Imperatives

by Sharp Quill

5. Different Perspectives

Meg experimentally gave her wrists a twist; they freely turned. The spell she had surreptitiously cast still functioned. Packing tape was all her captors could find. The point of the spell wasn’t to free herself, of course—she would be a mostly model prisoner—it was to protect her skin.

She adjusted her position. Being in the back of a van loaded with stolen property, including at least one operating magic generator, was not the most comfortable way to travel. Leaning forward from the side, she took a peek through the windshield. No mistaking those archaic wind turbines lining the hills on either side of the highway: Altamont Pass.

Knots formed in her stomach. So that’s where they held me. An industrial warehouse in Tracy—and they were taking her straight to it. At least I’ll be long gone when what happens happens.

Living through that once was quite enough.

---

Rarity hummed to herself as her magic delicately unfolded onto a ponnequin the dress worn by Meg for the Grand Galloping Gala. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer I create something more… suitable?”

Meg shook her head. “I want to look my best when I appear on camera with a leash around my neck, and that dress will do nicely.” She certainly wasn’t going to appear naked on national television. “Just, I dunno, add some subtle reinforcement around the neck?”

The fashionista gave her that look. “To avoid being damaged by that leash, I assume?”

“Yep.”

“To be treated like a recalcitrant dog,” Rarity muttered as she inspected the part of the dress in question.

“That’s what my advisors are going for, the visual juxtaposition of an exquisite dress and the inevitable leash—since, you know, they can’t handcuff me on the account of having no hands.”

“‘Exquisite’ is a given.” She looked up from the dress. “Fortunately, I’m always up for a challenge, though this hardly qualifies. It’ll be ready in a few days.”

Five days. “That’s fine.” Five days till her just-scheduled appearance at the trial. This is happening.

“Anything else, darling?”

“Meg!”

Meg jerked around and spotted Sweetie Belle entering the shop. “Yes?” It wasn’t terribly hard to figure out what the filly wanted.

“When can Susie come visit us again?”

“Sweetie, darling, Twilight is not available right now. It will be some time before she returns. You’ll just have to be patient.”

“Well, can’t you bring her across? Can’t any unicorn do it?”

“Darling, that wouldn’t be a good idea—”

“In theory, yes,” Meg interrupted, “but it’s best left to ponies whose special talent is magic.”

“Precisely so,” Rarity said with relief.

“I’ll talk to Sunset Shimmer—and to Susie’s parents—and see what I can arrange. But no promises.”

“I can’t wait to tell Apple Bloom and Scootaloo!” Sweetie chirped, then she trotted over to the stairs and galloped up them.

Meg sighed. “What part of ‘no promises’ did she not understand?”

“I’ll manage them, so don’t you worry about it.”

“Thanks.”

No other incident delayed Meg’s departure from Carousel Boutique. Once outside she paused, wondering, now what? She had taken the train to Ponyville because of the dress, but she was now free to fly back to Canterlot. It was still several hours, however, before she was to pay Sunset a visit at the mirror. She had some time to kill.

Decisions, decisions.

I know, I’ll pay a visit to one of the changelings. They weren’t a bad bunch, once you got to know them. One was usually at the tree library, serving as the new librarian. Which one didn’t really matter; they all took on the same form, leaving ponies none the wiser. The changeling in residence also functioned as a messenger between Twilight and Daring Do.

A function that had become moot for the time being.

What did the changelings do when their “hive leader” wasn’t around? Perhaps they could use the company.

The walk over to the library was pleasant enough. A carefully arranged partial cloudiness kept temperatures just right. Ponies were out and about, seemingly without a care in the world. And it had been months since the last incursion from the Everfree Forest—if a sick and confused manticore could be considered an incursion. Fluttershy wouldn’t let anypony else lay a hoof on it.

After a few minutes the ancient and hollowed out tree was before her. Without knocking—it was a library during its hours of operation—Meg went inside. There was the librarian, straight out of central casting: a mare wearing spectacles, graying mane, a cutie mark of a book. She was talking to… Lyra?

