//------------------------------// // Chapter 5 // Story: Black Lotus // by Winston //------------------------------// Black Lotus Chapter 5 There were spheres, moving through the nothingness of a black empty vacuum. They raced in circular orbits, moons around planets, and planets around stars, and many stars scattered about the vast emptiness. Every one of them was held up on a rod, attached to a gear. Every gear was enmeshed with other gears, all connected but somehow not touching. The motion of each one was deterministic based on the motion of all the others, interlocking in an unfathomable machine woven through everything. Twilight moved in closer to one of the star systems, willing herself toward it through the endless expanse. She approached but discovered that the planet she aimed for wasn't in any one spot. Instead, it was there but not there—everywhere at once but in no particular place. It had an orbit that was exact and perfect but only in a diffuse shell of probability all around the center it circled, just a confusing thin blur of non-definition. The gear attached to it was stuck motionless, teeth aligned to a position on an indicator that showed a spherical locus. For eons the system floated alone in the dark, until another one just like it drifted along, surrounded by a similar cloud-orbiting planet in no single spot. The two came closer. They bumped into each other. The gears for each planet suddenly snapped over to a new position, a new indicator for a new sort of probability cloud that both now occupied at the same time, sharing the bizarre orbit. But that doesn't make sense. They should have smashed together and been destroyed. How could...? Realization dawned on her that the model wasn’t what she thought it was. These weren't planets or star systems. She had the sense of scale almost exactly backwards. Small. These were small, not large. They were so small that they were individual atoms. She was watching electrons around atomic nuclei. The two of them shared a covalent bond now, and a simple molecule had just been born. When it happened, the gears didn't turn in smooth motions from one position to another, they instantly snapped into discrete states, the teeth not passing through the space between. They could do this, she saw now, because weren't actually gears, they were really just numbers, quantities. They were counters. They were information. That's what all of this was, these electrons, the nuclei they orbited, the particles inside the nuclei, everything around. They weren't here, they were all just information, piles of numbers. She could see them suddenly, too, now that she knew what she was looking at. They were in a table, a three-dimensional lattice of tiny cubes that filled all of space, and every cube with a number inside it. The electrons were gone, the atoms had vanished. There was nothing actually there but the simulated representation of them, numbers that changed in complex cascades, creating immense phenomenological effects through the interplay of simple parts with simple rules. Twilight tried to look down at her own hooves, and found that they were the same substance, or lack of it, nothing but numbers describing probabilities that collapsed into deterministic certainties as she moved her legs and they passed through the lattice of information-space in a wave of trillions of interacting, changing digits. Her entire being was just data in some sort of ever-changing spreadsheet of an entire universe. It was all there but it was all an illusion, and it felt real because she was inside it and couldn't tell the difference, but she knew... None of it was real. It never had been. Her eyes snapped open. She found herself at her favorite desk in her palace library with her head lying on the pages of a thick book. Lifting herself up and pushing back her mane to get it out of her face, she looked down at the tome. She half expected, and half feared, to see it filled with a mind-numbing vast numerical table that stretched away beyond comprehension. To her relief, she found that it was just the regular printed text that was supposed to be in this volume on advanced theoretical thaumokinetics she'd been reading earlier in the evening. Things seemed solid and real enough again... for now. The magically powered reading lamp she used at night was still glowing, but it was very dim, the crystal power source nearly drained of energy. It must have been on for hours, because the last thing she recalled about it was that it had been at full brightness on a fresh charge. How long have I been sleeping here? She wondered through the groggy haze of tiredness. A glance over at the grandfather clock standing against the wall, and a quick light spell to illuminate it, showed that it was just barely past four in the morning. Twilight was annoyed by that discovery, because she found herself not seeing any good options about what to do now at this hour. It was still dark outside and good little ponies were all getting their much needed rest like she should be, but on the other hoof, going to bed at this point hardly seemed worth it, close as it was to morning—and close as the lingering images of that dream still were. She wasn't about to risk seeing that again right away, not if she could help it. What she really wanted to do, she decided, was get out of here and clear her head. A well-practiced silencing spell, often used in late-late nights and early-early morning hours, quieted her hoofsteps on the hard crystal floor so that she could walk through the halls without disturbing Spike. There was no reason for him to have to lose sleep for her nightmares. The front door of the palace, when she reached it a few moments later, was likewise opened with a sound-suppressing modified version of telekinetic magic. After exiting and closing it again behind herself, she took to the air, flew up to a flat area on the palace roof, and landed there. The moon was low in the western sky and would soon be ready to set and end the night. It looked huge near the horizon, glowing bright with a pale yellow-orange color. She watched it creeping lower minute by minute, while she took in the cool misty pre-dawn air in a slow, steady rhythm of breaths that calmed her. After a little while, she heard soft sounds of feathered wings flapping in the air. Twilight turned to look for them, and saw a large dark shape coming in, one with trailing streamers of indigo magic just barely visible against the night sky. They had pinpoint twinkling lights of a field of stars enmeshed in them. The shape approached the roof and flared its wings, air-braking off forward momentum and dropping down for a delicate, graceful landing on four hooves. Pretty teal colored eyes and a white crescent moon symbol set against a jet black torque were visible