//------------------------------//
// Chapter 10 - Down the Rabbit Hole we go! 
// Story: Sweetie Belle and the Tablet of Knowledge 
// by CheshireTwilight 
//------------------------------//

	Sweetie Belle worked for the next few hours in silence; only giving the slightest nods or non-committal grunts when spoken to. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo decided to leave her be, but they couldn’t leave the issue alone.

“What do you think is wrong with her,” Scootaloo asked, scooping a pile of dirt into a wooden box they used to move the dirt out of the cave they made. “I know it’s pretty much any time we’re not talking with Sweetie Belle, we’re talking about her but …” She sighed. “There really isn’t much to talk about I guess. It’s either: that, Cutie Marks or digging …”

“Ah know,” Apple Bloom grunted, angrily pouring the dirt she dug into the box. “It’s really all we can do. Ah can’t really blame Sweetie though; she wouldn’t be hurtin’ herself fer no good reason.”

The two of them decided to take a break; it was hard talking and doing work at the same time. They dropped their hoof-shovels and moved under their makeshift tent, pouring the wooden box full of dirt down the hill-face.

“Still,” Apple Bloom sighed as the two fillies sat down on the hot dirt floor of their tent. “Ah can’t help but agree with what Twilight said, there is definitely something possessin’ her.”

“Then should we really be helpin’ her? I mean, if she’s being possessed, wouldn’t helping her be a bad thing?”

“No … Ah mean, she’s still her, just ... different.” Apple Bloom put a hoof to her chin in thought. “Ah think she’s just figurin’ stuff out ya’know? Sweetie Belle’s kinda like Applejack when she finds somethin’ challengin’ and doesn’t want nopony’s help. She won’t outright forget ya, but she’ll be a lot less talkative. Sweetie’s talkin’ ‘bout all them fancy adult things and doin’ all this crazy stuff but she’s still Sweetie Belle. She cares about us and … I don’t know how to explain it but she still feels the same.”

Scootaloo nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. Still, I don’t think it’s just Sweetie Belle growing up. I mean, sure she’s acting like a grown up, but there isn’t a grown up I know that could just make sleeping powder out of kitchen supplies or makes plans that well, even with magic!”

“We can’t leave her though, right? Ah mean, Ah want to … Ah really want to just go home and forget this whole crazy adventure, but it wouldn’t be right. Ah’d never forgive maself if Ah left her and she … she never came back …” Apple Bloom sniffed, trying to hold back tears.

“Don’t go crying on me now,” Scootaloo chided with a smirk, lifting a forehoof to the air. “You make it sound like we won’t be kicking this adventure’s flank!” Putting on a straight face—but keeping up her confidence—she said, “I agree with you; we can’t turn around now. I mean, I definitely can’t turn back; I jumped at the chance to come, and I’d be one of those hippo things to just turn tail now! Besides, Sweetie Belle’s right; there’s some ups and downs, but that’s just what an adventure’s all about.”

“Ah know that … it’s just ... we don’t know what we’re doin’! Ah trust Sweetie Belle but this adventure just isn’t like her. She’s always been more down-ta-earth; even more than Ah am! If any of us had a crazy idea like this, she’d shoot it down so quick it’d make our heads spin. I’m worried that whatever that ‘influence’ Twilight went on about is, it isn’t changin’ her for the worse.”

Scootaloo looked back at Sweetie Belle and then at Apple Bloom but didn’t speak another word. Instead, she took her hoof-shovel and went back to work.

‘I hope you’re alright,’ Scootaloo thought. ‘I just wish that we could help you more. Just … please don’t change … I … I just want things to go back to the way they were ...’





Ever since she started work with her friends that morning, Sweetie Belle had had a continual conversation with the Tablet. With her new breadth of knowledge, she had realized several things she previously neglected to consider. The first realization was that she didn’t have any idea what the Tablet really did other than what it told her.

After simply asking, it turned out that it was far more useful than just for answering questions. For one thing, it could speed up Sweetie Belle’s mind for several minutes at any time she asked, and even automatically if she scheduled it. In fact—often when she talked with the Tablet before—it would automatically quicken her thoughts during a discussion with her friends so that she could talk to both them and the Tablet simultaneously. It unnerved her greatly that she never noticed this behavior before.

