’s what the wave function collapse has given us.” Twilight took a deep breath and exhaled. “Fine. Then you also remember that this demonstration, so far, falls short.” “Indeed I do!” She addressed her friends. “It’s time. Let’s prove I still bear the Element of Magic!” Rainbow light swirled around the six mares as the Elements within them awakened. Twilight had never observed from the outside the transformation into their Rainbow Power forms. She had to admit it was almost convincing. “Then try to doubt this! Let’s zap her, girls!” Twilight froze in shock. “Wait. WHAT?!” The rainbow beam slammed into her, suffusing every cell of her being with harmonic energy. It was… pleasant, actually. Sort of relaxing. Was this what Meg had experienced? It didn’t seem like it; time still insisted on being perceived. But she was already connected to harmony, already a magical being, an Element Bearer no less. Speaking of which… the Element of Magic within her had noticed. It was reacting, resonating—with itself! That settled it. The being in front of her could be none other than her future self, still the bearer of the Element of Magic. She had personally witnessed her transformation into a human and back, evidentially with no harm to her Element. The prismatic glow faded away. The six mares had reverted to their everyday, unpowered forms. “Our job here is done,” the other Twilight said, strangely lacking conviction. “Wait!” Meg shouted, trotting over to them. “What about the anomaly? How was it fixed?” Future Twilight scowled at the pegasus. “I thought we agreed a time loop cannot safely solve that problem for us.” “That’s quite the assumption, darling. That it was fixed.” “But we’re not saying it wasn’t,” Rainbow added. Meg advanced upon them. “Yeah, yeah. Twilight coached you on what to say—and what not to say. But answer me this: What’s the point of Twilight going human if humanity was destroyed?” That’s a good question. And obviously her future self would remember it being asked. And her future self had an answer prepared, as if reading from a script. “You’re assuming there’d be no point to me visiting the human realm incognito prior to its destruction—assuming the anomaly did, in fact, destroy it.” “And that point would be?” Present Twilight asked. Meg shook her head. “No, Twilight. The point is that none of them seem terribly shook up by the hypothetical destruction of my world.” “Maaaybe,” Pinkie countered, “it hasn’t happened yet!” Meg gave a smile of victory. “Then you could have led with that and avoided this whole conversation.” Pinkie replied with a sheepish grin. Future Twilight sighed. “Yep, just as I remembered.” Her horn lit up, and all six disappeared. Twilight and Meg looked at each other. “I guess that means we do fix the anomaly?” Twilight asked. “Yeah, let’s go with that.” Princess Luna approached them. “I doubt I would have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.” “I’m beyond disbelieving anything a time loop throws at me.” Twilight conjured a notepad and pen out of thin air. “Guess I’d better record what just happened.” “So you can regurgitate it when you go back in time with the others,” Meg said. “You got it.” Luna tilted her head. “Then… where did those words—” “It’d take too long to explain,” Meg said, “and it’ll only give you a headache. I guess I’ll be going. I should investigate that portal history query time out. Thanks for the talk, Luna.” “I am glad to be of service. On your way out, please inform my staff that they may return—unless you, Twilight, wish to talk privately?” Twilight shook her head. “No. I’ll just be by your side as you carry out the Court’s business.” Luna looked at her like she’d sprouted a second head. Twilight realized she hadn’t the opportunity to mention why she had come. Luna returned to her throne, barely suppressing a laugh. “Try not to be bored.” She tapped her sister’s throne with a hoof. “I don’t think she’ll mind.” Now that she thought about it, Twilight realized that there had been an absence of petitioners outside. “I guess we’ll see what happens,” she said before she ascended the stairs to the thrones. Meg stepped through The Mirror, hardly noticing the transition from four to two legs. She walked over to the console and flicked the mouse, bringing the monitor to life. Sure enough, there was the query time out dialog box. She dismissed it. “So what do I do now?” she muttered. There seemed little point in running the query yet again. She could try a shorter date range, do a binary search to find out how far back they can go before molasses set in. But somehow she felt she already knew the answer. There really was no other logical explanation. However this