Adrift Off Fiddler's Green: The Final Conversion Bureau Story

by Chatoyance

14. And She Was

14. And She Was

She had fallen for the longest time. She met the sides less and less until, at last, she soared right through the middle like a bullet down the barrel of a rifle. Oh, she hadn't thought about that sort of thing in forever. Just forever.

There was no choice, none at all. She had acted almost instinctually, flat on her belly, all of her effort in one desperate, true kick. When she'd gone in, it had been headfirst, and she'd said, out loud to herself, "Hole in one!"

It got cooler very fast. The wind, the air, moved past her faster and faster, taking with it her sweat and her tears too - for she had been crying. She wondered if she had been singed - it was impossible to tell, even for her nose, because the ferocious wind tore past her so powerfully, as she fell.

It was much, much deeper than she had imagined. By now, she was uncertain if a bottom even existed at all.

She tried relaxing, as best she could, against such hurricane wind. She used the pressure of it to turn herself over, careful to avoid ending up in a spin. With her backside to wind, to the direction of down, she found breathing less onerous. Her face was no longer mashed or flapping as her angle changed. This was better. She wished she could sleep. In every way, whatever happened, it would be better. Either there was a bottom, or there wasn't, and neither outcome would be improved by being conscious.

She tried praying. It was almost certainly ridiculous, but she was clear that she had nothing to lose from it. Pascal's Wager made a lot more sense in a situation such as this, she reflected. There was no answer, of course. Or perhaps not 'of course'. It was, after all, the magical land of Equestria.

At least Frontpage would make it. Her kick had been perfect. Plantain, who she reckoned she would be seeing again relatively soon, would be very proud of her. Her sister had once attempted to get her interested in doing an act together, in her show. Nothing had come of the effort and practice at the time, but the training had turned out to be of value after all. One reporter had lived to write the story. She tried to imagine the look that must have been on his muzzle, when he found himself helpless, kicked high, oh so high, up and right through that cosmic ribbon. Two points.

It should count more as three, she mused. Her current distance from the last existing three-point line was more than ninety years in the past, and well over 24,000 earthly kilometers in some dimension of space beyond the normal ones, plus time. Human basketball did not exist in Equestria, despite newfoals dominating the culture. It was too simple, too easily won by telekinetic unicorns or flying, slam-dunking pegasai. Maybe separatist earthponies alone might secretly play it, somewhere out in the unimaginably vast Exponential Lands. If there even was such a thing as a separatist earthpony.

There was no way she could have hoped to make it through the ribbon. It took all of her considerable power just to shoot Frontpage up to it. The impossibly gargantuan disk of the sun was terrible when it approached. She never even got to see it. Still distant, beyond the walls of the Luna Pit the heat was unbearable. The suns light blazed through the strange crystal that was the material of the sky, and turned the blue walls ocean green.

She could barely breathe by the time she remembered the 'trap' - the circular hole at the very center of the 'X' shaped gorge. It was desperation that sent her rocketing with a swift kick straight toward it. She knew that to fall within meant being trapped at the bottom of a frictionless pit within a pit. But her flesh could no longer stand the rapidly growing heat. She knew, in those moments, only the drive to escape, to move away, by any means, to any destination. And thus she slid over the rim and directly down.

And down. And still down. It grew cooler quickly. Within seconds it was pleasant. Within minutes, she was in utter darkness.

The smooth and polished walls of the circular shaft were made of sky-stuff. Without friction, striking them did no damage whatsoever. She knew she must be falling at whatever terminal velocity was within Equestria. She felt weightless, the only force acting on her the rushing wind of her passage, as she plowed through the still air within the vertical tunnel.

For a long while she just... let go, her mane and tail fluttering like ragged flags. When she began coughing, after her mouth and throat had dried out, she took the work of dropping more seriously. It took some time before she could work up enough saliva to cease feeling choked. She kept her eyes mostly shut, against the constant gale. Occasionally, she would peek, because not looking was even more awful than looking. Always, in the back of her mind, was the image of the bottom of the shaft. It was coming to meet her. Very, very fast. And she felt very certain it did not want to be friends with her.

