//------------------------------//
// Getting Off of the Right Hoof 
// Story: Broken Symmetry 
// by Trick Question 
//------------------------------//

The dress landed on the ground and inexplicably scrunched away from us. For the next three seconds, Twilight and I stood there and wordlessly stared at it.

My first thought: there was a small creature hiding in the hem of the dress. I quickly dismissed that idea as unlikely due to the tight curves of its shape. While I struggled to formulate a better hypothesis, the dress winked out of existence, right before our eyes.

As most educated ponies know, memory isn't by any sense a literal record of events. It's a hodgepodge mess of connections stored in the brain, and any sense of coherence comes from the process of reconstructing the memory from those connections. It's an imprecise and error-filled process, and most of us aren't consciously aware of it because our minds fight against that kind of awareness. For example, as ponies living in a logical society, we feel the need to give 'reasons' for our actions. But the reasons we claim don't actually predate our actions: studies prove we make them up after the fact. Memories are very similar in that respect.

What happened to me when the dress disappeared was so chaotic, I had to piece it together afterwards. It went something like this.

I was standing right next to the door, while Twilight stood behind me. The moment the dress disappeared, I felt the air being torn from my lungs and my body shot forward into the vacuum that now filled experiment room zero. The heavy door also slammed shut, or at least it tried to. My right forehoof was, for better or worse, in the way.

By all rights, this should have been a horrible disaster. The door was heavy enough to break my hoof in two, and then I would have been locked inside the room for ninety minutes as I bled, potentially to death, inside a chamber whose full function was yet to be determined. I might also have suffered pressure damage to my eyes and skin if the air pressure had failed to fully stabilize before the door slammed shut. My survival would have been likely, but it would not have been an enjoyable ninety minutes.

Thank Celestia, I lucked out. Instead of losing a hoof, I heard the crack of the door on my hoof (I went into shock so quickly I barely even felt it), but something else blocked the door well enough to prevent it from doing more damage. Apparently, the piñata stick had been sucked partway in, and the fat end of it stoppered the door. Twilight's hoof was braced against the stick on the outside, which helped in two ways: it kept the stick from entering the room, and it wedged the door open even wider. This saved my hoof from a severe break.

I started gasping for air as the pressure stabilized, and Twilight squeezed her legs into place in the door to help extract me. The next thing I knew, I was lying on the cold, metal floor outside the room.

"It's okay, Moondancer," said Twilight, although her eyes were wet. "I've got you." I lifted off the floor as she levitated me up. A few moments later we were outside and one of the guards had flown off to get a medic.

I was feeling pretty dizzy. "Thanks," I said to my friend. She laid me on the grass, but kept my hoof elevated with magic. I glanced up at it, and it looked pretty awful. Cracks ran up both sides, and there was some blood dripping from the medial.

"I'm so sorry," whispered Twilight. She was crying and trying not to look me in the eyes.

"Hay, it's not your fault," I said. I reached up with a forehoof to touch her cheek. "Your quick thinking saved my hoof, and maybe my life."

Twilight shook her head. "It was dumb luck," she admitted. "The suction pulled me toward the door too, and my hoof hit the stick at just the right time to leverage the door open."

"It'll be okay. I'll live," I said. I looked over at my cracked hoof. "Shit. I hope I didn't break the coffin bone."

Twilight shuddered and said nothing, but I knew exactly what she was thinking. I've seen the pictures in medical textbooks. Repair of a broken coffin bone is painful, time-consuming, and horrific to look at.

I gently petted Twilight's mane as she leaned down to hold my neck. Before I knew it, I was passing out in a hospital bed.





It was morning when I woke.

"You're lucky," said the doctor. Twilight was standing right beside her, her face a mask of worry.

"Tell me something I don't know," I joked. "I can still feel my hoof, after all. Not that I want to, mind you." I looked up at my hoof. It had been placed in a walking cast, which already told me everything I needed to know: there was no break, and I'd be out and trotting again within twenty-four hours. I winced from the pain.

