Unforgotten
Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash trotted into the throne room. "I'm getting way too old for this," said Dash. "Sorry we're a little late, everypony."
"Hmph. You're barely twenty-nine," said Fluttershy.
Rainbow Dash frowned. "Uh, right. Just like I said," she added. Pinkie Pie giggled in response.
"Wow. Way to make a mare feel old, guys," said Starlight Glimmer, with a deep sigh.
"Cheer up Glimglam! You're bound to be an alicorn by the end of Season 10," said Pinkie Pie.
"Not even going to ask what that means," quipped Rarity.
"Twilight, did everything go okay with the family last night?" asked Fluttershy, as she took her throne.
Twilight Sparkle shuddered. "It was... rough. They already knew what the date meant, and I explained our plan. They discussed it for a while, and eventually elected to forget that their foal was going to die. There was a lot of crying, but right after I cast the memory spell I put them to sleep with a different enchantment," she said. "They'll wake up the next time they're directly affected by magic, which shouldn't count the cessation of the date spell, but will definitely count the limited memory-erasure spell I'll be casting on all of Ponyville. It shouldn't have any added effect on them since those memories are already gone."
"I'm just glad this is finally over," said Spike, leaning sideways on his chair. "Why does this feel so terrible when we did so much good? It's depressing."
"I can't imagine how medical doctors deal with this kind of stress," said Fluttershy. "It's hard enough doing palliative care for animals, but life-or-death surgery?"
"Physicians are made of special stuff, that's for sure," said Starlight.
"I definitely... no, wait a moment, where's Applejack?" asked Twilight. "Unlike yesterday, she knew about this meeting well in advance, and she's rarely late."
Fluttershy gasped. "Oh no."
Rarity tousled her mane nonchalantly with a hoof. "Applejack is a good friend with a lot of horse sense in her. If she got into some sort of trouble, she would seek our help immediately," she said. "Just be patient, I'm sure she's fine." Rarity then surreptitiously wiped a dot of sweat from her brow.
"Well, I hope she's okay," said Twilight. "We can go search for her after we finish here if she doesn't show up. But it's almost time, everypony. It'll be obvious enough when the spell expires, so you don't need to take off your headbands."
"Um, but why should you leave them on?" said Spike, the only one present without a headband. "I mean, obviously Pinkie and I don't matter, but aren't we all going to forget the dates anyway?"
"I still have an 'EXP', just in case anypony was wondering," volunteered Pinkie.
"We weren't," said Dash. Fluttershy reached out and poked her hard in the ribs. "Ow! Ugh, fine, I'm sorry."
Starlight Glimmer shook her head, turning back to Spike. "We need the headbands on to prevent either Twilight or I from remembering any more than we need to. One of us has to cast the spell, and it can't be cast successfully unless the caster retains her knowledge of the entire event. I'd rather be the one to bear the burden of knowing, but I suspect Twilight disagrees."
"You suspect right, Starlight. It makes the most sense for it to be me," said Twilight Sparkle. "You've already seen, what, two thousand dates? I didn't do any sorting, and as for everypony here, I've forgotten your latter dates entirely. Plus, I never knew my latter date to begin with. I was so caught up in my thoughts yesterday that none of the data shifted into long-term storage."
"You don't know that for certain," said Starlight. "It could come back to you later."
"Just let Twilight handle this," Rainbow Dash said, sitting up in her chair. "It's... it'll be fine."
"Agreed. Besides," said Rarity, "as much as I understand the magic in question, we'll still remember generalities of the event, won't we? Which is why you needed to handle the tourist family separately. They might not remember the date, but they would still have known it was coming very soon."
Twilight nodded. "Yes, exactly. After I put them to sleep, Spike helped clean them up so it wouldn't look like they'd been crying," she said, with a short sigh. "They knew exactly what they were deciding. I'll need to send them away from Ponyville for a couple of weeks just to be safe, but we can come up with a way to make it up to them."
Starlight Glimmer shrugged. "I still don't like letting you be the one, but if it ends up being a problem, we can probably come up with a fix later. Good luck, Twilight."
The friends broke into two groups and made idle conversation until Applejack galloped into the room. Her eyes were wet, but she was grinning wider than a yawning hippo.
"AJ? Is everything okay?" asked Rarity, her facade of calmness cracking immediately. Her hooves trembled against the armrests of her throne.
