I awoke to the sensation of pressure on my chest and raindrops on my face. I struggled in vain to move my legs. I opened my eyes. It was still night. Somepony was lying on my barrel, immobilizing me.
That somepony was Twilight Sparkle. She was crying uncontrollably. She gasped for breath over and over, hunched atop me and shaking.
"Twilight? What?" I mumbled. I tried to reach for my glasses, but she held my good hoof down. "What, what in Equestria is wrong?"
"I'm the worst friend in history!" she bawled between deep, sobbing gasps. "I'm TERRIBLE!"
"Don't be ridic—wait, have you been drinking?" Yes, she had. Her breath positively reeked of ethanol, without the usual apple or grape scents that accompanied pleasant drinks like wine or cider. It was moonshine or vodka, in all likelihood. The hard stuff.
"It doesn't matter, nothing matters," she choked, laying her head on my shoulder. "Oh Dear Celestia, I, I..."
"Twilight, I'm worried. What happened? Is this about yesterday?" I was starting to panic. I couldn't move with her on top of me, and I wasn't about to push her away. I didn't have any idea what to do. I wasn't the Princess of Friendship. I barely knew anything about comforting other ponies.
She snorted and swallowed, then leaned in until our muzzles touched. I could see her eyes clearly. They were red, swollen, and recessed. Tears trickled down the bridge of her muzzle and up mine. And then it happened.
Twilight Sparkle kissed me, right on the lips.
It was rough at first, so rough I didn't know what was happening. But then she relaxed, and I could feel the gentle touch of her quivering lips buffeting mine. Her alcohol-polluted mouth was overwhelmingly soft. I didn't understand anything anymore, but my heart pounded in my chest like a jackhammer. I reached around her with my good hoof to hold her because I didn't know what else to do. Was she taking advantage of me? Was I taking advantage of her? Did this mean something?
Did I actually feel what I was feeling?
She pulled back from the kiss and closed her eyes tightly as though in great pain.
I panted softly, uncertain of what to say. I should have been figuring out what was wrong with her, but I was so distracted by what had happened that I just said the first thing that came to my mind.
"That... was my first kiss," I said.
Twilight nodded, her face contorted in a mask of agony.
"Was it yours?" I asked her, stupidly. "I think you said you hadn't been kissed..."
She shook her head. "Tack, tock—technically no," she croaked, in a voice that was as broken and hollow as it was quiet.
"Oh. Okay, that's okay. Shit, I don't know why I said that. I, Twilight, I didn't know you felt... I mean, we should really talk—"
"No," she said, and clambered off of the bed, nearly tumbling over in the process. "We can't ever talk about this."
She cantered to the staircase and rolled down it, spinning like a tumbleweed and yelping with each bump. I was worried she might break a leg, but all I could do was try to get out of bed as quickly as possible.
"No, Twilight, wait!" I shouted. It was hard to get out of bed with the cast and the covers in the way. By the time I'd stamped three to the floor and grabbed my glasses, the front door had opened and shut. She was gone.
I screamed profanity at the top of my lungs, knowing full well the guard outside could hear me. I didn't care if we'd just made a scene. My world had peaked and shattered all at the same moment.
"IT ISN'T FAIR!" I shouted, grabbing a pillow and throwing it over the balcony, where it ricocheted off of the giant hourglass, tilting it slightly. A bucking princess—why did she have to be a princess? Of course we couldn't talk about this! She didn't want anypony to know. Why would she? I had no right to be this close to her. I was a nobody, obviously not a stallion who could be her prince someday, and maybe not even a good friend. Nothing made sense. Everything hurt.
I grabbed two narcotic pills and a hoofful of benzos. Somehow, I managed enough horse sense to keep myself from downing the whole bottle. I cried into the bedcovers until the pills pulled me under.
"M—Moondancer, are you okay?" I felt somepony prodding me.
I slowly opened my eyes and turned over in bed. My eyes were still wet. I hadn't been asleep long enough for them to dry, or else I'd been crying in my sleep. The pills were in full effect. I couldn't tell how much time had passed: it could have been fifteen minutes, or four hours. But it was dawn outside now, and Twilight was clearly more sober, so I assumed it was hours. Everything around me felt numb and dreamy, and I was woozy. I had taken too much of the medication, but I didn't care at the moment. I felt disconnected from my heart, and that's exactly what I'd wanted.
I grabbed my glasses and looked up at Twilight. She'd cleaned herself up, more or less. Her mane was brushed and her eyes were only a little red now. Her breath smelled like mouthwash. Lines of worry cut into her face, and she fidgeted from hoof to hoof. I didn't envy her. I was grateful I had the pills to help me manage my own feelings.
"Sorry, pills, hard to think..." I said, struggling to get the words out. "You gonna try to kiss me or something?"
