Imperatives

by Sharp Quill

22. The Observers

“So what happened to the humans,” Discord carefully repeated. He looked at Meg, stalling, apparently trying to find the right way to phrase it. “They got… outcompeted.”

“Outcompeted?” Meg asked with raised eyebrow. “Humans? By what?”

”Don’t get me wrong. It took a century or two. Humans are an irresistible force, when that force is applied against non-sapient beings. But against griffons, dragons, centaurs, minotaurs… beings that are just as smart as humans, but with sharp claws or fire breath or magic, that irresistible force turned out to be resistible after all. In the end, even sis was on board with offering the remaining humans an out, a chance to join one of the other species. Many accepted.”

Meg didn’t ask about the ones who chose otherwise; the answer was clear enough. “What, no ponies?”

“At that time, no. Poison joke created all the sapient non-human species, from those humans who accidentally or deliberately touched a blue flower.”

“Like the centaur, Lord Tirek,” Twilight said, mentioning the famous example.

Discord looked like he tasted something unpleasant. “Yes, like Tirek.” Even after all this time—long after Andy, having lost his centaur immortality, had died of old age—the draconequus still held a grudge. “But poison joke was, then as it still is, incapable of creating a species that bears a harmonic cutie mark.”

---

Egor tilted his head from side to side as he considered the question. “You have yet to visit Russia, to communicate with us. President Tretyakov would treat you like honored guest.”

So it was going to be one of those. Twilight didn’t need Applejack’s opinion on his opening statement. It was blatantly true, if also a blatant non-answer. “Equestria has yet to establish formal relations with any nation on your world.” Also a non-answer, and she held up a hoof to forestall the obvious comeback. “The one nation with which we have extensively interacted has, as a result, been thrown into chaos, of which I am sure you are well aware. Perhaps that has made us a little—how do you put it?—made us a little gun shy?”

“You visit Greece.”

“Indeed I have. I was invited to take part in the filming of a documentary.” She met his eyes. “I have yet to receive an invitation to visit Russia, nor any other form of communication.”

He shrugged. “How we reach you?”

It wasn’t the first time she had heard that excuse—and excuse it was. It wasn’t a lie, exactly, but it wasn’t the truth either. Previously Twilight would ask if they had tried asking the Americans to pass along a message. None had admitted to trying, though not in so many words. But none had had any trouble demanding a place on this trip once Discord had done his thing.

Twilight decided this time to skip all that. “You now have my full attention,” she declared. “What do you wish for me to know?”

Which caught him off guard, floundering about for a reply. This one was not a trained diplomat, she figured.

“Okay,” he finally uttered. “I admit we not know what make of pony thing. That is not state secret. But when this ‘Discord’ turn sky black… that is scary. You claim to time travel; that is scarier. We study cartoon. We see what you, Twilight, do. I just experience teleport. Why I am here?” He shrugged again. “Seek truth.”

Twilight looked to Applejack, who nodded in return. Well, so far so good. “We are no threat to your world, though I must confess words are cheap.”

“Change is threat. You bring much change.”

Twilight sighed. “That goes for us, too, I’m afraid. Anyway, on to my second question: What do you intend to do once I take you to the past?”

His reaction was one of confusion. “Observe anomaly start?”

Another nod from Applejack.

“That is correct,” Twilight said. “You will be one of the observers. I shall now teleport you back to the plaza. Please do not discuss with the other candidates our conversation here.”

He nodded. “This time I keep eyes shut.”

Twilight waited until his eyes were closed then teleported him and herself back to the plaza. “We’re back.”

Egor slowly opened his eyes, carefully looked around, spotted the still-open portal, and made a beeline for it—not at an undignified sprint, but an urgent walk. Twilight eyes followed him as he reached the guarded door on the portal’s other side, nodded at the agents, opened the door, and departed. She noted there still weren’t any uninvited persons on the other side of that door looking for an opportunity to sneak in.

So who next? Until now, she had processed non-Americans. They had proven easy enough to handle. For the most part, their presence was due to their governments having finally been forced, after witnessing the displacement, to take ponies seriously.

