Chapter 4: Avoidance Tactics
How do you hide from yourself?
“You see that? Right in that corner there.”
I followed her hoof as she pointed to Luna smelling the roses and generally having what looked like a pleasant day. Well, so far.
“I don’t like this,” I muttered for the umpteenth time.
Twilight grinned at me, more caught up in the execution of her plan than my misgivings. Not that it would stop her anyway.
“You got it?” she asked me.
I frowned, hefting the metal canister and seriously considered keeping it. I didn’t know what Twilight wanted with the canister, but if her past actions were any indication, it couldn’t be anything good. Wait a minute, that’s me. I’m her past actions. I muttered some choice words under my breath. Ah fine, whatever it was she was planning, she wouldn’t tell me. Besides, with the way time worked, even if I could guess what she was up to, there wouldn’t be a way to stop her. She would know. Eventually—reluctantly—I passed over the canister.
Twilight licked her lips as she took the container and opened it with ill-concealed relish. A quiet ‘pop’ and the lid came off. Hearing something, or by coincidence, Luna’s ears swivelled around. She perked up, her eyes raking her surroundings in wary scepticism. I stifled a gasp and Twilight shrunk back slightly.
“Anypony there?” she called out.
When there was only silence, Luna reddened.
“Fie! Show yourselves!”
My heart felt like it was trying to leave through my mouth. I swallowed it back down and laid still like Twilight had told me.
How did she hear us?!
Luna swept past us, but suddenly stopped, and whipped her head back, her eyes fixed directly at our position. I just barely prevented myself from flinching in surprise. By her suspicious scowl, it looked like she had spotted us in the bushes. She glared, her smouldering look feeling like lances in my chest as she locked gazes with me.
She knows, she knows, she knows! I screamed in my mind. We’re going to be found out!
A hoof touched mine and I nearly yelped, but I realised it was future-me, giving me a small smile of steady reassurance. She was completely at ease, wearing that ever-present smirk on her lips. I clamped down on my instinct that screamed at me to confess to a crime I hadn’t yet committed.
I’m not here. I’m not staring at you. It’s your imagination, Luna!
Luna peered owlishly for a few more seconds before she gave an almost imperceptible shrug and wandered off. I sagged in relief. Eventually, the debilitating fear slowly wound down, but my heart never stopped for a moment in trying to climb out of my chest and leap out of my throat.
“Oops,” Twilight said, putting away the canister with a reluctant sigh, “I forgot Luna had excellent hearing. I should have thought that one out more thoroughly. Wowee, how was that, though? Got the old adrenaline running?”
“That was the single most frightening experience I’ve ever had, and I faced off Princess Luna when she was Nightmare Moon. Why are you asking me anyway? You’ve been through it before.”
Twilight got up and shook her herself free of some of the leaves and twigs that had entangled themselves in her mane and coat. She trotted around.
“Sometimes it’s best to sample a delicacy afresh,” she answered cryptically. She beckoned with an impertinent hoof. “Come on! We can still move on with the plan, even though I didn’t expect that to happen.”
Again, I wrinkled my brow in confusion. “Don’t you already know?” I hissed back at her. “You should have already known that this was going to happen!”
Twilight shrugged with a smile so blithe I wanted to reach around and strangle her. “I can’t remember everything perfectly that far back. I just remember I pranked a princess, blah, blah, fun, blah, blah two days dungeon.”
“Two days what?!”
“I’m just messing with you,” Twilight replied with a monkey’s grin. “We don’t get into trouble. I think. Besides, the Princesses have a sense of humour.”
“How do you know this?”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Honestly, it’s like you keep forgetting that I’m a princess too.”
That wasn’t fair! Of course I would forget about that, she never acted like one!
Twilight continued her thought, ignoring, or choosing to ignore, what I was thinking. I could never tell with my future-self. “Anyway, there’s always a backup, we’ll just have to find out who…”
“On whom?” I asked finally. “Anyway, we’ve tried, let’s go home.”
Twilight wrinkled her muzzle like she’d seen a quesadilla. “What are you, a walking dictionary?” She rolled her eyes and continued before I could say anything. “We continue onto Celestia, of course.”
I knew it, too good to be true. Now we move onto—
“Princess Celestia? W-What?” I squeaked. “You can’t prank the Princess.”
Twilight gave me a quizzical look. “And Luna is fine?”
“That’s not the point!”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh please, we’ve been through this, tell me you haven’t thought about it. No wait, you have. I know.”
