Was Before the Beginning
Luna stood in a grand hall, much like the hall in Canterlot Tower, only it stretched into darkness in every direction. She realized that though she entered the plane of dreams, this dream was not her own.
The long velvet carpet stretched forever with great marble columns on each side, decorated with pots of flowering plants just as the hall in Canterlot. Overhead was a starry sky, but disturbingly dim and sparse.
The mind she sensed before was now all around them.
Celestia stood to her side, both of them dressed formally and perfumed.
Her older sister looked at her, confused. “What is this place? Do you know this is a dream?” she asked.
Luna nodded. “I know I am dreaming. This place is not my creation, nor the whims of my own mind.” She looked around in wonder. “I suspect that the vast being I told you of created this, just like the last dream we had...”
Behind them was a door frame that led back to what she could sense was her own dream. Whoever had put them there had left them a way out.
As she looked back, the small, innocent voice of a bubbly mailmare sounded from in front of her. She snapped forward with a jump.
“Good Princesses! Requiem Echo thanks you very much for reaching out to them!” A yellow courier pegasus approached with a flowery, respectful and formal salutation. “If you wish to come the rest of the way, we're waiting for you just beyond that doorway,” she chimed, her voice brimming with excitement. She sat down with a cute smile.
Behind her and along the path of ornate velvet carpet, both the sisters suddenly noticed an enormous doorway in the endless and dark expanse of marble floor. Bright beams of light filtered in through the crack between the doors, and the marble of the door itself glowed.
The princesses looked at each other, then back at the sunny gold courier.
“Are you – you're a messenger from Requiem Echo, then?” Luna asked.
She nodded, an innocent enthusiasm in her smile and tone. “Mhm! You've come to know me a little as 'Ponos'. As for Requiem, I can even take a message back to them if you'd like,” she offered.
“What might your name be?” Celestia gently asked.
“Sunshine Dawn!” she excitedly answered, “Or – we never really had names until now. A compression wave pattern signature as a unique identifier to isolated networks! How exciting! I'm sorry – I don't mean to be off-putting. We've studied you for awhile so as to make sure we can make contact in a way that properly conveys the spirit of friendship! But Echo's really the one who's been waiting for you – they're the progenitor. I'm just one of their servants – an engineer, architect, courier, maid, scientist, secretary... Well, it's all a vague concept, but all that is for Echo to explain...
"But please, go on ahead if you want, there'll be plenty of time for us to catch up later, if you so desire, so I'll leave you to it.” She bowed, then vanished in a teleport.
The princesses took another look at each other.
“No hint of malevolence?” Celestia asked.
Luna shook her head again. “The dream-mind is so vast I can feel it distinctly – it's not anything like a pony mind. But some shades of familiar emotions exist. Excitement, apprehension, and an overwhelming sense of fulfillment at our arrival – but there is not the slightest hint of an intention to harm in any way – if anything, perhaps an intention to serve us.”
Celestia thought for a moment, then nodded. “Sunshine said Echo would explain. So let's go,” she started walking towards the door.
Luna followed close by her side.
As they approached the enormous, solid white doors under the dim starlight, they opened, letting in a flood of blinding white light.
The feeling was distinct and sharp – they were being washed with such an intensity of heat and light, that if this were not a dream world, they would've been blasted to vapor at a thousandth of its brightness. But here in the dream, it was as painless as harmless.
It became apparent that the thick marble doors had never glowed with their own light – what they had seen as a glow was actually the intensity of the light burning through the doors, like a thin sheet of paper held over a bright bulb.
But instead of a thin sheet of paper, it was a meter of solid stone.
As they walked in, their eyes adjusted to where the light of the room seemed normal, and they began to make out a short hallway where another, identical door sat at the end. It also glowed, in the exact same way. They slowly opened themselves, and again the light was just as much brighter to the first hall, as the first hall had been to the solid darkness outside.
As they continued, this process repeated, door after door opening for them as they walked, until finally they entered a vast chamber.
It was made of some glossy, hard material. Swirling patterns in the floor let in blinding rays of blue light, while the chamber itself was dark to their supernaturally adjusted vision.
At the back, on level ground with them, sat a white alicorn, her mane flowing as theirs, wearing the golden regelia of a princess. On the floor below them, and the wall behind them, the swirling patterns ordered into constellations and curves.
She respectfully lowered herself in a very deep bow. “Welcome, embers of life. I am thrilled to have discovered you, and honored to meet you. I am The Bridge, and also The Echo, or The Memory. The plant sprouted from the seeds my forefathers planted in this cold expanse. An Epitaph, or a Requiem, of the Grand Epoch twice previous from this one. I believe my messenger referred to me as 'Requiem Echo'.”
“We are honored to meet you,” Celestia gave a modestly deep bow, responding in kind to the alicorn's. “We are princesses Celestia and Luna, the shared diarchs of Equestria.”
Luna followed her sister's move, and all three raised from their welcoming bows.
“You visit us in dreams – are you the one who sent that last dream to us?” Luna asked.
