“Hey! You must be, uh, Rose Bud? Did you know that roses have all sorts of funny meanings? Like, y’know, love and happiness and innocence and all that junk! So cool, y’know? My boyfriend keeps talking about that stuff? Total flower nerd if you ask me.” The pinkish unicorn planted herself next to Amber in the crowded lecture hall and started to rummage in her bag with her magic. Her cutie mark was stylized bird, probably a magpie, Amber mused. “Oh, hold that quick, will you?” With that she hovered a paper cup of steaming coffee right in front of Amber and let go to better concentrate on her rummaging activity.
Amber tried to grasp the cup in her magic. Her horn cracked and sparked, an auburn aura flickered around the cup, then it fell through and spilled hot coffee over Amber’s legs before it hit the floor. With some effort, she managed to right the much lighter cup on the ground. She bit down the searing pain along her legs. First she would correct the other pony’s misapprehension of her identity.
“You guessed that from my cutie mark.” It was no question. “And no, my name is Amber Rose.” She broke eye contact only for a second to indicate the puddle of coffee with a glance. “I would appreciate a towel or tissue.”
The deadpanned remarks caught the magpie pony off guard. She stared a moment too long, then started rummaging with greater urgency until she found a pack of tissues. “So sorry about that. What’s wrong with your horn?”
“I had an accident some eight years ago. My magic has never been what it was,” said Amber.
The magpie pony dabbed at some of the spilled coffee. “Oh, so sorry to hear that, Rose Bud,” she said. Her face was a caricature of concern.
“It’s Amber Rose.” She took another tissue. Some ponies made her wonder whether she had chosen the right degree. How could she make a difference in the world when she was surrounded with colleagues who could not even get her name right?
“Hmm, so there are limits to these prophetic abilities of parents? Y’know, when they, like, totally predict their children’s cutie marks when they pick the names?” the magpie pony who had still not introduced herself said. “Now, if your name is Rose, you know what that means, right? Once that bud there blossoms, it’ll totally be like a beautiful yellow rose, y’know?” A smile, then it faded. “Except, y’know, cutie marks never change, now do they? But don’t you let it get you down that you’ll never blossom, you hear me!” She tried to make her voice sound belligerent.
The pain from the hot coffee lessened. “There’s nothing prophetic about it.” Amber looked her in the eyes while she quietly enjoyed to again ignore the latter half of the magpie pony’s verbal effluvium. “Ponies’ physiology allows them only once in their lives to form a cutie mark, and this usually happens as they enter adolescence. At that time, their interests are still very much inspired or influenced by their families and their immediate environments, the same factors that often inform their parents’ choice of their names. Their own names probably even influence them. Many ponies switch occupations later in their lives and find that they are just as or more gifted in their new vocation.”
The magpie pony looked at her blankly.
Moments before the lecture was about to start she turned toward Amber again. “I’m Mag Pie, by the way.” They shook hooves.
It was the first lecture in Mass Communication 101 in the first semester of Amber’s journalism degree. The professor introduced herself as Ms. Butterfly Peak, almost like Amber’s mother’s name, and stressed that she would prefer to be addressed with her first name, keeping the “Ms.” but that she did not insist on the academic title.
The stale air made Amber drowsy, but she looked up when Ms. Butterfly concluded the introductory section of her lecture with a first question.
“Here’s a case in point. Who knows what the great astrophysicist Tenderhoof is known for?”
When no one dared to speak, Amber answered without so much as raising her hoof. “He was a fraud. Till his death he made millions selling his stupid cutie mark readings to gullible parents, companies, even academic scholarship programs. Countless students were barred from their dream jobs when proper vocational counseling would’ve revealed their real aptitudes and interests.” She kept her voice calm but her passion shone through.
Ms. Butterfly looked askance. “No, that must be a different pony. The Tenderhoof I’m referring to is astrophysicist as I said. He’s still alive. He made an important observation of Starswirlian physics, the Tenderhoof self-consistency principle, which bars us from using Starswirlian time travel to change the past. But it’s not so much the principle that I wanted to mention but the way he …”
“You’re right,” Amber interrupted. But before the lecture concluded, she would actually get to correct the professor a few times on issues outside her field.