She concentrated on her breathing for a bit - the wind was extremely fierce and felt like it was bucking its way into her nasal passages. She contemplated what it would be like, when it happened - would it be instant, or would she suffer for a while as the mush that once had been her dripped from where it had splattered? That was silly - the walls were frictionless. Any flecks or gobbits would collect instantly in a central pool, they could stick to nothing...OH LUNA! Where the empanada are you? Why wasn't she already here, kindly carrying a pony scythe? Wasn't she supposed to be the designated psychopomp for the Equestrian cosmos? That was Frontpage's theory. Luna, the Not-Pale Mare. Protector of foals and fools, reaper in the night.

The constant blast was very annoying. The fall was taking entirely too long. She reckoned that she could have fallen from old, vanished earth's orbit several times by now. Just how high was the sky anyway? Did the crazy dome just go on forever? Was Equestria a universe of infinite dome-crystal and equally infinite ground-stone interrupted by a tiny bubble of air and light and life?

The wind was too much. That was when she decided to try to turn over, put her back to the storm, and see if she could take a nap.

Drifting comfortably off was impossible while being buffeted about during a death plummet. 'The more you know!' she thought to herself.

The air felt different now. Moist. She detected the scent of moss, and what seemed like flowers and grass, though the moss dominated. Praying hadn't worked, and sleeping was right out with the loud rushing of wind in her ears, so she decided to face her destiny - and those curious scents.

Turning over in mid air once more, she noted that the walls had changed - and that she could see them. For the longest time she had descended in pitch blackness, light long lost, no longer even a speck far above. The burning sun itself could not reach down such a tunnel, it was so deep. The tunnel walls were no longer blue ice that was not ice. Now they were dirt and rock and patches of dark olive green. She was slowing down.

Far ahead, a pinprick of light was visible. From it came illumination enough to just distinguish that the walls were different, and that she was moving past them with less and less velocity. Now the jumble of rock and soil was giving way to measured blocks, bricks of carefully cut stone, a circular tube through which she was... rising? Something in her inner ear suggested that down was now impossibly... up. She was falling - flying - upwards, the velocity from her long drop now serving to launch her up the brick-walled shaft.

There was something ahead. A spiral led to a discernible disk of light. The spiral was interrupted, staggered. It finally came to her realization that she was seeing the underside of a staircase, made of brickwork, that rifled the tunnel she rose within. At the beginning of the stairs was a platform of some kind, also stone, that jutted out from the wall. Her swift climb continued to slow. She barely noticed the fact that her body was screaming now, apparently of its own volition. Perhaps the poor thing had simply endured too much, and needed a good long yell to release the tensions of the impossible plummet... now an ascent.

The light in front of her was very bright. The approaching circle of light, where the tunnel and the stairs ended, far above the approaching stone platform, had a peculiar greenish-blue tint to it. It was the same color as the Equestrian sky at mid-day. As she continued to rise higher and higher up the shaft, she began to see that it was sky, and there was the sun, peeking over the lip. She whizzed past the platform where the stone steps began their ascent. In moments she found herself outside the strange shaft entirely. Her voice never stopped shrieking, the thing clearly had some will of its own.

She flew up and out of a well. A stone well. In a frozen moment, as her speed upwards ended, and a new plummet began, she noted that the well had once had a metal cover, which now lay to the side on the grass. Whipping her head around she saw the ruin of an enormous and ancient castle. Her mind recoiled at the recognition of it. It was the castle of the Pony Sisters, the castle in the Everfree. This was the oldest building in Equestria... jerking her head, just before she passed below the rim of the stone well, she saw the entrance to the cave where the Tree Of Harmony stood. The very same tree with a new door in it, where she and Frontpage had stepped through a blackness to escape the monsters of the forest outside.

