Cosmo-logical
“Welcome to the Carousel,” Rarity said brightly. “Ever round and round we go. What brings Twilight Sparkle to my humble abode?”
“How did you know it was me?” Twilight Sparkle asked.
“Oh, I hate to reveal trade secrets, but as time goes by you get used to the feel of ponies. Anyway, I’ve been expecting that you would eventually show up looking something like that. It’s a bit of shame, though. You had such a gorgeous mane.”
“It’s a matter of convenience,” Twilight stated. “That's all. I’m sorry I didn’t let you know I would be visiting, but I was in the neighborhood and had the notion to drop by. I see you’ve been keeping busy.”
“It is always a pleasure to see old friends,” Rarity replied. “And yes. There is always work enough to occupy my talents. Would you like to see my latest effort?” She winked conspiratorially. “I admit I may have gone a little overboard with this one.”
Twilight studied the image Rarity displayed for a long while. “Impressive,” she declared.
“And?”
“It’s very nice.”
Rarity sighed theatrically. “I knew you wouldn’t care for it. What is it? Too much blue? Or too vivid a shade? Be honest. I've become better at taking criticism.”
“It’s fine, really,” Twilight insisted. Under Rarity’s skeptical gaze, she finally went on, “If you must know, I remember you used to produce works that would stand the test of time. But this is more flash than anything else. Anyone can see it isn’t going to last.”
“Not forever, no,” Rarity agreed. “Very little lasts forever.” She chuckled softly. “But I can promise this one is going to go out with quite the bang, and I am confident that the spectacle of it will validate my design choices.”
“As long as you're happy with it. I suppose I just don’t see the point of pageantry anymore.”
Rarity smiled. “You’ve become even more of a fuddy-duddy since last we saw each other. What is it you’ve been doing, exactly? If I may ask.”
“Contemplating the heat death of the universe,” Twilight replied matter-of-factly. “Trying not to think. Thinking about how best to do that. More of the same.”
“That miserable business again? Hm.” Rarity turned away from her work. “What can I do to cheer you up? If it would please you, I suppose I could create something a little more practical.” She set to work, humming softly to herself. When she was finished, she turned back to Twilight. “Et voilà! Plain. Yellow. Unembellished. The opposite of ostentation. Actually, it reminds me of another piece I made for you.”
“I like it. Really, I do,” Twilight said. “It brings back pleasant memories. But—”
“Good,” said Rarity. “Though it’s not terribly exciting, is it? Destined for a long and unexceptional existence, safely on the edge of nowhere exciting, finally to fizzle away quietly. A bit ho hum," Rarity declared. “Not as much fun as the big, bright ones.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve had fun,” Twilight said. “I can’t even imagine how I would go about it. Mostly, I feel tired.”
“I don’t see how,” Rarity observed, gesturing at Twilight with a foreleg. “How can this get tired?”
“Not physically. Men—well, not exactly mentally. You know what I mean!”
Rarity nodded. “You know, you are perfectly welcome to stay with me for a while, if you think it would make you feel better.”
“I doubt it. I just want to know what keeps you going. Why keep creating? Fundamentally, it's all meaningless. There's nothing new left. There's no one capable of appreciating your efforts. Worst of all, with every action you take, the total entropy of the system increases. The arrow only points in one direction: toward the cold and the quiet.”
Rarity shrugged. “I enjoy my work. I hope you haven’t come all this way just to go on about doom and gloom again. There must be a better place for fatalist rumination than the Carousel.”
“It isn’t doom and gloom,” Twilight insisted. “It’s a law of nature. Look; I’m not trying to stop you. I just want to know why you keep at it.”
“Perhaps I simply wasn’t built for quiet contemplation,” Rarity replied. “The impulse to keep moving and keep making is as strong in me as it ever was. I can’t envision ever stopping.”
“Though eventually you will. Eventually, there will no longer be any source of free energy with which to work. There will be total universal equilibrium. And us, presumably. Doesn’t that worry you?”
“Not presently,” Rarity replied tartly. “Anyway, I’m not sure that I entirely buy into your vaunted thermodynamics.”
“What? You can’t simply ignore the immutable laws of physics!”
Rarity narrowed her gaze.
“Ah. Well, I described the operative mechanisms for 'magic' long ago, as you know. At most, rules have been stretched but never broken. Certainly any energy expended in the form of magic still came at the price of increasing total entropy. That’s what you are doing, too. Creating anything only moves the universe closer to its inevitable end state.”
“We may have to agree to disagree,” Rarity said.
“How can you disagree?” Twilight asked, a touch of exasperation in her voice. “Are you going to propose an alternate model for the universe?”
“No.”
“Good!” Twilight shouted. “There is no alternative model!”
