//------------------------------// // Amphiboly Proxy // Story: The End, And Then... // by PunIntended Consequences //------------------------------// Thump. Head vs Tree. “Whew he whe naa?” Whumf. Flank vs Ground. “What did you say, Sky?” Conk. Hoof vs Root. “Sorry. Still getting used to having a mouth. Where are we now?” Thump. Head vs Low-Hanging Branch. “I thought it might be fun to take a more scenic route and enjoy the sights; it also gives you a chance to get used to having an actual body!” Thud. Sky Voice vs The World. Current tally is 0-27 in World’s favor. “Are you… sure you don’t need any help?” the lovely Twilight ventured. A small groan dribbled from the mouth of the orange stallion beside her, whose front half was currently sprawled out on the dirt road and back half was proudly displaying a distinct lack of mammalian biology. “I’ll manage, Twilight,” he grunted as he pushed himself up. “Like you just said, how else am I supposed to learn how to walk other than actually walking?” He took three very shaky steps forward before tripping once again. “See? I’m already getting better! That’s a new record!” The Lavender Goddess simply sighed and shook her head, a smile ever so gently caressing her flawless face as she wisely chose to leave the mortal alone to learn from his own mistakes. Let it be known once more that Twilight Sparkle’s choice was as it should be. “Mhm, yeah, uh, Twilight?” The unassuming pegasus proclaimed. “Yes?” Glorious Ruler responded. “I think that Narrator you, uh, ‘hired’ is still malfunctioning,” the Idiot Who Defies Gods and Goddesses so unbelievably had the wherewithal to speak aloud. “Yeah, something’s definitely not right with it,” he continued, thus showing his utter ineptitude in all things ever. “And now it’s trying to insult me. Great! Twilight, kindly put the voice in its place before I do it for you.” Twilight the Great and Powerful once more took hold of the fabric of the world, isolating the infantile and utterly insignificant strings of the Narrator, weaving them together more fluidly than before and plucking away some frayed remains of broken connections and proverbial ‘ghosts in its machine’. Oh. Oh. The Narrator suddenly felt a large amount of guilt and stupidity over his actions as Twilight Sparkle imbued the strands with her personal copy of God/Mortal/Narrator Interaction for Silly Fillies. The appropriate etiquette and mannerisms filled its mind for a brief second before the last vestiges of its conscious emotion were carefully peeled away and stored for later incarnation. “’Later incarnation’, huh?” “I can’t just destroy it! That’s an actual consciousness, and thus is at some level aware of its actions and the world around it. To will it away would be tantamount to murder!” “Alright, alright, I get it; you don’t want to kill it! Sheesh, there’s no need to be short-tempered.” The pair continued their slow-but-perfectly-timed trek in silence. Twilight took the opportunity to study the forest they were currently walking through, its many coniferous trees swaying slightly in a gentle breeze. The forest was one of only three mysteries she had yet to solve—four now, counting Sky Voice’s sudden and seemingly irreversible memory loss. It had begun to appear shortly after her latest ‘world update’ (as she liked to call them), seemingly at random, but most often when she was travelling a very long distance. While she had her suspicions about its nature, none of them were supported by enough evidence to explore in-depth. As such, she had yet to discover what it was or where it might reside in the universe, although every every journey made her feel just a little bit closer. Sky Voic, unfortunately, was not able to appreciate said forest of trees. He spent mososost of his time receiving unwanted close-ups of either the dirt path or the many rocks embedded in it instead. Each time, he would diligently pick itself up, dust off its front, take a few steps fffforward, and promptly fall fall fall fall fall “Whoa, howww happened? Who turned on the lights? Twililililight……… what’s going off? “I don’t know! Everything’s gone… I can’t feel anything besides us.” Well… what n— RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRROHMYGOSHTWILIGHTMAKEITSTOPRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR “I’m trying!” RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPLEASEHURRYITHURTSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA “Hold on, I’m