Stories set in the Oversaturated World, some silly, some less so.
It was a relatively common sight, albeit in a different sort of universe: A young godling eager to show off greater clarity into the nature of reality by challenging mortals to a game just barely out of their reach. In this case, as with so many others, it was a variant of the game of war abstracted down to an eight-by-eight grid.
At first, it played out the same as it did in many worlds: The mortal’s moves came hesitantly, taking a minute or two, hands shaking as she moved her pieces. The godling, by contrast, moved like lightning, hands and pieces darting with relish. Especially when the space around the board began to blur, the pieces wavering in superposition between two, three, five simultaneous game states. The only constant was white pieces falling in battle, with far too few black ones going with them.
But then came a novel twist on the narrative. The mortal paused, looked across and back and in directions that had no name, then took a rook and turned it not quite counterclockwise.
The entire board sprang back to its starting state, save for the white rook in the middle of the board.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s try this again now that I’m getting the hang of it.”
The godling made a point of not letting his jaw drop.
At that point, Sunset Shimmer appeared at the end of the cafeteria table in her typical golden flash. “Okay, what exactly are you doing to causality?” She frowned down at the chessboard. “And how does Ditzy have three rooks?” A tilt of the head made the frown deepen. “Hang on… What?”
“A fascinating twist on the classic proposed by none other than our illustrious Agent Heartstrings,” said Mr. Discord. “Time and possibility are but additional axes in which the pieces can move. And Miss Hooves just realized that that means rooks can jump all the way to the beginning of the game, so long as their current space has remained unoccupied through the entire match. Unlikely but wholly possible.” He grinned as they began the exchange once more, both moving with that divine confidence. “I have multiple mates in two, but those are far ahead in the timeline. She has ample time to try to dig herself out of—“
“Checkmate,” said Ditzy.
Mr. Discord blinked, then looked back over the board. “I can just—“
“On your king three turns ago.”
“That… Er…” After a few more moments, Mr. Discord nodded and tipped over his king. “So it would seem, yes. Well played, Miss Doo, well played indeed.”
A golden glow enveloped the chessboard as it collapsed back into a single eigenstate. “Please tell me you’re not going to popularize this,” said Sunset.
Mr. Discord shrugged. “I’m not sure most people can even process it. You and I, certainly. Miss Doo with her unique relationship to multiversal geometry, evidently.”
“To be honest, Agent Heartstrings has shown me the game before. Though she uses unicorns and dragons.” Ditzy shook her head. “Then it gets weird. At least I’m better at it than normal chess.”
“Still, I’m not sure many others can handle more than a few timelines without their brains melting.”
“Pretty sure that’s where computers get involved, Mr. Discord,” Ditzy noted.
“Hmm. Fair point.”
“‘Cross-Temporal Hyperchess’?” said Lemon Zest. “Which bad sci-fi novel are we in again?”
Sunny Flare smirked. “Let’s not forget who introduced whom to that metatime-strategy game.”
“Okay, fair. Let’s see how nuts this one can get.”
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The best thing is that even without the real-life context, this still looks like a perfectly normal day for the Oversaturated World's dimensional adepts. XD
Is it bad that I totaly get this?
Love the opening! Setting up an expectation, and then subverting it!
Hmm... I wonder how Pinkie Pie or Twilight would do... Or Dinky??
Ah. And Lemon Zest and Sunny Flare are playing?
Hmm... "Cross-Temporal Hyperchess" could be sort of seen as an abstraction of Achron, as Chess was to regular war...?
----
On thinking about it, that could also mean timelines playing chess with each other... How that'd work, I dunno.
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Typo. Sorry for missing this!:
white pieces falling in battle
Huh. It has been a long time since I'd heard of that MTS. Oddly, I've played both of the games mentioned here (and sucked at both of them).
My brain is not big enough to succeed at normal chess, so I'm confident that literal four-dimensional chess is well beyond my current abilities. And you know what? I'm okay with that.
10511176
Pinky could do it, because it's funny. Twilight is smart enough but doesn't have enough ability to "see" or manipulate Time and possibility.
I suddenly want to buy and play that 5D chess game.
Girls, it's urban fantasy and/or dungeonpunk. Get with the program.
10511176
What a coincidence, my thoughts also went to Achron as soon as I figured out what was going on. And, I should mention, before I hit the mention of a metatime-strategy game, which it billed itself as the first of.
10534417
So Celestia abandoning her duties is cannon to Oversaturation at some point?(if you look closely you can see my opinion of season 9)
10534204
That's fair for hunger and the underpinnings of genocide but how about just a mass teleportation of a people being slaughtered after using her influence that many people see her as god to make sure the country they are being teleported to accepts them? Even if the leader of said country isn't a Shimmerist many of their population will be and they will have a hard time getting relacted if the leader snubs Sunset's express orders.(I'm assuming she teleportes the people being murdered to a democracy)
10534907
Haven't decided yet. The full effects of the ripples from Transmission Spectrum have yet to be seen. I can't rule out either possibility at the moment.