Breaking Point
I had a lot of time to think on the train. This was a good thing, because I had a lot to think about. Obviously, figuring out what Twilight meant by "you'll understand when you examine the IV bag" was priority zero. At least that part didn't take long.
I was feeling pretty proud of myself, as indicated by my aforementioned whoop of laughter. The required insight had been tricky, but that wasn't the true source of my felicity. I was happy because Twilight had had faith that I would get the answer, even though most ponies probably wouldn't have been able to. Twilight Sparkle was easily the smartest pony I knew (and a princess, no less), yet she didn't look down on me intellectually. I felt tickled deep within my barrel. A small part of me worried that my emotionality was foalish, but I tried to rationalize it as yet another benefit of true friendship. I felt so fortunate Twilight had returned to Canterlot to make amends with me. As far as I was concerned, she'd earned her silly title.
The tip-off to the mystery had been that I needed to read the text of the IV bag through the clear liquid, because it was printed backwards on the outside of the bag. It was easy enough to read because the liquid was transparent, but it made no sense that this could be intentional. No sensible pony would design essential medical equipment to be any harder to read than absolutely necessary. I briefly supposed it was possible the design could ensure that only clear liquids be used with the bag, but that would make for a confusing failsafe. Clearly this was some sort of machining mistake. Right?
Not so fast. The text should have been printed on the outside of the bag. If so, that meant the writing had intentionally been printed backwards! That couldn't be the result of a simple manufacturing error. Could it be a combination of an odd design choice and a production error, I speculated? Reverse-printing would be legible if it were printed on the inside of the bag (then a pony could read it without the liquid getting in the way), and a machine might have sealed the bag inside-out by mistake. But that didn't make sense, either: if the ink were intended to lie on the interior of the plastic bag, it could compromise the purity of the bag's contents.
The facts were inconsistent. Backwards writing couldn't have happened accidentally during the machining process. It couldn't have been backwards by design. The bag looked genuine, and nopony with any horse sense in them would make a novelty fake IV bag with a minor design flaw. I didn't have the most well-grounded sense of humor, but I was fairly certain something like this was too obscure to be a source of amusement (even to medical staff).
That left only one possibility: the bag had been altered by magic. And then it hit me: the entire physical structure of the bag must have flipped when it travelled backwards through time! That's why Twilight had to antimatter shift the bag to save her past self: it's because she had been shifted as well, and she apparently needed an IV bag that had also been physically reversed.
At first pass, this appeared to explain everything. Twilight's physical body must have switched parity following the first antimatter shift. The organs in her body would have been on the wrong sides, and the stripe in her mane would have been reflected (which would explain why her mane seemed odd to me). This is why it was unfortunate she didn't spend time in Ponyville: from her perspective, since her brain was backwards, everything around her would look backwards. When reversed Twilight walks and moves to the left, to her it must look and feel like she's walking and moving to the right. She would immediately notice her castle was on the wrong side of town, not to mention everything else in the city. That mirror effect was probably a big part of why she was disoriented after her trip through the antimatter shift: the lab, though mostly symmetrical, was backwards.
Twilight must not have paid attention to familiar Canterlot landmarks while she rode the taxi. Given how tired she seemed to be, I can't say as I blame her. Reversed-Twilight had already been awake for three hours longer than I had, and I know she's an early riser. The Sun was setting as I got on the train, so by Reversed Twilight's circadian clock, she was only a few hours from bedtime back when I had helped her exit the laboratory.
The mirror-symmetry also explained her illness. The transposition would have gone further than the merely physical and psychological. Twilight's body would have been reflected all the way down to the molecular level.
Chemically speaking, organic materials are made from molecules connected by covalent bonds. That makes them different from other materials, like metals or minerals. Specifically, biochemicals can have a very complex structure. They can be very large and complicated, which allows for the neigh-unfathomable complexity inherent to life.
There is a kind of physical symmetry that appears in any nonzero number of dimensions sometimes called "reflection" or "mirror symmetry". Three-dimensional biomolecules can be symmetrical (e.g. water), or asymmetrical (most large molecules, like proteins). The property of having reflection asymmetry is called chirality. Most biomolecules are chiral, which means their mirror-image has a different shape: the molecule can't be rotated and superimposed precisely onto its mirror image without leaving gaps. Chemists would say that most biochemicals have "left-hoof" and "right-hoof" versions (although which is which is an arbitrary label).