"Eeyup! Even better than okay. You ain't never gonna believe it," she said. "Get this. Apple Bloom managed to get past Mac and see Granny, and she had the crazy idea to write on her head with a red marker..."
"What? Oh? Oh!" exclaimed Pinkie Pie, mouth open wide. "And it worked?"
"That... okay, that's brilliant, which I've come to expect from Apple Bloom by now, but it's also completely impossible," said Twilight. "That isn't how this kind of magic works! If we could do something like that, it would lead to paradox after paradox!"
"Well, it done worked, so there you go. She turned a 1 into a 4—Bloom's mouthwriting's always been pretty, as you know—and Granny's back among the living, just like that. We're keepin' her away from mirrors, but she seems totally fine. She'll break the age record for earth ponies by several years if she actually lasts here 'till 1040 Anno-Sol and all," said Applejack with a chuckle. "Hopefully it won't be a slow decline, but well, we can cross that bridge when we come to it."
"Oh. My. Gosh. Twilight. Twilight! Twilight!!!" shouted Rainbow Dash, fiercely gripping the edge of the Cutie Map with her hooves. "Add a buckton of 1's after my date! Do it do it do it do it do it now!"
"Actually, that's not a bad idea," said Starlight Glimmer. "Wait, this means can save the foal! Holy Moon and Stars. We can save everypony! Forever! Seriously, nopony ever needs to die again! This is... it's just unbelievable."
"It can't work that way," said Twilight. "This has to be dangerous. Something will end up stopping us if we try, because the statistics are against it. Like, in combinatorial terms."
"Um, Twilight, I think you should know..." said Spike, but nopony was paying any attention.
"Well, we might as well make an attempt, for goodness' sake," said Rarity.
"Do me first!" said Rainbow Dash, lifting her headband as Twilight averted her eyes from the date... and then there was a bright flash of red light. "Ow. Did I do that?" Dash said, blinking several times.
"No, that was just the spell ending," said Twilight. "But that's fine, we can just cast it again."
"Guys, that might be a problem," Spike said much louder, to no avail.
"Twilight, where's the book? I thought we left it here on the Cutie Map," asked Starlight Glimmer.
Twilight's eyes widened. "I don't know! I didn't move it. Spike, do you know where the book went?"
Spike covered his face in his claws. "That's what I've been trying to tell you!" he said, exasperated. "It's not here anymore."
Rainbow Dash glared directly at Spike. "What."
"It wasn't my idea! Look. I told Celestia about the situation because she mailed me last night and asked what all the hubbub was about down in Ponyville," he said.
"I doubt she used the word 'hubbub'," said Twilight Sparkle.
Spike rolled his eyes. "Fine, I'm paraphrasing. But she told me to return the book immediately. She says all of the spells in that book are forbidden, and she shipped it here by mistake. I sent it back Pony Express. Derpy left before midnight and headed straight to Canterlot."
"No. No, no way. That... that must be a mistake. Twilight, tell her there's a foal about to die!" said Rainbow Dash, leaning so far over the Cutie Map her chin was bumping Cloudsdale.
Twilight covered her face in her hooves, and her voice dropped. "I don't think it's a mistake," she said.
"But Twilight, this is an unfathomable opportunity. We could cure death itself!" said Starlight Glimmer, wide-eyed. "I mean, surely you can talk some sense into her?"
"I'm sorry, Starlight. Celestia and I... we've had this discussion before, on more than one occasion. Immortality isn't for everypony, guys. It would ruin society and prevent progress toward a better future. Ponies are supposed to die," said Twilight. "Even Princess Celestia and Princess Luna will die someday. When I last spoke to Celestia about it, she made a very convincing argument. I've had to accept that my parents and friends will all die at some point, no matter how powerful I become, and at this point, I'm afraid I agree with her general position on the subject."
"That's as it should be," said Applejack, narrowing her eyes in Rainbow Dash's direction.
"Easy for you to say!" said Dash, wings launching outward from her barrel. "You just gave an ancient pony, what, thirty more years? Meanwhile, a little foal is going to die in less than two! How is that even remotely fair?"
"It ain't," said Applejack, "and I wasn't the one who did that to Granny. I wouldn't have brought her back, to be completely honest. I'd even take those thirty years off her and give it to the foal, seein' as I know without question she'd agree to it, even though it'd pretty much be murder at this point."
