Memento Mori
Instead of allowing her thoughts to wander and fester her frustration, Twilight focused on putting one hoof in front of the other as she ascended the large spiral staircase leading to Alex’s room. If there was anyone that would be able to distract her from her troubles regarding Cadence, it would be him.
For some reason or another, he and Rose asked to have a room with as much altitude as possible. All the better, since it at least forced Twilight to focus on how much work she had to put in to just climb up to it. Hopefully he was there… he should have been done briefing the castle guards by now.
Out of sheer curiosity, Twilight decided to stick around and observe one of Alex’s briefings before checking up on the others’ preparations. It was all straightforward and simple: just they way Alex prefered it to be. He elaborated to the royal guards that, in almost any given situation, the Liandri are both decisive and quick to act. If they were around a Liandri when somepony was being aggressive, it was in their best interest to let the Liandri handle the situation lest they get in the way and inadvertently cause more trouble. The fewer variables they had to deal with, the better.
Most of the guards didn’t like the idea, of course, and several were eager to voice their opposition since he was essentially demanding superior jurisdiction. Objections went away pretty quickly after several guards challenged the Liandri to hoof-to-hoof duels, and altogether when Alex demonstrated their equipment. Although after the first two practice dummies caught fire, Shining Armor had them use a big rock as a demo target instead.
As Twilight neared the top of the tower’s stairs, she caught sight of a Nova dutifully standing watch outside the door to Alex’s room. It was already staring right at her, no doubt having somehow noticed her well before she came into view. Just as she opened her mouth to ask it if Alex was inside, the Liandri reached over for the door handle and pushed it open.
“Come on in!” called Alex’s voice.
Huh… that was… oooookay…
Twilight’s mouth snapped shut as she entered into Alex’s room proper, the Nova closing the door behind her. A cursory glance around the circular room told her that Alex had been more than glad to make himself at home already. The present furniture had clearly been moved around, and the repainted Exosuit, deactivated and folded open, sat off to the side. The door to the balcony had been opened as well, and a device roughly as tall as Twilight with a large curved dish had been deployed outside.
That must be some kind of communication device, Twilight thought. They probably wanted such a high up room so that it would work better.
At the far end of the room from her, Alex sat facing away from Twilight on a chair he probably brought from home, hunched over a dresser he decided to use as a makeshift bureau. A portable computer was opened and placed to the side. Two other Novas stood in the room with him: one by door Twilight just came through, and the other right next to Alex. However, the one next to him was… different. While every other Liandri besides Rose normally had yellow eyes, this one’s eye was red.
“So what brings you up here, Twilight?” asked Alex, not bothering to look away from what he was doing.
“How’d you know it was me?”
Alex tapped the side of his head. “The Reds told me.”
Twilight hesitated for a moment. “Right… Where’s Rose?”
“She took the other Reds to go map out Canterlot and get a closer look at that shield of your brother’s,” he said, still not bothering to turn around; somehow managing to simultaneously hold a conversation and remain completely absorbed in whatever he was doing. “Rose wants to make sure she knows her way around the city—because, you know, why not? Oh, and that shield is really cool. We wanna try to replicate it at some point. But I’m sure you didn’t come up here to hear me talk. Something you need?”
Twilight let out a deep sigh, allowing her body to sag, and even suffer a split second of vertigo. “There’s a lot of things on my mind right now, and I’m just too stressed out… I guess need a few distractions.”
“Ah, so you did come up here to hear to me talk. Alright, well I got just the thing.” For the first time since Twilight came in, Alex looked over his shoulder at her and beckoned her over. “Come take a look at this.”
Twilight hadn’t known what to expect really. As far as she knew, it could have been anything. This was a man whom she knew did all manner of things on a whim; like build thermal lasers and replace body parts just because he could. But when she walked over to Alex’s side to see what he was working on, she was presented with the last thing she would have expected from him.
It was a small, open object, with all sorts of obvious, yet benign, electrical components sticking out from the inside. The center of it was dominated by a small board, punctuated with countless tiny holes, all in neat, evenly-spaced rows. Small wires of various lengths and colors connected one row of holes to the next in some pattern she couldn't quite discern. Along the middle of the board was a tiny black object, with pins that connected into at least a dozen different rows. It was all very static, except for the tiny blinking light off to the side.
And that was all it did—blink at a constant frequency.
"Magnificent, isn't it?" Alex prompted, a giant smile adorning his face.
It took a moment for Twilight to realize that he had spoken. Of all the things he could have been slaving over, of all the grand technologies he could have chosen to unveil to the world this time, his latest achievement was something that made a light blink?
"It, uh... it is..." Twilight finally said. "Um... what is it?"
"It's a breadboard," Alex answered, his eyes remaining fixed on the blinking light. "Well, a pencil box, technically speaking. Just like the ones I used while I was in school."
Ah, nostalgia. That explains it, then.
"This is how everything started, you know?" he continued, his speech getting noticeably slower. "Rose, Power Cores, the Liandri... it all started ten years ago with this... a blinking LED... back when things were easy..."
Uh oh... Twilight thought as she heard Alex's last words. Nopony says something like that unless there's something really bothering them.
Sure enough, when she focused her attention on the finer details of his face, she could see small tears form around the corners of his eyes. It was barely noticeable, but they were there. And yet, his face appeared as joyous as ever.
"Alex, is everything alright?" Twilight asked, allowing her concern to taint her voice.
"It's so stupid when you think about it. It's just a blinking light. Nothing special about it. But when you use electricity, well placed wiring, and logic chips: when you get that light to blink exactly the way you want it to, it suddenly becomes so much more than that."
"Alex." This time, Twilight laid a hoof over his back. "Is something bothering you? Please."
That did it. Suddenly aware of her concern, Alex's smile quickly cracked and faltered, and he allowed himself a heavy sigh as he stood up and wandered towards the balcony. "Yeah... there is..."
Twilight followed after him. "What is it? Maybe I can help."