They both turned to look at her.

“Not interrupting anything?” Meg asked.

An awkward smile from Lyra. “No… I ought to be going anyway.”

Wait a minute. Meg and Twilight had stumbled upon Lyra and one of the changelings in the Everfree, when they’d been conducting one of their time travel experiments. The one where the time travel spell repeatedly failed until she had been looking in the direction of where the changeling and Lyra had been at their time of arrival in the past. “What’s your connection to the changelings?” she blurted out.

“That’s… complicated,” was all the unicorn said before hurriedly departing.

With raised eyebrow Meg turned to the disguised changeling. “Would you care to answer that?”

“Not my place to comment,” was the simple answer.

Meg kept her gaze on the librarian; it didn’t work.

She looked somewhere else, anywhere else. “I suppose I could try asking Daring—”

Realization dawned. Back in the forest, they hadn’t yet learned of the connection between the changelings and Daring Do. In hindsight it was obvious: Lyra was using the changelings to pass messages back and forth with the author, the same as Twilight was now doing.

The changeling shrugged. “You’re certainly free to ask her.”

Meg sighed. “I certainly am.” And that pegasus would be just as likely to answer as Lyra was.

“Have you heard anything from her?”

Was that a touch of unease? They’re probably not used to being out-of-touch with her, she decided—and Daring had gone where no changeling could follow (presumably). “I’m not really in the loop on this one, but I wouldn’t worry. By now they’re probably in a plane flying over the ocean to their destination.”

---

“I must confess I had never heard of you or your books during my brief reign of terror, and the prison library in Tartarus sadly lacks any Equestrian titles.”

“And I must confess I was at the time in the Griffon Empire, doing research for Daring Do and the Eponymous Emerald. I didn’t learn of your ‘reign of terror’ until after it was over.”

The banter was playful enough; naturally, it was all for the camera. Kyle the director had the idea of having Andy and Yearling converse, the logic being that they should get to know each other if they were going to be on a team. Twilight couldn’t deny that logic; that it upped the celebrity factor of this documentary surely was a coincidence. At least it allowed her to be off camera.

“Is that why you’ve joined us? To do research for your next book?”

“Can’t slide one past you,” Yearling remarked. “Having a Daring Do book set in the human realm would be beneficial for sales, in both realms. But, believe it or not, I do have a background in archaeology—write what you know, as they say—and I wouldn’t mind putting that training to work at ancient ruins of human origin.”

And you already did. Not that Yearling was going to mention that here. And, to be fair, she probably meant ruins of human origin in the human realm. Regardless, it was the first Twilight had heard of her background. An archaeologist past had never been mentioned in any bio of the author she had read. She’d have to look deeper into that the next chance she got.

“It remains to be seen if there’ll be anything you can apply your training to,” Andy said.

Yearling wasn’t the least bit fazed. “We’ll see. I hope so, and I feel the humans should hope so too. I bring a different perspective, obviously, and so do you.”

Andy smiled at that. “I certainly do.”

Kyle interrupted. “That’s a good point to break.” He looked towards Twilight. “Anything you’d like to add to this topic?”

Twilight was gazing out the window at the boundless ocean, so far below. “Not particularly,” she said. She fully expected Yearling to utilize her training, but not necessarily in the presence of these humans. And by “humans” she excluded Andy, of course, as only he knew the locations of several points of interest. That wouldn’t make Kyle happy. She wasn’t sure how much that mattered.

“I’ve been sat here, listening to this delightful conversation, and I would like to add that I, for one, am quite interested in the different perspectives these two have to offer.”

That was the resident domain expert, Professor of Aegean Studies Samantha Hutchinson. She was in the back, near Fowler and Reubens. Twilight hadn’t exchange many words with her yet, but any person who has written multiple books was alright by her. The professor’s distinct Trottingham accent didn’t hurt—or British, as it was known here.