Also, she learned that it could greatly improve how she used her magic. By telling her which neural pathways activated various magic actuators, she was able to gain high-level control of the horn’s various functions by stimulating those pathways with the relevant abstract “ideas”. For example, imagining a pulsar oscillating over her old writing desk allowed her to control the wavelength of the exotic quasiparticle field. Imagining the sound of water crashing on a shore allowed her to modulate the the power of her horn with the sound’s loudness. It was difficult at first but eventually she could get almost sixty percent of her horn’s total power while performing a task. This made using the heavy pickaxe with her magic to break apart rocks much easier.

Determined not to let a single concern go unanswered, she also queried the Tablet about: the Non-Disclosure Agreement, any background of the Acarel Corporation that produced the Tablet, as well as sections of corporate law; all in an attempt to find a loophole that would get her out of the contract. Unfortunately, it seemed that most of the company information was classified and the law came down to proving “beyond reasonable doubt”. Until Sweetie Belle had the means to prove that the contract was invalid—either by showing that there is nopony alive to enforce it, or that the company no longer exists—there is no way out of the contract. In essence, what the Tablet said was true; she would have to access the database to cancel the contract.

Of course, all this discussion was done at 10x speed. It had only been three hours for the other CMC, but for Sweetie Belle, she had been thinking for well over a day straight. Her mind had a nearly endless stream of questions concerning the union of her morals, ideals and what she knew of the world and what she learned from the Tablet. Although the Tablet had determined that learning things like: philosophy, morals and ethics were unnecessary for the adventure, Sweetie Belle couldn’t think about anything else.

‘But it just doesn’t make sense. How can we do anything if we can’t be sure of anything?’ Sweetie Belle thought, continuing her four-hour long discussion on the nature of the universe, logic and rationality.

*The issue of objectivity and certainty was intensely debated in philosophy but was eventually settled. This was done by the creation of a model of thought called ‘Logic’. Ultimately, any conclusion one makes of the world must be based on axioms; self-evident beliefs beyond refutation. In order to avoid any falsehood or contradiction, the list of axioms is made as small as possible. These axioms cannot be proven but are believed to be true because doing otherwise is less ideal.

*An example is the axiom of reality. No logic can be done unless this axiom is accepted. It is not possible to prove reality is real because it would require the use of another real thing we are uncertain are real. This creates a paradox from circular reasoning. It is believed that reality exists simply because not believing would be ‘pointless’.*

Sweetie Belle let out an annoyed huff. ‘That’s so dumb though. So even if I know everything, in the end it could all be wrong because one of these dumb axioms are wrong?!’

*Yes, as axioms have been proven wrong in the past. An example is the axiom that space follows Euclidean Geometry. It had been previously believed that this held for the universe’s three spatial dimensions, but under the relativistic physical model, it was proven that the bending of spacetime could cause two parallel lines to converge, violating Euclid's 5th postulate.*

‘Huh … so, based on that, wouldn’t the ‘fact’ that we can’t be certain also not certain?’

*Error 2: self-referenced paradox. This device cannot answer that question.*

This was starting to hurt her head a bit. ‘Well that’s … really annoying.Okay, let’s just stop with all this ambiguous stuff.’ She drove her pickaxe into the stone she was breaking and sat down, shielding her eyes from the sun.

The sun …

‘Sweet Celestia … that … that can’t be possible.’ Sweetie tried to formulate the vague confusion she was feeling. ‘How does Celestia control the sun?! I know how celestial mechanics works and we have to exist in a Heliocentric Solar System. It isn’t a matter of how powerful Celestia is, it just can’t be possible. If the sun is small enough that it can be locked in our gravity well, it can’t be large enough to sustain nuclear fusion.’

Sweetie Belle, unable to focus on the ideas running through her head, brought out a piece of paper and did her rough calculations.





‘Okay, forget all that. I should focus on what I know. I know that a yellow star must be at least 0.8 times the mass of the sun and 0.9 times the radius. So, assuming it is large enough, then it has to be far enough away so that it appears to be small and more importantly doesn’t burn everything. In that case, there should be relativistic effects. When Celestia raises the sun, there should be a delay as the light travels to our eyes, and the sun should only be able to move at a certain speed. In this case, it needs to move at 0.037 times the speed of light just to orbit every day. At least in that sense, Celestia’s power seems within the bounds of physics—assuming she has the crazy amounts of power needed to do so. When she raises the sun for the Summer Sun Celebration, she might do it ahead of time and the speed it raises might be slow enough to be possible; I don’t remember how fast it rose.

