Space Captain Pinkie Pie

by terrycloth

26: Core Problems

“I solemnly swear, with Pinkie Pie as my witness, that if I am shown to be a mirror image of the real Tess, I will obey all commands given by the real Tess without hesitation. So help me Pinkie Pie.”

“That’s not a proper Pinkie Pie swear,” Twilight Sparkle said, one eye closed painfully while she waited for it to stop hurting. Someday, she’d remember to close her eye before sticking a ‘cupcake’ in it.

“That’ll do for now,” Pinkie Pie said, setting the mirror into which Twilight and Tess had sworn against the wall. With Chance busy reorganizing the storage rooms to hold as much moondust as possible, everyone present had taken an oath. “Now, who wants to warp the mirror? Oh, say me say me!”

“Not me,” Tess said. Pinkie Pie grinned widely, then mouthed ‘say me’ at Twilight.

“Why don’t you try first,” Twilight said, glancing at the book of mirror magic that was back up on the conference room’s big screen. “I should really refresh my memory on the mirror-warping spell before trying to cast it. It’s a lot harder than the ‘look at a different place’ spell.”

“Aww, but then you won’t be watching,” Pinkie Pie said, pouting. “Oh well!” She turned and stared at the mirror, then started to chant. “Orange, yellow, orange, red, red, red, purple, green, blue, blue, orange, yellow, yellow, red, blue, blue – you’re good,” she said to her mirror reflection. “Or else I’m bad at being random.”

“You’re the most random pony I know,” Twilight said.

“Thank you!” Pinkie Pie said cheerfully. “Now, where was I?”

“Blue, blue,” Tess said. “I’m not seeing a pattern.”

Pinkie Pie giggled. “You’re not supposed to, silly. I’m being random! Blue, blue, orange, yellow, yellow, red, blue, blue, yellow, orange, orange –“

“Okay, now I’m seeing a pattern,” Tess said. “Next up is purple.”

Pinkie Pie looked surprised.

Tess smirked. “I think we need to try something different.” Shoving Twilight’s mirror magic reference into a smaller space, she brought up a window that had an image of the room they were in, along with a diagnostic pane with color-coded lines. She dragged a targeting reticle onto the image of Pinkie Pie. “Pinkie Pie knows whether she’s the real Pinkie Pie, right?” Tess said. “So, lie detector app.”

They positioned the mirror so that they could see the mirror image’s lie detector, and then Tess motioned to Pinkie Pie. In unison, both Pinkie Pies said, “I’m the real Pinkie Pie.”

Neither app had much of a blip.

“Maybe the mirror-image app is mirroring the real app,” Tess guessed. She brought up a second copy, and targeted it at the mirror image directly. “Go.”

“I’m the real Pinkie Pie,” Pinkie Pie said. Again, all four lie detectors gave her a clean bill of health.

“It’s not a magic mirror,” Twilight Sparkle said. “It’s just reflecting light. Whatever Pinkie Pie supposedly does to mirrors hasn’t been done yet.”

“Or maybe your lie detector isn’t very detecty,” Pinkie suggested. “I’m a banana!”

A loud beeping noise filled the room as both copies of the lie detector started flashing red.

“Is it my turn yet?” Twilight asked, levitating the grease pencil. “I’ll use the simple version of the charm,” she said, sketching a bunch of runes onto the mirror. “I can’t believe I forgot that all the runes had to be backwards!”

After she finished, she cast a short spell, and the image in the mirror shifted slightly. “There. Now it’s not reflecting light – it’s a window onto a mirror universe, identical to our own, but not real.”

“So if I say ‘I’m the real Pinkie Pie’ now –“ Pinkie Pie started – and one of the lie detectors started to beep and flash, while the other stayed quiet. In the mirror, the opposite happened.

“Wait,” Twilight said, parsing the flashing lights and beeps. “We’re the fakes?”

The Twilight in the mirror shrugged at her, and grinned awkwardly.

“Buck me,” Tess said, closing her eyes. “Fine, let’s head over to engineering.”

===

They didn’t take the mirror with them. The real Twilight and company probably were, to see the results of the experiment, but there was no reason for the copies to keep an eye on the real world.

“What we’re doing here is a basic Captromantic ritual,” Twilight explained, on the way. “Normally, we’d alter the mirror universe using complicated mirror-piercing spells that directly altered the mirror reality, but thanks to Pinkie Pie we’ve managed to break the symmetry with nothing more than a promise.”

