Chapter 5
Black Lotus
Chapter 5
There were spheres, moving through the nothingness of a black empty vacuum. They raced in circular orbits, moons around planets, and planets around stars, and many stars scattered about the vast emptiness. Every one of them was held up on a rod, attached to a gear. Every gear was enmeshed with other gears, all connected but somehow not touching. The motion of each one was deterministic based on the motion of all the others, interlocking in an unfathomable machine woven through everything.
Twilight moved in closer to one of the star systems, willing herself toward it through the endless expanse. She approached but discovered that the planet she aimed for wasn't in any one spot. Instead, it was there but not there—everywhere at once but in no particular place. It had an orbit that was exact and perfect but only in a diffuse shell of probability all around the center it circled, just a confusing thin blur of non-definition. The gear attached to it was stuck motionless, teeth aligned to a position on an indicator that showed a spherical locus.
For eons the system floated alone in the dark, until another one just like it drifted along, surrounded by a similar cloud-orbiting planet in no single spot. The two came closer. They bumped into each other. The gears for each planet suddenly snapped over to a new position, a new indicator for a new sort of probability cloud that both now occupied at the same time, sharing the bizarre orbit.
But that doesn't make sense. They should have smashed together and been destroyed. How could...?
Realization dawned on her that the model wasn’t what she thought it was. These weren't planets or star systems. She had the sense of scale almost exactly backwards.
Small. These were small, not large. They were so small that they were individual atoms. She was watching electrons around atomic nuclei. The two of them shared a covalent bond now, and a simple molecule had just been born.
When it happened, the gears didn't turn in smooth motions from one position to another, they instantly snapped into discrete states, the teeth not passing through the space between. They could do this, she saw now, because weren't actually gears, they were really just numbers, quantities. They were counters.
They were information.
That's what all of this was, these electrons, the nuclei they orbited, the particles inside the nuclei, everything around. They weren't here, they were all just information, piles of numbers.
She could see them suddenly, too, now that she knew what she was looking at. They were in a table, a three-dimensional lattice of tiny cubes that filled all of space, and every cube with a number inside it.
The electrons were gone, the atoms had vanished. There was nothing actually there but the simulated representation of them, numbers that changed in complex cascades, creating immense phenomenological effects through the interplay of simple parts with simple rules.
Twilight tried to look down at her own hooves, and found that they were the same substance, or lack of it, nothing but numbers describing probabilities that collapsed into deterministic certainties as she moved her legs and they passed through the lattice of information-space in a wave of trillions of interacting, changing digits. Her entire being was just data in some sort of ever-changing spreadsheet of an entire universe.
It was all there but it was all an illusion, and it felt real because she was inside it and couldn't tell the difference, but she knew...
None of it was real.
It never had been.
Her eyes snapped open. She found herself at her favorite desk in her palace library with her head lying on the pages of a thick book. Lifting herself up and pushing back her mane to get it out of her face, she looked down at the tome. She half expected, and half feared, to see it filled with a mind-numbing vast numerical table that stretched away beyond comprehension. To her relief, she found that it was just the regular printed text that was supposed to be in this volume on advanced theoretical thaumokinetics she'd been reading earlier in the evening. Things seemed solid and real enough again... for now.
The magically powered reading lamp she used at night was still glowing, but it was very dim, the crystal power source nearly drained of energy. It must have been on for hours, because the last thing she recalled about it was that it had been at full brightness on a fresh charge. How long have I been sleeping here? She wondered through the groggy haze of tiredness.
A glance over at the grandfather clock standing against the wall, and a quick light spell to illuminate it, showed that it was just barely past four in the morning.
Twilight was annoyed by that discovery, because she found herself not seeing any good options about what to do now at this hour. It was still dark outside and good little ponies were all getting their much needed rest like she should be, but on the other hoof, going to bed at this point hardly seemed worth it, close as it was to morning—and close as the lingering images of that dream still were. She wasn't about to risk seeing that again right away, not if she could help it.
What she really wanted to do, she decided, was get out of here and clear her head.
A well-practiced silencing spell, often used in late-late nights and early-early morning hours, quieted her hoofsteps on the hard crystal floor so that she could walk through the halls without disturbing Spike. There was no reason for him to have to lose sleep for her nightmares.
The front door of the palace, when she reached it a few moments later, was likewise opened with a sound-suppressing modified version of telekinetic magic. After exiting and closing it again behind herself, she took to the air, flew up to a flat area on the palace roof, and landed there.
