//------------------------------// // Conversation 11: Twilight Sparkle // Story: Aporia // by Oliver //------------------------------// “These are the earliest surviving historical documents, so they are about as reliable as the sources on this period get. Which means that sandwiches were known and popular for at least nine hundred years,” I concluded. It’s annoying, but I can’t really call most collections of legends, prophecies and hearsay I’ve read reliable. I’ve spent the entire night double-checking and cross-referencing them, so I should know. Every single notable work older than two centuries is full of nonsense, like extensive descriptions of great civilizations of ponies with dog heads. Writing has been with us since before the Settlement, but rigorous study and recording of history? Not by a long shot. Now, thanks to the advances in archeology, we know more about the ancient kingdoms of jackals than about our own history, just because they kept better records! It’s amazing how lax we can get when we can rely on Princess Celestia’s wisdom. It actually made me feel a bit ashamed, because even the cursory description of human history I had access to looked more complete and well-researched than most of my library. “If there ever was an inventor, we certainly have no clue,” I added. “So, does this help with your hypothesis?” I was still far too sleepy to make anything but coffee, and I didn’t have the heart to wake Spike, either. Owlowiscious went to sleep soon after sunrise, and he can’t cook anyway, so we left them a note and ended up drifting all the way to Hay and Clover to grab an early brunch. I needed a lot of fresh air to actually get clear-headed enough to say something more important than a greeting, and a short summary of my findings was what I started with. “Well, I can’t formulate one now, but I can at least explain myself…” Mary said, interrupted by the waiter bringing our order – my bowl of daisy salad and her plate with two cucumber and tomato sandwiches. “Thank you…” she smiled to the waiter before continuing. “Get ready for a lecture,” she said, raising a finger. “You have grown up with it and take it for granted, and you’re a unicorn, so much of it matters little to you. But pony culture rests on an astounding number of artifacts better adapted for a being with fingers,” she punctuated this by tapping the thin nail of her finger on the mushroom table, “rather than hooves. You paint with paintbrushes that can’t be comfortable to hold in your teeth. You have round handles on your doors, when long flat ones would be much more convenient. You play string instruments and pianos. I could go on listing these things for hours. Much of that is tradition, of course. It works, it’s good enough, so you keep making new doors with round handles and think nothing of it.” With this way of looking at it, it did seem a bit odd. “Where are you going with this?” She smiled. “Some of them might be cultural imports. Invented by griffons and used unchanged, made in minotaur factories, whatever, I don’t know. I’m sure you will correct me. But there are a few, which allow us to distinguish a world where ponies just use things others have invented from a much more interesting story. Like the why and how of eating a sandwich. Please take one. Show me how you would eat it,” she said, gently pushing her plate towards me in a smooth, calculated motion. Still puzzled, I took a bite out of the sandwich and looked at the other one in her hand. She held it between her fingers, and a bite was already missing. After swallowing, she added. “So, do you see it?” I looked at the remains of the sandwich. Then at the one in her hand. Still too sleepy. Is it about how I bit it straight off the plate? Even Rarity doesn’t always eat with magic, and she’s much more conscious about table manners than I have ever been… No, it can’t be that! Even if I were grazing in public, she wouldn’t care, she’s not a pony! But Mary was still talking. “Ponies are magically capable of holding things with their hooves, applying considerable force, and don’t appear to think much about it. However, in the particular case of a sandwich… Well, try picking it up with your hoof.” I tried. The sandwich came apart, and I was left staring at the half-eaten half-sandwich and a piece of bread in my hoof. I dropped the bread back and tried again. Point made, I guess. But I wonder what that point is. It took me a couple more attempts before I managed to grab it, constantly thinking just how clumsy it feels, and in the end I decided to just chow it down before I make a mess, levitating the bits around. “Now here’s a little something you don’t know,” Mary commented, watching me struggle with the food, “In the majority of human worlds, the form known as the sandwich was invented by, or at least, for, one John Montagu, the lord of a place called Sandwich. This distinguished statesman would engross himself both in his work and in gambling so deeply, that he would refuse to break for food. He needed a snack he could eat using just one hand while keeping the fingers dry.” She thrust her hand with the sandwich in it across the table to punctuate. “That convenience is the only reason a sandwich with two slices of bread exists.” It only took me a moment to connect the dots and follow the logic, this time. “…Using only one slice of bread would make it tastier. For the convenience of holding food with one hoof, we have pita and burritos, which can’t fall apart, and even quesadillas…” I shivered involuntarily. Hate quesadillas. “Cupcakes, muffins, cookies… There’s no reason to adopt a sandwich with two slices at all!