//------------------------------// // Canterlot consequences. Version 1 // Story: Being of Two Minds // by cosmofur //------------------------------// Princesses Celestia would tell you that she never paces, at least she never admits to it. Sure there’s been times when awaiting stressful news she would walk from one end of the long stained glass window gallery to the other, over and over and over again. But she would protest that was just to work out a kink in her legs or to enjoy the fine works from many different angles. She had similar explanations about the times she had been caught walking in circles in the foyer of the Sun Tower, where the Elements of Harmony had once been kept. Not a single pony on the castle staff believed her, even for a moment. Yet at the same time, if you wished to keep your cushy job sorting tax forms for the equestrian government, it was best not to point this out. So not a guard, nurse, accountant, butler, maid der fay, secretary, clerk, intern or janitor in the Castle dared called what Celestia was doing in front of her Sister’s bedroom, pacing. It just looked like it. Celestia had been at her Sister’s room within minutes of getting the night guards report that she had failed to awaken at her customary time. Celestia, knew about Luna’s dream walking skills, and at first wasn’t too concerned, so she just lowered the moon, figuring she would get to tease Luna about it later. But as minutes stretched into hours Celestia started to get, well, she would call it ‘mildly concerned.’ The staff would call it ‘having a major hissy fit.’ A score of doctors were summoned from CMC, Canterlot Medical Center to care for Luna’s body, while Celestia in a series of rapid teleports had summoned personally the entire senior staff from her School for Gifted Unicorns to consult about the magical implications of her sister’s comatose state. The entire castle was in panic mode, guards were running each and every way, some carried actual messages or delivering supplies for the doctors, but the majority did so just to seem busy as fear started to overtake sanity. Meanwhile Celestia, definitely was NOT pacing as she walked back and forth in the antiroom of her sister’s chambers. There she shakingly drank cup after cup of tea, while elderly mages, many still dressed in night clothes debated and argued about what magical calamity the nation faced. Fist fights only broke out, a few times. Hours later Celestia was still drinking tea, stepping over two esteemed peers on the themographic and metapolytacktial colleges as they wrested on the ground about the merits of globularpholonic fields and necrodipholonic brines. Several bets were riding on the argument, but Celestia was too distracted to really care, besides the ten bits she had put down on Professor Night Song, wasn’t even a gamble, she had seen his choke hold on unwary undergraduates before. She lifted her tea cup to her lips and was about to down her eighteenth cup this evening, when a burst of green dragon fire dropped a scroll, right into her tea cup. Scrunching her muzzle at the mess, Celestia fished out the scroll from the tea with her magic, flipping the worst of the water off of it. Seeing the message was from Twilight, Celestia allowed herself a small smile. If she wasn’t so concerned about her sister, reading any notes from Twilight would have been on Celestia’s top agenda, but now with Luna failing to return from her dream walking, Celestia considered just putting Twilights message off to the side. Certainly she could read it later? Celetia floated the still unread scroll over to the mantlepiece and was shocked to see that there were three other scrolls, just like it, rolled up and unread. Had she been ignoring multiple messages from Twilight? That was so unlike her. Celestia frowned at herself, she really needs to apologize to Twilight later, but the idea of reading another cheerful friendship report when Luna was missing just seemed a too frivolous use of her time. Wait! Twilight no longer sent her friendship reports. Celestia opened her eyes wide, had she been THAT distracted? She picked up one of the scrolls randomly and started reading it, and the the normally placid Princess poker face completely failed her, like a roller coaster she went from one high or low after another. Celestia nearly collapsed from relief when the note clearly stated that Luna was with Twilight. She was so relieved that when the note continued to explain that Luna was trapped in a male unicorn’s body for the day, that Celestia fell on her withers wildly laughing. Which drew some interesting looks from the attending mages and guards. But the emotional roller coaster took a deep dive when another of Twilights missives described the disaster in Coltsdale. It took all of Celestia’s self control to keep herself from literally breaking into solar flames in anger due to the injustice of it all. Her