Her consciousness reeled. She had fallen through the top of the sky, all the way to the surface of the world! The dome of the sky was the literal underside of the whole of Equestria. The universe wrapped around upon itself, through unknown dimensions. It was a finite-yet-unbounded cosmos, a bubble of spacetime floating in some multiversal realm, like a toy boat tossed about, lost in the ocean...

This last thought deserved some real consideration, but her insight was massively interrupted. She found herself no longer falling. Silvern light covered her entirely - she was held within an impossibly strong telekinetic grasp. She found herself being rotated to face the opening that existed beyond the stone platform that jutted from the walls of the brick well - the very start of the stairs that led up to the surface.

There, standing next to a number of very classical, ornately decorated, metal-banded treasure chests set within a deep chamber beyond the stone platform was her savior - the princess Luna herself. Luna looked her over with not a little surprise, even astonishment. Beside the nocturnal diarch, a tall bipedal creature seemingly, constructed of seven or eight different animals impossibly sewn together, slowly closed the journal he had been reading. He carefully lay the book back into the open treasure chest in front of him. Discord. Likely the most powerful entity in Equestria - even the princesses had trouble dealing with him. He didn't seem surprised at all. He did seem utterly delighted for some reason. Likely because it must seem like chaos itself to have a little earthpony fly up out of a well that led to a hole in the sky.

"Prithee silence thyself sweet mare, for safe thou art, within mine own keeping!"

Crimson Beauty Acres gradually fell quiet, and slowly closed her mouth.

"No, I think that could end up very, very bad for us. We don't know what kind of genie we're dealing with." Frontpage held a foreleg out protectively, blocking Crimson from stepping through the rectangular section of cosmic ribbon.

"Genie? What?"

"That game I liked. Also earth mythology, but mostly D&D." Frontpage sat down on his hindquarters. "In Dungeons and Dragons, sometimes a DM - a Dungeon Master, the pony who ran the game, kind of a referee and storyteller? The DM would throw out a magic lamp or some such McGuffin, and the players, being greedy little piggies, couldn't wait to get their hooves on some free wishes. If the DM was a charitable, nurturing game master who worked to serve his players enjoyment and fun, then the genie would be nice and the wishes would be granted fairly. That's gotta be how all games in Equestria are played now. Obviously. We're all ponies, and that's what we do. Mostly.

"BUT, a century ago, when I played the game on earth, with human DM's, well... sometimes, oftentimes, actually... the genie would be evil. Super evil. It would basically be used as a means for the Dungeon Master to exact petty suffering, or retribution for previous player antics, or even to teach exceptionally greedy and uncooperative players some harsh moral lessons. It was a spankin' switch, and sometimes could even be used to kill off an entire party and effectively end a campaign that wasn't fun anymore."

Crimson just glared. "I have not a clue what any of that has to do with my plan. We just think about going to wherever my sister is, and after we step through, we both get what we want! I see my sister, and you can interview her and get the Big Scoop on what happens after we die. It's win-win, and I don't see why you are having a problem with it."

"Just listen, okay?" Frontpage sighed. "Imagine being in a game like I just described, alright? You get three wishes. Make a wish. I'll play the genii. A wish like an ancient, human adventurer might make. Any wish. Go on!"

Crimson sat down too, clearly they were not going anywhere until Frontpage finished 'colt-splaining' whatever it was he was going on about. "Yes. Fine. Make me... rich, I suppose. A ton of gold. I wish for a ton of gold." This was insulting.

"ZAM! A ton of gold falls on you and squashes you flat! You're dead. Do not pass 'Go', do not collect on your life insurance." Frontpage seemed to be enjoying himself.

"That isn't what I asked for! I said I wanted to be wealthy - and have a ton of gold, not be killed!"

"Yes, that is exactly what you asked for and it is exactly what you got. You didn't ask to be killed, but you also didn't ask not to be killed. You got your gold, you were rich for exactly as long as it took to fall on you, your wish has been granted, master of the lamp. Evil genie. Literal computer. Same thing."