I could feel the heat rise to my cheeks. “I didn’t! This is different!” There had been some tempting times when I was a foal, but I’d always had too much respect for the Princess to ever carry it out. There wasn’t much use denying it, though. “And you know as well as I why I wouldn’t!”
“Hmmm.” Twilight studied me in the same way I studied insects, then she snorted. “Anyway, you know Cadance can’t take a joke as well as Celestia.” She cocked her head. “Well she can, but you just know she’ll prank you ten times harder. That mare is a diabolical machine.”
“Well that’s not true…” I trailed off trying to dredge up a defence for my former foalsitter.
“You’re right,” Twilight replied thoughtfully. “It’s more like your overprotective brother.”
“Okay, that’s true,” I replied with a surprised giggle. Gosh, they were so in sync when they teamed up. “And he’s so possessive of Cadance sometimes.”
Twilight chuckled. “See? All good, you know I would think this through. After all, I’m thorough if nothing else.”
I considered it, then finally nodded. If there was one thing I could trust myself to do in the future, it was think things through. And read books. But mostly think things through.
“Fine,” I said grudgingly. “But the Princess? Really? Why can’t it just be a random pony?”
Twilight held a hoof to her chest as if she were offended by the notion.
“I’m insulted that you would think I would terrorise poor strangers I don’t even know.”
“And Luna’s okay?!” I shot back, mimicking her tone.
Twilight gave me a funny look. “Luna’s not a stranger. That’s just mean.”
I couldn’t keep up with her. “B-But—Oh why am I still arguing with you?!”
Twilight chuckled. “That’s the way. Give into the darkness. Okay, how about this? Whichever princess we find first, Celestia or Luna, we prank first. Fair?”
Baloney, nothing about this sounded remotely fair. Besides, we could be here all day, and she wouldn’t budge. She… I could be stubborn when I wanted to be.
“Alright,” I grumbled, knowing that she was loving every second of this. “Let’s get going.” I made to leave, but Twilight lagged behind, forcing me to stop and turn around.
“What?” I snapped impatiently. “What is it now?”
“Actually,” she said, “on second thought, let’s prank the Princess. I know a way we could pull it off.”
I gaped at her, she probably offered a compromise just to get a rise out of me.
“You were going to do it anyway,” I stated sullenly.
“Indeed!” Twilight exclaimed. “It will be wonderful, I can’t wait to see that expression!”
I pursed my lips. Nothing had changed. “Fine, I’ll come with you, if only to keep you in line.”
“Oh no, a tattletale, I don’t want a pony like that as my partner!”
“I won’t tell!” I said defensively. “I just want to make sure you don’t break anything important.”
“I’m insulted that you don’t believe in yourself more.”
“If you weren’t you I’d be more confident in myself.”
She considered it, but shook her head. “No, no, you’d best go home, I don’t think you’re loose enough to help me anyway.”
Hot intoxicating indignation flooded my cheeks. “I can help! I can be fun!” The words flew out of my mouth before I could snatch them back. My hooves flew to my lips as I gazed, wide eyed, at Twilight.
Twilight sucked through her teeth, cocking her head as she studied me thoughtfully. She really was loving this. “Hmmm, okay, but we do it my way.”
I trotted right into that. This mare knew me from the inside out, how could I compete with that?
“You’re evil,” I grumbled darkly.
“Ouch, touché. Relax, it’s nothing serious, who knows? It might not even work.”
“What won’t?” I asked curiously.
Twilight wagged an admonishing hoof in front of me. “Ah ah ah! No spoilers. You would probably stop me if you knew.”
I rolled my eyes and huffed. “This better be worth it.”
Twilight rubbed her hooves together gleefully. Something frightening gleamed in her eyes. “Oh it will be, don’t you worry…”
I gulped, shying away from the mischievous gleam in her eyes.
Maybe I should have cut my losses way back there. This wasn’t worth a book, was it?
———————
Moments later, I found myself following myself.
I had doubts, but then again, this was a once in a lifetime chance to read the book of the ages. Who knew how long I would have to wait until I could lay my hooves on a book of this calibre again? Still, knowing that it was in my future did stymy my enthusiasm a little. I just had to play the waiting game and I would be able to read the book… but it’s such a rare book! Twilight was up to no good, but if she was me, I would never do anything too rash. Pranking the Princess would be harmless enough. I’m sure the Princess can appreciate a good joke. I hope.
