Conversation 46.2: Twilight Sparkle
After a few seconds spent wondering whether she actually has a doorbell, and what one might even look like, I opted for a simpler solution. I knocked. Let’s just hope she’s up by now. I don’t really want to dawdle in the Everfree any longer than necessary. Standing on a doormat amidst a neat lawn doesn’t change the fact that a dangerous forest continues just a stone’s throw away.
“How many times do I have to tell you, I don’t want to go hunting,” Mary’s voice yelled from inside.
“Hunting is not what I had in mind, anyway!” I yelled back, and heard shuffling, muffled crackling noises and something that sounded suspiciously like curses in a language I couldn’t identify.
“It’s you,” Mary smiled, swinging the door open and almost smashing my muzzle in with bright orange plastic. “I thought it was a manticore again.”
“Do manticores knock?” I asked in surprise.
“They do now,” she grinned at me. “I had to threaten to eat the one that didn’t, but they’re actually quite civil most of the time. They seem to have filed me away with the ambush predators. Trying to invite those for a hunt seems to be their idea of a prank. Don’t just stand there, come in,” she said, disappearing inside.
I was about to ask when she’d learned to speak manticore, but then I noticed the scorch marks on the path to the house. Figures.
It took me a moment to remember my manners and step through the door, shutting it behind myself. The inside of a human house looked strangely… normal. Like a room in a cheap hotel, only a few notches above a stable – spacious, but mostly empty and sterile, if you don’t count the large table in the middle, tall enough that it would never be comfortable to use without a chair, all covered in books and newspapers. Most of the books were the ones she’d checked out from my library, but a few weren’t. Like that huge tome of “Equestria Accords: The Complete Annotated Edition with Commentary by Legal Fiction,” which, apparently, fell onto the floor when she tried to get out of the nest of newspapers that surrounded her chair.
“I don’t think that threatening to eat her is going to work with Rarity,” I commented. “If she sees you wearing that, she’s going to peel you and burn it on the spot.” She was wearing some kind of black track suit, which had obviously been made for something only roughly anatomically similar – whether it was a very thin minotaur or a very large Abyssinian, I couldn’t tell. “Even I can tell it’s monstrous. Where did you even get that?!”
“There’s a shop in Canterlot that sells used clothing,” she explained. “Lots of interesting things in there, and I needed something to wear around the house. I could ask Rarity, but she’s busy with Luna’s dress, Moondancer’s entire wardrobe, and there’s a huge line of orders after those. She would surely make something far too precious for the purpose, anyway.”
I perked my ears up. “Wait, she got an order from Princess Luna? She never told me!”
“I actually caught Luna making that order a few hours after her troops landed,” Mary replied, pushing aside the newspapers and edging between them into her chair. “I didn’t tell you that, by the way.” She wordlessly motioned towards the second chair opposite her with her hand.
“My lips are sealed,” I grinned, climbing into the chair. “So, what are you researching?”
“Monitor everything,” she whispered with a grin that was more than a little creepy. I shivered. This sounded like a parody of my own time travel experience. Probably was. I keep forgetting how much of my private shame she’s actually aware of. “Historical context of the entire mess we just got out of, mostly,” she added. “You have a really twisted constitution.”
“It’s survived for over a thousand years, and has only been rewritten in its entirety once,” I shrugged. “It could have had a lot more amendments than the 162 it does.”
“It’s still wonderfully arcane,” Mary commented. “You have a very interesting view of the separation of powers.”
We’re getting sidetracked, we could talk about the Accords till the cows come home. I had a different plan for this morning.
“I’d love to discuss that at length,” I said, “but actually, I came to you with an answer to your original question. Maybe not a final one, but I think it’s solid.”
“Oh!” Mary grinned, unceremoniously brushing off a mound of newspapers, which streamed onto the floor, and setting her elbows on the table. “So?”
“I can’t tell you if he’s the original inventor,” I said, “because nopony makes such a claim, but I have found the earliest sandwich recipe I believe exists, specified to excruciating detail. And it was penned by Star Swirl the Bearded… What?”
