“44, 11, 42, 8, 28, 41, 33” Twilight chanted as she leaped out the window to her death.
“Well that didn’t work.”
Twilight executed the sequence of actions to save her friends.
“We thought we would never see you again!” cheered Pinkie Pie.
“Celestia, I want to tell you something in private.” Twilight looked at Celestia tiredly.
Celestia nodded. “Meet me in my chamber in two hours.”
Two hours later, Twilight entered Celestia's chamber, and Celestia is lying in bed with rose petals floating around the room, despite there being no wind in this indoor location.
“No, I'm not here to have sex with you.” Twilight rolled her eyes. “I mean, I didn't intend to, though...”
“Well? I'm listening.”
“I mean, this is a tempting offer.” Twilight blushed, “But I have more important issues than just having sex with you.”
“I can only spend about an hour with you in private, so make your choice quickly which to do first.”
Twilight decided to have sex first. Unfortunately it took a bit longer than expected. Oh well, thought her as she dozed off on a really soft pillow, I will tell her tomorrow. The lottery isn’t out until Friday.
On the next day, Twilight sent Celestia a letter.
Dear Princess Celestia,
Please keep the enclosed scroll unopened in a tamper-proof chest until this Saturday.
Your faithful student,
Twilight Sparkle
In the scroll was the lottery number along with the explanation.
On Friday, Twilight opened the newspaper in the castle suite, but to her dismay, the Canterlot Lucky-7 for this week was 14-21-40-23-11-21-29, bearing no resemblance with her prediction. Thinking fast, Twilight wrote another letter.
Dear Princess Celestia,
Please don’t open the scroll. Burn it up instead. It’s really important for me.
Your faithful student,
Twilight Sparkle
Several days passed and not a word from Celestia. Twilight sighed relief. I suppose she did do as I asked. Good. At least they won’t send me to the hospital this time.
Twilight returned to Ponyville, now that there was no point for her to stay in Canterlot. She put up a show of normality during the welcome-back-party, but in the evening she dived into her books and let her thoughts race through.
Why didn’t it work? There are mainly two possibilities. The first possibility is that the world has fundamental randomness. The second possibility is that the world is deterministic, but some events in it are chaotic. They are so sensitive to initial conditions that unless I perform the exact actions, they will be different.
The subtlety between a strike to the chin and a strike to the snout is the difference between a second of my victory, which is the difference of a few seconds for the time Celestia leaves the throne room after commending my victory. This difference changes the walking flow of ponies outside the castle, and so on. When the lottery is drawn, the initial difference changes to a completely different set of numbers.
Twilight Sparkle felt the pangs of loneliness in being the only pony knowing the cyclicity of her time.
Alright, time for plan two then. If lottery is too chaotic to be used, I could use some other proof that I have really experienced excess time than what is apparent. I can study a lot, a lot more than I could have ever done, then show my knowledge to Celestia, thus proving that I did experience excess time.
This was an electrifying thought, and Twilight eyed the books around her with hunger.
Finally enough time to read them all.
She briefly contemplated ditching her friends immediately and going back to Canterlot to study a Bachelor-PhD joint program in Meteorology, one of the subjects that she had always wanted to know more about, had no specialist knowledge in, and she knew that Celestia knew that she had no specialist knowledge in it. But she shot down the idea, because it would be very lonely, and she needed all the psychological health she needed to face the potentially infinite time ahead.
After reading through the list of Dewey Decimal classes, she settled on making deep studies in five fields: Old Alpine Language, Physical Combat, Mathematical Physics, Alchemy, and Piano.
Old Alpine Language is the language of the unicorns before the Hearth-Warming Unification. Some very ancient unicorn spells are still untranslated from Old Alpine, and even those that are translated tend to work better when cast in original Old Alpine. Twilight has taken basic courses in it, sufficient for working with the occasional encounters, but she has always wanted to take an extensive course in it, to truly cast Starswirl’s spells through Starswirl’s tongue.
After battling the changelings for hundreds of times, Twilight had reformulated many points of Physical Combat on her own. Still, serious systematic training will be useful, both to make her final demonstration more impressive, and to deal with roadblocks in the potentially infinite future.
Mathematical Physics is the rigorous study of how the world works. Magic is practical physics, but practicality cannot suffice for this situation she is in. She needed mathematical precision in getting to the bottom of the mystery. Besides, the study of mathematics has always had a cool, austere effect on her mind. It is calming to immerse herself in the contemplation of mathematical entities. And if I cannot escape, at least maybe I can find solace in such studies.
Alchemy (aka Chemistry) has never been her strong point. She could perform the experiments assigned to her in school and pass the exams with high scores, but she did not enjoy it and did not take elective classes in it. This had always left a vague guilty feeling inside her, since she felt she had a responsibility to be good in all fields of magic, and such a defect must be fixed.
