Imaginary Worlds
Queen Twilight watched as all seven of her friends stirred and returned to reality one by one. Within a few seconds they were all awake and chatting amongst each other like before, discussing their experiences in the linkscape. After only a few moments Sunset turned to the queen, who was once again lying on the blanket and calmly smiling.
"So, what's this final test you have in mind?"
That got everyone's attention again and soon everyone was looking to the queen expecting an answer. She was all too happy to provide one.
"As the final test, I want all of you to try and create a linkscape of your own. If you manage to create one, I'll know and come visit you there."
The seven were slightly taken aback by the apparent jump in the challenge of their tests, but nonetheless focused. Soon enough the queen felt the formation of a linkscape. She quickly jumped in to it to see what it was.
As the world materialized around her, Queen Twilight found herself in a nearly perfect recreation of Princess Celestia's throne room. And standing in the middle of the room on the carpet, was Sunset Shimmer, in her pony form.
"Good job Sunset, I guess you have that much control after all."
Sunset turned to look at her with a wistful smile. "Does it still look like this?"
The queen was confused for a moment, then she understood. "This is how it looked before you left, isn't it?"
"Yup."
"Well, it's pretty much the same, really, a few more stained glass windows, but that aside, pretty similar. A bit empty, but mindscapes tend to be rather devoid of life. Well, save for the info hubs but that's a special case."
"Info hubs?"
"Mindscapes used to share information among drones. A side effect of intelligent drones is that, with them acting on their own, the Queens don't need to micromanage every detail. So the drones need a way to share information on a larger scale."
"I see. You know, it's quite interesting to learn how your hivemind works."
The queen suddenly turned her head to the side, as if she heard something.
"What's the matter?"
"It seems another one of the girls managed to form a linkscape. I better go see who it is."
"You do that, have fun."
With a smile and a nod the queen closed her eyes and vanished from sight.
Once she reopened her eyes, she found herself standing on something that reminded her of pink snow. Looking around she saw giant, red pillars with flames at their tops, and strange curved hills of a deep blue all around her. Using her control of the mindscape she phased upwards. From her new vantage point she realized that the pink snow had in fact been the frosting of a giant cake. Suddenly it became very clear to her who formed this mindscape.
"Pinkie?"
"Yes?"
The queen recoiled as the confectionary connoisseur was suddenly floating at her side. The fact that such a thing was normal in a mindscape, didn't serve to make Pinkie's sudden appearance any less surprising.
"Why am I not surprised that your mindscape is a giant cake?"
"Because I like cakes, duh."
"Pinkie, that was a rhetorical – nevermind. It seems you have everything under control here."
"Yup. Want some?"
"Oh why not, it looks like none of the other five managed to form a mindscape yet."
"Five?"
"Yeah, I just came from Sunset's."
"Cool. Well, dig in."
With that, both of them phased back down to the gigantic confection and began eating.
Supremely enjoying her multitasking ability and utilizing it to manifest in two linkscapes at the same time, Queen Twilight appeared in what could be described as a stormy sky. There was no ground in sight and strong winds, rain, hail and lightning were coming from all directions. A few hundred meters before her, a rainbow blur was racing through the storm, dodging all obstacles with ease.
With a sly smile the queen made use of the linkscape's properties to rapidly accelerate and catch up to her friend without much effort. Close up she saw that Rainbow had once more assumed her 'ponied-up' form and was having her fun flying through the stormy sky.
"Hi Dash."
Rainbow would have nearly fallen to the ground, had there been any, as it was, she simply fell about fifty meters before catching herself and flying back up to the snickering queen.
"Not. A word. To anyone."
"Don't worry Dash, it's no big deal. I just happen to be good at sneaking up on people, especially in a mindscape. Having fun?"
"Yeah, flying is awesome. And being able to create a challenge for myself makes it even better."
"Oh you want a challenge? That I can give you."
As they were floating in midair, the changeling swept her hoof across the infinite skies before them and quickly replaced them with a recreation of the Cresnox Jungle. A bright blue sky above and large clouds all around them.
"How's this supposed to be a challenge again?"
