Mr. Kingpin had never really thought about knocks, but if he had then he might have supposed there wasn't much to them; they could be loud, quiet, or somewhere in between, and that was all. However, the knocks at the door of his bowling alley were the kind to prove such thoughts wrong: quiet, but clearly insistent.
“We're closed!” he called out, not deigning to look in the knocker's direction. It was, after all, half past six, the sun was well down, and he'd just finished sweeping up for the weekend.
Another extended family of knocks told him in no uncertain terms that the knocker didn't care about his problems. Grumbling, he turned himself around and saw the pony disturbing his peace through the glass door.
It was a mare who seemed to have quested long and far to find the most tasteful, elegant clothes in the world—just so that she could go to the other side of the globe and buy from there instead. An ugly gray bonnet thing had deflated around her head, sadly leaving enough room to display overlarge eyeglass things (somehow, Mr. Kingpin thought, it was important to refer to each of her clothes as a “thing”, if only to remind one that they didn't quite count). Beneath that was an overlarge purple robe thing, and above that was a tannish face with a determined expression. Probably no one too important, Kingpin thought, but I suppose I'd better humor her. “Can I help ya?” he said through the glass.
“This is Ponyville Lanes?” the mare asked in an odd accent.
“Says so on the sign.” Kingpin pointed up. “And if you'll read that one—” he pointed right, where a second sign informed passersby that they were closed “—you'll see that this isn't an incredible time for bowling.”
“I'm afraid I'm not here for that, Mr....”
“Kingpin.”
“I'm here for the arcade machine.” It wasn't immediately clear to Mr. Kingpin what was wrong about the mare's accent, but somehow it seemed as ill-fitting as her robe thing. Perhaps I should think of it as an accent-thing, then.
“Well, you can't come in and play that either, so come back in a few. G'night.” Kingpin turned tail on her.
“I'm not here to play it. You see, er... young man, I am A.K. Yearling.”
Young man? With a glance backward, Kingpin estimated he was twice the mare's age, her gray hair notwithstanding. Then it occurred to him that she'd stated a name, apparently with the expectation that he'd know it and, possibly, grovel. “Who?” he asked.
“The author of the Daring Do series of novels.”
“Oh.” Now the proverbial bells began to ring.
“Such as Daring Do and the Serpents of Sakat. That is to say, the one based on which you seem to have an... arcade game. And, from all I've heard, you seem to be making a profit on it, without my knowledge or permission.”
“... oh?”
Yearling rolled her eyes. “Young man, have you heard of copyright infringement?”
Kingpin could hardly keep from rolling his, from the way she kept putting on airs-things. “Miss Yearling, I'm quite sorry about this situation, but I think you should contact the manufacturer. I assumed that Shift Laboratories had contacted you already for the granting of permission.” Keep her talking, he thought. We don't need anyone asking questions about the machine; no need to open that can of code. “So, you're a writer, you say? You know, I've been thinking of writing a novel myself, I think I have the voice for it—”
“Don't get off topic. They claim up and down that they've never even manufactured a single one of these machines, and it appears that you are the sole proprietor. So here I am, Mr. Kingpin, with a simple demand: shut it down.”
“I'm afraid I can't do that—”
“I'm afraid I can force you to.” If it wasn't his imagination, her posh-ish accent slipped for a moment into something coarser, more threatening. Her eyes narrowed.
“Ma'am, you don't understand. This machine must stay operational....” He trailed off at the fire in her eyes, one which seemed strangely fierce considering its frumpy source. Eventually he added, “A life depends on it.”
She snorted. “Whose?”
Should not have said that. “It's a long story.”
“Long stories are exactly my business, young man—”
“All right!” he said, abruptly unlocking and yanking open the door to Ponyville Lanes.
Yearling gazed at him curiously. “You'll shut it down?”
“No. What I will do is, I will let you see it, and then you won't let anyone shut it down either.” He grimaced and directed her forward; with some hesitation, she followed him into the dark alleyway. Within several steps they were at the alcove wherein resided Daring Do and the Serpents of Sakat. He reached behind the machine, turned it on, pulled out one of his own bits, and placed it in the slot, bringing the game to life.
He'd long since cast aside all expectations about what the game would look like, and was therefore unsurprised to see the pixelated Daring Do in, not a desert, but what looked like an ancient temple before it had become ancient. Blocky waterfalls cascaded in the foreground and background, and reflected light played off the off-white marble; everything seemed to be slipping around in constant motion.
Everything, indeed, except Daring Do, who was still as a rock.
“Am I supposed to be impressed?” Yearling asked, peering at the pixels through her obnoxious glasses-things.
Kingpin sighed, reached around the machine once more, and pulled a hidden switch. When he looked back at the screen, Daring had not yet moved; he sighed and said, “Daring, you can show off.”