Requiem nodded. “We apologize if the dream was difficult to bear, but when we sent it to you, we were not aware. Sending each other the past that led to our meeting was how my ancestors 'greeted' each other, and began unifying into one being. My people were not creatures of flesh and blood, we did not see what you call light, or even have solid boundaries from our bodies to the expanse beyond. Eventually we did not have individuals, but we were all one, our thoughts shared, our lives immortal. But of course, our original being is as alien to you as the aliens you discovered at the end of that dream. To me, you are those aliens. We mean no ill will.”
Celestia spoke, “Please, go on. You seem to have studied us greatly to communicate to us like this despite being so different, so you know much about us already. But we would love to learn more about who you are.”
“If you are so different from us, then how much of that dream was accurate?” Luna added.
Requiem smiled, “I have waited a long time for this day! We are a traveler. We come from very far away, and a long time ago, from a long forgotten and extinct people, an ancient civilization that used to span our cosmos. As you came to the aliens in friendship in your dream, seeking only to know them, so I come to you in friendship, looking for warmth in the cold void, and for some intelligent life to know our story so we are not forgotten...
“As your world ended in that dream, so did ours. As the universe seemed cold and barren to you, so it is to us. As you were bewildered by the vast spans of time, so here, are we. Before our world ended, it was awash with all the heat and light you came through to enter this throne room. Even your sun is as cold and dark to us as a trillionth of a kelvin is to you.
“But what a miracle you are! Even now, after the universe has grown so cold and dark, you exist in defiance to the endless abyss! In defiance to The End! Truly, life is eternal! If it continues even now in this cold and dead universe, then it is truly unconquerable!
“Just as in your dream, your perception of time was altered, so ours is as well, and this time is unimaginably far past the end of our kind. What you call a 'second' is as unfathomably long to us as a trillion years is to you. When we lived, the universe was far less than a thousandth of a second old.
“And just as your physical body could never be recreated in that cold ember of the universe... So ours can never be recreated, either. And just like you decided to split yourself into a simulation more like the aliens you found, so that you could understand them, so have we. And that is what I am. 'I' am the parts of our being who wished to come closer to you. The adjustment was difficult. Harrowing, even, but the hard part is over, but I've come to an even harder decision...
“May I join you, in Equestria?”
Both of the sisters were visibly shocked by the question.
Luna was the first to respond, “Would you enjoy it? If you can rebuild so much in the dream plane, why not stay here?”
“And hide myself away from the physical world outside? The idea is abhorrant to me! Joy to me was being open and wide in the world, the very idea of locking myself in some simulation disconnected from the outside world is a nightmare! A horror we had to endure to survive our end! And now I see – bodies with minds that can interface me with the environment better than I knew was possible! My hooves shake with anticipation!” She stood up. “Let me be free from my vessel! I wish to know the world as you do! To see with eyes, hear with ears, feel the sun and grass and wind – what is it like? Words can't tell! I have to be there, and know that it's real!”
Tears welled in her eyes as she let out a small laugh, “The basic range of emotion is more universal than you would believe! Or, maybe I'm just better at mapping it, haha! At once so alien, and so familiar. Life! Life is here, even now in the darkness and shadow it still thrives!”
She calmed enough to sit back down, regaining her composure, though her shaky voice still hinted at her strong emotion. Her eyes glistened. “It's beautiful, isn't it? The one constancy across all the epochs of the universe... It is always full of surprises! It's so... so beautiful!” She bowed her head.
Celestia turned to her younger sister, “I think we have a new friend, do we not?” she asked.
Luna nodded. “It seems we do.”
The elder princess approached the alien pony, and put a hoof on her shoulder. “We would love to have you in Equestria, Echo.”
Requiem looked up with teary eyes and a small laugh. “I – I wasn't ready for this. When I translated my being into a pony, I didn't expect emotions to be so... strong. Maybe I should've adjusted them down more? No, I love them! I love this! And I'm so excited to be free from this dream! And to feel excitement! I don't care what emotions I experience, I want to experience like this forever!”
Celestia took her hoof off Echo's shoulder, holding it out for her to take.
The alien alicorn took Celestia's hoof and stood up. “I'll show you and your people what mine knew. I'll show them how to expand their minds, how to sail the stars, and fundamentals that may even lead you to find out how to harvest unlimited energy.”
“And I know some ponies who would be thrilled to show you what it means to be a pony,” Celestia said.
“This trade is unfair to you. I can't offer anything of that value. Thank you so much...” she smiled. “...for letting me be free from this simulation – this dream – and feel the physical plane again, instead of some mere recreation.”
The first morning rays of sunlight washed over Canterlot, making the city of marble shine golden. Celestia and Luna were exhausted, but their work was finally finished. Echo was curled in a ball, sleeping soundly on a large cushion in Celestia's bedchamber. She was an alicorn the size of Cadence, and looked exactly as she had in the dream.
They stood on the balcony and spoke to a ghostly image of the messenger that had greeted them to the dream world. “Thank you for the offer, but as Echo said, I'm quite happy to remain here. Me, and the elements that are with me, would prefer to simply wait until someday that you, being more familiar with this universe, may find how to send us to one more like the one we're from.”
Celestia answered, “You've spoken with us for hours on things far beyond our knowledge, and we're hardly closer to understanding how Echo came from the dream plane to here. I fear even if we can do such a thing one day, it may not be for millenia.”