And the study of Piano? That is mostly an... insurance for the future. It is said that for musicians who have suffered great amnesia, they often still retain their full musical ability, and while they are playing their music, appear almost the same as before suffering the amnesia. So if I eventually lose my mind, maybe a bit of me can hang on in music.
Life is short and the study is long, but for Twilight, life had suddenly become a lot longer.
Of the five studies, she started with Physical Combat training, since it was directly useful for fighting the changelings every time she was reset. First at the local gym, she progressed to a four-year full-time study in the Canterlot Military School. Celestia was a little bemused by Twilight’s sudden change of study direction, but was mostly convinced by her explanation that it was the experience in the changeling invasion that prompted her to study physical fighting.
In order to protect her psychological health, Twilight convinced Rainbow Dash to quit her weather control job in Ponyville to come along and study together. After graduation, Twilight and Rainbow joined the elite task force in Equestrian army, further honing their battle techniques.
Eventually, Twilight felt she had learned enough to consider herself an expert in physical fighting, and she felt it was time to go. So she took a holiday on her own to the Northern Mountains and killed herself there, making sure her corpse was unrecoverable.
“Well that didn’t work.”
Twilight grinned as she saw herself back to the familiar place. She grabbed Spike and galloped full speed downstairs, but soon stopped. She felt that her leg muscles were aching and sour.
Oh, of course. Twilight facehoofed. My strength is not transported even if my muscle memories are.
She started going at a more appropriate pace, which felt uncomfortably slow to her, after living in a strong body for so many years.
Oh well! I still have my reflexes, and can still use most of the techniques for balancing and transferring of momentum. That ought to be good enough.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, she still needed time to adjust to her new old body.
“Well that didn't work.”
“I’m sure this time it will work.”
Eventually, she found the subset of techniques she could execute in her old body, and with these, she found that it was possible to pass through several chokepoints that were previously impassible. A major rerouting followed, and in the end she managed to find a route that allowed her to consistently complete the level a bit over ten minutes faster than she could before, which translates to about 30 less dead ponies per invasion.
Satisfied with her progress, Twilight started her study of Old Alpine. Convincing Celestia to allow her to change her study focus was easy, as she has always expressed an intense interest in all things Starswirl-the-Bearded-related. However, this time it was more difficult to balance her studies and friendship, as the study does not even remotely interest any of her friends, and the local institutes does not offer good courses in Old Alpine.
After one semester of full-time study in North Royal University in Goattenberg, she felt that long-distance relationship didn’t work out, so, per Celestia’s suggestion, she obtained a private tutor in Old Alpine so that she could study in Ponyville.
Old Alpine’s sound system has been perfectly preserved, since it was carefully codified by ancient linguists who tried their best to describe their language accurately, down to the smallest detail, for the very practical reason that even the smallest change in the language affects the effect of spoken spells.
Due to their obsession with the sound of their language, the ancient unicorns didn’t use a writing system until late in history. They instead preferred to recite everything, since that is the only way to ensure perfect copying of pronunciation, intonation, and even hoof gesture that accompanies the recitation.
To ensure perfect recitation, ancient unicorns developed a system of “coded recitation”, wherein a given block of words is broken into separate syllables, then weaved together in a few different ways. By reciting the coded versions of the same block of words, and comparing them, it was easier to detect a mistake in recitation. Through this technique, they achieved almost perfect collective memory.
The Book of Seas and Mountains, an Old Alpine work of literature, remained unwritten for over one thousand years after its composition. Throughout that millennium, the existence of this book relied on the memories of each pony who recited it. And when finally the unicorns adopted writing from pegasi and earthponies, they gathered around every one of them who could recite the book and started reciting. It was immediately clear that everypony recited the same book, and on every syllable, at most one or two ponies would recite a different syllable from the others. The book was thus written down in the span of days, and it is the one and only version.
As Twilight studied deeper into Old Alpine, she kept noticing bits and pieces of it poking out from modern magic spells, like an afterimage from the past. Three years’ studies exhausted her tutor’s knowledge, and to continue her studies, Twilight got hold of the seven-volume set of Starswirl’s Collected Papers, Notes, and Related Works, in original Old Alpine.
One day she found herself able to understand memes among Old Alpine researchers. At that point she decided she has learned enough. As a last validation of her competence, she wrote an article on the reconstruction of a corner case of Old Alpine adjectivals. It was published.
Feeling her work done, she locked herself in a room and swallowed two bars of copper, the most proper method of suicide for the ancient unicorns.
