Black Lotus
Chapter 3
"Thank you so much for joining me for tea, Twilight." Princess Luna lifted a simple but beautiful mirror-polished silver kettle and poured into two equally beautiful delicate white china teacups. "It's somewhat rare that I have the chance to properly have tea at all, let alone to have the pleasure of company."
"Thank you for the invitation," Twilight replied from across the table. In spite of her smile, she couldn’t help fidgeting while she glanced down at a box on the ground next to her chair for a split second. Suddenly self-conscious of what she was doing, she returned her attention to her hostess as quickly as she could. "I've been looking forward to it."
The palace gardens were always a comfortable place for Twilight, spacious but bordered by hedges trained into living walls that ensured privacy. The round garden table that they sat at, wrought iron with a frosted glass top, was situated under an octagonal pavilion of partly translucent cloth. It blocked most of the sun's heat, but let enough light through to avoid casting a hard shadow and instead bathed everything beneath in an inviting gentle glow. Beds of many different kinds of flowers splashed the landscaping with color and perfumed the soft breeze with a gentle, pleasant scent.
"It means a great deal to me that you've expressed interest and made the time for this," Luna said. "I very much enjoy this section of the gardens. I take any chance I can find to spend time in them, and I thought it might be nice to share the opportunity with a friend, as well." She added two cubes of sugar and a squeeze of juice from a small slice of lemon to her tea and stirred with a silver spoon. "I had also hoped it would be a good place for us to discuss what has been on your mind. You mentioned in your letter last week that you were hoping for a chance for us to speak in an informal setting, yes?"
"Oh." Twilight levitated two cubes of sugar and gently dropped them into her cup. "Yes. Well. That's... umm... I was just wondering how you're doing. Especially after the... recent... you know..." She trailed off.
"Ahh, I see." Luna nodded. She thought for a moment. "I am… much better than before. It may seem strange to say, but the creature nearly escaping from the dream was perhaps something I needed—a wake-up call, to use an ironic turn of phrase. It forced me to confront certain issues and make realizations. There are far healthier ways of addressing my regrets and learning how to accept myself, and I understand that now."
"Good." Twilight's voice was upbeat while she stirred her tea. "I'm happy to hear that something positive came from it."
"I find myself in debt to you and your friends a second time," Luna said. "I could not have overcome such a thing without you."
"It's just what we do." Twilight looked away to hide a small flattered smile. She couldn't help self-consciously fluttering her wings against her sides for a brief moment.
"Indeed." Luna turned her eyes toward a small but ornate multi-tiered serving cart next to the table. She levitated a triangular half of a small cucumber sandwich off the top tray. "Not only myself, but all of Equestria has often been in debt to all of you. Sometimes I worry that perhaps we do too little to make it known how truly appreciated you are." She took a bite of the sandwich while it hovered in midair, then set the rest of it down on a small plate on the table in front of her.
"Oh, no, I don't think any of us wants special treatment," Twilight said. "On the contrary, I would be more worried that spoiling us with privileges would disconnect us from just being normal ponies. If that happens, we might lose touch with the ability to be embodiments of the Elements we're supposed to bear."
"Hmmm." Luna nodded slowly. "A pity that we cannot honor you and your friends in a grand fashion, then, but perhaps that is for the best."
"I think so," Twilight agreed.
"And if I may return your concern, how are you doing?" Luna asked. "I understand that not every aspect of adjusting to life as an alicorn or a princess has been easy for you. I sympathize, for it is a rather abrupt change from what you must have been accustomed to before. The border delineation conference last week was quite trying, so I hear. Is there any difficulty you face that I may help with?"
"Not particularly as far as the princess thing." Twilight shook her head. "Some parts have been tough, but I think I'm coming around and figuring out how to make it all manageable. The conference was... I mean, the thing that's really been getting to me lately is more... about something else."
"Oh? What would that be?"
"I..." Twilight started to raise one forehoof, and hesitated. "I don't know if I should even ask about it, honestly."
Luna leaned forward in her seat. Her face was soft and friendly but her eyes were piercing while she looked at Twilight. "That is surely a sign that you should ask, for how will you know until you do?"
"Alright." Twilight paused and took a shallow breath, searching for words. "It's just... I'm confused. I feel like I don't understand something, no matter how I try. Or... no, that’s not quite honest. Maybe it's worse: maybe I do understand, but I'm afraid of the answer."
Luna raised a brow. "Surely it must be a very great quandary to be so challenging to my sister's greatest student. What is it?"
Twilight Sparkle tilted her head up and met Luna's eyes, looking into them intensely. There was only one question she could imagine that would get directly to the heart of the issue, and there was nothing to do but go for it... regardless of how crazy she knew it might sound.
"Is any of this real?"
For a moment the two of them just stared at each other. Silence was heavy in the garden air.
What am I even saying?