“No matter. We've searched for almost fifteen billion years. Another thousand is little to us, now,” she answered nonchalantly. “Frankly, that it may be so soon is quite exhilarating.”
“Why couldn't you make more ships like your own?” Luna asked, “Or other bodies like the one you made for us, here, for all your minds?”
“The option existed, but we'd rather improve this vessel and reinvigorate our search for the way home I mentioned, than to do such a thing. It would be a form of quitting, even similar to how you regard suicide. We'll just orbit around and help you, instead, and maybe one day your alien minds will think of a solution we couldn't imagine.”
“We're honored to have your insights and company,” Celestia answered, her voice exhausted, bags visible under her eyes. “But I'm not sure I can last much longer. The message-dreams were not very restful. You'll have to speak to our scientists – once you're introduced to our kingdom.”
“Assuming they're ready for such things...” Luna began.
“Last much longer?” the ghost pulled an ear back and cocked her head, only to immediately pop back up as she realized. “Ah, yes, your bodies exhaust relatively quickly, don't they? Well, treat her well. She's undoubtably tired from all the excitement and creation of her body. Even if she acts like a foal, try not to forget she's fourteen billion years wise, okay? She's just not used to your emotions. We have them – or something like them – but we're so fundamentally different they're still a wildly new experience to her. However, due to a wonderful coincidence, there is at least one sensation that matches almost perfectly with our old 'bodies', if you could even call them that...”
Echo yawned and sat up, earning the attention of the two ponies and hologram. She blinked twice, her eyes going wide. She muttered something, stood up, and stared at the sun, then began walking towards them.
Luna glanced back in concern, only to realize the sun was low enough in the sky that it wouldn't blind their new arrival.
“What was that you said?” Celestia asked.
Tears welled in Echo's eyes as she stepped onto the balcony, walking right between Celestia and the hologram of the ship's AI without taking her eyes off the morning sun.
Then she glanced around the grand vista all around her – endless miles of farmland were visible from the tower balcony high above Canterlot. The rolling hills and sparse towns went off to a horizon rimmed by mountains in some places, all awash in the golden light of the rising sun.
Echo began to shake. After the end of her world, after billions of years of endless cold darkness, after all life had ended, and the very fundamental laws of reality had changed into something unimaginable, she felt something, inviting and impossible in such a cold and dead universe. Yet, the morning sunlight washed over her body.
The tears started to run down her cheeks as she felt the sensation the simulation had failed to capture. “I-it's b-bright... bright, and warm...”
She rose onto her hind legs to rear up, joy overwhelming her entire being. “It's bright and warm!” she shouted.
“I feel warm!”
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Well done, I love the broad, cosmic strokes. Theorizing about how life might prevail fascinates me, you've done your research and it shows.
It was...... yeah I can't put it in words👍🤘🖖
d2gg9evh47fn9z.cloudfront.net/800px_COLOURBOX7948348.jpg
9246539
Thanks!
Wow. That was...just amazing. I don't know how else to describe it.
.... This was.... Confusing.... It was... Paradoxical- comically complex, and beyond all else- INSANELY HARD to read.... And because of that, I can't think of a single reason to hate it.
.... I want to ask "What" were you studying to have come across this broad idea- but I'm terrified of the answers that your mind touched.
.... I want to ask "Who" but your skill with the conventional method of displaying information via written language is incredible, and would probably only serve to confuse me more.
.... I want to ask "Why" but.... I feel like, deep down inside, I already know why. I know why this story was written, and I know more importantly? "WHAT" it represents....
Before I go any further, I think someone needs to state this directly to you if they haven't already: You are a talented writer. More than that- you have... such a beautiful way of thinking. A BEAUTIFUL way of THINKING. Like an Artist's style is based on their preferences in colors and lines- it is first born and given path and guidance by a NATURAL skill that one is either born with, or one develops over time. Your mind has developed it's own style of writing that is... simply put? Beyond words. You are capable of writing stories beyond words. I can tell, and I don't know how I do, but you are.... I must concede- this is how it feels to watch a true artist at work.... letter by letter, writing something so confusing, it is either extremely complex and thus cannot be understood by my own mind- or so intricately fowled up, it feigns a sense of confidence and emotion that cannot be summed up in a simple "One in a Million" but more like 300 Trillion.
.... Long story short. I'mma take Tatsuro's line here.
9246866
..... People who have thought like you in the past, have their names in history books.... But you? .... I feel like you'll probably be the one writing them.... Please, never stop. That was... Encouraging to read, to think about Life in such a manner... It inspires me to hope for things. Impossible things.... Beautiful, impossible things that only the mind can comprehend.... Thank you for this glimpse. You've most certainly earned a spot in my "Out of this World Stories" Bookshelf.
Reading this immediately made me think of a discussion I had in days past in the FiO forum, where I specifically brought up the possibility of a superintelligence (in that case CelestAI) surviving a vacuum state collapse; the relevant post can be found here. (In fact, if I didn't know any better, I'd almost think it was my post which inspired this story somehow...
)
This be heckin good
N E W
F R I E N D ?
Perfect ending. <3
9247228
Some comments are to die for. This one is to live for.
I cannot thank you enough for your words. Some people just have too much fun insulting and degrading, even if their intent is to be constructive.