‘The real problem, though, lies with when Discord took over Equestria. I don’t remember much since everything was all crazy—and I did my best to forget about it—but I do remember that the sun and the moon were jumping around in the sky at impossible speeds. Assuming it is at least one hundred and fifty million kilometers away, it would have to be travelling much faster than the speed of light to go from the middle of the sky to below the horizon in under a second. Even if we assume it is travelling at the speed of light, it would have to be so close to the planet that we would have to be inside the sun ...

‘There’s something wrong with my assumptions, isn’t there Tablet? There has to be!’

*There is nothing wrong with your conclusion. The sun—as it currently exists—doesn’t correlate with what is understood by physics.*

‘T-then what could it be?! I have to know! Did physics stop working somehow?! Please, can you give a few examples; I’m desperate!”

*This device has confirmed that all laws are still valid—except laws which require particle super-colliders or telescopes to prove—within the acceptable error of 99.999999%. This includes relativity. There is no clear answer, but regardless of the solution, it is likely caused by magic. Movement through space, but independent of space—like through the Aether—could give the illusion of faster-than-light travel although that would likely have caused visual discrepancies and would affect the sun’s ability to heat the planet. Another possibility is that the sun could not be a star at all. In that case, it could be smaller and powered through non-nuclear means. That would mean that there must be something external powering it, however, since nuclear fusion is the only internal, self-sustaining power source known which could provide such power.*

‘That could be true ...’  Sweetie Belle sighed. ‘That’s not even considering how Luna accelerates the moon to the point that it should be converting the surface to incandescent plasma or how she rearranges the stars. Moving stellar bodies light years away simultaneously at great speeds breaks just about every physical law there is.

‘How can you be sure that physics still works? I understand how you could test gravity, electromagnetism and the atomic model but how did you test things like quantum physics and relativity?’

*This device’s broadband radio communication system uses a DSP algorithm which takes into account the delay effects of relativity. This algorithm has been tested post-startup and it is not a source of error. Additionally, various components in this device rely on non-deterministic quantum physical systems to function. Since the heuristic models which rely on these systems to function are still reliable, those laws must still be valid. Additional tests include-*

‘Alright, alright ... that was stupid question; physics still works … mostly. I will get to the bottom of this, it-’

“Ah think we found somthin’!” Apple Bloom cried out, causing Sweetie Belle to break out of her discussion. It was a good thing too, she probably would have been doing it for days.

Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo raced towards the back of the cave where Apple Bloom stood in front of something shiny. That shininess turned out to be solid metal.

‘What is it Tablet? Is this what we’re looking for?’

*According to the diagram provided,* the Tablet stated, revealing a 3D wire diagram showing the hill, the facility, and a box going up and into the hillside from the facility below, *the structure’s exterior face should be comprised of a stainless steel door which this likely is. Before the door can open, however, you will need to uncover the keypad interface which acts as the door’s locking mechanism. In the event that this database facility required sealing, only a manual override can open the door.*

“Yeah, this looks like the spot, I guess.” Sweetie Belle examined the hole they had dug and compared it to the door. The hole was far smaller. They were lucky the door swung inward or they would have been spending a lot more time digging. “This is a big metal door and we will need to find some sort of panel thing. It would probably be a good idea to dig up until we get to the top of the metal door and dig down from there.” Sweetie Belle emphasized this by showing that a ramp would be needed to get to the top. “The door is pretty tall so we won’t be able to reach it if we don’t plan ahead ...” As Sweetie Belle continued to speak, laying down the groundwork. Apple Bloom and Scootaloo listened with rapt attention; after all the running around and digging, they finally had something tangible for their work towards and so they worked in earnest.

It only took two more hours to finally dig out the door. Unfortunately, in that time, Sweetie Belle was no closer to understanding her world. The more questions she asked, the more questions she created and the Tablet had little in the way of answers for her. In the end, she only had the justification of “magic” as the source for all of these inconsistencies, which left her very unsatisfied.

With the door completely dug out, they were able to see that the door was entirely made of sparkling steel, almost three meters tall and four meters wide. The dirt and dust seemed to simply fall away, like the surface was covered in a film with zero viscosity. The surface was bumpy and irregular, like it had been beaten with a hammer.

“Alright, so we finished movin’ the dirt away from the big door thingy, what do we do now?” Apple Bloom asked.

Sweetie Belle moved to the right side of the door and opened up a section of the wall, per the Tablet’s instructions. As she did so a hissing sound indicated that it had been sealed until now. Inside the panel was a keypad without any symbols and a small screen. Following the Tablet’s steps, Sweetie pushed the buttons in a specific sequence. With each push of a key, a green asterisk would appear on the panel. Once the input was complete, she pressed the large red button at the bottom of the pad.

