16 - Inconsistency
Crystal Faire sunk deeper into the couch as she shifted through some papers floating above her. She eventually settled on one particular sheet which contained some half-complete diagrams with a few footnotes underneath them.
I could… she thought as she twirled the quill in her magical grasp, I could always make some sort of central control for it… Something physical might do. Is that possible?
A cracking sound reported the wood in the fireplace splitting apart. The flames within shifted but nonetheless burned with the same intensity as before. The walls flickered as they reflected its orange and red light.
She yawned and floated over a slice of pizza. She bit into it, noted the juicy pineapple bits sprinkled across the slice, and then chewed in silence.
The doors opened, and Crystal sat up and looked over the back of the couch to find Starlight Glimmer trotting in.
“Trouble sleeping, I presume?” Crystal asked.
Starlight rubbed the bags under her eyes and nodded. “I bet you could see me tossing and turning all the way from here, huh?”
Crystal nodded.
Starlight hobbled over and rested her forehooves on the back of the couch. “But, it’s like… three in the morning. What are you still doing?”
“I’m just doing some blueprinting,” Crystal replied as she lay back down. “Besides, circadian clocks mean nothing when time itself is at your hooves like it is to me.”
“Surreeee,” Starlight slurred. She sniffed the air and seemingly followed the smell with her nose before her eyes locked onto the opened pizza box on the nearby nightstand. “Oh, mind if I have a slice?”
Crystal hummed. “Go right on ahead,” she said as she jotted some words down onto her paper.
Starlight lifted a slice with her magic and went to place it in her mouth, but then she paused and scowled as she glimpsed the pineapple toppings. “Ew. You know what? Nevermind.”
Crystal raised an eyebrow and watched as Starlight replaced the pizza slice. “Suit yourself, Starlight.”
Starlight shuddered and turned her attention back to Crystal. Her scowl faded and she straightened up. “Actually, I’m kinda glad that I found you still up. I have a question.”
Crystal shifted in her seat. Her mind’s eye immediately scanned all the timelines which diverged from this moment for Starlight’s speech and she pieced together Starlight’s question from within those. “No, there is no way for me to travel to the past.”
“Not even by other means?”
“No.”
Starlight trotted around the couch and then to Crystal’s side. “Okay, because I’ve done time travel before, back before, you know, I became Twilight’s student. And there are time travel spells out there.”
“I know of them,” Crystal replied. “But I’ve found that any time I wish to use a time spell myself, it conflicts with my time sliding ability, and so I end up going nowhere.”
Starlight shrank. “Oh. I see.”
Crystal smirked and took another bite from her pizza slice. She tapped the quill against her diagrams and frowned. Even if I sustain one spell across numerous timelines… That could put some considerable strain on my capacities. I wonder if I’d even be able to survi—
“Twilight told me that you discovered some sort of discontinuity, right?” Starlight asked.
The paper almost crumpled in Crystal’s grasp. Crystal sighed and stashed her thought away for later. “That would be correct.”
“Could you tell me about it?”
“When you traveled through time, you appeared at the moment of the Rainboom. That’s constant across all timelines,” Crystal explained as she rested the papers on her abdomen. “But, naturally, since the chain of events diverges after King Sombra; after when I was conceived… there are any number of timelines where you did not time travel at all.”
Starlight scratched her head. “Sure. But doesn’t that mean there would be timelines where I did time travel, but it still doesn’t line up?” She pointed to herself and said, “Like me? Maybe?”
That makes sense… Crystal thought. The Starlight that appeared at the Rainboom might not have been thinking the same thoughts that you were thinking when you time traveled. They might not have experienced the same things either.
She nodded. “That sounds about right, Starlight. Admittedly… I’ve given it some thought since Twilight first brought it to my attention.” Crystal sat up and scooted back into the armrest. “There is a discontinuity, and… it probably exists everywhere.”
“For every timeline, you mean?” Starlight asked. “That… kinda makes sense to me. But that just means that every timeline is wrong.”