Crimson Acres opened her mouth, and then closed it again. Her ears drooped.

"Think about what you wanted us to do - to 'Go wherever Plantain is'. What's the most efficient, most direct path to that goal?" Frontpage looked very grim.

"D-death. We die and..."

Frontpage nodded "We die and our wish is granted. We are exactly wherever Plantain is, and even in exactly the same state of being. Absolutely optimal result... for a literal machine. Just because this system grants us very specific food and drink doesn't mean it can handle highly abstract commands. To go where a dead pony is? How else do you interpret that? I suspect we'd be wormfood the instant we stepped through.

"Now, I'm not saying that the Equestrian... system or interface or whatever it is... is necessarily an evil genie. But I think it would be prudent to be very, very careful about exactly how we give it instructions. It could be perfectly nice, but unpleasantly literal. It could kindly, and in friendship, give us exactly what we ask for."

"When we get out of this mess, I want you to teach me that game." Crimson lay down and turned her head to stare at the floating stone control monolith. It was currently egg-shaped.

"I'd be glad to. For now though..." Frontpage also lay down, his belly flat to the marble, his forelegs extended "...for now, we need to come up with a very specific destination, something even a literal machine - or an evil genie - can't cause us any trouble with."

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a while.

"Crimson. What do you want?"

"You know what I want. I want my sister back! Or at least, I want to see her, talk to her, know she's alright... and that there really is some kind of afterlife for her!" Crimson seemed almost offended to be asked... again.

"And I want to know what is going on with our world, why there are armies of ghosts invading bistros, and why the Everfree has gone crazy-go-nuts. And most of all, I want to know what's being done about it... and whether or not it's curtain time for all of us."

This seemed to surprise Crimson. "Do you really think it's that bad? It's just a few, well, ghosts and the monsters are a little thick..."

"'The dead rising from the grave! Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!' - I think that's how the line goes. It's been a century. Bottom line - ghosts swarming and monsters rising up is basically the standard cake recipe for the End Of The World. And I'm talking basic vanilla, no frosting, not even any layers, zero decoration. Just cake. Super basic."

Crimson laughed. "More than ninety years, the old universe is just a memory, planet ground up to make the Exponential Lands, and... we're still making references to media that was ancient when we were both children! Earth was a miserable place, but it had some amazing art, didn't it?"

Frontpage glanced off at the color-splotched void. "Makes sense, if you think about it. The crappier the world, the more you need escapist entertainment. To escape. Because it hurts, all the time. Native Equestrian stuff was pretty insipid and very short before newfoals showed up. It was merely tolerated - it interrupted having fun every day. Seeing a play or a show was work. It was like going to school, not escape."

"Ponies love earth stuff now. Allowed or prohibited, they eat it up. Why, if not for escape?"

"Fun is fun, and novelty is always exciting." Frontpage bent his neck far to the side and nibbled his flank because it itched. "Earth art may have been born from dissatisfaction and pain, but it was still pretty great. Nothing odd about that. Good is good, whatever the universe."

Crimson smiled "Aren't you the sage old stallion with all the answers! You are quite something, blithely discussing how entertainment functions between differing universes!"

"If I knew even half of the crap I talk about, I'd be pretty amazing, wouldn't I?" Frontpage joined Crimson in laughing. "Do we actually want the same thing?"

Crimson startled "I thought so. Aren't they the same thing? I mean, if anypony should know what is going on with the dead coming back, Plantain would. She'd be all over that like... like..." Crimson stared at the marble floor, mouth open. "Plantain's dead. She's... dead. I... I'm still - it's like it isn't real, and then it is, and sometimes I feel nothing and other times... sorry. I'm still... I'm not sure."

"We've been on a bit of an adventure. You haven't had any time at all to actually grieve. If anything, I think you've put your grief on hold, because of your intention to get her back. Get her back, and there's no reason to grieve at all. True enough in terms of logic, but emotions don't much care for logic. They just feel." Frontpage nuzzled Crimson for a bit. "So, where do we go from here?"

