Part 4: Cosmological
Billions of years passed.
During this time, Grasping Hand and Moving Finger’s species also died, and joined the fossil record, just a few layers up from their beloved dragons and ponies. The light of sapience disappeared from the world once more.
It did not return.
Let’s talk about Boulder.
After Grasping Hand died, Boulder was inherited by one of her daughters. She didn’t know why Boulder was important to her, for she was never told, but she knew how important Boulder had been, since Grasping Hand had insisted Boulder be next to her when she died. So she kept Boulder in the same cabinet as her photo albums and participation trophies. Occasionally, she would look at the chunk of basalt and smile, as a picture of her late mother filled her head.
After Grasping Hand’s daughter died, Boulder went to a landfill.
Not much happened after that, from Boulder’s perspective, until at some point a set of meteors made impact on the planet. The first was large enough to burn away the atmosphere. The second impacted at just the right angle to launch Boulder, and a whole lot of other matter, out into space at escape velocity.
The escape velocity of the solar system, that is.
With a trajectory perpendicular to the plane of the galactic disk itself, Boulder’s voyage into the intergalactic void was predictable. As was his fate. With hardly a particle to cross his path in that lonely darkness, Boulder would just continue to be, throughout the countless eons. Long past the billions of years it would take for the star Celestia once raised to expand, swallow the planet She once walked, and die. Long after the last sapient interstellar civilizations, desperately clinging to life around the last of the black holes, vanished. Long after that.
Luckily, Boulder is just a rock, so that doesn’t really mean anything.
Let’s talk about magic.
At one point, the planet Equestria was on teemed with it. It not only gave life to the fantastic creatures way too high on the trophic system to be sustainable in their environments, but also sapience to the dozens of species we are familiar with today. What else could explain these myriad species from different evolutionary lines developing cultures and civilizations and mindsets more compatible than those of a single culture separated by fifty years in time?
Of course, that is not all. Folks say the Everfree Forest doesn’t work the same as the rest of Equestria. It’s not natural. The animals care for themselves on their own. Thanks to the powerful magic of the Everfree, they have sapience, though they lack both a material culture and the ability to speak Ponish. From the bears to the squirrels, from the rabbits to the bees. Even non-living constructs made of wood and leaves. This tells us something.
The sapience that magic endows doesn’t need neurons.
So why not a rock?
Let’s suppose, as a hypothetical, that Boulder was sapient, and consider his long journey into eternity.
To us, this fate would be straight out of a tale of cosmic horror. Countless eons of not even the hope of external stimuli. There is a reason solitary confinement is considered torture.
But Boulder is not us. Boulder does not feel ennui or boredom or existential malaise. Do not be sad for Boulder. Boulder is content. Boulder has his memories.
Sometimes, Boulder thinks of Grasping Hand or her daughter. He tried his best to communicate with them, but the magic was so weak by then. He could only project vague feelings, so weakly that the effects would be indistinguishable from invoking an emotional association. But he did his best to pick that vague feeling well, to bring as much comfort as he could, because he is a good Boulder.
Sometimes, Boulder thinks of Starlight’s life after Maud. Boulder never did try to talk to Starlight like he did to Maud, though he could have. He didn’t want to distress her. She talked to him all the same. Mostly about Maud. He liked hearing about Maud.
But there was always a pall of sadness over that period of Starlight’s life. She never stopped grieving her, all the way up to the end. Her subsequent partners understood, or left because they could not. She never found the happiness she had with Maud again, but she never regretted that either. Once in a lifetime was a miracle enough.
So mostly, Boulder thinks of Maud. The mare who grew up different than other ponies, on an isolated rock farm. The mare who had no friends and, though she loved her sister, could not understand or be understood by her. The mare who was lonely enough to begin talking to a chunk of magnesium-rich basalt she found on one dark and stormy night. For hours and hours throughout the years, providing the magic-powered matrix of computation inhabiting Boulder the raw material it needed to turn into language and consciousness.
That is to say, mostly, Boulder thinks of his mother.
Of course, when he thinks of the first part of Maud’s life, he also thinks of her loneliness. A pall of sadness, the mirror image of Starlight’s. As meaningful as Boulder was to Maud, he knew Maud needed something more. Somepony to love her, to understand her, and to be understood and loved by her. Maud tried her best to be stoic about it, but Boulder could still hear the sadness under her monotone voice. So he was very glad when Maud found that somepony, and happiness, at last.
So really, what Boulder thinks about the most during those long eons are the last years of Maud’s life. The ones she spent with Starlight Glimmer.
In his mind, she is still reading her latest poem about rocks as Starlight gazes up at her in awe, chin resting on hooves.
In his mind, she is still kissing her as Starlight holds her hooves, trying to distract her from giving her lesson about an obscure kite technique.
In his mind, she is still saying “I do” in a quiet ceremony in front of the Castle of Friendship, where they met for the second time in their lives.