Twilight felt a nervous tension creeping through all her muscles. She became aware that her heart was beating faster, the familiar rapid but shallow pulse that came with anxiety.
Am… am I just making a fool of myself by asking something so strange, or...?
Luna, however, was much calmer, seeming unperturbed by the question. She raised her cup, getting ready to take a sip of tea. "Is any of what real?" she asked.
"This." Twilight lifted a foreleg and waved her hoof in a broad arc at everything around them. "All of... this!"
"I'm not quite sure what you mean." Princess Luna gave Twilight a look with no particularly readable expression in it. "I assure you, the royal gardens are no mere conjured illusion." She set down her teacup and her face took on a faint but kind smile.
"I mean, the entire world," Twilight said. Her eyes darted around, taking in the surroundings frantically. "All of it. This planet, space, time... us... everything."
"I suppose it depends on how one defines 'real'." Luna wrinkled her muzzle in thought as she tilted her gaze upward for a moment, pondering. "In the common everyday sense of it, however, I think it qualifies."
Twilight flattened her ears as she stared into her teacup and watched the liquid inside. What exactly had she been hoping to hear, anyway?
Her stomach felt like a thousand butterflies trapped inside were trying their best to escape.
Luna glanced down again at Twilight. She tilted her head slightly and knitted her brow. "What brings you to ask such a question?"
"Because I'm not so sure anymore," Twilight said in a small voice. Her eyes stayed locked on her teacup. "I haven't been for a little while now."
There was some faint ambient music of distant birds singing sweet songs as if they were celebrating that it was such a fine afternoon. Otherwise the garden was silent while Luna sat and patiently waited for elaboration.
"It was the Tantabus," Twilight said, barely above a whisper. "I'm sorry to bring it up again..."
"Do not worry about me, Twilight." Luna shook her head. "Please, continue."
"How could it have been trying to reach the... real world... if it existed only as part of a dream?" Twilight asked, and finally looked up at Luna again. "I've been researching this. Every line of investigation indicates that dreams are phenomena in a pony's head, and not real things, and that they're specific to individual ponies because there's nothing external about them. They're strictly imaginary, and imagination as a direct experience is limited to one pony. Present company excepted, of course."
"Indeed." Luna nodded.
"So I thought that you being an exception might account for the abilities of the Tantabus. Since it was created in your dreams, it would be part of you, and therefore it might be able to do the things you can, like gain access to different dreams and jump between them. That seemed pretty logical. But then it wanted to reach the outside... the real world. That's a much harder problem. It's a whole different question compared to just slipping between dreams, isn't it?" Twilight’s throat started to feel dry. She took a drink of her tea.
"It is, yes," Luna said.
"But even with the issues that presents, I still thought there might be a way to reconcile it with a reasonable explanation. I supposed that maybe it was just your mind and magical abilities being used forcibly by something unconscious to conjure the creature into existence external to your imagination, here in the waking world."
Luna nodded. "That could be a fairly accurate way of viewing it."
"Essentially, the Tantabus, as part of your own mind, would escape by making you replicate an exact copy of itself with an independent material existence. But it wouldn't be the same Tantabus, per se, it would just be a copy with properties consistent with real world physics and so forth. After that copy was made, the Tantabus in your mind would be perceived by you as having 'escaped', so it would cease to exist in your imagination, and would seamlessly appear to have just walked out of your mind and into the world. Or, at least, that was the only realistic way I could come up with for how this process could have worked."
"Very cleverly reasoned." Luna smiled and levitated her sandwich.
"But... it's not correctly reasoned, is it?" Twilight asked. She couldn't keep a hint of shaking out of her voice. "It wouldn't have been a copy. It would have been the same Tantabus, in a literal sense. Or, I guess the point is more that it could have been. Just the possibility is what matters, and... and it is possible."
"Interesting," Luna said in a measured voice. "How did you reach that conclusion?" She finished off what was left of the cucumber sandwich while she waited for Twilight's response.
"Experimentally," Twilight said. "Because that's me, isn't it? For better or worse I just can't leave these things alone until there's some kind of answer, so I designed an experiment."
"What sort of experiment?" Luna poured herself more tea and levitated a pastry topped with whipped cream and slices of fresh strawberries from one of the lower trays of the cart. She also offered a second one of the same type to Twilight. "Would you like one? These are among the best of the palace chef's creations, in my opinion."
"Oh, thank you." Twilight took over control of the pastry with her own telekinesis and set it on a plate in front of her, next to her cup of tea. "I remember these from when I lived here. They're one my favorites, too." She took a small bite and enjoyed the sweet taste of strawberries that flooded her tongue.
"Anyway," Twilight continued after swallowing, "the idea for the experiment came from what happened in that big collective dream you created. I discovered a lot from that about just how fine a level of control a pony can actually have. I'd read about lucid dreaming before, but I didn't know it could be that refined. Once I realized, though, it was the ideal tool. My first step was to practice until I could reliably control my dreams like that on my own. It took some getting used to, but before too long I was ready."
