I was planning to be a witch after finishing high school. Maybe an evil one. The Moderately Wicked Witch of the East. Funny how that turned out.
During middle school, at least, and sometimes, for a while afterwards, every girl wants to be a magical girl. Or a princess. A magical girl is a princess half the time anyway, no matter the type. Some of them even know what happens when the magical girl loses, and still want to be one regardless. But somehow, nobody accounts for what happens when a magical girl actually wins. Which normally only applies to Type II magical girls, and I’ve been Type I, far more like Fullmoon than Sailor Moon. I didn’t even have anything to win, except the silly rivalry that sparked over a boy. One that never cared about either of us in the first place. Funny how that turned out, too.
If I didn’t stumble onto Mary, by now, I would probably have curled up on my sofa on the bottom floor of the Library, to continue sleeping for the foreseeable future. I’d even put up a note, “Wake only in case the place urgently needs some burning down.” At least, the last time, I did burn quite a bit of it.
Just don’t tell Mary, please.
Who am I kidding. The Library grows constantly. There are millions upon millions of books which have never been opened from the outside. The number of readers roaming the cylinder rarely changes, and it’s actually on the decline. Cross-shelf permeation is limited, and I still don’t know what makes one story get written into another one in the first place. Chances are, nobody’s ever going to read this. Except me.
And you.
But if you do meet Mary, don’t tell her. I’ll know.
And it’s kind of difficult to navigate around here when she’s the only soul around, with that golden eye of hers.
“What exactly have you done?” I finally asked. “I can’t see anything actually changing in terms of events, but genre flags are shifting across the board.”
Don’t ask me how I see these. It expertly defies explanation, even through poetry. When I try to change the genre flags, it usually involves very difficult to describe activities performed with things inaccessible to any kind of senses. I screw up about as often as I get it right, it’s fiddly, low-level hackery. When Mary wants to alter them, – and she didn’t even know they existed until I told her – she just does something seemingly inconsequential and innocuous, or rather, tells me to do it, and suddenly, nothing is the same ever again.
“I asked a question,” Mary said darkly. “Even that might have been too much.”
“Oh?” I smiled at her. At least in her general direction. The sun has already set…
“I asked the smartest pony around who invented the sandwich. Even before I realized what I was doing,” Mary explained. “God alone knows where this ends up now. If you wanted to break an Arcadia, this is exactly what you’re getting. As if the universe does not have enough depressing places to live in…” she added. I think it’s a scowl.
I laughed. I must admit I enjoyed this a bit too much, this might have scared someone. It certainly scares Mary when I do that. She never shows it, but I know. “This question has a simple, true answer,” I said when I was done. “We’re in a story. It’s written by humans, for humans. It follows the principle of indicated difference and the law of conservation of detail, it would not be comprehensible otherwise. Lord Sandwich’s cook is the inventor of the sandwich. The same sandwich the ponies are now making. Isn’t that good enough?”
“I refuse to accept that this world is nothing but a story,” Mary snapped. “Just like I refuse to accept that mine is. The author is dead, and we have killed him, you and I. Stop waving the corpse around, it’s impolite.”
“But nothing else actually exists,” I countered. “The story is the most precious thing people ever produced. Just like it is what created people. Of course it’s not just a story, it’s exactly as real as anything else.”
“Well, I know that!” she hissed. “I actually told exactly as much to Twilight. But a story is not just a text. It’s a…” Mary waved her hands around grasping for an analogy, “A ball of yarn, that extends into the past and future, that is self-consistent… At least to some extent. Being written by someone does not render an in-universe reason void! No matter how tangled the yarn might be, that reason already exists, because it has always existed. Even if the world has been created whole cloth the moment someone wrote its story.”
I shrugged. “Time is an illusion. Space-time doubly so.”
“Don’t you… I dunno, see it?” Mary asked after a long, strained pause.
“I’m not sure what you are actually talking about, Mary,” I answered.
“Time,” she said. “You don’t see it?”
“I can see story,” I said. “A story about people, told through words, across time. I don’t think I can actually perceive time itself anymore, if that’s what you mean. I’m not sure I ever could. Time is a sequence of words.”
She just sighed, “I guess this explains why you have such trouble understanding what I was really shooting for back home.”
I don’t think her home story actually can be expressed as a linear text. Not even a set of multiple linear texts, more like a constantly twisting stack of rewrites eating other rewrites. I do so hate those. I don’t know how she doesn’t go crazy from that, but to her it’s so incredibly natural, that she can’t even explain, she barely understands the question… Actually, I don’t know how she just walks around with multiple narrative streams in her head and doesn’t go crazy from that alone. Even schizophrenics only get one narrative stream, it just keeps flipping perspectives.
Her reaction to this trip was unexpected, to say the least. There was a very particular reason I named this tree as the destination for this adventure, but even though I really didn’t bother to think it through very far, I don’t understand how could I anticipate something of the sort. You ask her to improvise and then she… improvises, by behaving completely contrary to any of my expectations.
I must admit it did make things interesting, and I did ask, so I can’t exactly complain. But it’s frustrating like you wouldn’t believe.
“Why do you think that question is going to break this story?” I asked, finally.
“I don’t know. I just know two things,” she sighed. “It’s a nice place and it’s fragile. Like a snowflake. Just one gust of wind and it might tumble somewhere.”
I actually giggled at that, “Don’t tell me you’re going to go all ‘alas cruel humanity’ like everyone else.”