Crystal actually felt a drop of sweat form on her brow. “W-well, yes. I suppose that is an accurate observation.”
“I guess that’s what’s been keeping me up,” Starlight said, chuckling nervously.
Crystal nodded and lit her horn again, levitating the papers back into her view. While her eyes stared at the diagrams and notes before her, her mind remained on the idea of discontinuities. “But if it’s any consolation…” she began, “my intuition tells me that there has to be at least one true timeline and subsequent diverging set of timelines out there to which both past and future match up.”
“Really?” Starlight asked. “Do you think you would be able to find it?”
Crystal shook her head. “Not a chance. I can’t even see your entire romp through time. I couldn’t make any comparisons even if I tried.”
Starlight’s ears drooped and then her body did as well. “Oh…”
“Now, trying to find out what caused the discontinuity in the first place… that’s something I would be more interested in.” Crystal sighed and shook her head. “But I don’t think that I would ever find it.”
“Well… uh… let me ask you a question, then. You’ve been to a lot of timelines and fixed a lot of things.” Starlight nodded from side to side and her muzzle scrunched up. “I would imagine you’ve been to some timeline and did some things, and then, later on, I probably had my time travel episode with Twilight, right?”
Crystal nodded. “Of course. I would suppose that there’s nothing I can do that can prevent other ponies such as yourself from time traveling.”
Starlight raised an eyebrow. “Okay. Then let’s say I got my hooves on a time travel spell right now. From what you say, I appeared at the Rainboom once and only once, so that’s crystallized now. So… then, what would stop me from time traveling there a second time?”
Time marched on and yet Crystal remained frozen in that moment. Her mind’s eye backed up a few moments to look at the span of the timeline where Starlight had said those words. She saw Starlight speak those words again. She replayed those words in her mind. She had to do so several times. And then she imagined that scenario in her head and imagined what it meant.
Crystal scrambled off the couch and landed straight on her hooves, unceremoniously dropping the papers and quill in the process. There’s… nothing, she thought.
* * *
Crystal paced about the library with her eyes glued to the floor. Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer sat nearby with the former hiding some yawns behind her hoof while the latter laid her head on one of the tables. A couple of candles served as the only lighting as the night sky seen through the windows offered nothing.
The sounds of hoofsteps heralded Starlight and Chrysalis as they entered the room.
Chrysalis wiped at her bagged eyes. “This had better be good,” she grumbled.
“Gather around!” Crystal barked. “Quickly! We’re traveling.”
And then, once they did so, Crystal touched a timeline some distance away with her mind’s eye, and reality folded in and back out again where they landed on solid ground. And the others let out several cries at what they saw.
And Sunset keeled over as she shielded her eyes from the bright sun above. “My eyes!” she screamed.
“Oh, come now, Sunset Shimmer,” Crystal said. “You signed up for this.”
“No! I did not sign up for surprise daytime!”
“Seriously, what the hay?” Starlight seethed. “You could have warned us about the light!”
Twilight nodded in agreement.
Crystal backpedaled and went flush in the face. “Okay, okay, fine. My bad.”
“What is all this about, anyway?” Twilight asked.
Crystal straightened up and cleared her throat. “Well, Starlight’s brought something to my attention. Twilight, you remember that discontinuity that you and I discussed over dinner a few weeks ago?”
Twilight went wide-eyed. “Oh! Yes! I do! Wait… have you figured out what caused it?”
“No. But… I’ve been given a helpful hint which I intend to test out right now.” She turned away and motioned at the surrounding landscape. “That is why I have brought you all out here.”
The five of them stood atop a tall peak. They saw several mountains and hills on all sides although much of it looked torn up and utterly destroyed like several landslides had stripped the peaks of their layers. A few kilometers-wide craters dotted the landscape at irregular intervals.
“And where is here, precisely?” Chrysalis asked.
“I will tell you later. Chrysalis, everypony here, besides you, has performed time travel at one point or another. But, today… you’re going to join the club.”