In his mind, she is still lying on that deathbed, even her eyelids immobilized by the progression of the disease, but her mind still sharp. Still able to gaze into Starlight’s eyes through the caps of clear saline. Still determined to have those eyes be the last thing she ever sees. Still alive.
In his mind, she never really died. That is the closest we ever get to immortality.
But that hypothetical is silly, right? Boulder is probably just a rock.
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I've seen sillier hypotheticals. Lovely little thought exercise. Thank you for it.
10603237
Glad you liked it!
Hm, was the word count deliberate, or a coincidence?
And nice; thank you for writing. :)
10603742
I've been into aiming for deliberate word counts recently. It's only 1111 because I got tired of cutting to get 11 more.
10603781
Ah, neat. :)
Though I'm afraid I'm not spotting the particular significance of 1100.
Damn. This made me cry, in a beautiful way. I shouldn't be surprised, given how deeply Timescales moved me. Lovely little expansion and thought exercise here. Such simple prose, some of it hypothetical, but all of it very heartfelt. A nice sort of epilogue/POV shift to that amazing work of yours that preceded it.
I do like your ideas on sapience. Maud basically giving Boulder the Breath of Life by talking to him over the years was lovely. Starlight having had other partners after Maud was a bit of a surprise, but her not finding that same happiness wasn't. Their love was one for the ages.
Amen. And that's why the connections we make is all we really have.
Thanks for this story.
10655810
Thank you for this lovely recontextualization.
It truly was! And Starlight loving while still grieving, as she will be all her life, is a beautiful story I hope to be able to do justice one day, but it might be some time before I am ready for it. For some reason I foresee it as one of the last stories I'll write for this community, which is hopefully many years from now.
I am so glad you finally got to this story. Getting to know that I have communicated something I find meaningful is what makes all the time I spend writing worth it. Thank you for being a reader of mine.
just as lovely as the first. thank you
See this only adds to what I was saying at the end of Timescales. Meaning and effects far outstripping our ability to know how we can create them.
Also the idea of Boulder thinking of Maud as his mom is too cute for words. Eeee. Headcanon accepted. Boulder is Maud's little rock baby.
okay.
I’m fricking crying now.
Man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man.
This was definitely a oneup on yourself.
its good. that’s the only words I can form.
Eventually, Boulder will find himself at the center of a void more vast than the entire observable universe is today. His nearest neighbor will be a scattering of hydrogen and helium atoms, thousands of lightyears distant. And then, when they one by one vanish forever over the cosmological event horizon, they shall bestow upon him the twin titles of master and sole inhabitant of an entire universe of his very own. The last being in all of creation to remember a world of ponies and love and one very special pony, carrying those memories forward into the cold dark of eternity.
Now, this only deepened the existential crisis. I pack-bond to too many inanimate objects. This wasn’t a good thing for me to read at ten in the evening
The question in mind is if Boulder is sentient as we discover how much Boulder has experienced. Without dialogue and all narrative, it certainly feels lonely like Boulder is; alone with thoughts and only feelings to express. The nod to how isolation is one of the worst forms of torture is exactly how it felt. What happens to everything in time? The material things we care about will eventually be discarded and/or withered under the inviolable march of time.
Still, though, it mentions the very thing that is permanent: the memories, the experiences which we take with us. As the saying goes, “people might forget what you say to them, but they will never forget how you feel".
This is what makes this a great addition and finishing touch to Timescales. But I might be crazy. Boulder may only be a rock.
I want to believe Boulder is pulling a Trixie and is narrating this story himself.
Seriously, throughout every Maud appearance in the show - I never doubted Boulder was there, some form of an entity just observing, watching, looking down on us mortals. This story just added onto the greatness of Timescales.
First off, nice wordcount you got there.
Second-
oh.
aw.
Never has an extinction event sounded so mundane.
And... wow.
It's been a ride. A beautiful ride. I used that word a lot in my comments here, because this really was beautiful. I'm torn between feeling a deep sense of sadness but also relief that in one small part, the memory of Maud and Starlight and Grasping Hand and everything else is still there in one tiny pebble in this vast, ever-expanding cosmos.
I love this, Bike. Everything about Timescales and Cosmological.
Thank you, again.
Howdy, hi!
Okay, the flippant attitude of this fic is ridiculous, also boo on you.
Don't dictate my feelings of wanting to hug a sentient/non-sentient rock. I will hug a rock if I so damn choose.
In seriousness though, this was a trip. Just the absolute bonkers idea of a ship and love that transcends past known living life. You could even say Boulder who may or may not be sentient is an excellent spaceship carrying the memories of his time on Equestria. A very odd time capsule if you would.
I now have very conflicting feelings and no idea how to begin processing them.
Anywho, this was the bucking best, thanks for this.
You can has review!