May 23, 2030
Stability
Friday
Quantum’s week in the Borough of Stability progressed like a jump-cut. Picking up the ropes faster than ever before in any vault, she built on Hal’s cues until she could pre-empt what he would say next, and laughed with him while learning about his life from a perspective nopony could hope to match in another. A well-oiled machine, their teamwork was enough to skate through classes, weasel out of flying with daily excuses that stuck, and, most importantly, retain the interest of a certain coral pink filly. By Friday night, Quantum was standing before a mirror in Hal’s bedroom, fixing the bow tie around her neck by way of his reflection.
“…steppin’ out, with my baby,” Quantum sang just below her breath as she posed before the mirror, “can’t go wrong cause blah blah blah…smooth sailin’ cause I’m blah blah something…with my top hat, and my white tie, and my tails…”
The real Hal stared into the mirror with a look of childlike bewilderment. “I’m never gonna get used to this. It’s like watching a movie of myself from a decade ago. Only cooler.”
Quantum let out a lighthearted laugh that up until a few days ago was uncharacteristic of her. She peered over the shoulder of her reflection, remembered that holograms don’t show up in mirrors, and turned to offer her friend a confident grin.
“Just relax and enjoy the show tonight. I’ll be out of here in a couple hours and who knows? Maybe we’ll be talking about this back home tomorrow.”
Hal lifted a brow. “You know I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this cocky, Cutie. What are you even basing that on, the idea that the next vault will just—“ he made a wooshing sound by blowing air through his cheeks, “—take you right back home?”
Quantum peered back into the mirror, changing her expression several times just to watch the younger Hal match her every movement. “What more can fate put me through, right? I’ve been colts, stallions, mares, nags—been nearly killed several times, saved lives, made things right, learned skills I never had before on the fly…” She pulled the corner of one lip, “What else is there? Maybe this vault is like…a victory lap or something.”
Hal floated over to his own desk and nodded at the clock. “You don’t even know that’s how this works. Heck, we really don’t know how any of this works. Every second you spend blipping around through realities like this could make for its own groundbreaking research paper into a science I don’t even think we have a name for yet. And do you really think you’re just going to waltz back into 2039 and just be forgiven for everything?”
Quantum’s expression faltered. Hal backpeddled.
“N-never mind that now. Look at the time. Just one more little hop and we’re golden this time around.” Hal felt his toasty orange cheeks warm up beyond their normal color, “…you know I can’t thank you enough for this.”
Quantum looked away. “…my mother isn’t the only pony I owe one to.” She forced out a smile, “I’ll make this work tonight. Promise.”
“No doubt,” Hal grinned. He glanced at the bed. “Right about now I was hiding under my covers reading a science-fiction journal that I found so fascinating it probably had something to do with the vocation I ended up in. But that’s beside the point. Listen, my mother is going to want to take five thousand pictures of that bow tie until the whole night is over, but I—you—are never going to hear the end of it if you just duck out. Just tell her—“
“—just drop some subtle egotistic comments about your prowess with the fillies,” Quantum completed the thought, “And remind her how the whole dance will be sad if I don’t make it there on time to show them how the rug is cut.”
Hal blushed again. “I was gonna say tell her you need to get going.”
“She’s probably the most doting mother I’ve ever even heard of, Hal,” Quantum replied. “And she adores you. That’s the kinda stuff an adoring mother wants to hear.” Her thoughts suddenly turning to Trixie, Quantum softened, “…probably, anyway.”
With her mane slicked back, a boutonniere in her collar, and a corsage for her date, Quantum posed for the Calavanner family photo album and set off for school under a small patch of clouds that were encroaching on Luna’s starry sky. The correct path through the nicely-primped neighborhood had long since become second nature. Soon, Quantum found herself muzzle to muzzle with a giggling gaggle of primped-up fillies, a number of spit-and-polish colts subtly trying to out pose one another, and several well-dressed but clearly bored looking faculty-ponies.
“What’s this?” A voice preceded by a blast of honeysuckle perfume cooed, “Can’t even pomf out your wings for me? Isn’t that how pegasus-boys say hello to a lady?”
Hal’s wings did indeed spread to their very tips the moment he laid eyes on Twitter Step, but Quantum, who was in control of his material body, merely gaped. She had never seen the filly without a bag on her shoulder, or in dancing sweats with her mane tied sharply back. Now, Twitter’s amber waves were cascading in twirling spires down her back and neck with the kind of perfection that must have taken hours under a curling iron. Her cheeks and eyelids were darkened just slightly by a skillful application of makeup, while her amber eyes seemed to sparkle that much more under the school’s floodlights. She wore elegant slippers on every hoof, and the happy bluebird that was spinning around a dancing shoe on her flank was just barely visible under an aqua gown, with taffeta and lace in all the right places. She turned her head and batted her lashes in a disarmingly feminine way.