Alex sighed again as he leaned against the balcony's marble guard rail, allowing the pristine weather to dictate his thoughts. After a few moments, he allowed himself to speak. "Blood Exchange Therapy is harsh, Twilight. Elevating and enlightening, but harsh. I mean, you're just floating in a tank of water, effectively limbless, hoses hooked up to your body, and your brain tied to a computer that thinks a million times faster than you ever could. I'm only ever in there for half an hour at a time, but with an exocortex like that... Feels like forever. And the only thing you have to pass the time is your thoughts and memories and... it really makes you aware... forces you to think... to remember..."
Twilight reared up and leaned on the railing next to him, gazing out over Canterlot. "Remember what?"
"Everything. Lot of 'what ifs,' though."
Twilight shook her head. "Even I know you shouldn't think about those types of things. I mean, it's not that I don't. I do! Way too much, actually. It's tempting, but... it's a bad idea. All they do is make you regret things. Things you can't change."
"No disagreement here..." The two of them sat in silence for a long moment, allowing the sun to warm them, before Alex finally spoke up again. "I never really told you what I did before all this Liandri shit started, did I? Before the Cores?"
Twilight turned to face him. "Not really, no."
"Lemme ask you this, Twi. What do you think I am? What do you see me as?"
"Um... I'm not really sure I understand the question..."
"What kind of person do you see me as? A genius, a prodigy, someone who just knows things—What?" He turned his eyes towards her. "Be honest with me here."
Twilight returned her gaze back to the city, expelling a breath in a quiet whistle as she did. "Wow… Okay, well... on the face of it, I'd describe you as a scientific genius, I guess. Somepony who possesses a vast wealth of scientific knowledge and who knows how to employ it effectively. Why do you ask?"
Alex turned his eyes outward again. "I'm asking you that because you know just as well as I do that I wasn't just born knowing things. I grew up. I had a childhood. I had to go to school just like everyone else. I had to study—to learn the things that I know. Sometimes, it just feels like people forget that."
She had never really considered the idea, but in the end, Twilight conceded to herself that he was right. To her, Alex just spontaneously appeared out of existence, already fluent in scientific thought and as a near limitless source of knowledge, but nothing was further from the truth. He was born. There was a time when he knew none of what he did today, and at some point, he had to take the time to learn and integrate his knowledge of the world into his very being, just like...
Twilight looked back up at him curiously. "You used to be just like me, weren't you? Completely focused on your studies?"
Alex gave a light sigh as he carefully nodded his head. "For five straight years, yeah. It was worse than you, though. Pushed a lot of people away. I always justified it by telling myself that they never really cared about me as a person: that I was just some really smart guy that they knew, but now... now I'm not so sure..."
Twilight let out a bemused scoff. “You sound so sure that it was worse than me, though. I was pretty bad before I came to Ponyville.”
“I have an idea of what you were like. Spike told me stories way back when. I still think you’re a lightweight.”
Twilight raised a challenging eyebrow. “Oh really? And how, exactly, did you manage to out-study somepony like me?”
Alex chuckled. “I was a pretty normal guy for most of my life. Had friends, hung out with them after school and all that… When I graduated from high school at seventeen and went to CEGEP, though, my friends just kind of… drifted away from me, I guess. I was the only one to go into a science program, and they all went into either liberal arts or social sciences. Didn’t see them terribly much after that. I knew they were still going out with each other, though. They just didn’t bother to invite me and… it hurt, you know?
“I tried making friends during the two years I was at CEGEP, but they felt more like acquaintances than anything else. I wanted to get to know them, but they never really wanted to get to know me. So when I graduated from there and moved on to university... I guess I just abandoned the idea of having a normal social life.”
“That’s when you started to completely dedicate yourself to your studying, isn’t it?” Twilight hypothesized.
He nodded.
"Why do you think your friends did that to you? If you were close before, something must have changed."
"That's..." Alex hesitated. "That's where I'm not so sure. I always told myself that they never really cared, that they just wanted me as a contact just so they had a smart guy on hand. But after going through the Therapy... maybe they actually did care. You remember how I am with alcohol, right?"
"You instantly pass out after a one sip, and then you start yelling at everypony in French after you wake up."
Alex grit his teeth. "That's pretty much the long and short of it, yeah."
"Is that why they never invited you?"
"Kind of... You see, they didn't always leave me uninvited. I'd come along everything now and again, but after we graduated high school, pretty much every single one of their get togethers involved some form of partying: alcohol, marijuana, loud music... even the more benign hangouts."
Twilight scrunched her nose, forcing a strained "eh..." through her throat.
Alex scoffed at her reaction. "Yeah, not my cup of tea either. I tried making it work, but it never did. I couldn't drink alcohol, and I don't even want to imagine what would've happened to me if I tried smoking marijuana. At some point, they usually got either so blackout drunk, sky high, or both that any attempt at intelligent conversation was about as pointless as getting Pinkie to sit still for five minutes. You could try, but it ain’t gonna happen. At some point, I'd just see myself out.
"The thing is, they already knew all this. They knew I refused to smoke, and they knew I couldn't drink alcohol. I always thought the worst about them, but in hindsight... Maybe they stopped inviting me because they also knew I wouldn't enjoy myself..."
"Alex, look at me." Twilight commanded. He did. She frowned directly into his eyes. "Alex, if they were true friends, who really appreciated you, they would have done what they could to include you and make sure that you enjoyed your time with them. They wouldn't have shrugged you off like they did and pretend the problem doesn't exist."
Alex looked outwards again. "We all make mistakes, Twilight. Theirs was not seeing the problem, and mine was not talking to them about it."
Twilight's face softened as she digested his words. She didn't know who all these other humans were, and she definitely didn't know all the nuances of Alex's relationship with them. Maybe they actually were nice individuals? Maybe they actually meant well the entire time, and Alex didn't do a good enough job conveying his distress to them, or even too good of a job hiding it? At this point, only Alex could know, but it was clear to Twilight that this was a question that even he couldn't answer.