“Uh huh,” Tess said, mostly tuning out the babbling unicorn.

“It was so easy with a magic mirror,” Pinkie Pie said enthusiastically. “I can’t believe I never tried getting a mirror magicked before! It took a long long long time to get all the mirror Pinkies to show themselves, but with magic mirrors we can do this all day long! Even if we end up blowing ourselves up, we can just try again!”

“Except that we’ll be dead,” Tess noted.

“Well, we will but we won’t all be dead, just us,” Pinkie said. “As long as there’s some Pinkie around to work on the problem, then we can try again and again and again until we get it right.”

“Or until they get sick of repeatedly murdering their copies,” Tess said.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “It’s not exactly murder. I mean, we’re not real.”

“Even less real than normal,” Pinkie Pie said, nodding.

“So it’s no more murder than if you wrote a story with yourself as a character and then killed yourself off,” Twilight said. “We’re disposable.”

“Except that it’s not the same,” Tess said. “We’re thinking. We’re conscious. We have free will. We’re copies now, not reflections. Copies are just as alive as the real person. Killing off copies in simulation runs is… well…” She scowled. “Perfectly legal, actually. But it’s still not right!”

Pinkie Pie giggled. “You’re just focusing on the bad part. Maybe we have to do this silly experiment that might kill us in a horrible inferno of flaming death, but in the meantime we’re totally free! We can do whatever we want with no real consequences! Hey Twilight, wanna make out?”

“Um…” Twilight said, blushing. Pinkie Pie suddenly appeared in front of her, staring into Twilight’s eyes with her own huge, eager blue ones. “No, Pinkie,” Twilight said. “I think that’s something I’d rather experiment with when it does mean something.”

Suddenly, the pink face was looming in front of the moon pony instead. “Tess?” Pinkie asked, without missing a beat.

“Go talk to Chance,” Tess said, shoving Pinkie aside.

“Okie dokie lokie!” Pinkie Pie said, bouncing off back the way they’d come.

“Pinkie!” Twilight Sparkle called after her. “Ugh. I wanted her to be there for the end. Well, I wanted one of my friends to be with me, but I guess – sorry, Tess. I guess that’s not very nice to you. You’re my friend too, just not that kind of friend.”

“I understand,” Tess said. “If you want to be nice to me, we can maybe not do this?”

“You’re the one who said how important it is,” Twilight said. “I mean, you were going to try it in real life before we convinced you to try making our mirror copies do it. Which means we probably won’t die, right?”

Tess sighed. “It’s important,” she said, bracing herself. “If we can get the reactor running again, then we can abort if Rainbow Dash doesn’t have the storm ready, and wait another day. Or week. Or year. But what we really need to know is if it’s safe to jostle the reactor with the cloudwalking spell cast on the whole ship. If it’s only stable because it’s frozen, and something gets shaken loose during the drop and unfreezes it, well…”

“Boom,” Twilight said, wincing. Then she laughed. “For some reason I’m not scared, though. My whole life I’ve been focused on not screwing up – don’t flunk your entrance exams, don’t turn your parents into houseplants, don’t disappoint the princess. Now that I’m just an extra copy, nothing I do matters. There’s nothing to worry about.” She giggled, and giggled some more, and found it hard to stop. “Sorry, heeheehee, I feel giddy as a foal.”

“You’re terrified, and high on adrenaline,” Tess grumped. The she perked up. “You know – we don’t have to do this. It doesn’t matter if our reactor is fixed, all that matters is if the real-us knows whether or not it can be fixed, right?”

“I suppose?” Twilight said, curious as to where she was going with this.

Tess explained, “So why don’t you magic up another mirror, I’ll go pry Pinkie Pie loose from Chance, and we can set up a nested simulation run –“

“I don’t think that would work,” Twilight said. “If we chicken out, what’s to stop a mirror copy of us from chickening out too? They’d make their own copy, and then that copy would make a copy, and before you know it we’ve got a dozen levels of ‘let the next level buck around with the reactor’ and no actual reactor fixing.”

Tess snorted. “So you’re saying that, by induction, it’s useless for us to try to pass the buck.”

Twilight nodded. “The buck stops here. QED.”

That statement ended up being a little more literal than Twilight had intended, since they’d reached their destination and now stood in front of the door to the reactor core. Like many of the doors in the Here to Help, it was locked, but the unlocking procedure was a little more involved than the usual verbal request. Tess keyed in the passcode, and the telltales on the door flipped to green. There was a hiss as the pressure door’s seal was broken, and she pulled it open.

