Chapter Two: “The Truth”
Twilight awoke with a start. She had that strange feeling again, just like the one on the train, but even stronger this time. “Spike?! Did you feel that?!”
After a moment of silence. Twilight looked down at Spike still asleep next to her. She shook him gently. “Spike!” She shook him harder. “SPIKE!”
He remained fast asleep, despite her best efforts. Frustrated she got up to go eat breakfast. Her mother was already fixing, somehow she always knew exactly when Twilight would wake up. “Morning honey, sleep well?”
“Right up until the end, how about you?”
“Oh I slept fairly well, thanks for asking.” While she was talking she flipped the pancakes she was making into the air magically. As the semisolid batter fell it missed the pan and went all over the stove. “Oopsy daisy. I haven't messed that up since I was a little filly, must be getting old.”
Twilight moved over to help. But her mom held up her hoof. “Now don't you dare lift a hoof to help me missy, your the guest here, this is my mess. I'll fix you some more.”
“That's all right mom, I really do need to see Celestia, so how about when I get back, OK?”
“OK dear, we'll be awaitin for ya.”
She went back to her room to get Spike. “SPIKE! WAKE UP!” She yelled quite loud.
Spike didn't budge. He was completely asleep. Twilight gave up and went to see Celestia without him. If he woke up mom would take care of him.
She trotted into the streets, heading for the castle. It was about midday, Twilight had slept pretty late. The streets were mildly busy, packed with mostly unicorns, as was standard of Canterlot. There was a lot of chatter, but nothing unusual for that time of day. Suddenly Twilight looked up, she had got that strange feeling again. This time it seemed like she wasn't the only one. A hush fell over the crowds. Everyone on the streets got quiet, most stopped talking entirely. After a second the noise began again as if nothing had happened. Twilight knew such phenomenon to happen occasionally, but in combination with such a strange sensation she kept feeling, she was beginning to get worried.
She quickened her pace towards the castle. Once there she made her way to Celestia's throne, to find Luna there sleeping. “Princess Luna?”
Luna opened her eyes to see who had addressed her. “Twilight Sparkle? This is certainly a surprise, to what do we owe the honor?”
“I have come to speak with Celestia, it seems that I cannot send her letters for some reason, and I need to speak with her.”
Luna's head drooped a little. “Ah, we see. Sister has been busy lately. You may find her in her room pacing.”
“Pacing? Is she worried about something?”
“Perhaps you may get a sane answer from her. She will not tell us in a rational manner what is wrong with her.”
“Thank you, I'll see what I can do.”
Twilight made her way to Celestia's room. She knocked lightly. From inside the room Celestia's voice came quick, and slightly shrill. “What is it?”
Twilight swallowed a bit. She had never dealt with Celestia in such a mood, and didn't know how to handle this, but she needed to speak with her. “Princess? It's me Twilight.”
“Twilight?” Her voice became more calm, but also slightly confused. “Why are you here?”
“I need to speak with you about some strange events that have been happening.”
Celestia quickly opened the door and looked down at her. “Come in and tell me everything.” She said in a hurried tone.
Twilight walked in and looked at Celestia. “Well at first...” Twilight stopped short as she saw Celestia shudder violently. “Princess are you...” before she could finish the strange feeling once again hit her, this time violently enough to make her shake much like Celestia just had.
“Twilight? You can feel it too?”
“Yes, what is 'it'?”
“This is not good, if your kind can already feel it, then...” She trailed off and looked up, obviously in both deep distress and thought.
“Please Princess, tell me what is going on.”
Celestia looked down at Twilight again, as if suddenly remembering she was there. “Right, uh, that's hard to explain. Um... this is so much harder live...”
“Live?” Twilight asked curiously.
Celestia practically bit her tongue. She had obviously said something she was not supposed to have said. “I meant... oh I'm very bad at this.” Celestia was becoming increasingly more fidgety, and was speaking in a more and more rushed tone, not like her normal speaking voice at all. “You know what? There's no time to explain, we need to get to Discord's statue immediately.”
“Discord? Is he behind all of this?”
“Hmm, uh yeah, of course!”
Twilight was feeling quite uneasy about the way the Princess was behaving. She didn't sound anything like herself by the end of the conversation. What could be so wrong as to make her loose her calm like this? Celestia turned and began to walk towards the grounds where Discord's statue was kept, Twilight followed close behind her, not knowing what else to do she remained silent as they walked there.
Once they got there Celestia looked around to see if anyone else was there. It seemed to be only her, Twilight, and the statue of Discord. She looked up at the statue and hesitantly said. “We have a problem.”
Twilight looked at her. “What do you...” She was cut off by Celestia raising her hoof up.