Twilight reached over and pushed a button on a hoofheld device next to the bed, apparently intended for my use. I wondered what it was supposed to do, but seconds later I knew.

"Oh, that feels nice," I murmured as the fire fizzled through my IV, and I smiled up at Twilight. I'd been hospitalized previously, but meperidine had never felt like this before. It must have been a high dosage.

Twilight sighed. "I'm just glad you're okay. We really need to be more careful than this, Moondancer."

"Don't blame yourself, Twi. Neither of us could have foreseen this possibility," I said. "And now we know for sure. We just need to stopper the doors at the start of each experiment."

"Ms. Moondancer, the Princess informs me that you are already familiar with your condition," said the doctor. "But just to be clear, your hoof is going to be fine. You need to keep this cast on for a week if possible, so we'll schedule you back when you're ready to head out. No cantering or dancing or anything, just a light trot at most, and preferably keep it to a walk and stay off of it when possible. We don't see any cracks on the X-ray, but there may be a hairline fracture in your coffin bone. We need to keep you under observation for a few hours after your last dose of IV painkillers, and then you can go."

"I don't suppose I can keep the IV?" I said, trying to sound as sarcastic as possible. "I'd like to leave soon, but I'm probably going to dose again the next time it starts to hurt that badly, and Celestia knows how long that will keep me stuck here."

The doctor smiled. "Princess Twilight Sparkle has already picked up a prescription of oral painkillers and agreed to manage your care. You can take those instead, once the pain is light enough. I daresay you're in good hooves," she said.

"Well, I think I'm in great hooves," I countered, reaching out to squeeze Twilight's hoof with mine. Then I did something very silly, which surprised me—must have been the narcotics—because I winked at her, and Twilight blushed. The doctor blushed a lot deeper, though.

Me, winking at a princess! I loved it. I was such a ham.

"I'll... leave you two alone," said the doctor. She walked off quickly and shut the door behind her.

Twilight buried her muzzle in my barrel for a moment, then came up for air. "I was so worried, Moondancer."

"These things happen, Twilight. Even if the door had shut, I would have survived," I said.

"We don't know that."

"Eh, it's probable. I still don't know how that flimsy stick saved me, though. It didn't even break, did it?" I asked. "Piñata sticks are designed for foals. They shouldn't be that durable, even though it is surprisingly heavy for a toy."

Twilight grimaced. "Well... it's not really a piñata stick."

"Wait, what?" I said. "Where did you get it?"

Twilight smiled oddly. "They didn't have any piñata sticks at the store when we went to prepare for your party, and we were short on time. And I wanted your party to be perfect, naturally. So I chopped off and sanded down one end of a baseball bat."

My jaw dropped (figuratively, of course). "Seriously? Back when I brandished it at you at my party—I could have given you a concussion with that thing!"

"Heh, well, these things happen, right?" said Twilight, with a cute grin. "It's all water under the bridge."

"I guess," I relented. "Anyway, now that we know about the vacuum, we should be safe from here on out."

Twilight stood up and shook her head. "No. Moondancer, we need a reasonable theory before we can proceed with further experiments. This is simply too dangerous."

I groaned in objection, but Twilight was right, as usual. "Ugh. I haven't had time to think, but I'm not sure thinking would even help. What happened is categorically impossible. Teleportation?"

"The field can't possibly break; that's an absolute, just like you said. And if it could, there would be no more building after the inevitable explosion," said Twilight.

"Then all we're left with then is a violation of the conservation of energy, which breaks all of known physics. That isn't acceptable," I stated.

Twilight pursed her lips. "I've had time to think while you were sleeping, and I have an idea. But I need your quantum mechanical experience."

I nodded, instantly curious. "Well, let's hear it," I said.

"What if—not saying how, just what if—the test chamber could create a closed timelike curve?" said Twilight.

I stared at Twilight, then I stared at the wall. I tried to put the pieces together in my drug-addled head. She was patient, kindly enough.

