“Harmony and I go back a long, long way. For lack of a better word, you could call us siblings. The existence of your human realm had been known forever, but what hadn’t been known was whether it harbored life. Many argued that without magic that was not possible.
“Your realm, Meg, is mostly empty space. This realm—our realm—co-exists with yours across its entire span. They are fraternal twins, you see, created in the same instant; ours got the magic, yours got everything else. The two affect each other; you perceive us as dark matter. We, likewise, can trivially detect concentrations of matter in your realm. Advanced magic research enabled us to peer into your realm, to see it as you see it from within—no, Twilight, I’m not going into the details right now.
“We created a suitable detection spell and cast it, and it sped throughout our realm, peeking into yours seeking life. Even though it traveled far in excess of the speed of light, it still took many decades for it to return with an answer. During that time, it had been conclusively ‘proven’ that life without magic was impossible. The alleged discovery of your world only proved, as far as all were concerned, that the detection spell was flawed.
“An expedition to find out one way or another was shot down as pointless, a waste of resources. We decided to mount an expedition anyway. Bridges were burned; we felt it was worth it.” Discord shrugged. “Perhaps life had become too boring.
“We found Earth, obviously. Visiting in person was not possible, but we could observe your planet, study it from a distance, so to speak. Over time, our inability to exist in your magic-less realm, to interact with your pre-literate ancestors, became frustrating. We gave up everything for this? Until one day, we came up with a solution.
“The answer was to create a new realm, one that reunited what had been sundered at creation, one that would have both the magic of our realm and the physical laws of yours, a realm in which we could co-exist with material beings such as yourselves.”
Twilight patiently waited while President Serrell walked back and forth in front of the panoramic windows of Celestia’s private tea room. She could hardly blame him, considering what she had just told him. Celestia serenely sipped her tea as she watched, while Luna just watched.
He stopped, and he looked down at the lights of distant Ponyville. “How am I supposed to sell this?” he asked, his age seeping through into every word he spoked. “They want to get rid of me as it is, in case you’ve forgotten.”
All Twilight could say to that was, “Discord insists it’s much safer to pull the entire planet into hyperspace than just a small piece of it.”
His gaze remained upon the town below. “Sure. Must have done it dozens of times.”
The tone was facetious, and she felt compelled to add her own facetious remark: “He didn’t volunteer that information.”
“Any timeframe? If this isn’t solved soon, I’ll have no choice but to issue an emergency evacuation order for the whole town, possibly adjacent towns too.”
Unfortunately, Discord had vanished before they could discuss timing. “Not yet, no.”
Serrell shook his head. “Regardless, I thought non-magical creatures couldn’t exist in hyperspace, certainly not by any means at his disposal.”
Nor ours. “The displacement into hyperspace will be tiny, less than the width of a proton. You’ll still be gravitationally bound to everything else, and quantum fields would also remain partially coupled. It’s enough to keep the physical laws in place, but not enough to keep them immutable. That causes conservation of energy to fail, and that will allow me to destroy that anomaly.”
He sighed. “Any chance of explaining that in plain English? Or at least something our physicists could understand?”
Twilight was beginning to see his original point. How could this be explained to every human to their satisfaction? “Well, for your physicists, tell them Noether’s Theorem. They already understand why conservation laws are a thing, that time translation symmetry leads to conservation of energy. In other words, conservation of energy exists only when the laws of physics do not change over time.”
“And for the rest of us?”
Twilight scrunched her muzzle in thought. She really ought to make the attempt to come up with an explanation for “the rest of us.”
She moved an unused pillow off to the side. The very act of doing that with her magic, of course, violated conservation laws, but explaining why was too difficult—and telekinesis somehow knew how to obey conservation laws in the human realm, anyway, by using gravitational waves as the equal and opposite reaction.
