The Exchange Program

by Sozmioi

Chapter 11: Wring

"So, what about the demon?" asked Jack.

Gwyneth shrugged. "There is no demon. Or, well, it doesn't look like the trap was laid on me by a demon, so we don't have any reason to suspect there is one, anymore. I put it on myself. More of a voluntary block, really."

Shankar added, "That's concerning. Not as much as a demon, but still. If you made yourself forget magic, that's a bad sign. Were you protecting yourself from… secrets man was not meant to know?"

She shrugged harder. "Why I did it is probably going to be in those notes, somewhere. Probably towards the end." She reached towards him to take the last notebook. "If it were dangerous, I probably would have destroyed them."

As he hesitantly handed it over, I asked, "How did you figure out that it was all from you?"

"I meditated on my energy."

"Your energy? Rhiannon said she had never used herself as a power source."

Gwyneth raised an eyebrow and her ears drew back ever so slightly. "I think you must have misunderstood her." (She was correct - Rhiannon had said that she never absorbed external energy into herself), Gwyneth explained, "If you do magic that's only on yourself, it is best to only use your own power. I can feel no intrusion, and I can feel that I'm doing something to myself. If I were to stop it, I think that would take the block apart." She opened the journal. "Can I focus? I need to figure out whether I want to remember magic or not, before I can set foot out of this room."

So we retreated from Rhiannon's room. Jack sat on the sofa, taking advantage of its having partially collapsed to recline back; Shankar and Lyra sat at the table, and Lyra began explaining the math of magic. Though, she hedged heavily, saying that she didn't fully understand it herself.

I sat down next to Jack, and let my energy (anxious, not magical) escape. There was no demon, we had things under control. Phew.

Shankar and Lyra, though, got more animated - Shankar seemed downright incredulous. "You can't be serious. That's… magic is governed by the Schrödinger Equation?"

After she affirmed it, he leaned the chair back and thought. "On the other hand, everything here is governed by it, in a way that it would be very hard to interface two worlds together without their both following it. Or at least something a lot like it. Having two worlds even have a causal relationship where one was classical and one was quantum would be… gibberish to both. Okay, so it fits within the QM framework. That's good to know. Bet it screws around with a lot of other things, though. That's going to be one funky potential."

Jack, without moving his head, asked, "You know physics? Like, serious physics?"

Shankar laughed. "Well, I can solve some problems in it from doing physical chemistry, but I only know its broader implications from reading stuff on the internet. So, you know, grains of salt may be applied. This is not my specialty."

Specialty… I suddenly realized I wanted to check on my cutie mark. I went to the bathroom, pulled my pants a bit down for a moment… nada. Again, further, on the off chance I'd forgotten where it was. As blank as it had been before. Both sides. Ah well.

While I was there, I looked in the mirror and finally saw my burnt hair. Ugh. Well, nothing for it but to go downstairs and get a haircut. I rubbed my fingers through it. Actually, seems like there's so little I might as well use a shaver rather than a true haircut. Save my $20. So I got out my trimmer and put on the longest separator, which I'd never used. Before I started, it occurred to me to head out to ask, "Does anyone have any reason to suspect that my hair is going to magically grow back, before I trim it to be even?"

Lyra and Shankar were deep in some discussion, with Shankar drawing diagrams. Neither took note of my question, but Jack shook his head. "No, Sunset didn't mention anything like that."

"Hey, Shankar. Should I trim even? Shave bald? Mohawk?"

He took a moment to change gears. "You can't leave it? More hair is better."

"My scalp looks like a worn out teddy bear. A cross between Calvin and Harry Potter would be a step up."

He got up, approached, and took the trimmer out of my hand. I totally thought he was going to kiss me and tell me it didn't matter, but instead he carefully looked over my head. I can live with that. Taking my problems seriously is good too. He said, "I think it could come off a little over here and then it's not balanced exactly, but looks coherent." He turned to Lyra. "What do you think?" She shrugged.

So I went along with it. We headed into the bathroom and I kept my head over the tub. Over the next few minutes, Shankar trimmed my hair so it was, though short, at least mostly symmetric except in ways that looked not entirely stupid.