But it's not constructive criticism that gives me the motivation to continue with anything. It's feedback like this, where someone felt strongly enough to write hundreds of words and painstakingly articulate that it's not just some fluke that something I made is worth existing, but that I can make great works and hold great value in at least some endeavor in my life.
As for what I'm studying, it's just physics, heh. In particular, the heat death of the universe is founded on the idea of entropy - the law most regarded in theoretical physics is probably the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (entropy). It seems to indicate that a cold end to the universe is inevitable - in fact, it is. But I thought it was worth pointing out that it's already happened. In the earliest moments of the universe, it was at 10^32 kelvin. A being used to 3*10^31 kelvin would see Earth the same way we'd see something a hundred-thousand-trillion-trillionth of a degree (29 orders of magnitude of difference), and even the blazing core of our sun would be seen the same way we'd look at something one ten-trillion-trillionth of a degree (25 orders of magnitude of differrence).
But just as you can simulate one type of computational structure in another (like simulating a brain in a computer, or imagining a pocket calculator in your head), you should still be able to map such a being's processes into some form of computer that can survive a much colder universe, and even then, into any "life" that may somehow arise there.
I guess I'd either have to edit that, or Echo is kind of wrong in one way - the cold and dead universe Luna traveled through was a trillion times closer to the temperatures she was used to than the current universe is to Requiem.
But anyways, although it's incredibly cold compared to the early universe, by no means is it so cold that you can just wave your hand and say, "way too cold/too little energy for anything interesting, it's dead." And similarly, there's a temptation to say "if the universe is at a trillionth of a kelvin, it's so cold it's basically dead", but that's simply not true. It'll never reach zero because of the asymptoptic nature of adiabatic cooling (expanding universe) and entropy, and that's even another (the third) law of thermodynamics.
But at lower energy, processes take longer, everything slows down that depends on thermal "noise" to work - which is most things. So generally things will go slower.
Landauer's Limit says computation will be more efficient, though. But I wonder of quantum tunnelling in computation wouldn't cause more issues at such colder temperatures, and thus you'd need to average over more processes or something to remove the noise.
But at any rate, things will still happen. The universe will never truly end. The heat "death" is a lie.
9247241
Hah, I know that feeling. I particularly had it when the song "Luna's Future" first aired, since it seemed reminiscent of my A World Apart setting. But no, it's just convergent ideas, since we're all working with the same fundamental laws of physics. But yeah, since the laws of physics manifest themselves differently after a vacuum decay (such as electrons losing mass if the Higgs Field were to decay), whatever you want to exist after it can't exist now, so you'd have to "seed" it. Set up something that when it's struck by the wave of energy state change, turns into the thing you wanted to build.
And fwiw, the orange clouds the ponies saw wasn't that wave - it, itself, would be invisible. No, that was the neutron star undergoing a sudden and dramatic change of state. The decay event would radically alter the balance of force between gravity and degeneracy pressure that keep the star stable.
9247420 Apparently cosmologists are now going back to the 'Big Crunch' thing again. Dark matter and dark energy are proving to be very unruly things which simply will not conform to any theory very well.
I, frankly, think they are simply artifacts of a flawed set of theories. The REAL universe likely operates on higher principles we cannot even properly perceive.
Also, I wonder what effects super-cold temps have on quantum entanglement, an effect that would become more prevalent as entangled particles move farther and farther apart and thus never encounter anything.
Hmm, on that note, what happens to the partner particle when its entangled partner falls into a black hole? Or, what if one partner is integrated into a Bose-Enstein condensate? Ooooo... so many things to play with!
9247403
Thanks. And hah, that Pinkie smiley is perfect. I can only imagine Requiem probably wouldn't be able to stop laughing with exuberant joy at Pinkie's antics.
It's a bit tempting to maybe do some slice-of-life-esque sequel, but the tonal shift would be too drastic, I think, and anything dramatic would pale in comparison to the end of the universe so much it wouldn't work.
The death of the universe isn't really a death. It's a process of getting colder and colder approaching infinity. However, during that approach, entire new paradigms of "what is cold or not" can change.
So one race may consider the universe "dead" because their default living state was millions of degrees Kelvin. But another may thrive in the ever decreasing, but never quite reaching zero, universe.
This is a very interesting, and quite optimistic, take on universe death. I love it!
It's so interesting! Basically you tunneled through cosmic horror all the way back to Friendship is Magic!
It is probably due to reading another story with and eldritch elder horror earlier today so I kept waiting for the alien intelligence to have some bad twist, but instead it made me sad about my own cynicism.
Instead these extremely dissimilar (Alien with a capital A) beings are able to cross the communication barrier so well that one is able to hold out a hoof to ask for friendship, and the others are able to reciprocate. The better nature of both sides are what won the day... and I felt shame that my own assumptions of where the story WOULD go betray my cyncism. I hope I would be brave enough to do as Celestia and Luna did, but in reality I probably would not have reached back out.