Since biomolecules tend to work together in a lock-and-key manner, the left-hoof and right-hoof versions of chiral molecules sometimes have different functions. For example, glucose is a simple sugar naturally produced by most life forms. The "right-hoof" version (called dextrose) is common, but the "left-hoof" version (called L-glucose) isn't natural. L-glucose tastes a lot like dextrose, but the pony body can't utilize it for energy, so it's basically an artificial sweetener. The only reason we don't use it as a sweetener is that it's hard to make in a lab: you can't get bacteria or plants to do the heavy lifting, because lifeforms won't synthesize it.
There are countless chiral chemicals like L-glucose that aren't produced in nature, most of which have unknown effects on the pony body. Twilight becoming ill after imbibing a soft drink isn't all that surprising. Her molecules were reversed, and even her DNA would have been rotated the wrong way around. Any interaction with biochemicals in a state like that could prove toxic, not only to her but to the organisms around her, too. The fact that she might need an IV bag with a sugar her body could digest (the L-glucose variant, which would be just like dextrose for her) makes sense, particularly if she were hungry and unable to digest nutrition from natural sources.
This theory also explained the odd behavior of the dress. It appeared to pull through itself as I tugged on it because it was switching parity as I yanked at it, and the odor was different because many scents are based on chiral molecules. The rare chiralities that aren't produced by life often can't be detected by olfaction because they don't fit into the same receptors. There's no evolutionary push for special receptors to exist for them because they're so rare. Even when receptors do exist, the smell can be very different.
And that's where the theory stopped making sense.
Saline and dextrose wouldn't have hurt Twilight, but she said the doctors were going to administer an IV that "probably would have killed me". That would make perfect sense for a blood transfusion, or perhaps for the administration of the wrong drug. The most common drugs she'd be likely to receive after falling ill from drinking something (setrons or antihistamines for nausea or inflammation) are probably safe, but they might have given her something strange. However, Twilight didn't mention that the IV she gave me contained any unlisted drugs. There was a place they could be injected into the bag, but she wouldn't have omitted data that relevant.
I supposed that Twilight might have mistakenly believed L-glucose was deadly, but I was doubtful. I realized the IV wouldn't likely be enough to save her. I would probably need to convince the doctors not to give her a drug they think she needs. That would be a harder sell than simply delivering a substitute IV bag, even though I had a scroll with her signature to back me up. This wasn't something I could afford to take chances on, even if there was already a safe-and-sound Twilight Sparkle already waiting for me in Canterlot. I still wasn't certain what form of time-travel we were dealing with, and I wasn't about to let any Twilight die. Not on my watch.
I was so deep in nervous thought, I didn't notice the train conductor until he cleared his throat multiple times.
"Miss? You do know you paid for a sleeping car," he said. "Bed thirteen."
Surprised by the interruption, I looked out the window. Tiny reflections of moonlight danced across nearby rock formations as the train traveled through the scrubland. Hours had passed me by.
"Thanks," I replied. I hadn't known about the bed, actually. It made some sense Twilight would have splurged on me. Maybe it wasn't such a splurge for a princess, but I wouldn't know—and either way, I wasn't complaining.
I took my things and headed to my bed. I didn't hear anyone else in the sleeper car with me, so for all I knew, I was the only occupant. I had slept in a train before, but never in a sleeper car. It was comfortable, but I knew I wasn't going to get much sleep. I was bothered by the real mystery.
The parity switch made no sense, because parity should have been conserved. It might make sense for an object to temporarily switch to its mirror image during the shift (although I couldn't think of a possible mechanism for that either), but why would parity still be reversed after the shift had finished?
It was still a clear violation of combined CPT-symmetry, and everything I knew about physics said that was impossible. The field I had created shouldn't have been capable of doing anything other than temporary matter alteration. The formula couldn't have caused a parity shift of any sort. And the problem of the antimatter disappearing was still there. The rooms weren't acting like a closed experiment. It was almost like the field was opening a portal between two very different worlds, similar in nature but acting like time-shifted broken reflections of one another.
All this unexpected data would have been exciting if it weren't so dangerous. I should have been energized by the prospect of discovering something new, but I was scared. This wasn't worth risking Twilight's life over. Nothing was.
Then I had a horrible realization, and my blood went cold. Twilight Sparkle wasn't the only organism to pass through the antimatter shift.
Her entire biome went with her.
