Discord rolled his eyes. “That’s the question you start with?”
Truth be told, it had been ages since Meg had last thought about it, but her recent visit to the ancient past had resurfaced old memories. “You certainly can’t use that old excuse of us being ‘too young’ to handle it.”
“I did just admit to that,” he reminded them. “It’s merely so… inconsequential.”
“Then why the run-around back then?” Twilight asked.
Discord grumbled. “Because then I’d have to explain that the Elements hadn’t really turned me to stone.”
Twilight’s jaw dropped. “What?”
“Oh, mind you, I was expelled. That statue was just a placeholder for my non-presence, evidence that I’d been dealt with. Harmony would never do something so cruel to me as literally turning me to stone.” He looked up in thought. “Not sure she could actually do that, even if she wanted to.”
Meg quickly put two and two together. “So let me guess. You were floating around in hyperspace, unable to return to Equestria, so lacking anything better to do you watched events in my world.”
“No, no, no, no, no,” Twilight said, shaking her head. “What do you mean by ‘Harmony?’ You’re talking about her—it—whatever—as if it were a sapient entity.”
With a tired sigh, Discord conjured for everyone chairs upon the infinite grid. “Meg, correct, though I could return here as well. Hyperspace is a terrible place to visit, and forget about living there. Twilight…” He slumped into a draconequus-shaped chair. “Make yourselves comfortable. It’s time for a story.”
“Maybe it’s the wrong gemstone?” Meg asked.
That gave Twilight pause for a few seconds. “They obviously haven’t cast this spell, so the fact that it’s in this machine means they either intend to cast it or they had just enchanted it. But why enchant this spell, unless they intend to cast it?”
“Could we re-enchant it to something harmless?” Sunset asked.
Meg shook her head. “Then they’ll just enchant another gemstone and try again. What I don’t understand is this: They must have run this spell through my magic simulator, so why do they think it’s a good idea?”
Twilight frowned. “Because this particular spell breaks certain simplifying assumptions built into the simulator.”
“Great.” Probably need to fix that before they could simulate a potential fix to the anomaly. Except: “Then how did the anomaly happen instead of… whatever this would do?”
“Don’t get me wrong. This spell would cause something very much like the anomaly, just that it would grow to consume the entire planet within minutes.”
“So maybe they tweak it tomorrow?”
“We don’t know that.”
“And what if they don’t?” Sunset asked.
Meg groaned. “Isn’t that obvious? The question is, what do we do to slow its growth down?”
Twilight grimaced. “I’ll have to think about that. But it means we’ll have to come back again near the time of the spell casting; if they made the tweak themselves, great, otherwise we’ll have to intervene.”
“We can’t hide from them, you know. Not with these magic generators probably cranked up to full power.”
“Won’t matter,” Sunset said. “Not when this place is about to be destroyed.”
Right, Meg glumly thought. “Let’s just not get destroyed along with it.” That ought to be impossible, because paradox. Even so, she didn’t feel like putting it to the test; most likely, it just meant the time travel spell would refuse to take her—or Twilight—back. And there was still the trip to bring the sightseers back to observe the event from the vantage point of the parking lot.
Regardless, they shouldn’t leave any gemstones unturned before leaving. “Just to be thorough,” Meg said, “why don’t you check out the other gemstones, make sure none of them have a spell that would cause the anomaly as we know it.”
“Yeah. Good idea.” Twilight started walking along the workbenches. At the first gem she found, she inspected it with her magic. “Well this one’s clearly a dud.”
Meg turned her attention to the computer controlling the contraption. “Do we borrow this? I’m sure it’d be helpful if we can find the spells they’ve been putting into those gemstones.” She frowned. “Assuming it’s not encrypted.”
“Yes, borrow it,” Sunset said. “Maybe the next one they planned on enchanting is the one that causes the anomaly.”
“I agree.” Twilight stepped over to the next gemstone. “These over here are un-enchanted. Most of the others I’ve checked are duds. But one would glow a shade of orange, and another turns transparent. The most advanced one I’ve found self-levitates. None of these effects would be persistent.”
