//------------------------------// // Conversation 18: Twilight Sparkle // Story: Aporia // by Oliver //------------------------------// “It’s clearly fake. I suppose you can see why,” I sighed. The little adventure in the castle of the Royal Pony Sisters was concluded, Applejack excused herself and returned to the farm, and even Rainbow decided she told enough ponies about our duel with Trixie and went off to do something else, leaving me alone with our prize. We came back loaded with books, and yet, the only actual prize was the Journal. There was no doubt in my mind, that the pile of books on the floor that we found when we finally reached the library was there because Trixie had already rifled through it. Anything critically important for my hypothesis the library might have contained was certain to be gone. And now that I’ve had a chance to study that journal in more detail, I was disappointed beyond words, almost to the point of crying. “Well, I can read it, for one. Which by itself makes it rather suspect,” Mary said, leafing through the journal. “I would expect the language to change a lot more in a thousand years, judging by Princess Luna.” “Modern Equish is not that much of a stretch. Old Equish was just the language of formal documents and court speech,” I disagreed. “Using the modern Equish script for it is, I’m not sure when that was created, but I think it’s supposed to be much newer. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Nopony really knows where and how Princess Celestia was born, she never told me that, nopony ever dared ask, but there is no trace of an alicorn culture anywhere. King Bullion, ‘of the Unicorns,’ whoever that is, somehow avoided the coronation of Princesses of Equestria, sworn protectors of the Equestria Accords he supposedly signed. ‘Luna’ writes a detailed description of how she pranked the Founders, and then ‘Celestia’ writes ‘I know it was you’ on the very next page. All zebras talk in rhyme! Every other page is a load of horseapples, and the rest of them are a little filly’s friendship album!” I paused to take a breath and straighten my mane. It’s simply infuriating! “Oh really,” Mary said in a blank voice, turning another page. “I just don’t get how could anypony ever be so stupid!” I kept pacing around. Yes, this whole business has me pretty flustered. “Get into a ruined castle that stood untouched for centuries, explore it in detail, – the description of the trap controls matches perfectly! – write a fake journal, leave it in a secret room we only discovered by accident… and still make enough mistakes that only a foal wouldn’t see it’s fake! If they put in so much work to prank ponies they wouldn’t even ever meet, couldn’t they at least be competent?!” “When was paper invented?” Mary asked, rubbing one of the pages softly between her fingers. “Pre-Settlement,” I replied. “Way before sandwiches, it’s actually older than parchment.” “It’s odd that parchment even exists,” Mary commented, “I don’t think you have an excess of animal skins.” “Skins?!” I exclaimed. “What the hay are you talking about?” Mary glanced at me curiously. “In my language, ‘parchment’ is a word used primarily for a writing material made from processed animal skins dried under tension. Typically goats.” I shuddered. “I presume this at least involves eating the goat.” I know just how universal reading is in her world, so imagining entire populations of goats slaughtered just for storing knowledge is way too conflicting. “Of course,” Mary confirmed, not even batting an eyelid. “It was the preferred writing medium before paper was mass-produced.” “Well, we use the word ‘parchment’ for paper treated with sulfuric acid during manufacture,” I explained, holding my scroll of questions out for her, so that she could see the texture. “I started using it because it doesn’t stain or tear easily, you can never be too careful with your lecture notes when you’re taking care of a little dragon. Then it became a habit.” “Yet another linguistic collision, then,” Mary commented dispassionately, and turned back to the book. She kept leafing through it in silence for a while. It’s half-empty, and the hornwriting is very neat, so it didn’t take her very long before she was done. “This book is type IV impossible. Or the author is a time traveler,” she finally stated without the barest hint of humor in her voice. “You humans sure like to sort things into numbered types,” I commented, unrolling my scroll of questions and adding yet another line to the bottom. I’ll have to wiggle the whole classification out of her one day, but right now, the thought that this journal isn’t just a fake, but also impossible, sounds more interesting. “How can you tell? Is it some sort of time distortion that I can’t see, or…?” “No-no, nothing silly like that,” Mary smirked at me. “Type IV is impossible in genesis. There is nothing that prevents it from existing, as such. It’s probably not what it says it is, sure. But it should be impossible to for it to be written at all, no matter when that happened.” “…What?!” I jumped. “The exception would be an author capable of experiencing two time periods divided by a thousand years,” Mary added. “Which would be the case if the journal is real, the authors are who they say they are, and they’re writing nonsense deliberately. But that’s… well, that’s either royally stupid, or pranking on such a level, that you may as well blame my existence on Pinkie, knock on the door, and tell her it’s time to yell ‘surprise!’ because—” Mary caught herself in the middle of her phrase and we nervously looked in the direction of the door. Fortunately, no Pinkie was forthcoming. That’s right, she has a double shift at Sugarcube today. I stared at Mary, letting out a breath. “Just what are you basing this on?” “For starters, just how many ponies were even aware Princess Luna exists, before your rediscovery of the Elements?” Mary offered. I took a moment to consider that. “I’m not sure. It’s possible that nopony was, or the prophecy of Nightmare Moon’s return would have been on somepony’s calendar.” A few academics might have known, but I’d need to do a lot of reading to be certain. “Which just means that the journal was written afterwards, that’s not impossible.” It does mean, that whoever wrote it is somepony who spent a lot of time exploring the Everfree Forest and the ruined castle, which places them squarely into Ponyville. I don’t know of anypony who fits, except maybe Zecora, who certainly doesn’t seem to be the kind of zebra to entertain herself by writing a fake diary for unsuspecting archaeologists. But life’s full of surprises. Mary shook her head. “It’s actually the ultimate out of place artifact. Look,” she said, gingerly holding the open journal with both hands, and slowly pushing it in my direction. It was open on a page where a bright picture of a city was pasted in. “Does this image mean anything to you?” “I thought it was just a scale model,” I said. Now that she has drawn my attention to it, I noticed that the distorted depth of field one would expect in a photo of a scale model simply wasn’t there… but by itself, that doesn’t mean anything, because it’s not really a photo, it just looks like one. “I’ve seen a few pictures like this. Mostly in works trying to imagine how ponies of the future might live. City planning, that sort of thing.” “It’s a color photograph,” Mary stated. “When was color photography invented, by the way?” Not as long ago as you would need to make this journal real, but that by itself doesn’t mean much. “Actually, it’s not a photograph. It’s an imprint, a completely different, purely magical process,” I explained. “They’re difficult to make, but they were around for hundreds of years.” I’m not even sure how long. The corners of Mary’s lips curled. “Taken from the air. By a unicorn. Presumably, with a pegasus holding him up by the tail.” I decided to ignore the sarcasm and bit back the comment about chariots, which exist to solve just that sort of problem. Not to mention balloons and numerous less popular earth pony inventions. “So, do you know of a place called Crystal Empire?” Mary insisted, tapping a line on the page with her finger. “Not really,” I admitted, “But there were over forty pony kingdoms that were eventually absorbed into Equestria. This went on for the entire First Celestial Era. Every other polis was an empire! And at least a few of them definitely did not actually exist, so it can be just as fake as the—” “Wait,” Mary interrupted me, “That feels like yet another linguistic collision. What does the word ‘empire’ mean?” Oh no, not again! They keep making me doubt we’re actually understanding each other at all. “It means a kingdom capable of ‘impervious’ static defense of the entire population,” I explained. “In less archaic terms, this usually meant a really tall wall around a relatively small settlement. There’s also a connotation of being multi-tribal at least to some degree… What, it doesn’t match yours either?” “No, it doesn’t, and I certainly didn’t expect this one. It actually explains some things…” Mary sighed. “So how does your opinion change,” she continued, gently closing the book and placing it back on the table, as if it were a vial of dangerous chemicals, “if I tell you, that Crystal Empire still exists? That it looks exactly like this picture? That it is currently impossible to access, and has been so for at least a thousand years?” I just had to clarify that kind of statement. “Impossible like …?” Mary bit her lip thoughtfully, “I’ve no clue what sort of magic is involved, but it is currently supposed to be frozen in time in some sort of …pocket space, I don’t know. It should reappear within a month, if nothing prevents that.” This took a moment to sink in. “Is this… from my future?” “Very much yours, yes,” Mary nodded, as if she didn’t say anything more extraordinary than predicting I would have muffins for breakfast tomorrow. She told me we can talk about my future later, if I want to, but I’ve been… avoiding the topic, so far. “It’s an important part of your story, with three heartsongs to it. All three with you leading,” she added. Huh. “Three? How long did… …will this adventure take?” I asked. “My guess, if it even happens, about a week, but it’s not like I have a timetable,” Mary shrugged. “For you, it starts with an urgent summons to Canterlot, you can’t miss it.” That sounds life-changing. Just what would have to happen for me to have three heartsongs in a single week?! Even one means something important is going on! And do I really want to know? “I know of a few versions of Equestria where Crystal Empire does not exist,” Mary added, “but in those, your brother doesn’t exist.” “What does it have to do with my brother?!” I jumped, startled. How is it possible that Shining Armor doesn’t exist?! “It’s also his adventure,” Mary explained. Whew. I love my friends, but if we’re counting, my brother is still my oldest and best friend, and nothing can change this. Any adventure with him is definitely going to end well. “But if this world was one of those, it would make the book more impossible, not less,” Mary continued. “And the journal does mention a tree. I’m sure that’s the tree the Elements of Harmony come from. The one you have never heard about.” That’s right. This has to be the tree that Mary mentioned before, “elements of all that is good and true” leaves few other options. That’s got to be a piece of knowledge which is really hard to come by, it’s not even hinted at in “Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide.” I sat back on my pillow and considered the possibilities. If it is a prank, it’s incredibly contrived. Taken together with the information Mary just supplied, it crosses from incredible all the way to impossible. Either Mary’s in on it, which simply can’t happen, or I’m being pranked by the Princess herself. Which could happen, and would probably make me very happy, but it doesn’t feel like her style. Her pranks rarely ever fail, when this one clearly did. There’s a certain chance I’m being pranked