No, she had a better idea. “See this pillow,” she said, pointing a hoof at it. “Now I magically change a law of physics by reversing the direction of gravity.” She did so in the region of the pillow, from the floor to the ceiling. It fell up and impacted the ceiling. “When I did that, potential energy came from nowhere and got turned into kinetic energy as it fell up.” She canceled the spell. “Same thing happens when I undo it. I can repeat as many times as I want, creating as much energy as I want. Technically, I expend energy casting the spell, but the amount of that energy is not related to the amount that can be created. If the pillow were made of lead, it would take no more energy to cast the spell, but far more kinetic energy would be created out of nothing.”
“That’ll have to do, for now I guess.” He rubbed his eyes; Twilight wasn’t sure how successful she was. “Getting back to the displacement,” Serrell continued, “would we be… inconvenienced by it?”
Maybe not as successful as she’d like. “Possibly? I mean, you wouldn’t want any rockets going into space, that’s for sure. And the sun might look funny…”
“And astronomers should take the night off. Got it. Satellites?”
“They’ll remain in orbit.”
“But what about radio communication with them?”
Twilight grimaced. “Not… sure.”
“So certain forms of long-distance communication might not work. Same for GPS.”
Twilight sighed. “It’s really hard to say. We just don’t know what a partially coupled electromagnetic quantum field will do to photons crossing the boundary. Could be anything from nothing significant to totally blocking them.”
Serrell turned back to the window. “Perhaps it would be best to make no public announcement of any kind. If it turns out to be ‘nothing significant,’ great. And if instead it winds up being quite significant… well… we could just say it was a side-effect of the magic to kill the anomaly. It wouldn’t even be a lie, from a certain point of view.”
Twilight wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but it wasn’t her call. “I’ll see if the satellites can be displaced along with the Earth; it doesn’t increase by all that much the volume displaced. That should reduce unwanted, uh, side-effects.”
The president sighed. He turned to the royal sisters. “You two have been quiet.”
Celestia peered over her teacup at her sister and offered a barely perceptible shrug. Luna met her eyes and gave her a slight nod, then addressed the president. “Do not view the ‘inconveniences’ as a liability, something that one hopes does not occur or is mild enough to ignore. View it as an asset, proof that we and our magic exist. I would go so far as to suggest magnifying these side-effects, though of course only to the extent that they remain mere inconveniences.”
Serrell had no immediate response. Twilight said, “That’s… an interesting idea.”
Silence returned. Eventually, Serrell broke it. “I don’t know which is worse: the ones who refuse to believe ponies are real, or the ones who believe I’m conspiring with you to overthrow humanity. Your idea, Luna, will help with the former, but the latter I’m not so sure of.”
“Perhaps the former would help with the latter?” Celestia offered.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter. The anomaly makes it necessary. When you’re given lemons, make lemonade.” He took a breath. “One question, though. Will this ‘displacement’ permit Discord to visit Earth?”
The question took Twilight by surprise. “He, uh, didn’t mention that? Which doesn’t mean anything, you know. Even if it did permit him to exist on Earth, he would be occupied with maintaining the displacement, and that might only be possible from hyperspace.” She looked at Serrell. “Do you want him to make an appearance? I can see how his antics could be considered proof of our existence.”
“Or be considered proof of your danger, whatever your intentions.” He threw his hands up. “I honestly don’t know.”
Nor did Twilight. She remembered how Routledge had reacted to Discord messing around with a journalist at the Gates of Tartarus. It was far from inconceivable that that incident had been motivating his more extreme actions.
“I chose to release Discord from his prison,” Celestia said, “because I felt his magic could be of great benefit to Equestria. While there’s no denying he can be tiresome at times, I have yet to regret my decision.”
“Point taken,” Serrell said. “I’ll keep the option open.”
Twilight scrunched her muzzle. “And I’ll talk to him about it.”
There was a knock on the door.
A look of confusion from everypony. This was unusual, to say the least.
Celestia stood up. “Give me a moment, please.”
Twilight half expected it to be Discord. Sure, he usually just popped in uninvited, but maybe that had become too predictable for his chaotic tastes.
The door opened under Celestia’s magic. It was Meg.
“Could you spare Twilight for a few minutes?” she asked, looking at the mare in question. “It concerns the anomaly—how it was created, that is. A simulation has identified a spell, but… you won’t like it.”