Trillions of organisms had been reflected. Most of these were symbiotic gut bacteria, but there were also the bacteria living on her pelt. Ponies are surrounded by clouds of personal microbes from skin, gut, and oral cavity. They form a sort of unique hoofprint. All of the microbes that travelled with Twilight would have backwards DNA and RNA. What would happen if they found a way to replicate? What if they survived and became infectious? Our immune systems might not be able to combat them. They could wipe out civilization entirely!
I resisted the urge to hyperventilate, for two reasons. I hadn't had time to analyze the situation fully, and Twilight Sparkle had had the time. This would have crossed her mind too. Slowly, I reassured myself that parity-reversed microorganisms would not be able to take a foothold in Equestria. All life functions using fundamental building blocks, and most of the essentials are missing in a mirrored world. Since all but one of the amino acids that make up DNA, RNA, and other proteins are chiral, and many of those are not found in nature, mirror-image microorganisms would not be able to replicate long before falling apart.
I was fairly certain I was correct, but the idea was still unsettling. Even single-celled life isn't fully understood. It's too tiny, it's too complex, and it operates too rapidly. As scientists, we must rely heavily upon inference to understand cellular biology. Life spreads like wildfire into new territories, and some bacteria have inherent magical abilities (e.g. archeus magicum which live in a commensalistic relationship with the lesser tatzlwurm). Even in the best case scenario, Twilight had polluted Equestria with a completely new form of life, one unlike anything the world had ever seen.
There was nothing to be done but hope for the best. The odds were on our side, at least. When Twilight cast her biosignature spell on the dress, it detected no organisms. Based on how that spell would have to work, it should have detected living reflected organisms as well, and there would have been some still thriving on the surface of the dress if it were possible for them to replicate.
At some point I finally nodded off. My sleep was plagued by nightmares I wouldn't remember upon waking.
I awoke to bright sunlight, and slowly gathered my senses. I remembered my mission. I opened the blind and looked out the window of the train to a sunny desert day. Then I noticed the position of the sun, and the fact the train was still moving.
"HELP!" I shouted at the top of my lungs. I'd already gathered my things by the time the conductor arrived.
"Miss? What's the problem?" he asked.
"We passed Dodge City!" I said.
He nodded. "Ah, missed your stop? We'll come back on the return trip..."
"NO!" I said, grabbing him by the shoulders. "I'm on a life-or-death mission and Princess Twilight Sparkle is in grave danger!" I held up the scroll, which featured her seal embossed in wax.
The conductor grabbed the side-rope and yanked it twice, paused once, and then a third time. The train immediately ground to a stop.
"You're lucky. We're only a few minutes past the city. We can't travel backwards safely because another train is due soon, but you should be able to get back to Dodge quickly if you gallop," he said, then looked down at my leg cast. "Oh dear."
I shook my head. "It's fine, I can gallop. Thanks." I made sure I had the IV bag and scroll floating next to me and I jumped out the nearest exit.
The train started moving again, and I looked at Celestia's Sun above me. It was very hot. As much as I loved my old, ragged sweater, I needed to ditch it. I dropped it a few feet from the tracks in the thin hope I'd be able to recover it later.
I could see Dodge City several kilometers in the distance, and I started cantering toward it. The ground where the tracks lay was very solid. I considered detouring through the sands, but realized that I'd have a hard time making progress that way. Running on the hard earth hurt my hoof, but I had no choice.
As I cantered painfully along, I began to realize my gait might not be fast enough. I was still groggy from sleep, and my mind struggled to put the facts together. Twilight said that Applejack told her I hadn't needed to run to get there in time, and based on what I knew of Applejack, she wasn't the type to lie about that sort of thing. However, we already knew this wasn't time travel of the first form. There was no telling what might happen this time around. Symmetry had already been broken, so Twilight remembering that I'd arrived in the nick of time might prove to be incorrect. I didn't know what to expect. I simply had no basis for an accurate prediction.
I increased my pace to a full gallop.
Almost immediately, I learned that this was a questionable idea. A full gallop was very painful. Each repeated thump of my right forehoof increased the risk I would snap my coffin bone like a crescent-shaped twig on the next. My mind raced along with my body in a frantic attempt to buy me time. I held the scroll and the IV bag in front of me with magic as I ran, and I started cogitating possible magic solutions to get me there in a single piece. Teleportation wouldn't get me far enough fast enough, and I was too rusty with it (not to mention mildly nauseous from the recent painkillers). I could levitate myself if I needed to, but not for very long or very fast. I was an impressive mage, but no Starlight Glimmer.
