The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi

It's Time For Science

"Mmmhm," Anemone said, hovering over a machine holding the windigo heart. "Hmmm... Right. Mhm. Mmm..."

Her tongue poked out of the side of her mouth in concentration as she adjusted dials and stared at a graph with a frown. "Go stand over there, please," she instructed, pointing a wing at the far corner of the room. "Your necklace is interfering with these readings."

Valey held out her duffel bag. "If you're looking for interference, I've got four more in here."

Anemone blinked in attractive irritation. "...You might have wanted to mention that earlier."

Valey shrugged in self-defense. "You didn't ask!"

"I got tired of asking because you were being mysterious," Anemone levelly replied, "which is great for dating but not so useful for science. Work with me here, and I'll buy you something hard after work so no one can blame us if things get inappropriate. How's that for motivation?"

"I honestly don't know how they work," Valey replied, holding out the bag. "Just what they can do. And every last bit of it is evil mad science tier, not the kind of thing you'd want to do in a school."

"Such as?" Anemone arranged the other hearts in the machine, setting them in a circle on a dais. "Stop worrying, I wouldn't work here if I wasn't responsible where it counts."

Professor Sea Star frowned from further back. "You work here because I vouched for you after you got expelled for misconduct."

"Wait, that can happen?" Valey scratched her head. "They boot you out as a student, but not a...?"

"Lab assistant, technically," Anemone muttered, making a face at the display. "Long story short, there are certain things it's less inappropriate for an employee to do than a student. According to them."

Valey blanched, looking over her shoulder at Sea Star. "But wait a sec, she said she was your ex...?"

Sea Star groaned and shook her head as Anemone suddenly giggled. "Not that kind of misconduct," she sighed.

"Say it...!" Anemone warned, grinning at the machine chamber.

Sea Star threw a whiteboard eraser at Valey's head, then turned around and left. Valey effortlessly dodged it.

"She got expelled for stealing Buckball buckets," Caballeron said with a shrug. "But was a good enough student that my colleague wanted her in research. It was a big favor, one thing lead to another... You know how it goes."

"Why were you stealing Buckball buckets?" Valey stared at Anemone, jaw slack. "And what even is a Buckball bucket? I mean, what?"

Anemone was busy staring at the display in surprise, her voice quiet. "Long story. Do I have your curiosity?"

Valey tilted her head. "I mean, yeah?"

"Good." Anemone fluttered her wings in satisfaction. "Then go stand on the other side of the machine and hold as still as you can."

"Uhh... sure?" Valey obeyed, locking her hooves and holding her breath.

Anemone watched a display, nodding. "Now come back here and hold still again."

"Like this?" Valey moved to stand beside her.

Anemone frowned and tapped the machine. "Is this thing faulty? We had a latency spike back there... Hey, Starfish! Get back here! Did you do anything?"

"No!" Sea Star's voice called back through the door. "And don't call me that!"

"A latency spike?" Valey stepped closer and tilted her head. "What's that mean? And what's this thing doing, anyway?"

Anemone sighed, putting her forehooves on her flanks and staring at the windigo hearts with a suspicious expression. "Will you make this worth my time?"

"I won't know if I don't know what it's doing." Valey shrugged.

Anemone took a breath. "...Right. You rode in on the Arc Manta, right? How much did you hear about what it's built for?"

Valey pursed her lips. "Going fast underwater and mapping the seafloor?"

"That's... grossly inaccurate," Anemone sighed. "Very long story short, there's a sheet of magic that we think exists at the deepest point of the world, like a plane the entire world sits on. We call it ether, which is a subset of a concept called harmony. This sheet of ether as a whole, we call the lifestream. The lifestream is constantly flowing in a complex pattern, and as far as we know is linked in a way we don't understand to every living thing. A major goal of multiple Kinmari research programs has been to better understand the lifestream, both because we're curious and because it's relevant to things like space travel for tangential reasons. One of the biggest questions relating to that which we're focusing on is how immutable the lifestream's currents are. We already know there are patterns to how and where it flows, but we want to better map them and what, if anything, can make them change. How are you following so far?"

Valey nodded. "Have you ever actually been down there?"

Anemone nodded in return. "We dug a very deep shaft on this island and can directly access and observe a tiny part of it, yes. But we need more than one data point. The purpose of the Arc Manta is to try to use the lifestream's effect on living creatures to map out its flow. Essentially, it takes ponies to the seafloor, as close as they can be to the magic, and then moves them around and tries to measure subtle changes to their bodies based on their proximity and the ether's movements." Her eyes grew serious for a moment. "Don't go talking about this to just anyone, by the way. It's fairly privileged information that our main method of measuring this is actually measuring ponies near it."

"Information you were remarkably quick to divulge," Caballeron pointed out.

Anemone frowned at him. "She knows things too, and someone had to start the conversation."

"Yeah, don't worry." Valey shook her head. "Lips are sealed. So then this thing...?"

"Is a little complicated," Anemone admitted. "But it's a measurement device. Think of the Arc Manta as this thing, except that pedestal in there is the entire interior of the ship. Plus a lot of other things."