The two scientists again returned to their silence, simply observing the cityscape beneath them. Down in the streets, royal guards performed their rounds while nearby pedestrians did their best to ignore their increased presence and continue on with their daily lives. The communication device sitting somewhere behind them periodically emitted a light, echoing beep, a sound Twilight hadn’t even noticed until now. The Raven could be seen from their perch; a large, alien object that appeared from the skies and now dominated a normally docile environment, one that ponies were perfectly content to walk through to completely forgo their worries.
Twilight’s eyes wandered over to Alex. He was leaning against the marble guardrail on his elbows, with his forearms overlapping. The intricacies of his new immaculately white limbs kept her attention glued. She still found it difficult to believe; to remind herself that Alex, at some point within the past two weeks, had willingly amputated his limbs in order to justify using cybernetic replacements. Their movement was so fluid, so natural, so human that she had completely forgotten that they weren’t. Not until she focused on them. Despite how close they were to the originals they mimicked, their metallic exteriors made them anything but.
Technically, Alex was a “cyborg” ever since he replaced his heart and right eye, but it had never been so overt until now. Things like this are normally such big deals, but he just seemed so… casual about it all! As if replacing your own limbs was as normal as breathing! Nothing about it felt right, like Alex was breaking some kind of unspoken rule.
Just… just think about something else…
“You never did answer my question,” Twilight suddenly said. “How did you do your studying?”
“Huh?” Alex glanced over at her in brief confusion before registering her words. “Oh! Shit, I guess I kinda got sidetracked. Um… Not much to it, I guess. I went to McGill university into their mechanical engineering program, worked with the school’s administration to get myself a custom schedule, and then proceeded to brutally murder any kind of social life I had.”
Twilight perked a brow. “Seems pretty broad to me. Couldn’t you be a little more specific? What do you mean when you say you got a ‘custom schedule?’”
Alex clicked his tongue. “You see, every semester, which is roughly half a year, students take a certain number of classes related to their program. They do homework, work on projects, write tests, and at the end of the semester, you write your final exam and you eventually find out how well you did overall. I did things a little differently. I talked with the admins and managed to get myself a schedule that stuffed in more classes than any student would sanely take. Barely left any time for me to eat and sleep when you took all the homework and studying time I had to do. Even they thought I was crazy.
“But you know what? I committed. I did it all. Homework, projects, papers, exams… And my grades were right up there. I studied every single one of my subjects day in and day out. Weekends, weekdays, holidays, school days… didn’t matter to me. Hell, I even did extra studying. By the time I had to take the final exams, I not only did the ones for my usual classes, I asked to take exams for classes I wasn’t even taking. A lot of them were actually outside of my program too, and I aced all of them.
“My the time I earned my Master’s degree in mechanical engineering, I also earned my Bachelors’ degrees in electrical, software, and biomedical engineering. To put things into context for you, most people get a Master’s degree in about five years if they’re really quick about it, whereas I did all that in just two and a half. I started doing research in theoretical, particle, and quantum physics around that time, too. Real fun stuff.”
Alex allowed his words to hang in the air, though only silence filled the space where he expected Twilight to say something. Looking over to her, Alex was greeted by a dumb stare, jaw completely unhinged and mind unresponsive.
Snorting, Alex turned his eyes back towards the distant ponies below. “Told you I was worse.”
After forcing her jaw back into place and reorganizing her thoughts, Twilight finally managed to voice, “Yeah… Yeah, that’s definitely worse than me… To be honest, I’d have a tough time believing you if I wasn’t already familiar with your work habits. You’re like… Well, you’re like a machine, I guess.”
This caused Alex to chuckle. “That’s what people started calling me, actually. ‘The Machine.’ ”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. Word about me and my work habits spread around campus. Speculations turned into rumors, which turned into investigations, blah blah… Couple of school journalists tracked me down for an interview. They were the ones that came up with the nickname, actually.”
Twilight allowed herself a light smile. “Wow… So you became famous around your school, didn’t you? Kind of like in Ponyville.”
“Worse,” Alex huffed.
This derailed Twilight’s train of thought. “Huh? What do you mean by ‘worse?’ ”
Alex sneered to himself. “After I got my first Master’s, the university pretty much let me do my own thing. Offered to let me work in their labs and do my own research. So that’s exactly what I did: I did research. Wrote my own papers. They offered to publish them, so I let them. Only took a few months for practically every major news outlet in North America and Europe to start hounding my ass day and night because of how young I was.”
Twilight’s eyes widened. “Wait, are you telling me that you were known internationally?! Why have you never told me this!?”
“Because I fucking hated it, Twilight!” Alex ranted as he slammed a fist into the guardrail, causing Twilight to jump. “I just wanted to do research and math and make things and - and… not have to deal with all these assholes with their cameras and microphones and their calling me the next Albert mother fucking Einstein! I didn’t want their attention! I didn’t want to deal with all their senseless, shallow bullshit!”
The two of them locked eyes for several seconds—Alex’s infused with frustration, while Twilight’s only expressed surprise at his outburst.
Eventually, Alex let out a long sigh. “I... I never told you because it’s just a lot of frustration that I’d prefer to forget..."
“I can see why…” Twilight murmured. “But if you were being bothered by journalists all the time, how did you manage to build your first research facility without them noticing?”
He scoffed at the question, as if she should have known the answer already. “Because the media had the attention span of a mentally stunted goldfish with ADHD. By the time I got that particular ball rolling, it had already been a year and a half since I had done anything interesting. I was just old news.” Under his breath, he added, “Thank fuck for that…”
“Huh…” Twilight nodded in mock understanding. In reality, while she did her best to conceptualize everything he was saying, and despite Alex’s own descriptions of human media in the past, she admittedly had a difficult time truly understanding the scale in which it operated, especially since newspapers seemed to be the only constant between their worlds. “So when did the Power Cores come in? Rose and the EMC?”