"Oh, maybe you want to ask the fire hornets that."
"Who?"
The queen simply pointed behind them at a swarm of giant burning insects that was fast approaching. "Them."
"Oh. It. Is. On. Come hornets, catch me if you can!"
The queen watched for a few more moments. Rainbow was faster than the hornets. But they had the numerical advantage by far. With a sly smile she conjured more swarms all around them so her prismatic friend would have her fun. Then she sensed another mindscape forming and quickly disappeared.
She immediately reformed and found herself in a room that she found to look very comfortable. Despite being a bit tight for a changeling queen – it was clearly designed for a human – it fit her tastes very well. The room seemed to be a laboratory of sorts, with various pieces of equipment and electronics the queen couldn't really place and others of which she would have sworn she knew magical equivalents back at the hive. In a chair next to a relatively clear workspace sat her counterpart, staring at the wall opposite her with the face of someone in deep thought. Looking to the wall, the queen found a board with various pictures, notes and what appeared to be readouts from various measuring instruments, attached to the board with numerous pins which where in turn connected by strings of red yarn into a complex web of connections. Interestingly, all of them seemed to be connected to CHS in some way.
As she calmly walked up to the girl in the comfortable chair, her counterpart turned and gave her a somewhat sad smile. "This is where it all started." With a questioning, yet calm, glance the queen prompted her to continue. "About half a year ago. I was here, working late on a research project when my instruments picked up a spike in electromagnetic emissions. For months I didn't pick up another spike of that magnitude. Only smaller emissions. But I was able to find out that most of them were coming from CHS. I aligned my instruments towards the school and I got better readings. And then, two months ago, almost to the day, I picked up another spike. I even managed to create a portable device to track and contain the energies, and still, when the Games came around, I had no idea what I was getting into. I suppose expecting magic of all things might be a bit much to ask."
"I'd think so."
Twilight gave her royal counterpart a pained smile. "Still, it's no excuse for what I did."
The queen closed her eyes for a moment and a wave of changes came over her. After only a second, she had once more taken human shape. Beyond that she had manifested in another linkscape she had felt come into being, she knew she was still busy here, but she was a changeling queen. She could be in two places at once. At the same time, Twilight's chair widened into a comfortable couch and the queen calmly sat down next to her and held her gaze. "You didn't do anything Twilight, I wasn't there when it happened to you, but I was there when the same thing happened to Sunset, even she didn't do what she did because she wanted to. Once the magic overcame her she completely lost control over her own actions. I can only assume it was the same for you."
As the queen put a gentle arm around her shoulders, Twilight seemed to relax just a little. "It was scary, you know? The moment I touched that magic and it started pulling me in, I was terrified. And there was nothing I could do."
"I know, Sunset felt the same thing. The fear I felt from her in that moment still sometimes gives me nightmares. Dreams in which I couldn't save her, or couldn't protect my friends from what she became. And it's been a long time for me since then. You see, our worlds have a temporal differential. It fluctuates to a degree, but the one constant seems to be that time runs faster in Equestria. It may have been half a year over here, but for me it's been five years since then. And to this day it still sometimes haunts me. I don't know how it is for her or how it will be for you. But I think you should talk to her about it." Finished with her business in the other mindscape, the queen was about to switch back to focusing solely on Twilight, but another linkscape formed and kept her from it.
Twilight had at this point once again taken a comfortable position next to her counterpart. Even in her human form she was exceptionally comfortable. "I think I will, thank you."
The queen gave a light chuckle. "Hey, you're my dimensional counterpart, you're practically family. And family should be there for one another." Twilight couldn't help but notice the touch of bitterness that crept into her voice at those last words.
"Your family didn't take your rebirth to well?" It was a shot in the dark, but with everything she had learned today, Twilight was fairly certain she had a decent read on her counterpart.
"Well, no. Most of them got over it though. But mom ... Well since she doesn't love me any longer, I really feel I shouldn't call Velvet my mother any longer."
Twilight was incredulous. "What? Come on, Mom would never do that! I'm sure she still loves you."