A smile grew on the president’s face. “All that taxpayer-funded cloud time has come up with something useful? By all means come on in! I could use some good news.”
There was no objection from anypony, so Meg entered. “How good remains to be seen.” She squeezed her pendant once she reached Twilight, removed her laptop from the saddlebags that now hung around her neck, and set it down on the table and opened it up. A bit of typing and trackpad movements later, and she said, “Take a look.”
Twilight did. The spell was… different. Something no unicorn would have come up with, but that was hardly surprising; a search algorithm on a computer had found it. Regardless, it looked plausible enough. Using her magic, she simulated a finger press on the trackpad and played the recorded simulation. It did the job, no question.
“See the problem?” Meg asked.
“Not really?” Twilight went back to the simulation parameters and looked more closely. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.”
She reviewed the spell again. “No flexibility on when it’s cast?”
Meg shook her head. “Damn little, barely a microsecond. Too late, and it’s useless. Too early, and it’ll create a different sort of anomaly almost as bad.“
Twilight frowned. She’d have to review the simulations which varied the time of casting to understand that, but there was no reason to doubt it. The spell, it appeared, was to be in a ring of crystal that surrounded the crystal holding the spell that caused the anomaly. While it was in that machine. As it was being operated by the bad guys—and who was going to cast the corrective spell in that ring at the precise microsecond?
Yeah. Problem.
“It won’t be pretty,” Meg said, as if reading her mind.
“No, it won’t.” Twilight, with a frown, closed the lid on the laptop. “And it looks like I’ll have to be there to power it when the anomaly is created. I have no idea how I’ll survive it, but somehow I must, because it’s a paradox if I don’t.”
“A paradox?” Serrell asked.
“I’ve been visited by my future self, and I haven’t completed that time loop yet.”
With a sigh, Meg returned the laptop to her saddlebags. “We need to study their spell casting machine more closely. We still need to figure out how to synchronize the casting of the two spells. One way of doing that would be to have that machine cast both of them, if it could be arranged.”
Microsecond timing, wasn’t it? “I agree.” Then maybe she wouldn’t have to be there.
Meg resumed her pegasus form. “The arranging part may prove problematic, but I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
There was no point in asking about a gem to replace the problematic one. If the search had turned up such a candidate, Meg wouldn’t be presenting this one. Though why was there only a corrective spell, one that would modify that other spell? Why was there no spell that would directly create that anomaly? It would sure avoid a lot of headaches.
“I prefer to remain in ignorance, if at all possible, on how that problematic part is solved.”
Meg looked up at the president. “Don’t blame you. If it’s any consolation, whatever we did do that day—or didn’t do—didn’t make the news, at least not in any way that ties it back to us.”
“I’m more concerned with it making the news in the present or near future, but point taken.”
“We’ll keep that in mind,” Twilight said. There was no need to add to his already considerable problems.
“That’s all I can ask.”
“Any reason I shouldn’t leave?” Meg asked. “I should get back to the lab.”
Twilight felt the need to return to the lab herself.
“I think not,” Celestia said. “But I strongly recommend you call it a night as soon as possible. Now is not the time for you to burn out.”
“I’ll make sure of that,” Luna solemnly declared.
“I’ll, uh…” Meg turned to the window. “Fine. Would one of you mind teleporting me outside?”
“I’d be happy to,” Celestia said.
Meg began to hover. A flash of sunlight, and she was outside. With strong strokes of her wings, she soared into the night.
“Still have trouble believing this is real, sometimes.” Serrell had watched, fascinated. “I hope it’s safe to fly at night like that.”
“My moon provides plenty of light.” For proof, Luna switched off the lights and moonlight flooded in through the windows.
He nodded his head. “Indeed it does.”
Twilight lit her horn, with a roll of her eyes, so she could read her notes.
Celestia turned the lights back on. “But not quite enough to read by, sad to say.”
Her horn now extinguished, Twilight consulted the agenda. “Next topic: the observers I’ll be bringing back to the anomaly’s creation.” She addressed Serrell: “Any progress on that item?”