Alex let out a long breath as he leaned back against the guardrail, scratching at the back of his neck. “Uh… Let’s see… We’re coming up on May twenty twenty three… Wrote the PhD for December twenty nineteen… Finished the Core during the summer, so… About three, two and a half-ish years now.”
Twilight held up a hoof, as if trying to grab a thought with it. “Wait, back up a second. You have a PhD? You’re a doctor too?”
“Actually, no, I’m not,” Alex clarified. “The paper I submitted for my doctorate was my magnum opus, but it crashed and burned really hard. Made me really emotional, said a few choice words to a few people, ruined my reputation…” He added a chuckle. “Fun times.”
Twilight folded a leg against her chest. “Oh… Wow, I’m… I’m sorry to hear that.”
Alex waved her off. “Eh, don’t be. In hindsight, I actually made a lot of fundamental mistakes. Some you’d might even consider ‘sins of science’ or something like that. I mean, I was right in the end, but I understand why they ripped into it.”
“What was your paper about, anyway?”
Alex opened his mouth to answer, but paused. His mouth quickly formed a smile as he gave Twilight a mischievous look. “Before I answer that, I want you answer me this: how much have you managed to figure out about Power Cores, anyway?”
Twilight’s heart skipped a beat and she immediately perked up. “What! No! I-I haven’t— What would make you think—”
“Don’t lie to me,” Alex teased, reaching over and booping her nose. “I know you’ve been trying to replicate them. I’d be surprised if you didn’t! So come on, tell me! How far have you gotten?”
For a few brief moments, Twilight looked like she was about to run away in a gallop. Instead, her posture wilted and she averted her gaze. “Not very…”
Alex gave her a hearty laugh. “Of course! Twilight, I taught you a lot of things when I was staying with you. Relativity, atomic theory, electricity and magnetism, yaddy yadda… And they’re all important, sure, but I didn’t teach you everything you needed to know to get even remotely close to making a Core. You’re still missing three entire theories.”
As her mind processed his words, Twilight’s eyes dawned in understanding. “Three entire theories? There’s still three entire theories you haven’t taught me?! What are they?”
After chuckling one last time, Alex pushed himself off the guardrail and sauntered back into the room. “Here let me show you. Units! Front and center!”
Being addressed by their maker, the two present Novas made their way to the middle of the room, where Alex asked Twilight to stand in front of them. At this distance, Twilight was able to get a better look at the Nova with the red eye, giving her the opportunity to confirm her suspicions. However, aside from the red eye, it looked completely identical to its adjacent brother.
Except for its name…
On the left pauldron belonging to the yellow-eyed Liandri was the lettering NOVA0003, whereas the other’s was different; spelling out NOVA0002-HYDE.
That’s Nova two…? Twilight thought, perplexed. I’ve seen him a couple of times before, but he’s never had that attached to his name…
“Um… Alex, is this Liandri… different in some way?” Twilight asked, granting him a curious look.
Alex, who had been making odd hand gestures in the air, manipulating something Twilight couldn’t see, looked over at her blankly before realizing what she had asked. “Hm? Oh! Yeah, we gave him some VI upgrades a few days ago. Doing a bit of long term testing to see how they work.”
After several more seconds of Alex waving his hands around in front of himself for seemingly no apparent reason, he looked back to Twilight with a smile. “Okay, I want you to focus on them. What you’re about to hear is something I listened to several years ago, and even inspired me to become who I am today.”
Before Twilight could voice anything else, sound coming from the Novas cut her off, where they asked her one of the biggest questions in history.
So, what are we really made of?”
The Nova with the red eye spoke those words, its eye flashing in time with the syllables while strange music, seemingly coming from both of them, played at the same time. But it was after that question that the music truly enraptured her.
Dig deep inside the atom
and you'll find tiny particles
Held together by invisible forces [Held together by invisible forces]
Everything is made up
Of tiny packets of energy
Born in cosmic furnaces
The Nova with the yellow eye spoke next, in much the same way as the first. They didn’t speak with their usual voices, but those of others’ that have been heavily modified, almost making it sound… normal. For Liandri, anyway.
The atoms that we're made of have
Negatively charged electrons
Whirling around a big bulky nucleus
The Quantum Theory
Offers a very different explanation
Of our world
The universe is made of
Twelve particles of matter
Four forces of nature
The universe is made of
Twelve particles of matter
Four forces of nature
That's a wonderful and significant story
Suppose that little things
Behaved very differently
Than anything big [anything big]
Nothing's really as it seems
It's so wonderfully different
Than anything big
The world is a dynamic mess
Of jiggling things
It's hard to believe
The quantum theory
Is so strange and bizarre
Even Einstein couldn't get his head around it
In the quantum world
The world of particles
Nothing is certain
It's a world of probabilities!
The Quantum Theory
Offers a very different explanation
Of our world
The universe is made of
Twelve particles of matter
Four forces of nature
The universe is made of
Twelve particles of matter
Four forces of nature
That's a wonderful and significant story”
As music filled the lyrical gap, Twilight’s mind buzzed with incoherent thoughts, vainly attempting keep herself grounded. The quantum theory! She believed there were only three particles - protons, electrons, and neutrons - not twelve! What were they? What is this so called quantum world? So many questions and feelings of reverence flooded her mind, heart, and lungs that none of it managed to stick. And then the Liandri began anew.
“It's very hard to imagine
All the crazy things
That things really are like
Electrons act like waves
No they don't exactly
They act like particles
No they don't exactly
We need a theory of everything [we need a theory of everything]
Twilight’s eyes widened at the voice. The others sounded normal, but modified. This one sounded purely robotic. Was this the Liandri talking to her?
Which is still just beyond our grasp [still just beyond our grasp]
They haven’t found it? Really?!
We need a theory of everything [we need a theory of everything]
As Twilight looked up at the Novas speaking down to her, they appeared as a giants, seemingly getting taller as they stood shoulder to shoulder. Marvels; wonders; simultaneously children and titans of science and technology. And they were addressing her! Asking for her help!