going to try to fix this with a blockade spell!” AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO | | | | “Ah… ooh… oh…” “W… what just happened?!” “You’re asking me?! You have way more experience with this than I do!” “What?! Out of the two of us, you would obviously know more about this than I would!” “Oh really? How exactly do you figure that, huh? Because last I checked, you—” “Look, *, I… I think it would be best if we left—“ “What is that?” “Excuse me, I’m trying to talk about this—“ “No, *, look at—there it is again!” “*, are you violating the barrier again?” “…Maybe.” “*, I told you not to do that.” “Just look!” “Hmm… It looks like some sort of censor. I didn’t know—” “Okay, uh, that’s great. What does it mean?” “…Why aren’t you letting me finish my sentences?” “Sorry, I didn’t even realize I wasn’t. I guess—” “OW! What was that?” “Uh, hold on, let’s think this through… we need a narrator.” “Right… but ours is broken, apparently.” “Can we fix it?” “Maybe…” “If not, I can always take over again.” “I don’t know if that would be a good idea right now, *. If what’s happening is what I think it is, we’re going to want to stay right where we are.” “Al…righty then? You’re the boss.” “Hold on. Okay, I have a plan. Take this, and when I tell you to, swallow it.” “Eeeww, it’s slimy! What is this?” “It’s a snipping of my essence. Don’t drop it, please. Swallow it now.” “Uuugh… it tastes like—“ Rrraaaaiiinn moooved around them, lightning crashed in the distance. The bright flash illuminated the startled faces of two Ones. They stood still, Place suddenly feeling very hostile. “Oh good, it worked!” Acting on its newfound feeling of hostility, Place of Places began kicking moving. * don’t think * fully understand what’s happening the One said: breathed. Other just sighed, because It knew exactly = precisely what was happening, and It wasn’t (was+not) sure how to feel about Ittttttt. “Oh shut up, I do to know how I feel about this situation. I feel… emotional darn it?” it attempted to agreeably argue. One, having not been looking to Other, viciously no vicariously stopinterruptingmeexpressing emotion. “Yes, and it’s a particularly bad case too. It’s known as ‘The Illness’… well, no it isn’t, but I won’t be able to tell you what it’s actually called until this is over. Anyway, it basically means we’re stuck in a sort-of not-really limbo where almost everything is wishy-washy but sometimes things aren’t.” It paused for a time. “Nothing really makes sense unless you can put up a good fight.” —That’s… sorta cool I guess think. How do YOU KNOW ALL that It hurts Twilight make it stop!?] “Reasons I have time to go into right now but the world probably won’t let me. It might be possible to zap it clean again, but those powers seem to be a bit iffy right now, so maybe we shouldn’t take that chance.” The One of them turned (rotated) away and strolled cantered walked trotted galloped ran flew scurried strolled uncertainly and certainly up/down the river-path-ground. So then how do we solve it? The One of them said: asked, stumstumblingbling to catch up… “You wait for an unspecified amount of time.” The One replied in a curt but friendly way. Or maybe it was a trick of the Thing. You can’t tell me that either then? The One of Them stopped and looked to see the other. “I know it’s difficult to tell right now,” the One replied, “but I said that correctly. It actually works kind of like the new traveling mechanics. That might even be what set it off in the first place. I’ve been holding onto a hypothesis about this Place; about this forest not actually being ‘real’, and this could be a major development in that line of thought.” Blurred edges in the distance sharpened slightly. They were in a forest. The world was grey and rainy. “According to one of my hypotheses, concretion and abstraction,” the speaker continued, “is all about perception. If the world is perceived as being concrete—as being unchangeable—it will continue to act in ways you expect it to, such as always moving from one place to another through a forest, regardless of where you start or end.” The speaker made a motion around itself. “All of this is what my mind thinks about when traveling long distances quickly. I see a forest, a barrier, separating what I interpret to be ‘lands’, places that are different from one another.” The world focused. Sheets of monochrome rain pounded the raging trees as lighting flashed unseen behind them. Thunder