“Not you.” She looked back at the statue. “Can you here me old man? We have a problem down here!”
They both stood there in silence looking at the statue. Twilight was completely confused and was about to ask what Celestia was talking about, and maybe who to, when Celestia let out an angry grunt. “Kayson, get out here right now! This isn't the time for your games.”
Suddenly the statue of Discord animated. “Nya, what are you doing? Not in front of her!”
“We have bigger concerns right now.”
“Bigger concerns? What are you...” Discord paused and his eyes grew wide. “OH NO! No! NO! NO! Has it already been twenty? This isn't good, why didn't you do something sooner? Where is Siya?” Discord piled these questions one right after another, not giving Celestia anytime to answer any one question.
“Look I'm sorry, it snuck up on me too, and Siya is the biggest problem we have.”
“What do you mean? Is she in one of her moods again? Now isn't the time.” Discord looked over at Twilight. “And still what is SHE doing here? We don't have time to deal with them.”
Twilight began to open her mouth to protest, but Celestia jumped in first. “I'm afraid we might need her, to undo this massive mess I've gotten us into.”
“What have you done?” Discord asked very cautiously.
“Well, one ago, she got into one of her moods, and so I sent her to the moon to be funny. When she got back she was more than a little angry with me. So I had some of them.” Celestia motioned to Twilight. “Use the fail safe again on her, thinking it would do something like it did before, but uh...”
Discord eyes grew wide again. “Oh NO! You didn't get her sent out did you? Or locked out. Please tell me she is still in reach.”
Celestia bowed her head sheepishly. “Sorta, her persona took over, and she hasn't been back since. At first I thought she was having a laugh at me, but then... I'm not sure why she wouldn't have come back to fix this, she wouldn't do that in spite, so something is wrong.”
At this point Twilight was completely lost, and couldn't take listening to this nonsensical chatter anymore. “I AM TOTALLY LOST! Can one of you please tell me what's going on here?”
Discord and Celestia both looked down at her in surprise. Discord then looked back at Celestia. “Are you telling me that you think you need her to fix this, and you haven't told her a thing about it yet?”
Celestia looked at Twilight apologetically. “I'm sorry, I'm just so bad with words, I wouldn't know how to begin to explain it all.”
Discord stepped forward. “Then allow me, my name is Kayson, I'm the programmer.”
Twilight blinked in confusion. “What do you mean 'programmer'?”
“Well you see, what you see, your entire world, it was made by three people. Myself, the person responsible for most of the physics and inner workings of this place, Nya here,” he motioned to Celestia, “whom is responsible for the majority of the living creatures, and most of the 'magic' that happens, and finally there's Siya, the one you know as Luna, who is the genius who designed the machine that keeps all this running.”
Twilight was dumb struck. She didn't know what to think or believe. She turned to Celestia, her mentor, the only one who she trusted to give her the truth. Celestia nodded, silently confirming everything Discord had just said. Still looking at Celestia Twilight's only question she could force out was, “Your name is Nya?”
Celestia blushed slightly. “Yes, we three have changed names many times in the last twenty, but that is my true name yes.”
“What do you mean by 'the last twenty'?”
Kayson answered. “We live for so long, we don't count in years, we count in thousands of years. This place has existed for twenty thousand years now, evidenced by the current breakdown we are facing.”
Once again dumbstruck, Twilight sat there and stared in disbelief at Kayson. He nodded slightly. “Yeah, that's about the reaction I expected. Think I should tell her how old I am?”
Celestia chuckled slightly. “Far too old to brag old man.”
“What? The oldest living sentient being is too old for ya?”
They both began laughing at that joke. Twilight hardly blinked the entire time. She still was having trouble understanding what was going on. “So the three of you created the world?”
Nya recovered from her laughing fit first. “No dear, we created this dimension, it was the only way we could escape.”
“Escape?”
Kayson quickly interjected. “Nya, I don't think it's such a good idea to tell them about before.”
“What harm could it do? They are in just as much danger as we are by now.”
Kayson looked at Twilight for a moment pondering that thought. “I don't know, it's just this is the first time we have ever broken character like this. It's been a full twenty and we have yet to break character until now.”
Twilight was slowly loosing hope that either of them would start making sense at this point. How can they just create a dimension, and what did they mean, 'breaking character'?
Nya nodded. “I know it feels weird, trust me, I'm not used to having to do it all live. I'm so bad at my character that I can't really do it live.”
Twilight would have gotten frustrated, if she thought it would do any good. Obviously these two were going to take there time getting reacquainted, regardless of how dangerous the pending doom apparently was. What did she mean by live?