"This is wrong. Talk to Celestia, Twilight," Rainbow Dash said, thumping her hoof repeatedly on the Map. "I don't even care about me anymore. At the very least, we should make sure everypony in Equestria can live a good, long life."
Starlight Glimmer slowly shook her head. "No. There's another angle to this I just realized," she said. "Sure, we could give everypony a long life, but at what cost? There's more to life than being alive. If we give this foal another thirty years, the most likely situation is that he'll spend them in a coma, or turned to stone, or something much worse. The future might not be much better for Smith Apple. Yes, the spell was a good thing to cast, but manipulating the dates like this is begging for a 'monkey's paw' outcome. And as Twilight implied, even the act of trying to fix things could cause a disaster due to the unlikely statistics involved. Like, a comet might crash into the castle before we get a chance to make the attempt, because as unlikely as that might be, it would still be more likely than lots of ponies living past their naturally-fated expiration dates. I mean, it can't kill us because it doesn't match our dates, but we could each be timeported to our fated deathdays at the same time. It might sound unrealistic, but when you're up against fate, the most likely scenario will win—even when all the possibilities are remote."
Fluttershy hugged Rainbow Dash as she began to cry, and Fluttershy cried along with her. "It's okay, Rainbow. I... I know you don't understand right now, and maybe you'll never agree with me, but death really is a natural part of life. I hate it as much as you do, but... maybe we need to move on, so the rest of his life can be normal." Pinkie Pie trotted over and joined the maudlin hug, but Rarity sat firmly in her seat and frowned.
"This... well, it's a big pile of wet horsefeathers, is what it is," said Rarity, invoking blushes around the room. "Pardon my Prench. However, as much as I hate to admit it, I also am forced to agree. Twilight is undoubtedly right on the bits this time, as usual. Plus, the idea of a comet smashing into all of us isn't a particularly pleasant thought. It would simply ruin my hooficure, for one." The dry humor eked a soft, sad-sounding 'heh' from Pinkie Pie, but that was all.
"It isn't fair," sobbed Rainbow. "It's one foal. Just one! Just, do it for him. Please?"
Twilight's face steeled with bitter resolve, and she slowly rocked her rump in her throne. "Spike, take a letter."
Spike looked down at the floor beneath the Map. "Twilight, I already asked her if there's anything she could do about the foal," he said softly. "I'm sorry."
"Well, what did she say, Spike?" asked Starlight Glimmer, before Twilight could even open her mouth.
"Again, I'm paraphrasing, but I kept the letters so you can read them yourselves. Princess Celestia said there are always options to save a pony's life, but those options are sometimes no better than death itself," he said. "When you go against fate, they're almost always worse, so it isn't worth the risk. She also said to treasure the time you have together, because those moments are precious... yadda yadda yadda. You get the idea."
"Twilight, this mess has gone on long enough. Let's get it over with. Please," said Applejack. Fluttershy and Pinkie broke the hug with Rainbow Dash and returned to their seats. Dash stopped sobbing and nodded in defeat, then sat back down.
Twilight straightened her back upright and looked out around the room. "My dear friends, we did something very, very difficult this past day. Our actions have saved numerous lives, including two of our own—or, three if you count my ridiculous extension—"
"Which we do," said Fluttershy, with a gentle smile.
"—thank you Fluttershy—and for that we should be very grateful. An opportunity this golden rarely comes along even once in a lifetime," said Twilight Sparkle. "And now, we must trot forward. I love each of you dearly, and I'm sorry you had to suffer through this, but you did an amazing job, the ramifications of which will likely live on for untold centuries from the progeny of the formerly ill-fated."
There was a brief silence. "Anything for you, Twilight," said Pinkie Pie. "Equestria too of course, but mostly all the ponies in this room. Oh, and the dragons, too."
"Hear hear," said Rarity, her mascara starting to smudge a little beneath her lower lashes. "Thank you, all of you."
"Spike, I realize it doesn't matter now, but could you ask Princess Celestia about your squiggly line later?" asked Starlight. "I'm still intrigued."
"I already did," said Spike. "It's weird, but my date was just in small print. I'll explain more later. Oh, and she has no idea what's up with Pinkie Pie."
"Me neither," said Pinkie, painfully faking a smile.
