The ripples from Discord’s tap propagated onwards, reflecting back whenever they reached the tip of a branch. The Element of Magic, embedded in the main trunk, began to pulse. The ripples faded and the Element went dark. “Yes, Discord, it is time.” The Element pulsed in synchrony with the reverberating female-ish voice.
So the Tree could talk after all. Meg found that annoying, oddly enough, what with all the times she had received silence. “So why start communicating now?”
Warehouse was replaced with tunnel. A quick check showed that everything had come across without mishap. To one side were the piles of stuff and the humans she had zapped with a sleep spell, and on the other were two crouched humans. She moved the piles and sleeping humans further down the tunnel, making space for Meg’s return. Excessively optimistic, arguably, but it didn’t hurt.
As for the sleepers, she zapped them again to make sure they stayed asleep for a while longer. She’d come back later for them, once appropriate accommodations had been prepared.
Next Twilight’s attention turned to the conscious humans. Both were still on their knees, looking around at their new surroundings—especially at what was above them. “Now you know why you had to get down,” she said. “This tunnel was not built with humans in mind. I’ll return us to my present.” And provide more empty space in which for Meg to return.
But by now she should have returned, if she was going to return at all. Was this why they had to jailbreak Tirek first? Because she was no longer available?
Unlikely. Meg had to return one way or another. Paradoxes were impossible. Celestia knows they tried hard enough to create one deliberately.
She just didn’t know how Meg would return. Or when. Maybe Meg didn’t know herself, yet.
The piles of stuff could travel to the present the slow way—no, then she would’ve seen them earlier and she hadn’t. Twilight included them in the time travel spell along with all the humans, both awake and asleep. Unsurprisingly, it worked, returning them all to her present—but not the present of Egor and Austin.
“Now I’m going to teleport you out of here.”
Twilight teleported herself and the two non-sleeping humans to the mine entrance, bypassing the main cavern. No need to risk interactions between future and present day humans. Plus one of them was a Russian; he might have awkward questions about what he saw there, and she didn’t have time to clear it with the Americans.
Egor walked outside and peered down. “You not abandon us, correct?”
Twilight joined him. “No, I’m not abandoning you, either of you. You have to understand you are still in your past. Probably by just a few days, but I don’t know—no, don’t tell me. I can’t return you—literally—until we catch up with your present. To do so would be a paradox, since I assume there’s no record of there being two of either of you existing at the same time.”
She looked questioningly at Egor, then Austin. Both shook their heads.
“You’ll be our guests until then. Canterlot is up there, on the other side of this mountain. Please be patient while I go and make arrangements. It shouldn’t be too long before I’m back.”
“You’ll find us here,” Austin said. He looked around. “No place to go, really.”
“Please just stay here.”
Twilight took off and climbed high in the sky. A few minutes later she touched down at the main entrance to the palace. First stop was the throne room, to touch bases with Celestia. She walked past petitioners lining the marble wall. The massive doors emblazoned with the Solar and Lunar Crests were closed; court was not currently in session. Perfect. The Royal Guards bowed at her approach and opened the doors just enough to let her through. The doors closed behind her.
Celestia was nowhere to be seen. Luna, however, was seated and consulting with a clerk.
Twilight walked towards the thrones. “Luna? Where’s Celestia?”
Luna lowered a coffee cup and looked at her. “Something important came up that required her immediate attention. No, I don’t know what. Asked me to fill in for her and just disappeared. Literally.”
That was odd. “Did she happen to say when she’ll be back?”
“She did not,” Luna grumbled. “And it’s well past my bedtime.” She drank some more coffee. “Is there something I need to help you with?”
“Not really. I just wanted to inform her that the anomaly creation has been taken care of. But two—” On second thought… Let the humans be Future Twilight’s problem, the Twilight of their present. She could come back to the past for them all and return them directly to their own time. No need for the guests to sit around for a few days, and no need to put the sleepers in a dungeon. “Scratch that. But Meg had to stay behind and… well… she didn’t return.”
Luna looked over her coffee cup at her. “You seem surprisingly unbothered for such an unfortunate outcome.”
“Because she has to come back, somehow. It’d be a paradox if she didn’t.”
Luna groaned. “It’s too late for talk of paradoxes. I’ll inform my sister when she deigns to turn up.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Twilight said. She turned to depart.
Once she was outside the palace and back in the air, she wondered what to do next. Returning to her castle was one possibility. She needed to write a summary for Serrell—and in particular inform him of the observer complication she’d encountered. But there was also the matter of Meg’s unknown whereabouts. Yes, she had to return, but that didn’t mean she’d return quickly—she hadn’t, after all. Various people ought to be informed of that.