anger was still burning when she read through the next part of Twilights notes, Luna’s strange encounter with the alien Parker. She had next to no feelings on that issue, other than some mild confusion, it just seemed of such little importance compared to Coltsdale. The last note was a message from Luna to telling Celestia that she should raise the moon that evening because Luna was unlikely to be able to return to her own body until after darkness fell. Seeing that the day was nearly ended, Celestia gladly prepared to do her sister’s duty one more time, knowing she was on her way home. After putting the sun to bed and greeting Luna’s moon, Celestia returned to Luna’s room to await her sister. She sat next to Luna’s body for another hour before the Moon Princess opened her eyes and gave her big sister a sad smile. Celestia smiled back, and the two Alicorns hugged each other, taking a moment because they both knew that in their own ways, both had been awake for more than a day, there was not going to be any rest soon. They had defenses to prepare and plan. During that day, Luna and Celestia sequestered themselves in their private offices and Luna explained to Celestia everything she had discovered about the Cult, including how much magic had been siphoned from the unicorn horns. There had been some darker spellwork and tests that Luna performed when she was in Red Wood’s body that gave her additional technical insights on the type of spells the horns had been prepared for. The news was grim. Late into the following afternoon, the two Princesses took a short break to check up on Twilight and her friends, having sent guards, to meet the Fillydelphia train and escort them all, including Banyan and Red Wood to the Castle . It was a sign of how tired, both physically, and emotionally that despite having the two first hand Coltsdale witnesses ie Twilight and Rainbow Dash and the oddity of Red Wood right in front of them, Celestia and Luna yawned then just told the group that suites had been prepared for them in the castle, and good night. Wait, strike that, it wasn’t that odd at all, they pretty much did the exact same thing at the first Crystal Empire Princess Summit. Twilight knowing the castle the best, took point in helping settle her friends and Red Wood’s family in. She was particularly concerned for the young colt, the stress of the last few days had been hard on Banyan. Pinkie wanted to cheer the colt up with a party, and Twilight couldn't stop the pink party pony from sneaking a pile of cakes from the kitchens but after a few hard glances and some what more direct language from an annoyed Rarity, even Pinkie got the hint and actually managed pull it down a few notches. Right now Twilight was certain, the colt and his father needed some semblance of normality and not parties. But in the end Twilight couldn't deliver even that, guards had been assigned to the stallions suite and though nothing overt was said, it was clear that Red Wood/Parker was more of a prisoner than a guest. Until it was time for bed, Fluttershy and Pinkie stayed with Banyan playing quiet boardgames. Twilight kept Red Wood company, trying to get whatever information he had about Parker, not that Red Wood knew that much more to tell, but he appreciated the company. Meanwhile the other girls just explored the castle. Applejack was mostly asking about for any further news or rumors about the recent events, while Rarity was keeping an eye out for any of her professional contacts. Rainbow just hung around, hoping for something interesting to come up, but when nothing did, she took off for the open garden training grounds and took the opportunity to stretch her wings with light exercises, plus it let her show off to the castle pegasie guards. With the falling of night, Luna and Celestia exchanged their skyborn charges, and retired to their personal chambers for the night, because of their disrupted sleep schedules, even Luna slept that night. Red Wood had closed his eyes to sleep, but as planned, Parker was the pony who opened them. It was early but already somepony was knocking quietly on the door. Yawning Parker slipped off the bed, he looked around for a robe to put on, before remembering that nopony cared if he answered the door nude. That was going to take a bit to get used to, but he didn’t have time to muse on it, as the knocking repeated and was more urgent. Not wanting the sleeping Banyan to be woken, Parker opened the door and stepped out into the hall rather than invite the knocker in. It was a golden armored guard the same one that had been there in the afternoon yesterday, he looked Parker up and down for a moment, then said, “For some reason I’m supposed to ask you your name again, Mr Red Wood.” Parker nodded, “Ahh yes, will I was Red Wood yesterday, but today Red Wood is sleeping in, and I’m sort of a tenant, the name is Parker. You can use Mister if you