“If you insist on being so strident about it, I’ll have to make you one of those ‘The End is Nigh’ signs to carry around. But you’ll have to do it somewhere other than my home office.”
“You haven’t explained how you can possibly present a viable argument that creation serves a viable purpose.”
“It makes me happy,” said Rarity. “The universe is always in flux. There is something new and beautiful to seek out every day. Just as I always have, I aim to find the sublime beyond that which can be measured and calculated. When I create, there is a spark that comes from somewhere beyond your immutable laws.”
“That’s nonsense,” Twilight said. “I’m sorry, Rarity, but it is. All I want is something observable and testable that I can latch onto, to give me some justification or at least some understanding as to why you keep hanging your lamps in the darkness, when into darkness all must go.”
Rarity sighed. “Your mother never needed any scientific justification for bringing forth the day. And yet she chased away the darkness every morning without fail. I never heard her complain that it was pointless.”
“She wasn’t my mother, Rarity. Anyway, she’s long gone.”
“Wasn’t she? Goodness. My memory could use recompiling.”
“You remembered a single dress,” Twilight pointed out.
“My designs are saved in permanent storage, with numerous backups. I’d hate to forget any of them.”
“Your priorities are mind-boggling.”
“To you, perhaps,” said Rarity. “By the way, it is frustrating not to have any clue where I should be looking when I speak to you.”
“Anywhere is fine. This manifestation is undifferentiated,” said Twilight. “I want to be clear; I am in awe of what you’ve done with this galaxy. It’s phenomenal stuff. Manipulating a particle stream in the ergosphere of a ring singularity to siphon the energy to power your stellar ignition engine is genius.”
“Well that’s something nice, at least,” Rarity said. “And thank you, but I’m no Twilight Sparkle. It took a few hundred thousand years to get everything working and properly calibrated. Now, I assume there is a ‘but’ coming.”
“But,” Twilight continued. “Even this grand venture of yours has a lifespan. Once you have extracted the phenomenon’s angular momentum you will be left with a plain vanilla singularity, with no more energy that can be extracted. If you repeat the experiment a hundred times in a hundred galaxies it won’t matter how beautiful the stars and nebulae are, or how bright a beacon you can make from a quasar. You will merely have accelerated the processes which invariably lead toward the eventual dissolution of all matter into its basic components. The complete absence of energy. Every star you’ve birthed will burn out and grow cold. The frozen remains will dissolve into elementary particles. Those will decay; any remnants will be annihilated. Creation and beauty are ephemeral, pointless, and ultimately harmful.”
“Now you are striking at the core of what I am, and I don’t appreciate it,” Rarity retorted sharply. “If you want to embrace your dreary view of the universe than go right ahead. If you feel compelled to disperse your molecules or whatever you’ve got there across the void, I'm sure I can't stop you. But I don't think you would. I think you’re the one who is still afraid of the dark, Twilight Sparkle. If you must, go continue to dwell alone and inert while I decorate the starscape with a billion points of light and color, each different from the last. And you know, I don't care if sounds vain; in my heart I believe the work I am doing is saving the universe, not harming it.”
“If you really think so, explain. Scientifically.”
“Scientifically!" Rarity repeated. "Fine. You want to observe? To test? Then look around you. Look back at what was. Imagine what is to come. Grant to me, Twilight Sparkle, that you believe the universe began at a point of equilibrium. Of entropy.”
“Granted, more or less.”
“And then equilibrium was no more. Particles appeared. Those elementary particles diversified. Matter and energy. The universe expanded. The universe expanded further. It continues to expand. Granted?”
“Granted.”
“Stars appeared, long before I had anything to do with it. Great bunches of them in every color and configuration. Profuse star clusters out of the dust and gas of the void. Galaxies, irregular or beautifully symmetrical. Nebulae. Planets. Moons. Rocks.”
“Yes.”
“And life! Provide organic compounds with an energy gradient and eventually it will appear. Amoebae, fungi, trees, fish, horses, and then ponies. Then us, Twilight, still here after all these years. Think of six friends coming together and becoming so much more than the sum of their parts. Your thermodynamics would have the universe be a melting ice cube, when the reality is nine billion years of geometrically increasing complexity, of the spontaneous generation of greater structure, of miracles out of the primordial soup. Certainly the old will always give way to the new, but that’s fashion for you. What empirical evidence do you have that such a wondrous trend will ever reverse?”
“The others are gone now,” Twilight said quietly.
Rarity laughed. “They’re not gone, you silly thing. They’re just not here. I should think you’ve seen enough over the years to understand a simple concept like that. You’ve stepped into other frames before. And I presume you know that one of the quirks of rotating singularities is that they can act as gateways to other places and times. The things I have seen!”