"I wish that was true, but she doesn't. She only loves her idealized, imagined version of me. She thinks I'm some kind of demon that possessed her real daughter. She utterly hates me. And trust me, for an empath, losing a mother's love ... and have it replaced by that ... It's extremely painful."
"Oh wow. How could that happen? Why would she do such a thing?" Twilight, in her concern enclosed the queen in a caring hug. She was honestly terrified at the idea of her mother doing such a thing. In any reality. And from how vague the queen had been thus far, she concluded that she didn't even know half of what the other world's Twilight Velvet had truly done.
Queen Twilight gladly reciprocated the hug and the two held each other for a moment. As she made to answer, she saw, with her real body, that there were tears running down Twilight's cheeks in the real world. "I can only guess, maybe she was around the wrong kind of ponies for too long, when people tell you something for long enough, you'll start to believe it at some point, regardless of how crazy it may be."
At this point she excused herself from Pinkie and the giant cake and manifested in yet another linkscape, the final one by her count.
The two Twilights held onto each other for a while longer, sharing in their mutual comfort.
Meanwhile, Queen Twilight found herself in what appeared to be a boutique of sorts. A smile came over her lips as she saw Rarity flitting about the place changing designs left and right with mere thoughts. As the fashionista turned and spotted her, she lifted a hoof to wave.
"Twilight darling, you wouldn't believe how wonderful this is. This makes creating and altering designs so much easier!"
The queen smiled as Rarity closed her into a grateful hug. "I guess it would, wouldn't it?"
"It most certainly does. I can even have models for any kind of style without any trouble at all." Almost as if to prove her point she conjured a recreation of Rainbow Dash in a fashionable yet sporty dress that fit her marvelously. "I guess you know how hard it can be to get her to hold still for any period of time."
"Yeah, I guess that is a constant between worlds. I'll leave you to your fun."
"Thank you, dear. Do let me know when you have need of me."
"I will, thanks."
Just as she was about to leave to focus on her conversation with her counterpart, Queen Twilight felt another mindscape forming and jumped to that one instead. Guess I'll have to split my attention a little while longer.
When she manifested, what she found was thoroughly strange. It seemed to be a room with strange, curved walls, or rather a single, circular wall running all around the room, almost like a salad bowl. The floor and ceiling were completely smooth however. Stranger still was the fact that the walls, floor and ceiling seemed to have the same color and surface texture, a homogenous, slightly glistening, pale yellow. Around a thick column in the center of the room ran a spiral staircase to a second floor.
The room seemed to be living room, dining hall, kitchen and entrance hall in one. Out of the windows she saw a beautiful, sunny day and a clear blue sky. The structure she was in, whatever it was, seemed to be situated on a small hill, gentle slopes leading downward in all directions into a forest of some kind. No, she realized, not a forest, but a sheer endless orchard of fruit trees. Suddenly it became very clear whose linkscape this was. Phasing out of the house, she found her suspicions confirmed as the 'house' was, in truth, a gigantic, hollowed out apple.
Phasing back inside she walked up the spiral staircase around the column which she now realized to be the apple's core. On the top floor she found a smaller room, cylindrical with outcroppings on either side, leading to the edge of the giant fruit where two more windows were situated. In the cylindrical parts of the walls, there was a total of four doors of well crafted, and beautifully painted wood.
One of them stood open.
Moving inside she found Applejack lying on the bed, her eyes closed, a picture of utter relaxation. Almost too sweet to interrupt.
Almost.
"And here I thought Pinkie's linkscape would be the strangest one."
Applejack sat up so quickly that she likely would have torn something, had they been in the real world. In fact, the queen cracked open an eye on her real body, just to make sure Applejack was still sitting calmly on her cushion. Unaffected by biological constraints, Applejack looked at the queen, utterly mortified. Her cheeks had taken on an unnaturally dark shade of red, one more side effect of being in a metaphysical reality.
"Twilight! What're you doin' here?"
The queen gave her a confused glance. "I told you I'd come by and check up on your progress, didn't I?"
"Huh. Guess ya did. Well alright, fair enough. Wait, this is stranger than Pinkie's?"