Fortunately, one does not have to login in order to do a clean shutdown—no, wait. “I’ve a better idea. Let’s ‘borrow’ mine. The spell has to be on that, because of the simulator.”
Sunset looked back and forth between the two computers. “I suppose?”
“And we know we can log in to mine.”
Sunset shrugged and started walking. “We can always come back for the other one if necessary.”
After a moment of indecision, Meg followed her. She’d let the unicorn do the unplugging. However wonderful it was to fly, having a horn would be nice too.
“Now it’s your turn, darling.”
“Yeah. We’ve told you all the awesome stuff we’ve been doing!”
“It’s just that we ain’t seen you in so long.”
A waiter came by to remove the empty bowl in the middle of the table and replaced it with a new bowl piled high with french fries. Rainbow Dash immediately grabbed a hoofful and stuffed it into her mouth. Rarity levitated over a single fry and daintily munched on it. “Quite astonishing nopony had ever thought of preparing potatoes this way. I hear it’s becoming all the rage.”
Applejack grabbed a hoofful for herself. “They’re okay. Mind you, they’ll never replace apple fritters.”
Rainbow rolled her eyes and grabbed another hoofful and pointed it at Twilight. “So spill it already.”
Twilight sighed. “I know. It’s just that I’ve been so busy recently.”
Rarity smiled at her. “Well, you’re here now. Surely you have made progress on that anomaly?”
“Yes—and no. Our trip back in time got some answers, but unfortunately raised even more questions. We brought back Meg’s old work computer, and she and Sunset are going over it now.”
“So ya can’t yet fix it in the here and now?”
Twilight shook her head. “No. Knowing the exact spell they used—and we still don’t—doesn’t help all that much. It’s their realm’s insistence on conservation laws. It just isn’t possible to undo the anomaly without first replacing all the energy it has extracted and converted to magic, which irretrievably dissipates into the environment.” She helped herself to a fry. “What’s so frustrating is that that’s so easy to deal with here in our realm. I know the spells; they just won’t work there.”
“I know darn little about magic,” Applejack began as Twilight ate her fry, “but couldn’t you just teleport—or somethin’—that anomaly to Equestria so you could fix it here?”
Twilight froze in mid-bite.
“Darling?”
She slowly finished off the fry. “No. It can’t be moved here. It’s far too large.”
Applejack shrugged. “Don’t mind me, then.”
“But,” Twilight continued, “maybe there’s another option. I’ll have to look into it.”
“Hah!” Rainbow shouted. “Applejack solved it, and she never even went to Magic Kindergarten.”
“I’m sure the devil’s in the details, darling.” Rarity smiled again at Twilight. “See? This is why you need to find the time to be with us.”
Twilight helped herself to another fry. “The devil in question is our local draconequus, but point made.”
Rainbow crossed her forelimbs. “Need we ask?”
“He’s not to blame for any of this, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“Can’t blame me for thinking it, just saying.”
“She does have a point, sugarcube.”
“Well… not this time. I’m far more concerned about the human ‘observers’ we need to take back in time to observe the creation of the anomaly. They represent various factions that—let’s just say they’re not friends—and their motives for ‘observing’ may be questionable.”
“Does it really matter?” Rarity asked. “Didn’t you say that the past cannot be changed?”
“No, it cannot, but unfortunately it does still matter.” Twilight sighed. “But the details as to why it still matters don’t matter to you, so I’ll spare you the lecture.”
“Thank Celestia,” muttered Rainbow. The others pretended not to hear that.
Applejack adjust her Stetson. “Sounds like you can use some help in uncovering the varmints.”
It couldn’t hurt, Twilight had to admit. Refusing the participation of the, uh, varmints was probably not an option, but if exposed they’d be easier to control—one would hope.
“And I can help keep them in line,” Rainbow declared. She flared her wings. “Not gonna get away from me!”