Crimson pulled her head away. "Frontpage? Maybe..."

"Yes? Maybe what?"

"Maybe we are in over our heads. Maybe you were absolutely right back in that restaurant." Crimson had the beginnings of tears in her eyes. "This truly is... cosmic level... stuff. I was raised to believe that there was nothing... that I was... on top of whatever and whoever and... it's really sinking now that maybe we've been... arrogant? A little over-certain of our own cleverness? All this - " She raised and pointed her foreleg and hoof, and swept it to encompass the disk and monolith both " - all of this is... if this was back when earth existed, my father..." She paused "My... human... father... he would have sent in teams. Of the best scientists and engineers and physicists and... there would be hundreds of ponies all over this, not even touching any of it. Scanning it, taking measurements, analyzing every detail, for months, before even daring to lay hoof on anything. Because every bit of this is way, way beyond... it's centuries, millennia, maybe millions of years beyond any technology... ever."

"And we've been playing with it like it was our own little toy." The statement felt especially grave to Frontpage as he said it - spoke it directly to the ears of the mare he had casually recreated after her death. He shuddered.

"I think it's time to call the princesses. Call them here, I mean. Or call for them to rescue us. We've been incredibly lucky so far..."

Frontpage winced slightly.

"...really lucky that neither of us has been seriously hurt. I don't feel lucky anymore. And I don't feel confident after your little 'genie' speech. I kind of hate to say this... but maybe... maybe we should give up." Crimson stared at her hooves.

"O...kay. How? That's been nagging at me for a bit, in the background. How, actually, do we get the princesses to come save us?"

Crimson's forehooves instinctually tried to dig into the ground. "That's a bit of a poser, is it not? No matter what we decide to do, the same 'genie' risk exists, doesn't it? Oh, that makes for a bit of a complication. Also, have you considered that we might get in trouble for all of this?"

Frontpage felt dizzy, from the smack he had given himself when his hoof impacted his poll. "Ow. Also, no... naw, I've never thought about that one. Not a bit. Never crossed my tiny, derpy little brain. No sire-ee, getting in trouble? Now there's a strange thought!"

"No need to be rude." Crimson stiffened.

"Sorry... really, I'm very sorry." Frontpage reached out a foreleg. "I apologize. I'm past tolerances, I think. Sorry."

"Forgiven." Crimson gave Frontpage's outstretched hoof a pat with one of her own. "Provided you help me work out what to do next."

Frontpage nodded.

"Wait! I have the answer!" Crimson seemed confident once more.

"What?"

Crimson grinned "We get the machine to teleport princess Luna here, right to us! Her, because she's... the more understanding of the two, I believe. She's more likely to go easy on us. We just get up, go over there, and you - the machine seems to respond to you well - you think hard about her, touch that ball to the stone and..."

"NO!" Frontpage felt his muzzle pale, under his fur. "No, that would not be... a good idea." Even if the alien god-machine could manufacture a duplicate Luna, even if it was capable of such a thing, even trying would probably be just about the most - essentially blasphemous - thing it could be possible to do within Equestria. He didn't even want to consider the penalty for duplicating a royal personage. It was exactly the sort of science-fiction concept that inevitably led to a lot of drama, all of it very unpleasant for everypony involved.

"That's how you rescued me. We know it works. We know how it works!" Crimson was up and already trotting to the floating stone control monolith. It was currently in the shape of a fat spindle.

"Wait!" Frontpage hurried to intercept "Just hold on! Crimson!" He thought fast, very fast. What could he say? Without revealing the truth, at any rate? Think, think... "We don't dare try to teleport a princess!"

Crimson stopped and turned. "Why? The interface is simple for teleporting - we've been doing it all day!"

Think, think... "Uh... because... because the princesses... they're royal! They're different!"