Perhaps, the ultimate triumph—
The ultimate triumph of science!
Twilight’s heart pounded in her chest, threatening to rip itself free. The theory of everything… the ultimate triumph of science… And she was the key…!
The Quantum Theory
Offers a very different explanation
Of our world
The universe is made of
Twelve particles of matter
Four forces of nature
The universe is made of
Twelve particles of matter
Four forces of nature
That's a wonderful and significant story
I gotta stop somewhere
I'll leave you something to imagine.
As the music tapered off, Twilight finally managed to catch her breath. One hoof was glued to her chest, trying to keep herself from falling apart while her rubberized legs struggled to keep her standing. It was all so much to take in, and in such a way…! There was still so much she didn’t know; the universe so complex and powerful a place that she was nothing compared to it.
“Humbling, isn’t it?” Alex suddenly said. While Twilight had been distracted by the music, Alex had moved his chair next to her.
“Yeah…” Twilight breathed, allowing herself to fall onto her haunches. “What… What was that?”
Alex inhaled deeply through his nose. “A symphony of science. Not the most up to date thing, mind you: we’ve discovered more than just twelve fundamental particles since then. But all those voices you heard were taken from documentaries and autotuned with the music. They were all real people. Famous scientists and physicists; some of whom I’ve even had the opportunity to discuss with. Before the Cores, anyway.”
“That one voice…” Twilight panted, “the one that… that mentioned a theory of everything… who was that…?”
“Stephen Hawking,” Alex answered. “That man was a scientific icon, mostly because of how iconic he was. He was a victim of some disease. I forget the name, but it left him almost completely paralyzed and wheelchair bound. His brain was still working, though.”
“But if he was paralyzed, then…”
“He spoke through a computer integrated into his wheelchair,” Alex guessed at her question. “He didn’t use a BCI, mind you. One of the few parts of his body he could actually move was his right cheek, so he had a special pair of glasses with a sensor on them that could tell when he twitched it. He used the computer with that.”
“Oh…” Twilight allowed herself an extra moment to catch her breath and collect her thoughts. Eventually, she said, “He… he mentioned a theory of everything… Are humans still figuring it out?”
Alex bobbed his head side to side. “Eh… yes and no.”
She blinked at the uncertainty of his answer. “What do you mean by that?”
“Technically speaking, yes, humans are still working on it.” Twilight’s eyes lit up at this. “But no, since I already authored it. The Theory of Everything was my PhD paper.”
The words cut through Twilight’s chest like a knife. Another potential grand discovery already taken. Sure, she could have worked on it herself and published it to ponies under her own name. Alex probably wouldn’t care so long as she did the research herself, but it just wouldn’t feel right with the knowledge she wasn’t the first.
Another world changing discovery taken before I could notice… Twilight thought to herself. Suddenly, light returned to her eyes. Unless… “Wait, didn’t you say that your PhD paper was rejected?”
Alex clicked his tongue. “More or less, yeah. Most, if not all of the university’s science staff read the paper and there were a number of… complaints. In hindsight, though, I don’t blame them.”
“What kind of complaints?”
“Testing complaints,” Alex said as he leaned back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other. “Wrote a lot of formulas, identified a couple constants, described a number of quantum events… the problem was, I didn’t have much testing to back most of it up. Almost none, actually. What’s the point of a theory if you’ve got no empirical evidence to back it up?”
Twilight blinked at his explanation, confusion crawling over her mind. “Huh…? Okay, that really doesn’t sound like you.”
“No. No it doesn’t. Even I find it weird.”
“Why did you do it, then? Right now, it sounds to me like you almost pulled your paper out of thin air.”
Alex let out a long breath. “Yeah… I mean, I’d been working on the paper for almost a year, and…” He paused as he leaned forward. “Listen. I was the head of a team of researchers. Mostly students. The university funded virtually everything. I even collaborated with other international physicists, Stephen Hawking being one of them, and even personally detailed and requested experiments for the Large Hadron Collider. And you know what we got for our efforts?
“Nothing. Jack. Diddly. Squat. Between January and October, we burned through our funding and we had nothing to show for it.” Alex leaned back into his chair, almost slouching, with a thousand mile stare. “I hit a wall… I didn’t know what to do, I… I…” He released a long sigh as he raised a hand to idly rub his forehead. “It was my single biggest failure as a scientist, Twilight. It… It was hard… By the end, I only had three... two other people left with me…”
Twilight placed a hoof over his knee. “It’s okay, Alex. We both know that success is never a guarantee. But that doesn’t mean you can just make up a theory like that.”
The two of them shared eye contact for a moment, and Twilight gave him a weak smile. Alex soon returned it before he chuckled under his breath and shook his head. “I had a dream, Twilight.”
She kept up her smile, giving Alex’s knee a reassuring pat. “We all have dreams like that, Alex, but we can’t—”
“Not that kind of dream,” Alex cut her off. “It was sleeping kind of dream. I don’t remember what it was about except that it involved the color green, but after I woke up one night, things just… made sense to me, you know? It was like… like the secrets of the universe decided to come out of hiding and present themselves to me. Like I was truly able to stare into the face of creation for the first time in my life. After that, I overhauled the theory, freshened up my paper, and handed it in for review two months later.”
Twilight sat on her haunches as she listened. A lot of what Alex was saying didn’t sound like good science at all, and by extension, didn’t sound like him. Why would he, of all humans, write such an important paper based largely on a dream? It couldn’t have been a very good paper if that was the case. “I’m sorry to say this, Alex, but that sounds really sketchy. Especially for you.”
“And I agree with you!” Alex exclaimed, leaning forward as he held his hands up in the air. “It doesn’t make any sense to me either! I feel like I put that theory together with information I pulled right out of my ass! But look at the end results.” He gestured towards the Liandri. “I’d say they speak for themselves. I’m still not sure how, but I was right.”