The queen grew a sly grin. "Well, at least her giant cake didn't have a house in it."
"A giant cake, huh? Ah swear, Ah've never seen no one so predictable and so unpredictable at the same time."
"Pinkie truly is a walking paradox, isn't she? In any reality."
"Sure is."
"Well, it seems like everyone managed to make a linkscape at this point safe for-" She cut herself off as she felt another linkscape forming. "Fluttershy. Nevermind. Well, I'll leave you to your fruit-house daydreams. Have fun."
Before Applejack could do more than give an indignant pout, The queen had vanished into thin air once more."
Fluttershy's linkscape seemed to be the most mundane one yet. Nothing more than a room with nondescript white walls and ceiling, lit despite a notable absence of any light sources, but with a soft, carpeted floor and filled with cushions of all shapes and sizes, numerous small, and not so small, animals and, of course, Fluttershy herself.
The girl was lying in a veritable nest of cushions, surrounded by a number of small animals. Suddenly the queen understood why it had taken Fluttershy so long to form a linkscape, getting any simulated lifeform to behave in an even remotely realistic manner was notoriously difficult in a linkscape, even for a queen with a lot of experience.
"Well, you sure seem comfortable."
"Oh, Twilight, welcome. Do you like my little nest?"
The queen watched in amusement as one of the simulated birds landed on the tip of her horn. "It has its charms."
She calmly trotted over to Fluttershy, quickly realigning some of the cushions into a second nest, large enough for her. As she laid down next to the animal lover, her conversation with this world's Twilight had turned towards her mother. With the new insight into the queen's emotions, the hivemind granted her, Fluttershy picked up on the queen's worsening mood quickly.
"Twilight? Is something the matter?"
"I'll be fine, don't worry. I'll explain it to all of you, but I'd rather only do it once. Everyone has managed to form a linkscape now, so we can go back to the waking world and discuss it there."
Fluttershy gave her a concerned smile. "Allright, I guess I can recreate this linkscape whenever I want to, right?"
The queen smiled at seeing her pick up on the concept so fast. "That you can. So long as you remember it, you can reform it at any time."
Fluttershy gave her a final smile and vanished. The queen did the same only a moment later.
Back in Twilight's linkscape, the queen now had her full focus on her human manifestation, still in a mutually comforting hug with her dimensional counterpart. As she lifted her head from Twilight's shoulder, where it had rested for the last minute, she spoke up. "Well, it's probably time I explained why I took so long to come here. Come on, let's return to our normal bodies. I think this is enough linkwalking for the moment."
Twilight nodded silently and a moment later both of them had vanished and the room disappeared.
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Does this mean each one of them is at Queen's level of hivemind then?
9104612
When it comes to controll over their psychic abilites, yes. However the most time consuming part in the development of a queen, according to LAP's cannon, is strengthening the nervous system to a degree where it can support the weight of a hivemind.
It's stated that a normal queen can handle a few hundred thousand lesser drones with their crown and Twilight's line can support maybe half a million without theirs. Since the Rainbooms don't have crowns and also lack the kind of development cycle queens go through, they could support maybe a hundred lesser drones or a few hundred, maybe a thousand, intelligent ones. That's the main difference.
9104694
So, the point is, the Mane 7 now develope the hivemind in the level of average Queen Changeling. Would this be the beginning of human world's hive?
9104860
Well, no. Like I explained, they don't have the capacity to support a hivemind. Or the ability to integrate others into one for that matter.
9104874
I see. Just that seeing human Twilight gain Changeling's similarities. I thought she also gain some changeling's strength.
9104876
Well she does get some of it, as do the others. Biologically, if they were to go to equestria, they'd be on the level of 'post-downgrade' Cadista, but of course without the raw psychic strenght that comes from having lived for that long. It should also be clear that, while the girls now have the same psychic abilites Queen Twilight has, they don't know that yet.
Just a little hint of what's still to come.
Wow..... I wanna comment about the 7 mental links the girls created to communicate with Queen Twilight, but..... To read that part where Twilight's mother see nothing but a monster, it's while... Depressing...