Kayson looked at Twilight, whose agitation was beginning to show on her face. “Oh right, she isn't one of us, she gets impatient easy. Alright calm down little one we'll explain. Where we came from, well let's just say the universe was getting old. I mean it was ancient. The whole thing was slowly collapsing in on itself. There weren’t many of us left, sentients that is, but what few of us were left were bound and determined to stay alive. Our ancestors had long ago chose to abandon physical bodies, and for the most part physical things in general. But somewhere far off in the corner of the universe, the three of us, and roughly twenty others, began work on Siya's master piece. She had come up with a machine to stave off the end of our universe, a way to keep the forces of time and entropy at bay, indefinitely. So we all began to work on it. The machine itself is more complicated than any of us could possibly understand, only the raw brilliance of Siya in her true form could understand it in all of its complexity. While they were completing work on its physical design however, Nya and myself began work on the coding, the internal mechanisms of how the worlds would function. We pulled from near limitless volumes of information, both factual and fictional that our ancestors had left behind, in an effort to create the perfect world. Of our many designs we all voted on this one as the best. All twenty thee of us began living in our new world and calling it home. It only took the first five for most of the others to decide to end it. They were not used to being bound to physical bodies, and this existence did not allow for them to make leave by any means other than deletion. After fifteen, there were only the three major players left. The creator, the designer, and the programmer, all living eternally for no real purpose but living. Now, at the twenty mark, we are faced with a crisis. The machine is out of chordal alignment. The entire structure is fluctuating out of existence, and the only one who knows how to fix it is in stasis.... or dead... or something...”
Twilight looked at him for a few moments. She was starting to get a handle on everything they had been saying, and was starting to understand the dire situation at hand. “But Luna, I mean Siya, is just fine, I talked to her before coming to see you Prin... I mean Nya.”
Nya looked at her. “No what you saw and spoke with was her persona, what takes over our bodies if we decide to be something else for a while. She would have already been here to fix the machine if she was awake. But it seems like the fail safe has put her to sleep.”
“By fail safe do you mean the Elements of Harmony?”
“Yes indeed, those were created by Kayson as an insurance policy in case something happened to one of us. They have the power to alter several setting in the code, but are not as powerful if just one person is using them.”
“Why is Dis... I mean Kayson able to break free from the stone?”
“Because you trapped is body, not him, we are able to escape to other bodies and let our personas do the work for us. Kayson lets us trap him with the Elements so that people respect us, and the power of the Elements. But if we used them on him for real, he would be in the condition Siya is in right now.”
“So us using the Elements on Discord was just a show?”
Nya blushed once more. “Sorry.”
Kayson laughed. “I thought you would be more concerned about the fact that you don’t actually exist.”
Twilight looked at him slyly. “You said that there was no more universe out there, so if here is all that is left, then I exist just as much as you do.”
Kayson clapped. “Clever girl, you have me there, but I digress. That's enough of a history lesson, it's time we get down to business, Nya, what's the plan?”
Nya looked confident. “Well between the three of us, we should be able to undue whatever has been done to Siya with the fail safe.”
Kayson looked skeptical. “I'm not so sure Nya, the six of them are not that bad at their use. Depending on what has been done, and how long ago it was done, we may not be able to undo it properly.”
“Any better ideas old man?”
“Is this localized? We could always port to another setup?”
“Even if the whole machine isn't collapsing it will eventually, we need Siya back, and this is the only world we would probably remember what the fail safe looked like.”
“OK I get it, so where is it?”
“Not far from here, come on.”
They all three walked to Celestia's throne room where Luna was siting. When they walked in Luna jumped up immediately. “Discord you fiend, how hath you been freed from your prison?”
Nya put her hoof to her forehead. She had totally forgot about Luna. How was she going to explain this? “Sister wait, you see this isn't Discord its uh...” She trailed off.
Twilight jumped in to save the day. “Its an actor, he is playing Discord in an upcoming play. I'm here to help with the magical costume. It's pretty good, huh?”
Luna looked between the three of them in turn. “Yes, most impressive costume, we were getting ready to fight. Sister, are you feeling better?”
Nya looked at her nervously. It was quite apparent that she wasn't used to not having her persona take care of the talking for her. “Uh, yes dear sister. Thank you for taking over for me for the day, everything's fine now, you may rest.”
Luna gave her a very curious look. She wasn't quite sure how to interpret the odd behavior from her sister. “Very well, we shall take our leave, take care sister.”
After Luna had left the room Nya relaxed. “Well that was close.”
Kayson laughed. “What would she have done? Honestly between the two of us her persona wouldn't stand a chance.”
Nya looked at him with a glare. “I wouldn't trust it. With the machine's breakdown messing with standard magic, and with the fail safe having altered her, there is no telling how her powers would compare to ours.”
Kayson laughed again. “You know I don't do magic, I just change the code.”