The moon was low in the western sky and would soon be ready to set and end the night. It looked huge near the horizon, glowing bright with a pale yellow-orange color. She watched it creeping lower minute by minute, while she took in the cool misty pre-dawn air in a slow, steady rhythm of breaths that calmed her.
After a little while, she heard soft sounds of feathered wings flapping in the air. Twilight turned to look for them, and saw a large dark shape coming in, one with trailing streamers of indigo magic just barely visible against the night sky. They had pinpoint twinkling lights of a field of stars enmeshed in them.
The shape approached the roof and flared its wings, air-braking off forward momentum and dropping down for a delicate, graceful landing on four hooves. Pretty teal colored eyes and a white crescent moon symbol set against a jet black torque were visible now.
"May I join you?" Luna's voice was clear but kept in check, spoken in a soft volume suitable for the early hour.
Twilight was a little taken aback by sudden unannounced arrival and wondered why the Princess of the Night would show up so spontaneously, but after a moment of thought she came to the realization that the reason was fairly obvious.
"You saw?" Twilight asked in a meek voice.
Luna nodded. "I saw." She started walking toward Twilight, stopping a short distance away. The two of them stood facing each other.
"I've read that dream interpretation can be kind of tricky sometimes," Twilight said, not quite able to meet Luna's eye, "but I'm guessing this one was pretty straightforward."
"It... was one of the easier cases lately," Luna said sympathetically, with a wry smile.
"Yeah..." Twilight sighed. "I try not to think too much about it, you know, but sometimes, it still gets to me. Can't help it."
"Is it anything you would like to talk about?" Luna asked.
"No." Twilight shook her head, but abruptly stopped. "Well... actually... yes."
"Oh?" Luna sat down next to Twilight and listened, the two of them side by side on the roof watching the slowly sinking moon.
"I know that it's just a hypothesis." Twilight spoke slowly and softly. "I know that it can't be proven. Being completely logical and completely rational, I know that we can never really know."
Luna nodded.
"But feelings don't work that way, do they?" Twilight asked. "Intellect can't just tell them not to choose, not to exist in one state or another. They don't have superposition or a middle ground, just a razor's edge that fences off the two sides of a question—and emotions and gut feelings are lousy gymnasts. They can't stay balanced on the edge of a razor, they always fall to one side or the other."
"And to what side of the question at hoof do you find your feelings falling?" Luna asked softly. She moved over a little closer to Twilight.
"I find myself believing that it's true," Twilight said. "I can try to pretend to be logical and say I don't feel either way, but that's a lie. When it comes down to it and I'm honest with myself, that's what I really think about the idea that it's all a simulation of some kind. I think it's true."
"And has this been troubling you?" Luna asked.
"Well... yes and no," Twilight said. "It's worse in my head than in my heart. It's surprising because I thought it would be the other way around: I thought my intellect would be more accepting because there's no sense in fighting against what the evidence says, but my emotions would have trouble because of the loss that comes with thinking that things aren't real. Instead... the opposite happened."
"How so?" Luna asked.
"I guess my mind doesn't really know what to think about it or what exactly it means if it's true, and I'm still trying to figure that out," Twilight said. "But my feelings about the things that actually matter to me? Those really didn't change at all. I was worried that what you warned me about might happen, but it never did."
"No?" Luna asked.
"It never made my friends feel unimportant or unreal," Twilight told her. "It never took them away. I didn't let it. If anything, it only made me realize even more how important they are. Things like my flying lessons with Rainbow Dash, and helping Applejack bring in the apple harvest on her farm—and yesterday, I took some time off just to spend with Spike, and I think it might be the first time in a long time that I didn't take having him around for granted. It's something I've really needed, and I didn't realize how much until this happened. In some ways, it's actually made me a better pony."
"I see," Luna said.
"It's just like what you said," Twilight continued. "What is 'real'? It's what you make of it. Nopony can tell me that all the good things I've shared with all the good ponies I've known didn't happen or didn't matter. They're the only things that matter. I realized that I don't care where they happened."
"Then it sounds as if I had nothing to be worried about." Luna smiled and wrapped one wing around Twilight's back. "On the contrary, you’ve done well to make an opportunity for growth out of a crisis."
"Thanks to your good advice," Twilight said, and nodded with a smile. “You were right. Love is an anchor that holds me in place against doubt."
"That is a relief to hear you say," Luna said.
"Sorry if you wasted the trip out here for nothing," Twilight apologized. "I didn't mean to cause a false alarm. I just can't always control what I dream."
