So, I always disliked pop music. Now, now, don’t look at me that way. It wasn’t the beats or tunes or the actual genre itself, per se. It was the content. The inane contents of pop music were always blaring on about love and lust, relationships and drama, men and women and all that sappy jazz. At least R&B was straight up about their content, drugs, money and women, etc. Though I never really listened to R&B.
So I never liked pop music, which annoyed me greatly that Emilia did, she would harp on about the latest hits that would flow around the extranet or how they enliven the soul. She kept nagging me, telling me that an appreciation of music was how one would truly discover the meaning of life, or something corny like that. I argued back at the time that I did appreciate music. Just not pop music. Intrigued, Emilia had asked me what music genre I liked. I played coy, it was actually kind of embarrassing, and it didn’t fit my personality at all.
“Symphonic metal”, I had muttered, low enough so she had to strain to hear it. She heard it though and her face split into a teasing grin that made me bury my flaming cheeks into my hands.
“S-symphonic metal?” she gasped between giggling fits that threatened to overwhelm her in laughter. One look at my extreme discomfort only further increased her mirth.
“Oh quiet, you”, I shot back, irritated but I could never stay mad at Emilia for long.
“Wanna listen to some music?” I offered and we both sat down listening to each other’s playlists through old-fashioned earphones. Suffice to say, I swallowed my distaste of pop and its strange affixation with romance.
Anyway, I’m telling you this because I accidentally stumbled on the discovery of a lifetime because I was trying to listen to music. Don’t go anywhere this stuff is pretty heavy.
It tipped me off when I saw I was connected to the extranet.
The extranet you say? What of it? Must be a malfunction. That’s what I thought. So I tinkered with my Synch trying to find out what the problem was. It wasn’t long before I realised that not only was the Synch working perfectly fine, as far as I could tell, the connection to the extranet wasn’t a malfunction, I was really connected to the extranet.
The best part of it was, the information seemed to be dated in 2032, a full year before Synch had even been developed. 2032… I knew I remembered that year from somewhere, but where? I couldn’t remember off the top of my head. I discarded the thought.
Now as a scientist, what do you do when you are confronted by this kind of information. Panic? Go nuts? Ignore it?
No. You test it. For science.
I sent innocuous messages along the extranet but I found that the information I received wasn’t dated in 2032. It was dated in 2039; a year after Synchrony was released. I was literally looking at my past! I even had a conversation with myself.
I considered warning myself about Synchrony and the future disaster, but seriously, who would take a guy on the extranet seriously? Even if I changed the timeline so that Angel would never put Black Box into play, would it just invalidate my own knowledge of the event? I mean, if I stopped Angel and Black Box then how would I have the video blogs from Angel? Perhaps I just held a copy of the possible future? But then, how could I trust it if it was just a possible future? It may never come to pass.
Ugh! Time travel was a mind explosion. I couldn’t handle it. I finally admitted to myself that I needed some help with this. Since Twilight and Pinkie had headed back to Ponyville, I only had the princesses for help.
“Celestia”, I greeted as I entered her room, having nodded at the guards. They were used to me by now, I’ve been visiting Celestia almost every night. Luna’s guards were used me as well, now that I thought about it. I’ve become a permanent addition to the castle, somehow.
“Ah, back for another chat about magic, I presume?” Celestia replied, as I closed the doors behind me. She looked tired and weary, unusual during this time she would be full of energy, even if she usually was just her calm and collected self.
“Something happen?” I inquired, trying to get a feel of the pony.
Celestia chuckled, “Oh, Twilight cast a tricky spell that I had to dispel. It would usually be no problem but I had to dispel a whole town full of ponies to prevent them from being wiped out.”
I cocked an eyebrow, wanting more details. What has that excitable mare done to destroy a whole town.
Celestia took that as an invitation to continue.
“Twilight’s been under some stress lately, she had to cast a spell to send some clone Pinkie Pies back to the mirror pool”, she explained, which only made me more confused.
“The spell reacted negatively with the pool a day or two ago and were producing some thaumic resonance that was going to clone everypony in the vicinity, since most of the creatures close to the mirror pool are dangerous, it would have resulted in a rush of monsters expanding out from the Everfree Forest.”
“Sounds tough”, I sympathised, giving Celestia a pat on her head. She looked at me in surprise before giving in to the stroking fingers.
“You know, you’re the only pon- I mean person who has dared do that”, she noted, pushing her head back as I scratched behind her ears. She seemed to really enjoy that.
“Why? You’re a nice pony”, I stated, as if it were an obvious fact.
Celestia shrugged, well as much as a pony could in the reclining position.
“Royalty are there to be placed upon a pedestal”, she said sadly, drooping her head between her hooves. “Our true friends are few and far between.”
I snorted.
“You may be royalty, but you’re just Celestia to me”, I told her, stroking her breezy mane. As soon as I touched it, it turned pink and stopped flowing ethereally.
“Huh, weird”, I grunted, poking and prodding it, watching it go from ethereal to normal pink.
Celestia giggled.
“Stop that!” she chided, trapping the offending finger and hand under a hoof. “It tickles.”
I grinned inanely.
“But it’s so much fun watching your mane do that, it’s freaky and mesmerising at the same time”, I confessed, using my free hand to continue petting her.
After a while of sitting in the comforting silence, gazing at the dancing flames within her fireplace, I decided to broach the topic that I had originally intended to explore when I had arrived.
“Tell me about time travel”, I asked of Celestia, tapping my Synch to turn it on.
“You will have to be more specific, dear one, time travel is a broad topic”, she replied, eyes closed in ecstasy as I continued my massaging ministrations.
I didn’t know where to start, so I began at the beginning.
“There are these diary entries, but they’re called video logs, because they contain moving pictures…”