Crimson stared at Frontpage. "Of course they're different - they're alicorns. Princesses. But we've seen them teleport themselves! At least I have. They do it all the time. You must have seen them teleport - you're a reporter. I know that you have. Oh..." She developed a sly smile "I get it, you're afraid. I understand." She smiled more warmly. "I'll do it. You've explained how simple it is. I'll take full responsibility. If we catch her in the... bath... or whatever, and that causes trouble, I will make sure she understands that I was the one to pull the lever. So to speak."

"NO!!" Frontpage bodily blocked Crimson. She had moved past him, and close to the monolith. Already there was a blank region forming on the side of the squat spindle - a workspace created by her strong intention. "We CANNOT, cannot teleport ANYPONY here. Not ever! So just stop, okay?"

Crimson studied the stallion. "What is the problem, Frontpage."

Frontpage swallowed. He looked down. His ears fell flat to his skull. He could feel his tail trying to curl up around his undercarriage, as if it were trying to hide. "The princesses aren't made of the same stuff other ponies are!" That was the stuff, now he was thinking! "They're energy beings, or multidimensional creatures, or something like that. They can shapeshift - you must know about that - Luna can become anything, supposedly. Vapor, a thorn, a tree, she was an 'aspect of the moon for a thousand years', whatever that means!" He was on a roll now "We can't teleport either princess, because it would almost certainly be the same problem as teleporting a piece of the cosmic ribbon. Same problem! Boom! Or zap. Something really bad!" Frontpage tried to look Crimson straight in the eyes, boldly, forcefully, to buck home the guise of sincerity, but he couldn't. His eyes just slid off her, to the side, and down once more.

Still, he had done it. No question but that was some quality, quality obfuscation there. It was even probably mostly true. He had stopped a potential disaster, and still maintained Crimson's existential security. Frontpage mentally patted himself on the back. Physically, he swished his tail against his hocks with satisfaction of a job well done. His tail made three swishes, then crawled back between his legs as if of its own volition.

Crimson was giving him the side-eye. "You clearly stated 'anypony'. Not just the princesses. And you are hiding something. Something big, from how many tells I am seeing." She backed away slightly. "It isn't just a 'teleportation' device, is it, Frontpage?"

Frontpage said nothing.

"It's a Krell Machine, a God Machine. I can guess why you didn't tell me, and why you are lying."

Suddenly, Frontpage found his face being pressed from the side, by Crimson's own. She was there, close, her ear flicking his, literally cheek to cheek. "It's alright, Frontpage. You need to understand that. I'm alright with this. I really am." She briefly nuzzled him, gently and slowly. "And you are a complete sweetheart for trying to protect me, but it's really not necessary."

Crimson stepped back. "Frontpage, listen - when I was a child in Antarctica, I spent a lot of time alone, watching media, reading books, being trained to be a proper little Bettencourt lady. But I also overheard a lot of things that most humans back then would consider secret, things that some would have given their very lives to know. The Good Families knew the world was doomed long before Equestria showed up. Long before.

"The Families had no intention of just accepting natural justice for their treatment of the planet. They were working on means of escape - Antarctica itself was nothing but escape for the elite - build mansions under domes at the bottom of the earth and leave the rabble to their fate. Huge city-ships out on the poison seas. They had countless plans all going at the same time.

"One you probably didn't hear about - though maybe you did, you are a pretty determined sort of reporter - was escape to a machine existence. All part of the big push to make A.I.'s everyday things - driving your car, navigating your airship, running your mansion." Crimson made a little cough "Or... being the friendly interface on a... public infotainment kiosk... everywhere."

Frontpage looked up. "You... you already know? What... what I did, what you..." He couldn't finish saying 'are?'

"I know now. Thank you for the confirmation." Crimson came nearer again. "You will be surprised, I should think, and relieved, hopefully, to hear that I don't have an issue with the idea that you... remade me? That's pretty much it, isn't it? I died, back there, in that pit, didn't I? So you used this incredible machine here to bring me back to life. I am very flattered. I don't think you could have succeeded if you didn't have a very clear conception of me in your thoughts. Apparently I made an impression."