"I suppose not." Luna shook her head. "But do not feel sorry. Nopony can. I have no regret, besides. What sort of a friend would be I be if I did not come when I thought you might need help?"
"Thanks," Twilight said. “That means a lot.”
"It is my pleasure," Luna said. "I would be happy to stay a little longer, too, if you would like."
Twilight nodded in silent assent.
The two of them watched the sky for a while, leaning against each other side by side in comfortable silence. Twilight enjoyed the contrast of the chilled air with the warmth radiated by her companion. The night wore on, closer and closer to dawn.
"Not to sound ungrateful, but should you be here, with morning about to start?" Twilight asked eventually. "Don't you and Celestia need to coordinate changing from night to day? I don't want to keep you from anything important..."
"Do not be concerned over that," Luna said. "It was an uneventful night, and there was nothing that demands a turnover in person. All that is required is that I yield the sky and complete the lowering of the moon on time, and that may be done easily enough from anywhere. This is important. My sister will understand."
With those worries alleviated, Twilight enjoyed the quiet of the early morning for a little while longer.
"Hard to think that one flower could lead to so many questions," she mused.
"Indeed." Luna nodded, a slow and somber motion. "Whatever did happen to that lotus?"
"Oh." Twilight shrugged. "I got rid of it after a couple weeks. It was just sitting around collecting dust, so I decided I might as well either put it to use or clear out the clutter. I ran a few destructive tests on it just out of curiosity to try to find out some things I hadn't been able to determine without them. There wasn't much left after it was all done."
"And what was learned?" Luna asked.
"Apparently, it was just an ordinary flower," Twilight said. "As far as I can tell, anyway. I never could figure out what caused the blackbody effect or why it didn't seem to wilt. I doubt I ever will."
"Some dreams do have a tendency to defy being explained," Luna said.
"That they do." Twilight agreed. She studied the moon on the western horizon and smiled, admiring the beauty of its light shining bright against the darkness of the sky. "That they do."
The End
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Glad to see this posted, and to watch it evolve from that first draft. Great job here, Winston! :)
6491281 Thanks! The story owes a lot to your help through the whole process.
*mashes like button into dust*
Very nice. I feel honored to assist with the birth of this baby.
There are some things in the universe, most things in fact, we will never understand. Just like the machines of ever increasing accuracy Luna and Twi discussed, our minds aren't perfectly aligned with every tiny little piece of quark-sized information.
Yes, we might not understand why the flower seemingly absorbs all light to become a true black. But it will live and die just like everything else, and that is one thing we know for sure. There is nothing that has ever lived that hasn't or will not die. That is life. So whatever we know as true may as well be, as what would it matter to us if it wasn't? We would never know anyway.
We all have lives to live, and we don't have the time to waste our lives worrying over things that may never affect us. These pastries taste really good...
Great philosophical piece. Though, Twilight seems to have missed the point. She can now manifest into existence literally whatever she wants. Seems eerily similar to the effects of a certain forbidden tome...
A pony-ish take on one of the more interesting (to my mind) puzzles. Well done!
6492178 Twilight Sparkle has learned the secret syllable of royalty: CHIM.
Nice to see this here.
My thoughts on the core content haven't really changed, I think, since we talked about that earlier draft, but I think that this is a much better presentation. Somewhat blatantly didactic in tone, of course, but, well, it's that sort of story. :)
Have you read 'Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy' by Stanislaw Lem? If not I strongly recommend to do so and then look into his nonfictional pieces like 'Summa Technologiae' It touches similar things, maybe you can retell the stories with ponies to greater effect.
Actually they can work like that, it's just rather unhealthy. Much like believing six impossible things before breakfast it's not impossible to chose to force to feel one way or another. It just takes staggering amounts of voluntary doublethink.
But back on topic, well, on the plus side for her mental health she managed to avoid questioning everypony else's existence as well as just the world. Just thinking that all beings live in a simulation is not as nearly as bad as thinking that you are the only real being in existence. :P
6495012 Thinking you're the only real person to exist in the universe is pretty scary! I've considered doing a story from a character with a perspective of solipsism, but it always comes to a very dark end in one way or another.
Nice story, and a nice way to see Twilight coping with the whole 'Are we real?' question that sometimes pops up. Also fun to see her subconscious trying to develop the electron cloud model of how atoms interact. (I figured it was atoms when the 'orbit' was described the way it was at first.)
I have to do a chem assignment but now have quantum physics on the mind. Also I wondered what would happen if dream-twilight and actual-twilight swapped places. Would the dream "host" simply transfer to dream-twilight and make dream-twilight into actual-twilight for all intensive purposes?