“Huh…” Twilight scratched her head in confusion as she eyed the Liandri. One way or another, the results were something she definitely couldn’t argue with. “What exactly was in your paper, anyway?”
Alex let out a long sigh as he slouched back into his chair. “Um… Well, there were a number of equations that described complex quantum events. Most of them were several pages long. The bulk of it was essentially dedicated to taking the probability out of quantum mechanics. At some point it gets into PCE, though most of that was a grey area at the time…”
Twilight held up a hoof. “Wait a second. You wrote about magic?”
Alex chuckled lightly. “Heh, you know, one of my lab assistants actually called it that once… But yeah. I did.”
“But magic is related to the Cores. I thought you kept that secret?”
Alex crossed a leg over his knee and placed a hand over his elevated foot, idly tapping at the sole of his shoe as he stared off into space. “At first, I didn’t. I included a section on the potential use of PCE. Power Cores, how they would work, and so on…” He sighed as he stopped tapping his shoe. “I still wanted to contribute. To help humanity…”
“But then your paper got rejected?”
He bobbed his head in confirmation. “More or less, yeah. Research errors aside, they thought the idea was ridiculous, confusing, and just plain couldn’t work… I spent the following months building one just to prove them wrong. When I actually got it working I… I…” He clicked his tongue. “I got cold feet. I got paranoid.” Alex finally met Twilight’s eyes. “You know the rest from there.”
“Wow…” Twilight’s eyes drifted to a corner of the room. She remained silent for several long seconds until, eventually, she glanced back up at the Novas. “But because they rejected your idea, it enabled you to develop the cores yourself! And now look at where you are; at what you’re able to do!”
Alex allowed himself a smile as he followed Twilight’s gaze. “Yeah. Pure scientific progress, without the need for funding, rules, regulations, or restrictions from others who protest your research despite knowing exactly nothing about it.”
Twilight looked back up at him, her face contorted in confusion. “Wait, that last one was a problem for you?”
“Not for me, no,” Alex said with a small shrug, “but it did happen every now and again. Stem cell research is the best example I can think of off the top of my head. Virtually everyone who opposed it was a religious zealot who thought they were experimenting on dead babies or something. They weren’t, but it’s not like the people they were telling that to were actually willing to listen.”
“Oh!” Alex clasped his hands in realization as he stood up and moved his chair back towards the improvised desk. “That reminds me! I’ve been doing a bit of research of my own, lately, and I’d to share it with you. It’s about magic.”
“Really?” Her interest thoroughly piqued, Twilight trotted over to him and watched as he conjured up documents on his portable computer.
“Yup! But first, lemme ask you this…” Alex quickly turned towards Twilight. “When you use magic, you draw Power Core Energy into your horn from somewhere, right? Where do you think you get that energy from?”
Twilight peered curiously at him. “Didn’t we already tell you this? Every book on the subject says we draw the energy from within ourselves—”
“Ah!” Alex immediately snapped his fingers, then placed one finger against Twilight’s nose in one fluid motion. “That’s what they say, but they got it wrong! Here, look at this…” He pulled up a document on the computer containing numerous photos of unicorn anatomy. “About a month back, we got some unicorns to come by for some volunteer testing. First, we scanned every inch of their body; to the point that they only way we could’ve gotten a more detailed image would have been to dissect them.” He scrolled further down. “As you can see, we paid extra special attention to the horn, of which we noticed actually vary from one unicorn to the next.”
Alex turned to another document. “The rest of their biology turned up nothing special. As far as Rose and I know, research-wise, PCE is an extra-dimensional element that can only be generated by Power Cores and similar technology. Having an organic creature capable of generating it on its own? It would be mindboggling! Horns can channel it, but don’t generate it, so you’d need some kind of incredibly complex, if not impossible organ to do that. The thing is, though, that unicorn anatomy seems completely ordinary. Aside from the horn, the organic system is completely identical to other types of ponies. We even double checked this with the hospital staff.
“So we had this weird idea…” Alex turned to another document. Twilight wasn’t able to read all the writing, as Alex was scrolling through it so quickly, but she managed to see several pictures of what looked like Lyra sitting alone in a metal cube with various objects. “We had Lyra sit inside of a container that prevented PCE from traversing through it and asked her to cast a simple levitation spell.” Alex looked back at Twilight and cupped her cheeks in his hands, a manic grin on his face. “Guess what happened!”
“What happened?” she answered lamely.
“Nothing!” Alex cheered as he threw his hands in the air. “She couldn’t do it! It was like her horn wasn’t even there! It was just,” He blew a raspberry, “completely useless! And look at some of the things she said afterwards: ‘When I walked in, it felt like I left a part of myself outside, and when I couldn’t levitate the ball, I felt genuinely scared that something was wrong with me. But when I came out, everything was fine.’ And look! Every other test subject reported something similar! Do you know what this means?”
“It means we were wrong about the origins of magic the whole time…” Twilight’s eyes blazed over the testimonies as Alex scrolled through them. “But if we don’t create it ourselves, where does it come from?”
“Take a look at this.” Alex switched to another set of documents. “We did an experiment where we placed PCE detectors on the test subject’s horn, then placed them in a sphere of detectors inside of a larger sphere of detectors. Look at what happened when they cast a spell…”
Twilight focused as a video on the screen began to play. All she could see was a collection of countless grey dots arranged in two circular patterns, one inside the other, with a clump of dots near the center. Suddenly, a few dots near the top of the screen turned to a bright yellow color, first in the outer circle, then the inner. The clump of dots near the center were next to light up, followed by all the dots around the inner circle, and then the larger one.
“Let’s see that again…” Alex restarted the video and pointed at the top of the screen. When the first dots began to light up, he said: “Bam. That moment right there is when PCE gets picked up by the detectors. The outer sensors picked it up first, which means that unicorns draw their magical energy from an exterior source. The horn receives the energy next, and then it radiates out from there. This all happens so quickly that it seems to be coming from the horn, but it isn’t. And we’re talking ‘photon fast’ here: it all happens in a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second.”