“Huh,” Twilight said, staring through the doorway at the pony-sized sphere in the middle of a tangle of cylinders, boxes, pipes and wires. “I thought it would look more… glowy.”

“The glowy bit is on the inside,” Tess said, hesitating at the threshold as well. “Trust me, this is the most dangerous thing you’ve ever seen in your life.”

“I’ve faced down Discord and Nightmare Moon,” Twilight Sparkle said.

Tess nodded. “And how many mile-wide craters did those two make?”

“Discord removed the Canterlot hedge maze and left us in a giant pit,” Twilight said, thinking it over.

“If there wasn’t any fire, it doesn’t count,” Tess said.

Twilight grinned. “Pinkie Pie made a mile-wide crater just yesterday, with the moon cannon.”

“Your argument relies on using Pinkie Pie as an example, and is therefore invalid,” Tess said.

Twilight chuckled, and then the two of them stood there for a few minutes, staring at the reactor.

“Soooo,” Twilight said. “You know what? We’re not actually in a hurry. We’ve got all day to work on this.”

“We do,” Tess said. “Want to go play some games?”

-Tess…- Chance sent. Tess blinked – the transmission was as strong as if he was standing right next to her.

-Oh, you’re the real Chance,- she sent back. -And you can’t hear me because we didn’t bring the mirror.- And apparently watching her and Twilight kill themselves was more interesting than moondust.

-I can hear you fine, there’s enough scatter,- he replied.

-Can you keep it down?- sent another Chance, from farther away, -I’m trying to concentrate.-

Twilight looked at Tess oddly.

-Tess, please just run the experiment,- the real Chance sent. -We’re stuck here watching the mirror until you do.-

-And what do I think about that?- Tess asked.

-It’s not going to get any easier if you procrastinate,- came her own ‘voice’ over the airwaves. -For what it’s worth, we’re hoping you don’t die. Ejecting the core has its own issues.-

“Tess?” Twilight asked, poking her gently with a hoof.

Tess sighed. “The peanut gallery says ‘get on with it’.”

“The… um… right,” Twilight said, ears flattening. “Let’s get on with it then.”

===

They tried to be careful. Kicking any component while it was attached to the reactor was likely to unfreeze the whole thing, so they removed the pieces one by one – with Twilight keeping notes on what went where, in case Tess’ implants somehow failed to correctly record the positions – and Tess smacked them to unfreeze each separately.

“Now we find out if this was a complete waste of time,” Tess said, as she prepared to remove a triangular wedge from the guts of the reactor core. “This is part of the magnetic bottle that contains the core. Once I remove it, we’ll be able to see if the core was really dead all along and we were never in any danger.”

Twilight nodded. “Got it.”

“This is also the first point when we’re in serious danger of experiencing a critical existence failure,” Tess said. “Any last words?”

“Um…” Twilight said. “Is it going to hurt?”

“I can’t think of any way for this to kill us slowly enough for us to feel anything,” Tess said. She took a deep breath, and positioned the electric screwdriver. “Here goes nothing.”

A blinding light filled the room. Twilight screamed in terror, and collapsed to the floor, cowering.

“Right,” Tess said. “The core’s still active, but it’s frozen enough that we can expose it without it going ‘boom’.”

“So… bright…” Twilight said, eyes squinted shut.

“Yeah, we’d better go get some welding goggles.”

===

Even with the proper equipment, the work was still unpleasantly hot, sweaty, and repetitive. There were twenty electromagnets in the containment sphere, and hundreds of other bits that had to be removed just to get at them. Every time the core was exposed, it was like being back in the Jelly Jar, skimming past the sun. And it took hours, and more hours to put everything back together again afterwards, to the point where it wasn’t clear if the real crew would have time to fix their own reactor, even if the procedure worked.

But at long last, it was done. All except the last step.

“The magnetic bottle’s in place,” Tess said, squinting at the readout. “It looks stable, but there’s no pressure on it from the core except what we’d expect from gamma radiation. That’s light,” she explained to Twilight, who was trying to follow along, but was finding it hard to concentrate. She didn’t know if it was the heat or the constant terror, but she was feeling pretty weak, and sick to her stomach.