I tried to create an artificial support with magic force. I needed mechanical advantage, and creating intangible training wheels on the sides of my cast would allow me to run without the repeated stress of hoof-fall impacts. I focused on a point in front of me to see if it a sturdy, moving conjuration were possible. It wasn't working. The axial connection wouldn't spin loosely without intense concentration, and I didn't have that ability with the pain throbbing in my right hoof. I settled for trying to protect my hoof with a soft magic cushion around the walking cast.
The moment I wrapped the cushion into place (mid-gallop), my next step sent me tumbling painfully to the ground. Fortunately I was able to keep the bag and scroll hovering above me as I slid on my barrel. The magic cushion had made my hoofprint thicker, which in turn had broken my gait. I cursed my stupidity for not stopping first to test it.
Magic wasn't going to help. I picked myself up, stretched momentarily, and focused my mental acuity on a virtue known to every mage: pure willpower. I broke into another strong gallop, faster than before, and fought with every fiber of my soul to disconnect the sensation of pain from the psychological experience. I began to partly dissociate my mind from my body.
I used the pounding ache to keep time. The shorter the interval, the faster I was running, so I played a little mind game to keep myself going. I timed each pulse of pain and tied it to my heartbeat, and managed to map precisely three heartbeats onto every two painful clops. I was using the pain against itself, and it was working. I'd never known I could run this fast at all, let alone manage it while in terrible pain. It was fascinating, and that fascination helped deepen the mental disconnect I needed to maintain my speed.
I was able to keep that rate consistent most of the way to the city, for several minutes (which felt like hours). It was amazingly hot out, even with no clothing on. My head was down, my nostrils flared. I was sweating, and I'd have been frothing if I were wearing clothing or saddlebags. Spittle gathered at the corners of my mouth. My vision tunnelled forward. For a subjective eternity there was nothing but my heart, the pain, the heat, and the sounds of grunting and clopping.
My next beat landed with a crack.
I flew forwards, quickly realizing I didn't have a contingency plan for flying end-over-end in excruciating pain. Without thinking, I instinctively launched the IV bag up high and fast into the air at as close to a normal trajectory with the ground as I could manage while being this disoriented and distracted. The scroll clattered to the ground behind me as the IV flew skyward, and I rolled forward like a tumbleweed with my poor, cast-covered hoof cradled into my belly. I had slid the telekinetic cushion back over it for extra protection, and this turned out to be wise. During the spill, my cast bumped against my barrel once, and even with the cushion it was enough to send stars shooting through my vision. Eventually I slid to a stop, scraping my left flank something fierce on a patch of gravel.
The first thing that went through my mind was a fascination that pain could actually be this terrible. I feared I would vomit or pass out, primarily because I needed to save my friend, but also because I might die of exposure in the desert myself. I immediately regretted how selfish that second fear felt.
Then I remembered the bag. It had only been a few seconds since I launched it, but my eyes scanned the sky in a state of panic. It was nowhere to be seen. My body shook with fear. Then, I saw a falling dot in the sky, far from the tracks. Too far for me to reach it with magic.
"Buck me," I whispered, then carefully fixated my eyes on a spot located roughly below the falling bag. There was nothing else to do. I had to teleport, so I realized I might as well get over with it now. It was hard to steel my nerves for the trip, but I wanted as much time as possible to recover from my ordeal before I had to catch the thing, so I focused almost instantly on the task.
Teleportation is a very hard spell. It's potentially dangerous in the hooves of a novice, and I was rusty. I was also in the belly of the worst pain I'd ever experienced. I knew I only had to shut the pain out for a fraction of a second to succeed. I thought of Twilight, dying in a hospital bed. I pushed every ounce of energy I had into making the jump. Right as I cast the spell, I realized I needed to project myself further from the tracks than the bag was falling because it had travelled in an arc. With that last calculation, I felt my body wrenching in two.
The pain was, somehow, even worse. Then I was lying on the sands and I craned my neck upwards. I needed to vomit, but I didn't have time. I saw something in the sky, but it wasn't the bag; it was an eagle. Then I saw the bag. The eagle was swooping in to catch it with its razor-sharp talons.
"NO!" I cried out horsely. Somehow, with the last of my reserves, I managed to fasten a magic bubble around the bag just before the eagle collided with it. The range was extreme, but I'd done it. The eagle looked irately down at me, but seemed less interested in the bag now and flew away.