Twilight blushed and broke eye contact. She took a nervous, empty swallow of air. "Wait, Moondancer, I... Look, I hope you're not upset or anything, after everything we—I mean, you—went through, um, yesterday," she said. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry about all of it. I'm a little emotional right now."
"Could have fooled me," I said, with as much biting sarcasm as I could muster. She visibly winced, and I felt bad about it. But the pills took the edge off of that, too. I began strapping my wheel on.
"Okay, I guess I deserve that," she said, and stared down at the floor. "Can we just, you know, put everything behind us and have a fresh start today? As friends?" she asked, then looked up to me with pathetic eyes.
All I could feel was numbness and nausea. "Yeah, that's fine," I mumbled, and nodded. She breathed a sigh of relief, but the tension remained in her face.
I didn't want her to know I was incapacitated by a drug overdose, so I navigated the staircase very slowly. Idly, I realized that Dodge City is more liberal with medication than Canterlot. I'd never have received a prescription for painkillers and anti-anxiety meds concurrently here. Maybe the doctor was trying to make a good showing of how she treated the Princess's friend. I resolved to flush the benzos down the toilet later, but I put the pain pills in my saddlebags.
"Oh! Be careful with that hoof, heh," she said, keeping one step behind me the entire way. I felt fortunate I could pass off the dizziness as a mixture of tiredness with limited walking ability.
I stretched a little at the bottom of the stairs. I felt like I might emesis at any time, but I didn't care. I just wanted to get everything over with so I didn't have to think about Twilight for a while. Maybe we just needed some time apart, or something. I didn't know. I felt so numb. I was trying not to think about this—thing between us, whatever it was.
"Mooni—um, I mean, Moondancer, you sure you're okay?" asked Twilight. "You look pretty awful."
I furrowed my brow and looked at Twilight Sparkle. She seemed concerned for me, but it was obvious she was projecting her own issues onto me subconsciously. She wasn't okay inside, so as a psychological defensive mechanism she saw me as not being okay.
Although I probably did look kind of awful, I realized. I'd gone through a huge ordeal the previous day, and that awful nightmare of breaking my hoof and barely saving the bag had been a drop in the bucket compared to the five minutes of overpowering emotional angst I'd endured in the middle of the night. Still, I knew Twilight was far less stable than I was at the moment, even if she hid it well.
A little too well, I thought. She'd been very drunk... I had never drunk alcohol of any sort, but I'd heard it can mess with your memories. Was it really possible? I had no choice but to ask.
"Twilight, do you remember what happened last night?"
She looked surprised. "I, well, I dropped you off here and then I went back to the castle," she said.
"And you drank a lot?"
Her cheeks flushed red beneath that purple pelt. "Well... yes. I wouldn't say it was a lot, but enough to put my sleeping schedule back on track. The alcohol and the pills..."
I planted my hoof over my face. "You took sleeping pills with alcohol?" I said. "Twilight, you could have killed yourself."
I felt guilty for leveling the accusation, because I'd come uncomfortably close to killing myself with pills the previous night. Maybe I was the one who was projecting.
Twilight Sparkle shook her head. "No! I didn't take that much! It knocked me out quicker than I'd anticipated, but—" she started, then gasped. "Wait, how do you know I was drink—Moondancer, did, did something happen?" she asked, and her hoof trembled in the air.
I closed my eyes to stop the room from spinning. What had happened had already happened, and I knew it was going to hurt for a long time. But if Twilight couldn't even remember the drunken kiss, it wouldn't be fair to tell her about it. Maybe someday, if things warmed up between us again, I'd tell her the story. But I wasn't ready to do it that morning. I didn't want her to hurt the way I hurt, and I didn't want to know how she really felt. So, I lied.
"No, nothing," I mumbled, opening my eyes. "I can just smell the alcohol on your breath. I'm glad you're okay."
Twilight breathed a huge sigh of relief. "Oh thank goodness," she said, then I saw her jaw clench. "But if anything about yesterday bothered you, um, I'm here if you need to talk, okay? I can understand if you're upset with me because I haven't been expressing myself prop—"
"Shut up, doofus," I said, and pulled her into a hug. I fought to hold back tears, and I won. Thank Celestia for the pills, I thought. I didn't understand any of these emotions, but I knew I needed to keep them at bay.
Maybe I was a lesbian? It wasn't about sex or anything like that. I'd never even imagined being intimate with another mare before. I just cared about Twilight so much. It didn't matter that she was a girl. I found myself wishing I was a stallion, and thoughts of her body entered my mind. It was very disturbing. I bit down hard on my tongue to distract myself.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Twilight said, breaking the hug.
I sucked at the blood on the side of my tongue. "Yeah, I'll just, brush my mane and teeth, and get some coffee," I said, the words coming out slowly. "Then I can go get the financial information from the lab, because you'll need that if we're going to shut everything down."
