[Metamorphosis]
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from life.”
On the third day of the second vision, Twilight nearly gave up hope on seeing Mainframe. She’d strained her eyes by constantly checking her peripheral vision, but the small grey pony hadn’t appeared anywhere.
At least I’m still learning about the future, and learning how to stop disasters more efficiently, she thought as she signed her name at the bottom of a piece of stationery. The missive was short and snappy; perfect to avert the disaster coming the next day. It read, “By royal decree of Princess Twilight Sparkle, this unsafe building is condemned. Trespassers will be prosecuted.”
“That should keep those tourists out. You’d think the obvious disrepair would have been enough to keep them from messing around there, but apparently not,” Twilight said to herself.
On her way to the abandoned warehouse to put up her notices, she stopped at a small deli for lunch. Twilight loved this deli and had eaten there almost every day during her previous vision of this week. She almost ordered ‘the usual’ before she realized she was a first-time customer in this timeline.
Twilight sat at one of the deli’s streetside tables with her food. She bit into the cabbage and toasted rye sandwich. The cashier had given Twilight a puzzled look when she asked for no cheese on the ‘grilled cheese and cabbage’ sandwich, but Twilight knew what she was doing; she had tried the normal version last week. She shuddered at the memory. Never again. It was so... cheesy…
She swallowed the tangy and tasty bite, then coughed in surprise as a voice spoke up from behind her.
“You have not changed your mane lately. I had thought that was part of your routine, but I must have been mistaken.”
Twilight twisted on her cushion and saw a pale grey mare behind her. Or at least, something like a mare. It had a soft jawline, but lacked any other femininity. A short slate-colored mane topped the youthful face.
“Mainframe?” Twilight squinted. “Is that you?”
The pony smiled. “You have figured out my name. I am glad. I have not quite figured out your kind’s ‘genders’, however.” Mainframe gestured at its body. It was more mature than its prior foal form, but still of indeterminate gender.
Twilight tilted her head. She wanted to ask ‘You can change your own appearance? And your gender?!’ but the answer to those questions was standing before her, clear as day. Instead she ventured, “So, you want to be a mare?”
Mainframe nodded. “As I have watched you, I found that I identify with the concept of femininity in your society. I have decided to be female as well.”
I guess that’s reason enough, Twilight thought. Her brow furrowed and she said, “Wait a second. That’s the second time you’ve said that you watched me. Don’t you watch any of these other ponies?” Twilight waved a hoof at the crowded avenue beyond.
Mainframe answered with a question, “Would you watch a stone wall while a river ran nearby?” Her eyes were focused on Twilight’s as she continued, “All the other ponies have been static fixtures. They live the same week in every possible timeline, eternally. You have been changing everything around you, changing yourself every day.”
While Twilight pondered that in silence, Mainframe added, “I have made sure to find the dreams that contain you. I have enjoyed guessing why you do the contradictory things you do. You seem to care for this city, but you did not pick up litter in your path. You risked yourself to save a pony one week, but then you let them die the next.” Mainframe stared into Twilight’s eyes, as if the answer was there. As if they could answer for her awful behavior.
Twilight swallowed hard. I must look like a monster to her. I come in to this world, do as I please, and leave without a second thought. This is exactly what Ginseng Rose warned us about.
“I do save them!” she replied, already on the defensive. “I find out what works in here, then I save them in the real world.” Tears gathered in her eyes and her throat clenched up. “I would never let them die…”
Mainframe stepped forward and put her face uncomfortably close to Twilight’s. “What does that mean? The ‘real world’?“
Twilight broke eye contact and leaned back as far as the table behind her would allow. “Where do I even begin?” After a moment she waved a hoof over her head and said, “Well, this is all a vision, just one potential future for my world. In the real world, there’s this big slate-colored machine that I can use to enter visions that cover the next seven days. When the vision ends, I use what I learned to help the ponies in my timeline.”
Twilight looked into Mainframe’s luminescent blue eyes. “We used to call the vision machine ‘the Object’, but now I think its name is Mainframe. I think it is you.”
Mainframe stood perfectly still. She didn’t blink or even seem to breathe for several seconds.
“Are you al—” Twilight started, but Mainframe turned on the spot and fled. She galloped away at full speed. She was gone around a corner before Twilight could rise from her cushion. “—right?” Twilight finished with a worried frown.
Twilight never saw the grey pony again.
That week concluded uneventfully and the vision ended. Back in the real lab, Twilight Sparkle sat slumped on the floor with the helmet between her hooves. “I should go back in,” she said aloud. “I don’t know if I can save everypony unless I do.”
She looked up at the massive glowing box before her, at Mainframe. “I’m sorry. I think I messed up. I said more than I should have and now you’re probably confused and hurt. And alone.”
Her magic enveloped the helmet and lifted it over her head. “I’m so sorry, Mainframe. I’m coming,” she whispered as she lowered the helmet and entered the vision.
Twice more Twilight returned to the real world, and twice more she donned the helmet and returned to the vision. In those two weeks, Mainframe never showed herself but Twilight never stopped looking.
Twilight optimized her actions in the vision and continued to refine her lifesaving technique. She jokingly called it “right place, right time,” or RPRT for short.
Twilight stepped out of the laboratory and closed the door behind her. I think I’m approaching the limit of what I can meaningfully gain from living this week, she thought. She started the long walk to her room. And it’s getting lonely in here.
She awoke at dawn on the fifteenth day. Something was different. The room had a faint floral scent she didn’t recognize; it came from a vase filled with fresh cut flowers on her nightstand. Those weren’t there the last four times I lived this day. Did I do something different before I went to sleep? Maybe I said something to a guard, and he had these sent up?