want, but I prefer just Parker.” The guard nodded,“I was told to bring you to the Princesses if you answered Parker, I don’t pretend to understand it though. Come follow me.” The guard led Parker to the castle gardens where Celestia sat in a vine covered gazebo, a tea setting for two already spread out. The guard saluted the Princess then left Parker standing there to take his place with a half dozen other guards at the base of the hill. Parker realized that though they were outside, this was probably even more private than any cloistered rooms in the castle. They had a clear view of anyone that might approach and the guards at the base of the hill would only hear anything if it was shouted down to them. As when he had met Luna, Parker wasn’t comfortable bowing, he didn’t know the right protocol so he just nodded his head and said “Princess.” For a long time Celestia just looked at Parker, her stare was uncomfortably penetrating. The silence seemed to last too long as if he had missed some critical social clue and she was waiting for him to do something. Parker was about to try to greet Celestia again, when she finally responded. “Tell me Mr Parker, are there no laws against Necromancy where you come from?” It wasn’t exactly the first question Parker expected, “Parden? I don’t understand.” “The raising of the dead, death magic, animating a dead body, that sort of magic is associated with the darkest evil. Yet, while you clearly practice it, I sense no clear evil in your heart. Can you explain that to me?” “Oh, you mean Red Wood’s body. Yes, there’s no easy answer. I guess we have a different viewpoint on that.” Celestia looked stern,“I can see that, but this is very strange for us. I guess I better ask first, is the body of Red Wood alive or dead? Is he an animated golem to you or a living being?” Parker found the question odd, “I can only think of his body as being alive. Though it was dead only by a technical definition and only for a very short period, my people are just very good a certain types of medicine. True,I don’t believe your doctors could have revived him, the tools we use are more capable, and a repair job of this sort wouldn’t have been unusual on my world.” Celestia nodded, “Clearly your, hmm, people? Have some advance healing magic, but what I find disturbing from what Luna told me, you had planned on taking over Red Wood’s body, and not revive his spirit until your tool, that thing you call a Doctor, got confused and revived both your spirits in the same shell. Is this disregard of another’s bodies spirit typical? To treat the once living shell as if it was piece of useful rubbish to be claimed at your conveniences!” There was a sharpness to her voice, bordering on anger. Parker, blinked at this line of questioning, yes they had walked in an ethical gray area but the Princess seemed to be taking it as if it was just black or white. “Let me try to explain Princess, it was a very difficult choice for us. It not easy for us to reach out to your world, the path between is very tiny and every trip is very expensive. I’m sure if we had unlimited resources and time, we could send millions of Doctors that can heal most every injured pony, cure most of your diseases and do all sorts of wonders, but we don’t have that option. Sending my mind, spirit if you will, here along with the Doctor was the extreme limit of what we could do. We had no way to communicate, to talk to you, unless we could take on a physical presence on this side of the portal between our worlds.” “And the only way you could have physical presence is to steal the body of one of my little ponies?” “Yes! But the plan was for only after that pony was done with it, had the cultists not confused the Doctor, he would have seeked out the remains of an elderly pony in the morges of your hospitals, one for whom there was no question he had exhausted his time on this world. We had no way to know this cult existed and would have some prophecy about our arrival and then they would drop a healthy young body right at the foot of our gateway.” Celestia calmed her features, Parker wasn’t sure if she was just hiding her anger or was considering his claim. “Still even an elderly pony’s body should be respected, it is very unusual for a dead pony to be anything but respectively interred in the soil by their family. Was there no other option for you?” “We considered other ways, like sending through a more general purpose tool than the Doctor, one that could manipulate objects to build a mechanical body. But when the math was done, we realized the largest body we could manage would be no bigger than a mouse, and the mind in that size body would have been of the same sort as the Doctors. I think we have already seen that artificial minds of that sort lack the wisdom to be trusted with such a complex mission as making contact with you ponies. Besides, in the past on my world, using