“I can assure you,” Twilight said, “that neither of them are known for keeping their perspectives to themselves.” She turned back to the porthole. “I can’t believe we’re going over five hundred miles per hour. Nothing seems to move down there.” Not that there was much to see, just flecks of white against the ocean. Even the occasional cloud passed languidly below them.

The professor got up, walked over, and took a seat near Twilight. “We are seven miles up, I should think.”

“Equestrian airships don’t go that high; they don’t need to. Not with magic to reduce air friction.”

Samantha’s face lit up at the word “magic.” “Are there spells to aid archaeologists? Could any of them be used here?”

The camera was pointed at them. “That would be Yearling’s department, it would appear.”

“Don’t look at me. I’m not a unicorn.”

All attention was back on Twilight. Her tail twitched. “I would have to look into it… but I doubt it.” If only because if such spells existed, Yearling ought to have heard of them alongside her unicorn classmates—which reminded her to find out which school she had attended. “But general magic, such as precise telekinesis, would obviously be useful.”

“Pegasi flight magic can be quite useful too.” Yearling smiled. “Daring Do sure finds it so.”

“Is that how your wings work?” Samantha asked, pointing at Twilight’s wings. “I mean, would they work in our world?”

“I’d be happy to demonstrate they do,” Twilight said, “but not in this tight, enclosed space. Perhaps once we visit a suitable site, I could offer you a birds eye view—if you wouldn’t mind being magically levitated far off the ground.”

Kyle immediately said, “Let’s do that.”

Samantha wasn’t so sure. “I’ll… consider it.”

“Can you levitate a camera man?” Kyle asked.

Mike, the cameraman, was not amused. “We have a drone, you know. An expensive drone.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’ve made your point.”

“I wouldn’t mind being levitated high in the sky,” Yearling said. “To experience flying, like a bird.”

And she said it with such a straight face too. “It would be my pleasure,” Twilight said. “It would help you write Daring Do’s flying scenes with greater verisimilitude.”

Yearling didn’t miss a beat. “I look forward to the experience.”

“Speaking of Daring Do…” Samantha began. “You wouldn’t happen to have one of your books on you I could borrow—possibly even buy?”

Yearling sadly shook her head. “I don’t have one on me right now, and even if I did I certainly could not sell it to you. My human lawyers are quite clear on that. Hasbro’s lawyers are the problem; they feel they are entitled to some of the revenue. It’s under negotiation.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Fortunately, they are not laying claim to book sales in Equestria.”

Twilight grunted. “They wouldn’t get far if they tried and they know it.” The current lack of a copyright treaty unfortunately worked both ways. Complexities like this, where a few scenes from a Daring Do book got incorporated into an MLP episode, didn’t help. She couldn’t help but feel that this was all posturing to make the treaty under development as favorable as possible to the humans. The royal sisters’ advice was to posture right back at them.

“I don’t suppose I could buy the book in Equestria then?”

“Not my department,” Yearling said, nodding at Twilight.

It was days like this Twilight wished she was still just the Ponyville librarian.

“We would love to tag along and film it.”

---

“It really does look like a control room out of a sci-fi movie.” Meg wandered about, taking a closer look at each of the monitors.

“It’s what we envisioned,” Sunset said, “but it turns out that could have been a problem: we envisioned it. Moondancer and I are not exactly experts in human technology.”

Moondancer stood by a monitor. “We believe our lack of deep understanding of computers is limiting what we can do here.”

Meg processed that for a moment. Then she selected a console and sat down. There was a keyboard builtin to the console and a wireless mouse to the side. She grabbed it with a hand and moved it about; the cursor moved likewise on the monitor.

Her attention switched to the user interface displayed on that monitor. It was vaguely Windows-like. The sole application running appeared to be the portal manager. The sole icon on the task bar was for that manager. There did not seem to be any way to launch anything else, any way to find what else was installed. They’ve both used human computers; why was this so limited?