“Pinkie Sense,” Twilight muttered. “Fine. I observe a universe characterized by a history of increasing complexity and continued expansion. Now, justify it without violating Fig’s Second Law.”
Rarity took a deep breath. “Alright, Darling. With the caveat that I am just a mare and have no special insight into the unknown; I believe that the universe is fundamentally good. No matter whence existence came, the universe is observably growing, and that growth provides opportunity. Radiative energy. Thermal differentials. It is irrelevant that total entropy must increase and is increasing, because the first great spark of creation continues to glow, ensuring that maximum possible entropy increases immeasurably more quickly. It is the same spark that glows within us. And so, the future that so troubles you need never come to pass.”
“In other words, the expansive nature of a growing universe guarantees a widening gap between the present entropy value and that required for final equilibrium?”
“Yes. With a little help from its friends, perhaps,” Rarity said, smiling. “Elements of harmony able to ward against any agents of chaos that should appear from time to time.”
“I—hm. I will have to think about this.”
“Do that,” Rarity said. “I hope you will decide that entropy is overrated. I hope you won’t resign to it, and that you will come to believe, as I do, that creation and creativity, its lifeblood, are the ultimate forces in the universe. That beauty and harmony are worth chasing, Fig’s Laws be damned.”
Twilight made a sound like a sigh. Not a sigh exactly, because such a thing was beyond the capacity of a floating agglomeration of pure thought, but close enough. “Okay."
"Okay? Well, good."
"Maybe," Twilight began tentatively, "if I am to come around to your point of view, then just for fun, maybe you could show me how to make something with this?”
Rarity brightened visibly, her inner light reflecting off the crystalline interior of the Carousel. “Certainly! I thought you’d never ask. Truly. Now, why don’t we start with something simple, along the main sequence. And after, perhaps tea?”
Twilight would have reddened, but she could not. “I don’t really drink,” she said.
“Ah. Well, perhaps you could join me anyway? The others will be along.”
Twilight almost popped out of phase. “Really? But they can’t be here! You admitted they weren’t.”
Rarity rolled her eyes. “I said they weren’t here now. But they will be, Darling. They will be, if you can be patient. We have all the time in the universe.”
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I admit I didn't understand very well their discussion, but some things I did get and they are beautiful. Why create anything at all if nothing is new? Why try to live if you are simply going to die? Beauty and harmony do seem like very good choices. Creation and creativity really do seem like very good purposes.
Aye, Rarity.
Entropy ain't what it used to be.
I'm not really sure how I feel about this. I had a hard time getting a feel for the discussion the two were having because of the lack of description at the beginning; I realize that this was a purposeful design choice due to what we learn over the course of the story, but it made it much more difficult for me to get into the story and the conversation that the two are having.
Also, people who act like Twilight did in this chapter annoy me. Infinitely so.
In the end I think this story deserves a thumbs up from me. It made me think a little bit about the heat-death of the universe, if nothing else.
Wait a second. Blue and yellow? This may not be a metaphor at all. It'd certainly explain why Twilight's contemplating the heat death of the universe...
Yes, because thermodynamics best applies to a system of largely indistinguishable, low-mass particles, like a room full of gas. The universe as a whole is better considered gravitationally, where equilibrium is a big clump rather than a diffuse haze. This is what happens when you use the wrong model.
In all, a nice little story of humongous scope. It's sad to see how much Twilight forgot in her entropic solitude. Magic may be quantifiable, but friendship isn't. And if you think the best thing to do is nothing at all, why even exist? But she has at least one friend to remind her, and maybe more. They have time to wait and see.
(Also, I only just noticed Rarity's face in the story image.
)
Heh. Misattributions or no, I see what you did there.
D'aww.
Okay, fine. I smiled. You win this one, Ponydora! ::shakes fist::
Well, Twilight sure is a wet blanket, isn't she? Rarity has some cosmically impressive arguments for creation, and really what better advocate for it could there be? I'd like to think her off-hand gift to Twilight was our own little number, even if she prefers the big, bright ones...
Twilight Sparkle, superintelligent shade of the colour lavender.
This seems rather fitting....
______________________________________________________________
When the last eagle flies over the last crumbling mountain
And the last lion roars at the last dusty fountain
In the shadow of the forest though she may be old and worn
They will stare unbelieving
at the last unicorn
When the first breath of winter through the flowers is icing
And you look to the north and a pale moon is rising
And it seems like all is dying and would leave the world to mourn
In the distance hear the laughter
of the last unicorn
I'm alive,
I'm alive
When the last moon is cast over the last star of morning
And the future has passed without even a last desperate warning
Then look into the sky where through the clouds a path is torn
Look and see her how she sparkles,
it's the last unicorn
I'm alive,
I'm alive
5678972
Damn, this is exactly what i was thinking as i finished the story and then your post was the first one after it when i read it. My mind was blown.