“You’re gonna let flies in if you don’t close your mouth,” Twitter smiled, placing a hoof on Quantum’s jaw and pushing it gently closed. “I take it you like.”
“I like!” Hal called from above, “I mean you like! Tell her that!”
Quantum shook her head and reminded herself she was currently almost a decade this filly’s senior. “Y-you look…great, Twit.”
Twitter stuck out her tongue, “Uh-huh. Keep being all chivalrous like that. It’s adorable.” She looped her foreleg in Quantum’s and again dragged her off before any other words could be spoken. The height and strength difference between them was considerable, despite their relative ages.
Quantum and her date were admitted to a hastily redecorated gymnasium. The basketball hoops and bleachers were packed away alongside wheeled equipment shelves, that had been pushed back to make room for a collection of refreshment tables. The tables in turn were arranged in a semicircle pattern, effectively creating a perimeter for an ample dance floor. Somepony had even gone so far as to hang colorful temporary mood lighting. A disco ball reflected the undulating, warm waves of purples and blues, sending them in a mottled pattern all over the room. Through the skylights the stars added their luster, but the gathering of rogue clouds at their perimeter was beginning to grow. Only the weather factory in Cloudsdale and the royal house itself knew exactly when every turn in the weather was scheduled to occur. The rest of the Equestrian populace was occasionally obliged to let nature take its course.
Quantum took in her thousandth breath of cheap cologne and the artificial floral scent the school had employed in vain attempt to cover the odor of a well-used gymnasium. The punch tasted like melted rock candy, such that her sweet-tooth quickly reached its limit. With little else to do, she watched the wallflowers stand around and began to feel a certain kinship with the majority of colts among their numbers.
“Hal,” Quantum finally spoke up between swallows as she watched Twitter gossip with her friends, “What’s the deal? Did she get her name for dancing or social butterflying?”
Hal, who had spent most of the evening enjoying a bird’s eye view of the dance he never attended the first time around, shrugged. “She’ll dance. She’ll dance when it’s worth doing.”
“What do the numbers say? Are we making any progress?”
Again Hal made no move to check his device. “Tissy says all you gotta do is dance with her. One song.” He smiled softly, “Relax. This is all about crossing the finish line now. One dance will seal the deal, but if she’s waiting like this? It’s because of how much that one dance is going to mean to her. You’ve already won.”
Quantum drained her punch cup and smirked behind it. ”We’ve won. We make a good team.”
“You know it,” Hal agreed.
“What do you think she’s waiting for though? Some song?”
Quantum’s question was answered by the break in the otherwise constant drone of slow muzak that had graced the entire evening; likely been borne of the prim and proper mindset of an ancient principal. As if on cue, the dance floor began to fill. Quantum felt Twitter by her side.
“About time Principal Crabgrass went home for the night,” Twit explained, lightly bumping Quantum’s flank with her own. “She might be old enough to have been doing her homework in hieroglyphics, but at least some of the teachers around here can’t see the harm in a little fun!”
Quantum tried to remove as much of the feminine intuition from her smile as she could, and stood that much taller. She received another playful rump-bump for her trouble. “Is this what you’ve been waiting for?”
“You know me so well. Like I’m ever gonna waste my hocks on muzak. Come on!” She made as if to roughly grab Quantum again, but this time she stopped herself and stood still, the blush on her cheeks deepening beyond the applied color. “You lead this time.”
Quantum took the dance floor with a new understanding of male pride. A few of the hoofball jocks were there with their dates. Some of them were giving her the eye, but everypony who did tried to play it down. They were in Hal’s world now, and by proxy, in Quantum’s as well.
Quantum wasn’t a mare above a little revenge.
Quantum quickly found her groove In the unbroken medley of snappy new songs. Determined to show off, both mares deviated frequently from the basic waltzes of the other couples, jumping between styles as the music dictated. Hal activated the red light numbers and called them out, but Quantum’s verve belied her from even noticing when his commands suddenly ceased.