"You mean what if the antimatter is actually travelling backwards through time?" I asked.

"Exactly! Maybe there really is only one dress. Then the one we put in might be the same one that came out," said Twilight.

I suddenly realized why she needed to do that experiment right away. "You had this idea from the very beginning," I said. "That's why you wanted to do the experiment right away. No wonder you sound so guilty. It makes perfect sense that the air would disappear, which was an oversight."

"I'm so sorry—"

"Stop, Twilight," I growled. "It's fine."

"But I should have told you what I was planning, and taken more time to think," she said. "That recklessness caused your injury."

"Maybe. I don't care. I might have done the same thing in your case," I said, and it was true. "Anyway, that wasn't the cause, because your theory is completely wrong."

"What?" said Twilight.

"It can't be a closed timelike curve, Twilight."

"But it has to be, it's the only..."

"That's faulty logic," I said, rather gruffly. I saw her face fall, and I felt a little bad, but sometimes you have to rip that bandage off fast.

"Okay, okay. So what's wrong with it?" she asked.

"Several things. First off, it isn't the same dress. It's a different type of silk, and it's been chemically treated. Remember?"

Twilight frowned. "Maybe the process of becoming antimatter and going backwards through time could have changed it at the molecular level?"

I shook my head. "It couldn't change the chemical composition—that doesn't make any sense," I said. "Besides, in order for something larger than a particle to be part of a true closed timelike curve, entropy would have to be reversed for the entire system."

"But that's possible!" said Twilight, her face brightening. "I thought about it, and it might explain the energy drain whenever you run an experiment. Some of the magic power is feeding the system to reverse entropy within the field."

I paused. "Okay, that might fit. Although I feel compelled to point out that the statics of the energy drain are highly inconsistent," I said. "The energy draw has been fluctuating wildly ever since I hooked the thing up, and it even varies between experiment rooms. The only room that never seemed to pull energy was room two..."

"That's the room that was sabotaged! Why didn't you mention this earlier?" asked Twilight.

"Because it was coincidental and irrelevant. That sort of physical damage to the door isn't something that could have been caused by a mana surge, or even a faulty seal," I explained. "I determined that even before I installed the camera that caught Starlight Glimmer in teleport."

"I guess that's fair. But we're left with only three possibilities. One, or I guess zero to be extra-dorky, all of physics is wrong. One, I'm right about the time loop, but for some reason it alters the chemical composition of matter inside the box. Or two, there's a possibility we haven't thought about yet," she said. "I believe my theory is still the most likely."

I shook my head. "It has to be the latter. For what happened to be a loop, there would need to be... Here, hoof me that notebook and a quill."

I took the quill with my magic and drew a line on the paper representing time going to the right, and another horizontal line separating the inside and outside of the chamber. On the separating line, I placed a circle for the first time the door was opened, followed by a square for the first time it was shut—and then a second time for the next time it was opened and shut. I drew a set of arrows showing the dress entering in the middle of the latter window of time in which the door was open. The arrows reversed direction just short of the door being closed, headed backwards through time, and reversed direction again right when the door initially opened. Then the dress exited in the middle of the first open-door period:





"Let me see if I follow," said Twilight. She pointed with a hoof at the left side. "The leftmost circle represents when we opened the door the first time, and the place the dress exits is where we picked it up. Then we shut the door at the leftmost square, waited, and the second circle is when we opened it again. We threw the dress in, and it disappeared moments before the door tried to close for the second time, due to the air also disappearing."

"Right. From the dress's point of view, we threw it into the chamber during the second experiment. Time reversed for it when it disappeared, then it saw the door 'shut' when we opened it. The dress sat in the room a while, going backwards through time," I continued. "Then time reversed a second time for the dress at the moment we initially opened the door for the first experiment, and that's the point where it came out. But there's a problem with this theory. Can you spot it?"

"Well, I'm going to guess it's that 'gap' you marked between the time the dress disappeared and the door tried to shut," said Twilight. "And even then, the door didn't actually shut all the way. As far as I know, it's a mystery what activated the second half of the experiment."