Twilight nudged me with her shoulder as we walked down one of the corridors casually. She seemed to know exactly where she was going, as if sneaking into the castle was simply second-nature to her. Out in the gardens, Twilight had led me to a secret alcove that had a rather ornate carving in the stone surface. Grinning as she waggled her eyebrows at me, the alicorn pushed the carving and stepped back. With a groaning moan like the castle was laboriously shifting the stone itself, a hidden passageway opened up.
“H-How did you know about this?”
Twilight blinked. “Hmm? Oh this? I’ve had experiences with castles and secret passageways.”
She didn’t expand on that as we entered the alcove. Inside, there wasn’t much light so Twilight used her horn to light the way. I could have done it, but I was too late, and she did it so naturally as if the spell didn’t take anything out of her at all. A light spell wasn’t a very hard spell, but it did take some time to cast and required a substantial amount of finesse to transfer energy to the air around your horn.
The air would emit a red light due to fluorescent scattering, but the up conversion of the spell pushed it towards blue and purple. If one was a particularly accomplished spell caster, the up conversion could be regulated to give the whole spectrum instead of a blue light. Something like that required practice and control that was almost impossible for a unicorn. Twilight seemed at ease, though, casting an eerie white glow all around us. If she was my future, then I was capable of things that right now would seem impossible to me too. I was able to cast white light of course, but multi-spell casting like the levitation in addition to the light was was beyond my ability.
Frustrating as the idea was, she was definitely a better spell caster than I was. Element of Magic indeed.
As we emerged from the narrow tunnel, Twilight flicked a lever and the stone slid back, though more silently this time.
“Quickly,” Twilight said, nudging me forward as I tried to get my bearing at the sudden change of lighting.
We were inside the castle! How was that possible? I thought I knew the castle like the back of my hoof. Where were we?
Twilight scouted ahead, before waving at me to catch up. Caught up in her stealthy mannerism, I found myself aping her movements. We always managed to turn a corner, sidestep into a side-corridor, or drift into a room just as a guard appeared.
“Why are we avoiding the guards?” I asked. “And how do you know?”
Twilight swept her gaze around, scanning for any threats, before answering my question. “The point is surprise, right?”
I nodded.
“So wouldn’t it be a little suspicious if there was suddenly an alicorn wandering around?”
“Oh,” I replied sheepishly. “I-I guess that’s true.”
Twilight chuckled. “And now you see why I’m the boss.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Excuse me?”
Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Since I am you from the future, I’m technically smarter than you.”
“W-Well that’s not always true!” I spluttered. Well, I had to admit that her grasp of magic was better than mine, but that might simply be because she was an alicorn!
“No,” she said, as if she could read my thoughts. Wait, she could! That’s cheating! “I’ve literally had more time to study than you.”
“You could be going senile,” I muttered grouchily. “So in that case, I would be smarter than you.”
Twilight didn’t look fazed. “Alicorns don’t get senile. And did you seriously wish yourself senile in the future?”
Not to be dissuaded from the sudden opening, I crossed my arms and smirked at her triumphantly. “And how would you know that?”
Her response was low and quiet. “Trust me, I know.”
I guess I was ready for banter, or playful riposte from myself, so I couldn’t come up with a response to her unexpected reticence.
“Oh…” was all I could say.
Twilight perked up, shaking away the cobwebs of her hidden past with one swift movement. “Come on,” she urged. “The corridor should be clear now.”
Like a phantom had entered, paused, then left the room, the mood slowly lifted. Twilight continued as if nothing had happened, babbling something about her plans to ensnare Princess Celestia. Around us were the familiar sights and sounds of Canterlot castle. After quick successive journeys to and fro from Ponyville and Canterlot, I was starting to feel a little tired, and lagged, so it was starting to get hard to pay attention. Where I would usually note the new vases, changes to the drapes and the….
Wait, why was the decor different?
“Twilight,” I hissed, pulling back in alarm.
The alicorn stopped. “What? We can’t stay here, there will be a guard in the next twenty or so seconds.”
“There’s something different with the drapes.”
“What?”
“The drapes. They’re different,” I said meaningfully.
“Hmm? Is that a problem?”
Why didn’t my future-self get it?
“Because,” I began with exaggerated patience. Then my ears swivelled as I heard hoofsteps approaching. Two sets. Guards! “Quick! Where’s the next hiding place?”
Twilight twitched, but didn’t hesitate. “Down here.”
We wedged ourselves in a small alcove behind a flower vase.
“Is this going to hide us?” I whispered in alarm.
