Grunts

by Cackling Moron

Thought experiment

Author's Note:

The Storm Guard were either my first or second favourite thing out of the movie, the other being Princess Skystar who I found adorable.

Anyway, stupid story. And without any humans! What has happened to me?

Theo, a Storm Guard, was patrolling.

The capital had fallen without anything more than token resistance. Even those monarchs they’d been warned about had been dealt with without too much fuss. Barely a whimper, in fact. And beyond that it had just been a question of rolling up what few pockets of holdouts had managed to organise themselves, which wasn’t a whole lot.

That’s what preparation and overwhelming surprise can achieve. That’s what planning for a very specific adversary and a very specific style opposition can do for you. That’s what you get for partying when you should be building higher walls and gazing nervously at the savage and dangerous world beyond.

Theo assumed there was a middle ground, but it wasn’t his job to find it. It was his job to patrol, at least until things progressed and the next phase of the King’s plan could be enacted. Whatever that was. Presumably something grandiose and important. Theo was quite curious to see what it might turn out to be.

Commander Tempest was off chasing down that last, errant princess, the one that had managed to slip away from the initial attack and who was presently holding things up in her absence.

Given the Commander’s track record it was more a matter of when and not if she would succeed. All that was left for the Storm Guard to do really was to sit tight, keep an eye on things and wait for her to get back.

Frankly, the whole episode had been a bit of an anticlimax. Theo and his cohorts had gone in expecting if not stiff resistance at least a little bit of a fight, only to find an absence of anything even the least bit threatening.

Disappointing, he supposed, but better than the alternative. Any one you could walk away from.

A bunch of balloons that had managed to escape the attack unmolested caught his eye and he ambled over, chuckling to himself as he snipped the strings and let them loose. That never got old.

Balloons indeed.

Continuing on his route Theo spotted his friend, standing guard over a group of cowed, cowering ponies and so Theo wandered over. Taking five minutes for a little chat wouldn’t be the end of the world, after all, and the Commander wasn’t around to yell at him.

Scary lady. No sense of humour.

His friend saw him approach and gave a nod of greeting which Theo met with a grunt, as was custom. The ponies continued to cower and quiver, failing to understand the subtle nuance of this communication.

Then, still speaking in grunts, they had the following conversation:

“I say Quinten, I have something I’d like you to consider,” said Theo.

“What’s that?” Quinten asked.

“Imagine this: there is a device that is capable of transporting you from one place to another place and doing so technologically and not magically, for the sake of argument.”

This was something that Theo had been going over in his head for most of the day, post fighting.

Patrolling an utterly pacified city was tedious, and Theo was more than capable of keeping his eyes peeled for malcontents while entertaining whimsical scenarios at the same time. He was keen to hear what Quinten’s thoughts on the subject might be.

“There may be some intersect between those two that we’re unaware of,” said Quinten.

“There may indeed but that is beyond the parameters of the hypothetical so it’s not something you need to consider. You just need to imagine a device that is capable of taking you from one place to another place without moving you through the space between,” said Theo.

“Teleportation, then.”

“In a word, yes.”

Quinten took a second to visualise this.

“Okay, I’m imagining it. Now what?”

Setting his spear and shield aside a moment the better to gesticulate, Theo held his hands up to create a canvas on which to paint with his imagination brush.

“Now, consider the following: it transpires that the actual method of operation for this device - instead of moving you from here to there - is that it creates an absolutely perfect copy of you at your chosen destination,” said Theo.

“A copy?”

“Yes. A flawless copy, identical down to the smallest details, utterly impossible to differentiate from the original. Totally perfect. And with a continuance of consciousness. As far as the copy is concerned it stepped into one place and stepped out someplace else. Picturing that?”

“Yes. And what happens to the original?” Quinten asked.

One of the ponies - seeing this odd, grunting conversation and not understanding anything of what was going on - tried to sneak away only to be caught by Quinten and given a firm but non-wounding poke from a spear. That settled the rest of them down.

“Destroyed,” Theo said, once that was done with. Quinten took a second longer to glare the ponies into deeper submission before turning back to his friend.

“Destroyed?” He asked, as though he hadn’t heard properly. Theo nodded.