now. "May I join you?" Luna's voice was clear but kept in check, spoken in a soft volume suitable for the early hour. Twilight was a little taken aback by sudden unannounced arrival and wondered why the Princess of the Night would show up so spontaneously, but after a moment of thought she came to the realization that the reason was fairly obvious. "You saw?" Twilight asked in a meek voice. Luna nodded. "I saw." She started walking toward Twilight, stopping a short distance away. The two of them stood facing each other. "I've read that dream interpretation can be kind of tricky sometimes," Twilight said, not quite able to meet Luna's eye, "but I'm guessing this one was pretty straightforward." "It... was one of the easier cases lately," Luna said sympathetically, with a wry smile. "Yeah..." Twilight sighed. "I try not to think too much about it, you know, but sometimes, it still gets to me. Can't help it." "Is it anything you would like to talk about?" Luna asked. "No." Twilight shook her head, but abruptly stopped. "Well... actually... yes." "Oh?" Luna sat down next to Twilight and listened, the two of them side by side on the roof watching the slowly sinking moon. "I know that it's just a hypothesis." Twilight spoke slowly and softly. "I know that it can't be proven. Being completely logical and completely rational, I know that we can never really know." Luna nodded. "But feelings don't work that way, do they?" Twilight asked. "Intellect can't just tell them not to choose, not to exist in one state or another. They don't have superposition or a middle ground, just a razor's edge that fences off the two sides of a question—and emotions and gut feelings are lousy gymnasts. They can't stay balanced on the edge of a razor, they always fall to one side or the other." "And to what side of the question at hoof do you find your feelings falling?" Luna asked softly. She moved over a little closer to Twilight. "I find myself believing that it's true," Twilight said. "I can try to pretend to be logical and say I don't feel either way, but that's a lie. When it comes down to it and I'm honest with myself, that's what I really think about the idea that it's all a simulation of some kind. I think it's true." "And has this been troubling you?" Luna asked. "Well... yes and no," Twilight said. "It's worse in my head than in my heart. It's surprising because I thought it would be the other way around: I thought my intellect would be more accepting because there's no sense in fighting against what the evidence says, but my emotions would have trouble because of the loss that comes with thinking that things aren't real. Instead... the opposite happened." "How so?" Luna asked. "I guess my mind doesn't really know what to think about it or what exactly it means if it's true, and I'm still trying to figure that out," Twilight said. "But my feelings about the things that actually matter to me? Those really didn't change at all. I was worried that what you warned me about might happen, but it never did." "No?" Luna asked. "It never made my friends feel unimportant or unreal," Twilight told her. "It never took them away. I didn't let it. If anything, it only made me realize even more how important they are. Things like my flying lessons with Rainbow Dash, and helping Applejack bring in the apple harvest on her farm—and yesterday, I took some time off just to spend with Spike, and I think it might be the first time in a long time that I didn't take having him around for granted. It's something I've really needed, and I didn't realize how much until this happened. In some ways, it's actually made me a better pony." "I see," Luna said. "It's just like what you said," Twilight continued. "What is 'real'? It's what you make of it. Nopony can tell me that all the good things I've shared with all the good ponies I've known didn't happen or didn't matter. They're the only things that matter. I realized that I don't care where they happened." "Then it sounds as if I had nothing to be worried about." Luna smiled and wrapped one wing around Twilight's back. "On the contrary, you’ve done well to make an opportunity for growth out of a crisis." "Thanks to your good advice," Twilight said, and nodded with a smile. “You were right. Love is an anchor that holds me in place against doubt." "That is a relief to hear you say," Luna said. "Sorry if you wasted the trip out here for nothing," Twilight apologized. "I didn't mean to cause a false alarm. I just can't always control what I dream." "I suppose not." Luna shook her head. "But do not feel sorry. Nopony can. I have no regret, besides. What sort of a friend would be I be if I did not come when I thought you might need help?" "Thanks," Twilight said. “That means a lot.” "It is my pleasure," Luna said. "I would be happy to stay a little longer, too, if you would like." Twilight nodded in silent assent. The two of them watched the sky for a while, leaning against each other side by side in comfortable silence. Twilight enjoyed the contrast of the chilled air with the warmth radiated by her companion. The night wore on, closer and closer to dawn. "Not to sound ungrateful, but should you be here, with morning about to start?" Twilight asked eventually. "Don't you and Celestia need to coordinate changing from night to day? I don't want to keep you from anything important..." "Do not be concerned over that," Luna said. "It was an uneventful night, and there was nothing that demands a turnover in person. All that is required is that I yield the sky and complete the lowering of the moon on time, and that may be done easily enough from anywhere. This is important. My sister will understand." With those worries alleviated, Twilight enjoyed the quiet of the early morning for a little while longer. "Hard to think that one flower could lead to so many questions," she mused. "Indeed." Luna nodded, a slow and somber motion. "Whatever did happen to that lotus?" "Oh." Twilight shrugged. "I got rid of it after a couple weeks. It was just sitting around collecting dust, so I decided I might as well either put it to use or clear out the clutter. I ran a few destructive tests on it just out of curiosity to try to find out some things I hadn't been able to determine without them. There wasn't much left after it was all done." "And what was learned?" Luna asked. "Apparently, it was just an ordinary flower," Twilight said. "As far as I can tell, anyway. I never could figure out what caused the blackbody effect or why it didn't seem to wilt. I doubt I ever will." "Some dreams do have a tendency to defy being explained," Luna said. "That they do." Twilight agreed. She studied the moon on the western horizon and smiled, admiring the beauty of its light shining bright against the darkness of the sky. "That they do." The End