Twilight Sparkle closed her eyes. Her horn began to glow as she cast the spell to remove the date information from everypony in the vicinity. There were no fancy flashes of light this time, but a momentary dizziness struck everypony else in the room.
"What a ghastly sensation. I take it that's why you wanted me to tell the doctors in Ponyville not to do any delicate work around sunrise," said Rarity, rubbing her temples. "I'm going to need at least three spa treatments after all this drama."
"That was the idea, yes. As a side effect, that spell should end up waking our three guests. They're bound to hear us down here and show up eventually, probably confused as anything. Spike, could you go make breakfast for eleven? I heard you in there preparing things before the meeting," said Twilight.
"You got it, Twilight," said Spike, jogging off into the kitchen.
In-between flipping the pancakes, Spike fetched four chairs so everypony in the castle would be able to take a seat at the Map. It wasn't long before the family of tourists wandered into the throne room. The parents looked exhausted and confused, but the colt seemed perfectly fine.
"Hello?" said the stallion. "I'm sorry to intrude, but we're very lost. We went to sleep in Ponyville's Dragon Inn, I think it was called, but we woke up here, somehow? Is the Castle of Friend—oh, the Princess!" The parents quickly bowed, and the colt attempted to copy them, to imperfect but adorable results.
Twilight laughed it off, dryly. "Please, I'm nopony special. Er, well, I suppose I am, but don't bow. We're very happy to have you as our guests. I'm here to serve you, not the other way around."
The mare nodded. "Thank you, Princess. Can you explain what happened to us?" she asked. "Are we in some sort of trouble?"
Twilight Sparkle shifted nervously where she stood, and Starlight stepped up next to her. "May I explain?" she asked, and Twilight quickly nodded. "There's been a mishap with a magical spell that affected most of the town. For your safety, we need to escort you out of Ponyville by heading around the farmland to the West, and we'll need to ask you to stay away from the area for at least two weeks. In compensation, we'll give you a voucher you can use later on to stay here at the castle for three nights and enjoy the city, plus a thousand bits to help with travel and shopping."
"My goodness, that's very generous!" said the foal's mother.
The foal gasped. "Thank you Princess Twilight!" he said, bouncing in place.
"You'll need to use it in the next, um... six months," added Twilight. "But if there are problems with that, let me know. We'll find a way to accommodate the three of you."
As the conversation continued, Spike busily brought out silverware and stacks of pancakes with butter and whipped cream on top in whimsical shapes.
"I guess if you need to be secretive in getting us out of town, you can't tell us what happened in more detail then," said the father, looking sullen. "I hope we've done nothing wrong."
"No! No, not at all," said Twilight, fighting desperately to force a smile to the surface, even just a phony-looking one. "You're fine. You've been wonderful—this, this is all my fault. Not yours. Don't worry about it."
"Then, um..." whispered the stallion, frowning as he leaned forward with watery eyes, "do you know why my wife and I are so terribly sad?"
Twilight Sparkle froze for a moment before saying, "It, well, um... it was a side effect of the spell, but it only hit a few ponies who visited from out of town."
Unfortunately, she could tell by his face that he wasn't buying the ruse. Internally, Twilight wondered if somehow he still knew, and then the realization hit her like a sack of bricks.
Nothing is more heartbreaking than losing a child.
Of course they knew. They were his parents. The emotions were crushing them so severely, the depth of sadness could only be caused by one thing. She tried to think of something—anything—comforting to say, but the words just wouldn't come.
So, Twilight Sparkle forcefully pushed forward a pancake stack with a silly-looking smiley face on top. "Um, pancakes?" she asked him.
It was the only smile she could muster, but it was better than nothing.
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I'm not sure how I feel about that ending; I might have to come back to it.
The rest is really neat though!
8315258
8315280
8315325
Not everything I write is Order of Spring related, silly.
I mean, some of my stories are fictional.
8315295 "Difficult to say. Always in motion is the future." -Yoda
A big problem with seeing the future in any universe other than one with a boring locked in fate (absolute determinism is pretty pointless when you think about it. Even video games permit multiple directions of action.) then everything you prevent alters the entire chain of causality.