"I'll... wait outside," said Twilight, and she nervously left the building.
Ten minutes later we were walking to the lab. I still felt like I was going to be sick, but at least I wasn't dizzy. I opted to go nude while Twilight's washing machine cleaned the sand out of my sweater.
"I may have taken too much medication last night," I admitted. "I'm dealing with some weird emotions..." I immediately regretted opening up, and my voice trailed off.
"Well, weird can be okay," said Twilight, laughing nervously. "I have some, you know, emotions too. And I really like spending time with you. I mean, I really, really do. I just, I don't totally know what you're feeling."
"I feel like I'm going to throw up, but it's just the pills," I said, but I wasn't certain that the pills were the only thing making me feel that way. "I like spending time with you too. I'll always be there for you, but only if that's what you really want, or whatever. Sorry, I'm out of it."
Twilight nodded. "Yes, yes. It's okay. We can sit down and talk more later. This is good, though. I feel better," she said. She seemed to relax a lot. I was grateful for it, too. I didn't like seeing Twilight all wound up. I wanted to make her happy by being there for her, but I didn't know how to go about that. Giving her as much space as she needed seemed like the correct option, but there was a storm brewing in my gut and I had no prior experience managing all of these weird emotions.
Secretly, I was worried that on some level she hated me. I realized that was silly, but if I'd made her feel... romantic... and she didn't want to feel like that, I couldn't blame her for getting mad at me. Maybe it was my fault? I had no idea. My head was spinning, and I didn't know what to think.
We didn't talk any more until we reached the lab. Twilight keyed us in, and when we closed the door I sat on the cool flooring and sighed deeply.
"Moonie, are you sure you're okay?" said Twilight, sitting down beside me. There was that word again, but now it made me feel icky inside.
I gave up. "Okay, well... Something did happen last night, Twi. You were drunk and you visited me, and you were crying and emotional and you ended up running away from me," I said. "It kind of shook me up. But you seem better now, so I dunno. I guess you're fine. I just don't know what to think or feel. I'll feel better when some of these drugs leave my system. I'm starting to wake up, at least."
Twilight gasped. "Oh no! I've never blacked out drunk before... I just assumed I passed out in my bed!" said Twilight. "I didn't have enough alcohol, so it must have been the synergistic effect with the hypnotics I took. I haven't been a somnambulist since I was seven. I'm so sorry, Moondancer, oh Celestia please tell me I didn't hurt you," she said, barely holding back the waterworks. It looked like last night was going to happen all over again, minus the kiss, of course.
I opened my eyes as wide as I could and straightened my back. I realized it was my responsibility to be the strong one this time. I accepted that as a friend's price. "It's okay, Twi. We can forget the kiss ever happened, and move forward."
Twilight blushed and opened her mouth to say something, then shut it again. She seemed very sad all of a sudden. Did I not mention the kiss before? I was so bad at this kind of thing, and while the drugs helped my spirits, they made conversation even harder.
"Right," she said very softly, and took a deep breath. "Anyway, let's, um, focus on our work here. You had financials to show me?"
I nodded, stood up, and walked to the desk, equally eager to talk about something else. "Yeah, here. This is the offer letter, and it's the only thing they've ever sent me. Payment comes monthly via wire transfer. I sent them an initial response with a budget and two follow-up reports, one when the lab was almost completed when I turned on the juice, and a second one just before we started doing experiments together. I never mentioned the mystery mare to them. I figured that should remain a secret until I had more data."
Twilight paused in thought, then placed the offer letter back on the table, unread. "I may have an idea," she said.
"I'm all ears. Figuratively, of course."
"Moonie, maybe the mare in the image isn't Starlight at all. It could be one of us instead! We've never used room three, so one of us could go back in time to the very beginning and do the sabotage," she said.
"Right. I'd considered that, but I don't understand why we'd want to," I said.
"This is what the book meant about exploiting time travel of the first form," said Twilight. "If one of us goes back in time, there doesn't need to be a Starlight Glimmer at all. Completing the circle would make it our fault all along, which is much less dangerous than having Starlight involved."
I shook my head. "But we already know the antimatter chambers don't cause time travel of the first form. It won't work."
"It might, though?"
"No. Move subjective time backwards through all the loops. If it isn't perfect symmetry—"
"Which it isn't," admitted Twilight.
"—then it can't go back forever. There has to be an initial state that began the loop for the first time."
"Are you sure?" she asked.
"Perturbative theory," I said. "Probability approaches one the further back you go in the loops, if only due to random quantum events. Every loop we trace back has a nonzero chance of being the first, and that adds up to impossibility as you approach infinity. There must have been a universe that started this mess, but it wasn't ours."
