//------------------------------// // Records of Nothing // Story: The Price of a Smile // by Trick Question //------------------------------// The Office of Equestrian Records was Twilight's best guess. She remembered she had received a paper with a general location in Canterlot on it, that it was located either on the castle grounds or within the castle, and that she hadn't known why she'd been asked to go there. The Office fit all the puzzle pieces, including the "uncertain what I'll do when I get there" piece. She arrived at the Office after closing. The door guard allowed her access without so much as a curious look. It was dark inside, so Twilight turned on the wall lights and looked around. The OER was almost like a small, private library. Twilight had been here many times before, and she knew exactly where to go, because only one place made any sense. If she'd been sent here without direction, it would need to be something obvious, which means recent records. It would involve civilians and aggregate statistics. Money, in all likelihood. It took Twilight a while to find the taxation figures. They didn't seem to add up at first glance, but that was a separate issue. Maybe she was supposed to find out that someone was misreporting numbers? A simple application of Bitford's Law might detect any gross malfeasance, but with this much data that could require days of work if she didn't already know where to look. And she didn't. After a boring hour or so of hooftipping through ledgers and statistics, she had only uncovered one irregularity. Hospital visits had dropped. "Okay, let's see. Hospital supply order summaries, where were you? I was just looking at you," Twilight said, talking to the books as though they could talk back. And to be fair, they almost could. "Ah! Here we are. Let's see... No, not capital equipment." Twilight put a hoof down on the ledger in surprise. "Last month's diaper order was zero? Weird. They must have had a surplus at some point," she reasoned, looking back further. The previous month was identical: zero diapers ordered, for every hospital in Canterlot. Going back three months, the diaper order was very small. Every previous month had a large order. But for two straight months, no diapers were ordered at any clinic or hospital in the city. "This is weird," she said, tapping the carpet with a rear hoof. "There must have been a major in-kind contribution, like a tremendously large diaper donation to the entire city, of a quality good enough for finicky hospitals. But nothing of that size is listed for in-kind contributions going back six months." Twilight took a short breath and held it. What if... No, she reasoned. It'd be impossible. But, Twilight Sparkle being Twilight Sparkle, she still had to check. She grabbed the aggregate data ledger holding Equestria's population statistics and genealogical records, flipped a page, and there it was. Halfway down the third page stood a clean column of zeroes, straight down to the bottom like a tower of creepy little featureless eyes. The topmost line printed the overall summary. Births: 0 According to the statistics, there were zero foalbirths reported last month throughout the entirety of Equestria. Zero ponies, zero donkeys, zero mules. Zero calves, zero lambs. Even zero griffon chicks. "Okay, this has to be wrong," she whispered, as though to reinforce the idea by hearing herself speak it. Twilight started pulling together all of the population and genealogy statistics. Nopony anywhere in the kingdom had reported any foalbirths in two months. Three months ago, there were one-fourth as many as usual, just like the diaper order. Every preceding month listed thousands of newborns. Twilight felt a chill run down her spine. "Calm down. Do the math, Twily. Assuming foalbirths are mostly independent," said Twilight, "I can get the probability with a simple Ponisson distribution. Treating twins and triplets as a single birth, there are roughly seventeen-thousand—" She stopped, and her mouth dropped open in horror. "My Stars. I don't need to do the math. Even a binomial approximation is obvious. Dear Celestia, this wouldn't happen by chance in more than a trillion, trillion, trillion years," said Twilight. And even that was a ridiculous understatement, she realized. Twilight quickly checked the total population records. There was some instability due to ponies moving from place to place, but the overall population of Equestria was dropping by thousands of ponies each month. Every sapient race was dying off. But Fluttershy's animals were reproducing just fine, Twilight recalled. Her kind-hearted friend would have raised the alarm in an instant if anything were amiss. I could use some comforting myself right now, mused Twilight. She felt very fortunate to have a friend like Fluttershy. Another check, and farm statistics confirmed that wildlife were, in fact, reproducing as normal. It was only people who were suddenly sterile. Quadrupeds with language. Citizens. Twilight thought back to when Cup Cake gave birth to twins, maybe five or six months ago. "It was an unusually long labor," the nurse had said. "Seems like all the labors have been long over the past few months." For a short time, there were researchers looking into the problem, but Twilight figured it was a fluke, because she didn't see anything about it in the news. Princess Luna already knows, thought Twilight. This is the truth she's been hiding. The attack on Equestria began months ago, and Luna thinks we've already lost.