“Why are you talking to a machine—” Yearling's words were cut off as she looked back at the screen and jumped away with an astonished cry. Daring Do had flown to the other side, and her face filled the screen.
“Evenin', Kingpin,” she said with a lazy grin. Kingpin smiled back at her.
“It—it talks!” Yearling said. Her accent was gone, and for some reason her voice sounded very familiar.
“Excuse me—she talks.” Daring rolled her eyes. “So who's this frump? And why are you letting her in on the big secret? I thought we’d agreed I was officially just a fictional character.”
“Daring Do, this is... um... your author,” Kingpin said. "Say hello." Daring squinted at Yearling, and Yearling didn't have what it took to squint back. Kingpin went on. “She's trying to have you shut down, and I'm trying to persuade her otherwise. I daresay I've succeeded, Ms. Yearling?” he asked, with a tilt of the head as he regarded the author.
“Uh... I....” She'd lost her composure and accent in much the same way a child at the park could lose a helium balloon—irretrievably.
“I'll make this quick,” Kingpin said, “because it's been a long week for both of us.” He tapped Daring's machine for emphasis—lightly, as to avoid disturbing her. “She's alive, she's intelligent, and in most ways that matter she is real. You may think of her as a fictional character, Ms. Yearling, but if you shut her down, that means you've killed her. Are you a murderess?”
“I—you make some very good points, uh, young man, and I should—should definitely go—”
Daring Do laughed a laugh with such volume that it distorted the sound of the machine's speakers. “Oh my—oh my code!” she exclaimed, doubled over in mid-air. “It's like looking at a mirror!”
Kingpin gave Daring a confused look. “She doesn't look anything like a mirror.”
“Well, not to you!”
Daring pointed at Yearling, who was by now halfway out the alcove, but whose momentum had vanished as if to spite certain physical laws. “Come on, girl!” Daring said. “Show us what you've got! Shake that compass!”
Yearling sighed. “Oh, all right,” she said, and suddenly comprehension dawned on Kingpin—a whole choir of metaphorical bells ringing in his head. Of course her voice was familiar. “You showed me your secret... tit for tat.”
With a motion that seemed too fluid, Yearling's garment-things were cast aside, revealing a second Daring Do. She matched the one in the game perfectly, from her pith helmet to her wings to her compass rose cutie mark. Now Kingpin understood Daring's remark about her looking like a mirror, albeit one that had escaped from a thrift shop. That's good, actually, he thought. I should write that down.
After a few seconds, Daring Do—the one in reality, not the one in the game—though that was equally real, as he'd just explained—Daring Prime gave him a look like a magician who'd just made a castle disappear in front of an audience of thousands and received no applause. “Well?” she asked him. “Aren't you impressed?”
“Eh?”
“The character you've all thought for years was fictional is in fact the author of her own book series. Aren't you supposed to be impressed?” She seemed embarrassed. “I mean, I've never done this before, but I always figured it would blow some minds if I did.”
Kingpin shrugged. “We're sharing a room with a machine that apparently was never built, which contains a character who shouldn't be alive, and... oh, it nearly destroyed the world once. Mind-blowing is relative... young lady.”
She grimaced. “Look, sorry about the 'young man' thing—it helps with the whole A.K. Yearling illusion. That and the gray hair. Ponies expect things, ya know?”
Daring Do—or, as Kingpin resolved to call the one in the arcade machine from here on in, Daring Deux—rapped the screen. “Hey,” she said, “I'm kinda impressed, I guess. So, you're real?”
“Apparently,” Prime said.
“So it's all actually real? Me, Ahuizotl, Quetzalcoatl, the Serpents of Sakat and the doom-portending prophecy about it?”
“The books are entirely autobiographical,” Prime replied. “So, uh, yeah.”
Deux groaned and struck her head against the screen. “Dammit!”
“What?”
“I owe Ahuizotl ten bits! And we don't even have money in here!”
“So,” Kingpin said, showing Daring Prime the door. She'd conversed with her copy for about an hour about various things, many of which were incredibly interesting—Kingpin supposed he could have written several chapters about them—but he had had to put a stop to it; it was getting late and he had a dinner waiting for him at home.
“So?” she said back, pulling on her disguise. “That is to say... so?” Now she'd pulled on her accent-thing as well.
“I promise to not tell anyone about your identity.”
“Thank you, young man,” she said, replacing her eyeglasses with a wink. “Though I suppose no one would believe you anyway.”
“And in exchange... you don't tell anyone about her.” After a moment, Kingpin smiled. “Well, I suppose no one would believe you either.”
Daring Prime laughed. “They already don't, Mr. Kingpin. That's the point of the whole shebang!” And with that she departed into the night, her dark robe helping to quickly obscure her from view. Kingpin almost didn't see her trip over it half a minute later, mutter for a bit, glance around, and then pull it off to take to the skies.
Almost.