It was a sunny day in Ponyville. The birds flew through the air, gliding on the wind and enjoying it's lift, the animals on the ground played with each other or just enjoyed a sunbath and Discord and Fluttershy enjoyed it each other. Not in the way the gentle reader could think now in regards to the choice of words in this description, no, they were just having their weekly teatime today.
They sat opposite of each other, at a small table, a cup of tea in front of them. Aside from that, the table was laid with a beautiful green tea cloth, a small bowl with sugar, a big teapot with steaming hot tea in it in case they desired to drink another cup of it and several plates, mounted with cookies, pies, muffins and.....
Cucumber sandwiches.
After stirring some sugar into it, Discord lifted the small cup to his mouth. He took in the scent for a moment and then took a little sip. His head was adorned by a green top hat, a piece of paper with “10/6” written on it stucking out of the black hatband.
“Oh, my dear Fluttershy, your tea is delicious as always!”, he praised her for the hot liquid he enjoyed.
“Why, thank you, it's so kind of you to say this”, Fluttershy replied in her timid voice.
Discord grabbed one of the cucumber sandwiches and took a bite out of it. “You're welcome!”, he said with a full mouth, spilling some small pieces of the sandwich on the table while talking.
Fluttershy noticed it with disapproval in her eyes.
Their weekly teatime was always the time were they talked about the events of the past week. Mostly it was Discord who talked, since the quiet life of the yellow pegasus went exactly the same in almost every week, if her help wasn't needed to defend Equestria from an evil ruler of the past or a magic-sucking centaur, while Discord's life was full of amazing things every day.
And since that was just a few days ago, they happened to talk about a certain time travel today. It was one of the more exciting things you could experience with the draconequus, even for his standards.
“I can't believe that I could really meet a butterdragon!”, Fluttershy began with gleaming eyes. “I envy you so much for being friends with one in the past! Having a butterdragon as friend must be wonderful!”
“It is okay”, Discord answered, having swallowed the sandwich and already aiming for the next one. “But they also have some terrible manners and attitudes and it's not always easy to have one as your friend.”
“Oh, which manners and attitudes do you mean?”, Fluttershy asked him interested.
But Discord was denying her an answer on this question. “Oh, you wouldn't want to know that, trust me. Explaining this would need to go into some icky details and this is no topic for a teatime with so much delicious food like this one.” He threw another cucumber sandwich into his mouth and began to chew on it satisfiedly, a few more crumbles landing on the table. “The only thing I can tell is that these attitudes were the reason why they exctincted”, he continued after he had swallowed the sandwich. Then he took another sip of the tea.
Fluttershy was disappointed, but then, a different thing came into her mind. “Oh, but there is another thing I would like to know!”, she chimed. “Before you brought us to Coltlantis, we landed in a different time, but you just closed the door of the time machine before we could take a look at it. What have you seen there?”
Discord began to cough and spilled out the tea in his mouth, all over Angel who coincidentally walked by. He gave Discord a disapproving and mad look so intense that he would have dropped dead in this moment if looks could kill. “Oh that”, he said, after his coughing fit had died down instead, “that was nothing special. It was a boring future, there was nothing exciting to see at all. So I decided to make it short and to bring us to the next destination immediately.”
This explanation raised doubts in the pegasus. “But you seemed so distressed when you looked out of the time machine. You said we've gone too far and when I asked you, you just said that spoilers were out there. What did you mean with that? I never heard of a 'spoiler' before.”
Discord became nervous. Big streams of sweat were flowing down his face. He was struggling to find an excuse. “Oh, Fluttershy, you should not ask so many things about the future. My offer to travel with you and the girls through time was only meant to visit the past. Knowing things about your future is not good.”
“Why that?”, Fluttershy asked surprised.
“Well, knowing too many things about your own future can cause problems. It can make you doing decisions to avoid creating a future for yourself that you don't like and make everything even worse with that.”
Now it was Fluttershy who began to break out in sweat. “Does this mean my own future is so terrible? What happens to me in the future? Please, Discord you have to let me know!”
But Discord shook his head and declined Fluttershy this explanation. “No, Fluttershy, I'm afraid I can't tell you that. It's important to let the future happen as it was intended. If you don't, you could create a time paradox that makes the whole universe implode. Even I, the Lord of Chaos, can't do anything against that.”
But the words of the draconequus were not enough to stop Fluttershy's concerns. She jumped up and began fidgeting around nervously. “But if something terrible happens to me I have to try to prevent it! What if I can't speak with animals anymore? Or if my Stare doesn't work anymore? Or maybe I become a crazy cat lady? Or Princess Celestia makes me an Alicorn too! Or.....”
