Few places in the world were more uncomfortable than a cramped elevator. This was a basic fact of life that everybody learned at different times. For some, it was something that they instinctively knew from birth. For others, it was a revelation they had randomly during their day to day life, like while on the toilet or while chopping onions. But for most unfortunate souls, this was learned through bitter experience when they were confronted with it themselves.
Robber Mask, Shady Dealing, and the minotaur janitor Axe Grind were in just such a cramped elevator together at that moment, as they ascended towards the upper floors of Sunshine Hotel. By the time they'd reached the ground floor, they were already very uncomfortable.
In an apparent attempt to lessen the awkwardness, Axe Grind tried to make conversation.
"So... time travel," he said, leaning against the side of the elevator. "You serious about that?"
Shady shrugged his wings.
"I don't expect anypony to believe us. Damned Discord..."
"Well, I believe you."
Both ponies looked up at Axe Grind.
"What, really?" said Mask.
"Well, that is to say, I want to believe you. I'm trying not to get my hopes up, but you did mention Discord, and most ponies these days don't even know who he is. Especially not in Manehattan."
Shady blinked.
"That's right!" he said, slapping his forehead. "Stupid! Discord was trapped in stone for hundreds of years! Of course the manager wouldn't have believed us! He wouldn't know who Discord is anymore than we did!"
"Wait, how do you know about Discord then?" asked Mask.
Axe Grind snorted.
"All minotaurs know the tale of Discord. He's the creator of our race! Many of our kind even still worship him today! Not in Equestria, of course; that's kind of outlawed here. But in the homelands, he's still a revered figure to some."
"...Huh," said Shady. "I didn't actually know that."
"But you make it sound like he's free in the future. Is he?"
"Yeah, kinda," said Mask. "He got released from stone a while back. Broke out, ruled Equestria for a day, and then he got taken down by the Elements of Harmony, who are these six anonymous mares who... Well, that's a whole other story. And then he was in stone again until recently, when he was released by Princess Celestia and supposedly 'reformed.' And now he's tormenting us."
Axe Grind raised an eyebrow. "The future sounds strange."
"That's not even the half of it," Shady muttered, shaking his head.
"What else happens, then?"
"You know the story of the Mare in the Moon?"
Axe Grind rubbed his chin. "Hmm... vaguely...."
"Well, that one was true as well. A bit before Discord came back, Nightmare Moon did too. And she also got reformed, and now she co-rules the kingdom with Celestia. And they aren't even the only alicorns anymore. There are a whole bunch now."
The janitor gave Shady a skeptical look.
"Are you just messing with me?"
"Guys," Mask interrupted, "I think something strange is going on. Weren't we supposed to be just going up to the third floor? How long have we been standing in this elevator, talking?"
At that, the elevator stopped moving and shuddered to a halt. The three nearly lost their balance at the suddenness of their stop. There was a dinging sound again, and the doors opened. Not onto the floor they were meant to be on, though, but instead to the grey wall of the elevator shaft.
"Oh, beautiful!" Axe Grind shouted. "Another thing I have to fix!"
He grabbed the cage doors of the elevator and pulled them closed again. Then, without warning, he balled his right hand into a fist and smashed it through the ceiling. At least, that's what it looked like at first. Shady soon realised that Axe Grind had just displaced a loose grate that was meant to be moved anyway, but for a moment there he'd thought that the minotaur had just punched through solid metal.
Axe Grind placed both hands on the edge of the opening and hoisted himself up. The hole was comparatively tiny, obviously designed for ponies, but somehow he managed to squeeze through without difficulty. Shady and Mask moved under the grate and looked up to see his face appear in the opening, staring down at them.
"You two stay there," he said, voice echoing through the shaft above. "I have to do work up here."
Then the grate closed.
"...Shady?" said Mask, turning to him.
"Yeah?"
"What are we even meant to do? Discord must have a reason for putting us through this, but I don't get how this is meant to reform us. What's the point?"
The elevator doors opened again, along with a block of grey concrete from the elevator shaft, this time to reveal Discord standing on the other side in a room identical to their elevator, and still in his fancy clothes from before.
"The point, my dear boy, is to teach you life lessons through experience, something which your parents obviously failed to do."
Mask grit his teeth and stepped forward, but Shady put a foreleg in his way to hold him back.
"Simply put, you have your reasons for being criminals, you have your justifications, and you have the excuse of never having been taught how a responsible citizen is supposed to act. Your time in the hotel is going to invalidate all of that. I look forward to seeing your resolve crumble as I strip all your rationalisations away."
Discord grabbed the side of the wall.
"Adieu, mes petits poneys."
With a flourish, he pulled the chunk of wall back over the opening again, covering it back up and leaving the two stallions alone in the elevator.
"...I really don't like him," Mask grumbled.
Just then, the ceiling grate opened back up, and an upside down minotaur hung down before them.
"Hey! Up here! Now!"
