//------------------------------// // Worst pony // Story: Moments // by Bad Horse //------------------------------// “I’m looking for four-leaf clovers,” she tells me, and pokes at the weeds that have sprung up around the edges of somepony’s house. “The south side of the street is the lucky side.” Is my smile quite as bright? Is it my imagination, or does it strain at the corners? When I finally saw the flaw in using the theorem, and the single optimized routine I’d painstakingly constructed exploded into an infinity of possibilities for me to choose from, I concluded almost immediately that I wouldn’t be able to. That was quick of me. Suspiciously quick. A scientist tests her beliefs. I’ve never tried. I’ve never tried. “One dozen each of those irresistible bear claws and eclairs, please!” I tell Mrs. Cake with a smile. My rationalizations fall apart like rotten lace when I hold them up to the sun. Each cycle is not the same. Each time through, some different detail catches my eye—the perfect reflective smoothness of the glaze on the eclairs, the subtle expansion of Derpy’s flight feathers when I mention Luna. I wanted to believe I’d lost the freedom to choose. Just like I’d wanted to believe the theorem could tell me what to do. Better to keep on doing what I’d been doing, until the repetition blurred the pain of all my mistakes and all the wrong I’d done into a mindless dull ache. I tried to twist science into absolving me of everything. But science doesn’t twist. It’s a ray of light, bright and inflexible. You can’t turn it to go wherever you want to go, prove whatever you want to prove. You can follow it, or wander in darkness. “Scootaloo”, I say, “you will fly someday. I promise.” I know I’m free, I’m almost sure I’m free, yet I repeat the lie one more time, exactly as before. Or did I just blink? When I began the lies, it seemed like kindness. Like giving a foal a storybook where the friendless colt saves the town on the third page from the end, and everypony loves him. But you can only read that story so many times. The best lives, like the best books, are ones you could repeat over and over without shame. I know that now. Or at least, that’s how I feel. My mind’s a consequentialist, but my conscience remains a stubborn deontologist. “And what’re you gonna do about it?” Apple Bloom asks. Please stop asking me, Apple Bloom. If I’m not free, then I’m just a cog in a wheel, turning in an endless circle, helpless, blameless. “I need a hug,” I tell Big Mac. But if I am—if I’ve freely chosen to lie to my friends and treat them like children, and push myself on Big Mac, over and over and over again— “Hush, now,” Big Mac whispers, as he strokes my mane.  If I am free, I don’t want to know. In the distance I hear the clop of hooves. I look up. Big Mac’s eyes have turned to the star. I can already hear shouts from the village. I lift my muzzle towards his. “Big Mac,” I hear my own strangled voice say, “we’re all going to die.” He stumbles back in slow motion, his jaw swings slowly open, as I think: I’ve done it! I’ve broken free! A shiver of joy sweeps from my head to my hindquarters in a wave, one second before the icy horror of knowing who and what I truly am crashes over me. Big Mac whinnies and turns, galloping down the path towards Fluttershy’s cottage. Another shiver passes over me, but not one of joy. I stand and stretch my neck out after him. “You’ll never reach her in time!” I shriek, through lips drawn back as tight as a bow. Damn him. Damn him to Tartarus. I should let him die. All die. Bury my humiliation under a million billion tons of rock. But, I learned something. And a second thing: I’m a monster. And a third: I’m free. Also, Big Mac apparently has a thing for Fluttershy. It's always the quiet ones you’ve got to look out for. My fur bristles, charged with magic. The bright colors before me blur; the sky thickens to a sickly haze, and—