realm worked, it was currently modeling human computer technology. In any sane application design—and all this was based on her own expertise, presumably—that query would result in a SELECT against a table in an SQL database, a logging table to which a row is appended when a new portal is created, modified, or destroyed. She couldn’t imagine such a query taking days to run—and it certainly ought not take that long to time out! She could spend the time trying to reverse engineer the program, maybe try attaching a debugger to it—if she even had permission to do so—but if what she suspected was correct, it’d be a waste of time. She wouldn’t be allowed to succeed. It was time to talk to Discord. On second thought, maybe she was overthinking it. Sure, now it was modeling human computer technology. It most certainly wasn’t when those ancient portals were open. Where was that information stored? How would it get mapped to a modern database? Could that be the problem? Maybe it wasn’t doing an SQL query at all; maybe it was executing a remote query against—well, whatever kept that ancient data. Regardless it didn’t feel right, and she already knew that Discord could and did mess with the emulated computer. And like it or not, he was the closest thing to an expert on this realm. It was still time to talk to Discord. She looked at the time on the monitor, which conveniently matched Equestrian time. It was getting late. She sighed. Tomorrow. Luna had been quite right, as it turned out. Only one pony had sought an audience with the Princess of the Night, a mare whose filly suffered recurring nightmares. Naturally Luna offered her assurance that she would take care of it. Indeed, before midnight struck, Luna departed so that she could safeguard the dreamscape; that was something Twilight could not participate in, much less help with, so she went her separate way. That left the rest of the night. There wasn’t much to do; pretty much everything was closed. She returned to her castle for lack of better options. There, at least, she could always catch up on her reading. But as she perused the stack of books… No, there was something else she could do first: visit the anomaly. It was getting late, true, but not so late that no one would be around. She got a plaid pill from the dispenser and took it. The anomaly itself wasn’t visible at night, of course—to the extent it was visible at all. Floodlights still illuminated the perimeter of tape, which had been moved back. A lot. No crowds that she could see—or hear. There. Inside the perimeter some activity. She trotted over, mindful that there could be bad actors. It was a needless concern. Present were three humans: Martin, Steve, and Sunset Shimmer. It reminded her to give Meg more plaid pills—perhaps Sunset should get some too. They were so focused on a device that they failed to notice her until she was practically on top of them. “Decided to drop in for a late night visit, eh?” Sunset asked, her voice raised to be heard over the ever-present wind. “Not much else to do at night, as it turns out.” Twilight nodded at the device on a tripod. A laser beam shot out to the anomaly; it seemed to disappear inside it. “Scanning the geometry?” “Trying to,” Martin said. “Jerry’s on the other side. Surprisingly difficult to match up the entry with the exit.” “It doesn’t go straight through?” “Oh, sure, if it’s aimed at the exact center. But that’s not very interesting.” Jerry’s voice came from a phone lying on a tray below the device. “Okay. Got it positioned on the beam at this end.” “Starting it now.” He pushed a button. Nothing obvious happened. Answering Twilight’s unspoken question, he said, “The beam is now tracing out a pattern. We’re recording how that pattern is distorted as it goes through the anomaly.” “Thus telling us something about its geometry,” Twilight guessed. “Correct.” “Any conclusions yet?” “It’s not symmetrical, we figured that much out.” “Is that bad?” “Don’t know.” “I suspect it has to do with the distribution of consumed matter,” Steve said. That seemed reasonable to Twilight. After all, they believed it was that matter that was powering the spell. The effort continued for another two hours before they called it a night. During that time Twilight noticed the wind got a bit stronger. She returned home and spent the remainder of the night catching up on her reading. She made a lot of progress; nopony else was around to interrupt. But all good things come to an end, and shortly after sunrise a disguised pegasus found her. “Aren’t you back rather early?” Twilight asked A. K. Yearling. “Got too dark for filming. We spent most of the day driving around the island as Andy provided commentary on what used to be there. Samantha ate it all up, of course, peppering him with questions. I found it pretty interesting too. But maybe it was just as well you skipped it.” Considering her reaction to Yearling’s gushing over the minutia of the Parthenon, Twilight couldn’t argue. “But you will be visiting Knossos tomorrow, right?” “With or without you.” “Then it will be with me,” she declared. Afterwards she could get back on Equestrian time. Yearling turned around and departed. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.” When tomorrow came, Meg took to the air, heading towards the old mine entrance. Once she reached the backside of the mountain, she decided it was as good a place as any. Still flying to the main entrance, she called out. “Discord, we need to talk!” It was unlikely to work, of course. He rarely showed up just because you called out to him. Minutes passed by. The defunct ore processing facilities came into view. As she touched down at the mine entrance, she resigned herself to flying over to Ponyville during lunch to seek out Fluttershy. Once inside she extracted the helmet from a saddlebag and put it on. But before she could turn on the light— “FIRE IN THE HOLE!!” A kaleidoscopic blinding flash! But the exact opposite of a loud bang, like the very existence of sound itself got nullified. Over too many seconds Meg’s sight returned, revealing a draconequus outfitted in full mining attire. “. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .” she failed to say. “. . . .?” Discord failed to reply. A puzzled look, then a lightbulb lit above his head. He snapped his talons. “That better?” “What are you doing here?” “Mining for chaos of course!” He examined the closest section of the tunnel wall—completely unaffected by the… whatever that was—and sadly shook his head. “Nothing.” “Mining for chaos. Sure. Whatever. Could you hold off until I’m safely past? But while you’re here, mind if I ask you a question?” That’s probably why he was here, she figured; he just had to make a big production out of it. “Walk with me.” He set out down the tunnel. She was heading that way anyway so she followed. Every now and then he’d tap a rock with a perfectly ordinary pickaxe; each time nothing unusual happened. Eventually she took his silence as acquiescence. “Are you preventing us from accessing the portal log dating back to ancient history?” “Yes.” “You admit it, just like that?” He briefly stopped to tap again, then continued. “Yes.” “Why?” He gave her a hurt look. “It would be terribly predictable if I didn’t give a simple, direct answer now and then.” “No, I mean, why block access? We already know you created those portals, so what are you hiding?” He shrugged. “Maybe I have nothing to hide. It would also be terribly predictable if I only hid something when there was something to hide.” “So would always hiding something when there was something to hide, but I’m not aware of you ever failing to hide in that circumstance.” “Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.” He stopped to tap again, and again the result was a perfectly ordinary tapping sound of metal against rock. He sighed, saying, “Not promising.” “What do you want to happen?” He looked at her in surprise. “Something chaotic, obviously!” Meg sighed. “Obviously.” She resumed walking. “I’ll leave you to it.” More tapping behind her, then: “Give ’em chaos tomorrow!” Thanks for reminding me. Not that she could possibly forget her upcoming trial appearance. She continued walking. “We’ll see.” A sudden thought, and she turned around. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything about that trip into hyperspace to study the anomaly from that angle?” “Can’t say that I have.” Another perfectly normal tap. “Nopony tells me anything.” Meg sighed. Maybe if you weren’t so hard to get a hold of. She resumed walking. A symphony of vuvuzelas blared behind her. “Jackpot!! Pure chaos!!” Meg pointedly ignored it—the best she could, anyway. Eventually she was alone with the sound of her hooves. Thoughts of tomorrow’s impeachment testimony flooded in. It almost made her want the cacophony of those vuvuzelas. Almost. She plodded along, her body on autopilot. As the locked door came into view, no insights had come to her. She wished the trial was already behind her. Once she was on the other side, she surveyed the room. None of her co-workers were there; most were at the anomaly, she knew. Steve would be there soon himself. She thought Sunset Shimmer would be there too, but there she was, sitting in front of a computer busily typing away—with hands, no less. “Did you drive all the way back from Tracy to the portal?” Meg asked. “Had no