She’d start with her co-workers. A quick flight around the mountain—but well short of the mine entrance, where the two humans might still be waiting for her future self—followed by a teleport and she was there. “I need your attention,” she declared. Jerry, Martin, and Diana were around a workbench, and when they turned towards her a familiar looking device was revealed. “You’re making a copy of it?”
“That magic-casting device from the warehouse?” Jerry asked. “We are. We’re… making progress.”
“What did you want to tell us?” Dianna asked. “Sounds important, whatever it is.”
Uh, right. That device can wait till later. “The anomaly’s creation has been taken care of, but…”
All eyes were on her.
“But Meg had to stay behind and start that original magic-casting machine. She’ll be fine, otherwise it’d be a paradox, but she hasn’t come back—yet—and I don’t know when she will. Just thought you ought to know.”
Silence.
Dianna broke it. “How did Steve take it?”
Twilight shook her head. “I thought he might be here too. He doesn’t know yet.”
“Probably with Professor Arcane Scroll,” Martin said. “They were here earlier.”
“Okay, I’ll check with him next.” Twilight’s eye returned to the magic-casting device. Back at the warehouse, those humans had the option of turning off their magic generators. That option didn’t exist in Equestria, not with an ambient magic field. “I’d feel much better if a suitable unicorn was around when you’re ready to test it, if I wasn’t available.” And it was all too likely she wouldn’t be, she had to admit.
“No argument from us!” Dianna said. “Sunset Shimmer, Moondancer, and the professor himself have all offered their assistance.”
“Excellent. I’ll be off, then.”
Back to Canterlot she went, this time heading towards Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Before long she had arrived at the professor’s office, the door open. Steve was, in fact, there. She coughed to get their attention.
“Twilight,” the professor said, standing up. “What brings you to my office?”
She looked uneasily at Steve. “Actually… it’s Steve I’m here to see. It’s about Meg.”
He took a step forward. “What about her?”
“She, uh, had to stay behind to activate that spell-casting machine. She… didn’t return.” She quickly added, “Not yet, anyway.”
Arcane Scroll looked aghast. “You mean she was ground zero when that anomaly was created!?”
Twilight merely nodded.
Steve took a moment to process that. “No, she has to be alright. It’d be a paradox otherwise.” He gulped. “For some definition of ‘alright.’”
“You might want to check the news,” she said. “There were other… complications. Not that they really change anything, not with respect to Meg, anyway.”
“I’ll do that.”
Then she facehoofed. “Sorry, don’t check the news, not yet. The observers haven’t gone back yet.”
“Okay?” He shrugged. “Hard to keep things straight when time travel’s involved—no, don’t bother telling us the complications. Not if we don’t need to know about them now.”
“There were other eyewitnesses to Meg’s actions, that’s all.” Twilight looked over to a blackboard, covered in magic equations. “That’s… different.” She hadn’t been following the research into the magic of stellar bodies. “Stars, I take it?”
“Indeed it is,” Arcane declared as he moved over to the blackboard. “These equations here are for the spells that maintain the stability of our pocket realm.”
“Their design clearly shows knowledge of relativity,” Steve said.
Arcane nodded. “And so no pony, lacking such knowledge, could have created them. Not even Star Swirl the Bearded. I think Discord could be ruled out too; this isn’t chaos magic. But, quite honestly, it doesn’t seem to be pony magic either.”
Twilight contemplated the equations. “It stands to reason that this magic was present at the beginning of our realm, whatever that means. Logically, it could not have come from any creature that came into existence within it.”
“Would that alone rule Discord out?” Steve asked.
“I… don’t know. But there is another candidate: Harmony. We never have done a formal study of the magic of the Tree of Harmony or of the Elements.”
Arcane grunted. “We’ve barely done a study of chaos magic. But your point stands.”
“It’s something to think about.” Twilight started to leave, but decided to ask something instead. “By any chance do either of you know were Celestia is?”
“You haven’t told her?” Steve asked.
She shook her head. “Only Luna. She doesn’t know where she is either, some sort of urgent business she had to attend to. She’s filling in for her right now.”
“At this time of day?” Arcane sat back down. “How odd. But, no, we do not.”
It was a long shot, after all, that whatever this urgent business was had involved her school. To Steve she said, “Should I tell her brother or do you want to do that.”
“I’ll take care of that.” He grimaced. “If she doesn’t come back soon.”
“You might not want to wait, not for long anyway. Serrell could make a public statement about that, though not until after the observers go back in time. I’ll have to tell him what happened at that warehouse, naturally.” That was next on her to-do list.