Shady couldn't see very well outside the elevator. The light from inside still poured up through the open grate, but it didn't help much. He could see the cables that connected the elevator to the top of the shaft, but they disappeared into the darkness somewhere above them. A little way up, he could almost make out some silver doors that likely led to one of the upper floors.
"We have a problem," Axe Grind said gravely. "There is another elevator blocking our way."
"Ahh... what?" said Shady, attempting to clear his ears.
"Another elevator. There is a second elevator in the shaft somewhere above us. I think the cable connected to this one is stuck between the other elevator and the wall of the shaft."
"I... Okay. Why is there another elevator in this shaft? Isn't there only supposed to be one?"
"That's what I thought as well, pony. But here we are."
"See?" said Mask. "Discord! This is definitely his doing!"
"That may be. But I need somepony to go up there and tell me what's wrong." Axe Grind turned to Shady. "You have wings. Go take a look for me."
Shady laughed.
"Ahaha. No. That's not my job."
"The alternative is being stuck in here until an engineer comes to get us."
"Aren't you the engineer?" said Mask.
Axe Grind crossed his arms.
"I'm the janitor. I fix some things, but mostly I just clean stuff. Elevator maintenance isn't my job either, but at least you won't have to scale the wall or climb up the cable."
Shady growled and threw his forehooves up as he rose into the air.
"Fine! I'll look at the damn thing! Do you at least have a flashlight? Something? Anything?"
"Sorry."
Still grumbling, he flew up into the darkness as instructed, leaving his companions behind, though he could still hear their muttering below him.
Although as a pegasus he could have raced straight to the top of the shaft if he wanted, it took Shady over five minutes to reach what he was looking for. The darkness was oppressive and all-encompassing, and he couldn't see his hoof in front of his face after a while, left with nothing but a little speck of light a long way below to show how far he was from his partner and the friendly minotaur who had been their only ally here so far.
Shady didn't want to bang his head against something he couldn't see, so he rose slowly, just a little bit at a time. He still didn't see the underside of the second elevator coming until he actually hit it, but at least he felt his wings brush against it first so that he knew it was there.
Okay. So what are you then?
Hovering in place, he began to run his hooves along the underside of the elevator. He was assuming that it was another elevator at least, because that's what Axe Grind seemed to think it was. Though, looking back on it, he didn't really have any idea what made him think that. Could minotaurs see in the dark?
Shady flew towards the centre of the shaft, trying to feel around for the cable that the lower elevator was suspended by. When he couldn't find it, he instead began flying around, feeling the walls to see if the cable pressed up against one of them. Sure enough, he found it, and followed it upwards to discover that Axe Grind was right, and that it was smooshed between the wall and the elevator above.
And just how am I supposed to get this out?
The other elevator had a grate in the ceiling that had allowed them to climb on top of it. How likely was it that there was one on the underside of this? Not very, he would have guessed. After all, what possible reason would somepony have to go below an elevator when it was suspended above a sheer drop? But there wasn't any other way he could think of to solve this, so Shady began searching for one.
His eyes widened in surprise as he put a hoof through a perfectly square hole in one corner of the elevator's floor. His hoof touched against something inside. It had a coarse texture, but it wasn't very solid, and didn't resist much when he pushed against it. Flying directly below the hole, he shoved upwards against it, and it gave way to reveal light from within.
Shady had to shield his eyes for a second, but looking up into it, he saw the roof of the same elevator he had been in before. He blinked, and then began pulling himself upwards through the hole. Climbing inside the elevator, he looked around some more. The material he had pushed through turned out to be carpet. That corner of the elevator had its floor missing, and it had just been carpeted over.
Why?
He looked around. On closer inspection, this elevator wasn't exactly like the previous one. There were some differences, like the layout of the buttons and the font for the floor numbers on the labels. The carpet was definitely new. That hole wasn't there in the other elevator, and he knew because he'd stood a hoof on that space before. And this elevator didn't have the cage doors, but instead a more modern set of steel ones that completely concealed the elevator from the shaft outside. They even looked like they'd been polished recently.
"Huh," he said to himself.
Out of curiosity, he pressed the open doors button to see if this elevator was trapped between levels too. To his good fortune, it instead opened into a corridor identical to the one he and Mask had initially been dropped in. He took a tentative step outside, looking around at the door numbers on this floor's rooms. They were all insanely high. Six digit numbers. Far too much for a building of this size. He wondered what floor he was even supposed to be on.
"Discord?" he called out. "What's going on here? Explain this!"
No answer.
"Damn it..."
It seemed all he could hope to do now was go back down and tell the other two what he'd found. Hopefully the janitor would have some idea of how to fix everything, because he didn't.
The doors of the elevator closed as Shady stood there pondering, and he gave a growl of frustration. Stepping over to the elevator again, he was just about to press his hoof against the button to open it back up, when a voice from behind him sounded out.
"Shady, don't."