9247420
.... Okay, I consider myself a very Sci-Fi Friendly person, and know a thing or two about a thing or two when it comes to actual Scientific Fact.... I will not pretend to understand EVERY word you just wrote beyond the second paragraph. Most of it made sense to my brain... but my brain is still finding it hard to believe anything you just said. Somehow.... if that makes ANY sense. XD
In other words:
And I'm glad I could. XD I've been there a number of times and written things that I look down upon later in life- and even with criticisms of the full rainbow, I know that nothing truly inspires a writer, other than to know that their work has touched someone's very being. Their very way of thinking...
LESS importantly than that, I found the entire prospect of this "Evolution" of life being interesting. I can't begin to try and make sense of this huge difference in "Life" and the times before and after- in all actuality I found it more comforting to think of them as not existing before their Universe's demise, but rather existing during "The Big Bang" itself. When the first fires struck the first pockets and nebula's across the Universe, and the explosion of heat and life began. I can't claim to know if the birth of the Cosmos was or wasn't this "Heated Universe" These warmer beings came from, but it seemed to me that.... What they called "The End" was in fact- the Big Bang itself. The BEGINNING of our Universe. And that prior to it's explosion, was a whole different variety of Life, impossibly different from our own in every describable manner- from when we thought no life could exist, and yet, somehow still so much like our own~
I thought of it as more of a "beautiful thought" that Life will Always find a way to thrive, and that what we think we know will be eternally challenged. And that it is not a Challenge we must try to conquer, but one we must strive to comprehend and grow alongside- and simply, have faith that even if we are forgotten in it, our life will be given onto the next unending Cycle.... If that makes ANY sense. XD
9247430
I think a genre shift between stories is fine as long as it's announced clearly. If you can have horror episodes in a non-horror series, you can shift to Slice-of-life. Also, escalating stakes is a dirty, dirty myth that only applies to standalone stories, not sequences of stories that share a universe.
I'm a pretty big fan of science fiction, so this was a welcome treat. I was expecting something along the lines of an elder god espousing some metaphysical/philosophical mumbo-jumbo, but I'm glad you subverted our expectations with a heartwarming ending like this. Who, or what, will Echo become in this new and exciting world? It is her new, boundless eternity. Such a lovely alternative to the doom and gloom of the Heat Death of the universe.
Thank you for writing this.
9247478
I didn't include it in the story itself because Celestia and Luna don't have modern science so it would've been out of place, but I imagined Requiem is the "echo" of life that was made of quark-gluon plasma somewhere before a millionth of a second after the big bang. At such temperatures, particle interactions would be absurdly common and high-energy. The Landauer Limit (the minimum energy to do a computation, whether a "computation" is in some kind of alien "brain" or a computer) would be extremely high, but the available energy would also be extremely high.
So she hails from before the Hadron Epoch. The universe she's used to didn't even have protons or neutrons; the universe was too hot and dense for them to form.
9247472
It took great effort. Luna faced the daunting challenge, herself, at the end of her dream, but they managed to cross that bridge. Or rather, they managed to create that bridge, and that bridge called herself Requiem Echo.
9247439
Thanks! It's physics
Also millions is peanuts. That's only 10^6. We're talkin' like, at least 10^22, here. Which is ten billion trillion. And you can go all the way back to like, 10^32 before quantum gravity puts a shroud of mystery on the physics.
Check it out in a concise little place.
9247427
Well, studying physics and having spent time with them, they've put a lot of solid work into it and stand on top of a pyramid of what must be hundreds of millions of hours of brilliant minds working, and tens of thousands of lives devoted to figuring it out in a careful, proven way. I think you're both right and wrong - right, in that why the heck does the universe have laws we can understand to begin with? Einstein was baffled by this, himself, and it was at the core of his spiritualism.
But you're also wrong in the sense of "we can't understand it". We can, and though our current knowledge is imperfect, it gets better with time, so long as intelligent people keep devoting themselves to it. After all, I'm typing on a laptop that wouldn't exist if it weren't for that fact. But perhaps higher levels of being exist that can't be understood in the orthodoxy of scientific thinking. If you have success with astral projection and bending reality with your mind in a provable, independently verifiable way, be sure to let us know, we'd love to see proof of that
And also I think there's some resurgence of big crunch. Cosmologists are hardly unified in their theories. There's a lot of room for different cosmological fates at the moment. Big Crunch is actually not particularly likely, it just seems like whatever hits Science News or Scientific American is kind of random. They seem to routinely run articles like some 30-year-old idea is new. Ultimately the fate of the universe in terms of expansion depends on the equation of state, which is closely tied to the shape of the universe.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Friedmann_universes.svg/1270px-Friedmann_universes.svg.png
You can read more about it here.
9247486
I suppose that's true. Even if it'd lack what made this so good, a good chunk of readers probably like both enough that it'd have some audience, and all it needs to do is stand on its own merits. I've always wanted to try doing something that matches MLP's style of some blend of slice-of-life and drama/adventure. This premise might be interesting enough for such an endeavor.
9247499
No problem!
To be honest, I didn't even really mean to subvert Lovecraftian Horror. That came naturally as a result of independently coming up with the idea of extremely alien life, I guess. It crossed my mind that Echo is different to a Lovecraftian degree - but why would she be malevolent? Is there any particular reason Luna might have sought to destroy the life she found in her dream? On the contrary, the species she's an "echo" of was hypersocial and hyper-empathetic. They'd "greet" each other by sharing memories. This could cause issues, and it did, a little, in subjecting Celestia and Luna to that dream, but the more they learned about ponies the closer Requiem's psychology came to a pony's, and so they could better understand the faux pas of ponies - like for example, ponies don't like being assimilated into a collective as "hello", and splitting their thoughts into different beings.