By the eighth song, the floor was nearly empty of all the exhausted students who could no longer keep up. Quantum Trots Lulamoon – now Halifax Calavanner, and her partner Twitter Step, reveled in their absolute domination. Lost in the moment, Quantum mashed together the steps she had been taught to create an absolute mayhem of rhythm, exploding forth like random chemicals cast into an already frothing beaker. She nearly lit her horn with the colors of pure glee before a certain sight drew her eye.
A sight that was simply wrong.
Spinning with the music, she had to focus on what she had seen three times before she was certain her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her. Standing in a semi-darkened corner with spectators passing right through her was a mid-twentysomething, wine coated earth mare. Her classic beauty gave her poofy, powdery cyan mess of bed-head hair a sensual ‘morning after’ feel, but the glassy look in her steel-gray eyes and the hefty blotch of nothing where her cutie mark should have been gave her identity away immediately.
“…Tissy…?”
It was as if Quantum only now noticed she was dancing. Her steps became heavy; her attention split between the apparition in the corner and the realization that she was doing something she had no idea how to do a week ago, now in front of an audience. Just before an embarrassing trip would have derailed the entire performance, Twitter caught Quantum in her forelegs, sensed the elder mare’s distress, and dipped herself – leaving Quantum looming over her, holding the taller filly up with forelegs wrapped around her midsection.
Twitter’s makeup was running. She was panting hard and sweating under the lights, but the look on her face was one of pure rapture. Her lips were puckered.
Quantum glanced away. There was Tissy, standing perfectly catatonic…
…with Hal’s control device resting on the flat of her hoof.
“Well…?” Twit whispered, “…aren’t you going to kiss me?”
Quantum looked back to her partner with worried shock on her face. Twit frowned, misunderstood the expression entirely, and smiled again.
“Don’t be shy—”
Twitter placed her hooves on either side of Quantum’s head, pulled herself up a few inches, and completed the connection to a chorus of catcalls that dwarfed the song of the fillies that first day in dance class. Wide-eyed, Quantum could do nothing but accept the less-than-adolescent advance until the music abruptly ceased, and the crowd parted before the admonishments of Hal’s Equestrian history teacher.
“—prpopriate behavior on school grounds, you two! Break it up.” Was all Quantum heard. Her response was to dart away, leaving the startled audience behind to burst through the doors and follow the phasing image of Tissy into the drizzly night.
“Tissy!” Quantum shouted the moment she was clear of the building, gasping to recover her breath. “What’s going on? Where’s Hal?”
Tissy stood completely still, her mane undisturbed by the increasing breeze. She tapped a few buttons on the control device, but said nothing.
“Tissy! I’m talking to you!” Quantum growled, reaching out in a vain, knee-jerk attempt to shake Tissy’s shoulders. “Where’s Hal!?”
Tissy ignored the advance and continued to type. As Quantum soaked helplessly in the rain, the wine-coated mare finished her task and turned the screen for Quantum to see.
+++Well done, Cutie. There is now a 94.8% likelihood that Halifax Calavanner will choose dancing over science, and continue on to his future in the Maretonian ballet.+++
Quantum’s eyes widened. “…what? His future?” She fixed Tissy with a stare. “Don’t be ridiculous. You know what Hal’s future is just as well as I do. He’s our best friend!”
Tissy typed—
+++I am not personally acquainted with Halifax Calavanner. Nor to my knowledge are you.+++
Strands of Quantum’s rapidly matting, seagreen mane began to drape over her eyes. She laughed dryly. “Tissy you know I appreciate it when you try to pull a fast one, but this really isn’t funny, okay? Now tell me where Hal is.”
+++Halifax Calavanner’s consciousness is currently being inhabited by you. Given that you have successfully altered the event with the highest percentile chance of being the key event, you should prepare to vault at any moment. You have done well.+++
“Not this Hal, Tissy!” Quantum snarled, pointing down at the younger Hal’s reflection in a growing puddle. “Where is OUR Hal? The one from 2039!?”
Tissy squinted. Staring as always just past the shoulder of whomever was addressing her, she hesitated, as if uncertain how to answer. As the rising crescendo of raindrops pattered the ground beneath her, she began to type again. Slower this time.
+++Research data remains unchanged. Halifax Calavanner and Twitter Step are rising young stars in the Maretonian Intercontinental Ballet. Reports suggest they are planning marriage when they graduate from Maretonia’s most prestigious school of dance.+++
Quantum felt something snap inside her. Her lip curled in a sneer so ugly it might have wilted flowers all on its own. For every step she advanced, the invulnerable holographic earth mare actually backed away.
