//------------------------------//
// Chapter 7: Tech Support 
// Story: The Exchange Program 
// by Sozmioi 
//------------------------------//

While Shankar and Lyra worked on chopstick technique, I was getting progressively more annoyed with sorting them out - I could remember they were switched, usually, but then I'd flip them. It didn't help that Shankar was nearly as bad with the chopsticks as she was. Finally, I got up and borrowed a blue pen from the host's booth, and sketched Lyra on my napkin. After returning the pen, I fished a safety pin out of my purse, hooked the napkin with it, and offered it to him.

His eyes went wide. "Wow. You just did that? You're pretty good! So, ah... okay, I know safety pins, but I'm not sure how to use them without a horn or hard hooves."

Jack got up and came around to get a closer look. "That's what you look like?"

"Yeah! She really captured the mane."

"Aside from being blue, I suppose."

"Well, a different shade."

Jack squinted at him. "You're... blue."

"Aqua. And there's the white stripe."

"You're aqua-colored with white stripes and your hair looks like Cloud's."

"No, it looks kind of spiky, not like clouds at all. Do you have spiky clouds here?"

"Sorry, I just never imagined that unicorns would be brightly colored like that."

"I never expected you all to be basically the same color. It's one hue of brown all around. Light, dark...and that's it. And your hair? One swoop from orange to yellow through brown to nearly black, and that's it? You're all the same type, even. You said New York had all kinds, and, well, you all seem to be one kind to me."

"So we all look the same to you?"

Lyra slowed down, raising an eyebrow. "No, just similar in certain ways."

Shankar backed Lyra up, "Yeah, Jack. That wasn't what he said at all. Anyway, we went through a population bottleneck a few hundred thousand years ago. Which is a nice way of saying there were like thirty of us all told."

Jack coughed. "I presume you're talking about our mitochondrial DNA? That's not what that means at all. If there had been thirty of us, we wouldn't be here."

"That's a funny position for a creationist to be taking."

Jack blinked at her. His eyes flared, unamused. "Genesis spans billions of years."

Shankar shrank back. "Oops. Sorry. I kind of forget that you guys exist."

"We're only the majority."

"Yeah, total derp there."

Lyra looked back and forth between them. "Uh, what just happened?"

I offered, "Well, remember the dinosaurs, and the big bang, and all that?" Lyra nodded. "So, Jack appears to think God did that, and we think it happened on its own, but a bunch of other people think that's all wrong, God did it in under a week around six thousand years ago."

Lyra frowned. "Well, why that look, then? So, they've got a different opinion about things that happened a long time ago, before anyone was there to see it."

The three of us sighed. How to begin? "That," said Jack, "is a question to save for later, I think. In other news! I mentioned meeting a lyrist to a harpist I know this morning, and she gave me two comps - complimentary tickets - to a concert later this afternoon. I'm not entirely sure that regular tickets cost anything, actually. Classical music of some sort involving a harp." He pulled them out and put them on the table in front of Lyra. "They're yours. Just... she's going to want to talk with you after, and, well, she thinks you're female. And at the moment, you're not plausibly female."

Shankar added, "And I'm not plausibly a lyrist." I noticed she was passing Lyra some of the amulets. I really need to find out what each of those is for.

Lyra rolled his eyes. "Is all this confusion really necessary? I can just go, talk, whatever. It's no one either of us knows, so... okay!" His eyes darted among us. "Right?"

I nodded. "Right. So, which of us will you bring?"

Lyra thought for a moment, then pointed to me... with a relaxed fist. I gently took his hand and extended his index finger. "How to point."

He examined the hand. "Huh. Right."

While I was there, I folded in the index finger and extended the middle finger. "Not that you would, but just to be sure... how not to point."

He nodded, and Jack said in a lecturing tone, "Boom. This demonstrates the importance of not extending your middle finger."

"...except in such cases as you extend your index finger.", Shankar amended, demonstrating and chuckling.

Lyra and I shared glances, and I said, "I don't get it."

Shankar chuckled again and added, "It just sounded funny."

Jack stared at Shankar and me. "You guys don't... I could have sworn you'd know your Monty Python."

That tone suddenly made it clear to me why he might have had friends abruptly want him not to be around them any longer. This is not how you geek out. You're doing it wrong. Shankar coughed and said, "Having only watched Holy Grail, Life of Brian, The Meaning of Life, two full episodes of the show, and the most famous sketches..."

Jack shrank back, recognizing the frost, if not necessarily understanding it. "I guess you just happened to miss that one. It's pretty good."

"Yes. I expect it is."

Of course, the fact that Shankar has seen quite a lot of it isn't really the problem with what he just said... Still, I figured that going along for now would help, so I added, "We could catch up?"