"Damn. You're absolutely right," said Twilight. "There would need to be a reason for one of us to have gone back in time and sabotaged the equipment, even though the equipment hadn't been sabotaged previously... I can't think of a reason, but it still might have happened, right? Maybe the first time, we sabotaged it to prevent—"
"It probably would have been me, the first time, because I wasn't planning to involve you until the sabotage happened. And I surely would have known that breaking one room wasn't going to stop myself," I said.
"There are too many unknowns," said Twilight. "Even if we could look at every loop in detail, there's no way to perfectly predict the previous sequence of events. The looping could have started from a practically infinite number of situations. Hypothesizing is useless."
I nodded. "True. Every time we open a door, pretty much anything could come out. There's no way to know in advance. But even if we're tapping into a different universe or something like that, that lack of knowledge violates fundamental laws of determinism, and that shouldn't be possible."
"I've been thinking about that," said Twilight. "I need to do some more research, but I have suspicions about what will happen if we attempt to create a paradox. I'd like to sit down with you and go over it later."
"Yeah, let's save the shop talk until we're both totally sober," I said in agreement. "So, the financials?"
Twilight levitated the letter and read it quietly.
Dear Ms. Moondancer:
I am a well-connected mare with a personal interest in funding scientific research on antimatter. I have been made aware that you're interested in doing a large-scale antimatter experiment, and I'm willing to stake a considerable amount of money in supporting you. All that I ask in return is a mention of my contributions in any resulting publications, and access to the raw data at my request.
You will find I have already wired you one million bits. Your reputation as a researcher is strong enough that I have no fears about how wisely you will use the money. Please keep an account of all transactions and report them quarterly, with updates on your progress. I realize this is a large quantity of bits I'm investing, but in time, I'm sure we'll both get the interest we deserve from our exchange.
Yours in discovery,
–CP
Twilight's jaw dropped. "Wait, what?!"
I nodded. "Yeah. A million bits, just like that. In my personal account, actually. I set up a separate account and transferred the money there, then told my backers to use that one instead."
"Moondancer, exactly who is financing you?"
"I have no idea," I said.
"WHAT? You're taking millions of bits from an unknown source? That's, that's just crazy!"
"Oh, come on! I'd be crazy not to take it. I mean, it's research funding. I'm not going to look them in the mouth! It's not like I'm using the money to run for Mayor of Canterlot or something," I said.
Twilight set down the letter and held her hoof over her face. "Oh Moonie. This could be very, very dangerous. You have no idea who we're dealing with."
I shrugged. "Again, I couldn't say no to that offer. They'd wired me the first million before I had a chance to ask questions."
"So, did you?" asked Twilight, with incredulity spread across her face.
"I sent a small message back to them through the bank asking about the details, yes. They've never replied to anything I've sent, except that they adjust the money they pump me based on what I tell them I need. It's a pretty one-sided relationship. You can't blame me, can you?" I asked, frustrated.
"No, but this raises so many red flags! Celestia must know who it is, because any amount over ten thousand—"
"She knows about the transactions, but I don't know if she can trace the source. They're anonymous wires through Manehattan, and the bank guards the privacy of its clients by destroying records after each transfer."
Twilight sat on the floor. "This is unbelievable. Is there a return address?"
"Nope. It's postmarked in Manehattan, but that's all I know. Just one letter, and tons of bits," I said.
"See Pee. Who could CP be...?" Twilight asked the floor. "There must be a wealthy investor, or science foundation, or something."
I reached down and petted Twilight's mane, without even realizing I was doing it. "I tried to figure it out, but there aren't any famous CP's in Manehattan to my knowledge. I only spent a few hours in the library checking, but still. Definitely no major corporations or CEO's, at least not among companies based in Manehattan with that quantity of bits to spill."
Twilight stood up. "Come with me for a moment. I have an idea for an experiment. We can prove this isn't time travel of the first form, and unravel how it works, but I'll need you to follow my instructions to the letter."
"I figured more shenanigans. You know damn well you're not permitted to set hoof in those chambers anymore, princess doof," I teased.
"I know! It will only require a household item. Maybe the bat," she said, motioning to the club.
"Lead the way," I said, levitating the bat as Twilight opened the door to the experiment anteroom.
Twilight promptly screamed and collapsed just inside the room. I dropped the bat and ran into the room, cursing the slight reaction delay caused by the drugs. And then, I saw it too.
It's strange seeing yourself on film, or hearing your voice. It always sounds and looks awful and bizarre, because it doesn't match how you view yourself. But how could it? Nopony knows what they really move like or sound like, because we don't watch ourselves from outside our bodies, unless you're a performing artist or something where you have to see the end results of your work as part of the job.
Well, it's even stranger to see yourself in real life. This is especially true when the other 'you' is lying motionless with a massive-looking closed head injury matting her mane dark from all the dried blood spilled out and onto the floor.