… But why?!” “No idea,” she shrugged. “Which is why I can’t formulate a hypothesis yet. If the sandwich had a history, maybe. As it is… Your story tree has one rather uncommon, very peculiar property, you see.” “Magic?” I wondered. “For me, it still seems to be the biggest single difference between our worlds. Beside us being completely different species, I mean.” Her house did hatch from an egg, somehow… But that egg came from yet another world. “No,” Mary replied, shaking her head, “High decoherence. Plainly, a multiple choice past. In your case, numerous, very similar worlds exist, which have evolved in radically divergent ways. Knowing how it happened in some of them tells me nothing about this one.” “How did it happen in all the others, then?” I asked. “Like it or not, we live in a human-dominated universe,” Mary stated in a faintly apologetic tone. “Every story is about people, but the majority of those people aren’t pony-shaped. In some of these, ponies have been borrowing from an extinct or distant human civilization. In others, ponies are transformed humans, enchanted into this form for one reason or another. In yet others, ponies are an artificial race, originally created by humans for a specific purpose.” “Does that happen often?” I interrupted. Mary tilted her head to the side, thinking. “I didn’t actually read any of those stories, so you’d have to ask Rika. Anyway… All of these could conceivably produce exactly the same present state. But since the sandwich still exists, and you didn’t say it’s a traditional ritual snack or minotaur national cuisine, I think none of that is true here.” She grinned playfully at me. “Whatever it is, it’s a fascinating mystery, don’t you think?” …Aha, gotcha! “It is,” I nodded. “But somehow, I would never have expected it would be a mystery to you,” I smiled. Either she doesn’t actually support her own theory, or there’s a lot more to it. “Why?” she asked, raising an eyebrow in surprise. “Your story theory states that any world is identical with a story. You accept that a story has an author somewhere,” I explained. “Doesn’t that imply, that the sandwich exists merely because the author of this particular story is a human? That this is just how they imagined ponies living?” Let’s see her wiggle her way out of that. Mary grinned back at me. Here it comes… “After you have defeated Nightmare Moon with the magic of friendship, Princess Celestia has so decreed, that you are to remain in Ponyville and keep studying that magic. That decree is obviously the only reason you’re still here, and otherwise you’d move back to Canterlot,” she said with a hint of sarcasm. “Princess Celestia did that because she knew my friends live here!” I huffed. “Oh.” I know what Mary actually meant. This roundabout way of making statements is slowly but surely getting on my nerves. They can both be so smug about knowing the objection you’re going to make… “So your position is that this hypothetical authorship and the actual chain of cause and effect are somehow interconnected?” “At least sometimes,” Mary agreed. “But in general, stories are self-consistent. Take, for example, the language. We aren’t speaking the same one. We are speaking two different, mutually intelligible languages, which aren’t even related. For me, the word ‘crusade’ derives from ‘marked with a cross,’ and has complex historical connotations, which color the meaning. Look it up. What does this word mean to you?” “…I think it just means ‘a heroic quest,’” I answered, after poking around in my memory. “It’s derived from ‘crossing the borders.’ The first ponies called crusaders were the legendary travelers who explored distant lands.” At least, I’m sure the exploration aspect was why the Cutie Mark Crusaders have adopted it, that’s what these fillies do all the time. “Which is very different from the bloody wars of conquest in the name of religion that humans call ‘crusades,’” Mary commented. “It will be even more obvious if we compare obscenity, profanity and slang. Being a story explains the coincidence itself, but not the incidence. Rika dismisses it as immaterial, but that’s silly. Like two straight lines crossing, two similar worlds will go in different directions from the point in which they look the same. Even if there is an author who just decided they should exist, the reason sandwiches do exist is something genuinely yours.” That was certainly a novel idea. “You know, this entire conversation feels exactly like Professor Ravenhoof giving Daring Do a clue that starts her next adventure,” I mentioned. Ancient civilizations, forgotten temples, mysterious artifacts… I’ve always wanted to have a Daring Do adventure, and this question certainly has that ancient history color. But please, this time, let’s just keep the fate of all Equestria out of it. A scavenger hunt across the continent, through trials and dangers, that ends with discovering a tome of forgotten wisdom and magic, that would be really sweet. …When did I get so used to exciting things happening, that a Daring Do adventure seems relaxing, anyway? Mary just smiled in response. “This is what being an extreme historian really means. I have just set you on a path that will alter the history of this world, and it started with a sandwich.” She glanced towards the sky. “Actually, I