That there was no denying. It seemed unlikely her speed would be needed, but if it was… It might make the difference between the time travel spell working or… not. Twilight looked expectantly at Rarity.
The fashionista politely cleared her throat. “Yes, well, I suppose I could be of assistance, should the need arise, in helping to defuse a tense situation.”
Twilight beamed. “Perfect.”
She’d talk to Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, naturally, but it was difficult to imagine the former being eager to participate and as for the latter… Pinkie could be so unpredictable sometimes.
Considering the non-deterministic nature of time loops, could that be a good thing?
Meg started the simulation. A bubble of space-time expanded and extruded outside the known universe, forming something that looked sorta like a wormhole. After ten seconds, the simulated magic generator was switched off. The tube retracted, releasing its stored energy as gravitational waves. Perfectly sane and reasonable. Once the fabric of space-time had returned to being flat—or as flat as it was going to get in the Earth’s gravitational field—she ended the simulation.
“At least we know what they thought they were attempting,” Sunset remarked.
Going by the timestamps on the files, that was the most recent spell they had simulated—and it matched what was on the gemstone in that contraption. Other files had variations on the spell, none of which performed as smoothly in the simulator and, obviously, had never been cast. The older files matched what had been found on the other gemstones, their version of Magic Kindergarten.
Meg quit the program and turned her attention to her current workstation. “Now let’s see what that spell does in our updated simulator.” The one in which the simplifying assumptions had been remedied, not that Meg understood what those assumptions were about. Nopony could explain it in simple English.
Meg hit “run.” It was like a bomb going off. A shock wave radiated out through space-time, and behind it space inflated like it was the Big Bang. Not literally, but bad enough. As expected, time slowed to a crawl as the energy of matter swept up by the shock wave powered the magic field. Twilight, it turned out, had been optimistic. The Earth would be consumed in seconds. Just over two of them.
What would happen then was unknown, as the simulator had hit its limit. Would the shock wave die out once it hit the near vacuum of the solar system? Or would it get as far as the Sun? If it did die out, what would happen to the inflated space-time it left behind?
Fortunately, those questions were academic. That hadn’t happen. The question was, What did they do to scale back the anomaly to what had actually happen?
“Any progress?”
That was Twilight, just having teleported in. She was carrying a box of donuts, from Donut Joe’s probably. Meg gave her a summary of what they’ve found.
“Two seconds, really?”
Meg reran the simulation for her.
Twilight cringed. “I guess that answers that question. We need to find some way to weaken that spell; at least we know we’ll succeed. On the other fronts, I just had lunch with the gals. At least Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Applejack will accompany us to help keep our observers in line. Perhaps I should have Applejack present when I meet them for the first time.
“And speaking of Applejack…” A chagrined look. “She came up with an idea for dealing with the anomaly in the present: Move it to where the standard corrective spells would actually work. Not Equestria, because I can’t teleport something that big, but into the adjoining hyperspace. I’ll have to talk to Discord about that; there are a lot of unknowns here.”
Sunset picked out a chocolate donut. “It’s already sucked in a lot of air. Would it be possible to retrieve that air afterwards?”
“That’s one of the unknowns.”
It was still a plan, Meg thought as she picked out a jelly donut. Relying on Discord, though, was never the best option. “If Discord should be… unhelpful—I know what he said, but, you know—we could let our distant future selves deal with it.” Once Twilight had become a fully mature alicorn, for example. Even her own future self seemed shockingly capable in hyperspace.
Her future self.
Who was going back in time to be “kidnapped.”
Shit.
“I know how those Star Swirl spells got onto my computer.”
God how I hate time loops.
Twilight took a step towards her. “Meg? You look ready to kill somepony.” She hesitated, as if afraid of the answer. “Who was it?”
Meg spat it out: “My future self.” She shook her head. “She told me she was going back to be their prisoner. She had access. She must’ve deleted all the stuff that’s missing.” I can’t believe I will do such a thing! Put the whole world at risk. Even worse, her future self would remember feeling this way—and do it anyway.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Sunset said. “You couldn’t have translated those spells, not without a lot of help from us.”
