//------------------------------// // 14. The Un-Redacted Truth // Story: Imperatives // by Sharp Quill //------------------------------// “You needn’t concern yourself, my dearest Fluttershy.” Discord, his usual draconequus self, entered from a back room. “Why don’t you visit your other friends?” Fluttershy hand paused in the middle of a stroke. “Is everything all right?” Discord’s gaze fell upon Meg and Twilight. “They undoubtably feel otherwise,” he quietly said. “Please let us talk in private.” Fluttershy completed the stroke and stood up. “Okay.” She gave the pony a pat on the head and departed, Discord’s eyes never deviating from her until she left the building. “I know what you’re going to say.” It was barely a whisper. Twilight sighed. “She wouldn’t want this. She made her decision.” “We’ve all lost loved ones,” Meg added. “This…” She waved her hands around. “This isn’t healthy.” He turned away. “I know.” Twilight put a hand on his shoulder. “Equestria needs you.” He looked back at her. “You can’t stay here forever.” Discord threw up his arms and howled in agony. Everything dissolved around them, revealing a black void with an infinite grid for a floor. It reminded Meg of a Star Trek holodeck. That out of his system, he slumped. Lethargically he turned to face them. He studied them, as if seeing them for the first time. Meg stared back at him. “What.” “You are old enough.” It wasn’t a question. “Huh?” Meg replied. “What does that mean?” He sighed. “It means it is finally time.” Twilight tilted her head. “Time for what?” “The un-redacted truth. Ask your questions.” President Serrell stormed back and forth across the Oval Office. “And it’s not just the media. Russia and China are both demanding representation.” He threw up his hands. “To make sure we don’t take advantage of being in the past to harm them somehow, or so they say.” He stopped in front of a cringing Meg. “That’s why mentioning time travel was off limits.” There was no point repeating her justification. It hadn’t worked anyway. A flying pegasus may be quieter than a drone, but not a single person noticing her? It’s not like phones had extreme telephoto lenses; she hadn’t been, couldn’t have been, far from them. It just reinforced the faked video narrative. There was a reason for not being noticed, of course—the invisibility feature of the magic bubbles—but she hadn’t mentioned that and for good reason. Everybody was freaking out enough as it was over time travel. “Don’t they understand that the past is immutable?” Twilight asked. Serrell swung around to the alicorn. “Do they? I’m sure they heard the words, but I’m not sure they processed them. You won’t believe the number of people demanding to know why we haven’t yet killed Hitler as a baby, and an equal number saying that obviously we must have, but all it did was create an alternate time line.” “Kill what now?!” Serrell waved it off. “Doesn’t matter, it needn’t concern you. The point is you will have a lot of passengers.” Twilight grimaced. “Will you want a representative as well?” “Yes. If only to keep an eye on the Russian and Chinese representatives.” He sighed. “And especially Routledge’s.” “I’m not worried about them messing with the past,” Twilight said. “I’m worried that their intentions to mess with the past will cause the time travel spell to fail. I’m sure they’d blame me for that.” Serrell paced back and forth once more before responding. “I guess we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.” “Or… the spell doesn’t fail.” All looked at Meg. “Predestination paradoxes are not prohibited; I-I know that from personal experience. We shouldn’t assume they are unaware of that—actually, they may already know because they did pull it off. They’re just completing the time loop.” He exhaled, rubbing his eyes. “Is there anyway to know that has happened? Or better yet prevent it from happening?” Meg and Twilight looked at each other, the latter answering. “Not that I know of. I mean, in theory we could go back in time first to observe what they do when we bring them back later, but that… makes me uneasy just thinking about it.” “Better to do it after we bring them back,” Meg said. “Less potential for paradox, and it isn’t as if we can prevent it anyway if it did—does—happen.” The president stared at the ponies, open mouthed. “Aren’t you worried about meeting yourselves?” Meg shrugged. “Been there, done that. Both of us.” “Twice, in my case.” “O-kaaay.” “Maybe we should plan on going back twice,” Twilight said. “Even if all the others are well-behaved, their presence will still distract me from analyzing that spell, if only by