Paradox Explained
Twilight opened the TARDIS door, and stepped inside, just ahead of the Doctor.
She almost ran into Spike, heading out.
“Spike?” she asked. “I thought you were going to stay in the TARDIS?”
Spike crossed his arms. “I was worried,” he said. “You weren't coming back... I was going to look for you.”
Twilight smiled, and nuzzled the little dragon. “Spike,” she said, “you know why you couldn't come with. A dragon – even a baby dragon – in old Everfree City would have caused a massive panic. Ponies could have been hurt. It could have been a disaster.”
“It was a disaster,” said the Doctor, closing the door behind himself. “It's hard to see how Spike could have made things any worse, exactly.”
“I... still don't know what I did wrong, Doctor,” said Twilight, meekly. “I saw a way to get Laughter back without causing any more prob-”
“Do not finish that sentence.” The Doctor pointed a hoof at Twilight. “You didn't need to get Laughter back, and you caused massive problems up and down the timeline!”
Twilight frowned. “I... don't get it.”
“What exactly did you do?” asked Spike.
“I managed to trigger Paradox's time machine,” said Twilight, “sending him back to Discord's time again. Since Laughter couldn't travel through time, it was left behind.” She turned to face the Doctor. “But, Doctor, without Laughter, Celestia wouldn't have the Elements of Harmony. Nightmare Moon could have defeated her, easily.”
The Doctor rolled his eyes. “You're an alicorn, idiot!” he snapped. “Nightmare Moon could perhaps have defeated Celestia, but she could never have defeated the two of you working together!”
He stomped over to the TARDIS' controls and started flicking switches and pulling levers.
“Oh. I... didn't think of that,” admitted Twilight. “But then... wait. I couldn't have done that. I saw their whole battle before, with Zecora's potion. Since I didn't see myself -”
“Time,” snapped the Doctor, “is not as linear as you think. A few minor things might have changed in your memories, anything bigger we could have gone on to sort out on a case-by-case basis.”
“Soooo... you can't sort out whatever problems Twilight just caused?” asked Spike.
The Doctor snorted. “We've done what we can already!”
Spike blinked, twice, and raised a claw to tap on his chin. “I'm... not quite seeing the problem,” he admitted. “What exactly did Twilight cause?”
The Doctor pulled down a particularly large lever with his mouth, and then stepped back from the controls. Twilight could hear the strange sound of the TARDIS launching. “Paradox,” he said.
“I caused a paradox?” asked Twilight.
“Not a paradox,” said the Doctor. “Paradox. Big grey stallion with a time machine on his wrist. You caused him.”
Twilight and Spike shared a look of mutual bafflement.
“How?” asked Twilight. “How could I have possibly caused him?”
The Doctor threw his forelegs up in the air. “Oh, for crying out loud, do I have to spell it out for you?” he asked.
“Um , yes please?” said Spike.
The Doctor glared at Spike, but complied. “Paradox,” he said, “is a time loop.”
“He's what?” asked Twilight.
“A time loop. Round and round he goes, repeating the same events time after time after time. He doesn't have a beginning, he doesn't have an end, he just goes around through the same set of actions again and again and again! First he finds himself in Discord's era, he loses his time machine and then manages to wait around until Discord's defeat, rebuilds the machine, travels to the future to try to kill you in retaliation for your having trapped him in Discord's time, goes back to try to kill you as a baby, then tries to crash my TARDIS when it's damaged, then goes further back to try to arrange Nightmare Moon's victory so that there isn't even a world for you to exist in... and then you do something completely stupid and send him back to Discord's era, starting the whole loop over again!”
Spike frowned and raised a claw. “Wouldn't he get older every time round the loop, until he died of old age?” he asked.
“Weren't you listening?” asked the Doctor. “He doesn't age he doesn't learn he can't be injured – he doesn't change.”
“Wait a minute,” said Twilight. “You're saying he tried to kill me in retaliation for me sending him back to Discord's time? Doesn't that mean that Discord managed to change him – at least his goals?”
“No, it does not,” said the Doctor, firmly. “His goal was always to kill you, and thus to not exist. In all of his cycles, that never changes.”
“Soooo...” said Spike, “does that mean that every time he gets out of Discord's era he's going to make a new attempt on Twilight's life?”