Then there were the Americans. Some, she knew, were representatives of the president; they should be walks in the park—unless any secretly worked for his opposition or possessed other ethical failings. But that one was Routledge’s pick. Didn’t mean she intended to do anything funny once back in the past, but…

“Kimberly Hurst.” Might as well get it over with. “You are next.”

A confident smile graced her face and she strode over. “Ready when you are.”

Twilight gazed up at her, noting unclosed eyes. Well… if this human meant it…

One teleport later.

She had to give it to her; Kimberly was unfazed. The human looked around the lounge and saw the sole chair fit for humans. Not saying a word until after she sat on it, she said, “Where do we start?”

“First,” Twilight said, “I take my own seat.” She promptly did so, taking her spot next to Applejack. Their eyes briefly met, one of Applejack’s under a raised brow. “Now that that’s done,” Twilight continued, “I shall ask you my first question.”

The human nodded in acknowledgement.

“What is your goal in observing, in the past, the creation of the anomaly?”

“To make sure you do not attempt to frame my advocate.”

“You can do better than that,” Applejack warned.

Twilight couldn’t agree more. “Why would I bring over a dozen witnesses if that was my plan?”

The human shrugged. “That’s above my pay grade,” she said, clearly not meaning a word of it.

Tempting as it was, Twilight felt she couldn’t end the interview just yet, not wanting to potentially play into the senator’s hands. “Second question: What do you intend to do once I take you to the past?”

“Keep an eye on you.”

Applejack rolled her eyes.

There was no question they had a trouble-maker here. But what to do about it? She knew what Luna would say: If she rejected this one, Routledge would just substitute another equally bad, maybe one with more subtlety. If she rejected all the substitutes, he would complain loudly and publicly; “Proof!” he would scream of the ponies’ duplicity.

She cast a security spell, isolating herself and Applejack from the human both visually and audibly. “We have to take her.”

“Are ya nuts? She didn’t utter a single truthful sentence!”

“I know, but if I reject her Routledge will just select another who’s equally bad. I don’t know what she’ll do, but we know she can’t change the past. So perhaps it’s best to take her along and keep a close eye on her. If and when she does try something, we can use that against her boss.”

“I dun like it… but there’s a lick of sense in what you say.”

Only a lick, Twilight had to confess. If it was Hurst’s intent to mess with the past, that almost certainly would prevent the time travel spell from working—and getting that spell to work was currently enough trouble as it was. They would just have to deal with that when the time came. “Okay. Dropping the spell now.”

Twilight did so. Kimberly was still seated, patiently awaiting her victory. Twilight gave it to her. “You will be one of the observers,” she said.

The human stood up, beaming. “Excellent! You’ll teleport me down now?”

Nothing would make Twilight happier—not that there was a need to telegraph that. “If you are eager to depart,” she casually said.

“W-Why would I wish to stay up here?”

Not quite the response Twilight expected, but she chalked that up to her unexpected statement. She stood up and jumped down to the floor. “Then let’s be on our way.”

The human stood up, then Twilight teleported with her passenger down to the plaza. Hurst was no more fazed by her second teleport than her first, and she strode through the portal.

On to the next one. Twilight’s eyes fell on a young woman, who was then straining to see the more distant parts of the park. That was the sole media observer, so she had been informed, the only one due to a compromise amongst all the contenders acknowledging the need to avoid all of them sending someone. “Sophie Henshaw? You’re next.”

She jerked around at her name being called. “Be right there,”she said, and started to make her way around the planters. Upon reaching the alicorn, she closed her eyes. “Ready.”

So she had been paying attention. Without further ado, Twilight teleported her up to the Zephyr. “You may open your eyes now and take a seat.”

Sophie did so and looked all around, first noting the presence of Applejack and then the chair. She sat down.

“First question: What is your goal in observing, in the past, the creation of the anomaly?”

She shrugged. “To provide coverage for CNN, obviously—well, for all media outlets, I guess. I’m not used to doing that without a cameraman or other support people.”

Twilight nodded. “There are only so many people I can bring.” And part of that compromise was for a relative unknown to be selected to stand in for all media.

“If those are the rules then those are the rules.”

“Second question: What do you intend to do once I take you to the past?”

