I breathed in deeply, then let out the air as a deep sigh, eyes boring straight holes into the ceiling. I had become mesmerized by the sound of the rain, hadn't I? The individual drips all being drowned out by the greater whole of the downpour, just like anything in life. Just like everything in life, perhaps. I glanced around, shifting about on a tough wooden stool, looking for a window. This wasn't my house! But somewhere in me, I already knew that. As I found the window, my eyes were turned away by a paper pinned to the shut curtains: "DON'T OPEN THE CURTAINS. STAY AT THE TABLE. —Twilight."
I looked at the table in question. A number of papers were organized on the table, connected by strings of yarn in a very logical and appealing fashion. I followed the pink threads towards the top, which lead to a piece of paper, torn from a notebook.
Twilight: You have anterograde amnesia due to cranial trauma. Stay calm, you need to figure this out. I've laid down all the evidence. Make connections where possible. Do not use magic. You have a friend, Bigs. He's going to try and get in contact with our other friends. Until then, work out what you can.
—Twilight.
I nodded sagely, agreeing with my past self. I decided to survey the rest of the table before getting started with the evidence, though. Excluding the tightly-wound pinkish ball where the yarn seemed to have been drawn from and a hoof-operated cutter, there wasn't much else in front of me. All there was to be found was one other solitary paper, disconnected from the yarn, a mirror, and a crumbly blueberry muffin, partially eaten. I contemplated taking a bite, but judged that my stomach was feeling too ill to handle anything at that moment. The other paper was a different reminder.
Twilight: You'll probably read this before delving into the main evidence, so I'll put the reminders for stuff we should occasionally do or eventually do here. That way, they won't distract from our main work, but still get done.
Twilight: Remember to check your bandages with the mirror from time to time. Don't use magic. Just lift up the mirror and check behind your horn. If there's blood, put a reminder here to tell Bigs.
Twilight: Tell Bigs to change the bandages when he gets back.
Twilight: You need to translate the Equestrian Binary on the Hospital Report. I barely remembered this paper by the time I got done reading it, it needs to be transcribed to Twenty-Four Character to make it manageable.
Twilight: Seriously, if you're reading this, go transcribe the Hospital Report now.
Twilight: How depressing is it that I can procrastinate with amnesia? Honestly. Twilight, do the report next time you go through.
Twilight: I transcribed the Hospital Report into Twenty-Four Character Equestrian. Twilight, since you won't remember, I'm just going to remind you that it was really aggravating, and all the other Past Twilights should be chastised for their laziness and inability to commit to a task.
Twilight: There probably aren't any irregular reminders to do anymore. I'm going to leave this up here in case I figure out something else I should put down here, but you probably should put this paper back into the Mystery Bag, it's most likely to waste your time as you try and read the crossed-out stuff.
I grumbled. It had been a waste of my time. I tore off everything below my reminder to tell Bigs about my bandages, and then swept it off the table.
I ran over the preliminary message again, just to keep the memory fresh in my mind, and followed the first yarn down. It led to a raggedy sheet of papyrus which bore similar warnings to the prior. It was however, clearly older, and torn from the center down to the bottom edge. Two more pieces of yarn strung off from it. One led to a pair of pages labeled as the testimony of Bigs, which I quickly read through. The other led to a stack of paper covered in lines and dots—Equestrian Binary. I grumbled, not so much at the absurd and obtuse system of written language, but more so at the system which required it to be used in all official government documents. A hoofwritten transcription followed it, though, which was more than a little fortunate. I read through the transcription, which had converted over half a dozen pages of binary value into almost exactly a single page of Twenty-Four Character Equestrian.
Ponyville General Hospital,
Juniper Fifth, 3 5A
Tender-HeartThe patient, a light-purple unicorn with a dark-purple and magenta mane, entered the hospital sporting a significant head injury and a piece of papyrus impaled on her horn at 6h23. The patient identified herself as Twilight Sparkle, and requested "immediate examination." We promptly brought her into the examination room to assess her injury. Several minutes of observation confirmed her self-diagnosis of anterograde amnesia—Miss Sparkle was consistently incapable of remembering any event occurring more than eight minutes previous, and frequently forgot more recent events as well. Given her report of the night before, it is probable that some amount of retrograde amnesia is also present, as she cannot remember acquiring her wound. The retrograde amnesia is a limited factor, however, and not a significant worry of its own merit.
What raised the most concern is her head injury. Any blunt-force trauma that causes bleeding is always a reason for concern, however, careful analysis shows that she has suffered no noticeable damage to her skull. This particular wound is concerning not due to its magnitude, but instead due to its location. Since the impact was on the top of the patient's head, behind her casting horn, damage to her arcane functions was expected. An Arcane Resonance Scan confirmed our fears. Fortunately for our patient, she seems to have escaped any damage to the casting horn, but her arcanokeratin mass has suffered extreme cracking. Any attempts that she makes to use active magic may very well cause sparking below the flesh, within the arcanokeratin mass. This would severely exacerbate her condition, and attempts at sustained casting could worsen the damage to the arcanokeratin mass. In a worst-case scenario, active magic use could lead to an exponential buildup of heat from the cracked mass, to potentially fatal levels. Even in best-case scenarios, any sustained use of active magic would give her a dangerously high fever and a powerful migraine. When compounded with her amnesia the problem becomes worse still, as we cannot forbid her from casting when she won't be able to recall any instructions given to her.