“Depends how far in the future we’re talking about,” Meg countered. “I witnessed my future human self doing things only Discord can do today, not to mention using a time travel spell.”
Twilight finally picked out a sugar-dusted donut for herself. “I’m beginning to think very far, but this is all a distraction. The real question is, Why is this anomaly part of a time loop? How does it increase the loop’s probability of happening?”
Everyone ate their donut in thought. Like it or not, Meg knew why her future self apparently set in motion the events leading to the anomaly: Because it had already happened, because it was a part of her past, and because the past could not be changed. Even so, this particular time loop could not exist if it lead to a paradox; and would be unlikely to exist unless it somehow constructively interfered with itself, increasing the amplitude of its wave function.
So how did the anomaly do that?
She hadn’t the slightest clue.
“We can worry about this later,” Twilight finally said. “Right now, we need to figure out how to modify the casting of that spell.”
Discord appeared to massive applause. Doing a poor job of pretending not to notice the aforementioned applause, he bent over the donut box, inspected the contents, and picked out one that was lava-frosted. Meg was fairly certain it hadn’t been there before. As he lifted it out of the box, some of the lava oozed onto a finger. A howl of pain, followed by audience laughter.
“This isn’t an old sitcom,” Meg grumbled.
“Spoilsport. I thought you of all people would appreciate it.” He took a bite out of the donut. Steam poured out of his ears. “Mmmm. Spicy hot.”
At least he’d dispensed with the laugh track. “We’re kinda busy. Any particular reason you’re here?”
He took an indignant pose; the lava-frosted donut had ceased to exist. “A particular reason? I should say so.” His eyes visited each one in turn. “Have you all forgotten about my theme park?”
Actually, Meg had forgotten. “Something important came up. You do remember the anomaly?”
Before Discord could reply, Twilight said, “Actually, I want to talk to you about that, the anomaly that is. I think I know how it can be solved, and it requires your assistance.”
“And I’d be happy to talk about that—after we talk about my theme park.”
He’s reformed, Meg told herself.
“Time is of the essence here,” Twilight said. “The longer we delay—”
“Says the time traveling pony.”
Twilight froze, mouth open. Of course she had no response. Discord was infuriatingly correct. They could’ve ended the anomaly hours ago for all they knew; it wasn’t a paradox so long as they did not observe its continued existence after that point in time.
“You know what?” Twilight eventually said. “Let’s talk about your theme park. I have a use for it.”
“You do?” simultaneously asked Meg, Sunset, and Discord.
“Yes, I do. We’ll be taking some humans back in time to observe the creation of the anomaly. I’d first like to vet them; Applejack will assist with that. It’d be best to do that in Equestria, and I think your theme park would be an excellent place for that. Of course I’ll mention it all belongs to you, and that you’ll be... unhappy should anything happen to it. You’ll also be happy to hear that the group will include at least one person from the media.”
“Can never complain about free publicity.” He tapped his muzzle in thought. “Sounds like you wish me to stay away.”
“I’d be satisfied with you being a silent—and invisible—observer.”
“But should one of them… misbehave?”
Twilight paused. “Only if they cross a line—that I draw. Don’t worry; I’ll be sure to give you permission if that happens.”
He held out his paw. “We have a deal.”
Twilight offered a hoof and they shook on it.
“Now,” Discord said, then took a bite out of a rainbow-frosted donut that wasn’t in his paw before. He gagged on it, fire erupting from his ears. “And I thought the lava was spicy!”
Rainbow Dash had often tried to get Meg to sample pure, liquified rainbows. She was glad she had never succumbed to such an obvious prank; Dash would never touch it herself.
“Tough crowd,” he mumbled. The donut had vanished. “Ahem. The anomaly?”
“Right,” Twilight said. “To destroy it, we must first remove it from the human’s realm restrictions on magic. It’s too big to teleport here, but what if we separated it from their realm, have it float free in hyperspace? No limitations on magic there, correct?”