I didn't have the energy to levitate the bag, but I kept it in the bubble until it smashed into a loose pile of sand. I helped cushion the fall by yanking the bubble slightly toward me right before it hit, which caused the bag to spin around inside the bubble, converting its downward momentum into angular momentum. I flipped onto my back as I rolled the bubble up to my chest, then popped it and caught the bag with my good hoof. I rested the bag on my chest, and examined it. There were no scratches of any kind.
I breathed a tremendous sigh of relief, then turned my head to the side and vomited into the sand and into my mane, somehow steadying the bag with my good hoof to keep it from falling off of my belly. I coughed and spit a few times, and it felt like I needed to emesis a second time, but after a minute of rest it seemed clear that wouldn't happen.
I levitated the bag slowly, and then staggered to three hooves. I thought I might be crying, but I couldn't tell. I snorted weakly. I started cantering forwards, minus one hoof. It was much more difficult to move through the sand. I used magic as my fourth hoof, and I used magic to keep the broken hoof safely aloft, but maintaining three spells was too exhausting. I reached the top of a dune before collapsing again.
I rested the bag on my back. The IV was hot; almost too hot for a safe infusion. I had to get to town faster than this. I could see the city from where I lay, and I could see one or two ponies walking through it, like ants in the distance. There was no way they could see me lying flat on the sand.
I closed my eyes tight and resolved not to give up, and then the obvious occurred to me. They can't see me, but they might be able hear me. If only my voice hadn't escaped my throat! Then I remembered my magic. I took a ragged breath, focused what mana I could still scrape together into my vocal chords, and shouted:
"HELP"
This was much louder than I'd expected. I heard hollering and saw a dust cloud forming. Within half a minute there were two strong earth stallions standing beside me.
"I must get this bag to Twilight Sparkle, matter of life-or-death," I wheezed. One of them carefully picked up the bag and placed it in his saddlebags, and the other helped me onto his back. They began to walk back to town.
"Don't walk. Gallop," I said.
My body was bruised and scraped, I smelled like fresh vomit, and I didn't have the energy to protect my hoof from the painful bouncing. The walking cast showed wear but no damage to it, so at least I didn't look grisly. I felt a relieving numbness in the tip of my hoof, and was fairly certain I was pooling blood within the cast.
This was yet another new experience: I could feel myself breaking. I shivered as though I was cold, even though I was burning up in the hot sun. I thought I might pass out. Somehow, I maintained consciousness. At the time, I thought it was my last remaining shreds of dignity. I later realized it was just my instinct to save Twilight's life.
"What do we need to do?" said the pony upon which I was rider.
"Princess Twilight Sparkle has fallen ill, but she may die if she receives the wrong medication. She needs that IV bag immediately because it has special medicine in it. I have a scroll with her signature that confirms my... shit!" I said, wincing. That was right. I dropped the stupid scroll.
"Whoa," said the smaller pony. Both ponies stopped and I nearly fell off my ride. The sand here had finally given way to firm ground. The smaller pony took the bag from his saddlebags and placed it into Packer's. "I'll go look for the scroll. Packer will take you to the infirmary."
"It's by the tracks," I said, and he took off. "Packer, there's no time to waste."
"Then y'all best hold on real tight, missy," said my ride. I put my undamaged left leg around his neck, and my rear legs tight around his barrel.
"Ready," I said.
It turned out that Packer could run significantly faster than I could, which tempered my pride a bit. It was all I could do to stay in place. I tried to use magic to steady my hoof, but only weakly succeeded. Packer's gallop was still agitating it painfully. I almost wanted to tell him to slow down, but I wasn't about to give up now.
Finally, we arrived at the infirmary. It looked modern and almost out of place among the wooden buildings. I felt like death.
"We're here to help, miss," said a doctor who immediately pulled out a stretcher as Packer walked me into the building.
"Have you seen Applejack or Twilight Sparkle?" I said. "Twilight has a temporary mudam, am, a, a medical condition that, she'll die if you give her any dr, drugs..." I stammered.
The doctor lowered me into the stretcher. "The Princess is under our care after fainting, yes," she said. "Is that what the IV is for?"
"Yes. She can only have the IV, and no other drugs," I explained.
"We have IV treatments here. She'll be fine."
"NO! This is a special IV! Dammit, you need to listen to me!" I shouted, and started bucking reflexively at the air.