REALLY sick to her stomach. “Tess?” she said, her eyes going blurry, “I think I need to –“ Her stomach heaved, and she sprayed its contents all over the floor in front of her… leaving a puddle of half-digested pancakes mixed with blood.

Blood?

-Oh, horseapples,- Chance sent through the mirror.

“Twilight?” Tess asked, turning from the machinery to examine the fallen unicorn. -Chance! Her eyes are bleeding! Her skin’s all burned up under her fur, and -- -

-Radiation sickness,- he explained. -You’re shielded of course, it never even occurred to me to worry about Twilight.- After a second of silence, he added, -Oops?-

-What do I do?-

-There’s nothing you can do at this point,- Chance said. -I’m going to take Twilight and Pinkie to the clinic and check for any damage, in case some got through the mirror.-

“Tess…” Twilight croaked, one hoof reaching weakly towards her. “I don’t feel so good.”

Tess sighed. “The reactor gives off a special kind of light that’s poison to ponies. Moon ponies are immune. I’m sorry, I didn’t think –“

Twilight laughed. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing they had us try it after all,” she said, then whined and curled up, clutching her stomach. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “Just finish the experiment. I want to see if it works.”

Tess shook her head. “They’re off making sure we didn’t accidentally kill the real you,” she said. “We have to wait until –“

-I’m still here,- the real Tess sent.

“—nevermind,” she said. “Right. I’ll try the experiment. Everything’s ready, so all I have to do is tap the reactor and unfreeze the core, right?”

Twilight’s head moved an inch or so. It might have been a nod.

Tess stood up and walked over to the reator, which now hummed gently as the mechanism maintained the magnetic bubble that should, in theory, keep her safe. Except that they’d tried to restart the already running reactor how many times? There was bound to be a spike, but how large?

Only one way to find out. She closed her eyes, and with a loud battlecry, punched the reactor.

===

“So what’s the verdict,” Tess asked, as Chance had Twilight and Pinkie Pie lying on cots, with various testing apparatus arrayed around them.

“This physiology is amazing!” he said. “Some of the hormones floating around in their bloodstream aren’t even chemicals.”

Tess gave him a look.

“Oh, they weren’t irradiated. Looks like the mirror filtered out the harmful radiation. But look!” he said, pointing to a chemical diagram on a wall display.

“You’re running experiments?” Twilight asked, rolling to a sitting position on her cot. Chance grinned at her, and she rolled her eyes. “What about the mirror simulation?” Twilight asked. “What’s the verdict?”

“The mirror melted as soon as she unfroze the reactor,” Tess replied. “I’m guessing that’s a bad sign.”

Twilight cringed.

===

-I still can’t believe I’m a copy!- Chance sent from a safe distance away. Namely, two miles away and underground, since he’d been captured alive by the pegasi when he tried to run. There was no sign that they were aware he could still communicate.

-I can’t believe you thought it was safer to run than to stay on the ship,- Tess replied. -I mean, this time we’re leaving the core frozen and just activating a pre-set emergency program.-

“Is everyone ready?” she asked out loud, for the benefit of the ponies in the room. When there wasn’t an immediate response, she turned to see Twilight and Pinkie Pie in each other’s’ embrace, kissing. “AHEM.”

They broke apart, giggling. Twilight looked horribly embarrassed, Pinkie Pie not so much. “You can push the button now miss grumpy pants!” the pink pony said.

Tess pushed the button. There was a thump, and the ship shook as explosive bolts ejected a panel from the hull, and hurled the reactor core out into space. “There,” she said. “Nothing to it.”

“You mean we lived?” Twilight said, looking around the room.

“You know what this calls for,” Pinkie Pie said, grinning eagerly.

About that time, the core came back down, pulled by the planet’s gravity. The Here to Help survived the explosion; the ponies on board, not so much, as it flipped end over end and eventually tumbled off the side of the moon, eventually breaking into pieces as it hit the atmosphere at a particularly unfortunate angle.

“Do we have a plan C?” Twilight Sparkle asked, staring at the mile-wide crater that was all the magic mirror showed.

===

Chance waved his arms frantically at the pegasus patrol that swooped down towards him and his volatile cargo. For his trouble, he got a spear rammed into his gut, where it failed to penetrate his hide and instead snapped the vacuum-weakened shaft. He dropped the reactor, dodged a kick, and started running away from the now-loose reactor core as fast as he could, two pegasi right on his tail. The third landed next to the odd-looking sphere and curiously poked it with a hoof…

“Well, that time only Chance died,” Tess said, backing away from the mirror as it melted into a puddle of molten glass.