Valey stared at it for a moment. "Okay. Yeah, I can see ponies getting spooked if you told them they were riding in a giant thing that was constantly experimenting on them."

"Measuring. Not experimenting." Anemone shook her head. "All we can do is observe output. The only changes we can actually make ourselves are moving your physical location. Even being able to measure the lifestream like this is cutting edge. Manipulating it could be years in the future."

"Huh." Valey stared again at the windigo hearts. "So what was it you just got surprised by right there?"

"Oh, it changed about a second worth of data after it had already written it," Anemone sighed, looking at the machine with a confounded expression. "Right around when she threw that eraser and stormed out. This is an extremely unstable testing environment, unfortunately, since it's built to hold ponies and doesn't have proper shielding to guard against interference by observers like us. And with materials we're not familiar with... Well, we know it's reading something. Your necklace isn't helping either, by the way, but it's already enough of a mess I don't think we're learning anything except that the unexpected can happen. Still, I've never seen it second-guess itself. There shouldn't be any type of input that could cause errors in the temporal mapping... Maybe the building had a power surge, or something. Maybe it's just a mechanical fluke."

Valey frowned curiously at the display. "Yeah, probably." She pulled back, then blinked. "Hey, for the sake of good experimentation, you wanna see if it'll happen again? Throw an eraser at me."

Anemone shook her head. "I just had you move around, and that didn't do anything more unusual than I was expecting. We've tested ponies being surprised around this, haven't we, Caballeron? Either way, our eraser chuckster isn't coming back, so we can't-!"

Mid-sentence and without warning, her wing twitched inside her coat, and she flung a highlighter like a dart straight at Valey.

Valey caught it without blinking, trotting over and passing it back. "Any luck?"

Anemone was staring dumbfounded at the screen. "That's... That's impossible..." She glared back up at Valey, eyes flashing with an intense lust for knowledge. "What made you suggest that!? What made you suggest throwing something, instead of getting Sea Star or yelling or flirting or anything else we were doing? It just happened again! If we can reproduce a phenomenon I've never seen anything like before..."

"Uhh..." Valey scratched her head, reaching a hoof beneath her beret and rubbing. "I mean, I used my cutie mark to dodge it, so since those have to do with harmony and that was at the same time as this thingamajig..."

Anemone fixed Valey with the most restrained look in the world. "Your cutie mark, hmm? I would like to study this. What would it take to make you willing?"

Valey nodded for confirmation. "You want to study my butt."

"Yes, I..." Anemone finally reddened, made worse when Valey pumped a hoof in victory. "Hey! I'm being serious!"

Valey flexed. "What goes around comes around, girl. You don't get to spring that on me when we met without me trying to defend my crown. Now... you have a legitimate scientific interest in my rear."

Anemone breathed very, very deeply. "Yes. I do! In both meanings of the phrase, if that's how you want to play. Will you come back here and let me investigate why this machine rewrites itself when someone throws things at you?"

"Let's say there's a price." Valey leaned in, folding her forelegs on a counter. "Those things?" She pointed a wing at the windigo hearts. "That effect you're measuring from them I am ninety percent sure is actually mind-altering in a negative way. Not super emergency level, but I don't know enough about them and want them shielded and contained so there's no way they can affect me or my friends anymore. You find a box or something that can hold them and stop them from being measurable to your machines that detect effects on life, and I'll go along with whatever. Because I'm also ninety percent sure all this chaos data you're complaining about is actually the machine measuring their effect on us, not it measuring them."

Anemone stared at her for a moment with a slack jaw. "Help me set these in a circle around the machine. I'm going to stand in the middle, and you're going to get to learn how to read this display."

Caballeron waved, stepping out as they got started. "Have a nice experiment, ladies! I am going to find some afternoon coffee..."

---

The sun was two hours out from sunset when Valey emerged from the space department, sans her duffel bag and all alone. Anemone had data to crunch, and she had existing friends to catch up as well as new ones to make.

It was a short flight to the hospital, barely two buildings away. Valey zoomed a quick circuit around the building, eventually finding the same second-story window overlooking the entrance she remembered from earlier and shadow sneaking her way inside.

"Valey!" Maple blinked in surprise. "You never knock, do you?" she greeted with a smile.

"If that's a problem, slap me until I change my ways." Valey winked back, glancing around the room to see who else was there. "Meltdown, Saffron, Sparky. Hey girls. Where's everyone else?"

Shinespark sat in a corner, watching the door, and sighed. "They're out."

"President Kinmari stopped by about an hour ago," Saffron Sunflower explained, sitting carefully across from Maple's bed. "Got everyone who felt like a walk together and invited them to check out some places on the island. Said he was finding you a real place to stay."

"Really?" Valey raised an eyebrow. "Makes me wonder why he didn't do that earlier."

Shinespark shrugged. "Maple and Felicity had this place, and do you and Gerardo even care where you sleep?"

Valey slowly knit her brows, sensing a double meaning. "Are you... uh... upset at all about how I teased you on the boat?"

"I'm upset about far too many things for that to even matter," Shinespark replied. "I'm burned out on being upset. I haven't been processing much of anything now that we're here."

