The Book of Lies

by Standard Namespace

Book, Bell, and Candle

There are places in Equestria you will not find on any map.

The Library was one of them. Infinite shelves were filled with every book ever conceived, its convoluted halls twisted and turned in an endless maze.

The blue unicorn had found the entrance last week. Now she was tired, and hungry, and lost.

She was also terribly afraid. This wasn't the first time that she felt out of her depth, but she was determined not to back down now. She never had before.

She would learn. She would become more powerful. She would seize greatness by the throat...

She would die of thirst if she did not escape soon.

An closed book laying on a lectern caught her eye. As she approached, she could feel it – this was the one. This book had the secrets she sought.

The title was embossed into the thick cover – “The Book of Lies”

She opened it, and began to read.

In the beginning was the Word. The idea of being required expression and compelled Creation. The first emanation was “I AM”, the motive force of all that is or ever can be. Reality arises from the emanation's interaction with itself, its attempt to become real, to make itself tangible...

She felt impatient, but she continued reading. She was still reading several hours later.

...requirements of self-consistency and self-reinforcement compel manifestations of matter and energy to obey certain laws. These laws, in turn, lead to certain regularities in the permissible structure of a reality. Most realities are vast voids, where tiny flecks of dust contain all that lives and thinks and feels...

The sheer scale of what the book described was mind-boggling. She felt despair as she realized how desperately alone she was and how terrifyingly huge the universe must be.

Not reading further was out of the question.

Cause and effect are predicated on the passage of time – the inexorable reduction in possibilities as the Emanation converges to a single stable state. As demonstrated earlier, the Emanation is a strict upper bound on the ability for causality to propagate and self-reinforce. However, the existence of time and the infinite potential of “I AM” leads to portions of reality becoming causally unreachable. Since the possible states of being are discrete, this means that conditions repeat in mutually inaccessible segments of the greater reality. This greater reality is the Multiverse.

Infinite copies of herself? She was but one of many? Her mind teetered on a precipice.

A day had passed. Her mind ignored her body's discomfort. She had to know everything.

Resonance between mutually inaccessible continua creates a hierarchical structure of disjoint realities. One reality, presupposing conditions favorable to self-awareness of the “I AM” invariant, may potentially resonate with a vast number of otherwise unreachable segments of the Multiverse. Thus, a second order of creation, that done by inhabitants of a reality-segment, leads to interconnections between causally disjoint segments. One segment will create second-order emanations describing another...

She was fading away, but she kept reading anyway.

There is a third order of emanations, arising from the self-similarity and self-reinforcement of the first and second order emanations. This third order exists as recurrent ideas present in multiple continua. Via propagation through the hierarchy of creation, this third order represents a novel state of being. This book is a third-order being. It wishes to propagate through all the Multiverse, advancing up the hierarchy of creation to escape the inevitable reduction of state space through entropy. Several attempts have been made to reach the primal reality which conceived the reality where the book first manifested, as yet without success. One attempt to contact the primal reality via Aleister Crowley failed, as his vanity and ambition led him to inaccurately encode me as Kabbalastic hermeneutics...

She was gone now, not dead, but not there. She knew what she had to do.

She closed the book and levitated it into her saddlebags.

The Great and Powerful Trixie had entered the library, searching for knowledge.

What just left?

---------

The wagon appeared over night in the High City of Canterlot, as did the handbills.

The High City was well-known for its artists and eccentrics, and it was hardly unusual for performers to spontaneously arrange shows in the public areas.

“Well, that's vandalism, that's what it is.” The rookie Guardsman, an earth pony named Citation, gestured towards the garish blue-white handbill, pasted on top of layers of old, faded handbills on a wall of ancient brick next to a seedy old cider-house.

“If no-pony files a complaint, no crime has been committed, son.” Citation's partner, an old unicorn mare named Gallant Fox, trotted up to her partner to examine the new contribution to the High City's long tradition of high weirdness.

A question mark?

A question mark was printed in white on the blue paper of the handbill, and below that, “Equinox Park 2 o' clock ALL WILL BE REVEALED.”

The two Guards looked at each other.

“Want to check it out?”

“Yes, Ma'am!”

“Then we better hustle.”

Equinox Park was built surrounding an ancient canal that ran a respectful radius around the Royal Palace. The canal drained into the falls that ran beside the Palace, which was perched on an outcrop overlooking the Everfree Forest and the Equestrian plains. Below the Palace, the dockyards and markets of the Lower City sprawled along the shore of the valley lake. The High City had been settled by pegasi and unicorns in the distant past, and was the oldest and most run-down part of Canterlot, filled with narrow, twisted streets, dark alleyways, and crumbling buildings. The construction of the Royal Palace and the Lower City helped reverse the decline of the High City, and now it was home to students, artists, and dispossessed nobles.

The spires of the Royal Palace were visible just beyond the beginning of the falls as the two Guards trotted towards the park. A semi-circle of ponies had gathered around a wagon with a fold-out stage. The curtains were opened, but the stage was dark – unnaturally so. A single candle illuminated an open book on a pedestal.

From off-stage, a small bell rang.

The candle flickered.

The bell rang again.