While he trimmed, we all talked over magic and reductionism. Principally on the question of, if our minds are made of brains which are made of matter - a fact which Lyra also seemed to take for granted, which was interesting in itself - how did magic identify them to act upon them in all the non-destructive ways we'd observed? The mechanism clearly had to be extremely complex. Lyra had no particular answers to any of these questions.

Abruptly, Gwyneth called out to us and asked us to help with her reading. So we headed in and grabbed notebooks. The one I got was unreadable. It was code, but not so much for encryption as simply being highly-abbreviated. Tables of letters and numbers without context. After a minute I realized it was list upon list of tarot cards, each list with a brief label up top, and followed by statistical summaries. On page 40 I finally got some text, which was conclusions, again highly abbreviated. A taped-in computer printout of a graph, that was made with a printer older than I was… was that an exaggeration? Possibly not, I realized - I came across one date, putting it in January 1989. That was around when I was proudly reading primary phonics.

Gwyneth interrupted us. "Okay, you can all stop. Thanks."

"What?" we all cried in near-unison, and crowded into the room.

She explained, "The block isn't at full power, but it was still able to get me to not think of certain things. Having all of us thinking about them overpowered it and I could remember some things. Enough to think on for now, and enough to give me pause."

She took a deep breath. "I wish I could say I came by effective magic by a stroke of genius or personal virtue. But it was just that someone walked into our Litha observation and told us we were irritatingly close to not completely wasting our time. This would normally not be a great way to get on our good side, but she was a dog."

She stopped and seemed to be thinking more. Jack eventually asked, "Where's the dog?"

Gwyneth chuckled. "The dog probably died fifteen years ago, now. But the fairy who was possessing her? Probably alive, but probably not here, either."

"A fairy." I said. "Where did you encounter her? Can we find her again?"

"First time, Sandy Hook. After that, mostly at Jim's place on Staten Island. Anyway, she told us some things about how to find magic and gather it." She frowned. "Haven't seen her in a long time."

Shankar asked, "So… why make yourself forget?"

Gwyneth shrugged. "I haven't got that part yet."

Lyra asked, "Is this world's magic chaos magic or something? We had a big problem with that for a long time, what with Discord. You might want to forget that."

"No… it's more… from what I can remember… oh, I can't think about it properly. When I think back, all that comes to mind is the old Battlestar Galactica, and I wasn't even a fan. But that suggests robot apocalypse or the destruction of Earth. Since that hasn't happened, I think it must be some sort of prophecy?"

Lyra seemed very worried. "This sounds like the kind of thing I ought to actually call princess Celestia about."

I held up a hand. "We assumed that Rhiannon's warning was about Gwyneth, but what if it was about this? No getting her involved yet. Or Sunset Shimmer. But we could ask Rhi…" I stopped, suddenly expecting what happened a second later:

Sunset Shimmer said, "Did you say my name?"

I nodded. "Yes, I did."

"What's up? How are things going? I'm doing some tedious reading, so I jumped when I got the ping that you said my name."

Thinking quick, I asked, "See, I got a cutie mark when I was in Equestria, and I had it a minute after we swapped back, but now it's gone. I understand that is a magical thing, and I wonder if you sucked it away with that sponge thing."

Sunset sounded thoughtful. "I don't know. If I did, it'll come back on its own when I empty it."

"Oh! I get to keep it?"

"If you really got it, it's part of you. But if it was my magic filtered through you when you were in my body, then it'll return to me. Well. I guess I can wring the sponge out now. Wherever it came from originally, this will put it back. Ready?"

She didn't confirm, but I was ready. A pop and a crackle, and I saw a little flash of light peek up over the top of my pants. "Looks like it's mine, then. Yay?"

Lyra quivered. "Maybe I have mine now? I didn't earlier, but if that restores magic…" She hiked her dress all the way up, and, upon discovering her mark, squealed with joy. "I feel complete!" Even though she still had panties on, Jack practically dove onto Rhiannon's bed face first and stayed there. Shankar and Gwyneth gave the mark looks around as curious as mine. Meanwhile, Lyra sat on Rhiannon's bed right next to Jack, and gradually got the dress the rest of the way off.