“A function of the machine. Assume that in order to create this perfect copy at the destination the destruction is required, just hypothetically. Point is, that’s the situation. You step in, and another version of you - functionally identical, not having missed even a second of consciousness - steps out the other end, only it is a copy and the old you no longer exists. Got this?” Theo asked.

Quinten unpicked what Theo had said and then bobbed his head. Not a nod, a bob. Different.

“Got it,” he said.

Having set it all up Theo now lowered his hands for the denouement.

“So here’s the question Quentin: this perfect copy, is it still you?”

“Yes,” said Quentin without a moment’s hesitation.

Theo was profoundly glad that he was wearing the standard-issue Storm Guard mask. It did a good job of hiding his disappointment.

“Oh. That was quick,” he said, broad shoulders slumping.

“I didn’t really see the point in dwelling on it. If it’s exactly like me then who cares? I’m sure I had stuff to be doing wherever it was I ended up. Why else would I be going there?”

Quinten was a simple Storm Guard. Theo should really have remembered that.

“So you’re not at all worried about the original having been destroyed? About being different?” Theo asked. Quinten shrugged.

“You said it was a perfect copy, didn’t you? And there was continuation. Up until the point I was told how the machine worked I wouldn’t even know. And like I said, I’m sure I would have stuff that needed doing. I’m a busy guy.”

Unwilling to write this conversation off, Theo grasped at straws.

“Alright. So what about if the machine didn’t work properly one time and made a copy without destroying the original?” He asked.

“I thought you said that it needed to do that to work,” Quinten said, infuriatingly. Theo let out a particularly disgruntled grunt that made the ponies flinch in fright.

“Just imagine that this one time that didn’t happen. Hypothetically.”

“Then there would be two of me. And wait, is it one of the copies that’s trying to teleport, or the original original? This is getting confusing,” Quinten said, scratching his head with his shield.

“Just the original. Imagine that it’s the first time you’re ever using it and it functions oddly and just copies you,” Theo said.

“Then there would be two of me,” Quinten said, flatly.

This was not working out the way Theo had hoped at all. In his head this would have been rich and fertile philosophical ground. He would have got Quinten’s mind going, sown the seeds of a deeper and more rewarding discussion later.

Instead, just this.

He knew he should have waited until he’d bumped into Leopold. Leopold could talk bollocks with the best of them.

Still unwilling to write the conversation off as a wasted effort, Theo decided instead to jacknife into something else entirely in the vain hope of catching Quinten off-guard.

“Okay, but what about a broom that has its handle replaced, then later its bristles, then later still the whole head. None of its component parts are the parts that they were when the broom first came into your possession. Is that still the same broom?”

“Yes.”

Hopeless. Completely hopeless. Theo picked up his spear and shield again.

“You know Quinten, typically in these sorts of discussions someone supplies reasons for their decisions. It’s rather the point of the exercise,” he said. Quinten shrugged again.

“Reason wilts before force. The most articulate argument in the world isn’t much use when the one making it is being thrown off a cliff and whoever is left standing at the end is the one who gets to tell everyone else what’s right and what’s wrong.”

“My, you’re a minion through-and-through aren’t you, Quinten?”

Quinten stood a little straighter, a little prouder.

“Of course. I come from a long line of minions, each minionier than the last. My father was a minion, his father was a minion before him and so on back down the line. Isn’t your family the same?”

“My parents are bakers, actually,” said Theo.

“Bakers?”

“Hey, don’t think I don’t hear the condescension in your voice there. Dinky little magic-proof shields and sharp sticks are all well and good, Quinten, but they’re not much use if the minions wielding them are insensible with hunger, you know?” Theo said, not-at-all defensively.

“I suppose that’s true.”

“You suppose? Logistics, Quinten! It’s vital! Amateurs study tactics. Veteran study strategy Professionals study logistics!”

“Yes yes, you’ve made your point,” Quinten grumbled. His ear then twitched. “Wait. Do you hear that?”

Theo did indeed hear that. HIs ear twitched as well and the two Storm Guard turned as one, away from the prisoners.

“It’s coming from the gate and lower courtyard. What is that?” Theo asked.

They both listened. Results were inconclusive. Could have been anything, really.

“Probably nothing. You guard them, I’ll go check,” said Theo, who did just that.