“To pay attention to what’s going on and take video with a camcorder.”

Applejack nodded her approval.

Twilight got up. “You’ll be happy to hear that you’ll be one of the observers. I shall now teleport you back to the plaza. Please do not discuss with the other candidates our conversation here.”

Sophie closed her eyes. Twilight teleported her down to the plaza. After opening her eyes, she went off into the park to explore.

The remaining candidates were processed without incident. Not many had gone sightseeing in the theme park, besides Sophie, and only two of those needed Rainbow Dash to find and “guide” them back to the plaza. In due course the last human returned through the portal, though two of them lingered just on the other side.

“I’ll pass that on to the president,” Reubens said, after receiving a summary of the interviews. “You’re probably right in approving Routledge’s candidate, but my opinion is not the one that matters.”

Twilight frowned. “At least none of the other candidates presented any issues. Anyway, I’m sure Serrell will let me know if he has a better option.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it. Any idea as to when the trip to the past will happen?”

The frown turned into a grimace. “Not right now. There are some… technical problems that need resolving first.”

“Anything we can help with?”

“Not that I can see.”

“If that changes, let us know. I suspect the longer it takes to get those problems resolved, the worse the political fallout will become.”

As if I didn’t have enough to worry about. The Secret Service agents departed and the room on the other side of the portal was empty. One call to Sunset and the portal was closed.

“Well that was dull.”

Twilight turned around. There was Discord, wearing a tool belt full of… tools, she guessed. “What, working on your hotel?”

“No, the action—or lack thereof—over here.” He glared at Rainbow Dash. “I didn’t even get to round up any sightseers.”

Dash glared right back. “Well excuse me.”

“Enough!” Twilight shouted. “I’ve got more important things to worry about.”

“What, those ‘technical’ problems you mentioned? I’m sure an egghead like you will solve those in no time.”

Discord smirked. “It seems to me it’s taking a bit longer than that.”

It was Twilight’s turn to glare. “I don’t suppose you have any insight into my problem?”

“Moi?” he replied, paw over chest. “I’ll have you know I’m neither as omniscient nor omnipotent as you would like to believe. And it so happens there’s a reason I don’t like time travel.”

No denying that. She remembered when she and Meg had threatened him with knowledge of his immutable future, back when they had gone to the past in the Everfree Forest in an attempt to deliberately create a paradox—which failed, naturally.

“Fine. Are you omniscient enough to know where Meg is right now?”

He waved away such a trivial question. “Right now she’s in Ponyville and it’s a safe bet she’ll still be there when you get back.”

Twilight looked up at the Zephyr. “Rainbow, prepare for teleport.”

“And concerning you’re not-so-little problem…” Discord faded away leaving just a smile. “I suggest trying a little chaos.”

---

Derpy’s eyes went a little more crosseyed. “What’s a theme park?”

“Well, uh…” Meg had never heard that question from another pony. “It’s like a… large place of entertainment, with rides and restaurants and stuff, that follows a theme.”

“I’m guessing the theme is chaos?”

“You got it!”

“So the convention will take place here in Equestria?”

“That’s what we hoping for. Still lots of details to work out.”

“I dunno, Meg.”

“You should totally do it! It’d be superific fun!”

The pink pony topped off their beverages and trotted on to the next table.

“Meg! There you are!”

All heads turned towards the entrance, where a breathless purple pony stood. Upon catching her breath, Twilight teleported over to Meg and Derpy’s table. “We need to go to the lab right now—maybe my castle will do.”

“Do for—” Before Meg could finish the question, Twilight teleported her. To her castle. Her residence within the castle.

“Wait right there.”

Twilight teleported yet again, without Meg this time. A few seconds later, she reappeared, carrying a laptop in her magic. It was deposited onto a desk and its lid magically opened.

“Care to explain what this is about?”

Twilight started typing. “It’s something Discord mentioned, about our time travel problem. How a little chaos might solve it.”

“Okay?”

The alicorn stepped away. Meg moved closer and saw the quantum random number generator website in the browser. “I see from where the ‘little’ chaos comes, but what are we supposed to do with it? I can’t think of a yes/no question whose answer would solve our problem.”