Discord was only listening with one ear and did not really hear what Fluttershy said. Instead, he just nodded satisfied. He successfully distracted her from finding out about the real terrible future, something that would make her afraid even more, since it was affecting the whole of Equestria, maybe even the world, not only her. He knew Fluttershy very well by now and so it was easy for him to fan some fear inside of her to let her do what he wanted. Of course he only did that in an emergency like this. And it was better for Fluttershy not to know the truth. As sensitive as she was it would probably cause a breakdown of her to know that the Equestria of the future consisted of futuristic buildings, cyber ponies and squidward-pony hybrids.
Ok, maybe she would like the squidward ponies, but everything else would utterly terrify her. Especially considered that this future did not look like there was any notable piece of nature left and thus, no free living animals anymore.
The last thing made Discord wonder. There may be a complicated evolutionary reason for the origin of squidward ponies; evolution was, as Discord learned over the course of his life, something that was as chaotic as his powers, but how could cyber ponies and big futuristic cities happen? The society of Equestria relied to a big part on magic. And magic could do everything ponies needed. There was really no need for technology in Equestria, or any nation on this planet, and especially not reason for ponies to implant their minds in articifial cyber bodies. Cyber ponies could not even use magic! It didn't make any sense. No matter how much Discord was taxing his brain, he could not come up with a reason why ponies should do this.
“Why should the ponies of the future desire to replace their organic bodies with cyber bodies?”, he muttered aloud.
All these thoughs kept him busy, while Fluttershy continued to go through all the possible horror future scenarios for her her nervous mind could come up with, and Discord did not even notice it anymore. There was one thing that Discord did notice, though:
When Fluttershy suddenly stopped her distressed mumbling and asked him something again.
“Ponies replacing their bodies? What are you talking about?” Fluttershy looked with big eyes at him.
Discord twitched. “Uh-oh”, he just said. All those thoughts he taxed his brain with made him forgot for a moment what he tried to hide from Fluttershy and so he spoke out one of his thoughts, as he had to realize now. “Uhm..... I..... I was just..... I was just..... I was just talking about a novel I want to write!”, Discord hastingly put an excuse together.
Fluttershy stared at him with a blank expression. “I don't believe you”, she said taut. Discord's stuttering revealed him. He could not trick Fluttershy this time.
The draconequus sighed. Now he could do nothing to hide it from his friend anymore. “I'm very sorry, Fluttershy, I was not telling you the truth about the future”, he began.
“You lied to me?”, Fluttershy stemmed her hooves in her her sides.
“Yes”, he admitted. “But I only did that to not making you worried. I was not lying when I said that you shouldn't know about it.”
Fluttershy seemed still unconvinced. “What can be so bad about the future that you have to lie me about it?”
Discord hesitated to tell her the complete truth, but her stern glance at him let him realize that he had no choice. “The future I saw is not concerning you, but it's concerning the whole of Equestria, maybe even the entire planet. What I saw when I looked out of the time machine were giant cities built of steel. There was no flying pegasus in the air anymore and all ponies flew in big airships. But not the airships we know, those airships were made of steel too and while they were flying through the air, they produced a disgusting smelling smoke that was polluting the air. There was also no nature anymore, everywhere were just those buildings. And the ponies.....” He hesitated again.
“The ponies did not look like the ponies you know anymore, Fluttershy. They looked like a crossbreed between ponies and squids. And some of them even.....” He took a deep breath.
“Some of them even did not have organic bodies anymore. They replaced their bodies with bodies of steel.”
While Fluttershy was listening to his report about what he had seen in the future, her eyes grew bigger with every detail he mentioned. Discord noticed it. “I'm very sorry, Fluttershy. I wanted to prevent you from finding out all of these things about Equestria's future.”
“And this is everything you saw?”, Fluttershy, whose eyes had grown to the size of watermelons by now, asked him in a quiet voice.
Discord nodded quietly. “Yes, I promise that I told you everything!”, he added then.
“Oh, okay.” Her eyes returned to their normal size and Fluttershy sat down again. She nipped calmly at her tea.
“I'm so very sorry, Fluttershy, for lying at you, I promise I won't ever do that again, please don't be–“ Discord stopped his sentence suddenly. “Wait, what do you mean with 'ok'? I thought a future like that would trouble you.” Discord stared at her, dumbstruck and unable to believe her calm reaction.
“Oh, not at all!”, she answered happily. “I'm a huge fan of science-fiction stories. I have read all of the novels by famous science-fiction authors like Michael Neighton or Arthur C. Colt!”
“B-But this wasn't a story what I was telling you. This will be Equestria's future!”
“Oh, but not according to the rules of time travel!” Fluttershy looked at him with a comforting smile. “Everything you see in the future is just a possible future. Now that we know what could happen, we can do something against it. We just need to find out what will cause this future.”
The draconequus let himself fall back into his chair. He was happy about it that Fluttershy took it so lightly and yet baffled over the fact that she just outdid him when it's about time travel knowledge.
With shaking hands, he reached out to the cup of tea in front of him and took another sip.