Everypony else, especially Chrysalis, wore confused frowns.
“Me? Time travel?” Chrysalis said with a snort. “Preposterous.”
“Oh, I think you could do it,” Crystal replied. She lit her horn and a scroll appeared in front of her. “This is Starswirl’s time travel spell. It primarily exists within the Canterlot Archives. This version is a once-per-lifetime spell, and the three of them have used it already.”
Twilight blinked and turned to Sunset. “You?”
Sunset pointed to herself and said, “When I was dealing with the Nameless.”
Chrysalis raised an eyebrow. “And you?”
“It clashes with my travel powers,” Crystal replied.
Chrysalis groaned in response.
Crystal unfurled the scroll with her magic and levitated it over. “You can read this, can’t you?”
Chrysalis snatched the scroll with her magic and took a glance at it. Her features curled into a fang-bearing snarl. “What do you take me for? I am a changeling queen! Of course I know how to read this.”
“Excellent. And I suspect that, as a changeling queen, you have enough power to at least pull this spell off.”
Chrysalis blew a strand of hair out of her face. “Yes. I do.”
“What I want you to do with this spell is to use it to travel to this spot exactly one week ago from this moment. No sooner, no later.”
“And then?”
“We will watch from another timeline,” Crystal continued. “We will leave you here so that you may perform the spell. Once you come back, describe aloud what you saw. Once you do that, we will come back to collect you.”
Chrysalis cracked her neck and looked at the spell again. “So… time travel one week into the past to this spot, describe what I saw when I return. Hmmm?”
“That’s right.”
After a few moments of silence, Chrysalis nodded. “Very well.”
Crystal turned to the others and nodded. As Chrysalis walked away from them with her head stuck in the scroll, Crystal wrapped her essence around the others. “Meanwhile, I’m going to momentarily indulge in something. Don’t be alarmed.”
Crystal shifted. Reality folded into a single point for a few moments. It folded back out and they landed within the shade of a solitary tree atop a grassy hill.
The space around them shifted and warped. They saw several images flash briefly in front of them, including some which contained Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash. However, their eyes centered on a cracked-horned Starlight Glimmer sitting at a table and wearing an eye-shaped object on a necklace.
Mere seconds later, the warping stopped, and the images faded into nothing.
“That was… me,” Starlight said.
“From an alternate reality. I like to peer into these sorts of events whenever possible, because it allows me to refine my filters” Crystal hummed and stroked her chin. “Twilight, remember when we studied relativistic effects on the evolution of the multiverse?”
Twilight nodded. “I do. We concluded that it evolved at your pace.”
Crystal pointed at the space where they had seen the images. “That object around that alternate Starlight’s neck was an artifact that manipulates time, which is what we saw just now. I was thinking about something similar. I needed to get another look at it to remind myself of how it works, so I can duplicate it later.”
Twilight hummed and nodded.
Crystal cleared her throat and turned her mind’s eye back to where she had left Chrysalis. “Anyway, let’s see what Chrysalis has for us…”
“That timeline that we just left her in,” Sunset began, “its past should have turned semi-crystallized behind us, right? Whatever happened a week ago is set in stone and can’t be changed.”
“That’s right,” Crystal replied. “That timeline that we just visited… is highly characterized by Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity traveling to the far west Archback Mountains.”
Twilight tapped her chin. “Oh, that was where we were just now. But why would they go there?”
“The beneviolet flower that grows there. It’s for horn rot.”
Twilight shuddered. “Oh! I see…” She felt at her own horn.
“A week before the moment we just visited… the three of them arrived in those very mountains and fought a world snake in order to secure that beneviolet.”
Sunset shuddered. “No wonder that place looked so torn up. World snakes are tough.”
“World snake?” Starlight tremulously asked.
“It’s a snake as big as the world,” Sunset replied. “But… it’s more the size of a mountain range.” At the stares that Twilight and Starlight gave her, she added, “No, really.”