There followed ruckus, nadir and the thorough humiliation of the Storm Guard at the technicolour hooves and various other appendages of a depressingly small handful of ruffians. Frankly, the less said about it the better.

Later, disarmed and being overseen by skypirates and even some freshly-freed ponies incongruously wielding swords held in their mouths, the Storm Guard sat in several huddles throughout Canterlot.

Rumour was the King had been petrified and broken into bits. How that was supposed to have happened was unclear, but stranger things had happened. It was suspected to be related to that strange incident with the sun going up and down more times than it should have done not that long ago, along with all the explosions from up in the castle. None of it had sounded good.

Time would tell how this unfortunate situation would resolve itself.

“I say Quentin, what does your ‘might makes right’ ethos have to say about being on the receiving end of a dragon being used as a living weapon?” Theo asked under his breath, holding his hands up before him as one of the guarding ponies growled and brandished their sword.

How effective it would be held in the teeth was also unclear, but not something that Theo wanted to investigate.

“It says shut up, Quinten grumbled.

“That’s fascinating.”

Comments

[Gordon_Freemane]

Would be interesting to see more of you writing storm guard stuff. We never did find out what happened with them after the invasion.

[Herald of Opera]

For those playing at home, the transporter from Star Trek works exactly as described (Scotty refuses to use them because he knows how they work), and in at least one episode malfunctioned exactly as described.

[Cackling Moron]

9786912
Apparently you see one or two just sort of standing around in the crowd towards the end. In my head I figured that some would have got folded into life - which would be the meat of any such followup story - while the rest got...back home...somehow...

I really did like them though. That one guy who snipped the balloons was my favourite.

[Cackling Moron]

9786916
Is that genuinely how they work? Holy crap, I thought people were joking. That's a philosophical can of worms!

Knew about the episode with the double though. That was Riker, wasn't it? I figured there was some technobabble excuse for why they created a copy. Crosswaves or tachyons or whatever. Didn't they scrap the double without a thought? Seems like a misstep to me.

Star Trek is always at its best, I think, when its basically just taking an idea, dressing it up in cheap sci-fi set dressing and then talking about it for an hour. Love it.

That said, I'll take Culture displacement over a transporter...

[Venerable Ro]

9786935

Didn't they scrap the double without a thought?

Nah, Riker no.2 was stranded on some planet for like ten years or summat because they left with the copy, not knowing that there was another Riker still on the surface. So from his perspective the Enerprise just suddenly up and sodded off for no reason at all. Very rude that, if one is being marooned there ought to be some reason given, "we don't like you" at the very least.

Anyway, a while later they came back and found him, there was much drama as you might expect, and then Riker no.2 was free to go whiffling off into the galaxy in search of his own place in the universe. I think he eventually got married or something.

[Herald of Opera]

9786935
Yeah, they scrapped it without a thought because it was supposed to be scrapped without a thought, and the scrapper initially malfunctioned.

[Cackling Moron]

9786945
Well I guess that's a plus? I guess?

[Cackling Moron]

9786946
Man, that's really not very Star Trek at all...

[Jordanis]

9786916

It was always McCoy who was grouchy about the transporter, I was fairly certain.

9786935

Given the several Transporter Clone incidents in the show, it is how they appear to work, but the Treknobabble employed in describing them claims otherwise. Supposedly one is disassembled, converted into energy, transmitted, and reassembled at the far end. This still raises troubling questions in the continuity-of-consciousness and grandfather's-axe sort of space. Also it doesn't suggest a ready way to end up with these Transporter Clone incidents--one would have to ask where the extra matter came from.

Also, creating a coherent transmission out of the mass-energy equivalent of, say, 80 kilos over the course of, say, 3 seconds, would be like directing about 135,000 times human civilization's current global power output. I am reminded of the Kzinti Lesson when contemplating the casual conversion, direction, and deconversion of that much matter to energy.

Much hedging and bending over backward is also invested in keeping the replicators from being cloning machines.

Oh right, lovely little vignette, too. They're a good bunch of henches, they are.

[Cackling Moron]

9786991
Subspace. It creates the extra mass out of subspace. Somehow. Maybe. Particle waves.

Isn't subspace also the answer for why disintegrating someone with a phaser doesn't annhilate everything for miles around? I'm not a huge Star Trek guy, though I am enjoying watching DS9 again. Mostly it just seemed very contrary to the Federation's ethical stance to have something that doesn't move you but copies you and murders you.