by Princess Luna instead, which would be a first, but that’s still way too contrived. She might have directed Trixie to challenge me, and at the first opportunity, I’m going to talk to her about it, but finding the journal was way too random for me to be the target. No, it’s not a prank, and I should smack myself for even thinking that. And while the journal is clearly not what it says it is, knowing why it was actually written and who wrote it becomes very important… If the Crystal Empire is not a real place in our world, a picture Mary recognizes would imply the author had access to other worlds. Either directly, or in the same mysterious way authors of fiction supposedly do. It’s incredibly intriguing if they had direct access, but merely curious if they did not. If the imprint is made from memory, this is a possibility, but since color photography was perfected, it almost became a lost art, because in terms of difficulty, it’s on par with teleportation. Less power, more finesse. Something Trixie or Rarity would be good at. And even then, Rarity would just draw, she’s incredibly good. The author of the journal is still suspiciously knowledgeable, because, together with outright nonsense, it contains a lot of really esoteric truth. But if Mary is correct, there’s an adventure involving the Crystal Empire somewhere in my near future. Which should be easy to verify. In that case, there are plausible possibilities that don’t rely on other worlds, or Mary’s fiction theory. The most plausible one would be that somepony acquired some truly ancient relics, and used them in making this book. The other, less plausible one, is that the mysterious author of the journal really is a time traveler. One with a much more advanced time spell than the one I used, or at least, a spell that permits them to reliably see across time. It still leaves the question of ‘why’ unanswered, but more information should turn up if I can deduce their identity, if only through getting my hooves on their spells. In any of those cases, scrutinizing the journal down to the smallest detail is the only real clue I have, because it’s possible for the journal to originate both in my past and in my future. Hay, I could be the author myself, for reasons I simply don’t know just yet and using a time spell I will learn later. If the Crystal Empire reappears sometime soon, taking a photo or an imprint of it would be easy. “How the hay do you manage to turn everything into a mystery novel?” I muttered, glancing at Mary, who got bored while I was thinking and was now casually leafing through the book, gently turning the pages over. “How the hay everything in your world manages to turn into a mystery novel?” Mary countered. “I’m just looking into places you normally wouldn’t bother to investigate and know a few things you don’t.” She does have a point. “Let’s start by making a list of what we know, then,” I proposed, picking up a fresh piece of parchment and readying a quill. Mary might try to wiggle out of actively participating in this quest, but while she’s in my library, I’m definitely not letting her avoid a consulting role. “Well, fact number one is, this journal exists,” Mary pointed out. “Unless illusions and other magic shenanigans are involved.” “They aren’t,” I confirmed. “There is no enchantment on it,” I said. The moment I started having doubts, that was the first thing I checked, enchanting a book to make it read like something else was a trick very popular among pre-classical mages. Star Swirl the Bearded was famous for hiding his more dangerous spells behind recipes, which is why I also packed every cookbook I could find in the library. “No preservation enchantments either, so it can’t be more than a hundred years old, even assuming optimal storage conditions. The paper is too new.” “In its own timeline,” Mary commented. “That does not settle when it was written.” “Then that’s fact number two,” I said, writing this one down. “We don’t know when it was written, but we know it did not spend a thousand years in that room.” “For number three…” Mary said, and paused, chewing on her lip. “The author is a girl, who had yet to find her cutie mark, so about nine years old at the time of writing. Allow plus-minus three.” I dropped my quill into the inkwell and stared at her. “Just how do you know that?” “I read a lot of diaries?” Mary shrugged. “You said it yourself, it reads like a filly’s friendship album. Whoever wrote it is very sensitive about not having a cutie mark. When those come up in the text, they make sure to point out that Celestia and Luna are much older than everypony else, and want to be treated according to their age, but the actual text displays none of the experience that would come with such an age. And there isn’t even a single poem in it, so she wasn’t a late bloomer.” “What do poems have to do with it?” I wondered. “Puberty,” Mary replied tersely. Then, sensing my confusion, she elaborated, “The author displays no tangible romantic interest, not even for Star Swirl. There’s one entry when Luna spends some alone time with him, and it never gets romantic either.” “Well, I wouldn’t write that sort of thing in a journal!” I stated, almost blushing. I never dared to commit thoughts like these to paper. “I wouldn’t either,” Mary grinned, “But most teenagers do, unless they skip straight to mathematics, like we both did. If the author did, it would show, but it doesn’t.” I guess I can mark this one as tentative. “Let’s go with that,” I said, writing it down. “I can’t imagine a filly with no cutie mark being capable of time travel in any fashion, though.” “That makes fact number four!” Mary said, raising a finger. “Whoever placed the journal into the secret room is not necessarily the same person as the author.” “This is starting to look like a list of things we don’t know,” I commented, writing that one down as well. Now I have not just one, but potentially two ponies to track down. “These can make a very telling picture too,” Mary pointed out. And once again, she has a point.