“Hrm…” Discord massaged his goatee in thought. “Possible. Won’t be easy. I’ll have to think about it.” He raised his claw to—
“Wait,” Meg said.
Discord looked expectantly at her, claw still raised.
“I think I also have a use for your theme park—and this time you’ll be the star attraction.”
Andrew’s face peered from the monitor. “You’re literally holed up in a cave. And aren’t you a pegasus these days?”
Meg kept her face neutral—mostly. “Do you want the convention to happen or not?”
“And how are you supposed to help with that when you’re on the run?”
Did he have to make it so difficult? “I’m not on the run, not here in Equestria.”
He rubbed his forehead. “And how are you supposed to help us put on a convention when you’re stuck in Equestria. Literally holed up in a cave. Sure you’re not on the run there?”
Then why did he agree to talk to me? Best to just cut to the chase. That’ll make him take it seriously. “Because I’m proposing to hold the convention here in Equestria, in a new theme park created and operated by the Spirit of Chaos himself—who, by the way, also wants Guest of Honor billing.”
Blessed silence. He didn’t see that coming.
Finally, he asked, “Does that mean no Lord Tirek?”
Meg stared at him. “That means no Lord Tirek.” He’s still obsessed with him? “But on the other hoof, it means the Mane Six are back on the table—but no commitments yet. Maybe I could even get Celestia and Luna to make a brief appearance.”
He leaned back in his chair. “Why? I thought you were done with us?”
I thought so too, she thought. “Because it’s the only way to end this insanity. People denying ponies are real. People insisting evil intent. I know it won’t fix everything overnight, but it’s a start. Encourage the non-believers to attend. Let them try denying it after experiencing Discord close up.”
Meg could see the gears turning behind those eyes. She was counting on it.
“How will people get there?”
He was hooked, just as she’d hope. “A portal, like the one Andy used to enter Equestria millennia ago. We now got control over them. Just have to decide where the other end goes.”
He nodded. “Will parking be here or there?”
That was an excellent question. “I guess it could go either way. I don’t remember Twilight mentioning anything that looked like a parking lot, but I’ll ask Discord about that. It’d take just a snap of his talons, you know.”
“O-kaaay... Is there a hotel there?”
Twilight hadn’t actually gone inside. “I’ll get back to you on that too.”
“What about troublemakers? How will we keep them out?”
Meg bore a grim smile. “Discord doesn’t want them kept out. Enough said.”
“Yeeeaah. I see what you mean. Still leaves us open to legal liability.”
“Does it? Equestria is outside the jurisdiction of all human legal systems.”
“And the Equestrian legal system?”
Meg suppressed a snort. “Good luck suing Discord in an Equestrian court.”
“I was more concerned about us being sued.”
“No pony would hold you responsible for Discord’s actions. But if it’d make you feel better, I’ll see about getting a preemptive decree from Celestia.” It wasn’t just about humans visiting the park; ponies would be visiting too. Better to have this addressed now. That’s how she’d pitch it to her.
“It wouldn’t hurt. Say, any chance of having that mirror that goes to the Equestria Girls world? That’s a thing, right?”
Meg slumped in her chair. “Yes and no. The mirror exists, but that world isn’t what you think it is. It’s… not a good idea.” They still didn’t know what would happen to humans who entered. What would happen to non-magical creatures entering a realm of pure magic? Discord had his theories, but that’s just what they were: theories.
“You’ve been there?”
Meg just nodded.
“So… let’s just forget the mirror.”
“Already forgotten.” She checked on the latest simulation to finish on the cloud. The resources available to her now dwarfed what she had years ago, back when they needed that spell for that Pinkie Pie doll’s collar. “Anything else? I, uh, need to get back to saving the world from that anomaly.”
Andrew sighed. “Regularly saving the world is one part of MLP that could’ve remained fiction as far as I’m concerned.”
“You and me both.”
She ended the connection and turned her attention to the simulation.
Her heart sank. Of course that’d be the one that worked.