She went through the portal manager’s menu bar, looking to see what functionality was there. Again, only the bare essentials were present. A manager like this ought to maintain a log of all activity, of all portals created and destroyed over the years—millennia? There was nothing she could find. Maybe a log file was being written to, but there was no way to look for it never mind inspect its contents.

Meg could only conclude that just the mere impression of a computer was being emulated.

She leaned back. “Yeah, I see the problem. So what do we do about it?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Sunset walked over to the pillar hosting the portal back to Equestria. “First, we all leave; second, you return first, with a proper control room in mind; and finally, we follow.”

Meg stood up. “Let’s do it.”

Sunset immediately went through the portal. Moondancer was next to reach the portal and to go through it, with Meg right behind her.

Three ponies stood before the mirror.

Meg took a deep breath, concentrating on what a proper portal control room should be: it would have “real” computers, as she understood them. Exhaling, she went through the mirror.

Everything looked the same, superficially. She wasn’t surprised. The appearance was not the problem, so she hadn’t wasted any effort on expecting anything different.

She walked over to a console and sat down. There was now a USB hub in the console. Hopefully it might even work; she had no way to test that at the moment.

The monitor was dark, in power-saving mode. However silly that might be in this simulation—or whatever it was—that’s how a real computer ought to behave, so that was a promising sign. She took hold of the mouse and moved it.

It was the moment of truth.

The monitor came to life, revealing a perfectly normal Windows desktop, right down to the default desktop background image. She clicked the Windows icon in the bottom-left of the task bar, and up popped the Start Menu. So far, so good. In due course she found and launched the command prompt. It came up, showing the familiar prompt. She typed “DIR \” and the usual top-level files and directories were listed.

“It looks like it worked,” Moondancer said, standing behind her.

“Yeah. This really raises questions about how this realm operates. I mean, I find it really hard to believe it’s ‘simulating’—or whatever the heck it’s doing—a perfect replica of a human designed and manufactured CPU, running an actual copy of Windows. It sure didn’t get all that from me. No one person remotely knows all that stuff.”

“And then there’s Canterlot High,” Sunset said. “They even had a version of the internet. Whoever imagined that into existence had detailed knowledge of both human technology and the residents of Ponyville.”

Meg sighed. “Kinda narrows down the suspects, doesn’t it?” And she was top of the list, though a future Twilight or Sunset could also be up there.

The portal manager was still in the task bar. Meg clicked it.

“That looks promising.”

“It sure does, Moondancer.” The menu bar was fleshed out. Meg went to see what was under “View.” There was a history menu item! She clicked it.

Three rows were displayed, one for each of the portals they knew about, only one of which was currently open. All the information was there: latitude, longitude, when it was created, when and if it was closed, and so on.

“That’s it?” Sunset asked. “We know portals existed millennia ago.”

There was a button for filtering options on the bottom of the window. Meg clicked it. It was as she had suspected. One of the filters was a date range; it only went back a year by default. She typed in a ludicrously ancient starting date then clicked “Apply.”

Nothing happened for a second, then a wait cursor appeared. It kept on rotating. And rotating.

“A perfect simulation of that too,” Meg muttered. “Maybe I shouldn’t have put in such a large range.”

“Anyway to cancel it?” Sunset asked.

“Not that I can see. Who do we even blame for this lousy user interface design?”

“Us? We imagined it, sort of, didn’t we?”

“Whatever.” Meg stood up. “No point in sticking around. Hopefully it’ll be done when we come back.”

Moondancer was walking around the room, searching the walls for something. “I wonder if there’s any place to grab a bite here. I don’t see any doors.”

“I wouldn’t mind a snack myself,” Sunset said.

“I… didn’t think of anything outside this room,” Meg said.

“I didn’t either,” Sunset admitted. “But whenever we wanted to leave this room before, we simply went back out the mirror. Never occurred to me there ought to be other rooms here.”

Moondancer had stopped walking and was facing them. “Same for me. I wonder what we’d find if we cut a hole in one of the walls?”