“No,” said the Doctor. “It means that every time he gets out of Discord's era he's going to make the exact same attempt on Twilight's life. The same place, the same time. We know she survives it.”
“That memory,” said Twilight, with sudden realisation. “When we were in Discord's era, and he remembered where Discord was going to throw those fire balloons. It was never your memory – it was his own memory, from a previous loop!” She frowned. “But wait, does that mean he was learning from his own memory?”
“No,” said the Doctor, “he didn't learn anything that he hadn't already – and always – known. If you had just been able to keep your hooves off that strawberry milk flower, none of this would ever have happened! You would have been able to live out your entire life without having to deal with any crazed time-travelling assassins, I would never have crash-landed and been forced to take on an identity as a clockmaker, and Paradox wouldn't be trapped in the age of Discord for all eternity! Aside from that, everything would have been exactly the same, or at least fixable!”
“Oh, I don't know about that,” said the flower still in Twilight's mane, speaking in Discord's voice.
There was a long moment of silence.
“You don't need to look at my flower like that,” said the flower, the petals moving like a mouth. “I still can't time travel, this is just a recording. And no, I can't hear you, but I do have access to Twilight's diary, and she certainly wrote about this conversation in detail! Anyway, I just wanted to say that, when you get back to the present, you might just want to talk to me about a number of side-effects of Paradox's existence that you're not aware of quite yet.”
The flower grinned in the approximate direction of the Doctor, and then fell limp, its message delivered.
Spike shakily raised one claw to point at it. “Are you really sure it's a good idea to keep that thing in your mane?” he asked, nervously.
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But wouldn't history have remembered Celestia's backup?
Well, no, not if the Doctor asked her to make sure it didn't.
Paradox's nature is really flummoxing me. I can understand a causal loop, with effects leading to their own causes, but not a living loop with no true beginning. I want to ask how Paradox got into this mess, but that's obviously the wrong kind of question... and yet it just doesn't click. When did he become unchanging? Why is he convinced that he is the Doctor? And would the changes that the Doctor lists really have been that simple? After all, an unchanging digestive tract means that the Element of Laughter would be stuck in Paradox's gut, and without that, the Tree of Harmony would've been in dire straits in a millennium or so.
5712553
Wow, you're fast.
At about the same time as he got into this mess; or, in other words, he's always been unchanging.
I never said he's sane. But on some level, he recognises that he's trapped in a loop, which is why he goes absolutely ballistic if the Doctor so much as hints at them not being the same person.
No
. To be fair, Paradox's unchanging digestive tract would have been erased from time, so that at least wouldn't have been a problem...
...you know, the most annoying thing about being an occasional Doctor Who fan is that any time the series does something incomprehensible, "wibbly wobbly timey wimey" is brought out. This fic fits right in there next to one of Eleven's nonsensical season finales. A closed time loop without an originating event. The logical part of my brain needs ice cream. Lots of ice cream.
Hm. I'm not sure why the Doctor is so upset, if everything he says is true the problem with Paradox is resolved now. Sure, it was a hassle dealing with his various assassination attempts, but since he's a time-looped ontological paradox he can never try anything other than those assassination attempts and Twilight survived them all.
5712620
This is definitely a story that could only be written with time travel.
I hope you find your ice cream...
5713010
The Doctor's upset because he wants to save everyone. It is now (probably) impossible for the Doctor to save Paradox. Moreover, Paradox is going to be spending an infinite amount of time going through horrible torture at the mismatched limbs of a pre-reformation Discord.
Sure, he's a killer and a villain and an all-round bad guy, but nopony deserves that.
5713060 Hm. I wouldn't say Paradox is spending an infinite amount of time experiencing that. Those memories and events only exist once, it's a finite amount of time. No worse than just experiencing it once IMO. The only downside is that Paradox can never experience anything else, but that's no different than if Twilight had simply killed him. I guess this is one of those philosophical puzzlers on which reasonable people can differ. :)
5713060
Because it's a time loop, he already has. (Assuming everything is as it appears to be right now)
Yep. Got it, at least as far as Paradox being a self-defined causal loop.
But Spike showing up in the TARDIS out of nowhere? ...
7301735
He was there all along. Seriously.