“Huh?”
“In at least 65% of all cases, humans visiting Equestria feel that ponies need to be protected from the Unbearable Horrors of the Human Race,” I explained. “You know, they must not be told about war, how humans are predators who weaponized everything they ever laid their hands on, how humans have nothing of harmony in their hearts, that sort of thing, and if ponies are told, the poor fragile creatures take offense and suffer mental damage, not necessarily in that order. They usually start hating or shaming the visitor, but get over it. Misanthropy as a cheap source of drama, not recommended.”
Stifled laughter. Fits of stifled laughter. Finally, Mary broke down and laughed properly, so we had to stop walking while she was doing that. “I picked the right one, then… Innocence is not immaturity,” she said finally with a very serious tone before making another step. “Whoever first decided to set up innocence in opposite to experience has done culture a great disservice. No… this is a world of mature innocence, it’s not an Utopia, it’s an Arcadia. Ponies know what evil is. You can’t reject evil when you don’t know what it is. They just don’t have a habit of being mean to each other. No need to be their own best enemy, they’ve got enough examples.”
“And you were able to tell from just one party?” I inquired.
“Just one look at them interacting when they don’t think I’m watching is all it takes, really,” Mary said. “Do you remember my definition of paranoia? Paranoids are not people who think they have enemies. Paranoids are people who think they don’t have friends.”
“I even remember that by this definition, you picked the most paranoid time and place on Earth to settle in,” I told her.
“I had my reasons…” Mary replied, looking down into the ground. Even though she explained those reasons multiple times, I never really understood. “Not paranoid. That’s all ponies really are. That’s all it really takes.”
“Their reaction to zebras implies otherwise…” I proposed. “If you just analyze the mainline, the less visitors are like ponies, the better ponies treat them. Most of that doesn’t repeat in the mainline proper, of course, but zebras are feared, buffalo are neighbors, minotaurs are guests, griffons are treated like their own, and they practically bend over for breezies…”
“Breezies? What are those?” Mary asked suddenly.
“Tiny plush sapient faeries with dragonfly wings, got their own language and everything,” I said. Well, damn. I thought she’d be more familiar with the mainline. Why didn’t she just tell me?…
“Well… Maybe there is something about zebras. I guess I’ll have to ask Twilight. And Zecora,” Mary said. “But I’m pretty sure so far.”
I pressed on. “So, just how is this story fragile, and what does a sandwich have to do with it?”
“I can’t really tell, I just know,” she said. There she goes again. “Every good timeline is at least to some extent metastable. They are driven by actions of millions, but they always depend on a few key actors having a few key ideas. Ideas are fickle. Some ideas are inevitable, and it doesn’t matter who has them first. Others… not so much. And yet others can suddenly derail it.”
“From my point of view, most of the book went blank the moment you said ‘once upon a time,’” I stated. “There is no future, at least not yet. Just characters, their starting states, and their past experiences. And you. There is nothing to destroy. Just a story you have yet to write.”
Mary just sighed at me. “Sometimes, I’m really happy that I don’t see the world from your point of view.”
Girl, you have no idea.
Actually, I don’t either. I keep thinking, that this is exactly what makes her one of the few characters in this entire universe that I can relate to at all, and yet I can never grasp it. We’re so infuriating to each other.
“There are things here that are unfair, stupid, or simply broken, it’s not some perfect little formula,” Mary said after a really long pause, when we were almost about to enter the forest. “Twilight’s brother Shining Armor is supposed to be a hero, a military leader, with a knightly name and a shield for a cutie mark, and ends up a damsel in distress repeatedly. A small basket of idiot balls is rolling around. Celestia’s answer to everything is to sic Twilight on it… Some of this can be changed. Some of it probably should. None of it is really bad enough to risk it. This is not my story.”
Oh really. I sneered. “This didn’t stop you the last few times.”
“I saw a good ending at the end, the last few times,” Mary parried. “From inside, the only thing I do see is an Arcadia. For example, there’s no good ending I can think of that would make Shining Armor a hero in the process.”
“There are several different branches, in which he’s an Element of Harmony, so it’s not unheard of,” I mentioned.
“And Twilight is an academic lost to the world, I imagine?” Mary asked.
“Mostly.”
“Not a very good ending, and it exists already anyway,” Mary sighed. “That just means there are not enough threats to go around, isn’t that a good thing?”
I grinned in her general direction. “Something could be arranged.” It really wouldn’t be any trouble.
“I hope you’re not being serious,” Mary said. This time, I’m pretty sure it was a scowl. “I don’t think even your blue and orange morality extends quite this far.”
To be fair, it doesn’t. Whatever I might come up with in terms of a threat would probably depopulate a few towns just to show it means business. Not that I particularly care, but it wouldn’t make for a good enough story to justify the waste. I would have to get quite annoyed before seriously considering it.
Mary pressed on. “Isn’t a happy world of high adventure the kind of thing you want to see?”
I understand that someone did think that there aren’t enough threats, because post-apocalyptic branches do exist. They aren’t exactly common, but would it have hurt her to pick one of those Wasteland variants? I would at least feel needed in one.
Why didn’t I arrange the books so that these would be the closest, anyway?
“Don’t worry,” I finally told Mary. “This one is all yours, unless any pony petitions me directly. But if you think of something, don’t hesitate to ask.”
All she usually wants is to tell someone something. It never ceases to amaze me that this actually works.