preventing me from getting up close and personal while being invisible.” “You don’t want to be anywhere near them when they do cast that spell,” Meg said. “I doubt there’s any defensive spell you could cast that’d protect you.” Twilight looked up in thought. “No, you’re right. I could possibly neutralize their botched spell, or even correct it, but that’d be changing the past.” She thought some more. “They must be using technology to use magic. Hopefully it’d be sufficient to study whatever machine they’re using, what spell that machine has been set to cast.” “I should come along,” Meg said. “I’m best qualified to handle the computers—and I know I won’t be killed by being there when that spell gets cast.” Twilight smiled at her. “Neither shall I, so long as I don’t complete my latest time loop.” “Good point.” Serrell shook his head. “Okay, okay, I’ve heard enough. Just do what you think needs to be done. I’ll take care of the passenger list—and remember that nothing would stop them from being killed when that spell is cast.” “Don’t get us wrong,” Twilight said. “It’d kill us too. It’s just that it’s guaranteed we won’t be near it when it does get cast.” “Fine, fine. Point still stands.” “And point taken.” “Now,” Serrell said, with far less energy than before, “about the anomaly. It grew about a thousand feet in the last twenty-four hours. We need progress.” “We’re working on it the fastest we can,” Twilight said. The president was not impressed. “It’s on the verge of taking out the two-oh-five. The winds have already forced us to close it down.” Meg couldn’t blame him for being demanding. Shutting down a major interstate highway, never mind having it destroyed, was intolerable. “We’re doing all we can. What more can we say?” He sighed, but said nothing more. “So… are we done here?” “No.” Serrell locked eyes with Meg. “There’s still the matter of your disappearance during your testimony.” Oh crap. It had been too good to be true. Of course he was going to bring that up. “There’s a huge difference between mysteriously disappearing from a jail cell and disappearing from a Senate committee hearing on live television!” Meg had difficulty swallowing. She wanted to vanish right then and there. “Now I’ll confess I got a kick out of seeing the senator get flummoxed by your little stunt.” He paused for a second. “But you just showed that magic-wielding Equestrians cannot be held accountable for their actions. Catch one that committed a crime? Poof and they’re gone.” He turned around and returned to his desk. “You just made Routledge’s case for him.” “How could I’ve been so stupid.” Meg scrolled through the headlines on her phone. Serrell had been right. Even the articles that gave her the benefit of the doubt—and there weren’t many of those—still agreed that magic permitted ponies to get away with literal murder if they were so inclined. And what would happen when humans got access to magic? Then there were the articles that did not give her the benefit of the doubt. Obviously her story was a lie, a transparent lie that the good senator handily shredded. Equestria should be pressured to hand Meg over, as a magic-less human naturally. And still there were those who insisted the whole thing was a massive con job. Just how stupid did Hasbro think everyone was? Obviously Routledge and the others were on the take; they had to be to pretend there was an actual, not-CGI pony in that chamber. And, of course, the anomaly. It was growing exponentially. In about a month it would be as large as the entire Earth. The assurances that it was “being dealt with” had begun to sound hollow. But not to worry, asserted some: It was obviously a cover story for some secret military project gone horribly wrong. A catastrophe, sure, but hardly world ending. Whatever. Some people still believed the Earth was flat. Chaos had backfired on her. She put the phone down. But what else would have worked? Not even in hindsight did she have a clue. Steve put a hand on her shoulder. “Wait until we witness the genesis of the anomaly before passing judgment on yourself.” She grabbed his hand with her own. Perhaps he had a point. If not for the chaos, would she have thought outside the box and come up with that? Well, no, because time travel was a verboten subject. Tomorrow was another day. It was just as well she’d be spending this night as a human. If she were to suffer a nightmare, she’d rather suffer it in private. The intact warehouse was before her. Twilight flew over to an adjacent building, behind the warehouse where it won’t witness their future selves out front. There, she magically glued a