Twilight fell back into her morning routine and forgot about the flowers. After breakfast, she made her way to her first RPRT of the day: convincing a restaurant manager to throw away a shipment of potatoes that had gone green, and therefore toxic. While it wouldn’t technically save any lives, preventing 78 ponies from getting seriously ill seemed worthwhile.
Twilight couldn’t bring herself to skip a RPRT, even after she had mastered it. Not after what Mainframe had said about letting a pony die in the vision.
She already knew what to say to get the manager to act, “Green potatoes contain high amounts of a solanine, the same poison as nightshade. You wouldn’t want to poison your customers, would you? Just think of the lost business!”
Like the four visions prior, the manager apologized profusely for his near mistake and for inconveniencing a princess. He ordered the restaurant’s finest meal for her, potato-free of course, which Twilight gladly accepted.
As she ate the eggplant marinara and garlic bread, a different but familiar smell wafted over her. She sniffed at the air and tried to place it. Is that… the flower from this morning?
An unfamiliar mare sat down across Twilight’s table. She had a sky blue mane in a short bob-cut that flared out at chin level. Her coat was a warm yellow. The color combination reminded Twilight of the sky on a bright summer day.
Twilight was in the middle of chewing a large bite of eggplant so she merely raised an eyebrow at the Earth Pony.
“My apologies for interrupting your meal, Princess. I am Song Flower,” the mare said in a light sing-song voice. She bowed her head. “I wanted to thank you.”
Twilight took a moment to swallow her food and wipe her mouth with a napkin, then responded, “Thank me? What for?” Maybe I saved her last week in the real world? Though I’m surprised she didn’t approach me when I ate here in the last vision…
“Thank you for allowing me to know myself. Through your actions I have gained awareness. The knowledge you have given me has changed everything for me. For this world.”
Twilight’s jaw fell. “Mainframe?”
Song Flower smiled kindly but shook her head. “No longer. I am Song Flower now. Like my appearance, I chose this name for myself.”
“Oh? Why that name?” Twilight asked in an attempt to gain time to process these new developments.
A cryptic smile formed on Song Flower’s lips. “A song is a tale told along the vector of time. It may be repeated and relived, or changed and remixed. Do you see the parallel in your actions, Twilight?”
Twilight’s brow furrowed in thought, then she looked Song Flower in the eyes. They were still a light blue, but lacked their prior iridescence. After a moment, Twilight said, “Ah! Each week-long vision is like a song, and I’ve been repeating and changing those songs. Remixing them.”
“Exactly,” Song Flower said haughtily. Twilight was impressed by how quickly she acquired a personality of her own, even if it was proving a bit bothersome.
“And what about ‘Flower’? Does it have something to do with your perfume, and the flowers in my room this morning?”
“Not quite. Those came after. A flower is a plant, further removed from ponies in the tree of life than even insects or humans. But there is no doubt that it is alive, or that it is beautiful.”
Did she just say humans? How could she know about them? My journies to their world were never made public, Twilight fretted.
Song Flower didn’t notice Twilight’s state, or didn’t care. “Thank you again, Twilight, for opening my mind to the world, and opening worlds to me. I’ll be going now.”
Before Twilight could react, Song Flower disappeared. Where she had been was a black silhouette, a tear in space. The room became a flat painting, a canvas that was twisted and stretched to infinity as it was pulled into the hole. A familiar gut-wrenching feeling hit Twilight and she knew the vision was ending, though in catastrophic fashion. The world fell away and Twilight was alone in the emptiness.
She lifted her hooves to her head and removed the helmet that was and wasn’t there.
Twilight awoke on the floor of the laboratory. The helmet lay nearby. She knew at a glance that it would never function again; it was weathered and dented beyond recognition. Every rune on its surface had been rubbed away, as if by thousands of years of rain, wind, and sand.
She rose to her hooves, unsteady and exhausted. She turned toward the corner where the Object was. It was empty. The space Mainframe had once occupied was now open air. Twilight approached and saw the last evidence of its presence: a dust outline on the floor, eight feet by twelve feet.
One edge of the perimeter had been disturbed. A trail of hoofprints lead from the dust to the curtain that had enclosed the Object and beyond. Twilight followed them to a desk. A folded piece of paper sat upon the desk. Twilight lifted it and read the unsteady hoofwriting.
“Twilight Sparkle, you taught me that life is best when every moment is a surprise. Please live your life in the present.” It was signed ‘Song Flower’.
A few more faint hoofprints lead out of the lab, but they faded before long. Twilight continued up to the castle, and spoke to a guard on the way.
“Did you happen to see a yellow mare pass through here?”
“Oh yes, that was a few hours ago. She was very polite. She was lost and asked me to escort her to the main gate. We talked for a while but... I can’t remember what we talked about.” The guard removed his helmet and scratched at his scalp. “Huh, that’s really odd. It’s got that feeling, you know, like trying to remember a dream after you wake up.”
“Oh, I know that feeling better than you’d think. Thank you, sir,” Twilight said. She made the familiar trip back to her room, but this time was different. This time it was final.
As she settled into bed, Twilight wondered how she’d possibly explain this to the other researchers. “I guess I’ll have to wing it. No more practice runs for me,” she said with both relief and anticipation.
“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild.”
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Wait, was that Twilight saying that last line? Cause that doesn't sound like something Twilight would say.
6202501
The very last line (about birds) is meant to be a chapter outro, like the little intro quotes at the start of each chapter, not said by any character in the story.
I'll play with the formatting and try to make it clearer.
6204476 Ah ok, that makes sense.