for good purposes the bodies of people who have passed on was fairly common, has your medicine advanced to heart transplants yet?” Celestia frowned at this, “Yes, though it is far from a common procedure and is considered experimental. The ethics of saving one life, but at the loss of another, will always be difficult. Do you really think the take over of an entire dead body is the moral equivalent as a heart transplant?” Parker nodded, “When we had very few other options, yes.” Celestia poured some tea, and sipped at it for a long moment, “I will have to concede this point, but only because it is already a fait accompli, and I see no ethical way to reverse this or correct it. The Magic involved is far beyond any that I am comfortable with. But I will say this, you took Red Wood body without asking his permission, and handicapped him for the rest of his life, as he will now only have control of his fate only part of the time. This is a crime of stealing half of his life, if there was a way of punishing you, without also punishing him, I would consider it. If there should ever come a time when I find myself in the position to choses to save his life, or yours, I will declare now, that I would save his first.” Parker nodded, “I wouldn’t ask otherwise, he has a young child to care for, besides death is not so fearful for my people. If I should die here, I would lose all the memories from this place and that would sadden me, but my life on my world would continue. I would just be ignorant of all that has occurred here, an unfortunate amnesia but not a fatal one.” Celestia looked surprised by that, “That's very advance magic, only in theory have we ever considered that possibility. Even with my sister and my extended lives we still have reason to fear death, yet you seem to claim no such fear?” Parker laughed, “I certainly can experience fear, and I would fight to live if that option was available, we are far from immune to pain and loss, especially emotional pain which no known form of immortality can inoculate you from.” “So your people are also immortal? Is that common there? It exists here but very few can claim that, and indeed most that my ponies call immortal, are in fact, just long lived and all of us will face death one day.” Celestia looked doubtful. “We are very new to the idea, only having found ways to cure most physical forms of death in the last couple of generations. Most of my people still live a physical life for eighty to a hundred years, then transform to a non physical existence. In that form there is good reason to believe that some remnants of our people will live to see the heat death of our universe, some tens of trillion years into the future. Of course such long lives will make them very different people by the time they reach such an age. I guess then, they will then face a final mortality.” Celestia shook her head at the thought, “This is a very strange world you come from. With such advance magic, why did you wish to come here?” Parker took a deep breath, “Princess, I’m just a technician ment to open the way so that others, trained diplomats could follow. I can only tell you the reasons why I personally wanted to join the researchers that found the path to your world. Celestia laughed lightly, “I have been dealing with armies of diplomats for centuries, you are doing a fine job, even as an amature. Please tell me your personal reasons for coming here.” It was a leading question, the kind they warn you about when going on job interviews, Parker could have given her a pat professional answer, instead he thought deep and answered from his gut, “I’m not here to negotiate trade treaties, or the exchange rates for currencies and I can’t even imagine any way we could have any sort of defence packs. I’m sure the diplomats who follow me will want to talk about that kinda stuff, but to me that’s all nonsense. I’m here for the adventure, to discover something that I would never find on my home. My world has been mapped down to the inch, no part of it hasn’t been mined, farmed, stamped on, claimed and then fought over, but this is a world with unknown horizons, I truly have no idea what’s on the other side of your oceans, or beyond Everfree forest. And to get a glimpse of that, to smell something really new, is the most precious thing I can think of.” Celestia looked at Parker appraisingly, “Your race may know how to extend lives, but I sense you yourself is still very young.” Parker smiled at that question, “Years may pass differently on different worlds. Comparing years may not fair. I’m still under a century old, with an organic rather than a non physical body waiting for me back in my world, if that’s what you’re asking.” Celestia laughed, “Once you’ve been around a few thousand years, it takes more than a new horizon to see something new. But I understand the sentiment. I’m still not certain I want to open diplomatic