camcorder plus a small magic generator, to the wall just below the roof, and aimed it at the doomed warehouse. She then moved forward one day. The warehouse had imploded, and as she hoped the camcorder was still there. It should have caught the precise moment the spell had been cast. Meg took the camcorder from Twilight’s magical grasp and plugged in an HDMI cable. After placing the device on the desk, she plugged the other end into her workstation’s monitor. “It’s already positioned,” Twilight stated. Meg started the playback as Steve and Sunset Shimmer took up position on either side of her. The side of a warehouse in the fading light of the setting sun appeared. Nothing was happening. It was on par with watching paint dry. The large roll-up doors along the loading dock all spasmed inward—and remained there, obviously fighting a pressure differential that would only increase. “That,” Twilight said, “is when the spell was cast. At around seven twenty-six in the evening. Seven seconds after that, to be precise.” They continued watching. After a few more minutes more damage became visible, when the top of the wall broke off and fell towards the interior. “We don’t have a view of the roof, but it’s safe to say it collapsed prior to this point.” Twilight stopped the playback. “It ran out of storage before capturing anything else worth seeing.” Sunset started to pace around the cavern. “So what do we do next? There doesn’t seem much to be learned from observing outside of that building, but neither does it seem healthy to be inside it.” “It’s perfectly safe being inside it,” Meg said, “so long as we’re out of there before seven twenty-six and seven seconds.” “Right,” Twilight said. “We give ourselves enough time to study the means by which they cast that spell.” “That still leaves the question of our ‘passengers,’” Meg said. “Yeah. I know. I don’t see how we can let them go inside. They’ll be seen.” “Which will prevent us from studying what they got,” Sunset said. Thoughts of Trixie came to Meg. “Hold on…” Why had that crossed her mind? Surely that performer would be of no use in this situation! But Trixie was an illusionist, and one of the key tricks employed by illusionists was… “Misdirection.” “Misdirection?” Sunset asked. “Misdirection,” Meg repeated. “What if we claim we can analyze that spell from outside the building. Our passengers will witness the implosion, we will report what we ‘discovered’—don’t bother asking how because, you know, magic—and we’ll return to the present. Everyone’s happy.” Twilight tilted her head. “But how can we report… right. Because we’ll make a separate trip where we actually analyze what they did.” “And because we’ll be inside for that trip,” Sunset concluded, “we won’t cross paths with our future selves in the subsequent trip. What can go wrong?” She had to utter those words. Meg sighed as she unplugged the cable. And, of course, on second thought several problems came to mind. “What can go wrong is that nothing we ‘officially’ discover can tie it back to Routledge. That sort of evidence would be inside the building, where we ‘officially’ did not go.” “We would still ‘officially’ learn enough to fix the anomaly,” Twilight said. “That is the top priority.” Meg switched her monitor’s input back to her computer. “I know, and I wish there was a way we can take them inside but I just can’t see how that’d work.” “Why don’t we focus on when and how we’ll get inside,” Sunset said. Twilight frowned. “It’s safe to say there’ll be magic generators operating inside. We can’t depend on invisibility.” Sunset tapped her muzzle in thought. “What if we set up another camera in the past to observe the entrance. See when people enter and leave, so we know when it’s empty.” Twilight’s frown grew. “It’d have to be far removed from the first camera, but then it’d have to be to have a view of the entrance. The real problem is that it would record our future selves and our passengers. That’s a complication we could do without.” “Not if we removed the camera prior to our arrival,” Sunset pointed out. “There’s no reason to bring our passengers back much before the implosion.” “True…” Meg waved that away. “For all we know, some of them are living in there; we won’t see them enter or leave.” She sighed. “Look, we can’t depend on the place being empty or us being invisible. Even if we were invisible, I need access to their computers and being invisible won’t help if they’re all in use or if they have noisy keyboards. The best we can do is to go in after midnight, when, hopefully, the place should be unoccupied or anyone there is asleep.” “Sounds good to