One neat thing to think about is how much would change in history just by stopping that guy who shot Archduke Ferdinand a single minute before he pulled the trigger. World War I would be at least delayed by quite some time, and if it ever took place, it would play out very differently. The Russian Revolution, which was strongly incited by the disastrous losses of people and resources of Russia entering into WWI would have been pushed so far back the Communists might have lost any early momentum and never come to power. Either that, or the radical Bolshevik faction would have been the weaker side and lost in a civil war. The Ottoman Empire would have remained in control of the Middle East much longer, the warring factions Britain and France split Arabia into after WWI (Yep, the current mess is pretty much all their fault) would never have developed. Japan would not have developed as quickly since they benefited enormously from wartime contracts with the British who were their allies at the time. And a struggling artist would never have joined the German army and, through a chain of events which would no longer take place, never ended up in a prison cell writing a book called "Mein Kampf".
Stopping one man's action would have changed the course of history forever.
Not only does this example demonstrate how interlocked every event in history is, it also shows just how influential the actions of one person can be.
Never be fooled into believing one person cannot change the world.
8315417
I think you may be confusing "choice" with "nondeterminism" (although I agree with you about the power of choice). The reason you can't know outcomes within the system is similar in some sense to the reason you can't prove a system's consistency within that system: the recursion leads to paradox.
There is a single deterministic fate (ignoring quantum physics for a moment, which changes all this), but that doesn't make choice any less meaningful because we can't know in advance what will happen. Like, fundamentally we can't know.
How, exactly?
Given the fact that highly creative and innovative people are only slowed by the processes of age and death, who's to say that progress might now radically accelerate if degeneration ceased and mental faculties remained in perfect condition among all the great geniuses of the world indefinitely?
Now, the stupid people will of course remain as useless rubbish... CLEARLY we don't want the genetically inferior getting a hold of this!
But that's why eugenics was invented!
8315425
8315417
All this from saying that doing stupid things that kill you will kill you projected time of death be damned.
8315425 Well, we actually can't be sure that there is a single deterministic fate... as to know for sure we'd also need to know the initial state of the universe at the moment it popped into being... and we can't look back that far. The debate about the universe's 'end' is still raging quite fiercely, and there's still an uncertainly about what if any forces can influence it or if it's possible for something coming into existence within the universe to escape its 'end'.
8315474
Yeah, that's what I meant about quantum physics (Everett's viewpoint). But my underlying point is that the choices we make are also determined by natural phenomena. The fact that it "feels" like we're freely choosing things in some out-of-causal sense doesn't preclude mental determinism.
Fate... I do not know what definition you use for it but when it is used I think of "something is decided" and I have a problem with that as it implies that "something" "cares" about the outcome. Who/what made the decision? Is the universe "alive" or is it like a rock that can not take action and only be acted upon? A person can change it's actions depending on the information it gains while a rock cant act at all. Applebloom could change "fate" as what is more probable is not guarantied after all.
Death... It is not good and neither is it bad. Some desire it and other do not. We constantly live and do things that our biology is not made to do or live. A cure for death is only bad depending on the circumstances and even with out them... Maybe it could be a choice?
Really good story tho! I enjoyed it very much and it was thought provoking. I wonder what Spikes line said? And what about Pinkie Pies?
.
Keep doing what you do
8315485 And yet if we sit and think out decisions, doesn't that mean that we can mentally influence the natural quantum processes within our own brains?
Quantum physics demonstrates conclusively, after all, that the act of measuring a photon collapses its probabilities, thus determinism becomes dependent upon deliberate processes!
It's a tricky sort of thing, isn't it?
8315578
Brains don't rely on quantum processes. All cellular functioning takes place waaaaaay above the level of quantum indeterminacy, so our thoughts are essentially deterministic.
Also, it isn't the act of "measurement" that collapses a system. It's any real interaction between two particles that will cause waveform collapse (or from Everett's view, entangle the outside world with those particular states). The terms "observation" and "measurement" are frequently misunderstood because there isn't a classical analogy for the uncertainty principle that makes intuitive sense. Quantum behavior also has nothing to do with the fact that making observations changes the system (this is probably the most common misconception by the general public). The uncertainty principle was initially thought to be related to that idea, but it is actually a fundamental aspect of particles, regardless as to your ability to measure them. Put another way, it isn't that we can't measure the particles that leads to quantum behavior—the nature of the particles themselves makes them impossible to measure because the precise values of position and momentum don't actually exist at the same time.