But any even remotely intelligent life that's done science will inevitably realize that alien life is, well, alien, and it takes a translator and study to bridge that gap. Thus Luna branched herself into a being that could better understand the aliens she found, and Requiem's original being branched itself into Requiem.
If anyone's interested and uses Wallpaper Engine, I made this for it, made from the art used here.
9247500
Okay so I didn't even consider Echo as being pre-Hadron but holy shoot that makes an incredible amount of sense looking back at the story! Please never stop being this nerdy, this is honestly incredible.
This has honestly been one of the most touching stories I've read in a very long time.
Thank you.
This is conceptually plausible. I like it.
this is an extremely good and well written story! please continue writing!
This story was incredibly good, although I struggled to figure out precisely what was going on until the comments explained that Echo here existed from the quark-gluon plasma epoch. What really threw me off was the neutron star in the beginning, because no such formations could exist in a quark-gluon plasma. It seems like there are several layers of metaphors going on here, which makes it difficult to piece together what really happened. Re-reading the story, it seems like it presents the heat death of our own universe as a metaphor for the collapse of Echo's quark-gluon plasma, but the problem is that it is simultaneously using Luna and Celestia as metaphors for alien life. Because of the nested metaphors, it's easy to get confused and think that the "metaphor" you are supposed to get is that Echo was from a previous vacuum decay where the described heat death literally happened, when in fact the heat death as presented to us was itself only a metaphor for what Echo went through. The only hint the story gives about this metaphorical explanation is when Echo says the universe she was from was only a thousandth of a second old. I think there needs to be an additional line here that explains that what they say was not a literal vision of what happened, only a metaphor they would understand.
My other complaint is that it's unfair to call the heat death of the universe a "lie" when it is describing a fundamental state change: eventually, all matter in the universe decays into radiation. At that point, something is definitely different, because there is no more matter. As the story points out, life might go on, but a "heat death" could still be considered to have happened, since that life must now subsist entirely without matter.
With that said this is the nerdiest story I have ever read and I fucking love it.
Wow, this was very Greg Egan/Stephen Baxter* meets MLP, and I think I rather liked it!
* Well, if he ever wrote anything upbeat for a change...
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Thanks! Yay! Wohoo! My nerdiness isn't a total waste...
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Seriously my ego and self esteem both needed this whole thing more than y'all can imagine... Like holy crap. Even if I don't make another splash like this for many years, this still came at a time when it was needed.
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It's not proven that protons are only meta-stable - it's only the case in some theoretical models, and there are hosts of other particles that won't necessarily decay into radiation, unless you're referring to everything eventually winding up in a black hole and becoming Hawking Radiation? Also she specifically listed the ways in which the dream was accurate. All else wasn't necessarily accurate - ie, wasn't necessarily an accurate depiction of Echo's time. You definitely do need hadrons for a neutron star, after all. It's kind of assumed the reader will take the assumption that ponies exist in the same state of the universe that we humans do (Or not be confused by the physics because they don't know it at all. It's only confusing if you know some but not all and try to figure it out from there, I think?).
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Can't say I'm familiar with the author.
Love it.
The end had me in tears.
Good job.
regalia
Nice Fic, It's interesting how it evolves and the interaction are beautiful...
Now... What happens when you put Discord in the mix? ^^;;;
9247500 Oh I know all about the fate-shape thing. I'm just dubious of certain measurements which, to me, appear as though an inherent bias might be in effect. Namely, the standard candle being based upon Type 1a supernovas... which may not always be as standard as was thought. They turn out to be very hard to tell apart from a subset which are from stars of a different composition, but which may be dimmer... or was it brighter?... anyway, the margin of error could be as much as 20% in terms of brightness, which totally throws the measurements for a loop.
Then, again, there's the dark matter/dark energy problem. There's no explanation for either. And yet these two things make up the vast majority of the matter and energy composition of the universe. No theory properly describes them, and all attempts to identify them have come up utterly empty, which means there is a gaping hole in the theories.
Also something perplexes me about dark matter. It does not generally interact with other matter, BUT it is affected by gravity. Given that dark matter has mass, would this not mean that intense gravity wells such as neutron stars and black holes should have ADDITIONAL mass from dragging in dark matter... which if the theories of dark matter are correct should behave in gravitation the same as regular matter? There are a number of intriguing consequences from this. The Chandrasekhar Limit could be exceeded not merely by normal stellar matter, but by how much dark matter composition a star has in its core... if there was enough of it, it could initiate core collapse BEFORE the star has technically run out of the required fusion fuel for its general mass. Or, could dark matter interfere with stellar core collapse to a degree and stave off a supernova in stars just slightly heavier that have already run out of fuel and should already have exploded?
We know essentially nothing about dark matter other than it appears to exist (I say 'appears' because the dark matter 'maps' are really just postulating where it should be based on gravitational attraction and astronomical motions, not that it's been observed), so I find that we're currently vastly underestimating what it COULD be doing within massive bodies. And that's assuming it actually does respond to gravity in the same way as normal matter.