I also have a funny though on the practical applications of sleep-summoning as shown. She can quite literally dream up an army if needed.
I do hope the see some more of Sunburst soon, btw.
Clicked expecting some relation to the Magic: The Gathering card XD
Ended up being much better than that could ever be! Thanks ^^ Great job!
6496549 Ha! Yeah, I expected someone to make the M:TG comment a lot sooner. But you're right, it has nothing to do with the card.
And you're welcome. I really enjoyed writing this one.
Does this mean that this story is on Equestria Daily?
6499596 No, actually, it wasn't posted there. I'm just crediting the pre-readers since they provided feedback that led to significant improvements being made.
Fair warning: Do not read this story while drunk and/or high.
Kudos for diving deeper into the rabbit hole than any other pony author that I can recall — and deeper than most original-fiction authors, too. I wonder what other under-appreciated gems you've written?
Her only limit is her imagination, and she makes a black flower?
6545481 Thanks!
Reminds me a bit of the ending of Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger
" I myself have no existence; I am but a dream—your dream, a creature of your imagination. In a moment you will have realized this, then you will banish me from your visions and I shall dissolve into the nothingness out of which you made me.
"In a little while you will be alone in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes without friend or comrade forever—for you will remain a thought, the only existent thought, and by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But I, your poor servant, have revealed you to yourself and set you free. Dream other dreams, and better!"
Twilight better hope that reality is part of an impersonal machine. It could be so much worse if there is a personality instead. What happens if said personality is cruel and sadistic and seeks to mess with reality for their amusement?
(That cartoon still bothers me to this day...)
I love the smell of nihilism rejection in the morning! >8V
6706144 Yeah, it made for a better story than having Twilight give up, have Rarity made her a funeral dress and black veil, turn goth, and wander around Ponyville chain-smoking and telling everypony how nothing is real and life is just empty suffering for no reason until you die.
6706164
Are you kidding, this is a perfect AU. Go crackfic and write the hell out of it! :V
6706350 I second this.
/and surprisingly don't feel bad about it at all. xD
//sorry, Rares!
Yo people, we got a review of this thing on PCaRG!
http://www.fimfiction.net/group/201936/the-pleasant-commentator-and-review-group/thread/227984/review-black-lotus-must-read
6761987 Thanks for the review!
6762409
No problem. It was a pleasure to read. A slightly difficult one to understand, but a magnificent piece.
I just noticed that Grand Moff Pony had a hand in this as well. Seems like you guys' group has some pretty good writers in it
6762468 Yep! I had all-around awesome team while I was working on this one.
6762503
Well, you earned a like, favorite, and a follow from me. Well done.
And the man built an orrery that might chart the atoms, and he declared, "What a marvelous machine, by which we might at last know the universe!"
Such were the words of a man simulated by means of an orrery meant to chart atoms, which was declared a marvelous machine by which men might at last know the universe.
She saw, in the end, what actually matters. And that it is not the state of matter that matters, but what you do with it.
Damn. That was actually pretty thought provoking.
I've always thought stories with this subject matter to be fascinating, and this story was no exception. Not that it particularly matters, but the ultimate conclusion Twilight and Luna come to closely matches with my own thoughts on the matter. Reality is ultimately subjective, and can be as real as you want it to be. What does it matter if we're all a simulation or a dream of some cosmic being? If that is the case, it doesn't change anything. What is the point of being "real" when oneself and everything one knows is in itself virtual The world is still the same, and so are the people we love.
Thanks for the story. It was pretty deep, and will stick with me for a long time to come.
HiddenMaster out
So... what would Discord have to say about all of this?
6789177 He would make sure everyone has plenty of delicious chocolate milk and cotton candy, because why not?
6789259
I am not amused, sir!
Hopefully the universe gets that dream exploit patched before someone tries to bring over an object with infinite mass or something.
Very well done, Winston. I've used a modified form the simulation hypothesis in some of my stories (including one in the Friendship is Optimal universe). What I really like about your story is how Twilight reacted to her discovery, as well as how Luna responded to her questions. Both feel very true to how I see these characters, and their discourse is a great device to get the reader to confront the issue of reality. I'm really impressed.
PS - love the idea of the black-body lotus flower!
6791592
Or something with 0-size; in processing the object, the simulation would have to divide by 0"
¡Do not divide by 0! ¡You will kill us all!
6789177
Discord is Q and runs the simulation.
Sigh....
Real is the causal-interaction closure of your observable variables, Twi.