choice, really. Steve and I went there as humans.” Sunset rotated her seat to face Meg and lifted a familiar looking pendant that hung from around her neck. “Made one for myself. I, uh, did a quick study of yours when I borrowed it.” Meg squeezed her own and resumed her human form. “You can do that?” Sunset shrugged. “I wasn’t sure I could. Might’ve required alicorn-level magic, but apparently not. The pendant doesn’t actually do the transformation—” “It just triggers the chaos magic that’s already in place, I know.” She walked over to her own workstation. “Mind creating one for Steve? If it’s not too much effort.” “No problem, now that I’ve made one myself.” “Speaking of chaos… I just ran into Discord in the tunnels.” “What’s he doing there?” No, there was no point going into details. “Being annoying, mostly, but it did remind me that he’s offered to take us to the anomaly from the hyperspace side of things. If we’re going to do that, we ought to do it soon.” “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that, actually.” Not the response she’d expected. “Huh?” “What I mean is, there’s no point, really, unless we could actually learn something, and I’m not sure what that’d be. We can’t use analytical magic on it for the same reason we can’t in your realm.” Meg slumped. “Because it’ll fuel its growth.” “If we can even cast magic outside the realm that’ll reach inside it.” I bet my future self knows the answer to that. Too bad she hadn’t become her yet. “Yeah, maybe we shouldn’t rush. Who knows how the rapid expansion of space-time inside the anomaly affects adjacent hyperspace anyway?” “Not my area of expertise, I’m afraid.” “Nor mine.” She’d ask Steve at the next opportunity. Sunset typed away. “But this is my area of expertise.” She finished whatever she was doing. “Just sent it to you. What you need to model that expansion spell.” She exhaled. “Maybe.” “Maybe?” “It wasn’t cast correctly. There’s an unlimited number of ways they could’ve messed it up.” Meg opened the email from Sunset. Lots and lots of equations. “Yeah.” She scrolled down. More equations. “Let’s get started.” Anything to take her mind off of tomorrow. Twilight found herself in a modest bedroom in Athens. The bed hadn’t been slept in, of course. “So what now?” she asked. Yearling walked towards the door. “Join the others. They should be waiting for us.” She nodded at the door handle. “A bit awkward for hooves.” Twilight studied it for a moment, then quickly with her magic turned the lock, turned the doorknob, and pulled the door open. No question that if pony tourism ever became a thing, humans would have to accommodate them somehow. “After you.” The disguised pegasus went through, and Twilight followed, closing the door behind her. Yearling led her to a common area, where the others were all, indeed, waiting. “Look who’s here!” she declared. Kyle looked up from his phone. “Excellent! Shall we be on our way?” He didn’t wait for an answer, getting up. All the others took his cue and got up too. There wasn’t much for Twilight to do but follow them. That didn’t mean she couldn’t satisfy her curiosity along the way. “Have you heard much about the anomaly out here?” Kyle was already at the door. “None of us read or speak Greek, so we follow the same news online we’d follow anyway.” “I do, actually.” “None of us except for Professor Hutchinson,” he corrected. “Did Celestia really admit that ponies were probably responsible?” Twilight cringed. “You heard that.” “Sure did,” Mike said. “She had… incomplete information. I can’t say more at this time.” More like, it wouldn’t be productive here and now to say more. “Celestia’s not omniscient. Who knew?” Andy whipped out his phone. “I’m amazed that magic can make one of these work in Equestria.” Kyle opened the door. “Let’s get going.” He waved everyone through. “Our jet is waiting.” Once outside, Twilight said, “It’s useful. That’s why I have my own phone with me.” Not that she was in the habit of keeping it on her in Equestria. “Did you get a new SIM card for it?” Dominic asked. “SIM what now?” He shook his head. “Your phone won’t work here then.” “It won’t?” She pulled it from her saddlebag and checked. Nope. “Ponyfeathers.” Samantha snerked. “You actually say that.” Twilight sighed. “Where’s the van?” Meg started the simulation. On the monitor they watched hours of work come to fruition. The space-time grid expanded in the middle, stopping once the volume had doubled. Proper time within the region matched proper time outside it. “Looks like we modeled it.” “Can’t disagree,” Sunset said. “That’s how the spell ought to behave when cast correctly.” She stepped back. “I’m afraid that’s all I can assist with. I