//------------------------------// // Chapter 2: Infinite imponability times two // Story: Infinite Imponability Drive // by Pineta //------------------------------// The laws of geometry forgot whether the world had one or two spatial dimensions and settled for an irrational number in between. Sugarcube Corner crystalised in a regular lattice structure, wobbled a bit, then relaxed into a more comfortable body with curves. The walls turned turquoise. Pink icing mushroomed from the roof. An avalanche of cake mixture filled the room. Pink hundreds and thousands rained down from the ceiling, soon joined by an imaginary quantity of rainbow sprinkles. Twilight looked at her hooves and screamed. “What is happening to me? Pinkie! What is happening to you? Your head has grown bigger than the rest of your body.” “You too.” Pinkie Pie floated up in the air, inflated into a spherical pony balloon, burst, and fell to the floor in a cone of pink dust. Fluttershy shrank to a tenth of her normal size and hid behind a table leg. Twilight fell into a pile of little pieces. An alligator walked past with a vacuum cleaner and swept them up. “This does not look healthy,” said Rarity. Pinkie Pie reappeared without explanation, “It’s fun. The imponability level is getting higher.” Twilight returned with a similar lack of logic. “What is going on?” “I don’t know,” said Pinkie Pie. “I’m guessing this is some sort strange spin-off universe, without an integer generation number, that serious scholars of pony lore pretend doesn’t exist… Hey—this kitchen has some neat gadgets! And there’s a stash of potions here. I wonder what will happen when I drink them.” At the top of Pony Point, Patch lay on the ground with her friends Melody, Sweetheart, Clover, Bon Bon, Starlight, and Bright Eyes. It was a warm sunny day. They were a little tired after hiking up to the summit, and were resting, enjoying the view across the Ponyland countryside, and watching clouds drifting across the sky. “I’m telling you I met some flying magical ponies,” said Patch, “and one day, I’m going to fly up there for myself and find them.” “There she goes again,” said Bon Bon. “Always talking about aliens and UFOs”. “How are you going to do that?” said Starlight. “Build a spaceship?” “Maybe one day I will,” said Patch. “Stick your hoof in the air and see if you can get a lift from a passing flying saucer,” suggested Clover. “You might get lucky.” Patch lifted a hoof into the air. In a rainbow flash, the marestream whizzed over the horizon and pulled up by the cliff edge. Zipp stuck her head out of the window. “Hi. It’s a bit tight in here, but we’ve got room for a few more if you don’t have any luggage.” “Wha… wha…” for a few seconds Patch stood with an open mouth, then her brain caught up. “I’m coming!” She placed one hoof on the step before the open door and turned back to her friends. “Who wants to join me?” Bon Bon shook her head vigorously. Sweetheart took a step back and crouched down. Melody, Clover, and Starlight looked unsure. After a few seconds curiosity induced Bright Eyes to step forwards. “Awesome,” said Patch, pulling her into the marestream. “Let’s go!” Sounds of popping bubbles, wind chimes, and bells died away. A kaleidoscopic fog cleared letting through a bright white light. A hint of lavender and cherry blossom scent hung in the air before being replaced by an odour of new plastic. Twilight became aware of a familiar face in front of her. “Hi Twilight,” said Sunset Shimmer. “Can you tell me where you live, who is your mentor, and who are your closest friends?” “Ponyville, Princess Celestia, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie—hang on, you know all this.” Sunset, in human form, noted the answers on a clipboard. “Maybe. I just need to check you in properly.” Twilight, in pony form frowned. “Where am I?” “You’re on a space ship, cruising in interstellar space, somewhere in the Horsehead Nebula.” Twilight looked around her, but just saw a large gleaming white hall. The windows high on the walls just showed the dark view to be expected from a ship in the centre of a dense dust cloud. There were small groups of ponies present, but her vision was still too blurred to see who they were. “This is the main entry bay,” said Sunset. “What is happening?” “It’s quite a story.” Sunset crouched down to pony height and placed a hand on Twilight’s mane. “It began when the other you—” she indicated the glasses-wearing human Twilight to her side, “—and I wanted to do a summer science project and properly study Equestrian magic and dimensional portals and everything. We found an amazing professor, Megan Williams, who already knew a lot. It turned out that she had been to Equestria herself, or another version of it, and saved the magic of friendship from the forces of darkness multiple times, as you do.” Human Twilight looked at her pony self through her glasses and continued, “We were looking for a mathematic framework that would allow us to develop a model of Equestrian magic. Megan directed us to the theory of imponability, which is incredibly interesting.” “We realised that if we could generate a sufficiently high imponability, it could give us a way to move between all our worlds without relying on magic portals,” said Sunset. “That got us excited…” “…and Megan said she had a friend, an astrophysicist from London, Trillian, or Doctor Tricia McMillan, who might be able to help…” “…and when we contacted her, she said her ex-boyfriend had a ship that we could use...” “…which sounded exciting, if a bit weird. What we didn’t learn until we met her is that this ship is an intergalactic starship powered by a prototype infinite improbability drive...” “…or that her ex is a former galactic