did it the very moment I first saw you, we’re just filling out the details now.” Suddenly, an idea struck me. This is one of those questions that I need to put to rest as soon as possible… Awkward things happening early just gets me more time to smooth them over. “Tell me, Mary… Did you come to our world to be the extreme historian? For ponies, I mean?” I asked, after spending almost half a minute searching for the phrasing that wouldn’t sound too offensive. She’ll just answer that and I’ll be able to dismiss Applejack’s worries for good. “I’ve been waiting for this one…” Mary said, and smiled softly at me. “Yes and no. It’s a long story. The short of it is… This trip is primarily the result of a promise made to Rika. Her grand purpose in life is to exterminate despair, you see.” That sounded so matter of fact and so cryptic at the same time, that I couldn’t help but stare at her. “…Why?!” “Ask her what a magical girl is,” Mary replied. “She will explain. Might take a while, though.” Isn’t any unicorn mare a magical girl? I guess I can write that down for later. “…How exactly do you exterminate despair in the first place?” “Usually, with overwhelming force,” Mary said in a flat tone. “Lots of problems can be solved by proper application of high explosives, that’s not the issue. Her unique problem is that doing this doesn’t actually change anything. Entering a world and taking an active part in it only means that now, two worlds exist. One which she visited, and one she never did. From the Library point of view, a story can’t be rewritten.” “I can see how this would be a problem,” I agreed. I’m not sure I understand the rules of that mysterious Library properly, but this one sounds like it could make anypony miserable… “When she first brought this up, I told her that this is not an excuse to stop trying,” Mary continued. “That even if eradicating despair in a given world does not reduce the total amount of despair in the universe, it indirectly increases the amount of hope. She’s been trying to get me to tell her what to do ever since. Whether it’s out of spite, or because she really thinks that this works better than going in with guns blazing, I honestly don’t know.” “So that’s a ‘yes,’” I said. Now I have another question just for Rika. Actually, where is she? Humans seem to have such unusual ways of …being friends. Unless Mary is actually trying to tell me that she has a friendship problem. There’s more than just a friendship lesson in this, it seems like an entirely new class of problem… “But there was also a ‘no.’” “There was,” Mary nodded subtly. “Your world might not be perfect, but it’s a happy place. Some humans even see Equestria as a paradise, a posthumous reward for suffering in life. Some even receive that reward. I’m simply not qualified to mess with that, so I’m determined not to. The question about the sandwich was a momentary indiscretion,” She pulled a slightly unnatural smile onto her face. “But what’s done… is done. I could have gone home yesterday, and it would still be done.” That felt incongruous, and so theatrically tragic, that I laughed. “I doubt that asking me a question, or even sending me on an adventure, is enough to change the world.” I know I’m not exactly a nopony, but seriously. “I know that the set of ponies who can actually solve this mystery, and the set of those who are curious enough to try probably only intersect on you. And I know, that whatever the answer is, it will be much more important than it might appear. Give yourself some credit, Twilight,” Mary replied, looking at me with a serious expression on her face. “I do have an eye for these things.” I need to revise my checklist of questions to ask her, but I guess I might as well ask this one right now. “Sorry to pry, but… uh… did you mean the golden one?” I asked. I just hope she isn’t too sensitive about that, because that could be be even more embarrassing than the question she just answered. Mary tried to laugh, but it came out muffled with a full mouth and she had to swallow before answering, “No, it’s just a figure of speech. The blue one, if you insist. The golden eye is far more trouble than it is worth. For much of my life, it was completely blind, and when it started seeing, I wished I didn’t have it. If I wasn’t too squeamish to put it out, I wouldn’t have it by now.” I cringed at that. Ew. Suddenly seeing double would be a pain, but would it be enough to make me think of something so… so drastic? “It’s currently insisting you’re a human girl wearing a pale blue shirt and rather unfashionable glasses,” Mary added. “In watercolors. On a paper cutout.” That was Pinkie-level unexpected. “Well, it’s certainly wrong about that!” I burst. “I know. I just live with that constant stream of nonsense in my visual field,” Mary explained. “I thought it’s actually looking into the next world over for a while, but no, that’s not it… It just has opinions.” “Did the doctors have anything to say about that?” I wondered. “I’m assuming you did seek help…” She actually burst out laughing. “Seriously, Twilight? Any attempt to admit I have ‘hallucinations’ would cause a conversation with a psychiatrist. Being a time traveler, convincing one that I’m sane wouldn’t be fun.” She seems to be taking it in good humor, at least. “…Are you?” I poked cautiously, putting on a friendly smile. “Did I manage to convince you?” Mary grinned back. “If I did, I say I’m sane enough.” I’m not sure that is how it works.