Twilight took another bite of her pastry. "Once I had enough control of my own dreams, the next step was to create a test subject. It had to be something that I could imagine, but couldn't actually exist as a real object, or at least not with the properties it would have in the dream."
"And what did you choose?" Luna asked. "I do hope you were careful. The things that can be created in dreams can sometimes have certain hazards, as I think has become quite clear in recent experiences."
"That was a concern I had." Twilight nodded. "I didn't create anything that had a mind of its own, of course, or something that could be dangerous. In fact... all I created was a flower."
"Just a flower?"
"A very special one," Twilight said. "But yes, a flower was all I needed. A lotus, to be exact. I mean, actually almost anything would have worked, but, well... I dreamed of a pond, and it was the first totally harmless thing that came to mind, so I made lotus flowers grow out of the water."
"But lotus flowers exist in the waking world, do they not?" Luna asked.
"Not like these." Twilight shook her head. "They had a certain attribute that can never exist in lotus flowers grown in this world. I made sure of that."
"I see." Luna drank more of her tea.
"So I picked one of these lotus flowers, and I took it with me," Twilight continued. "It was tricky, but based on some ideas I had from what I saw the Tantabus trying to do, I developed a way that I thought might let me bring something out." She took a drink of tea and paused. "So I tried it to see what would happen."
"And?"
Twilight levitated the box on the ground next to her chair upward into the air, then set it on the table. "And it worked."
Twilight opened the lid. Inside there was a single flower, and she lifted it out: a lotus with petals of purest, deepest imaginable black. They were so black that the flower wasn't visible as an object merely colored black; the petals were the very absence of light itself, perfectly dark silhouetted holes in space in which nothing could be seen.
As Luna stared at the flower, her eyes opened slightly wider in a restrained but unmistakable display of surprise. "I must say, this is extraordinary." She watched as Twilight slowly turned the flower in the air. The stem, sepals, stamens, and seed head were all normal, aside from being ringed in those sheerest black petals.
"Each petal is a perfect blackbody," Twilight said. "That's what I made special about it. They absorb all the light that hits them and reflect nothing. I checked with a high-precision light meter to be sure. They emit some infrared, but once you subtract out the blackbody distribution spectrum for room temperature, there's nothing left. Essentially, they're invisible. All you can see is the shape in space where they block light."
"Something that should not exist, because a perfect blackbody is an idealization, never a real thing," Luna said. "This is an impossible flower, so it would seem."
"Exactly." Twilight set the lotus down on the table, next to the tea kettle. She was struck by the eerie way that the impenetrable darkness of it contrasted with the light that played off the polished silver on the white frosted glass.
"Still, how can you rule out what you first suspected to be the case about the Tantabus?" Luna asked. "That this was not simply conjured by yourself unconsciously as a consequence of having dreamed it?"
"Because I used a thaumometer to take a continuous reading of my bedroom," Twilight said. "There was no significant magical activity the whole time I was sleeping that could possibly account for enough energy to conjure something like this into existence. The only plausible conclusion I'm left with is that it came from somewhere else without using magic to create it locally, and the only place that somewhere could have been was my dream, because the room was sealed with indicator tape and intrusion detectors. I certainly didn't go anywhere."
Luna sat and said nothing. She just stared at the black lotus flower and tilted her head at a very slight angle with one eye a little more open than the other.
"There are only two possibilities," Twilight continued. "Either dreams are entirely real new places created spontaneously by ponies with no effort and nothing more than thoughts, which seems extremely unlikely given the incredibly unfeasible amount of energy it would take to manufacture whole worlds like that on demand and then project your own consciousness into them... or transferring physical material from a dream into this 'real world' turned out to be possible because the two are fundamentally no different in nature. They're both just phenomenological illusions with interchangeable frames of perspective. Meaning, this is all just one big dream of some sort."
Luna was still studying the flower. "That does seem to make sense, I would be forced to admit," she said, with a small nod.
"Not only does it make sense, it seems downright likely," Twilight said. "It's scary how much a lot of things we don't know suddenly fall into place in a hypothesis with that kind of explanatory power about them. Magic, for example. Philosophers and scientists have been struggling for centuries with why we're in a universe that seems to have laws of physics that are always constant, except when magic comes along and decides they can just be ignored. It never made reconcilable sense in a universe that's real, but this offers a very simple explanation... and the simplest explanation... well, it's usually drastically more likely to be true than a more convoluted one."
"I must also agree with that," Luna said.
"Although..." Twilight wavered. "I... suppose magic could just be some kind of exceptional force that's unconstrained by normal laws of interaction... I could still be wrong..."
"Perhaps. But, truth be told... I do not think you are," Luna said hesitantly.
"I don't think so either, not after seeing this." Twilight shook her head. She couldn't keep an edge of fear out of her voice. "It just leaves the question... whose dream are we in?"