As Meg flew back to the old mine, she focused on the problem of improving the simulation search space. It wasn’t a matter of insufficient computing capacity; for all intents and purposes she had a blank check for cloud resources. The problem, for lack of a better phrase, was a lack of “creativity.” Unfortunately, that creativity was the job of the programmer. Artificial intelligence or no, only an idiot would expect it from software.
By the time a guard had let her inside the converted cavern, she was no closer to a solution. Part of the problem, of course, was that she knew little about magic. Sure, she saw the equations Twilight and others had given her, and she had faithfully translated them to software, but that was like trying to explain color to a blind person by providing the equations for electromagnetic radiation. Maybe if she had been a unicorn instead of a pegasus; Steve did say that being one made a big difference, yet even he struggled with advanced magic. Or as he put it, being able to hear does not automatically make one a great musician.
Still better than being deaf, which metaphorically speaking she was.
Meg resumed human form and sat at her workstation. Since she had last checked over an hour ago, the genetic algorithm generating new variants had produced refinements to the previously discovered solution, but just that: refinements. Minor refinements at that. It would be a good idea to make sure that solution didn’t dominate the “gene pool” to the point of exterminating all other approaches, but she could worry about that tomorrow.
No one else was present, apart from the ever-present guards. This late that was unlikely to change.
Off to the side was her stolen office computer. With a sigh, she started to unplug it and prepare it for transport. They’d be returning it to the past tomorrow. The odds were that its spot on her desk would then be occupied by the computer that controlled the enchanter/caster; its importance had skyrocketed. Then she would go home and save Luna the trouble of kicking her out. There wasn’t really anything more she could do that night. Maybe what she needed truly was a good night sleep. Let Luna do that for her.
Once that was done, she decided to check her phone—best to do that before resuming her equine form.
There was a message from Andrew, asking for a status update on holding the convention at Discord’s theme park. She groaned, wondering if it had been wise to give him her new e-mail address. At least he didn’t have her new phone number—which wasn’t under her name, naturally. The honest truth was sufficient here: Discord had been unreachable and who knew when that’d change. Well, Discord would know, presumably, but he wasn’t sharing that information.
With that out of the way, Meg squeezed her pendant and went to find a guard to open the exit for her.
When Meg returned to the cave the next morning, it was the opposite of deserted. Sunset Shimmer was there, of course; they ought to be departing for the past as soon as Twilight showed up. She was half surprised she wasn’t there already, if only to take a closer look at the simulation results from last night. Her human co-workers were all present; it looked like one of them had brought a box of danish. And was that an espresso machine over there?
A little girl stormed into cave from a side-tunnel, screaming, “Meg!”
Meg froze. “Susie?” Her niece glommed onto her.
Her brother belatedly entered from that same tunnel. “Surprise?”
Jake, her manager, explained. “I arranged it. Thought you could use it.” He waved at the recent addition. “Got approval for a break area, seeing as the one in the office isn’t accessible to you.”
“I sure could—ah, Susie, could you let go now?”
Reluctantly, and only after her father put a hand on her, she did. Meg stepped back and squeezed her pendant.
“Whoa…”
Meg tilted her head down at the little girl. “Told you I can do that here.”
“Yeah but…” Matt answered for his daughter, waving his hands around. “Seeing is believing.”
“No argument from me.” Meg walked over to her workstation. “Give me a minute to check on something.”
That something was the genetic search algorithm. How far had it progressed overnight? The answer was not at all, not even a token improvement. And as she had feared, the spell identified last night was pushing out the remaining, so far less successful approaches. It should be possible to partition the gene pool, give each its own set of servers in the cloud. Let the other genes freely mutate in their own pool, free from competition from this one successful gene, while letting that gene evolve in its own pool and maybe it’d break through to something much better.
Well, she could hope.
But in the meantime… “Sunset, we have a spell candidate. It… leaves something to be desired. Twilight briefly looked at it last night.”
Meg brought it up in the simulator as the mare trotted over. “This should be interesting,” Sunset said. A platform for her to stand on, so she could see the monitor, floated in front of her. Following her were the humans. Once they had all gathered around, Meg clicked on “run.”