Also, I'm so happy you're back right now, Ponydora.
That's telling gloomy ol' Twilight, Rara.
The physical act of creating art may not push back entropy--perhaps nothing does--but the decision to share that art with the world and let it inspire and further transform itself in the minds of those experiencing it sure seems like it must be a victory of sorts for creation. Much as you've done here. So, thank you for writing and sharing and helping beat back entropy a little more.
This story is reminiscent of Isaac Asimov's The Last Question as told by ponies...
Maybe Rarity and Twilight could create the Equestrivac to provide a solution for the entropy problem?
5678967
I guess that makes Rarity a Hooloovoo?
5679630
I'd like to think they'll figure it out in time. And hey, this is a bit like Mr. Asimov's story! Neat.
5678967
Pretty much!
The first billion years are always the hardest.
Aww, Rares! You fight that entropy. Sometimes we all get a little too Twilighty and not enough Sparkley, and then the deep dark "what's the point" questions start piling up. Thanks for helping us all chase the gloom away. I love the fashion vs star creation comparisons, hahaha! And love that she stood up for herself and all that is Art and Creation. Frivolous it may seem, but art is what defines us and makes things worth living. Thank you for another fine contribution to the worth of life, Ponydora!
It seems like Rarity sides with Freeman Dyson, sort of!
Dyson's eternal intelligence
...well, that was interesting. I like how the question of what Rarity is creating is slowly answered over the course of the story.
I wrote a review of this story. It can be found here.
I create beauty and bring joy to others as a way of saying fuck you to this shitty universe with its inflexible laws and zero energy density. My flights of fantasy are orders of magnitude better than this stupid crippled retarded reality. Sure the universe will kill me and cover up the evidence so nobody will know that it wasn't the best of all possible worlds, but it's not like anybody will be listening anyway. Might as well pretend they're listening now, so I can shout my pretend stuff at them and show them why everything is terrible. My frozen corpse is sticking its tongue up at the sky because reality is a horrible failure, and none of this shit should even have existed.
Who's to say that, even if Twilight is right, that this hasn't happened before? Endless cycles and all that. Don't be a downer, Twi.
alltheragefaces.com/img/usercreated/5035fd53e9c64.png
Sorry about that. I just can't help it.
I do apologize good sir for what is about to take place. This is not me promoting myself but rather just a big coincidence. Observe
I really enjoyed this, as for all of your work. But this is probably the one with the most time-wimey stuff. Anyhoo, I look forward to what you write in the future. I give this: 5/5
Although, as a beloved fan of Douglas Adams, this story reminded me rather faintly of some of his more bizarre work.
- A
Excellent story, set in the far future of the Poniverse. It very much reminds me of my "Poniternity" concept, in which the Mane Six all ascend to become Alicorns and then the Ponies as a whole rise to become the Guardians of their Multiverse -- allies of the Cosmic Concepts against the Night Shadows and other major threats.
Interestingly, the specific despair to which Twilight almost surrenders in this story is similar to the motivating philosophy of the Night Shadows, who have answered the question of what to do to stave off entropy with "plunder and devour other Universes." Twilight Sparkle, though, is still a moral being and would not do any such thing. I'm also glad to see that your Rarity is still, fundamentally, an artist.
5679310
The impulse to create art stems from creativity in general, which is exactly the sort of lateral thinking which can lead the way out of energy dearths by identifying alternate ways of generating or using energy. Mind you, with a massively-augmented Twilight Sparkle thinking on the problem already -- and there is no reason to assume that she's the only one so thinking -- the solution may not be an easy one.
But hey -- the later techs on the tree always cost the most lightbulbs.
Hey,
It's been nearly two years since you were last seen so it's likely you may not see this, but who knows, maybe you'll login to reminiscence. In any case, I literally made this account to send you this message and comment on a few of your works to ask you if you have written/published any books. I adore your writing and would love to support your work. I have been a big fan of 'The Flight of the Alicorn" for years now, I recently just reread it to reminisce in your amazing story telling. I'm an adult now, which is a wild thought. But yeah. I've got the means to indulge in what I love. I love your writing, if you ever write any books please let me know.
*coughs up a lung*
I'm sorry, what? Did I miss something? What? WHAT???
I am so confused. I am massively confused.
And also, Rarity's argument implodes when applied to the real world.
8969180 Clearly the Elements ascended to Alicorns, and then further to Cosmic Entities of pure energy, able to manipulate space and time on a galactic scale.
10348686
Clearly. XD
stupid. Rarity's words are complete nonsense.
Twilight actions are not logins
Reminds me of existentialism, in that this also uses the idea that life creates its own meaning merely by existing.