Nya shook her head slightly. “All the more reason I wouldn't trust your 'power' in a fight.”
Twilight was loosing her patience with them at this point. “Would you two focus? We have a crisis here!”
They both looked mildly embarrassed. “Shes right, lets get the fail safe and hurry along.” Nya said.
They all three went on there way to the room where the Elements of Harmony were kept. Nya opened the lock and pulled out the box that contained them. Inside there were six small gems of varying colors.
Twilight got a concerned look on her face. “Oh no!”
Nya looked at her curiosly for a moment, then realized what she was thinking. “Oh don't worry, I expected them to shift back down to a less complex form. They probably did that to conserve what space they could. The whole machine is probably doing that all over.”
Kayson stepped in. “It will probably finish reverting everything to normal physics in just a few more days.”
“Normal physics?”
“Well yeah, magic is our addition to this world, it didn't exist in our universe.”
Twilight quivered slightly at the thought of no magic. Nya grabbed the gems and shoved two into each persons hand. “Alright, let's get this started.”
Kayson nodded and looked up. “Requesting level four override of local reality field, authority FS3, user codes KS and SY.”
All around them became solid black, and it was suddenly just them and the gems hovering in nothingness. Kayson spoke again. “Procedural call, access use records of all fail safe activity.”
Sudenly all around them were what looked to be videos showing all the times the Elements had been used by Twilight and her friends, multiple times by Celestia and Luna, and several instaces that Twilight couldn't make out. Kayson looked around until he saw the one of them using the Elements on Nightmare Moon. He pointed up to it. “That one I assume?”
Nya looked up to it. “That looks right.”
Kayson pointed to it. “Call instance number.”
A female voice came from no discernible direction. “Instance number four, seven, nine.”
“Access debug for instance four, seven, nine.”
Suddenly they were surrounded by millions of words and symbols, several of which Twilight had never seen, and had no idea how to interpret. Kayson began scanning through the text visually. He read at a rate that Twilight could not possibly keep up with. “This isn't good.”
Nya, knowing better to have even tried to scan through the lines of code looked at Kayson. “What, what's the problem?”
“Nya, I don't know how to tell you this, but I think Siya is dead.”
Nya got a tearful expression for a moment, but it quickly turned to one of rage. “NO, that can't be! Show me, now!”
Kayson looked back at the code. “Focus between lines seven, nine, eight, three and seven, nine, eight, seven.”
Sudenly most of the millions of words and symbols disappeared, and only a few hundred were left. Nya looked at it closely. “What does it mean corrupted?!”
She looked at Kayson anger showing. “How can she be corrupted?”
Kayson hung his head. “I'm afraid that the misalignment was starting to show as early as back then, and I think she got unlucky when this happened.”
“UNLUCKY? SHE IS DEAD KAYSON!”
“Focus Nya, we need to fix the machine, then we can try to get Siya back.”
Nya's head hung low. “We can't fix the machine without her, and there isn't enough time to try anything if she is totally corrupted. Face it Kayson, this is the end.”
Kayson was still staring at the wall of text before them. When suddenly he got a smile. “Wait! Look! It was mostly personality damage, most of her memories are still in tact, we can still pull this off!”
Nya looked at the code again, and her eyes lit up. “You're right! But wait, we can't force right a persona, we would need a foregrounder that doesn't run a persona.”
Kayson looked at her as if she was stupid, then pointed to Twilight. Nya turned and looked at Twilight with a confused look. “Wait, she is a balance mechanic? How, I mean she's powerful and all, but an actual balance mechanic?”
“All of her friends are Nya, they all have some of the most complex interactions of any entity other than us, and believe me they come close, look, call code for entity ID Twilight Sparkle in local field.”
Suddenly a new set of text appeared. This time there were not millions of characters, there were billions. Twilight stared in wonder at the huge wall of text. “That is... me?”
Nya looked stunned. “I never thought... that is insanely complex, we never built something that complex, our personas aren't that advanced.”
“WE didn't, the machine has. The beings it has been putting out have been becoming more and more complex, that is what I told it to do. I think now you can see that a full twenty has given it time to make some serious programs.”
Still staring up at the huge line of code Nya looked at Twilight. “Do you understand what we are planning?”
Twilight shook her head lightly. “No I don't”
“We have Siyas memory, and even her genius, just not her personality. Under normal conditions I would just consider her lost and move on, but we need her. We want you to take her memories and help us fix the machine.”
Twilight looked at her, unsure of what to do. “Is there a choice?” She asked meekly.
Nya looked at her with a sad expression. “I wish I could tell you there was, but the choice is either say yes, or end everything.”
Twilight swallowed. “Then I guess I'm ready.”