me,” Twilight said. “Doesn’t matter what hour of the day it is when we’re time traveling.” Sunset cringed. “What about surveillance cameras?” Now Meg cringed. “Yeah. Can’t rule that out. The only question is whether anyone’s watching the feed that late at night. They’ll be recorded, of course.” “We won’t have to open any doors, fortunately; that’d definitely set off alarms.” Twilight thought it over. “Does it really matter? The place will be destroyed the next day. There is no evidence Routledge knew of our visit, not if his reaction to your proposal is any indication. If the place isn’t deserted, I can cast a sleep spell.” Meg shook her head. “He may be a better actor than you give him credit for. For all we know, our visit spooked them, forcing them to act before they were ready.” She grimaced. “What are the odds we are the cause of the anomaly?” Twilight stomped a hoof. “Meg, stop that. I’m not saying you’re wrong; I’m saying it is what it is and we just have to deal with it.” She’s right, of course. Even if they did spook them, they wouldn’t “force” them to do anything; they are the ones responsible for whatever stupid actions they took, and they paid dearly for those actions. This was about fixing the present, not un-breaking the immutable past. In a more conciliatory voice, Twilight continued: “Let’s arrive at two in the morning, about seventeen and a half hours before the event. We’ll depart tomorrow morning. All agreed?” “Yeah.” “Sure.” “Okay. See you then.” Twilight teleported away. The intact warehouse stood before them. Meg scanned the partially-lit parking lot. “No cars. That’s promising. Should check the other sides, just to be sure.” “I’ll do that,” Twilight said. “You two look for the best way to get inside.” She took wing and flew off around the building. Sunset pointed a hoof. “That looks like the entrance.” There was extra lighting where she was pointing, reflecting off what was probably a glass door. Windows extended on either side. Probably a few offices carved out of the interior space. “Looks promising,” Meg said. As they trotted over, Sunset retrieved a device from her saddlebag. Under her magic, it separated into two parts connected by an expanding pole long enough to extend one part outside her magic bubble. “A weak magic field,” she said. “Nowhere near strong enough to disrupt our bubbles.” “Or our invisibility. For now.” Meg slowed as they reached the door. “But it’s nice to have confirmation something’s going on in there.” They both peered inside. There wasn’t much to see. Just a desk, presumably for a receptionist. A computer monitor and keyboard was visible, and little else. “There’s a camera.” Sunset pointed up where two walls and the ceiling met. A red light was on. “Guess we don’t have to worry about that one.” “Yeah. Well, easy enough to teleport inside. Ready?” Meg nodded. “Yep.” “Oh wait…” Sunset collapsed her magic probe and returned it to her saddlebag. “Okay. Three. Two. One.” They were inside. “Wait for Twilight?” Meg asked. “Shouldn’t be long.” Indeed, just then Twilight touched down in front of the door and folded her wings. After peering inside, she teleported to join them. “No other cars, for what that’s worth.” “We’ll find out soon enough,” Meg said. Sunset retrieved her magic probe and extended it again. “Only a weak field here—” she nodded upwards “—and there’s an active camera there. I’m sure there’ll be others.” Twilight looked upwards herself. “We did expect that.” Meg looked down the short corridor, ending in a T-junction. “Guess we go that way.” “What about this computer?” Twilight had gone behind the desk to take a closer look. “There’s no point. That’s for a receptionist. Probably. Certainly no reason to think it has anything interesting for us.” It looked like the monitor was not within the field of view of that camera. “What about a visitor’s log?” “That’d be on paper, so visitors can sign it.” Twilight had already turned the computer on. Meg couldn’t see the monitor from where she stood, but she was content to wait until Twilight reported her inevitable conclusion—well, it ought to be inevitable. They all waited patiently for the system to boot. Twilight frowned. “A login screen.” Exactly what Meg expected. “If the disk isn’t encrypted, we might get something useful off it, but we can’t do that here and now. Is it worth taking it with us? I suppose we can time travel back and replace it before anyone notices. Mind you, whatever we discover isn’t going to convince anyone, especially if we can’t say how we obtained the information.” With a mouse motion and a click, Twilight shut off the computer. “We’ll worry