“You know,” I said to myself, “it’s great to have another genius to talk to, if only for a short while.” My other self, who was sitting across the table from me, nodded.
“Agreed. It gets so lonely without other geniuses to talk to.” He sipped from a mug for a little bit, then passed me a sheet of paper.
"What’s this? I mean, you’re a genius like me and all, so I expect you have a reason for giving me a list of psychiatric exercises, but what is it?”
He winked at me. “It’s top secret, for your eyes only. It’s the time travel spell that I used to get here and have a chat with you.” I felt my eyes widen, and he grinned. “Yup, it’s that thing. Now, I have a favor to ask you.” He took another long sip of his mug. I could see why my future self would have liked it. The Rusty Mug was the best bar in all of Canterlot, and the drinks they served there were phenomenal.
“What favor is that?”
“In my past, your present, I come into the past to give you this spell. You are to use it in order to come into the past, at three o’clock in the afternoon, a week from now. That way, you will be able to give yourself the spell recipe and tell yourself to come into the past.”
I nodded. “Of course, I can do that.”
“Wrong. You will do it,” my future self said. Little shocks of lightning were traveling over his body, and he seemed to be talking a bit quicker.
“Fair point. Why are you flickering, out of curiosity?”
He looked down at himself, then grimaced. “Rats, my time’s up. Well, past me,” he said, “it was nice talking to you. Don’t forget: when you’re me, bring the spell back to yourself.” I nodded, and he vanished in a flash of light.
“Well. That was quite the experience,” I remarked as I headed to get another drink.
“Starswirl,” Celestia asked me two weeks later, “What are you working on?”
“Time travel,” I responded as I worked my way through the little room I called home. Admittedly, it wasn’t so much little as it was cluttered. I’d had papers and test tubes throughout the place, each filled with parts of my wondrous experiments. As Celestia stood by and watched, I grabbed a blank parchment and started scribbling.
“But you’ve already done time travel, haven’t you? That’s why I’m assuming I saw you in two places at once, anyway.”
“Oh,” I said, grinning. “You saw that?” I finished writing down on the parchment, then headed over to the shelves where all my research notes were held. I shelved it next to my other scrolls of no importance, and then grabbed another and began correcting things on it.
“Yes. Why were both of you at the bar, may I ask?” Celestia’s tone held a note of disapproval, as if she didn’t agree with the fact that I had used great discoveries in order to see what would happen if I had a toast with myself. Admittedly, when I had gone back to give myself the spell, I had also had a great desire to see what would happen if I toasted someone, then drank a lot, in two places at once.
“Stuff involving temporal anomalies and hangovers.” Celestia blinked at that comment.
“What were you doing that involved temporal anomalies and hangovers?”
Oops. I had expected that she had already figured that out, considering that she had seen both of me at the Rusty Mug. “Anyway,” I said, hoping to steer the conversation away from hangovers in the space-time continuum, “that was just a minor spell. Works only once per pony. I want to try my hand at something multi-use.”
“Why do you want to make a multi-use spell for time travel? I assume you’ve got a reason for it, albeit a ridiculous one, but what is it?”
I shrugged. “Eh, this and that. Mainly for research. I mean, imagine if one could go and view any event in the history of the world? It would answer multitudes of questions, such as 'why do ponies not have two heads' and 'why are unicorns able to make spells that turn things into oranges'.”
"I have two questions. One: what is this?" She tapped one of my more questionable phials that was sitting on a table, and I smacked her hoof away.
"Please, don't touch that. I've gotten in enough trouble for it already."
She raised an eyebrow at it, but avoided steering into that territory. She might have been the princess, she might have been dedicated, but she sure wasn't willing to discuss my compounds. Go figure. “And two, do you really think that the world needs to know the answer to those questions?” Celestia asked. I assumed that she had no desire to know why she didn’t possess another brain. It was a shame, but there was no helping the ones who felt that one head was better than two.
“Of course I do,” I replied. “I mean, what will the world do if I die before I finish my research?”
Celestia rolled her eyes. “You’re only twenty; it’s not like you’re hurting in the aging department. Besides, didn’t lots of other scientists die before they finished their work?”
“That’s because they were all idiots,” I said calmly, and I meant it. I mean, what kind of silly pony died before figuring out the secrets of the universe? It was pure idiocy to leave the earth before you had figured everything out! I mean, my good friend, Never Quits, once brought himself back from the dead as a zombie in order to finish his beloved research. Of course, he did end up terrorizing and taking over a country in the process, but as I always say, ‘For Science!’ I had recently received a letter from Never Quits about a week ago, saying how he had been put back to rest by a crusader, only to come back the day after. You couldn’t stop the dedicated, after all.
“Starswirl,” Celestia said, “dying before finishing something isn’t something stupid, it’s doing something natural. I mean, look at all the famous artists and novelists who died and left behind things that critics love and admire. It’s silly, I know, but it’s not like it doesn’t happen a lot.”
"But my spell would fix that. Could you imagine if you could go and talk to the most famous leaders and innovators, if only for a day or two? Like if you could chat with Commander Hurricane about how she led her empire or talk with your great grandson and ask him what the future was like?”
Celestia raised an eyebrow. “Starswirl, I may not be learned in time travel myself, but I’m pretty sure that you’re aren’t supposed to go to the past, as you could mess something up. Do you really think that this endeavor won’t risk the fate of history?”