“I don’t think there is one. I gave this a lot of thought on the flight back. The trick is, I think, to ask a question that isn’t yes/no. How would the answer be encoded?”

“Well… if it isn’t a yes/no answer, then… one or more words? A simple text encoding? ASCII?”

“That’s what I figured. So all we need is the correct question.”

“You’re also assuming we’re in a time loop—never mind.” Of course they’re in a time loop. They were always in a time loop. “So we ask why going back to observe the anomaly’s creation causes a paradox—no, too complicated, we need a simple, short, direct answer.” Did they? No, this wasn’t the time to explore those limits. “How about: what must we do to avoid the paradox?”

Twilight tilted her head in thought. “Perhaps be more specific as to the nature of the paradox?”

“Does it matter? We know what we mean, and that guides our interpretation of the answer. Only an answer that causes us to solve the paradox will solve the paradox, so that is what the wave function collapse will select for.”

Twilight hummed in more thought. “Okay, works for me. Let’s fill up the window with random bytes and start interpreting them.”

That is what Twilight did, and Meg found herself staring at hundred of bytes. Nothing to do but start with the first one in the upper-left and see what they got. “Got a pad of paper or something?” Meg asked.

“Right here.” Twilight already had a pad floating by herself, with a quill ready to write.

The first byte was E6. “Since this is supposed to be ASCII, we’ll just ignore the high-order bit as random noise.” It did seem that that bit had a fifty-fifty chance of being set, so that looked reasonable. “So that leaves us with six-six, which is a lowercase ‘f’. That’s followed by dee-two, an… uppercase ‘R’. Sixty-five, a lowercase ‘e’. Five-ee… That’s a symbol of some sort, not sure which one, but definitely not a letter or digit.”

“If we’re expecting words, then maybe it just ends the word, like a space?”

“Maybe? If we treat it like a space, then it’s a space, I guess. Not like quantum fields know punctuation. But ‘f’, ‘r’, ‘e’ ain’t a word. But then fields don’t know spelling either; if it’s close enough to a word, then it is that word?”

“Minor misspelling of words would qualify as a little chaos, would it not?”

“Sure. Let’s go with that. So say it’s the word ‘free.’ Not too helpful on its own, but on to the second word.” It was starting to feel like a bizarre game of charades.

“Next byte is five-four. Twentieth letter… so uppercase ’T’. Next is eff-two, drop the high bit giving seven-two, eighteenth letter, so lowercase ‘r’. Then forty-five, uppercase ‘E’. Six-three, lowercase ‘c’. Eighty, or zero. Null byte. End of message?”

Twilight scrunched her muzzle, staring at what she wrote down. “‘T’, ‘r’, ‘e’, and ‘c’. Upper/lowercase seems random too, so ignore that distinction. ’Trec?’ Misspelling of ‘trek?’”

“Free trek? Doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t work if it doesn’t make sense.”

“But the odds they’d all be letters, except for that one in the middle, is unlikely, is it not?”

Meg quickly scanned the following bytes. They looked like random garbage. “Yeah. Unlikely enough.”

In silence they considered alternative spellings.

“Tee-rec.”

Meg jerked her head up. “Huh?”

“Two syllables,” Twilight said. “Tee-rec. Or Tirek, a certain former centaur.”

Meg’s jaw dropped. “Free Tirek.”

Twilight nodded. “From Tartarus. We haven’t done that yet. It’s an open time loop.”

“But how could that possibly be connected to this time loop?”

Twilight floated her pad of paper onto the desk next to her laptop and closed its lid. “I suspect in time that will become clear.”

---

Tracking down Sunset Shimmer was harder than it ought to have been. If only the mare kept her phone on her at all times, like Meg was in the habit of doing. She and Twilight split up the likely locations to search; this time Twilight had her phone with her so that the other could be immediately informed once one of them had found Sunset. It made Meg reflect on how these ponies have yet to internalize instant communication (dragon mail not withstanding, and in this case anyway not practical).

Naturally, as the old joke went, Meg found Sunset in the last place she checked, which happened to be the converted cavern. Steve was there too—it hadn’t occurred to her that he’d be with her; it would’ve saved a lot of time calling him first—and so was Arcane Scroll. All were huddled in front of a workstation.