"While that's true, there's a larger problem. There are two dress worldlines in the same space, Twilight," I pointed out. "There should have been two dresses occupying the same position in space at the same time: once after we opened the door initially up until we removed the old dress, and once after we threw in the younger dress up until it disappeared. That isn't possible."

Twilight grinned. "But it is possible! If you're actually reversing time, the manner by which your field is separating the matter from the antimatter would allow two sets of spatial coordinates to occupy the same place," she said. The satisfied grin on her face was kind of adorable. I regretted having to wipe it off so soon.

"Okay, that's pretty bright. That might even explain the motion of the dress when we were removing it and adding it," I said. "It was being literally pulled out of, and then sucked into, the time loop. But you're missing something even more obvious. Look at the diagram, and think back to our experiments."

Twilight's brow furrowed. "I'm not seeing it. What is it?"

"Antimatter isn't invisible, Twilight," I said, flatly.

"I... No, I still don't get it. What do you mean?" she asked. I was kind of surprised she hadn't put the pieces together, to be honest. That sort of thing can happen when you're stuck in an otherwise-beautiful theory, though.

"Antimatter has equal but opposite electrical charge. So it absorbs and emits light in the same way that normal matter does," I explained. "The only difference is that the light that gets emitted has opposite polarity. Think about the antimatter version of the dress, before we shut the door the first time, and after we opened the door the second time."

Twilight sighed in frustration and planted her face in her hooves. "Oh, horse apples, you're right!" she said. I could forgive her the profanity, though. I'd have felt the same way.

"If your theory were correct, when we removed the dress from the experiment room we would have seen it split into two dresses: the normal matter dress which we removed, and the antimatter dress travelling backwards through time, which essentially would have been the past trace of the removed dress," I said. "Similarly, when we went to throw the dress in, it would have already been sitting there. Tossing it in would have caused it to scrunch into place on top of its dual, then both dresses would disappear when the time reversal activated."

Twilight sat and thought quietly for a few minutes, and I let her. I was still reeling from the drugs, and I needed a moment's rest after that much conversation.

"What if the antimatter were made invisible?" she finally asked.

"I'm listening," I said.

"It might be possible to invent a spell that could render antimatter invisible," she said. "If it actually is a closed timelike curve, then antimatter should maintain a unique signature within the field. Magic could also terminate the loop early, before the door is shut."

I shook my head. "Either spell would need to be cast from the basement, and there's no logical reason somepony would do something like that."

Twilight bit at her lip. "Starlight Glimmer might have done it, maybe to throw us off the track of realizing what your work is capable of," she said. I saw her shudder slightly, and I felt it too. The idea that Starlight Glimmer might have been in the basement of my lab while we were upstairs was not exactly comforting.

I snorted. "Ugh. We'll need to check the entire lab, then," I said. "But it's still ridiculous on the muzzle. If your theory is correct, then I've created a device capable of time travel of the first kind. There's already a spell that can do that, and that kind of time travel is highly limited in utility because you can't use it to change the past. The only benefits of my research would be that my lab allows it to be done to inanimate objects, and it could be performed multiple times by the same user."

"And it would be much easier to modify Star Swirl's spell to do that than to sabotage your lab," admitted Twilight. "If it is time travel of the first form, Starlight should have figured it out by now, and she wouldn't need to go to all this trouble to confuse us. I guess we're back to square one. We'll both need to hit the books and see else we can come up with."

I nodded in agreement.

Twilight sat with me and read to herself for about two hours until I was ready to be discharged. While waiting, I tried to nap, but my mind was tortured by all the possibilities. Some of the facts seemed to point to time travel, but there were too many impossibles in the way.

Everything together suggested Starlight Glimmer's involvement. It seemed obvious she was trying to 'fake' time travel with my experiments. But she must have known Twilight and I would figure it out, so for what possible reason?

Who in Equestria could benefit from a fake time loop?