“It is true,” Crystal said. “And from what I can see… in the infinitely many probable futures that we left Chrysalis to, she actually, earnestly, attempted the spell in a majority of them—”
“Oh, that’s good,” Twilight interjected as a smile appeared on her face.
“—although there are some where she failed the spell and some where she overshot or undershot or went to the wrong place or whatever; again, in the majority, she’s describing that exact scenario which I just described to you. Not only that, but there are some divergences where at least one of Applejack, Rainbow Dash, or Rarity can suddenly remember seeing her there.”
Starlight nodded. “So, she did see the fight. She pulled off the time travel spell.”
Crystal didn’t respond for several moments. Yes… she did…
She turned her mind’s eye backward. She saw the moment in which the five of them had arrived. She looked further back and saw the three ponies fighting the world snake. This entire span of time is constant across this entire set of timelines.
She looked forward again to where everything finally diverged. She saw the timelines where Chrysalis had failed and the many others where she had succeeded. Her… traveling to that constant past is variable.
I was right. Oh…
Eventually, she wrapped her essence around them and examined the probabilities with her mind’s eye, all of which looked almost crystallized. Concurrently-crystallized. She touched one, and as reality folded together, all the probabilities collapsed into one as Crystal knew they should.
Reality folded back out and they stood atop the mountain peaks again.
Chrysalis, who stood nearby, trotted over. “Did you catch what I said? I saw that behemoth of a snake,” she said. “I saw those oafish ponies fighting it.”
“We know. And those are my friends,” Twilight replied with hints of venom in her voice.
“You really did time travel, huh?” Starlight asked.
Chrysalis chuckled and beamed with pride. “You may bask in my glory now.”
Crystal felt like she didn’t have the breath necessary to speak.
Sunset, similarly grim-faced, looked around and said it: “Chrysalis never appeared when they were fighting the world snake, did she?”
Crystal shook her head. “My hypothesis ended up being right. The past is unchanged; she never appeared there despite time traveling there for any timeline. That’s constant across this entire set of timelines.”
Chrysalis frowned. “But… I did…”
Twilight gasped. “No way…”
Crystal met Chrysalis’ gaze dead on. She stared into Chrysalis’ soul. “You did it,” she croaked. “You’ve created a discontinuity.”
“Stars,” Twilight wheezed.
“Oh geez,” Sunset said.
“Stars,” Starlight said.
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Huh, so... She did so it, but all the realities she did it in were folded into one where she didn't? Interesting... I imagine there'd be a lot of headaches there.
... Wait, doesn't that also mean that someone could've gone travelled to change things in the past and it'd never be known?
Well, things are getting a lot more complicated.
8396967
Yeah, I think that's exactly what's being implied.
Huh. Now isn't this interesting?
8396967
8397087
It seems there's a bit of confusion on what happened, and I've gone in and fixed this in the text. Basically, it doesn't matter whether or not Chrysalis time travels; if she does, the past is unchanged. She can never appear there even if she time travels to that moment.
And, actually, that not knowing is not entirely true either. This one takes a little bit of inference since it's not actually stated in the chapter. If there had been some variation where Chrysalis killed Applejack in the past(which might not be out of character, maybe), Applejack would still be alive but she'd remember dying. Furthermore, these changes wouldn't take effect until Chrysalis time travels. Hence, the discontinuity.
8397392
That.... just made me more confused.
8397534
Just think of the past as constant, and the future as variable. Unpacking this in full will require some thought but you don't need to do so in order to understand the story.
It's a Dangerous Business, travelling back in time.
8397392
Do you mean.. it is like a dream ?
When we dream about weird thing .. , it is actually someone use time travel ?
best pony
heretic
I can handle a lot of nonsense in stories. I can suspend my disbelief pretty easily. I can put things together and guess at what happens throughout the story.
Nonsense of the time-traveling, multiverse variety is my nemesis. My head hurts.
Do not take this the wrong way. I am thoroughly enjoying this story.
*snicker* Starlight's disgust from pinapple pizza reminds me of this bit from TFS.