rolled in a near-constant boom, causing the pony/not-pony pair to twitch their ears in annoyance. “You, however, do not share the same interpretation.” The not-pegasus reached a foreleg around the orange not-unicorn. “As a semi-spectral guide, the level at which you interact with the world is much more… well, interactive. I may have control over everything, but I’ve been stumbling through the last one hundred and fifty years almost on luck alone. You, on the other hoof, were created from the world itself. You know how it works because you are it. “You don’t see the separation between places as being significant, seeing as you can be anywhere with just a thought and a turn… or at least, you could. Now you’re an actual being, and your mind is trying to cope with the loss of many of your abilities.’ She paused again, looking him over. “Didn’t you notice how you always try to turn around when you’re walking? I did.” Color leaked in. The rain was blueish-silver. Green needles adorned reddish-brown wood, which in turn was embedded into muddy, brown soil. Magnesium flashes preceded the fading storm’s thunderous vibrations. The pegasus shook his head, pulling away slightly. He stumbled, but managed to catch himself before his face sank into the mud. Both n-n-n-p-p-p-ponies were soaked from ear to tail, but neither seemed to mind much. “So… what, then? Am I the one to blame for all of this?” it asked. “No, not at all! If anypony is to blame, it’s probably me.” She hung her head. “I should have run more tests. I knew it would be dangerous to tamper with the Way of the World, but it was so inefficient and slow, and I thought if I could improve anything, it would be that. I didn’t consider that more could be at stake than just a mostly-extinct pocket universe.” Silence ensued. The whipping wind quieted to a dull roar, the lightning and thunder following a mere minute after. The rain was no longer a frenzied torrent; rather, it was soothing, cooling, and slow. The clouds began to glow softly. Sky Voice gestured forward. “Come on,” he encouraged, “let’s not worry about that right now. We have a forest to cross.” He stood and managed a few quickly-improving steps before realizing that Twilight had not moved. He slowly forced his limbs to turn around, only to find the mare sitting in the mud, ears down, muzzle scraping the sodden dirt. “We can’t,” she whispered. What was that? I didn’t quite hear you,” Sky responded. “We can’t,” Twilight repeated, just loud enough for him to hear. “Ah, c’mon Twilight, it isn’t that bad.” “I… I’m sorry Sky. The risk is just too great. I’ll send you ahead and walk through the forest myself.” “Twilight, what are you talking about?” Sky shot back. “It’s just a forest! We had a little hiccup, but it’s over and now we can move on. Look, I know how this works; just like almost every other time a problem crops up, you work some super-duper magic that up and makes the problem disappear! Whatever you did by feeding me your… ‘Essence’ must have fixed it, bing-bang-boom we’re done here.” “Yours is an abstract mind, Sky,” Twilight said softly. “It’s so very different from mine, even if it doesn’t seem to be. Our ways of thinking are in conflict here, where concretion and abstraction lay edge-to-edge.” She sighed. “It may not even be possible for us to travel more than a few miles together without risking the total destruction of our little reality.” “Waaaaiiiit, wait wait, what?” her companion spluttered. “Destroy the universe? Pssh, the stakes aren’t that high! …R-right?” The clouds were thinning now, and no rain bothered them as their eyes briefly met, one pair showing the light, confused worry of a long-time friend; the other pair was dark, unshed tears distorting the images they processed. Twilight broke the stare first, sighing heavily as her head dropped to the ground once more. “They are, Sky. I’m sorry, but you have to go. I’ll see you sooner than you think, okay?” Her horn ignited. “Uh, nono, this isn’t right!” The light increased. “Nonono, Twilight! Twilight!” The stallion moved to intercept, but in his clumsiness he tripped and splashed into the mud. Thus, with a resounding pop, Sky Voice was gone. Alone, Twilight Sparkle returned to her trek through the forest, although the path was admittedly now more of a stream. Heaving another heavy sigh, she conjured a small boat, turned due west, and set sail for the exit. The forest shuddered. The clouds grew darker. It began to rain.