“Shh, ponies will see what they want to see. Just be the flower.”
“Be the flow—” Her hoof clamped over my mouth.
I heard the hoof steps get closer, then pause.
“Funny,” I heard the guard say. “I swear I heard something.”
“See?” the other guard with her said. “It was just your imagination. These corridors are rarely used. What pony would be out here anyway?”
“Hmm…”
Go away, go away, go away, I thought furiously.
“Yeah, you’re probably right, nopony would be down here. I must be hearing things.”
“Get your hearing checked, old dam.”
“H-Hey, I’m still thirty!”
As the guard retreated, I let out a breath. Twilight raised an eyebrow.
“What’s with your freakout?”
“Why are we down in the restricted areas?” I hissed back. I don’t know why I lowered my voice. Twilight had spoken to me at a conversational level. The alicorn looked at the drapes, then at the vase. I could see the realisation light up her face like sun dawning.
“Well of course,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, “you do know they’re restricted? Hardly anypony would be down here and it’s the best place to sneak in.”
“W-We can’t be in here!” I squeaked. “What if the Princess finds us?”
“We’re going to prank her. It’s worth it.”
“No it isn’t, this is serious!”
Twilight snorted. “Relax, the Princess won’t mind.”
“How do you know?”
“Do you really have to ask that?” she said with a cocked head, and a cockier grin.
“You’re pushing it,” I warned, stomping my hoof for emphasis. “The future is irrelevant; I want to know now!”
Twilight sighed. “Woah, hey, okay. Calm down. We’re clear of this area, so we don’t get caught here. We fail in pranking the Princess, for some reason.”
What? Fail? But—
“Then why are we trying?” I asked incredulously.
“An experiment. I assume you’re acquainted with the notion?”
I nodded with exaggerated patience. “Ye-es…”
“So, it could be different this time around. There are gaps in my memory. Some events are fixed and have chronology, but others may not. I don’t know why it fails or what happens after.”
“Why are there gaps in your memory?”
“I deliberately put them there,” Twilight replied, her expression as glib as ever.
“WHAT?!”
She shrugged. “Not all of them, yeesh. It’s so I can travel back. Something about preventing the collapse of all known realities. It was in Star Swirl’s Final Notes and Addendum. In it, there’s a chapter just on causality. Star Swirl wondered why his time travel spells had such short durations.” She smirked. “It’s a good read, you should read it.”
No wonder future-me had that book with her, it was integral to her time travel knowledge!
“You see,” she continued, ignoring my gasp, “Star Swirl had this notion of ‘information conservation’. There was time symmetry, but causality only flowed in one direction. There’s a lot you can do with information—foreknowledge—but you can’t make it spontaneously appear out of nothing. A closed time loop is forbidden. At least, that’s what he thought.
“By erasing my memories, it protects causality and allows me to alter my own past, because essentially I’m not altering the present with my knowledge. I wanted to see if it would actually make a difference to the chronology.”
“So… you just erase a block of memory in the past and then do something and hope it changes the future?”
Twilight nodded. “Yep, something like that.”
“That’s crazy!”
Twilight laughed. “Tell that to Star Swirl.”
“I mean you!”
She flicked back some loose mane strands casually. “What do you mean?”
“Why would you erase your memories permanently to come back—”
“Woah, woah, woah! I’m as adventurous as the next mare, but I’m you, remember? I wouldn’t erase my memories permanently! They’re all stored back in the future, for retrieval. That way I can do a true comparison.”
“B-But that’s got to break some law of causality.”
“Well if it does, I’ll know. It’s a great experiment! Star Swirl’s Addendum is a masterpiece.”
I shook my head in astonishment. “I’ve never heard of Star Swirl writing that.”
“Well of course you haven’t, it contains instructions on how to time travel and such, which was thought to be impossible back then. He would have been the laughing stock if he couldn’t prove it. Or maybe he had another reason to keep it hidden?” She drifted briefly, then gave her head a gentle shake. “Anyway, it’s useful. Go look at it later.”
Despite being disturbed by her, frankly, reckless experimentation—something I would personally never do—her theory on why she erased her memories made sense in a sort of twisted kind of way. Really weird, but kind of mind-boggling. How did she protect her memories from causal influence? How does that work? Is that even allowed? What kind of magic was required—
I blinked. It was almost too easy to sink into research mode. I guess I could sort of see myself trying it out, especially if I had the power. I glanced at her. And the time.