Suddenly a siren could be heard from behind the door as it ground open, sliding inwards to the left and the right. As it opened, the sound became much louder—to the point that the fillies needed to cover their ears—and red flashing lights could be seen further down the passageway. At the end of the empty hallway was a concrete vault door.

“What the hay is that!” Scootaloo yelled, her voice barely audible over the sirens.

“What!” Apple Bloom cried out, not hearing Scootaloo behind the the hooves she had to her ears.

“I said what the hay- what the hay was that?” Scootaloo quieted down as the siren suddenly stopped. The door finished opening. All that remained was the dull hum of the fan as it continued to pull in more air.

“Ah don’t rightly know what that was, but Ah don’t think we should go in there. It just seems way too dangerous …” Apple Bloom shivered, the unknown was one thing, loud noises, empty grey rooms, and flashing lights were almost synonymous with trouble and danger.

‘I kinda agree with Apple Bloom here,’ Sweetie Belle thought, ‘What was all that about?’

*This passageway is an emergency environmental ventilation system and an engineering, cargo and maintenance passage. In the event of its use, it warns the individuals inside that the equalization of atmosphere might be dangerous. Potential toxins and other contaminants could cause illness or death to those exposed.*

‘Wait, so it really was dangerous! Why the hay didn’t you warn us!’

*A misunderstanding has occurred. It is only potentially dangerous to those inside. There is nothing dangerous with the inert argon gas inside the facility. Especially as it is replaced immediately upon entering.*

‘Oh … okay, I guess that makes sense.’

“The noises and stuff were just to warn ponies inside that there could be possible dangers outside, so there isn’t any danger to us.”

Apple Bloom and Scootaloo let out a sigh of relief but also looked incredulously at their friend. “How do you know all this stuff?”

Sweetie Belle’s eyes went wide. She realized that any time she even discussed knowing her destination, she was potentially compromising the fact that the device existed. Despite that, though, it never caused her to stop. She assumed that this must have been the line it drew on the information it allowed. “Uhh … my brain said so … really can’t say anything other than that … nope.” Sweetie Belle didn’t bother trying to hide that she was lying.

“Right …, ” they both said simultaneously. They knew that there wouldn’t be much point going down that line of questioning.

“Anyway, let’s go!” Sweetie Belle cheered. “We have a ruin to explore!” Now that she knew that she was convincing her friends to do something they didn’t want to do, she had decided that she would make it up to them later somehow. It was too late to go back anyway, they had finally made it.

“Ah don’t know …” Apple Bloom whispered.

“Come on Apple Bloom!” Scootaloo said, joining her unicorn friend. “We made it this far.”

Apple Bloom sighed. “Alright …”

The three walked down the brightly lit passageway, as they did so, the door closed behind them.

“What’s it doin’! Is it lockin’ us in?!” Apple Bloom cried making her way back.

Sweetie Belle held her friend back. “Hold it Apple Bloom. Look over there,” she said, pointing to a panel like the one outside. “We can just do the same thing we did to get in when we want to leave.”

“Are ya sure?” Apple Bloom asked.

The door closed before Sweetie Belle could get a word out. Instead, she simply nodded. That was enough for Apple Bloom and the three walked back down the hall.

What they didn’t notice was the small letters on the keypad screen that Sweetie Belle had pointed to. Written in a language they didn’t understand were the following words:

Administrative Override in effect. Unauthorized user access granted.





They spent the next fifteen minutes riding down an underground funicular to the main facility. The railway was the only thing at the end of the hallway after the passage with the concrete vault door. The funicular was a simple, open-top, electric-powered, cargo train attached to a rail at a thirty degree angle. It operated by a simple button at the front of the train car, forcing the occupants to stop only when it arrived. It moved at a slow pace which only served to emphasise just how far below the surface of the planet they were travelling. Sweetie Belle had asked the Tablet what the strange horizontal markings on the wall represented and it told her it marked the depth they were at in roughly fifteen meter intervals. She counted fifty of them by the time they arrived at the end of the line.

When they got off the metal vehicle, they were greeted with a simple door next to another much larger one which would have been used for cargo and other large objects entering or leaving the facility. They also noticed a map, detailing the various rooms and clearances needed to enter them. When the three fillies walked towards it, several of the rooms and corridors on the map lit green, signalling the green panelling which also lit up on the walls of the facility.