Fortunately, the situation was handily remedied. A friend of the patient arrived, looking for her. After an explanation of the situation, the friend in question assured us that Twilight would not leave her sight, and magic would be strictly prohibited. As an emergency precaution, we gave the patient a passive magic injection, via charged crystalline fragment in a saline drip. Her medical history suggests that she responds better than most unicorns to charged crystalline, and it should accelerate the repair of her arcanokeratin mass as well as to help prevent her from doing permanent damage to herself.
The patient was discharged at 7h05, and requested a copy of the medical report transcript. Her friend has been given instructions to repeatedly give her the following instructions: head straight home, avoid using active magic at all cost, get plenty of rest and sustenance, and avoid all risky behavior.
I reflected over the medical report, grimacing. Not only had the contents of the reports concerned me, but the fact that it was my last piece of evidence troubled me. As a general rule, I disliked puzzles that didn't have all of their pieces. Had I forgotten something crucial? Or perhaps, did I just not have enough to work with? I identified the paper the transcription was written on as notebook paper, from my personal notebook. Good paper was expensive, but it was worth the cost, in my opinion. It was certainly paying off as I used its presence to discern that my notebook was nearby. A quick search found it underneath the table, along with with my lime-green mystery bag. I retrieved it, then turned to the first page, uncapped the writing pen tucked into its spirals, and began to write out my thoughts.
My Postulations Regarding Juniper Fifth:
Time Written: Sometime after noon.
Location: Canterlot, Equestria, Bigs' RoomI suppose I should write this down colloquially, in stream-of-consciousness style. Not a word I think should escape my pen, for the betterment of my own future knowledge. Any discoveries I make are useless if they aren't written down, after all.
1. I know that I have been to my library. The calligraphic style on the papyrus found in my mystery bag shows me that I was using a quill rather than my pen, which implies that I was in my library. The papyrus itself is telling of my location, as it is identical to the papyrus which I stock there. This makes for a clean-cut conclusion only I (or a close friend) could make.
2. I know that I have been to the Ponyville General Hospital. A hospital form could only have been retrieved from a hospital. Furthermore, it is on government-issued and sealed paper, written in Equestrian Binary.
3. I know that when I went to the hospital, it was 6h23, due to the contents of the hospital report.
4. I know that I went to the hospital from my house, from the contents of the papyrus.
5. From this I can extrapolate that I was at my house at around 6h00. It's approximately a twenty-minute walk to the hospital, and while my injury might have slowed me some, it is doubtful that I would take much longer than twenty minutes.
6. I traveled to Canterlot from Ponyville. I know this because I was in Ponyville, but now I am in Canterlot.
7. I had arrived in Canterlot before 8h00.
8. I probably took the train. I was found near the Canterlot Royal Train Station, and it is the most logical way in which I might travel from Ponyville to Canterlot is less than an hour.
9. I have been collecting evidence while suffering anterograde amnesia. Objects to demonstrate my location and status have been carried with me.
10. According to my previous thread of logic, I should have the ticket stub from the train ride to Canterlot. It is a key piece of evidence that shows my time, location, and activity, all at once.
I capped my pen happily. Writing down what I had to think invariably made me smile, and hum a little. It was liberating, in many ways. That someone later could read what you had written, and perhaps pick up where you had left off was inspiring in its own way. I looked around me, searching for the ticket stub. It wasn't on the table, but the lime-green mystery bag beckoned to me from under the table. I slid my stool along the side of the table so that I could properly search my bag while not disturbing the evidence, and brought the bag onto the table gently.
"Ticket stub," I thought aloud, repeating the word to myself over and over again so that I would not forget it. "Ticket stub, ticket stub, ticket stub, ticket stub."
I searched my bag relentlessly, every pocket opening and yielding its secrets. I thought about the ticket stub until it was my only remaining thought. My results though, were not promising. My search yielded two clumps of pocket lint, a really long black thread, and a sore throat that was still muttering "ticket stub" in between accidental mutterings of "pocket lint" as I gave up my search. I looked to the pile of papers, and scooted the stool over towards them, catching up on what had been written.
After I had swiftly read through what little evidence there was, I shook my head. I had taken far longer than I expected looking for my ticket stub, so long that I had forgotten much of the evidence, yet I still had nothing to show for it. I sat with my hooves supporting my head, thinking of what to do from where I left off. Eventually, I decided it would be better to let my thoughts flow to paper, and see where I went from there.
11. Despite what could only have been an intensive search, I do not have a ticket stub.
12. Regardless, I should have a ticket stub.
13. Three conclusions might be drawn from this contradiction. The first is that I might have lost the ticket stub. I tend towards organization, making this less likely, but under these extraneous circumstances, it is far from impossible. Another conclusion might be that I did not take the train. I might have been taken to Canterlot by flying chariot or an immensely powerful teleportation spell. The only other conclusion that I might come to is that the ticket stub was taken—stolen by a third party.
I shuddered. A less than pleasant line of thought... but perhaps it had merit. I continued writing, postulating, and hypothesizing. The more I wrote, though, the more I became convinced of one central fact. Evidence that I should have had was missing. A quote from a book on investigative theory that I had recently been reading came to mind.
"At times, a lack of evidence can be turned into a piece of evidence in it's own." (Keen Eye 994 4A, 93).