Even the newspaper she quickly erected between us could not conceal Mary’s giggling. Finally she broke down and laughed. “Damn it, Twilight, do you have any other pre-classical thinkers at all?”
“We do!” I huffed, offended. “I won’t deny he’s my favorite, but there’s Morari the Maneless, Haycartes, Marelin, Sow Crates, Aristrotle—”
“Sorry!” she interrupted me with a silly grin on her face. “It’s just that he’s the only wizard I knew by name before I had a chance to peruse your library. Quite a strange coincidence, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” I replied. “And I won’t deny that finding this doesn’t solve the actual problem either, because the sandwich is just an example. Which is why you get to help me dig deeper,” I stated, pointing a hoof at her.
“Where?” Mary inquired with a raised eyebrow, folding her newspaper away.
“I have found what I believe is his experiment journal,” I said. “It describes working with what he calls a ‘veister,’ in his lab in the Castle of the Royal Pony Sisters.”
✶ ✶ ✶
“I can at least deny I am consciously aware of it, even if I am actually doing it, which would be silly,” Mary stated. “I wouldn’t even need my time machine if I knew I could do that sort of thing.”
Mary chose to keep her tracksuit, saying that she would hate to damage a dress in the forest, and packed very light. The only thing she took with her that I saw was the small black bag wrapped around her thigh, specially made for her laser weapon. Leather. The smell was faint, but still noticeable, and the reminder that this nice and civilized creature is actually carnivorous kept me slightly on edge.
I mentally slapped myself over the head with a newspaper. I’m the only one of my friends that squeamish about it. Even Applejack admits to eating fish on occasion… Must be that ancient griffon cookbook I saw yesterday.
“I don’t think Rika is right either,” I replied, “but she seemed so certain.”
“She usually is,” Mary replied, pushing a branch out of the way. “All the blue and orange. Doesn’t necessarily make her correct.”
“Blue and orange?” I asked, ducking under another branch and emerging back on the ancient, faded path. “What does that mean?”
“Blue and orange morality,” Mary replied. “Between me and you, our value systems, while different in important details, are still fundamentally compatible. We might argue about the degree, but in most cases, we will still consider the same things good and evil.”
“And she won’t?” I wondered.
“For Rika,” Mary replied, “the usual human values are closer to a distant memory. Something entirely different seems to have taken their place, and I couldn’t really tell you what. She can wipe out a city because someone hurt a child, and ignore the slaughter of millions as something normal, because, to quote, ‘it serves character development.’ Not something I’ve seen myself, mind you, but that’s what I heard.”
I shivered, and I wasn’t sure if that was because the morning, that deep into Everfree, was still chilly, or because of what Mary just said. “She certainly seems to care about you, at least,” I commented.
Mary stopped suddenly, and I had to stop and look back at her too. “Does she?” she asked.
“You call her a friend,” I declared. “And she calls you a friend. If you weren’t really friends, you wouldn’t have a friendship problem. Not this kind.”
“Really,” Mary replied blankly.
“I haven’t been saying anything, because I’m not sure how to help you yet,” I smiled sheepishly. “I’m just a student of friendship, I can’t presume to know all the answers. But I think I’m good enough to know there’s a problem, I just can’t put a hoof on it and help you solve it. But I will, eventually.”
“Let me try an analogy. A bad one, but just to put things in perspective…” Mary sighed deeply. And then she started talking, gradually accelerating. “Imagine that Princess Celestia suddenly decided that she isn’t your teacher, but your friend. And you’re not a magical prodigy, but a regular earth pony, with a special talent in, say, making clocks. She treats you as an equal. She vents to you about cosmic problems that trouble her, and you have great difficulty understanding what she’s talking about, let alone giving any worthy advice. And she does ask for your advice, she wants to know your opinion, and you’re constantly at a loss what to say. You’re simply so many weight classes below, that actually helping isn’t just a dream but utter nonsense, and you don’t even know why, time and time again, she keeps coming back to you, as if she’s expecting you to pull a rabbit out of a hat you don’t even wear.”