This sounds similar to: Through The Wormhole: 8. Is Reality Real?
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1k2t1v_through-the-wormhole-s04e08-is-reality-real_shortfilms
I am a bit confused how their reality being a simulation would explain why Twilight was able to bring something from a dream into reality. It doesn't seem very likely to me that a simulation would allow someone inside the simulation to do this. There are two possibilities: One, if dreams are like a simulation, they are still a simulation inside the simulation and cannot defy the rules of the outer simulation. And two, if they are not a simulation inside the simulation but a simulation on the same level as "reality" and a pony's consciousness switches between them, this raises the questions why there are dreams and why it is possible to move things between the dream simulation and the reality simulation.
The other explanation (than reality being a simulation) would be that the flower was conjured into existence by some kind of unknown energy/magic that Twilight's thaumometers just could not detect.
All things considered both explanations rely on strong and questionable assumptions. So why does Twilight completely rule out the purely physical explanation?
Is any of this real?
Luna gave a weary sigh as she returned her teacup to it's waiting saucer, and asked her own question in turn.
Twilight, have you been reading philosophy books without supervison again?
Good story. Most enjoyable.
I reviewed your story. You can find it here. Also, have a ribbon.
s13.postimg.org/5a2dthj87/Giz_Vyc0.png
This is a fine story I suppose. Probably thought provoking for many. But I thought about that stuff when I was fifteen. So this story did not have much to add that I had not already considered. Which, I suppose, is the nature of such a debate were no definitive answer can be reached.
Perhaps you could make another story that deals with the consequences of it all indeed being a machine. Such as the ethics of what it would mean to make and run such a thing.
I would have liked to see this explored in the story. 6799216
If reality is a dream or simulation, maybe we should try writing messages in the sky for the one dreaming.
"Hay, programer! Bring back Elvis!"
Loved reading. Shame someone already cracked the mtg joke. Thanks for casting this idea into everyones minds (and was something I was worried about about 6 years ago)
hoping nobody notices the subtle mtg joke I made
Hmm. It would be interesting to get Pinkie Pie's and Discord's insights on the subject matter. They seem to be pretty good at circumventing the regular laws of physics.
So... what would happen if Twilight dreamed up a second set of Elements of Harmony?
And that's where most stories would end. Big twist reveal cliffhanger, the end.
What I like about this story is that it goes on beyond that.
I was wondering about the same thing.
If the simulation were merely set out to simulate the interaction of particles alone, and subsequent structures made from these particles, then this wouldn't work.
Princess Luna said, it was more likely to assume a complex system stemming from simple rules, rather than a seperate "brain in a jar".
So, we must assume Twilight Sparkle's mind is indeed the result of neurons firing in specific patterns, each neuron composed of matter, matter composed of particles, particles composed of 1s and 0s.
So... Why then would a dream be anything more than the result of those same neurons firing in certain patterns? Why would the dream then have any sort of "physical existence"?
It seems to imply the simulation has a special case for those collections of matter that form sapient life.
Which, in turn, raises its own set of questions.
For one, it would mean the creators of the simulation are aware of sapient life in their simulated universe, and seem to regard it as something relevant.
Relevant how would still be unknowable, but it'd be a start.
Hopefully, the creators are benevolent, and respect sapient life.
Or it could simply be so they could use planets hosting sapient life as the playground for an extremely realistic videogame. *shrug*
It's highly questionable if you would WANT to gain the attention of the "True Elder Gods", as you have no way of knowing what they might do, and absolutely nothing you could do about it. You may never even get the chance to realize they did anything.
Either way... If Twilight is capable of bringing objects (or sapient life, in theory) from her dreams into the real world - with no magic expended, as her measurements show - then...
Actually... This changes quite a lot, even ignoring the philosophical aspect, simply on a purely pragmatic level.
Twilight has, in essence, just discovered the Equestria equivalent of "Minecraft creative mode".
Twilight - or anypony else with the right knowledge - could create virtually anything they can imagine, and, theoretically, in unlimited quantities.
No more limited resources, for one. ...Which, of course, comes with its own set of consequences.
Why harvest apples, if you can just manifest an infinite amount of them? Who'd want to <i>pay</i> for apples anymore? What'd be the point?
But, on the other hoof, you can easily build a space-elevator and explore the stars. Or create a free immortality elixir for everyone.
But wait! What, if the knowledge fell into the wrong hooves? What, if "the other side" used the knowledge first? Better to use it themselves before "the other side" can!
Also, just out of curiosity... What would happen, if Twilight herself jumped out of her own dream?