Silence fell. After a few moments, Shankar interrupted it (though she was breaking into silence, the tone was as if interrupting), "Lyra, does it occur that supreme executive power is granted by some sort of farcical aquatic ritual?"

"We don't do much granting of supreme executive power these days. If we needed to at some point... that would be really, really bad. But speaking of aquatic rituals, I need to go to the bathroom."

I got up to let him out, then realized that I needed to go too. As we approached, he murmured to me, "I think I can handle it."

"Don't forget to wash your hands."

By the time I made it back, Shankar and Jack were finishing up tag-team singing "Isn't it awfully nice to have a penis" to Lyra, who was just left blinking in confusion.

"Guys... maybe not here?" I gestured to some of the other folks in the restaurant, some of whom were giving them irritated looks.

Jack began to object, "We were qui...", but then noticed they'd been noticed. "Sorry."

Lyra added, "Anyway, I completely agree - at least, as long as I'm here. You knew what you were doing and took what, twice as long?"

We finished lunch without further incident. Jack drove us up to Juilliard for the recital; Shankar and Jack hung out outside at Lincoln Center, and Lyra and I went in. Lyra naturally knew how to politely attend a concert, and the music was good if not exactly my style.

And then, a soft whisper - "Hi. Please leave the concert." Before the voice was done, I could tell it was someone borrowing mine. I really need to get something to stop that from happening!

I grabbed Lyra's arm and exited with him over his silent objections.

I said, "All right, we're clear to talk. What's up?"

"Hello. I've been assigned to solve your problem as a test."

"Ah. We think we have it under control?"

A pause. "You don't."

Lyra observed, "I'm right here, and I think we do. I felt the..."

A dismissive tone - "So why haven't you snapped back yet, if you're so in control?"

"Because... it's... cool and exciting and different, and the guy I swapped with agrees?"

A sigh. "And it didn't occur to you that there are bad things that happen?"

"None of them sneak up on you if you know what to look for."

Five seconds of silence. "Well, I'm supposed to solve the problem. Do you at least have a plan for what to do if those problems do come up? Aside from calling princess Celestia."

Lyra nodded. "We have something to try before it comes to that." I'm not sure if she can see that nod.

Another several seconds. "Okay. I asked, and I can finish my assignment if I check that your plan will work. Rachel, may I be swapped with you?"

I said, "In three minutes, go ahead."

"Three minutes it is."

Lyra and I headed back out to and across to the fountain at Lincoln center. Just as I was waving to Shankar, I felt the transition starting, and quickly sat down.

I paid close attention to the very, very different way I went this time - I felt like... well, at the most concrete level it felt as if I was flying out of the exploding Death Star II with the flames creeping behind me, only the Death Star was made of gigantic crystals and it wasn't being destroyed.

But at a more abstract level, I was feeling like the complete destruction of complete order, a falling of darkness... and like that was the right thing to happen in this circumstance. Kind of. It's not like it was a religious experience or mind control; it gave that impression like a well-crafted piece of music. A piece of 'music' that played directly on my sense of self, much as my perspective had been forced outward when Celestia had been carrying out the shift. So, it was obviously external, even if it used channels that I normally thought of as internal. Kind of odd, yet very intuitive.

Anyway, it was intense, and when I zoomed out of the tunnel and my viewpoint suddenly became that of my new body, I gasped - instead of the rebel fleet, I had come face-to-face with a pink unicorn with a mane that was also yellow and lavender. Correction - unicorn pegasus.

She smiled. "Hello, Rachel. Welcome back to Equestria. I am princess Cadence."

I swallowed. "Nice to meet you." A glance gave me my wider surroundings - a palatial stone room overlooking a garden. "Just, one question. She said this is a test. Is, well... the outcome in doubt?"

Cadence inclined her head. "Only for her. Rhiannon has already looked your situation over and knows how you can fix it. Your world's magic is not much like ours, but her solution is sound."

I brushed a crimson strand of hair out of my eyes with a yellow hoof and replied, "Yeah, about that. Any idea why we, well, for the most part, it doesn't work... at least, not so it can give a convincing demonstration?"

Cadence shrugged and shook her head. "I can guess, but... why don't we take a walk?"

I struggled to my feet (it kind of felt like being on hands and knees, except not horribly awkward. Adding legs was much easier than taking them away - who would have guessed?) and slowly followed her. Cadence led me to a bench under a tree. Patches of sunlight flickered across her as the breeze shifted the leaves. She finally suggested, "One possibility is that your world is shadowed by a magic-rich world, or worlds. You only get what makes it through them."

"Like us and the tree we're under."