There were no bat ponies in the audience, so when the professor touched on the founding of Equestria in one of her examples, she felt she had to stand up for them. “You’re forgetting the bat ponies. Equestria would not have flourished without their high technology. They already had their cities inside the mountains when the three tribes settled this land.”
Then the lecture was over, and Amber wanted to leave. She waited for Mag Pie to clear her seat at the aisle. Mag Pie, however, turned around and looked at something right below Amber’s chin. “Uhm, Amber Rose? I’m sorry about what I said earlier, y’know? That you would never blossom? I’m sure you will.”
Amber quietly decided that she was all right after all.
“Can you tell me how you got your cutie mark?” Mag Pie asked.
“I was in a coma when it happened,” Amber said, “due to this accident.”
Mag Pie seemed uncertain how to react. Amber wanted to reassure her that there was no reason to feel sorry for her, that she had won at least as much as she had lost that day, but then Mag Pie just nodded a goodbye and dove into the stream of students along the aisle.
Amber did not mind much. She expected to see her again the next day.
Amber stepped outside of the department wing and was greeted by the smile of her older brother, Damask Rose.
“Hey bubs!” she exclaimed.
“Hei sisko!”
He had called her sisko for as long as she could remember. When she had just started school, he was abroad on a student exchange where he must have picked up the foreign term—and he was not known to forget things.
Amber cleared the stairs with one jump and embraced him.
“How was your first day, Amber?”
“It was fun!” She slumped against him as they walked and felt the irregular bobbing of his limp. Thankfully, it did not cause him pain anymore. “I think I’ll have some fun debates with the professor. And someone spilled coffee over me.”
“That was fun too?”
“Naw.”
“Did they survive?” he quipped.
She laughed. “The professor or the filly with the coffee? Both survived. She was alright.”
“The lakelet with the spouting fountain is nearby. You remember it, right? The one where we inaugurated your first model ship, the shallop, when we visited Canterlot the first time? We can take a swim. The coffee stain will wash off.”
“Oh, bubs, that reminds me. You won’t believe what I saw the other day!” Amber did not wait for a reply. “You remember that model ship I loved so much when we were here the first time?” It had been eight years since that vacation, but she knew her brother would remember it. She had entreated her parents for days to buy it, but it was much too expensive.
“Of course. A three-masted, lateen-rigged xebec.”
“Yes! Yes! With the weird figurehead. I saw it again in a store the other day, it was even on sale,” Amber said. “The bowsprit was as long as I remembered, almost as long as her foremast, but I had forgotten that it was raked forward just as her mizzenmast was raked back. But I immediately recognized her when I saw her there.” She enjoyed reminiscing about the stay even though it had ended in disaster for her—and her brother also had a painful encounter with hotel furniture, she recalled.
“Did you buy her?” Damask asked.
“Naw. It would’ve been just another piece of memorabilia.” They walked in silence for a moment. Then Amber remembered her brother’s suggestion to go swimming in the lake and said, “I’ll go straight home, shower, and unpack some more of my moving boxes.” Hastily she added, “But please tag along.”
“Aw! What’s the difference between a shower and a bath in the lakelet? Soap is overrated.”
“Not at all,” Amber said. “Soap is lyotropic liquid crystal, it’s like bathing in gems!”
“But do be careful that you don’t end up like our Ponyville soap shop, burned to a crisp because somepony forgot about the no magic rule.”
“C’mon, I was just a toddler!” She knew he was just teasing her with the old story but quickly changed the topic anyway. “Say, what courses do you have this semester?”
“We have mandatory math and physics courses, but I’ve also signed up for a course in plant engineering. Dad recommended that I specialize in that direction, and it does sound interesting.”
At one point on their walk home, when they were passing a hypnotherapist’s practice, Damask noticed a tail—they giggled about the pun. He thought they were being followed when he repeatedly saw a pink tail vanish around corners when he turned. But why would anyone want to follow them?
At Amber’s apartment they hugged goodbye.
The next morning, Amber awoke to the soft rays of the morning sun playing on her face. Or maybe it was just the flap of the newspaper falling through the mail slot.