They noticed her coming in through the secured door, of course, but that only meant it was a day whose name ended with a “y.” Meg lifted her phone, secured to her foreleg as usual by the phone holder Rarity had made for her, and called Twilight. “She’s in the cavern,” she told her, and after Twilight’s acknowledgment ended the call.

Meg walked over to the trio. “Sunset, we need to talk. Twilight will be here in a minute.”

The unicorn stopped whatever she was typing and turned around. “About what?”

Meg uncomfortably eyed the elderly professor. “I… don’t think you have clearance for this topic, sorry. Twilight will decide that.”

Arcane shrugged it off. “Royal business. I quite understand I assure you.”

Twilight teleported in and spotted them. Meg trotted over to her, and a moment later so did Sunset. Arcane raised a querying eyebrow at his former student.

“Sorry, professor, not this time.” To Sunset she said, “I’m teleporting us to a more private location.”

Twilight did so, and Meg found herself back at the old entrance to the mine. The alicorn lit everything up, making sure they were the only ones there. The tunnel returned to shadows, once more lit only by the daylight that found its way in.

“So what’s going on?” Sunset asked.

Meg answered. “We need to go back in time and free Tirek from Tartarus, like real soon. Our failure to close that time loop is what’s preventing us from going back to adjust the creation of the anomaly, to make it into what it actually became.”

Sunset opened her mouth to say something. Twilight preempted her. “No, we don’t know how they’re connected, just that they are. And I’m afraid it’ll also prevent me from taking humans back to observe its creation. Not that I know that shall happen, but we can’t take the risk, which means we must close the Tirek time loop as soon as possible.”

It took a moment for Sunset to digest that. “So… what’s the plan? We did that trial run with Moondancer; are we going with that?”

“Yes,” Twilight said, “but there are still details to be worked out. Like, to where do we take Tirek? We need to use the plaid pills at that location. And we need to extract Cerberus at the same time. I’ll do that, probably to somewhere near Ponyville, since that’s where he turns up.”

“Where does Tirek first turn up?” Sunset asked.

Twilight frowned. “We don’t know. It was a long time after he ‘escaped’ that he began his conquest.”

“Could we ask him?”

“No,” Meg said. “We broke him out. He’d find it quite odd we didn’t know where we took—will take—him. Besides, I don’t think it’s necessary. So long as the time travel spell works, we take him to the correct place. And so long as that place isn’t obviously paradoxical, like, I dunno, the Ponyville tree-library, I don’t think it matters much.”

“Seems reasonable to me. How about deep in the Everfree Forest?”

Sunset looked askance at Twilight. “Can he survive that?”

“Given his history? I’d say so. Besides, if he can’t, then that counts a paradox.”

“And,” Meg said, “it would explain why he took so long to get to… wherever it was he started sucking magic out of ponies. The, uh, cartoon wasn’t specific on that point.”

“Baltimare,” Twilight informed her. “Anyway, sounds like we have a plan. That just leaves when.”

“How soon can you do a long range time travel spell?” Sunset asked. “We have several years to traverse.”

“You needed Discord’s assistance to do that before,” Meg said.

Twilight shook her head. “Not this time. I’ve made refinements to the spell. There are preparations to be done, so not today. Maybe tomorrow, if something else doesn’t come up.”

“It shouldn’t take long, right?” Sunset asked.

“I would hope not,” Meg said. “Take the plaid pills, pop in, pop out, and we’re done.” She turned to Twilight. “Right?”

The alicorn didn’t answer immediately. “Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“After arriving in the past, I must separate from you so that Cerberus and Tirek are extracted to different locations. Afterwards, we must meet up to return to the present.”

Sunset frowned. “And time it so that both are extracted simultaneously, though we are separated.”

“And,” Meg added, “leave Tirek to his fate and prevent him from following us.”

“Yeah. Details.” Twilight sorta forced a smile. “Look on the bright side. We know we’ll pull it off.”

We also know we’ll “fix” the creation of the anomaly, Meg glumly thought, their inability so far to do so notwithstanding.