I just stood there, mouth agape, listening to this tirade, delivered almost entirely in a single breath. Finally, I asked, “You’ve been holding it in for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” Mary answered with a sullen face.
“Does she know?” I inquired.
“Count on it,” Mary stated. “She has a huge attention span.”
“Maybe it’s not actually that bad, then?” I wondered. “Nopony is as comfortable being near her as you. I’ve seen you two together. I’ve heard what ponies say.”
“Maybe I am exaggerating a bit…” Mary sighed again. “But I have to, or you won’t understand. She’s not just another human. Had been at some point, isn’t anymore. No matter how much I might like or hate her, and at times, I myself can’t tell which it is, but Rika is essentially an imprint of a soul on the surface of an endless ocean of broken dreams and hopes, collected from a myriad worlds. She’s experiencing the universe in a fundamentally different way. I can’t even aspire to relate to that. Do you really think I should?”
She says that, and yet, I am sure that Mary, in her own strange way, cares for her friend too.
“Do you want to say you don’t?” I asked.
Mary stared at me blankly for a few seconds, before replying with a faint smile, “Touché.”
I smiled back at her. “Let’s not stop here. I only packed enough sandwiches for one day, I’m really not looking forward to grazing.” Or hunting. Ew.
“Indeed,” Mary replied, and we continued walking along the faded, barely recognizable trail.
It took her at least twenty minutes to say something again, and she started with, “Mind you, I think your aversion to the idea of being a character in a story is not entirely rational.”
“I don’t think it’s irrational not to want to believe that the world is entirely at the mercy of some author,” I replied. “That’s objectionable from so many standpoints that I could keep listing them all the way to the castle.”
“Perhaps,” Mary agreed, “but the issue of authorship is neither simple nor clear-cut. Consider the following hypothetical. Suppose someone, as part of a major art project, engineers two opposing groups of robots, locked in a war for the sake of their long absent creators.”
I shivered. “That sounds like an especially morbid one.” She mentioned her robot friend who lives in the Library. Is this hypothetical really not a hypothetical at all, like the one Moondancer gave me?
“I notice the lack of objections regarding plausibility,” Mary commented, throwing a glance at me out of the corner of her eye.
“I think I’m getting somewhat used to your world view,” I responded, dreading the admission. “Something must be wrong with me.”
“I wonder if I should get offended…” Mary smirked. “But regardless, this is not actually a conflict, but an art project. These robots are not quite people, but the value of the project is in that they’re close enough to pass for people if you squint. The emotions of their suffering and victory are real, or at least, engineered to be as realistic as possible.”
“This is actually even more morbid than I imagined to begin with,” I commented. Those poor robots!
“It gets more morbid,” Mary replied. “Some of the value of art is in potentially outliving its creator. One of the two groups eventually wins the war, at the cost of heroic sacrifice, a victory so devastating that it leaves no robot standing. Once this happens, the underlying, rigid and entirely unthinking machinery cleans up the rubble and builds new sets of robots from the original blueprints. The whole thing starts again. Robots being robots, and thus not particularly creative, it proceeds more or less to the same script. Repeating forever, while resources last.”
She was clearly about to continue, but I interrupted her. “So what’s the question posed by the hypothetical?” I asked. “This is… a horrifying scenario. I can’t, in good conscience, call that art. You wouldn’t do this even to animals, let alone ‘not quite people.’ Whoever does this isn’t an artist, it’s a monster.”
Looking at her as I said that, I saw traces of that faint smug smile. Damn it, I walked right into her punchline again, haven’t I? I knew I was heading straight for it and didn’t want to think about it, but the structural similarities are impossible to dismiss.
“But the Unlimited Library,” Mary began, confirming my suspicion, “at least theoretically, permits travel to any war story you might have read. I know you have those, and they’re about ponies, not robots. What exactly horrifies you about this, while a book remains art?”
