//------------------------------//
// Chapter 7: Creeping insanity 
// Story: Time is up, Twilight 
// by Dream Whisper 
//------------------------------//

Number 306. What a beautiful number! The prime factorization returns 2, 3, 3 and 17. The square root is 17.4928556845. The sum of all digits is 9. It is pi to the power of 5 rounded to the nearest tenth. The geometric middle of the prime factors is 4.182446, while the arithmetic middle is 6.25 and the harmonic middle is 0.816. The median being 3, of course, which is exactly the square root of the sum of all digits. If you add the geometric and harmonic middle of the prime factors, you get 5, which is about the power, pi was taken to, to get to that number. 

Why was she thinking about 306? It was the three-hundred and sixth time that she had been teleported back to the past now. It had become a routine to thoroughly analyse that number before continuing. Why? Because it helped her keep her sanity. Numbers were really the only thing she could really rely on right now. They never change. Never in the entire being of the whole universe was the square root of 306 not about 17.5. Everything else was a mixture of a world that could never happen, and a world that should never happen.

She had seen it all by now, through her journeys. She had used the first hundred times just to find out every detail. It seemed as if the unicorns had become mad from power. She still could not believe that it all had supposedly been initiated by her own potion. After Celestia had been overthrown through mindless rage, the new generation of unicorns had overtaken Equestria. Ponies tell stories that Celestia actually never defended herself from the attackers, as the decision to overthrow her had always been in her subject's choice. She was their elected Princess, not a ruthless ruler. They had imprisoned Celestia, but Twilight had not managed to find her, yet. To be completely honest, she had not searched for very long, since there were other things to think about; For example, how to undo this catastrophe.

The new reign had forced the exclusion of every non-unicorn from social circles of the unicorns and had sentenced those, who did not comply to death. It was bad, that she had made this disaster possible, but it was even worse, that it was impossible to undo it. She could only operate in a very limited window of time, in which it was impossible to do anything more than speaking to a couple of ponies. She could not really change the world around her, as it was being reset every time. She had counted the seconds: 2494, which was about 41.56666667 minutes. Calculating that with having been reset 305 times already, it would calculate up to 211.297 hours or 8.8 days. Plus, of course, the time she had spent earlier.

She had not actually slept for about 9 days now. Every time, the world was being moved to the initial position, - or state 0, how she called it - she also had been reset in some way. Not only her physical position, but also her magical power and remaining stamina. She guessed, that would also apply to age and pretty much everything else, except for her memories. The memories were the only things, that stayed with her for the whole time. The memories, how her potion had destroyed the world in less than three decades. Of course, leaderships often fall in years, but it had been herself causing this. She was not sure if she could ever forgive herself.

While in the first hundred resets to state 0 she had searched for the lore of this lost world, she tried to spend the rest of the time finding out how to solve this mess. She had made this following compromise. Every time she was being reset to state 0, she would travel back in time to find the situation where future Twilight had done something without her direct influence. However, every sixth time, it was time to relax. You might have guessed it, 306 is a multiple of six. It was the 51st pause for her right now, a pause she really deserved. She had just visited her past for the 254th time before the last reset and there had been no evidence of a future Twilight. Of course, she had to be extremely absurdly careful to never ever give away her position to past Twilight. That would only cause another time paradox to solve.
She had developed her ability to magically see through landscape, through thick walls and even through ponies. A mysterious form of radiation seemed to pass through objects differently, depending on their thickness and their density. It was easier for that radiation to pass through a meter of air than it was to pass through a meter of solid stone. She used that concept to see through things. She just had to catch the radiation with her magic, and convert the amounts of radiation into colors depending on their strength. With time, she had developed a Twi-Ray vision, if you want to call it that way. It helped her to stay away from her target, the past Twilight, and still being able to watch the surroundings carefully.

She had learned many things about the world and the magic inside of it, since there was enough time to practice. She didn't have to attend any meetings, go on any adventures, she was completely left alone with her studying. This fact, while it would have made her the luckiest pony just some years ago, now it made her sick. It made her sick to not see her friends, to not have adventures with them, to not live her life with the magic of friendship. That was what had caused her to stop practicing this 306th reset. Usually, in the pauses of time travel, she would have practiced her magic, trying to become better at just everything. However, some kind of disease had caught her. The disease of not being able to be together with her friends.

Of course, she could just meet Fluttershy and Applejack in the Canterlot garden, Rainbow Dash patrolling up in the clouds, trying to look out for attacking unicorns, Pinkie Pie somewhere between Ponyville and Canterlot, as she had marched there to get new party goods, as the old ones had been destroyed in a tragic accident, and Rarity somewhere at the council of unicorns in Manehatten, or unicity, how it was renamed recently. It was funny, how that 'uni' was actually standing for unity and uniformity, not for the reign of unicorns. However, only unicorns were allowed in that united city. It was all just not the same. They were all older now, all different. They had diverged from another, losing their friendship over the course of many years. The pony that had seemed the most normal was Pinkie Pie, as she could still tell anecdotes about what had happened to the old party stuff and how she was going to throw the biggest party ever. However, even Pinkie Pie let shine through, that her friendship for Rarity was hard to sustain as Rarity had lost the mood for partying with them.