about that later. Top priority is finding their magic research.” Meg lead the way. Once they reached the T-junction, she looked both ways. It didn’t seem to matter which they chose. In either case the corridor, dimly lit as most of the lights were off, went on for a while. Closed doors to offices were on just one side, facing the exterior wall, and the corridor ended with a fire door, on the other side of which presumably was the warehouse proper. She turned to Sunset. “Is magic stronger in one direction or the other?” The unicorn checked her device. “It’s stronger here than outside, as expected.” She turned left and walked a dozen feet. “A bit weaker.” She turned around and went a dozen feet down the other way. “A bit stronger.” Twilight turned right and began walking. “Good enough for me.” Once they reached the fire door, of course, it wasn’t a simple matter of opening it. “Key card access,” Meg said, staring at the offending pad mounted on the wall. “We can teleport,” Twilight said. “We don’t want to open doors if we can help it anyway. Is it safe to assume there’s a clear space on the other side?” “It’d be stupid if there wasn’t, maybe not even legal. I mean, this is an escape route if there was an actual fire.” “I noticed what looked like huge rollup doors in the back.” Meg shrugged. “Loading dock, I’d guess. Warehouses have them. Doesn’t change things; the more escape routes, the better.” “I’ll go first.” Twilight walked up to the door, then vanished. A few seconds later, a muffled voice. “All clear, if you can hear me.” Sunset had already put away her magic probe. They both walked up to the door. “Three. Two. One.” Meg found herself on bare concrete, in what should be a huge open space. It was hard to tell, as there was no lighting apart from Twilight’s horn. It certainly sounded large enough, what with the reverberating noise coming from the ventilation. Sunset added her light to Twilight’s, to little effect, then redeployed the magic probe. “Let’s see where the action is.” The unicorn went off on her own, her bubble of light detaching from Twilight’s, and she performed a random walk, her hoofsteps reverberating in the void. Over time her walk straightened out as she determined the gradient of the magic field. “Definitely this way,” she finally reported. Meg and Twilight followed. Much of the floor space was unused. Eventually a row of workbenches came into view, with chairs on both sides, and on them were scattered papers, gemstones, and a few computer workstations. Sunset stopped there, put away the magic probe, and waited for the others to join her. “The field is strong enough here to shut off our bubbles.” Meg looked up, searching for cameras. None could be seen in the limited light, no lit LEDs from any cameras present. “I don’t think this area is under video surveillance. There’d be some kind of lighting here if there was—no, could be infrared. Visible only to the camera. Still can’t see any cameras.” “Neither can I,” Twilight said. “I’m guessing they don’t want a video record of what they’re doing. They must be relying on sensors to detect the breaching of the perimeter.” Sunset lifted a gemstone in her magic. “Too bad we can teleport.” Twilight lifted another gemstone. “Unless they’ve figure out how to detect that.” We’ll find out if they can soon enough, Meg thought. Sunset cringed, as if smelling something awful. “How could they come up with this?” “I know.” “Come up with what?” Meg asked. Twilight put the gemstone down and picked up another. “These are enchanted with spells, but not in any way that makes sense. I can’t imagine how these could be used.” She put the other one back too. “Quite honestly, I can’t really tell what the enchantment even is.” “Early attempts?” Meg offered. “Failed prototypes?” Sunset was examining her third gemstone. “I’m not so sure. I feel we need to determine how the spell gets cast. They’re not using horns, don’t forget.” Twilight wandered about. “Or how these gemstones even got enchanted, for that matter. They didn’t use horns for that either.” Is that? “Twilight, over there. I think that’s my computer from work.” Seeing her computer made Meg wonder where her future self had been held captive. “Could be.” Twilight made a beeline for it. “Sure looks like it. And it’s turned on.” She nudged the mouse and saw a familiar login screen. “That’s it alright.” Meg trotted over. No doubt about it. She looked at the keyboard, then at her hooves. Well, she was there to deal with computers and had come prepared. Out of her saddlebag she got a hoof attachment. As she oh-so-slowly typed out her password, she wondered if