When it had completed, she brought up the spell in a different window. Sunset perused it, her muzzle scrunching in concentration.
“Yeah, I know, no unicorn would’ve ever come up with something like this. Twilight already mentioned that.”
“And no unicorn did come up with this, but that’s not what’s…” Her gaze switched over to the simulation parameters—and she grimaced. “Must be cast simultaneously with that other spell.”
Before Meg could reply, a flash of light caught everyone’s attention.
“Twilight!” Susie ran to her and gave the alicorn a hug.
She hadn’t teleported in alone. Standing next to her was an unknown stallion, peering through his glasses at her niece as if he’d never seen a human before.
“Okay, Susie, that’s enough for now. I have important business to take care of.”
Matt had reached them. “That’s enough,” he repeated.
“Okay.” The girl released her.
While that had been going on, Meg gave the stallion a once over. Did she know him? Elderly. A coat that was once a deep blue. A graying violet mane. A beard that would do Star Swirl proud. Why did that sound familiar?
The stallion’s eyes finally scanned the other occupants of the cave. “Sunset Shimmer?”
“Professor Arcane Scroll?” The mare stepped towards him. “You remember me?”
“You were one of my best students. We’ll have much to discuss.”
“We… do?”
Twilight moved to the center of the cave. “The professor has been researching the spells powering the stars. You may have noticed the unusually bright star in the night sky. Princess Luna has been keeping it as close as possible so that we may visit it.”
Sunset’s jaw dropped. “You can actually visit a star?”
“I’m glad it isn’t just us humans shocked by that,” Martin said.
“Twilight can do anything!”
Susie’s father got her attention. “You need to keep quiet now.”
“Long story short,” Twilight said, “recent discoveries have shown the need for additional… resources. Professor?”
He cleared his throat. “I have made several trips to the star so far, always in the company of Princess Luna I must add. We’ve made some progress in identifying the stellar spells, but it has been quite… humbling. Magic unlike any seen before, upending everything Star Swirl has taught us.”
He took a breath. “It has become clear that the creators of those spells had an understanding of physics not dissimilar to that of you humans. We could use your assistance.”
Steve had helped with that the best he could, Meg knew, but he lacked sufficient knowledge of magic. Diana pointed out the obvious, saying, “We’d love to, but we know precious little about magic. You’re a professor of the subject, correct?”
“Indeed I am,” he said, chuckling, “but not magic of this nature. Ironically, you may have the advantage of not being shackled by expertise.” His eyes scanned the computer workstations lining a wall. “And… computers?”
Twilight walked over to the one Meg was sitting at. “I’ll let you get better acquainted. In the meantime, Meg and I need to swap computers in the past. I think we can handle that without your help, Sunset.”
The mare nodded and looked at her former professor. “Yeah, I’m needed here.”
Meg addressed her relatives. “I shouldn’t be gone too long.”
A few minutes later, Twilight brought Meg and her old computer to the warehouse, which disturbingly was illuminated for some reason. Meg was giving her the eye; Twilight shrugged in return. First things first: Twilight restored Meg’s old office computer to its original place on the workbench. Was there a clock somewhere? None she could see.
Could they have arrived at the wrong hour? It was unlikely. The uncertainty principle did apply to time travel; it could be minimized, but only by increasing the odds of the spell failing—and this time she had taken that risk. They ought to have arrived within minutes of their prior departure.
Meg urgently nodded her head at the computer. The cables needed to be plugged back in.
No sooner than Twilight had picked one of them up in her magic, the fire door opened and two humans walked in.
A quick check revealed their magic bubbles inoperative, as before, due to the nearby magic generator.
She ducked under the workbench. Meg did likewise.
One of the humans spoke. “Did you hear something?”
“You’re imagining things. Whoever took that computer is long gone.”
A second later: “Then explain that.”
The sounds of footsteps resumed, getting louder.
“That isn’t possible.”
“Maybe magic’s involved?”
“That doesn’t make any sense! Why would ponies…”
One of the humans—the one who’d just spoken?—dropped to the floor and eyed Meg and Twilight.