"Hold your horses," came a voice I'd heard once before. "I do believe I heard my name. Moondancer?" Applejack trotted into view.
"Oh thank Celestia. AJ, please, you have to get them to listen," I begged. I started crying, except there weren't any tears. I was dehydrated, and probably in more dire need of an IV than Twilight.
One of the nurses took my temperature with an ear thermometer, and her eyes went wide. "She has a high fever and there's blood in her cast, doctor. This pony needs immediate medical attention."
Applejack glared at the doctor. "Hold up, now, this seems important. What's goin' on, Moondancer? Do you know somethin' about Twilight's sickness?"
"Yes. It would take too long to explain, but she's in great danger. The doctors need to give her the IV I brought from Canterlot, and no other IV or medication. No drugs, no shots, definitely no transfusions; only this IV, period," I said, wheezing a little as the last words came out.
"We were about to give her a standard IV, but I'm her attending and we haven't started yet. You arrived just in the nick of time. What's special about this IV?" asked the doctor.
"It says dextrose but it's L-glucose. Her body needs L-glucose," I said.
"That's... difficult to believe," said the doctor. "Ponies can't—"
"I understand the biomechanics, but I need you to trust me. Twilight sent me with a scroll to prove what I'm saying is true, but I dropped it in the desert as I ran here..."
Applejack removed her hat and looked me square in the eyes. "How did Twilight know this would happen?" she asked.
I sighed, and winced. "It involves... time travel."
The doctor stifled a laugh, but Applejack kept a straight face. She looked deep into my eyes, and it felt like she was staring right into my soul. Her eyes twitched left and right with all the intensity of a doctor performing surgery.
"Doc, you do whatever this pony says," said Applejack, and she replaced her hat.
"You, you have to be joking," said the doctor, coughing. "We're not going to treat a princess on the words of a hallucinating pony who wandered in from the desert!"
"If Moondancer says Twilight sent her, she's tellin' the truth. That IV she brought look good to you, don't it?"
"Well, it looks sterile, but it's very warm, and I don't see..."
"Give her it, and don't give her any other drugs until we find that scroll."
"Listen, Ms. Applejack. I'm bound by oath to do my very best for my patients—"
Applejack snorted. "Doc, I happen to know Twilight has dealt with actual time travel on at least two occasions. I don't claim to understand it a whit, but Princess Twilight Sparkle has been tellin' me that Moondancer here's one of the sharpest tools in the shed," she said. "I believe she'd trust this little filly with her life, and so then do I. Give her the IV."
The doctor looked skeptical, but the lines in her face softened as Applejack spoke. "Alright," she said, and took the IV into the fold of her wing. "But all three of us will bear responsibility for this decision."
I sighed in relief and slumped back against the stretcher. Two nurses carried me into a room and Applejack followed.
"I need to make sure that stubborn mare actually follows through, then I'll be right back to check on you," she said.
"Take your time," I mumbled, and I finally passed out.
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Oh. Right-handedness. That's why it's called dextrose. I just got that. Now I'm kind of disappointed that L-glucose isn't called sinistrose.
In any case, as I thought, the problem was chiral mirroring. It will be interesting to see why and how the symmetry was broken. For now, though, Moondancer pulled through magnificently. Great work in establishing tension even when we knew the outcome; that's often a major failing of time travel stories, but you really made it work.
That has gotta hurt.
That was a fantastic read. I loved it very much. I only have two issues with it. 'Right hoofed' and 'left hoofed' instead of right handed and left handed. and the use of 'horsely' instead of 'hoarsely'. I'm not sure if you meant to put a pun there but it made me groan and pulled me out of the scene. Other than that I really enjoyed it even though some of the physics stuff is a little beyond my ability to comprehend. OK a lot beyond me lol but I love how you write Moondancer <3 .
7004342
Fixed the hoofedness, thanks for the catch.
"Horsely" was intentional, even though nopony seems to like that one except for me.
7004389 It's not super bad or anything just a teensy bit of a stumble. :)
(Spoiler warning for all passers-by who are only checking the comments to decide if they should read the story!)
The sabotage at the beginning of the story was clearly Future-Twilight's doing. Why? Because it was the reason why Moondancer invited her to join the project in the first place. Closed loop.
Now, as for the current chapter...
Hmm... If we're dealing with an unstable timeloop, then ... it's a miracle that the universe we're observing is one where a Future-Twilight arrived to save her past self.