Sunset clarified through me, "The marks might disappear when I set start soaking up again, but they should come back each time I stop, and will stay in the end." A pause. "Speaking of which, my sponge has caught a lot of magic that isn't Celestia's and doesn't have anywhere obvious to go. Seems like there's a lot of… cold in it."

Gwyneth seemed to remember something; she cut in, "Yes, that's mine, and, if you can put it back where it came from, not dumping it in me, I would appreciate if I could have it back."

Sunset replied, "Sure… hmm. The sponge doesn't know where to put it, and you don't have anywhere to put it nearby. How about I bottle it up on my side for a little while, and when you find where it should go, I can give it back?"

Gwyneth nodded. "That sounds good."

Sunset added, "That is quite a lot of cold. Do you know what you're doing?"

Gwyneth hesitantly said, "We are finding that out."

"Why are you sitting in a diagram, anyway?"

Gwyneth smoothly replied, "Part of finding out what we're doing. Trying things out."

Sunset's voice started bright and got darker and darker. "Ah, want some practice with solving problems with magic? Fair enough. To grow, you need practice. Real, practical practice. Celestia keeps me studying in books so much, I'm behind where I should be. Especially since I only have a few years to get ready. That's why I made Shankar's amulet so much better than it needed to be. I've had more practice with the guitar than with actual heavy spellwork or artifacts. I've examined, what, four artifacts? That was the second one I ever made. It's ridiculous."

Jack lifted his head out of the pillow while facing the wall, and asked, "You play guitar? Maybe that's practice for fine control of your magic. Intricate little motions and all that."

"But you play guitar by hoof, not horn. I'm learning from Flash, who isn't even a unicorn. You met him, I understand, Rachel?"

"Yeah. Your boyfriend? Seems nice enough."

Lyra interjected, "You have a boyfriend? And you're Princess Celestia's student? How old are you?"

"Thirteen. One of the perks of being a personal student, especially one living around Princess Cadence instead of the school proper, is that she didn't lock me up for the past month."

"You lucky…!" Lyra shrieked. (Meanwhile, Shankar pointed out to Jack that she was wearing enough to cover more than a bikini, so he could stop making a show of not watching)

I felt Sunset grinning. "Yeeeah. Anyway…" A weariness set in her voice. "The sponge is all wrung out, and I'm putting it back in place, and I'm sorry, but I think your cutie mark is going to vanish until next time. I think I can leave Lyra's, but maybe not. All set?"

We all nodded, and I got the impression she was no longer there.

Jack, having gotten up and sitting next to Lyra relatively normally, then asked her a very sensible question - "How long are your years, anyway?"

"Well, it depends…" She launched into an explanation of weather control and seasons in Equestria, which as an answer to Jack's question amounted to, 'years are only used as a measure of age because of tradition', which ended up with how most earth ponies used moons instead, and when you factored in everything, by the count of seconds spent awake, she was more like seventeen than thirteen, which made it much more understandable how she knew a little calculus, but left her still well out of dateable range.

The discussion of time led me to check it - it was six. "We are past time to start getting dinner ready. Who's sticking around?"

Gwyneth got up, dusted herself off. "I've disassembled the part of the block that I was triggering just by knowing about magic. And I'm not tripping the rest, so I should be good to go home. I'll be in touch about meeting again." And with that, she headed out, seemingly preoccupied.

Jack said, "So, Lyra - church tomorrow? Rachel?"

I closed my eyes. "I'll pass. If you think you can get her prepared, though, and she wants to go, sure."

Lyra asked, "What sort of preparation?"

Jack clarified, "People could ask awkward questions, and no, you can't just explain that you're a unicorn. So let's at least go over the basics."

I said, "If you'll take care of that, I'll count that as helping and you can stay for dinner."

So they did; Shankar came and helped me prepare. Since Lyra was vegetarian for the most part, we made a salad with sliced cucumber, tomato, carrot, and radishes. While we were cutting, Shankar suddenly said, "Rhiannon knows heavy math. She had written more notes in that last notebook, and her ritual chant was apparently made with the help of a computer program. Did you know any of that?"

"Are you sure it was her? My notebook was from nearly twenty years ago."

"Mine was from last year, and she signed it."

"Well, I knew she was writing web pages by hand, that's all. I never really paid attention. Also, depending when last year, it might have been before she moved in."