I sighed and stopped, staring into the ground to hide my eyes. She confirmed my suspicions almost verbatim. “The idea has occurred to me already. Repeatedly! You want me to have nightmares about my Daring Do fanfics, I’m sure of it now,” I accused. “Every storybook should horrify me too, right? Was that the conclusion you were expecting? There is still an option that you’re wrong, is it so surprising that this is the option I’m picking?!”
I felt a soft touch of fingers tickling across my ear. “There is one fundamental difference that you’re missing, Twilight,” Mary said. I turned to look up at her, and instead just found her back disappearing behind a tree, so I had to give chase to hear the rest of her phrase. “Someone deliberately creates the hypothetical robot theater. Regardless of our opinion, at least the intentionality of the whole thing is not in question. But there is no proof that by writing a story of a world, a world is created. Indeed, such a proof can’t exist. Why do you even think this is how it works?”
“But there’s no question we write books!” I exclaimed. “We intentionally put our heroes through tough situations to see them come out victorious, don’t we? Wild, exciting situations, that have no place in reality! And unlike reality, fiction has to make sense!”
“Really?” Mary inquired. “Funny how Rapier says she’d love to live a life of crazy adventure like yours. Exactly like yours, that is. You’re her favorite pony, you know.”
Her superhero friend. The irony was thick in the air. I stammered, fishing for a comeback. “Writing is not just art, it’s a craft that can be taught!”
“So it is,” Mary agreed. “Now tell me, when you’re computing more and more digits of the number Pi, do you actually create new information, or discover a fundamental fact of reality?”
Even the most complicated post-classical spells do not actually require computing with more than ten digits after the decimal, but that never stopped me. And yet… “I don’t get to pick those digits,” I objected. “Ever. The analogy doesn’t work.”
“But being an irrational and presumably, normal number, it’s an infinitely long chain of evenly distributed digits,” Mary stated. “Encode every letter of your preferred alphabet with two digits. This way, Pi contains every conceivable text. Eventually. Somewhere.”
That’s… a rather novel idea. Do those digits exist before someone computes them? Do they exist the way things exist, or do they, like friendship, exist through something else? Do the terms even apply? Just like there are multiple distinct ways for things to not exist, there should be multiple ways for them to exist…
“So tell me now,” Mary continued. “How is the process of writing a text different from simply stumbling on that position in the infinity where it exists already?”
“How?” I prompted.
“That’s the problem, I don’t really know,” Mary replied.
“Damn it, Mary!” I stomped, cracking a loose branch under my hoof. She will make a career out of winding ponies up if we let her.
She grinned back at me. “The processes couldn’t be more dissimilar, but that shouldn’t matter when the end result is the same, should it?” she said. “Oh, and speaking of the end result. Do you have the journal of the sisters with you?”
I wordlessly extracted the unfortunate book out of my saddlebags and thrust it at her in my magic.
Mary stopped, and opened the journal, holding it up in her outstretched hand. “Well, at least I can’t fault the author’s research.”
The imprint on the page depicted a view of the façade of the castle, and now that I saw it, side by side with the real thing, the parts of the ruins still standing were a perfect match.
With all the talking, I hadn’t even noticed how we’d reached the goal of our trip.
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Mystery!
Good to learn more about Rika. The closest thing I can really imagine to her is a Time Lord after 200 regenerations.
Interesting that it looks like they're going to find Starswirl's mirrors. I suppose that could be a solution for the sandwich problem, but unless there's something really good on the other end of the portal, it's just shifting the question.
I wonder if Twilight will ever dare cast Haycarte's spell on her Daring Doo fanfics now.
The real problem with the Pi scenario as well as the infinite monkey scenario is probability.
The probability of even discovering one legible sentence is so close to infinite that it would be extremely unlikely to ever happen.
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But of course.
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True, but you don't have only infinite monkeys with typewriters. There are also infinite readers in infinite stories going over infinite possibilities. It was made clear that branches could generate their own trees.
Even if you are not simply discovering configurations in probability space, then you are still generating stories that generate stories. And in that case Borges already created a story that created all other possible stories, which means that they are already out there.