As she rolled on the ground in agony, she understood why this method was so highly praised in the books: because whoever could suffer through it without rolling on the floor in agony demonstrated the highest mental fortitude.
“Well that didn’t work.”
“You tell me! Just what were they thinking! I can't even start to – ” Twilight growled at Spike, who recoiled with fear. “Oh, sorry, I was... Never mind!” She picked up Spike and gave him a little hug of reassurance before galloping out.
Twilight noted with joy that her twelve-year long foray into the dusty books did not decrease her knowledge of physical combat significantly. Memories were quickly refreshed as she fought her way again and again through the changeling crowd.
For the next subject, she chose alchemy. Thanks to her previous training, she knew enough to start studying on her own, but she also met with a mentor weekly for guidance.
There is nothing much to say about these years, other than a steady increase of experience and knowledge. She reads books in Old Alpine from time to time, just to keep the knowledge afresh.
After last time’s terrible experience, she decided that ceremonialness in death is overrated. Far better to choose a painless method. So she mixed some sleeping potion to sleep away this life.
The next life was spent on Mathematical Physics. This was basically what she had been doing all along, so there was really nothing particularly out of the ordinary for her happening in this life. There were some occasional adventures, but nothing dangerous enough to interrupt her studies with death. Well, almost nothing. She eventually died in some adventure out on the sea, but she had already learned quite enough about Mathematical Physics, such that she shrugged it off and continued on with her next project.
The next life was spent on Piano. This was the largest departure from Celestia's plan for her, and as a result, it took some effort for her to convince Celestia to allow her to have a sudden career change. It went somewhat like this:
“Princess Celestia!”
“Yes, my faithful student?”
“My traumatic experience during the changeling invasion has convinced me that life is really meaningless and there's no point in pursuing magic studies that I don't really like!”
“But... I thought you loved magic? Magic is your special talent, and your passion?”
“Yes... but I feel like I have known enough magic already. I already have studied my subfield of choice to the level of current research, and all the other subfields that I care about are also at least at graduate level. And... I feel a bit tired of magic. All I'm going to understand by going for more magic studies is polishing and refining.”
“And what is your plan?”
“I plan to have a career change. I want to learn to play the piano.”
“Dear Twilight, are you sure this is what you really want? I am not saying that it is a bad idea – I will support your decision if I think it is what you really want and is good for you, but it would be a great change in your life and you must understand the consequences.”
Twilight rolled her eyes. This is getting quite troublesome. “It is not as serious as you are understanding it to be. I just want to take a break from magic, OK? I'm not saying anything permanent, but I really want to learn the piano.”
Celestia rolled her eyes. If she actually become a piano player, I'd need a substitute for her. “Alright, I respect your choice. You are hereby allowed to suspend your magic studies and begin piano studies.”
Thus began Twilight's fantastically out-of-character foray into piano-playing. She studied under Doremi, a pianist in Ponyville. She would still read up some of the magic books in her library, to refresh her knowledge here and then, but did not extend into new studies.
Twilight thought her experience in fighting might come into use for piano-playing. It didn't. Five years of full-time piano practice later, Twilight finally learned enough to play professionally. Then she settled in Canterlot, bringing Rarity and Pinkie Pie along to make sure she had sufficient supply of friendship. With the help of a reluctant Celestia, she joined the Canterlot orchestra and eventually played alongside ponies like Octavia.
It's funny, really. How I could save Equestria twice, and yet ponies didn't really pay as much attention to me as one would otherwise expect. Sure, they respect me and random ponies on the street say hi to me all the time, but that's about it. And I don't get a lot of money either – not that I need much money, but it's funny how I don't get showered in rewards for saving the world.
Now that I'm a pianist at the orchestra, I actually get fans. Not a lot, but fans nevertheless. And money! Even by Canterlot standards, I can live and look like high society – which is kind of useful when I accompany Rarity to her very important boring parties. Ponies really pay a lot of money for good music...
Enjoying playing the piano had always required some mental fortitude for Twilight, but gradually even mental fortitude became insufficient. She could keep her skills without too much trouble, but pushing forward was too much of a bore. The only thing left to do was a melodramatic exit.
What would be the most melodramatic exit? I could... kill myself on stage, which could be preceded by a sorrowful piano solo.
In the empty hours of the music hall, Twilight choreographed her dramatic exit carefully. She had to check herself from adding too much to the performance. After the solo is finished, everything must be completed within 5 seconds.
The day came. Twilight played her solo, a piece of Nocturne in minor keys. Then she stood up in the applause and proclaimed, “The rest is silence.” She then stepped two steps back and bit hard on the cyanide capsule in her mouth.
Oh the drama... If only I can live to read the newspaper next day, to see what the ponies would say about this!