“Whoa…” Twilight rubbed her head at the revelation. “This… this… wow… But where does it come from, then?”
Alex planted his elbow on the table with his finger pointed skyward. “Directly up. Every test subject yielded the exact same results, too.”
Twilight’s eyes widened. “Do you think it’s coming from the layer of magic in the mid-troposphere?”
Alex nodded. “That’s what we think, yeah. Problem is, we still haven’t figured out where that is coming from. As far as our knowledge goes, raw, unaffiliated energy like this isn’t native to our dimension of reality. At least, not mine. Equestria seems to be a whole different ballpark entirely, sure, but everything we know about PCE leads us to believe that either something or someone is putting it there and sustaining it. But right now, we’ve got nothing to prove that.”
Twilight’s eyes twisted upwards to look at her horn, the surrounding aura appearing and disappearing as she conjured and dispelled magic from it. “It’s… definitely a new way of looking at things.” She paused in her thoughts, suddenly directing a hurt look towards Alex. “Wait, why didn’t you let me be a part of these studies?!”
“I wanted to surprise you,” he grinned. “Oh! But there is one thing you can help me with…” Alex stood up and moved next to the red-eyed Nova. With one arm over the Liandri’s shoulder, he tapped it in the center of its chest with the other. “I want you hit this unit with a blast of magic right there.”
“Okay…” said Twilight as she raised a brow. “Why?”
“Rose and I have been prototyping a form of magical countermeasures,” Alex answered. “A personal magic shield, if you will. Good ol’ Nova number two here is our guinea pig. We only managed to retrofit him with it this morning, so we haven’t gotten the time to test it.” He clapped the Nova on the shoulder. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to do that now.”
“Oh…” Twilight trotted up towards the Liandri and eyed it carefully, occasionally looking over at the other Nova in an attempt to spot any sort of physical difference, but couldn’t find any besides the color of their eyes. From what she was able to understand from Alex’s explanation, something about this Liandri would protect it from magic, but whatever it was, it wasn’t visible. “How exactly are these ‘countermeasures’ of yours supposed to work?”
“I’m sure you remember what happened during the Summer Sun Celebration, right?” he asked.
A shiver ran down Twilight’s spine. “Yeah… Our magic wasn’t able to touch it.”
“Exactly.” Alex began his unconscious pacing. “We’ve tried replicating the phenomenon, but it’s been tough to nail down. Safely, anyway. Right now, we think we have something viable that can be easily integrated.” He stopped in place a good distance away from the Liandri and gestured towards it. “So, mind testing it?”
Twilight shrugged before taking several steps back of her own. “Alright, if you say so.”
“Awesome! Unit, Twilight over here is gonna attack you. Do me a favor and don’t retaliate.”
The Nova nodded. “Acknowledged.”
“After you,” Alex waved Twilight on.
Twilight focused on her horn and allowed it to conjure enough energy for a decent magical bolt. Nothing too powerful, probably not enough to actually damage the Nova anyway, but it definitely wasn’t a bug bite either. She then lowered her head, aimed her horn square at the Liandri’s chest, and released.
The flash of lavender light leapt from her horn and struck its target true. Just off the surface of the Liandri’s chest, a chromatic barrier formed to block the incoming magical energy. However, instead of being nullified as intended, the magical bolt coalesced into a small lavender sphere stuck to the barrier. In the blink of an eye, the sphere turned into a blazing white light accompanied by a loud, high pitched whine, before suddenly detonating.
The explosion launched the Liandri clear across the room, smashing it into the opposite wall and leaving a large crack. The Nova fell to the ground and stumbled, but regained its footing quickly enough. Twilight yelped at the explosion and nearly jumped out of her skin, while Alex performed what some might consider interpretive dance with obscenities mixed in.
Once everything had calmed down enough, the two of them gave themselves an extra moment of silence to breathe.
“Okay! Alright!” Alex suddenly exclaimed as he moved behind the Liandri to push it into his chair. “That did not work! Good to know. Gonna shut that thing off before… whatever the fuck that was happens again…” With the Liandri sat firmly in the chair and leaning forwards, Alex began fishing through a toolbox next to the dresser.
Placing a number of instruments in the open, Alex took one in hand and used it to carefully remove a section of the Liandri’s rear armor. A noxious black smoke began to rise out of the exposed area, forcing a retching cough from him as he doubled over and did his best to hold onto his lunch. “Oh god fuck! Get up get up get up!” Doing his best to hold his breath, Alex forced the Nova to stand and shoved the Liandri out onto the balcony, closing the door behind it. Unfortunately, Twilight had the lucky opportunity to inhale some of the toxic fumes spewing from the bot as it was being moved outside, and was forced to keep herself from spewing out something of her own.
After closing the balcony door, Alex took the opportunity to lean back into it and slide to the ground, his face growing almost as pale as the hand he brought up to meet it. “God damn, that thing it completely shot…”
“Yeah, I… I figured that out…” said Twilight, holding herself against one of the far walls. Taking a few extra deep breaths, she said, “I'm really sorry about that. Do you need any help dealing with this?”
“It’s alright, I’ve got it,” Alex answered. “Just gotta let it air out a bit, and I’ll get to it in a few minutes.”
“Okay…” Twilight forced herself to stand on her own. “I should get going anyway. Goodness knows I’ve been here way too long already.”
“Probably for the best,” Alex agreed with a nod.
Just as Twilight as about the open the door, she paused and turned back to him. “Oh, I almost forgot! The girls and I are going to be meeting for dinner later at The Oat Garden on Whinny and Forth at eight. Wanna met us there?”
Alex smiled. “Sure! Oh, and Twilight? One last thing.” Twilight perked her ears in curiosity. “Memento Mori,” he said simply. When Twilight gave him a confused look, he elaborated, “It’s an old Latin proverb. It means: remember death. Or if you prefer: remember that you are mortal.”
“Why are you telling me this…?” Twilight asked after a brief pause.