“We can do better,” Chance said.

===

Chance paced back and forth, wringing his hands nervously. “So you’re sure this is going to work.”

“Yes,” Twilight Sparkle replied. “It worked flawlessly in mirror simulations, twice!” She waved at the two mirrors in question, where a pair of very much alive Pinkie Pies in party hats turned from their respective ‘hey, we didn’t die’ parties to wave back. “Also, we’re running out of time.”

“I’m ready when you are, Twilight,” Tess said.

Pinkie Pie was already wearing her party hat. “Ready!”

“Ready,” Twilight said, levitating a mirror that showed a view of the sky above the Here to Help.

“Set,” Tess said, hitting the button to eject the core.

Twilight followed its trajectory in her mirror, until it was at its peak. “Spike!” she said, her horn flashing as she whacked the sphere with a telekinetic smack.

Unlike the first test, it didn’t explode immediately. Unlike the second test, it didn’t explode a few seconds later. “Huh,” Twilight said. “That’s new.”

Chance looked extra calm as he leaned over to look in Twilight’s mirror. “Please tell me it’s at least going to land at a safe distance,” he said.

“Yooooou could say that,” Twilight said. “I missed the moon.”

Tess opened a window on the big screen, showing the planet below from the point of view of their last remaining probe. The continents were unfamiliar – it was still daylight in Equestria, so the moon was still hovering over the far side of the planet. “Well, the good news is it’s not going to land on any pony we know.”

Pinkie Pie blew a noisemaker. FWEEEE!

===

“They’re having way too much fun up there,” Thunder Lane said, taking another sip from his coconut as he stared up at the scary face on the moon from his hammock. The night air was pleasantly cool – nothing like the sweltering days – and the signal fire was burning away merrily without his help.

Ditzy sighed.

Thunder Lane looked over at his companion. “Still thinking we should try to get back up there?”

“It’s a lot closer than home,” she said. “But without anyplace to rest we’d never make it.” Her wings drooped.

“If you want, we can give it a try once I’m healed,” Thunder Lane offered, draining the rest of his drink. “Nother coconut, Ditz?”

“I don’t think there’s any cure for lazy-itis,” she grumbled, trudging over to pick up another of the fallen coconuts littering the beach. They should have started heading for home days ago. Well, one day ago. They should definitely get moving tomorrow!

“Hey, Ditzy, look! It’s a falling star!” Thunder Lane called out, rolling out of the hammock and pointing up into the sky. “Make a wish!”

Ditzy looked up and saw the star, which got brighter and brighter as they watched. “I wish Thunder Lane would get off his lazy tail so that we could head home and I could see my muffin again!” she snapped at it, or maybe at him.

The star streaked overhead, crashing into the side of the mountain that dominated the little island they’d been ‘stranded’ on. Everything lit up bright as day, and the two pegasi were tossed into the ocean by a searing shockwave. As they fluttered and splashed and pulled themselves up into the swirling, chaotic air, they could see that the top had been blown right off the mountain, revealing a glowing crater brimming with lava, that flowed out with a low rumbling sound, setting the jungle that crawled up the mountainside alight.

“Every pony run!” Thunder Lane shouted, and the two flew off as fast as they could to escape the building firestorm.

Comments

[terrycloth]

1091412 She did use magic to cheat. A lot.

Also, the Equestrian moon is like 200 times closer than our moon. It's lower than the orbits most sattelites use.

[Rowyn]

That was pretty hard on the copies. D:

I'm kinda with Tess about killing a copy of yourself being unethical. Yikes.

[terrycloth]

1092123 The worst thing about getting in the habit of killing off copies of yourself is that any copy you don't kill is going to know it's them or you!

[nemryn]

1092338
I have a very firm policy of never killing off any of my copies; that way, I know by symmetry that the real nemryn has a very firm policy of never killing me off.

[LittleSallyDigby]

OK. So Thunderlane and Ditzy are, in fact, fine. (In this reality.) That's good.
(And if they're chilling in the tropics somewhere and not leaving anytime soon, that leaves Derpy wide open to reappear at the last second and save the day. That's very good. (Un)Fortunately, that huge "thunderstorm" that's still waiting is made of shade clouds rather than thunderclouds, so the climax probably won't involve setting off any large-scale EMPs.)