The Rift

by Colors

– INTERLUDE –

... there is a large crystal sphere.

Power is power.

Light is light.

Cosmic texture is drawn to power and light.

Equestria is at the center of the sphere. A plane: wide, massive. Far larger than any planet.

Position is not random. Randomness is real in every day occurrences, but on a cosmic level, everything is guided. The crystal sphere is like a gargantuan control panel, far larger and more complex than any invention by species living within. Twenty-five quadrillion nodes, the equivalence of a quintillion lines of code, shooting hundreds of trillions of white lines by the minute, soaring through the sphere’s interior. The machinery that is running the universe. Not to be seen, never to be understood, but near perfect in what it does.

Save for the Rift.

In relative terms, the Rift is tiny. It that were different, the ensuring chaos would have wreaked havoc at a scale beyond imagination. It is five hundred miles wide, ten thousand miles long. You could not fit a single planet through it, not even a moon. And yet, if you punch a hole into an intensely connected web of software, even if it’s tiny, you will have lastings effects. The sphere has not been optimized for modularity.

So what is it that draws all the attention? What force put Equestria at the center? What could be powerful enough to keep up eternal interest from the machinery?