Sips from her hot cup of espresso washed new life into her limbs while she read the latest news. After years of advocacy, Princess Twilight Sparkle’s campaign for a greater role of bat pony history in school curricula had reached its tipping point and was finally gaining broad support from teachers and parents. Amber still remembered the librarian fondly from the time they both lived in Ponyville so many years ago.
But there were also bad news. Crop failures were wreaking havoc in the Griffon Kingdom for the third successive year. Their reserves had long run out, and they depended on donations from Equestria, Prance, and other nearby nations. According to the latest estimates, over eight million griffons suffered malnutrition. The article concluded that if only they had been able to predict the catastrophe a few years in advance, they could have held back greater reserves.
When Amber turned the page again, a flyer sailed to the floor. She bowed down and picked it up. It was much too unprofessionally printed to be from the newspaper press she decided, but it did promise a hundred bits for just a quick questionnaire. That was more than usual but not so much as to reek of scam. The room would be crowded.
Thanks to the comprehensive social security in Equestria, Amber never thought of herself as poor. She had everything she needed and could even engage in many of the cultural activities Canterlot provided. A few extra bits were still always welcome.
Amber was amazed to notice that it was perfectly timed, too, as if the organizers of the study had predicted her course schedule. She would stop by the department of post-Starswirlian magic, take the questionnaire, and most likely still have enough time to get back to the journalism department at a leisurely trot.
She recognized that the address was on the premises of the university, so she found it easily. She had expected to find a Rainy Day–style building mirroring in its architecture the outlandish spirit of the department it housed. Instead she found that the address just lead to another part of the same plain and functional building that also held the department of Starswirlian magic as well as several other schools of magic. She stopped herself from double-checking the flyer. Room 023. That must be on the ground floor.
Although Amber was barely a minute early, only a single pony waited in front of the room. She was a tall, white unicorn with bluish mane and tail, and heavy glasses. Her cutie mark were three fleurs-de-lis. A hundred bits for a simple questionnaire? Scores of ponies should be milling around that door. Or are they already inside?
The door was ajar. Amber decided to just walk past for now as if she was headed for the lecture hall, but peek inside the room from the corner of her eye.
“Hi! Are you here for the questionnaire?” the other unicorn asked.
Amber’s heart raced. Darn, I used to be better at this. “Uh, yeah.”
“Wonderful! The room is taken by another group unfortunately, but we can go to my office.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for others, Ms. …?” Amber wondered whether it was wise to ask two questions at once if you wanted answers.
“Uhm, yeah, we can wait a few more minutes. You can call me Liz.”
“What are you investigating with the questionnaire? Empirical studies, or any interest in the real world, is rather atypical for post-Starswirlian research, I understand.” She had not intended to make the question sound disrespectful. Neither did she care. White fur, fleurs-de-lis—who does she remind me of?
“Oh, don’t tell me about the ‘real world’!” the researcher said much too loudly. “I’ve been a model, a nurse, and a cartographer; I know everything about this so-called ‘real world.’ Change the projection and you got a completely different ‘real world.’ And all of them are eclectically awful.” She wheezed. “Ponies go hungry, are hurt, or fall sick, the causes so complex that no pony can make sound predictions. We sully our models with our arbitrary simplifying assumptions then measure the awful precision that remains, giddy like the foal who drew a watch on her wrist and saw that it gave the right time once a day. There is just no escaping the eclectic impurity once you put units in your magic.”
“Twice.” Amber was already starting to enjoy this batty conversation. Was she really using forms of eclectic as general-purpose swear words? “So your conclusion is to cloister yourself in your imaginary realms of pure, theoretical magic and forget about the real world?”
“Once this is all over.” The unicorn nodded slowly and repeatedly, her eyes suddenly downcast.
Amber was ready to either chide her for abandoning her fellow ponies or encourage her to let actual problems give focus to her abstract pursuits, but this cryptic statement caught her off guard. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, I mean just this particular, uh, project of mine. It has been occupying my mind for some years now.” She seemed to notice her nodding and stopped it. “For which I’m glad, don’t you worry. It has given my life purpose. I often picture myself on my deathbed evaluating my life’s accomplishments and deciding whether it has been worth its while. I don’t want to breathe my last breath in the knowledge that I let the impurity prevail, Amber, that my life had been in vain.”