He froze. Slowly looking over his shoulder, he saw the mare that the voice had come from. She was a pegasus, like him. Her coat was a butter yellow and her mane and tail were a deep purple. Both were long and naturally curly, but also starting to lose their luster and become frayed. She appeared to be in her early fifties, or late forties at best. Though she wasn't wearing glasses right now, a pair of reading spectacles hung from a chain around her neck.
Looking at her cutie mark, he saw that it was an image of an equine brain.
"Are you Dr. Lobe?" he asked.
She gave him a smile, but said nothing.
"...Why shouldn't I open the elevator?"
The mare looked off to the side, avoiding his gaze.
"You said it didn't end well."
"'I said?' As in, I said to you? You know my name, so... we've met before, right?"
The doctor looked back at him and nodded. He was beginning to notice that she wasn't the most talkative sort.
"Where did we meet?"
"Sunshine General Hospital. Discord threw you back there."
Shady's eyes widened.
"You know about Discord?"
"Lots of us do," she said softly. "You and Mask were around a lot in the old days. You kept trying to explain it all to us. Not everypony believed you, but... I can't say too much. You warned us about paradoxes. I don't think we can avoid them completely, but Mask said it could be dangerous considering... well, you know."
"Paradoxes..."
Now it was Shady who went quiet and looked away. He sat his rump down on the carpet and bowed his head, deep in thought. Discord had woven them into the history of this building. Already he was seeing the effects of something he'd clearly done in the future. His personal future. The past for her, a mare who he'd yet to properly meet, and yet who already knew him.
If he tried to avoid Discord's course and didn't meet her, then the timelines wouldn't match, and there would be a paradox. But if he did meet her, then wouldn't he be doing it only because he knew that he had to for this to occur? And if such a time loop were to happen, wouldn't that also be a paradox, only of a different kind?
A thought occurred to Shady that perhaps this was Discord's real goal here. What could be more chaotic than a time paradox? That was his element, wasn't it? Maybe this whole premise of a game he was playing with them was just an excuse to wreak havoc with time? Shady was just a career criminal, not a fancy unicorn scholar who knew anything about time or magic, but this sounded bad to him. If that was really Discord's plan here, then he had a clear goal now – to stop this madness before it got any worse.
The question was, which kind of paradox gave Discord more power? The one where the timeline stayed consistent, or the one where it was broken? Clearly in the timeline this mare had already lived through, he'd pressed that button and something bad had happened with the elevator, but both he and Mask had survived to try and warn her, trying to change the outcome...
His future self had wanted to change the timeline, so that meant... what, exactly?
Shady looked back to the button by the elevator.
"What happens if I press it?" he asked.
The smile disappeared from the mare's face.
"I... I'm really not allowed to say. You said I couldn't."
For a moment, Shady kept his eyes on the button, pondering what possible harm it could do to press it. Lobe was looking more and more worried with every second.
"Listen, uh... I think maybe you should just step away from the button for now... Come with me back to my room. We can discuss it a little more, and I can get us some coffee... You still like it black, right?"
The stallion finally tore his eyes away from the elevator.
"Oh. Uh... Sure. Lead the way."
Further below, Axe Grind and Robber Mask found themselves staring up into the elevator shaft. A little square of light broke the darkness somewhere above them, too far away to really see what it was coming from, and also too far to really make much of a difference. They were only slightly more illuminated than before; most of the light in the shaft still came through the ceiling grate from inside the elevator they were standing atop.
"What's going on up there?" asked Mask.
"I was right," the janitor replied. "Second elevator."
"But how did that happen? There's not supposed to be a second elevator, is there?"
Axe Grind shook his head.
"Then why is it there?"
"I don't know, pony. Perhaps it indeed has something to do with your claims that Discord now roams this place."
Mask looked up to the metal doors above them that would normally lead to one of the upper floors.
"Hey, do you think you could pull those doors up there open? Maybe we could get out? Find that engineer you mentioned?"
Axe Grind glanced up at it, looked back to Robber Mask, and shrugged.
"Worth a try."
He leapt into the air and grabbed onto the cable that the elevator was suspended by. With remarkable ease, he began shimmying up until he was level with the silver door, and threw himself off and against the wall of the elevator shaft. Mask winced as Axe Grind hit the door with a loud clang, but smiled as he stuck his fingers between the doors and began wrenching them open, letting another sliver of light into the elevator shaft.
"Hhhhhgggrrr..."
Finally, they flew all the way open as Axe Grind gave a triumphant roar. He turned around to face Mask again, his heroic figure silhouetted by the light from the corridor outside. The minotaur smiled and gave him a thumbs up, a gesture that Mask was sure meant something, though he didn't quite know what.
"Stay there, pony," said Axe Grind, preparing to jump back down. "I'll come help you up."
Just as he did, there was a sudden and ominous creaking above, and a groan of metal which echoed down through the shaft.
It became a scream as the other elevator began falling.