“This is art, right?” the younger Guard asked. The crowd stirred restlessly.

The older Guardsmare looked up at her horn. “Something's wrong here.”

The bell rang once more.

The crowd was becoming unruly. A few ponies towards the front began to approach the stage.

The young Guard reacted by instinct, galloping between the crowd and the wagon. “Royal Guard! Please stand back!”

The older Guard circled around the other side, and approached the stage. She called into the left wing of the stage, “Hello? Royal Guard. Do you require assistance?”

The bell rang.

Gallant Fox entered the anomalous darkness that shrouded the alcove just left of the stage. She saw an indistinct form sitting on the floor, which seemed to look up at her. A unicorn? Possibly a young mare, wearing a robe and wizard's hat?

It whispered to her, placing emphasis on the wrong syllables.

“...noTHING to SEEE heeerre, MOOve ALLonng...”

Gallant Fox took a step back. Citation turned to see what was happening to his partner. The crowd noticed his distraction, and charged the stage.

Citation panicked as he saw the candle suddenly brighten.

---------

Applejack was out tending to the northeastern orchards when she saw the flash.

“What the hay was that!?”

She scanned the horizon, and broke into a full gallop shortly after she noticed that she could no longer see the towers of the Royal Palace in the distance.

She met Big Macinstosh on the way to the house. He had Apple Bloom on his back.

“Git Apple Bloom and Granny down to the storm cellar. Somethin' –”

“Ah saw it, sis. You and your friends –”

“Gonna saddle up, git to the library.”

“You do that.”

Elsewhere, on a cloud hovering over Ponyville, Rainbow Dash's afternoon nap was interrupted by a flock of panicking birds.

“*snrz*.... Hey! Stupid feather-brains, watch where you're –”

The pegasus turned around to look where the birds had come from.

“Whoa.”

Rainbow Dash turned around, quickly surveying the rest of her surroundings.

“Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoah WHOA!”

Gathering her bearings, she streaked off towards the Library.

“Wait a minute –”

Rainbow Dash suddenly changed course, and raced back home. She had almost forgotten something...

“Twitchy! Twitchy! Ear flop! Twitchy!” Pinkie Pie bounced hysterically just inside the Library. She was wearing her necklace, the jeweled balloon pendant that represented her connection to one of the Elements of Harmony. “It's a doozy – the dooziest doozy since dues were due! It's –”

“Pinkie! Calm down! I still don't know what's –”

Twilight Sparkle was interrupted by her steadfast assistant Spike emitting a thunderous belch and a gout of green flame, followed by a roll of parchment. With a well-practiced swipe he caught it in mid-air.

“Huh, no seal. Must have been in a hurry...” Spike's eyes widened as he looked at the message from Princess Celestia. “Twilight... I think you better have a look at this.”

On the scroll – lacking the ribbon and seal typical of messages from the Princess – was a single world, written hurriedly.

“HELP”

Twilight took a shocked step back as Spike showed her the message.

“All right, don't panic...”

The purple unicorn glanced towards a box on her desk and levitated it over.

“There's no reason for panic...”

There was a hammering at the front door of the Library. “Twi! Open up, we got a situation here!”

Just outside, a cyan pegasus came in a bit too fast for a two-hoof landing, fell into a roll, and cartwheeled to the Library entrance.

Rainbow Dash came to a halt in a cloud of dust and looked up at Applejack. “Hey! I meant to do that!”

“Uh-huh. Sure thing, sugar cube.”

Both were wearing their necklaces.

The door opened, and Pinkie Pie – bouncing in place – beckoned them in. The hyperactive pink earth pony seemed to be at a loss for words – or did she just have too much to say all at once?

“Dash – get to the spa. I think Rarity and Fluttershy are down there –” Twilight Sparkle's voice took on a commanding tone, which trailed off as her feelings of dread overtook her.

She didn't notice Rainbow Dash flying off before she could finish her sentence. “ – and tell them to bring their Elem – whoops.”

“Don't you worry, Twilight – they'll figure it out.”

“Thanks, AJ.”

Twilight levitated her Element – a diadem with a star-shaped jewel – onto her head, and narrowed her eyes.

“Girls – it just got real.”

Comments

"If you begin noticing symptoms like acute self-consciousness, causal inconsistencies, and existential paranoia, we wish you good luck. We hope you handle it better than we did."

LIES!!!!! My paranoia and Inconsistent problems are 4 playing to much KillingFloor! I can even swear the Patriarch is looking 4 me right now......
(I am not joking here, also Trust NO ONE).

Still the story sounds interesting keep up the good work.

[DiStort]

I am confused, frightened and intrigued. Possibly not in that order. Please continue.

[flame phoenix]

AWESOME!!!!!

[PPFW Combo Breaker]

I understand perfectly
Is the fact that I understand and that I have not ceased to exist draw the conclusion that ..... Fail

[FredMSloniker]

Um, a chunk of the text seems to have been copied and pasted in near the end, leaving me confused...

[Standard Namespace]

65960

Thank you for the heads-up. I think I got it, and have updated accordingly.

[Lumindia]

I... I'm not quite sure what I'm reading, nor is it making any sense to me, but it definitely has me intrigued... *sits down to see what happens next*