think I should help out at the anomaly now.” Meg didn’t know what more she herself could do either, in the absence of additional data. “Sure. Go ahead.” It wasn’t long before she had only her thoughts to keep her company. Three red intact columns, holding up a small piece of intact stone… ceiling? Twilight wasn’t sure what to call it. An outdoor corridor? Two broken columns, still freshly painted red, continued off to the side. Behind the columns was a stone wall with a mural painted on it; it looked like it could’ve been painted yesterday. All around it were ruins. Andy pondered what he saw. “Not exactly as I remember it.” “I’m assuming this bit here has been restored,” Yearling said. Samantha adopted her lecturing voice for the camera. “This is a restoration, of course. Arthur Evans, who excavated this site a century ago, did extensive restorations, many that have been criticized as inaccurate, some even that had led to further damage.” “I’ll reserve judgement for now,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “To be fair, I have no idea how long our palace was occupied, what changes had been made by generations after mine.” “It was destroyed and abandoned around thirteen seventy-five B.C.E.; that much we know—that’s about three thousand four hundred years ago. We also know the Mycenaeans had been using it by that time for the better part of a century.” Andy snorted. “Surely you’re joking.” “I’m… afraid not. They invaded this island and destroyed every other palace around fourteen fifty B.C.E. Perhaps the earlier eruption of Santorini presented them with the opportunity; it’s hard to say.” His eyes were locked on that mural. “Our great empire—the work of my father, who ushered in an age of prosperity by wiping out piracy in the Aegean—destroyed by nobodies.” Samantha opened her mouth, then thought better of it. She said instead, “At least this narrows down when you disappeared. It had to be before fourteen fifty, but after sixteen hundred B.C.E., as that was when Mycenae got started—so far as we know, of course.” He sighed and redirected his gaze to the professor. “I can narrow that down further, assuming my understanding of when Mycenae formed is the same as yours. I would say not long before fifteen hundred, possibly a bit after.” Yearling stepped closer to the pair. “Then the invasion could well have happened in your lifetime, had you lived out your life here.” He looked down, clenching his fists. A deep breath later and he forced himself to relax. “I would’ve been a decrepit old man,” he told himself, “useless.” He looked up and scanned the fallen stone walls. “And even if we had won then, would this palace be in any better shape today?” It was a rhetorical question none dared answer. Twilight wanted to move on to the subject of the minotaur, but… now… did not seem the time to do that. “Here ya go, dearie.” A cinnamon and daisy swirl vanilla shake was deposited in front of Meg. It’d seemed silly flying all the way to Ponyville to get one, but it’d been a while since she last had one. Besides, it didn’t seem so far to fly anymore. All that flight training was paying off. “Thanks, Mrs. Cake.” She was the only customer in Sugarcube Corner this late at night, and that suited her just fine. Even Pinkie wasn’t around. As she sucked in the creamy goodness, the door opened. Of course it couldn’t last; maybe she should’ve taken it to go. Too late now. Trixie had spotted her and was making a beeline towards her. Now what could she want? The Naked and Unadorned Trixie took a cushion on the opposite side of the table. “Just the pony I needed to see.” Well, at least she wasn’t in her stage persona. “What can I do for you?” Meg asked around the straw. “I’m assuming there won’t be any engagements in the human realm in the foreseeable future?” “’Fraid not. Got a world-ending catastrophe going on right now.” The unicorn cocked her head. “You mean like last Tuesday here in Ponyville?” “Was there?” Meg shook her head. “Sure. Of course there was. Sorry, but I spend most of my time in Canterlot these days.” She sighed. “Look, humans aren’t use to that, and even once that’s taken care of, I just don’t know when you could perform there. Things are sorta also messed up in other ways.” Trixie got up. “I’ve already decided to go back to Las Pegasus. I appreciate the help and all, but I need to earn a living.” Well, that was easy. “You can’t wait forever, I understand. If the situation changes, I’ll send word to you.” “That’s all I can ask.” The showmare departed. Meg nursed her shake. There was only one way to change that situation, and her appearance tomorrow in front of the Judiciary Committee was the way to do it. Somehow.