She nodded.

"Nice visual aid there."

"As the world or worlds above yours change - using more or less magic, or different kinds - you can find more or less magic, and different kinds. That would explain everything I know about the situation."

"It would. It seems plausible." But it could very well be wrong.

"And it's just a guess. I could very well be wrong. Your variety of magic is so different from ours, I don't know if something about it makes it happen this way regardless. But we know that can happen. It is true of one world very much like yours."

"Really? How much? Like just, there are humans, or am I there?"

"No. People there are humans, but you aren't there. I am, and the other ponies. As humans."

"Wow. So... wait. If... if that world is a magically-overshadowed world of humans with mirror-universe twins who are ponies in the world that overshadows them, then, if my world is overshadowed by another, are we - am I a twisted reflection of some other Rachel who's some other kind of creature?"

"Maybe. If so, though, then they are a twisted reflection of you, too. You make sense on your own terms. You are not a dream."

"Okay, so it's not like there's some reality projector and I'm under someone else, getting my reality second-hand. The projection is just magic."

Cadence nodded. "I do not think you are twinned, though. If you were, Rhiannon probably would have contacted her twin, instead of us. Or both of you would have contacted us."

A cough got our attention - a hunky white unicorn in a bright uniform - the first male I'd seen - stood across the garden. Princess Cadence invited him over with a gesture, and he trotted to her and whispered in her ear. She nodded, and smiled a little. He whispered again, and she turned and whispered back. He nodded and left, with a glance back.

When he was gone, I asked, "Who's that?"

Cadence stared at me for a long moment. Then a big smile came across her. "You know? I can actually tell you. Just don't tell anyone. Promise?"

"What? I mean, sure."

"He's my husband-to-be. Barring calamity, in three years, two hundred and ninety three days, we will be married. We will be totally in love, so much it would be madly in love but for how utterly balanced in affection we will be."

Her voice didn't seem like the voice of a creepy stalker. "Run that by me again?"

She glanced down to her flank, and I saw a heart mark. "My talent is love. I can feel the shape of love, see it, predict it. And that stallion, right now, is just that nice reliable, capable guy who's a little funny and a load loyal and has always been there. I can see why I'll love him, but it just hasn't hit me yet."

I blinked. "That's... kind of how I feel right now."

She nodded, then looked closer into my eyes. "Hmm. I can see some parallels." And then, silence.

"And?"

She looked away and shook her head.

I suddenly realized. Messing with causality, inviting her to invade my and Shankar's privacy, asking her to do possibly hard work for me, possibly asking her to take on responsibility for actions I take in response, risking my feeling a loss of agency... not to mention we're aliens, or she could have bad news to deliver. "I'm sorry, there are so many reasons I shouldn't push too hard on that."

A flicker of smile. "Thank you."

Then she levitated a scroll out from inside and explained what we should do if the test failed. The scroll referred to some rituals Rhiannon had kept notes on in the computer. A proper fix was not going to be very straightforward - at least, not with just the tools Rhiannon had available. Fortunately, most of the complexity was in the rituals, with relatively little to memorize about which ones and how to apply them.

When I had it down well enough, I looked up from the notes and recalled that Cadence had excused herself. I got up and walked around in the garden and, in line with the principles of spaced repetition, focused on anything but that.

I came to a gap under the garden wall, peeked out, and saw that this garden was perched on top of a cliff. This garden, in which the wall was loose enough to have a gap under it, was perched on top of a cliff. I backed away. Once I was more than a few feet back, I went wandering, looking for Cadence, or Rhiannon, if I could find her. I found Cadence soon enough, but she was clearly busy speaking with a pegasus and a unicorn, and it seemed fairly official.

Then I got a look at myself in a mirror. Huh. I also have yellow hair, not just red. And wow, that gravity-defying swirl. Not quite up to princess Celestia's standards, but yeah.

I found someone and asked whether the School for Gifted Unicorns was nearby, and it wasn't. So, visiting Rhiannon was pretty well out. I got to wondering what was going on back at home. And then, I got to wondering if I could actually use that horn.

I went back to the mirror and touched it with a hoof. Just feeling something there was really freaky. It didn't have a corresponding spot on my internal body map, really - or maybe it did, and that particular sensation was not at all what I was expecting. Like how injections don't really hurt so much as they feel really wrong because you don't usually feel things there.

But I got over that and began feeling and sort of exercising it, focusing on it in different ways, feeling what was possible.

There was a gigantic pop and princess Celestia appeared facing me from the side, and she looked pissed, and she was focused on me, and almost before I could think 'holy crap!', I was being yanked back to my own body so hard I couldn't even form a coherent image of the process.