I cleared my throat, determined to pursue this. There were still some parts that weren’t so clear. “So if you don’t know how we fail, how’re we supposed to prevent that? Wait. If you know we’re going to fail how come that doesn’t count as knowledge brought back from the present?”
“Oh, well, I don’t actually know, we’re going to fail, I just know something is going to happen to make me feel disappointed and frustrated.”
“What?”
“Apparently my emotions are vague enough to let me have quite some agency, if I begin to violate a rule, the spell sends me back before I can do something. It’s one of many safeguards written in the spell.”
“Why have safeguards?” I said. “What are they guarding against?”
“Three things,” Twilight said. “One, Star Swirl thought that if you changed the past enough, you might prevent your future-self from actually going back into the past and that would be very bad.”
I nodded, that made sense.
“Two, it could be that reality wouldn’t actually be able to handle it and would wink out of existence, and replace the whole thing with an alternate construct in which the spell failed.”
I made a face. “That doesn’t sound very plausible.”
“Alternatively, reality could just collapse and never return, or the universe resets to tabula rāsa.”
“That’s… a lot more concerning.”
Twilight waggled a hoof. “Last, but definitely not least, it could do nothing and your trip back could actually cause a cascade effect. What you did in the past actually changed something.”
I tilted my head. “Cascade effect?”
“It’s basically his words for the ‘butterfly effect’ before the boffins at Neighture coined the term. The cascade effect or ‘waterfall point’ was what Star Swirl feared would happen. What if you returned to the future and it was vastly different? What if you didn’t like it? What if you had to stop yourself from starting the cascade? What if in doing so you’ve erased your own causal purpose and it’s always doomed to fail? What if you return to the future and it’s no longer inhabitable? You could perish on your return!”
My jaw dropped.
“Don’t worry,” Twilight said. “The spell is continuously checking the future to see if it sufficiently deviates enough from the alternate frame of reference that’s buried in my mind. That’s why I have a block of memory missing, essentially it’s stored in an alternate timeline, which is why this spell requires so much power. Or at least that’s how Star Swirl explained it, it’s entirely possible that, without further investigation, I’m just powering a whole lot of nothing and I’ve lost my memories forever.”
She smiled at my expression. “But that’s pretty unlikely, I think.”
“Dear Celestia…” I whispered.
“Oh don’t be such a downer. I’m sure it’ll work out.”
Well, if I say so… How could she be so casual about this? A nervous thought occurred to me. “What if you disabled the safeguards?”
“Then I would quickly find out which one of the three outcomes was the right one.”
Her cavalier attitude was really putting me off. What the heck happened to me all these years?
“That’s an insane amount of theory,” I said, deflecting my thought away from the depressive notion. “I-I don’t think I would ever have the guts to try it.”
Twilight burst out laughing.
“Sorry!” she said, catching my withering look. “Sorry, it’s just that you obviously did or I wouldn’t be here. Also this explanation doesn’t actually put you off because—”
“—Because you haven’t been sent back,” I finished for her. Right. How could I forget?
I licked my lips, considering more questions, but decided that hanging around in the restricted section of the castle was not the best way to sate my curiosity. “So… we’re going to try and prank the Princess, but you think we’re going to fail?”
Twilight smiled. “Possibly? This run of tests is exciting!”
“Run? How often have you done this?”
“Oh… I’ve lost count, but seeing how my memory is full of loopbacks, I think I’ve done it a bunch of times. This is the earliest memory I have of time travel, so I guess this must be the farthest back I go, unless I visited myself as a foal or something, but that’s kind of dangerous, so I left that out.”
Time spells, causality, potentially ending reality?!
“Don’t worry,” she continued, “you get used to me.”
I rolled my eyes. Note to self: Be a better role-model to your past self. I made to move, then I froze.
“Wait. If that was all feelings, how did you know we weren’t going to be caught in the restricted area?”
“I didn’t,” she said breezily. “I just calculated our odds were pretty low because I knew this place back to front.”
“So what happens if we get caught?” I repeated, my voice felt like gravel sliding over granite.
“Ah, well there’s always plan B?” she replied mischievously.
My eyes narrowed suspiciously at her easy manner. “What’s that?
“We use an invisibility spell and sneak away before she arrives.”
“I can’t use an invisibility spell, that’s way beyond my current abilities.”
“Oh… well I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
I gaped after her as she trotted off nonchalantly.
That little…
So she thinks the prank was going to fail?
How about a self-fulfilling prophecy?