president, who stole the ship from his government…” “…or that he is an alien with two heads.” “That sounds a bit… unlikely,” said pony Twilight. “It’s not a bit unlikely,” said Sunset. “It is extremely improbable.” “Right… I think I need to sit down.” “Make yourself comfortable. It’s a lot to take in. Meanwhile can I introduce you to some pony?” “Who?” “Twilight, meet Twilight.” A pink unicorn with a blue and white mane and a pale blue bow tied in her tail walked up.” “Hello.” Twilight sat down. The marestream moved along a straight line in n-dimensional hippospace, which meant a helical fractal spiral in the space occupied by the passengers. All ponies felt the acceleration produced by fictional forces pushing their insides, but no pony was thrown very far as the cabin was now too packed with bodies to allow much movement. “This is unpleasantly like being drunk,” said Izzy. “I don’t know what you mean darling,” said Rainbow Dash. “Ask a glass of water.” Bright Eyes pushed her way to the front and looked out the window at the swirling points of light. “Can anyone say where we are going?” “Yes,” said Izzy, “we are definitely going to Zephyr Heights. That’s what Zipp specified as our destination.” “We just don’t know how many more interesting detours Izzy’s program will take us through before we get there,” said Zipp. “Is there no way you can tell where it will take us next?” asked Pipp. “That’s a bit difficult…” Izzy laughed nervously. “The trouble with using neural nets and amethyst crystals is you can program them to learn something, but it’s not clear how they do it.” “So, we could be stopping everywhere from here to the end of the universe before we get to ZH? And how many more ponies will we pick up?” Bright Eyes stared at the text on the console screen, then looked under the dashboard and pulled out a dusty grey keyboard on a thick spiral cable. “What are you doing?” asked Zipp suspiciously. “I don’t know what CPU this is connected to,” she said. “But the interface terminal is an 8-bit 4K machine like the one I built from a kit at home. It’s not that complicated.” “You know how it works?” said Izzy. “I found it in Alphabittle’s dustbin, but there wasn’t a manual.” “Maybe there’s a log file we can read….” She tapped the keys with her hooves and read the text on the screen. “Here, last stop: ‘Pony Point, Ponyland’; next stop: ‘Starship Heart of Gold, Horsehead Nebula.’” “The Horsehead Nebula!” said Sunny, “that’s lightyears away.” “In real space, yes,” said Izzy, “but we are now in hippospace.” “That’s an interesting detour.” In the Heart of Gold entry bay, a group of ponies were sitting in a circle, mostly feeling a little timid and awkward. “I’m Fizzy, and this is Cupcake, and Surprise. We’re little ponies. We brought cake.” “I’m Rarity, and this is Fluttershy. We are also little ponies. I like your tail bows.” “I’m Firefly.” “I’m Twilight.” “I’m Twilight.” “I’m Applejack.” “I’m Applejack.” “I’m Rainbow Dash—the one and only!” “I’m Pinkie Pie. There are a lot more of me, but they’re not here yet.” The herd of little ponies introduced themselves politely like a class of well-behaved children. Human Twilight and Sunset Shimmer stood above them like a pair of teachers. Twilight pushed her glasses up her nose and scribbled notes and checked boxes on her clipboard. “Thank you every pony,” said Sunset. “I expect you are wondering why we brought you here. We are doing a science project where we are using an infinite improbability generator to let us travel between the human and pony worlds. Our first big discovery is that there are actually two separate pony worlds. The Equestria that I know, and Ponyland, where you know Megan.” “Hang on,” said Pinkie Pie. “You said you built an infinite imponability generator. I thought I did that!” “She did,” said Rainbow Dash. “We all saw it.” Her pony friends all nodded. Twilight and Sunset looked at each other. “Megan and Trillian did say we should expect this sort of coincidence,” said Sunset. “But then the numbers don’t add up,” said Twilight. “We generated an imponability level to bring Fizzy, Surprise, and all the little ponies here from Ponyland, and also to bring your pony friends from Equestria. If they have also generated an infinite imponability, then that leaves a very big missing imponability factor. What is going to fill that?” There was a flash of rainbow light. A cloud of pink glitter blew across the room. The marestream spat out of hippospace, rotated around in mid-air, and neatly parked itself by the wall. The door opened and three generations of ponies jumped out and pranced around enjoying stretching their legs. “Hi new friends,” said Izzy. “My name’s Izzy, and this is Sunny, Zipp, Pipp, Hitch, Misty, and then we have Patch and Bright Eyes, who we picked up on the way, and Minty, Toola-Roola, Pinkie Pie, and Rainbow Dash.” Five generations of ponies formed two lines and looked at each other. “You can’t be Rainbow Dash,” said Rainbow Dash, “because I’m Rainbow Dash.” “The real Rainbow Dash?” said Sunny. Her eyes opened wide and her mouth formed a big smile. “I assure you darlings, I am Rainbow Dash,” said Rainbow Dash, “and I am quite real, thank you very much.” “Yes yes yes!” said Pinkie Pie. “We have two Rainbow Dashes, just as we have two Twilights and two Applejacks and two Pinkie Pies!” she threw her hooves around the other Pinkie Pie’s neck in a big hug. The other Pinkie Pie seemed a little shocked. “Oh no,” said human Twilight, “now I need to redo all my calculations.” “Before we get talking about imponability physics,” said Pinkie, “I think we missed something very important that some pony said earlier.” “What was that?” asked Sunset. “Fizzy?” said Pinkie. “Did you say you brought cake?”