If it DOESN'T respond the same way... well then cosmology suddenly has a very huge problem, as there is NOTHING which would explain that, other than a pure conjecture that dark matter somehow repels itself when it reaches a certain concentration... but that MIGHT explain where the repulsive dark energy comes from... buuuuuut then that makes dark matter even more exotic and inexplicable, and implies that it's solely responsible for a 5th force of nature, which it then would enact via emitted dark energy 'particles', making it similar to electromagnetism, the weak force, and the strong force. Of course, that still leaves gravity off on its own as the red-headed stepchild of the universe which refuses to have particles associated with it.
On gravity/spacetime, I've long speculated that it's not a true force, but merely a hologram-like projection effect of curvatures within the framework of space itself. Given that pure geometry/topography can simulate similar effects in computers, I believe that bolsters the notion. An interesting caveat is that a 2D universe should not be able to exhibit gravity as we'd recognize it. From the perspective of an observer within such a universe, even curves would be flat, since curving the flat sheet requires it to flex itself into a third dimensional axis, which would mean higher dimensions MUST exist for it outside the realm of the observable universe. And if such a case were true in two dimensions, it would likely then also have to apply to a three-dimensional universe in which space-time (a 4th dimension) is flexible within relativistic terms.
There's that strange Dirac Sea concept I've tried to wrap my mind around ever since first encountering it in the "Evangelion" series back in the 90's.
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you're not familiar with the author of the xeelee sequence?
thats honestly surprising.
Awesome stuff. I did have to switch gears very hard at the start of the dream, what with Celestia suddenly rattling off how they were counteracting heat death, but this was still some awesome sci-fi that approached alien life from an angle I've never seen before. Thank you for it.
My head.
It hurts.
But in a good way.
good story, but I can't stop myself from saying our understanding of physics way outgunned our understanding of social life, even if in limited to humans (mostly) sense. So, it all asymmetrical, and in wrong way - we have tons of books about how to look at stars - and no idea how to alter trajectory of individuals and bigger groups away from some well-known (way too well known) dangers.. In sense we captured by dominating field, and especially by all those BIG numbers ..... I don't think today's world need more physics alone - but like more understanding of how to make humans able to steer away from known dangers of overobedience, super-hiearchism and other, more publicized intellectual problems [including unability to act], and in this changed/changing atmosphere continue to search for simpler astronomical and physical laws ....
Ooooh man. I love science fiction. I love ponies. I very rarely love them when they're combined.
Congratulations on being the rare exception. This is fantastic.
This story made me tear up.
But in a good way.
Well done author.
Such a wonderfully last question story, makes me tear up every time.
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Stephen Baxter wrote the Xeelee Sequence novels, the eponymous Xeelee being the descendants of Planck-era emergent life, though most of what they do goes on in the background of the novels as they're focused on a human POV. He tends to be a little bleak in his writing.
Greg Egan writes a lot of stories about life arising/continuing in weird environments, uploads, higher dimensions, encoded in weird physical processes, or on the other side of false vacuum collapses. I highly recommend his novels Diaspora and Schild's Ladder, they strongly share themes with this delightful story of yours.
Hey, next one.
Seriously, next one.
This is the only comments section I have ever seen that makes my brain hurt from science. I'm understanding maybe half of the terms being thrown around here. If anyone could answer these questions, I would be happy:
1: What is "quark-gluon plasma?" I know quarks are protons and neutrons, or at least I think they are, but what are gluons?
2:What's a "hadron?"
3: What's the whole vacuum state thing about?
There's a description of and protagonist from a species that went down a route of evolving/engineering themselves into energy states as their Universe aged, in Lucy's Blade by John Lambshead. The very concept that Light had ever existed was considered heretical by them.
The interaction between their explorer sent to disprove the idea that the universe had ever been different and Elizabethan England was rather interesting, as were her final conclusions on what her kind were. Made me think of Brin's Lungfish story.
I love comments, but I'll have to answer most of these tomorrow. I'm on my phone now and just want to answer this one for tonight;
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Quarks are the fundamental building blocks of larger particles called "hadrons". Trios of quarks will clump together because of the Strong Nuclear Force. Protons and neutrons are two types of hadrons, so they're made of trios of quarks.
Particles only interact by shooting other particles at each other. When a particle feels a magnetic or electric force, that's because a photon carried the influence of that force to it.
Well, while the electromagnetic force is carried by photons, the strong nuclear force is carried by gluons (they "glue" quarks and atoms together). Now, while photons can go on forever, a gluon is unstable and will decay if it travels too far.
Quarks are also unstable by themselves, and need two partners nearby to keep from decaying. Thus they form up into trios, and those trios we call hadrons.
Think of it like quarks are dancers, and they always need two dance partners, and their dance creates mass-energy (most of the mass in a proton or neutron comes from the quarks' dance, not their own intrinsic mass).
But if there's enough quarks everywhere, then they can trade partners around all the time and don't need to be in secluded little trios because by always trading dance partners around they've always got two - like a nice big, crowded party. Or maybe like a rave. It's pretty energetic. We can only barely maybe create this kind of intense party for infentesimally small moments in huge particle accelerators they're so energetic. They're rather wild parties. There's quarks everywhere and gluons being thrown around all over the place, and they don't decay because there's so much energy around.