“Screw history, it’s overrated. Besides, I already went into the past to tell myself how to cast my original time travel spell, so how bad could it be if I went further back in time? It’s not like I’ll end up breaking the fabric of the universe.”
“Starswirl,” Celestia grumbled. “You’re going to get into trouble with this spell, I just know it.”
“No I’m not,” I said cheerily. “The odds of me causing major harm are about as likely as Discord breaking free of his stone prison.”
“I still don’t like this,” Celestia said wearily. Arguing would wear her down, apparently. I made a mental note of that fact for the next time she reprimanded me for dabbling in dark magic. Okay, it wasn’t exactly dabbling. How was I to know that demons didn’t like to be reprimanded?
“Don’t worry,” I said, waving her away with one hoof. “I’ll be careful this time, I promise. I won’t summon up any major fiends from Tartarus, I won’t try to raise the dead, and I won’t use the amniomorphic spell this time around, I promise.”
She turned to go, and I almost thought that I had achieved victory. However, at the door, she glanced back. “What about conjuring up minor fiends from Tartarus? Do you promise not to do that?”
Rats. I had been hoping that she would forget that Tartarus wasn't only for the major league bad guys, but also for some minor league ones. She had got me there. “Fine,” I grumbled. “I won’t summon anything that resides in Tartarus.”
“And anything else that might cause trouble for Equestria, you included?”
“Alright, I will not summon any familiars, ghosts, deceased beings, demons or dragons. I will also avoid summoning anything that I personally created. Happy?”
“No, but I know I can’t get anything better out of you, so I’m going to let you continue with your research. However, when you finish this spell, please let me know. I don’t want you doing anything rash. Remember, do not use the spell without me here, or I will skin you alive. I've got the meeting with the dignitaries in two days, and I can't have you doing anything risky." With that, she left my room and closed the door behind her.
I blinked. It wasn’t every day that Celestia straight up told me avoid doing something or bad things would happen. Normally, she would just tell me not to do something, I would do it, and then we would have a good long talk about ethics and how actions had repercussions. I never listened to half of them, but I nodded my head all the same, if only to please her. She was my ruler, after all.
I then decided it was time to get cracking. I grabbed my wallet off of a shelf. It was never very full, as most of my spare cash went to research, but I always saved a little for situations like this, where I needed to bribe someone else to summon something for me. Who said I couldn’t be smart?
“Let me get this straight,” Arcane Convoker grumbled. He was a grey unicorn with a short black mane. He was a friend of mine, and he was always willing to help me out when I needed a favor, provided that I was willing to pay him. I figured that, considering all the stunts I had pulled, it wasn’t that bad an idea. “You’re going to summon up a kelpie-”
“Not me,” I interrupted. “This is the important part. You are going to summon a kelpie with my help, then we are going to interrogate it.”
“Celestia told you not to do this, didn’t she?”
I shook my head. “Of course not. She said that I was not allowed to summon a kelpie. She made no specifications about me helping a friend summon a kelpie.”
“You’re trying to find a loophole again,." he moaned. “Why do I always get dragged into it when you’re the one doing the mad research?”
“Don’t worry,” I said reassuringly. “This is nowhere near as dangerous as the time when we tried to summon that demon. And it’s not like it’s going to try to turn us into its slaves, like that lich did.”
“Still not doing it.”
“Come on, didn’t I help you that time you wanted to figure out what happened if you tried to keep a dragon and a demon in the same circle of containment?”
“Okay,” Arcane said. “That was totally different. At the very least, there were two very powerful, very nasty beings in the same room. There wasn’t even anything to clean up when we were done, either. How do I know that this kelpie stunt will be a safe endeavor?”
“You don’t. You just have to hope that my paying you will be enough to cover any and all damages done by the monster you summon.”
“For the last time, Starswirl, why do you think I’m willing to go along with this?”
“Because,” I said reasonably, “friends help friends. I helped you out with of your crazy stunts--”
“More like made them crazier,” Arcane muttered.
“And you help me out with my less crazy stunts,” I continued, ignoring his comment. He rolled his eyes, but I took no notice. “So, what do you say?” He gave me a pleading look. “No way am I giving up on this.”
“Fine. What type of spell are we doing?” I pulled out a sheet of parchment that had been sitting on my ‘of no importance’ shelf for ages and showed it to him. He groaned. “Not one of these. Last time we tried one of these, you ended up burning up half my garden!”
“That was just a flux from magical buildup. I give you a hundred percent guarantee that this summoning ritual will not fail.”
“You promise?”
“Of course. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen with this simple thing?”
He glared at me. “With you, plenty of things. Why do you want me to summon you a kelpie, anyway? I’m risking life and limb for this, so I’d like to know why you want a kelpie, of all things.”
“You aren’t risking your limbs. Kelpies simply drown you. Anyway, I want to summon a kelpie because, as creatures of the sea, they have extensive knowledge of how volatile substances function. With this knowledge, I will be able to use it to form a sympathetic link with things involving high levels of Cronos magic, as it operates on its own levels--”
“Don’t give me the whole scientific explanation. Just give me a five word answer as to why you want to summon a seapony.”
“I want it for research.”
“Not exactly what I was hoping for. Could you give me a bit more detailed answer?”
I nodded. “Of course. Basically, I want it to tell me all the wonky things involving magic that is constantly changing.”
"Thank you, that makes a lot more sense. Alright, let’s get this doomed endeavor going.”