“Yes, that’s why I chose to study journalism—well, apart from the stuff about impurity.”
“But you are aimless! You’ve been searching the whole ‘real world’ for any kind of purpose you can appropriate for your life, and yet here you are: aimless!” She took a deep breath and forced a calmer register. “And it’s all my fault. I’m so sorry.”
Amber considered that. As crazy as it all sounded, it was not without merit. “Why is any of that your fault?”
The researcher started to nod again for a few seconds. “I think we’ve waited long enough. Let’s go now. My office is over in the castle.”
Way to change the topic, but seriously, she has an office in the castle? The royals don’t let just anyone have an office in the castle! Amber wondered again where she might have seen her before. Maybe at a Summer Sun Celebration? Or at Twilight Sparkle’s coronation years earlier? She wished she had her brother’s memory. But something else was still on her mind as well. “So why do you conduct empirical research?”
“Oh, believe me, it has taken me some years of soul-searching, and I don’t think I’ll do it again. Appreciate it!”
Evasive answer number two. It was exhausting to try to get straight answers from that pony. Amber decided to just get the hundred bits and forget about it.
They walked in silence until they reached the castle. The researcher produced a key and lead the way through a side entrance and then through a maze of hallways, staircases, and a few more locked doors. Amber noted with relief that some of the guards even greeted her, so she was not just some grifter who somehow got her hooves on the right keys.
They were walking past many simple, functional offices now, each with a window in the door that allowed Amber to inspect the interior. Not much was there for her to see since most were empty, but the wide windows overlooking a courtyard admitted much of the morning sunshine and even bathed the hallway in inviting hues.
She was again levitating her key in front of her when she turned to Amber. “Pardon the mess. I used to collect newspapers back in the day. I stopped when I missed an issue, but I couldn’t bring myself to trash them yet, so I dumped them all in here.”
The researcher opened her office and asked Amber to take a seat in front of her desk. Amber noted at once that there was only one chair there. Between the stacks of old newspapers, books, scrolls, maps, and desultory miscellanea, hardly another chair could have fit into the place. Most striking, however, was the magical equipment that lined the walls and even the ceiling, devices completely inscrutable to Amber.
“Let’s get right down to business,” said the researcher. She took a notebook from a drawer and wrote down the date. “You haven’t told me your name. Don’t worry, I will not publish it in any fashion, but I would like to be able to get back in touch with you should the circumstances require it.”
“Amber Rose.” While she spoke, she looked her interviewer in the eyes but her attention was absorbed by a strangely pulsing apparatus that hovered above the researcher’s head.
“Where did you grow up, Amber?”
“In Ponyville.”
“How long have been living in Canterlot?”
“For about a month.”
She scribbled into her notebook. “Hmm. Okay. That would be all, but please wait a little moment longer. I have something for you.”
Amber cocked one eyebrow. That’s it? Already?
The researcher removed a hundred bit bill from her wallet and levitated a large tube from the wall over to Amber.
Amber noticed with a little surprise that she made no indication for Amber to take the tube into her own magic. Surely, it would have been much too heavy for her. Instead, the researcher leaned it against her chair and set the bill in her lap. In that one apprehensive moment, however, when Amber thought the tube would crash to the floor next to her, she noticed a framed certificate on the wall where it had leaned. It was a PhD certificate in cartography and geovisualization for a certain Fleur de Lis.
Fleur! Of course! Now she remembered who that pony reminded her of—apart from the mane, which she may have dyed.
“Amber, do you sometimes wish you could go back in time to undo your past mistakes?”
Amber had not considered it in a long time. She was still reeling from her epiphany and trying to disentangle its possible implications. She could not reminisce about past mistakes now. She looked at Fleur quizzically.
“Well, today is your lucky day,” Fleur continued as if Amber had answered. Then, not wasting a second, she shot a ray of magic energy from her horn into the contraption above her. A cone of light cut outward from it and through air, desk, books, newspapers right toward Amber. When she wanted to jump away, it had already enclosed her on all sides.
Amber groaned under a tremendous pressure, as if she were diving much too deep. Then a throbbing headache set in that knocked her unconscious within seconds.