they’d changed it, if they had ever cracked it in the first place. It was a proper password; cracking it shouldn’t have been possible. But then why was it even on after so much time? She hit “enter” and it was accepted. “Huh.” What did that mean? One thing for sure, the desktop was not as she had left it. A lot of stuff was gone, and… “That’s not mine.” Meg stepped aside so Twilight could get a closer look. The alicorn’s jaw slowly fell. “That’s not possible.” “What’s not possible?” Sunset asked. She came over. “See for yourself.” She did so. “Yeeaaah. Never saw it written up like that before, but it couldn’t be anything else.” “Could somepony explain it to me?” Twilight and Sunset looked at each other. Twilight sighed and answered Meg’s question. “It’s one of Star Swirl’s space-manipulation spells. This one you haven’t been given. Yet here it is, rewritten into a form suitable for your magic simulation software.” Meg knew better than to ask how this happened. “It’s not the only spell.” Twilight browsed through the directory. “It certainly isn’t.” “Is that what’s on those gemstones?” Twilight scrunched her muzzle in thought. “Maybe? It’s so… I don’t know. ‘Unconventional’ is the nicest way of putting it.” “It has to be,” Sunset said. “In some form. That’s what the anomaly is.” “You’re right of course.” Twilight began walking around the workbenches. “Let’s see what machines they got here. Let’s figure out how they enchanted those gemstones and how the spells on them got cast.” Meg stuck to Twilight, as she was her light source, while Sunset went in a different direction. It didn’t take long before Meg spotted what turned out to be an X-ray machine, and on a table next to it was a familiar collar—though most of the gems were gone. “So that’s what happened to it.” Twilight lifted the collar in her magic and examined it. “Still has the spell I put on it. I wonder what happened to the other gems?” “And they were studying it with this X-ray machine, I bet. Perfect for figuring out how spells are encoded in the crystalline matrix.” “Bunch of boxes over here,” Sunset said. “I’m guessing this is what they stole?” Meg trotted over and looked inside them, one after the other. “Sure looks like it.” “Over here!” Twilight shouted. Meg rushed over, Sunset close behind her. In front of Twilight was a cobbled together contraption. One of the stolen magic generators was to one side, with some of the liberated gems from the collar placed between it and a small platform upon which a gemstone rested. Pointing at this latter gem from all directions were numerous thin tubes. A mess of wires from the back of those tubes, through several intermediaries, eventually plugged into a USB port on a nearby computer. A close look at the tiny writing on a tube answered one question. “Looks like they’re lasers,” Meg said. “I’m guessing this is how they ‘enchant’ the gems or cast the spell within them, or maybe both.” “That’s a safe bet,” Sunset said. The computer was still on. Meg moved the mouse. The monitor came to life. The desktop was locked, naturally. If any computer was to be “borrowed,” this was the one. She noticed a sheet next to the keyboard. “It does both. Here’s the cheat sheet on using the computer.” Nearby was a notebook. Meg flipped through a few pages. “Looks like they’re trying to create a wormhole or something to reach Equestria.” The notebook practically vanished as Twilight yanked it over to herself. Quickly she scanned the first few pages. Then her magic focused on the gemstone in the machine. “This can’t be right.” “What do you mean?” Sunset asked. Twilight was too focused to answer. Each successive page turned over ever more harshly. Meg half expected a page to rip. A snarl fermented on the alicorn’s muzzle. “Idiots,” she muttered. “A Magic Kindergarten dropout knows better than this.” The notebook, somehow still in one piece, returned to the table. She eyed the gems from the collar. “Gotta give credit where credit is due, though. They used as part of this machine my own spell that manipulated the magic field that had emanated from that doll. It now manipulates the field coming from the generator.” Sunset looked uneasy. “Why do I hear a ‘but’ coming?” “I understand now how the enchantment is done, how the spell gets cast, so I can now decipher the spell in the gemstone. That spell cannot possibly cause the anomaly we know.” Meg didn’t like the way she said that. “And that’s… not a good thing?” Twilight picked the gemstone up in her magic, glared at it, then forced herself to put it back down—gently. “What this spell would do makes the anomaly look like a Pinkie party.”