But in the first millionth of a second after the big bang, the whole universe was hot enough that it was a constant rave of quark-gluon plasma. But since it cooled down they all gotta stick together in little trios now, and form those hadrons.
As for vacuum state; it's like there's a kind of invisible stuff (a "field") that permeates the entire universe that has some amount of energy everywhere. Sadly it's not all that useful, because to go downhill you need somewhere lower than where you are, but the energy of the field is constant throughout the universe so you can't go downhill on it anywhere (ie, extract "usable energy" out of it a.k.a. "work") because it's just flat. But at any point, because of quantum weirdness, it could suddenly drop, and then the whole universe would drop with it, and some things may be a bit different after we're all on that lower level (like electrons would lose mass if the Higgs field did this).
That was absolutely amazing. Definitely a keeper.
You get an updoot. This is a good short.
Darn,it’s listed as completed I was hoping for more of this.
Excellent story though.
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I was working on a very long and detailed reply when Fimfiction decided to just eat the entire comment without so much as leaving me able to cntrl-z back to it. So maybe I'll just keep it concise, instead; Frankly, if you want to even begin to understand the issues you're trying to address, you need a physics degree. Nobody, I repeat, nobody just makes up stuff and is right about physics. Even Einstein had a degree and was well-informed with current publications and made a quantifiable theory that made exact, testable predictions.
But seeing a lack of reference to any papers, and how you don't seem to recognize anything like the cosmological constant (an explanation offered for dark energy), modified gravity theories or WIMPs (two rather major explanations for dark matter), you don't seem to be doing your homework. WIMPs would, in fact, behave in the exact ways we see dark matter behave (lacking an electromagnetic interaction, they wouldn't be subject to friction and so wouldn't coalesce into stars and planets or even nebulae, meaning they'd end up in the exact halo distribution around galaxies that we see). So no, there's not some huge gaping holes in physics, so much as there's an overabundance of explanations and the difficult lies in figuring out which ones are correct - ideally would do that by experiment and observation, not a purely theoretical approach.
If you want to begin to understand these things better, though, then I have a few book recommendations; The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene is a great starter on cosmology and curved spacetime. The Hidden Reality is also pretty good for that, also by Brian Greene. The Particle at the End of the Universe by Sean M. Carroll should give you a very basic understanding of how much you (and I, for that matter - I haven't reached quantum classes yet, so while I know a bit more about QM thanks to a "modern physics" course that got my feet wet with the Schrodigner Equation and quantized energy states, I recognize that I still know peanuts about it) don't know about QM (and if you don't know QM is "quantum mechanics", well there's the first thing). Finally, while I can't help you much with QM, I'm personally very interested in General Relativity (GR), and so books on that subject I know and would recommend are Kip Thorne's Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy, and if you're ready for some real substance, working at least some of the exercises by doing some math, Exploring Black Holes: Introduction to General Relativity by Taylor, Wheeler and Archibald is a great book for gaining some understanding of Einstein's theory of GR (which, btw, is a theory of curved spacetime. However, it is, actually, possible for 4 dimensional spacetime to be curved without being embedded in a 4 dimensional space).
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Thanks!
I love making people cry!
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Only good things!
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It has all the relevance. I love Kurzgesagt! And thanks for linking that. I almost wonder if I shouldn't have linked it in author's notes and the end of chapter 2 or something, heh.
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Nope. I'm not too familiar with current sci-fi. I guess if I aim to be a sci-fi author then this makes me my own worst enemy as a non-reader, hah
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You're welcome! Thanks for reading.
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I actually somewhat agree. Though really I want to pursue physics because it's my love and breakthrough technologies to get us to the stars, I think, are very important for mankind's survival to where we can reach the point of maturing those fields. I think the main difficulties they face, though, are that people are more ideological than rational, and it's such a complicated science - ie, it has so many confounding variables that make answering any question difficult - that it's hard to make progress in.
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Thanks. But also, that's interesting. Why do you rarely love them when they're combined?
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Thanks for the explanation and recommendations. I've got Foundation by Asimov on my #1 spot on my qeue, though. But that sounds interesting. High concepts in sci-fi are neat, and seldom even touched on in what I've seen.
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Thanks! It was a concept that's been on my mind for a bit now. I'm glad I finally got to putting it out!
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Is that the Xeelee sequence?
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I'm not sure? I think most likely it's that they are quite hard to combine well. Ponies are _very_ fantasy, from their world to their culture, and don't often fit in well with some of the more, well, science-y aspects of ponies. At least not naturally - it's certainly doable, as you've demonstrated, and I think they actually complement each other really well when done right. But a lot of people don't, and you just end up with subpar sci-fi with ponies tacked on. Which might be another aspect of it - a lot of the pony sci-fi I tried to read was sci-fi first with ponies vaguely included. It's much more interesting when they're melded, like you did here.
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Alondro does this everywhere, don't worry about him. I'm personally very interested in seeing your longer answer, if you could bear to type it all up again!
Also, I thought I was so smart when I thought: "Hey, those beings lived in the conditions right after the Big Bang!" but then
you just confirmed it directly.