He sighed. “Duly noted.”
The flight back to her castle was uneventful. The first task was to write a summary, for Serrell’s eyes, of the trip back to the anomaly creation. It certainly had not gone according to expectations, not with the interference from the observers—who have yet to go back in time to observe. She emphasized that that didn’t change anything, that they would go ahead as planned with the observers—indeed, they had to—so please schedule a date.
She followed with the fact that Meg had taken video on her phone of the interaction between Routledge’s pick, Kimberly Hurst, and the occupants of the warehouse, an interaction that he’d be quite interested in seeing. Except…
Twilight sighed. Not even Pinkie Pie could sugar coat this. She explained what happened to Meg, but was quite specific that she would turn up eventually. Because paradox, if not in so few words. But until then, no video.
She sent it off.
Rainbow Dash picked that moment to fly in through the door. “Hey, Twi, any word on the observer stuff?”
Twilight stood up. “Just sent off a letter on that very topic. We should know soon.”
The pegasus hovered in close to study the alicorn. “What went wrong.”
Twilight looked askance at her. “Nothing, exactly, but…” She gave her a recap.
“Whoa. You’re sure about that?”
“As sure as can be. Paradoxes are forbidden.” She checked the computer; no response yet. “But I have no idea when or how she’ll come back.”
Dash cocked her head. “Forbidden by who?”
“Who? Nopony! It’s physics.”
“Geez, just asking, sorry.”
“No… I’m the one that should be apologizing. Let’s go out and get a bite to eat.”
They decided to round up the other gals as well. Rainbow Dash took care of Fluttershy and Applejack, while Twilight fetched Pinkie Pie and Rarity. They all met at the hayburger restaurant. Once they had been all seated and their orders taken, Twilight broke the news.
“You’re sure she’ll be okay?” Rarity asked.
“As sure as I can be. The problem is, I don’t know when she’ll return. It should have either been real soon, if not immediately, or…” Twilight shrugged. “I don’t have a clue what’s holding her up.”
“How awful,” Fluttershy said.
“Ah’m sure it’ll make that Routledge fellah real happy.”
Twilight couldn’t help noticing that Pinkie was being quiet. “No Pinkie Sense concerning Meg? What happened could be considered a doozy, right?”
She looked up in thought. “Not if she returns all safe and sound. That’s the opposite of a doozy!”
On the way back to her castle, a thought bubbled up in Twilight’s mind: those offices. The ones back in that warehouse. What was in them? She had brought back whatever she could from their work area, but was that everything?
Fortunately, nothing stopped her from going back and checking them out. She just had to avoid their past selves.
First things first. She checked for a response from the president; there wasn’t one. After getting a plaid pill, she headed to the designated time travel tunnel. After arriving, she then had to decide precisely the moment in the past to target. In the middle of the prior night, after their past selves had teleported past the fire doors.
Maybe that wasn’t an optimal time for removing stuff, because it might be later noticed by their owners, but first discover if there was anything worth removing. If it turned out there was, then she could come back closer to anomaly creation to remove it.
One plaid pill later, the corridor appeared around her. She didn’t bother testing the door, teleporting past it. Enough light made its way in from the parking lot to see. The room was unused, empty.
So was the next, and the one after it. In fact, all of the rooms were empty.
Well, it didn’t hurt to check.
Upon returning to her castle, she again checked for a response from the president. Again, there wasn’t one. Well, he was a busy man.
And she had been busy too, these last few weeks. Now that she had some time, she should take care of some action items on her cross-realm negotiations to-do list. The top item on that list was currency conversions. There was considerable disagreement on the dollar/bit exchange rate, of course, but it was even more fundamental than that. Could bits even survive undamaged a trip to the human realm? All coins have a spell to prevent counterfeiting; a coin without that spell is not legal tender. What would happen to that spell in the absence of magic?
Only one way to find out, and this was a good a time as any to do so.
She picked out a one-bit coin and got a plaid pill. But to where? It didn’t really matter. She decided to visit Meg’s old apartment complex. Hovering above the floor, she swallowed the plaid pill and found herself above the building. The roof. She could set the coin down there, fly far enough away for it to leave her magic bubble, then she would retrieve it.
She hesitated, her focus on what laid below her. The mob was long gone, of course. No sign remained of it ever having been there. No doubt someone else now lived in her former abode. Meg could not return to live there even if the insanity ended.
With an exhale, she flew down to the roof and carried out her plan. A minute later and she was back in her own home.