After another minute, he added, "I think it'll be helpful if you know calculus. Do you happen to?" - "No." - "Algebra?" - "Rusty. Why?" - "I don't want to have to grow our little circle more than necessary until we know more, and we'll know more sooner if more of us can understand more. I don't think you stopped studying math because you couldn't do it, but because you didn't see the need - right?"

I shrugged. "It got hard, but I could have dragged myself through it if I needed to. Do you think I need to?" He nodded. "Well, then, get ready to teach me. I can handle the rest of the food."

He asked me a few questions to figure out where I was, and then grabbed a sheet of paper and began planning. He also asked Jack, who didn't commit to joining in, and put off answering his questions. Shankar took the hint and dropped it, and Jack got back to preparing Lyra for going to church.

Dinner was astonishingly uneventful, considering the jam-packed day. Jack left a while later, and I fell asleep on the sofa while Shankar washed the dishes. Lyra woke me enough to move me to bed. I was aware that they kept talking for some time, but I just felt really tired.

I woke at 1 AM, drenched in sweat. The apartment was crazy hot and humid. And they were still talking intermittently. I got up and went to the kitchenette. Lyra was sitting at the table, naked, head propped on her hands, eyes flickering. Shankar had stripped down to boxers and was leaning back in his chair, working on some long math problem.

He turned and smiled at me as I approached.

I stared at them. "Time for bed."

He looked at the clock and practically jumped up. "Wow. Yeah." Lyra also got up at a more sedate pace, and I guided her to her bed. While I was there, I started the window fan. Back out in the main room, Shankar was bending over and slowly fitting his right foot into his jeans. When he looked up, I jerked my head toward my bedroom. His eyebrows rose. He got up, stepped back out of his jeans, put his hands on my hips, and nuzzled me.

I whispered, "Is there some very special reason not to be doing things? Like, are you holding back because you have an arranged fianceé you want to break off with before you do anything? Or is being swapped with Lyra has totally screwed up your sex drive altogether? I mean, earlier today you said you'd be interested in kissing, but here we are and…"

He took a deep breath, and answered, "I did once have an arranged betrothal, but we broke that off years ago. Yes the swap has had some odd side effects, but they aren't a problem at all. No… It's just that I can't focus on us, can't really think about it. Everything else is so overwhelming. And yet I do want us to be dealt with properly since in the long run we're going to be important to each other, and I don't want to go forward without thinking, on autopilot, boom go too far and then drama and fail. I just don't know where we should be doing in the mean time. I don't see any good Schelling points, I guess is the thing."

"Ah. You may be right that there isn't one, but… we don't need to coordinate without communicating, so we don't need a Schelling point, just a way of stopping at a good place. My usual rule seems to cover situations like this - I decide how far I want to go only when I'm by myself and not excited. When together, we can do anything up to that limit. I can hold to that limit because I know I can change it in just a few hours. But if I'm too distracted to change the limit, it doesn't change."

Lyra interjected through the door, "That's a great rule! But can you talk it over quieter? I don't have anyone with me in here."

Shankar rolled his eyes. "Yeah, our sexy, sexy discussion of decision theory."

"Well it is."

I suddenly asked, "Lyra, have you actually bathed since you got here? Go take a shower."

Pause. "Okay." There are enough traction grips on the floor she shouldn't have trouble, I think, and it should give us a few minutes of privacy.

We went to bed and talked a little more about it while she showered. Then there was kissing but not much more – mainly, he hadn't had a chance to properly place his line yet, and anyway the lines weren't meant to be excuses to rush things.

It was only when Shankar was in the shower and I was reviewing the day that I remembered what we'd been talking about when Sunset Shimmer heard us mention her and jumped in - apocalypse. I thought back to it and tentatively concluded that no, Rhiannon's warning couldn't have been about that because hardly any of the card meanings lined up. So yes, we'd talk to Celestia about it. And the prophecy was decades old. It'd wait until morning.

Comments

[totallynotabrony]

Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.

[Sozmioi]

9036293

I'm a little confused about the 'bears' and 'beets' parts of that.

[totallynotabrony]

9036510
It was a reference to The Office. I think. I've never seen it.