8315624 I'm referencing the modified slit-lamp experiment, which led to a very bizarre outcome that the photon's wave function seemed to only collapse at the slit which had a detector placed in front of it, while in the other case with only detectors behind the slits it would still seem to pass through all the slits.
I have tried to postulate that this could be because all portions of the wave function are entangled naturally and thus when any one portion of the wave contacts a detector, it immediately collapses upon that point where its energies are altered by the interaction with the detector. But that still doesn't quite solve the other part of the problem that the detectors past the slits all record the photon in the case where a detector in front of the slits is not present. Is it possible that passing through the slits splits the wave function such that the entanglement of its segments are separated? Or do they all indeed strike the detectors simultaneously? Perhaps it could be solved by placing one detector behind the slits slightly ahead of the others to determine if striking that one first causes the wave function to coalesce into a particle only at that point. If it STILL produces the slitted detection pattern, then something strange is happening.
Anyway, as far as the brain goes, there is evidence that even single synapses are maintaining multiple quantum states in their ion channels and may be involved in the processing and storing multiple memories and other information... much like a quantum computer! This is especially true with calcium-gated channels, the exact mechanism of which is still not properly understood with regard to long-term potentiation and how this leads to memory storage and retrieval.
8317161
I also need to adjust some numbers at the end as well. Should be closer to 700 solved rather than 200.
Done with this. I mean, it goes in machine of death directions of a sort in kinda interesting ways, but I feel there's not so much a story here as ponies reacting to a situation. Nobody really...grows from it, I guess?
You set up the most interesting bit with resurrecting Granny Smith - and then wrote it off as 'No, this is bad', when that to me is the hook that really takes the story into next-level territory. Yes, you note ways this could go wrong, but - exploration or at least debate on that would be more fun than 'Sunbutt shuts it all down from afar'.
Mid-ranger. Interesting premise but I don't think it utilized the full potential of it.
8317310
Feedback always appreciated!
8317161
I fixed this by removing Twilight and Starlight from the count, since the whole reason Starlight wanted feedback was to provide more grounding than she or Twilight are generally capable of. That makes it two and two, which should math correctly.
8317735
That does fix the mathy parts!
So the honor of observing proton decay for the first time is going to belong to Spike?
To be honest, just before the end I anticipated something like Starlight Glimmer time traveling 10000 years back trying to kick Celestia's ass at the very beginning, recover these old spells and save literally everyone from death Starlight-style (and apparently loosing). Everyone agreeing with Celestia's arguments in ~5 seconds was a tiny bit underwhelming.
8344499
She's an EXP!
Not bad. I wish you would have shown a little something about the tourist family, it's a little hard to give a damn about them when they're just 'that tourist family.' Good read, anyway.
Also, I keep telling you, stop posting stories en masse. You can't get enough face time that way. Just post a chapter every day, and wait 3 days between postings if it gets featured.
Apple "All these pulses are giving me ulcers" Jack
Apple "Abandon your toils, creep under the soil" Jack
Apple "Your fate's been read and soon you'll be dead" Jack
Apple "There's nobody like a cold body" Jack
And she's joined in her pro-Death propaganda by Twilight and Starlight. Their argument is like saying that no one should be vaccinated against measles because people who die of measles are safe from being hit by a train.
8315462
I like to think that, were an event like this to become real, then the stupid would be forced (by lack of a better word) to learn. The years would take their toll regardless of how much sheltering they experience. Eventually, they’d become human.
Well. That ending legitimately sucked. It was way, way to rushed and kinda killed all the catharsis and momentum you had going.
I hate withdrawing a like or a Fav. But it's warranted here, sorry.
10921454
Not to mention my weaknesses!
Also, I don't recall, but am forced to believe I modified the story a few years after I posted it because the following line is WAY too prescient:
Well, that explains why Granny had to die with no fanfare, but still what o.O
9524445
* Giggle
The whole fic, with its slow burn and lack of any real action besides a bunch of mostly-abstracted healthcare, looks to be building towards a huge catastrophe brought on by messing with fate, with Granny's revival looking like an obvious butterfly effect, which if allowed to go unpunished would simply leave them with the means to fix the ONE actual conflict of the story...and then they simply make up some excuses not to do anything while no punishment shows up and the plot suddenly falls over dead.