Alex smirked from his spot on the floor. “You were stressing out earlier. I don’t know what about, but I can say it ain’t worth it. Not in the grand scheme of things.”
Twilight mulled over his words. Alex had no idea what was causing her stress. How Cadence seemed so off; so different. How she was treating everypony poorly and was entirely excused because of the wedding. Maybe for Alex it wasn’t worth stressing over, but he wasn’t her. He didn’t know the things that she did. Twilight, however, didn’t voice that objection. Instead, she gave him a smile. “Thanks. I’ll remember that. See you at eight!”
“See ya then!” Alex waved after her as she trotted out the door. With the room devoid of activity once again, Alex allowed his gaze to drift towards the other Nova. “Memento mori… You don’t have to worry about that, do you?”
“No, sir,” the Liandri responded.
“No… you don’t…” After picking himself up and dusting himself off, Alex began to eye his cybernetic augmentations, taking in the details that, while intimately familiar, were still so different and fascinating.
One step at a time.
He hummed to himself as his eyes began to glow green. “Memento propositum bellator…”
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This is a story that I will dropeverything to read the only other that comes even close is Roses for the Grave keep up the good work!
It's actually memento mori, with an 'e' in the beginning.
6167507 Well shit, how about that. Thanks for letting me know!
I have to say that you have put a lot of work on this story. I am vary excited and can't wait for the next chapter to be posted. Saying that I am sorry to see that this story is going to end in the next chapter or two. I know that this is a bit early but are you going to write more story's?
Dragonfox
6167743 You think this story is going to end in a couple of chapters? OH FUCK NO! With the amount of things I have lined up, I'm probably only halfway done! Maybe not even that!
This story isn't even close to getting wrapped up. Which makes me realize that I really need to get my shit together if I wanna finish it...
Wow. No this is what I call advancement by a quantum leap^^
You have given Alex a lot more depth and background and have finally started to include magic into his area of expertise.
I can't wait for the next chapter.
I love your story
I just love how much thought you have put into this fic, all the scientific material you have put into this fic is just marvelous, i don't know how much is made up and what's official but you really make it work.
6167897 True, true, but you 'could' also say that aiming the nukes at japan and destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki as created a series of events that will end in Japan destroying the west in the year 2135 with giant thermonuclear mech suits(and yes I mean that the suits themselves are thermonuclear). They will eat us up like a big bowl of cereal, a big bowl of honey nut cheerios, I think im running out of material. Have some good tunes.
WHOOO!
So whatever is leading Alex on, now has a Magical jumpstarted Jekyl and Hyde armoured superbot to really start messing things up, distractions etc?
Im wondering if standard theory doesnt do gravity because they want it to be flatland. if you look at standard theory as supersymetrical, with only the first extra dimention, 4D spacetime, but 4D space, no time. you get Kaluza Kleins 1926 work, you get no localisation so particles exist in all points at the same time, as quantum superposition, and you get three families of particles because they are variations on WX, Wy, and WZ rotations where W is the 4th spacial dimention. An Electron, the charge, turns out motion along the 4th spacial dimention axis. therefore an electron is a neutrino with a charge And the mass of the electron is the mass energy of the charge field.
What gets me is that the 4D to 3D transformations were available for use as a screen saver back in 2006, but I havent seen anyone yet make a 3D volumetric phase array detector with the 4D transformation fuction, just to scan the universe for 4D encoded wavefrtonts. First rule of astronomy, every time you open up a new realm, you increase the information collected exponentially. Maybe thats why SETI isnt picking anything up, like the guys with teh drums on a desert island, we aint using drums, we are using wifi. Maybe out ther, the guys aint using wifi, theyre using 4D or another simple to implemet, effiicnt design that simpler stuff just cant recognise. Like how a crystal detector can pick up noise, which isnt,
I hope that Liandri doesnt go on a psychpathic killing spree. Or get possessed by Sombra.
6167808
You still have a half red "[/color"
6168124 We are far more likely to all die in a nuclear resource war over Alaska or some other things. But the point stands, so I digress.
6197892 Let me guess, is the war with china. And is it going to all go down in the year 2077?
I know your gameplan mister, there is no need to fallout over it.
By the way, I'm British, so we probably won't war over Alaska anytime soon.
6199224 Have you ever heard of MAD? Mutually assured destruction. It means that if any of the world's Nuclear powers started launching nukes, more or less all of them would, specifically the USA and the then USSR. The Fallout *badum tch* would also cause a global nuclear winter. So yeah, we ALL die. I would know because I don't live in a country with nuclear weapons . No, I am NOT American.
6201586 I was talking about the Alaska bit, not the nuclear destruction bit. I know that when one is launched, they all pretty much get launched. It's just that japan currently doesn't possess nuclear weapons anyway.
Oh, and back to the point where Alphanian was saying that millions would have died in an invasion from Japan. That is just plain moronic to think that, japan was extremely weak as it was and an invasion would have required them too send huge forces all the way across the North Pacific ocean, which would have been noticed by the Americans extremely fast thanks to the improvements they put in place after Pearl Harbour.
All in all, the nuclear drops on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unnecessary and could have easily be replaced by scare tactics.
6201641 I completely agree with you, but I still kinda don't. A story I heard about the end of world war 2 in the Pacific theatre is that, the closer the American soldiers got to Japan, the harder the Japanese resistance got. Soldiers strapped tnt to their bodies and jumped under enemy tanks, civilian went on mass suicides. If the atomic bomb had not been used, the casualties would have been exponentially larger. Nuclear weapons are dangerous and game changing, but funilly saved lives.... huh, that's an interesting POV.
6201807 All I mean is that if civilians were willing to go on mass suicides, would scare tactics have worked?
I'm sorry to say (don't know whether these are the views of just the character, or both the character and the author), that the possibility of testing on dead fetuses specifically for stem cell research is very high. One search on Google will show that fetuses are used for a variety of different research purposes.
Rip he died a couple of weeks ago