She would have given almost everything to just live her normal life with her friends again. She had cried for more than two resets, she had screamed, tried to deny it, tried to do anything. It was a bitter, unchangeable dead end. That fact was slowly causing her to lose whatever was left of herself. Only math sufficed to still pierce through the thick layer of grief, anger and disgust for this world. Math was the only thing that was keeping her sane and alive at this moment.

307 already. The dusty storage room had the same smell on it, that disgusted her for so long now. Still, she breathed the air in as if it would be the last time she would ever breath. The disgusting stench reminded her that she was still able to feel… Even though it was only disgust she felt. As she tried to analyse her feelings, she decided there was more than just the disgust. It was anger and a deep deep sadness. She was not crying anymore, not lamenting. She had accepted it, but it was slowly eating her up. 
How could she live without her friends? She couldn’t. And yet, she would have to find a way to do it. She felt an inner rage, turning against the world. However, she decided never to let that anger burst out. Not even Celestia would know what would happen then. It felt so strange to stand in this room and think about her own feelings. It reminded her of how cold she had become, unable to still feel... as feeling only brought pain. 
She stopped herself from thinking further and teleported outside, just to have some fresh air. She would need some fresh air to calm herself down. The anger was trying to rip its cage apart once again, trying to burst out and destroy this whole unfair world. Twilight would not allow that. Her friends still lived in this world, although divided and… different. She had to bring herself to other thoughts; 307... Not the most beautiful number to be honest. A prime number, thus the only prime factor was 307, not really something you can calculate the median or middle of. Not even a power of pi or e. The square root of the number was 17.521454679. There was no inner connection in this number.

Without losing more time on that pathetic number, Twilight traveled back in time once again. She watched herself just arriving in Ponyville: Pinkie Pie overreacting upon seeing her, the catering of Applejack and Rainbow Dash's speed with cleaning up the clouds. Why was she so far into the past already? Hadn't it only been 8.8 days? Of course, her math was correct. She had decided to have a superficial search at first, then she would slowly increase the depth of her search. Translating that into math would be:
A search layer over the interval of t, in which she would approach 0 with the delta t by a certain percentage, thus resulting in a multi-layered search raster, which she would use to create trust intervals on sigma-basis, trying to find the Gaussian distribution of the probability of her own future Twilight being right in that time. 
That should mathematically work very well.

However, this was probably the moment she had least anticipated. It was cruel to watch herself unite with her friends, to watch herself find these ponies, who were her life by now. She didn't want to go back in time. She just wanted to go back to live with her friends again. It was a cruel reminder of this world being unfair and evil and corrupt and impure and immoral and degenerate and despicable and … She let the breath out she had just been holding up. The anger was trying to erupt and she would not allow it. She had to stay calm, she had to suppress her feelings. From now on, she would just feel nothing. 

Could she trust her eyes? Was that really there?

No! This can’t be true! No! 

Are you serious?

Right there! Right there in front of her was something that she had never expected to see.

Right there, in front of her, was something that would change this all.

Could it really be there, could it really exist? Was this all just a dream?

How big was the probability of finding this here?

She had found it inside of the bush she was sitting inside right now. As she had just re-calibrated her magic for her Twi-vision when past Twilight had moved behind a wall. There had been a short moment, in which she had actually paid attention to her surroundings. There it was, the black mask. Her mind began to rumble, as she was slowly realizing the effects of that mask lying there.

The black mask. It took her just a minute or two to find the corresponding black robes, but it took her a lot longer to really grasp what she had just found. It was a mixture of shock and disbelief. Twilight gasped more than one time, trotting in circles, unsure if this was all real. Her mind was overflowing with possibilities and things to do, things to try, thoughts about her friends, thoughts about reuniting, thoughts about finding happiness again. Her body began to shake as she found the robes, too. 

307. It seemed as if the worst number had the most success. It went up in rank, from pathetic number, to her new favorite. She was free! Well, not yet of course, but she would be very very soon. Freedom! She laughed, she screamed, she yelled, not even caring if past Twilight would hear her. Freedom! She had done it. All that anger and all that pain were finally feelings of the past now. She was free! She could return to her friends and finally, FINALLY have time together with them again. This was the best moment ever! She had done it! Nothing in this entire world could have made her happier. She was finally free to live with her friends again. 
She had to snap herself out again. Second 2300 already, not enough time to celebrate. She had to go back right now. She finally had found a way. YES! She still could barely believe it. It was all done, finally. She had been there for more than eight days. Eight long days in sorrow and pain and now she was free! Tears of joy started running down her face as she could not be any happier. She felt this moment! She had almost thought she had stopped feeling, but she could really feel this moment, the happiness, her laughter, her satisfaction, her delight, her cheerfulness, her joy, just everything combining.

She stopped herself once again. Second 2420. There was not much time left.

She tried to remember every detail of the mysterious mare that had tried to stop her. This mask... It was exactly the same. The consequences of this discovery were deeper than she could ever imagine. The mare had actually tried to stop herself from creating the potion, so past Twilight wouldn’t have to go through all of this. It had not been a mysterious terrorist pony. It had been her future self, trying to prevent the inevitable disaster. Maybe, after solving this last paradox, she would become free again. That would be more than any expectation could ever deliver. Future Twilight must have known that she could never succeed, shouldn't she? Maybe, or rather most probably, future Twilight had been in this exact situation. The 307th setback, maybe even exactly these thoughts.

It was time to travel back in time and solve a paradox. 

Maybe, it was not too late.