relationships with your world yet, but if we do, I’ll probably want to take a sabbatical and go visit your world for the very same reason.” Parker smiled back, “Once we open a real return portal, that shouldn’t be a problem.” Then he frowned, “But the doctor used up all the assembly materials to patch Red Wood and my heads together. Without that material I can’t enlarge the portal or return home. I have to wait to see if my people on the other side will try again.” “Is it possible they will abandon you here? Not try again?” There was a bit of a hopeful note in the Princesses voice, it wasn't as if she didn’didn't want to make new friends and allies but right now she had enough on her plate. “Depends on how much telemetry they got when the Doctor was sent though, if the portal cut off before he sent an all clear sign, they may have assumed the worst and cut their loses. Every attempt is very expensive and there are other groups clamoring for the time and money. Celestia sipped her tea for a few moments thinking, putting it down she said, “OK, another question come to mind. In both Luna’s and Twilights reports, they said you recognized them as princesses as soon as you saw them. Twilight I know does not wear her crown most of the time, and Luna said that on your world, you do not have Alicorns. So how did you know they were Princesses if you never saw them before?” Parker made a show of also drinking some tea, he really would have like to avoid this question, he had hoped nopony had noticed his existing knowledge of equestria, no such luck. “Princess the answer is going to be complicated. The sort of thing that they have college course about and still just scratch the surface.” The Princess smiled, “I’m on the board of half the colleges in equestria, with drawers full of degrees, not all of them honorary. Give me a chance.” “I guess I’m not telling you anything new when I say there are other universes?” Celestia nodded, “We have some experience with that.” “Wouldn’t have a magic mirror to an alternate world stashed away in the crystal empire, would you?” Celestia gasped, “You’re from that strange other world!” Parker shook his head, “Oh! so this version of equestria is tied to one of the equestria girls ones! But no, not that world, though it is closer to my home than equestria itself is.” Celestia asked “‘Version of equestria’? You’re implying there is more than one.” Parker nodded, “When I say there are an infinite number of worlds, I really mean INFINITE, it is not just a big number, it’s an unending number. Every possible equestria exists, from ones where the zebras attack and destroy most of pony kind, ones were all the mares are stallions and the stallions are mares and to others where Nightmare Moon’s evil spirit spawns as an innocent filly that Twilight raises as a daughter. That’s why it so hard to navigate between worlds. How do you address an envelope when the zip code would take forever to write down.” Celestia was about to ask ‘what is a zip code’ but suppressed the question seeing Parker’s point even if not the terminology. “With so many worlds, why did you chose ours, and how did you find us?” Parker answered, “We have a special tool, called a quantum computer, it not limited to finite rules, so we could search for other universes by describing what we wanted to find and the QC would find someplace that most closely matched it.” “So you searched for a world that looked like ours and your quantum whatever found equestria? But what made you think of a world like ours in the first place?” “You have to understand that to find a new world with the QC, you won’t get good results by asking a few scientists to sit around a conference table and make up on the fly the search pattern for a random new world. When you try that, you always end up looking at empty space, or just distant stars. You need lots of data points, lots of ideas and descriptions, thousands to millions of them to create enough of a pattern that can be searched for, and even then the QC will find a best match, not a perfect one. In order to have that many data points, we needed to use patterns that had inspired vast amounts of thought, fantasy, music, stories and theater.” Celestia frowned thinking she understood, “So you put in your QC thing stories? Stories about us?” Parker tried to remember some of the notes that he had been given about the project before he joined it. “We didn't start with pony stories, we wanted to find a world where the rules of physics was different enough to be interesting scientifically, but also have beings that we could talk to and communicate with. We first tried rich science fiction stories, like Star Trek and Dr Who at first, but it didn't work. We only got good results when we used stories that didn't include anything that looked like our species, humans.” “Star Trek? There’s an old series of novels called Saddle Trek, about