“Hal was just here,” The statement sounded like a threat. “He’s been our best friend for years. Yours and mine. I can’t do this without him. Where is he.”
Tissy thrust the device out in front of herself like a talisman.
+++I do not understand the question.+++
“Where IS he, Tissy!?” Quantum shouted. “It’s a simple question! I want you to tell me what happened to Hal – he was just here a minute ago!!”
+++I don’t understand the q—
Quantum’s hoof passed sharply through Tissy’s foreleg as she attempted to bat the device away. Soaked through, she barked out a repetitive litany of the same brutish question, punctuated by choice profanity, with all the ferocity of a horde of diamond dogs. Only a muffled cry that barely sounded equine at all finally gave her pause.
Below, curled up into a fetal ball with her powdery mane splayed all over her, was Tissy. The wine-coated mare was rocking in place, her eyes shut tightly, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“…nuhh…nuhhh…”
Quantum stared at her own trembling hoof as though she’d never seen it before.
“…Tissy I…”
Tissy recoiled in horror from Quantum’s searching hoof. Backing away on the ground, she fumbled for the control device and activated the sheet of white light that would take her out of the holographic imaging chamber.
“T-Tissy wait!” Quantum held her hooves up in a gesture of peace. “I’m sorry! D-don’t leave, we need to talk about—”
With another feral yelp, Tissy plunged through the portal and was gone. Quantum sank to her knees in the rain, feeling as though the very light inside her had been banished to the moon.
“Hal?”
Twitter’s voice approached at a fast trot, “Hal? What’s the matter? You just ran off, and—”
“You.”
“…what?”
”You,” Quantum repeated without turning around. “I see what this is all about now. Why he wasn’t checking the numbers. He lied to me. He lied to me…because of you.”
Twitter Step, her mane soaking up the weight of the falling water, shook her head in confusion. “Hal, I don’t understand…come inside and tell me what’s the matter. We can talk about—”
“No!” Quantum felt rage choking her like an oily rag down her throat. “You don’t understand! You two had your chance! He’s my friend now!” Tears mingled with raindrops until one became indiscernible from the other, “He…he wouldn’t just abandon me…it’s all because he saw you again! All that crap about not messing with the timeline, and that’s just what he did! And he did it for you!”
Twitter backed away. “Hal…you’re scaring me…”
“Scaring you?” Quantum repeated, a maniacal smile on her face, “I can do better than that. I can fix all of this! I’m Halifax Calavanner, and guess what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna go home, and I’m gonna forget this night ever happened! You know why? Because I don’t want to be with you, that’s why!”
Twitter sniffled, taffeta adhering to her flanks. “Y-you don’t mean that—”
“Yes I do! Now leave me alone! I’m a scientist!!”
Twitter backed up until her rump bapped a wall. Shaking her head and fighting back tears of her own, she managed to sprint into a gallop just before the floodgates burst, her wail carrying her off into the night.
“That’s right!” Quantum called, “Go away! I don’t need you, I…I…”
Fog descended on Quantum’s brain as a kaleidoscope of moody blue emotions mixed with the red, volcanic fires of unmanaged anger, the green fields of envy, the gray spires of regret, and the brown dust of remorse. The moisture in her eyes attenuated every light, creating warped trails in every direction until her gaze fell upon a single figure.
There stood the colorless pony, wrapped as always from crown to pastern in gleaming white robes. Under his hood lay the patient null void of blackness – a splash of absent color in a wreath of presence. He never spoke nor moved a muscle, but his silent poise spoke volumes to the only mare who could perceive his presence.
“What! What do you want from me!?” Quantum felt a weakness in her legs, but held herself aloft through sheer desire to expel the last vomitous anger from her being. “You want to judge me? You want a hoof for a hoof? Well guess what? I’m not scared of you anymore, you dirty rag! If this is what you call ‘rebuilding lives’, then you can kiss my minty pony butt, because I’m done! Don’t you understand? I was trying to kill myself! Because I deserved it!” Quantum beat her own chest so hard she bruised herself, “Is having me jump through hoops fun for you? Well you’re not getting any more fun out of me! I quit! So send me wherever the hell you were gonna send me anyway and save everypony back home the trouble!”
Quantum spun on her heels and burst into a loping, clumsy gallop. Blinded by tears, the slippery rain, and her complete lack of coordination, she stumbled into Luna’s dampened grace until a cascading sound like wild thunder grew louder and louder behind her.
“No! Stop! LEAVE ME ALONE!!”
Every surface split apart, bursting forth with pure, blinding white light.
Quantum screamed.