'Cause if some minor thing in this setup went wrong even the tiniest bit - and it looks like that's a real possibility here - there wouldn't be a living Twilight that could go back to give past-Moondancer instructions.
Unless there's a fail-safe...
In a timeline where Moondancer fails to save Twilight, she... steps into the time machine herself to save past-Twilight?
Although, given that there's already a future-Twilight that arrived in her timeline that failed to give the correct instructions, all that would achieve is to send Moondancer to a different timeline... One where there is only one Twilight, who might still die, and two Moondancers. So going back again after failure is actually a bad idea from Moondancer's perspective. So that'd be where the "loop" would terminate.
So... Oh, wait, it's actually not a miracle after all that Moondancer was able to save Twilight. Because statistically, there's only a single timeline where she fails to do so. Huh. Go figure.
Incidentally, this makes me wonder how the "loop" started --- because if it isn't infinite, then it had to start somewhere, and because of a reason.
That reason wouldn't have been "because Future-Twilght said so", because there wouldn't be a Future-Twilight in the initial timeline.
Well, okay, the "reason" would obviously be for Moondancer to go back in time to save Twilight after she died. (She's clearly able to put together the pieces explaining why the medication had killed her, because we've seen her do it in the story-timeline.)
So "Moondancer 1" goes back in time to save "Twilight 2", succeeds, and............ then "Twilight 2" goes back to tell "Moondancer 3" she has to save "Twilight 3"? Why?
"Moondancer 1" already saved a Twilight. (Although now she has to "share" with "Moondacer 2".) Plus, if "Twilight 2" went back in time, she'd abandon both of them for "Moondancer 3".
So why go back again?
Of course, I may be wrong. Maybe the loop is actually stable, but "oscillating" between different states, none of which cause Twilight to die, but to deliver an alternating message each time she goes back.
...This is fun! Wheeeee!
...
This whole story feels like the glimpses I got of the movie "Primer". Though I haven't actually seen it, I've heard it "doesn't hold the viewer's hand" and "involves a lot of physics explanations" regarding its time travel mechanics.
Okay, I at first, I liked this story. Now? After seeing the clear research that would have gone into drafting this chapter?
I LOVE IT!
I'd have to hope this is a new timeline all on its own with no closed loop, because if Twilight for whatever reason is orchestrating this entire thing then she'll probably wonder what the hell happened to create a closed time loop involving her nearly dying on at least one occasion and Moondancer greatly suffering. On the other hoof, it might turn Twilight from finally playing around with time magic altogether
This is one of the best action scenes I ever read.
Also it was very funny to read how Moondancer basically repeated my reasoning about mirrored text on the bag that looks normal from inside, biomolecules chirality, influence of chirality on smell. I wonder if it is explained later why Twilight hadn't been noticing that world around her is mirror-flipped?
Despite the previous comments, I would argue that "right hoofed" and "left hoofed" are not the best terms because hooves themselves are pretty mirror-symmetrical. "Right winged" and "left winged" maybe?
This was a good chapter. I knew enough about chirality to see it coming before the chapter break, but it was good to see it explained and confirmed. Nice action sequence, too.
e and o were puzzled at the sudden substitution in the roles of i and a, but u and i both knew that a had secretly always dreamed of being an i.
8544576
Good catch. I think that one's actually older than the edits.
I'd like to point out one more time how awesome is this Moondancer's "shut up and do the impossible" moment! And, of course, Twilight's one later too! Woohoo!
As I see, Twilight's mirrored perception is explained here (should probably read further before asking
).
Another interesting question is a gas exchange between inside of the chamber and outside world. I wonder if Twilight's neurological symptoms may be explained by onsetting carbon dioxide poisoning (although not knowing chamber volume, how tight doors are, field influence and pony metabolism rate it's hard to predict equilibrium CO_2 concentration and how fast it would be reached). And it should be somehow related to the missing air problem.
A unique fingerprint?
8594775
Thanks for the catch! Fixed.
8595029
I appreciate the effort, but hoofprints aren't as inherently unique as fingerprints. Something is lost in the translation. Not everything swapping human for horse puns works. Maybe try "unique signature"?
8595332
Hoofprints can be nearly as unique, assuming the frog is captured, not to mention the shoe—and fingerprint science is not the best forensics anyway. I think the horsification is probably enough here. I mean "unique footprint" would work there more or less, due to the 'unique' qualifier.