“Ah don’t know about this Sweetie Belle …” Apple Bloom said, shivering between words. “It’s almost like the whole place is alive and Ah’m not sure that’s a good thing …”

“Alive, really?” Scootaloo asked incredulously. “You can’t be serious, a building can’t be alive. The walls and stuff probably have magic that light up when you get near it or something. I think it’s pretty awesome!”

‘Tablet, what’s going on. Only some of the rooms are lit. What does that?’ Sweetie thought, herself becoming worried. She had expected the place to be derelict and abandoned like the one where she found the Tablet. This facility, however, seemed to be in perfect operation.

*It is a security feature, although it doesn’t seem to be working correctly. The XH-30312-TC security module with software patch 1.03.XX.XXXX should only light up any room you can access with green and any room you cannot with red when somepony draws close to it. This seems to have lit up a path from the entrance to the data center despite our disparate proximity.*

‘How does it know what we want?’ Sweetie thought. She then realized how she phrased the question and quickly changed it before it the Tablet could give an error. ‘I mean, what is the most likely reason that it knows what we want.’

*It is possible that it extrapolated our need from my queries but such a feature seems unnecessarily complex but there is no evidence for any conclusions.*

The fillies went through the facility and to the data-center, following the green lights as they went. When they arrived, an automatic door slid open for them, revealing racks of interconnected servers. Thousands of cables ran between the shelves of systems and fans hummed, keeping the room a reasonable temperature.

“Woah …,” Scootaloo got out, stunned. “What are these things? They’re so complicated, and there’s so many of them. There’s just … so much …”

Apple Bloom didn’t agree, still nervous about the whole thing. She glanced cautiously around the room. Instead, Sweetie Belle responded, “You can think of this as a big metal brain, I guess.” Sweetie Belle only now realized how much she had learned. It had gotten to the point that she had to talk down to her friends.

“A brain!” Apple Bloom exclaimed, going wide-eyed in shock. “I thought you said this place wasn’t alive!”

“Well it’s not really a brain,” Sweetie Belle said, awkwardly rubbing her neck. “It just … helps out and stuff. It doesn’t think … umm … it just goes through the motions, that’s all.”

Both Apple Bloom and Scootaloo looked confused at that. ‘Well, I don’t really have time to explain all that. Tablet, where is the console we need to access the information about the Acarel employees that could remove the NDA?’

*There should be a command station at the far left side.*

Sweetie trotted to the end of the row and went to the back-left corner of the room. It seemed that the room was only about forty meters long and wide. She didn’t understand what was on the screen at first, but thanks to some coaching from the tablet and its ability to translate the text on its screen beside the window, she was able to get the gist of it. She made the query.

Sweetie Belle stared at the list of results. These were the people who could solve her problem. ‘Isn’t that first one, the:



‘redacted | redacted | Lat: +34.015748, Long: -116.505739, Elev: -728.094357’



line, isn’t that one right here?!’

*The first result is located in this facility, but the location specified doesn’t exist on the map of the facility.*

‘Who cares about that, we’re finally here! I mean, I’m not completely sure but those other coordinates are really far away.’

*Yes, especially the Galactic Coordinates. This device would estimate it at-*

“Hey girls! I found the place we need to go! We’re almost finished!” Sweetie Belle jumped for joy, ignoring the Tablet. She already knew that between going over one thousand kilometers again and just going down a flight of stairs, she knew which one she would be taking.

“Really?” Scootaloo asked. “I mean, no offense Sweetie Belle, but you’ve said that a lot.”

“No, I really mean it this time. It’s just …” she looked at the map, “it should be at the bottom level.” She pointed a hoof at a small room on the map, three levels before. “Right here.” She didn’t mention that the place they actually would want to go is several meters through one of that room’s walls but Sweetie hoped that that was just an error in the accuracy ‘... it wouldn’t be the first time,’ she thought; reminded of the fact that the “four hour trot from Los Pegasus” she had been promised turned into an almost 200km caravan ride.

“Well … if you say so,” Scootaloo shrugged, just going along for the ride.

“Ah still wanna leave but … if it really means that we can finally put this all behind us … then let’s go then.” Apple Bloom looked like she wanted to say more but she kept it to herself.

With that, the fillies headed to the stairs, too excited or scared to really appreciate where they were or where they were going. Distantly, a mind awoke from a deep sleep, fluids and electronics coming to life. The dark room it called home lit up with an unearthly white, saturating the walls. If it had eyes, it would have been blinded. Instead, it resumed its observation.

**Yes … your adventure is almost over …**