But eh, the thought experiment part of it is the fun part. Philosophical wank is endless fun, I find.

Next up Theo and Quinten get into an argument over whether it's justifiable or not to pull a lever and send a runaway tram into one person let it roll into more than one person. And then after that we do a Galaxy Quest crossover.

[Jordanis]

9787010

Subspace is also how Odo manages to change his mass.

I don't think it has ever been canonically addressed how a phaser on disintegrate doesn't dump, at a minimum, all of the chemical energy from all of the various fats, proteins, etc, into the immediate surroundings. Causing someone to briefly become a very large torch seems like more of a Klingon or Cardassian idea. Probably the Federation specifically designed the phaser to shunt all that mess into subspace as a matter of good taste.

I don't think there's a method of teleportation short of a man-scale wormhole that doesn't cause problems. If it's got to disassemble and reassemble you, it can or possibly does copy you. I suppose mother was right--you'd better watch where you're walking, cause if you can't, you might not be you when you get there.

Quinten has all the answers. Also, Galaxy Quest sounds like a good framework for an alternative take on the relationship between Daring Do and A.K. Yearling.

[Venerable Ro]

9787030
A Galaxy Quest rip featuring A. K. Yearling? That would be amusing, I recall that they mentioned a tone shift after her first few books. Perhaps she got dragged into real adventures after someone took her stories seriously?

[SIGAWESOME]

Really enjoyed this little vignette. The idea of a pair of StormGrunts engaging in deep philosophical issues while on duty (or trying to at least) is amusing. Really would love to see more of Quentin and Theo

[Hopeful_Ink_Hoof]

There was an episode of The Outer Limits (1995) series that used the teleporter idea. And like in the speculative story, it goes wrong. However, in that version, the main character is told to destroy the original. (link to the wikipedia article is here.)

[Cackling Moron]

9787177
It did just rather tickle me to picture the dumb muscle being articulate in their own tongue. I'm easily amused.

And I finally got to use "I say, Quinten" in something. This delights me for highly specific reasons.

[Cackling Moron]

9787030
Just take the 40k route and briefly detour through hell. You might not end up half in a wall!

Or Culture displacement where you...quantum...something...the grid?

[SIGAWESOME]

It did just rather tickle me to picture the dumb muscle being articulate in their own tongue. I'm easily amused.

"I say, Quinten, do you know the meaning to this war?"

"Hmmm...?"

"I mean... what is the whole point? It cannot be for the land because everything is burned, bombed, or polluted. It cannot be for the money because there is not anything left to spend it on. So what is it? Religion? Why do we continue to fight?"

"To win the war."

"Meh... Works for me"

[Cackling Moron]

9788873
Oh that takes me back

[Jagafeh]

There’s a rather gruesome story based on that premise about teleporting called Blink.

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/341279/blink

[Scyphi]

9786945
It was actually only eight years he was stranded, and the incident occurred before Riker's posting to the Enterprise-D (before it had even launched, in fact) and had been serving on a different ship at the time. Riker 2 did not marry, but Picard did get him a posting on another Starfleet ship (as him staying on the Enterprise was agreed to be just too awkward) so to continue a career in Starfleet. Couple of years later, he was revealed to have joined the Maquis, hijacked the Defiant from DS9 in an attempt to catch the Cardassians at foul play, got caught, and voluntarily surrendered himself to the Cardassians where he was last seen being given a life-sentence on a Cardassian labor camp. He's presumably still out there somewhere in the Trek galaxy, but despite indicating it was open to the idea, the franchise has yet to officially revisit him.

[Cackling Moron]

9862914
You know, I was re-watching DS9 lately (or watching it properly, seeing as how the last time I watchd it I was a little babby) and I saw the Riker2-napping-the-Defiant episode and I was like "Oh! He took off the facial hair! It's that guy!"

And they really do just set him up as something to come back to and just...never do...

Poor guy.

[Venerable Ro]

9862914

Ah yes, that'd be it. I hadn't watched those episodes in years, so you can see how poor my recollection was. Thanks for the refresher.