Maple glanced conspicuously at Valey, then nudged toward Shinespark with her eyes.

"...You wanna talk?" Valey asked, offering a hoof. "I'll fly you to the roof. We can sit together and watch the sunset?"

"Would you be alright with me being a mess?" Shinespark replied.

"If I wasn't, I'd ask you if you wanna go talk in a shower, or something." Valey waggled her eyebrows.

"...How?" Shinespark asked. "How are you so... carefree again?"

Valey trotted closer. "Wish I could share it with you. Can I try?"

Shinespark slowly exhaled. "Fly me out to my ship?"

"...It's a dump," Valey warned. "You sure it'll make you feel better?"

"No," Shinespark replied. "It won't, but if we're going to talk, that's where I want to do it."

"Gotcha. Hop on."

---

Valey banked hard, canceling her momentum and coming in for a soft landing on the deck of the Immortal Dream. Several university security guards stood near it on the dock, nodding as they flew overhead.

"Nice of them to add dudes to chase off trespassers," Valey remarked, crouching so Shinespark could climb down from her back. "So... why here?"

Shinespark ran a hoof along the scarred edge of the ship where a brood beast had torn one of the railings like a comb. The deck was dented, and a bit of water from high surf during the last leg of the voyage had pooled in various places, one of the pools disturbed by her steps.

"My horn is broken." Shinespark looked down. "My heart is broken. My dream is broken. My ship is broken. There's nothing left to do except start from scratch, like an earth pony without a cutie mark and no hometown. But I don't want to say goodbye."

Valey approached, staring into a reflection and using it to meet Shinespark's downcast eyes. "You've got a lot of time ahead of you. You remember what I said, right? Ironridge doesn't need a visionary or hero now, but it will in a decade or two. Don't say goodbye. Say you'll be back."

Shinespark sighed. "This ship looks exactly the way I feel. Don't you remember how beautiful it used to be? We didn't have a power source, but we kept working because we wanted it to embody all of old Sosa's spirit and pride, like an ark that would keep it alive after the city sank beneath the waves. And now look at it." She paced to the wall between the doorways to the stairs and the bridge, stroking a scratched, painstakingly-carved mural. "They put just as much faith and work into this ship as they did into me. And now that dream is dead for both of us. Both of us will never fly again."

A tear rolled down her dirty cheek. "Oh yeah?" Valey said, coming and standing behind her. "We'll see about that."

"What are you going to do?" Shinespark asked. "My horn is broken. The engine is destroyed. Even if you could rebuild it enough to make it technically work, it would be hobbling through the air on crutches. This ship is only as immortal as the dreams of its crew."

Valey frowned.

"And every last pony here is finished and tired." Shinespark closed her eyes. "I just can't anymore. I wish I could go back. It would be worth doing it all over again just to feel the conviction I used to have..."

"You mean the faith that everyone else put in you?" Valey stretched out a wing. "Yeah, well... for the time being, we're safe. And I'm not finished. So you just leave everything to me, okay? I'll see what I can do."

Comments

[Oberth Effect]

Lots of science fun to unpack!

Just to make sure I'm remembering things correctly and not missing any other info, "regular" magic uses mana, which is produced from harmonic energy by ponies/cutie marks. The lifestream is an ether plane, where souls are reborn/remade, while ether is liquid hope/the will to exist, and is a subset of harmony. And harmonic energy has some additional effects/powers that I can't remember at the moment. Is that about right?

I wonder precisely what kind of measurable effects the lifestream has on pony bodies. I'd imagine the Kinmari scientists would have a field day if they learned Starlight was reconstituted/reconstructed in a harmonic flame, and would probably kill to have the opportunity to witness it happening again.

Speaking of which, I'm curious whether that deep shaft can serve as an impromptu tree of harmony. I don't remember if it was said whether the flames in previous trees were drawn directly from the lifestream or whether the trees did something inbetween contacting the lifestream at its roots and powering the flame in their "main" chambers, but if there isn't much done then maybe we have a way to revive Glimmer. I'm curious whether they can contact the other trees of harmony.

That is some extremely interesting information on Valey's cutie mark. Is it rewriting the past, instead of predicting the future? Either way, it's a tantalizing clue as to how it works, and I can't wait to learn more.

And holy cow, Shinespark. Good thing there's research into the lifestream, i.e., liquid hope, going on? Not that I think she's going to get an injection of liquid hope to just fix things up, but if there's any place to get better here's probably the right place.

[Phoenix Kitten]

Careful, Valey. Don't take on more than you can handle. But that was a grade-S retort on Anemone.

[Workable Goblin]

I'm looking at Shinespark and going, "Mare, you know that you're in, like, the next best place in the world for building an entirely new set of engines from scratch after Ironridge itself, right?" Not to mention whatever other tricks the Equestrians have that Ironridge didn't to make the Immortal Dream even better than it was.

She pretty obviously needs a long rest and therapy. Again, it's good that she's where she is...

[Alchemik]

Retroactive, you say? Fascinating. Event chains that must happen in certain orders disrupted through time shenanigans, perhaps?