Twilight held the coin up to her eyes for inspection. It didn’t look any different. Of course it didn’t. That wasn’t the test that mattered. She applied the standard detection spell on the coin… and it failed. Legally, it was counterfeit. Another spell revealed that no spell of any kind was present on that coin.
“As I suspected,” she said to nopony in particular. The spell might have come back after the coin returned to a magic field, as many spells do, but then that particular spell had also been designed to be fragile, to foil tampering or deep analysis. She went over to her computer and wrote up her findings and sent it out to the relevant distribution list.
U.S. currency had the opposite problem: nothing stopped it from being duplicated once inside Equestria. Sure, they had serial numbers, but she gathered it’d be way too long before duplicates were spotted. Other earthly currencies no doubt had the same problem.
These weren’t showstoppers. Apparently humans were used to using alternatives to cash anyway, many even preferred it. Something of a digital nature would need to be setup to handle cross-realm currency transfers.
But what to do with her now-counterfeit coin? She could re-cast that spell on it. She had looked it up, of course. It was notoriously difficult to apply correctly—by design, naturally—but nothing she couldn’t handle. It wasn’t even improper for her to do so; she was a princess, after all. Eventually, maybe. She could show it in its spell-less state to interested parties.
Next item on the to-do list was precious metals—precious to humans, anyway. Duplication spells made them un-precious to—
An email arrived. From Serrell. Twilight read it. It was basically an acknowledgement, a confirmation that there was no change in plans.
Back to precious metals. She sighed. There was no way around it and it was time to face that fact. She added a new to-do item: create a spell that would detect precious metals (above trace amounts) so they could be prevented from passing through a portal. All arrivals to Equestria should be tested too, so that they’d have the chance to return the metals to Earth and not be forced to leave them in Equestria. Better yet: run the detection spell before entering Equestria. Their realm’s conservation laws shouldn’t be a problem.
She added a new to-do item to create a similar detection spell for bits, so that they would not accidentally become counterfeit.
Finally, an item for a detection spell for human currencies, so, like precious metals, they could be kept from entering Equestria or, once inside, from leaving. How to do that she hadn’t a clue.
Okay, another item: collect a sample of human currencies, so what they have in common could be determined. She knew they had anti-counterfeiting measures of their own.
Spike came down the stairs, carrying a cup of hot chocolate. “Thanks, Spike,” she said once it was placed beside the keyboard.
“Figured you’d need that. I know how you feel about Andy.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
He looked askance at her. “You haven’t checked that email box, have you?”
“Uh… no?”
Spike rolled his eyes and went back upstairs.
“I would’ve got around to it eventually!”
Twilight had a growing collection of email addresses, having taken Meg’s recommendation. It made it easier to give one out to less-than-trusted individuals—like the former Lord Tirek. Might as well see what that’s all about, she thought as she fortified herself with hot chocolate topped with the perfect quantity of marshmallows.
And there it was. There wasn’t much to it. Just an FYI that the documentary was not finished just because they had all returned from Greece. Kyle, the director/producer, would like her to participate in interviews, pick ups, or roundtable discussions. Sure, in my plentiful spare time. He was also still interested in doing a documentary on Discordland and the brony convention to be held there. That’s more Meg’s department. Whenever she would come back.
Twilight leaned back from the computer, pondering the messenger, still not knowing what to make of “Andy.” She had occasionally checked in on his YouTube channel. Recently it had been dominated by his recollections of his early, human life, and lessons from that which could be applied to the modern world. They had attracted a huge audience. He also must be making a fair amount of money selling “merch” on this channel.
Nothing nefarious about any of this, of course, but she couldn’t help but wonder what he planned to do with this fame and fortune.
Many thought he was a fraud, true, just like they thought ponies were fake, but Andy could read Linear A, the ancient writing system of the Minoans. He wasn’t faking that, and the “he’s a fraud” crowd had no explanation for that, other than an incredibly weak “he must be a linguistic genius.” The cognitive dissonance was a sight to behold: If he wasn’t a fraud, then cartoon ponies must be real, but that’s obviously impossible, so… and round and round it goes. The presence of herself and Yearling in that documentary was not likely to convince the holdouts.
Regardless, putting all that aside, was it indeed the case, as he had claimed, that their time as enemies had passed? Superficially, perhaps so, but… That was unfair, she knew. She was the Princess of Friendship. She had accepted Discord’s change of heart, for Celestia’ sake, and ironically Andy had never done anything since leaving Tartarus that called for remedial friendship lessons.
She just didn’t know.
Twilight looked at Andy’s email once more.
When are you coming back, Meg?