//------------------------------// // Day 6: Twilight Sparkle // Story: Games // by CCC //------------------------------// “I don't think I can do this.” Twilight paced back and forth, in the library, waiting. “Don't worry, Twilight.” said Spike, reassuringly. “I'm sure you can do it.” “He predicted Pinkie Pie.” said Twilight. She grabbed Spike by the shoulders and shook him. “He predicted Pinkie Pie. What chance do I have?” “Well, um. When you put it like that...” “He's heard all of my friendship reports.” said Twilight, returning to her pacing. “I've put everything I know about friendship into those reports; ergo, I can't teach him anything he doesn't know about friendship, like Fluttershy tried to do. He can see through things, so nothing jumping out suddenly will do it. I've got one idea – just one idea – left, and I don't know what I'll do if that fails.” Twilight stopped suddenly, and looked at Spike. “What about you, Spike?” she asked. “Have you got something planned for tomorrow?” “Ah...” said Spike, hesitantly. “You'd better get something planned.” said Twilight, firmly. “I don't think I'm going to do this.” “Well, that's just depressing to hear.” said Discord's voice. “I can't say I'm surprised, but it's depressing nonetheless.” “Discord?” asked Twilight. “Where are you?” “Right here.” said Discord, appearing out of nowhere. “Ah, yes, well.” Twilight took a deep, calming breath. “I do have one idea. Shall we head upstairs? I've got everything ready there.” She ran for the stairs, and hurried up them. Discord sighed, and pointed an eagle claw in Spike's direction. “You better have something good planned for tomorrow.” he said, before vanishing. Spike gulped. * * * “Alright.” said Twilight. She was sitting with a very tall pile of books on her left. “Now, as I understand it, when you were trapped in stone for a thousand years, you didn't exactly have any chance to keep up with the scientific literature, right? I mean, nopony came down to read scientific journals in the statue garden or anything?” “No,” said Discord, “nopony did anything of the sort.” “Oh, good.” said Twilight, taking the top book off the stack and opening it. “I'm sure that at least something that's been discovered in the last thousand years will be surprising. We'll start with Manedeleev's periodic table of the elements, that's physical elements with a small 'e', not Elements as in Elements of Harmony which would be capital-E Elements. Then we'll move on to special relativity, general relativity, and finally quantum mechanics and the theoretical Piggs Boson...” “I've seen it.” said Discord. There was a brief silence. Then Twilight asked “What?” “The Piggs Boson.” sighed Discord. “I'm an avatar of chaos, I've got really good eyes, okay? I can see subatomic particles with the naked eye. I don't think you're going to be able to tell me anything I haven't already worked out for myself.” There was a longer silence this time. Then Twilight said “No, that's impossible. The Piggs Boson doesn't interact enough with light to be directly visible.” “I don't use light to see.” said Discord. “Unlike ponies, I simply observe the structure of reality directly. I can see what's really there, not just the scattered lightwaves of what was there a fraction of an instant ago. I can count the protons in your body, though I'll admit I'm never sure at exactly which point partially-digested food starts counting as part of the body, that does tend to muddy the count somewhat, and there's the question of when to start counting the oxygen that you breathe in...” “Okaaaaayyyyyy...” said Twilight, suddenly even less sure of her plan. Still, it was the only idea she had, so... “Perhaps a little bit more emphasis on special and general relativity, then, and less on quantum mechanics...” she mused. * * * “...which means that the twin who was travelling -” said Twilight. “Is younger than the twin who stayed at home.” said Discord. He yawned. “Exactly!” nodded Twilight. “Now, some ponies raised the question, if we take the entire situation in the reference frame of the travelling twin, then wouldn't the stay-at-home twin be younger? And the answer to that is -” “The travelling twin uses two different inertial reference frames during his journey.” said Discord, bored. “One outgoing and one incoming. Analysing with regard to either results in the travelling twin being younger than the stay-at-home twin when he gets back home.” “Okay.” said Twilight. “You seem to have a good handle on that problem.” She turned the page. “Ah, here's an interesting one. There are two spaceships, joined by a piece of string. The string is taut, but fragile. Both ships start out stationery with regard to each other. They simultaneously start accelerating at the same rate...” Discord sighed. “The string breaks.” he said. Twilight's eye twitched. “I hadn't even finished asking the question yet! Wait... how does that work? If both accelerate simultaneously...” Discord sighed again, and let his attention wander. Outside the window, birds were singing, the sun was shining... inside the library, he could hear Spike vigorously assuring some filly that she was not allowed to take out a certain book on the strict orders of her sister Rarity... “...huh, what do you know, the string does break!” said Twilight, dropping her chalk. “Told you so.” said Discord. “Alright. Well, then. Special relativity does not properly take gravity into account, so let us move on to general relativity. To do so, we need to add in the Equivalence Principle; that is, the principle that, over infinitesimally small distances, gravity is equivalent to acceleration...” Discord sighed again. “I had a thousand years with nothing better to do than stand there and think about things.” he said. “I very much doubt that anything in that book will come as any sort of surprise to me.” “But there's still a chance, right?” asked Twilight. “A very, very small chance.” conceded Discord. “Then let's continue.” said Twilight. Discord sighed. * * * “Well, it was a very small chance.” said Twilight, as the sun sank below the horizon. Discord sighed. “I didn't really expect it to work.” he admitted. “I really, really hope Spike has something worthwhile. I don't want him to fail.” “Even if he does,” asked Twilight, “would you really have to go back to your old, evil ways?” Discord raised a claw, and stroked his beard for a few moments. “Yes,” he said eventually. “It'll get me turned to stone sooner or later; but if I don't then I'll go quite literally insane and get turned to stone in any case. Either way... it's not going to be pleasant. Incidentally, could you tell Spike from me that Fluttershy already took me into the Everfree, and so I really don't expect to find anything surprising in there?”