Frontpage couldn't stop the tears. "You... you have no idea."

"I think I do. Now." Crimson mopped Frontpage's muzzle with her soft pastern. "The effort to upload humans ended while I was in Antarctica. I heard all about it - it was a big defeat for the Good Families. It turned out that uploading was impossible. The human brain, back in the old universe, depended on unduplicable quantum phenomena. Some mathematical, physics thing. All earth life used quantum effects, as a sort of cheat, for a lot of life processes. Brains couldn't work without such a cheat, and that meant that the information - all the stuff that made a person themselves - could never be copied to another form. It was a dead end. If it hadn't been, we could all have ended up emigrated to something very like Equestria, especially if some rogue A.I. decided that ponies were better than humans. But that didn't happen, because it was impossible from the start."

"And... and that's why you don't have a problem with..." Frontpage lifted his own hoof and caught Crimson's in the crook of his terminal joint. "With..."

"I'm not a copy. It's not even a worry in my mind." Crimson looked Frontpage in the eyes "Not just because of the argument that if a pony is the only extant version of themselves, they are by definition the original because they can be nothing else - you forget... we have souls. 'Thaumatic Couplements'. Whatever you call such a thing, it is a soul, and it is supposed to be immortal. I've seen mine before. Peridot, Shinden's mother showed me. Several times, over the years - I was a test pony for some of her thaumomedical research."

"I'm not sure I understand." Frontpage shook his head. Ms Crimson Beauty Acres just kept getting deeper and more intriguing the more he knew of her.

"So, you reconstructed me from my constituent dweons... I wouldn't work, not in Equestria, unless I had a thaumatic couplement - a soul. I clearly could not have been dead long, because I have no memory of any afterlife. For me, it was instantaneous - one moment I am kicking your heiney, the next I am here - but Peridot made it very clear that nothing biological, physical, can be alive within Equestria unless it has a soul inside it. So, that machine scooped up my soul and stuffed it in this replacement body, and thus I am still me. The only me, the original me, the same pony that saved your tail so you could save mine."

The confident smile on Crimson's muzzle was like sunshine for Frontpage. He had been so worried, so concerned and here she was... more than alright with every bit of what he had done.

"That was a truly entertaining and no doubt greatly comforting ontological and existential explanation of your own existence, my dear. Pity that it is substantially - though not entirely - wrong."

Neither Crimson nor Frontpage had been the least aware that Discord himself, accompanied by Luna, diarch of the night, had entered the strange 'control room' through the cosmic ribbon far across the disk. They had approached in silence, listening intently to the exchange between the two ponies.

"Indeed, my sib doth speak truly, mine own diminutive ponies. Thy circumstances and actions are of great fascination to us, and we would hear tell of them most swiftly. Prior to thy royal report, howsoever, we would introduce thee both to another who would also, we do conclude, hath much to question thee about as well - and who possesseth impatience even greater than our own!" Luna glared coldly at the pair by the control monolith.

"Oh, dearest Luna, allow me, please? This is entirely too much fun, please, do let me perform the introductions? Pleeeese?" Discord seemed ready to burst.

Luna, princess of the stars and moon, sighed. "An' thou must, be thee on with it."

"Goody! Oh, I assure you, my dear, dear little ponies both, that it is absolutely my great delight to introduce to you the one but not only, the original, first edition, slightly singed but otherwise very much alive... Crimson Beauty Acres!" The tall chimerical entity bowed deeply, with one thin, griffonic claw held to his breast, and a wide leonic paw grandly gesturing forth.

From behind the starlit tail of princess Luna, Crimson and Frontpage beheld a pony walk forward. Her expression was unreadable, but whatever it represented, that emotion could not be a happy one.

"Well, this sucks." said both Crimsons.

In unison.