ponies flying an airship between the stars, is that similar?” Parker chuckled, “I wouldn't doubt it.” Celestia wondered aloud, “Why using stories about your own species fail?” “Oh it’s really simple, it would work but only as a loop back to another boring human world, where instead of new and different physics to study, we’d just find worlds where human actors played the roles and acted out the stories. There are some of our scientists that found that interesting, ways to look back at historic events and such, but the group I’m working for, wants to find a different type of universe with real magic and new things to study. So the pony stories they found were some of the richest and most expressive stories we had that didn’t feature any humans at all. Hundreds, maybe thousands of authors, musicians and artists give the QC millions of data points to search for.” Celestia asked, “So you had writers that wrote lots of pony stories? Stories about us?” “Yes being like you are featured in some of our oldest stories, art, and music, in fact several of the important ponies of your world are key players in these stories, at least by name and basic description. I can’t be sure how close your real lives mimicked that of the stories. At least until I can compare notes, but that wasn't my job so I’m not really well prepared to do that.” “I’m not sure how I feel about being told, I’m just a story.” Parker smiled, “Don’t take it to heart, the stories were used to find you, not create you. You would have existed if the stories had been written or not. I just would have had no way to map a path to here without them. Besides the odds are good that even my world is just a story to some other place, and so on and so on, there’s no end to that rabbit hole.” Celestia chuckled at the thought, “So someone from your world could be reading about us drinking tea right now?” Parker shook his head, “Not from my world, we’re tied together now, that breaks the relationship , but on some other world, almost certainly, and even more mind numbing is there probably someone in an even more distant fourth world, watching that reader. I wish Pinkie was here, she seems to have the knack for breaking the fourth wall and might tell us for certain.” Celestia shook her head, “When Twilight was still writing friendship reports to me, she told me that there are some questions you just shouldn't ask Pinkie and … WAIT! You knew about that, you read about Pinkie! This is a bit hard to digest.” After a moment Celestia continued, “OK I’m going to think on this for a while, meanwhile we have some practical issues to deal with. I know you said your not a trained diplomat, but for now, you’re all we have from your world. So I’m going to make it formal. This will give you certain legal rights as a diplomat, and I’ll arrange a stipend to cover your living expenses but you’ll be responsible for the maintenance of your mission and its grounds. Nothing extravagant mind you. Also we have to consider Red Wood and Banyan. They are innocent but their lives are forever changed by these events.” After pausing to think for a few minutes, Celeta said, “Here are the rules you will need to follow to keep from being declared Pony non grata, which, as you have no place to be expelled back to, is something you don’t want to happen. One, you have to give Red Wood a more than fair share of time controlling your and his body. I suspect due to his special talents he will want to open a shop and continue his craft work. I’ll provided financial assistance if he chooses that. But that is for him, not you to use. Two, I’m very concerned with Banyan, when you are in charge of Red Wood’s body, you are to treat Banyan as you would a close relative. 'Basicly you have shared parental responsibility for that colt and I will hold you to that. I don’t know his magic potential but I’ll try to help him get into one of the better schools here in Canterlot, maybe even my own gifted unicorn school. Three, I’m afraid your wish to explore beyond everfree and over the oceans will have to be deferred. I can’t let you leave Canterlot, until all the current mysteries are cleared up, I can not risk my little ponies with such an unknown. I will assign you a small team of guards to aid you and guard your diplomatic mission, but they will still report to me. Lastly, you are to make yourself available to myself or any of the other Princesses, anytime day or night we have any questions or need your input. There is still the unknown state of the Stone Heart Cult, they wanted you for some reason, and I’m going to find out what that reason was.” Parker nodded his head an agreement, there was really no argument he could make. But he had no illusion, with the guards Celestia was assigning and the restrictions on his movements, despite the title of ‘diplomate’, Parker was now Celestia’s prisoner, and would be so probably for the rest of his life.