What would they find? A void of pure magic, whatever that was? “I’m not in the mood for experiments,” Meg said. “Let’s just go the the Royal Café.” There she could bring up the subject of Susie and the Crusaders.

---

All gathered at windows on the right side of the plane. A few miles to the south-east was the Acropolis, lit up on top of a hill jutting up from a sea of city lights. Andy whistled. “Athens sure has grown over the millennia.”

The plane drifted closer to the ancient and ruined structure on the hill. It was a slight diversion, but one the pilot had been happy to make. I wonder if we could visit it, Twilight thought. Structures like that were surprisingly rare in Equestria, no doubt due to the Discordian era. And this structure, if she had her timeline straight, must have been built with only muscle power and primitive tools. At least ponies had magic.

Andy pointed out the window. “And that’s where the portal was located, in one of the caves in that hill.”

“What, you mean under the Acropolis?” Samantha practically shrieked.

“None of that was there back then,” Andy replied, shrugging. “It was just a hill with a lot of shallow caves.”

“Thoroughly researched caves,” she added, somewhat dejected, “many now open to the public. I don’t see how there could be anything left for us to discover.”

Twilight recalled something the then-centaur had said back in Tartarus. “You said it was located in the surrounding mountains, not in an isolated hill in the middle of the city.”

He shrugged again. “So I told a half-truth. I wasn’t yet ready to give up all my secrets, not before my freedom had been secured.”

“I suppose we should be thankful,” Samantha conceded. “How many people have searched the mountains for that portal—yes, we know it’s no longer there, but they wouldn’t care. They’d bet on it having returned.”

“I can safely say it has not returned,” Twilight said. Now that we have control over them. But it had become moot; this site had obviously been picked clean, and it was unlikely she’d detect anything magical in nature. Might as well visit it anyway for the sightseeing. She was sure Kyle would agree with that. “Can you describe the cave?”

“Its distinguishing feature was that it had three openings. Nothing else like it.”

“The Cave of Pan,” Samantha instantly supplied. “I’ve been there several times. Never suspected it once hosted a portal.”

Kyle slapped his thigh. “The Cave of Pan it is, then. I’ll arrange a trip.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. That cave is open to the public.”

Open to the public. Nope, nothing left there to find.

She met Yearling’s eyes in mutual understanding. If they were lucky, they’d find out if her cutie mark worked in this realm.

Over the next few minutes the plane descended towards Athens International Airport. Twilight tried to glimpse the runway they’d be landing on, but it wasn’t possible to see what was directly in front of them. Nonetheless the ground steadily approached, and soon enough she felt a nasty thump as the plane touched down, everything still racing past the window way too fast.

The engines got louder, oddly enough, but regardless they slowed down and soon they were traveling down the road at a sensible speed. A few turns later and they came to a stop in front of a hanger, where a welcoming committee full of official-looking people awaited them. The local media was also present.

Kyle quickly assessed the situation. “We’ll just acquire their footage. You should go first, Andy. They’re obviously here for you.”

Andy stood up. “Twilight should be by my side as a fellow monarch—even if my title as Prince is now honorary.” He looked expectantly at the alicorn.

Twilight hesitated. What was he up to?

“Then consider that if not for you, I would not be here now.”

Why not. Twilight got up and followed Andy to the door. The co-pilot was already opening it. She wasn’t taking any chances, though; she put a shield spell in place.

In defiance of Andy’s intentions, the door wasn’t really wide enough for the both of them. He stepped out first into the night and onto the door-turned-into-stairs to hearty applause and flashbulbs. Leaning to the side he encouraged Twilight to poke her head out the door, which she did—to stunned silence and even more furious flashbulbing.

Great, she thought. They didn’t really believe I existed either. What could she do about that? It wasn’t as if she could personally visit each and every human in this realm!

Andy went down the stairs. “Come now! If you believe in me, you must believe in her. How else could I be here? Back in my old stomping grounds and not rotting away in Tartarus.”

Yearling joined them at the foot of the stairs, holding out her Equestrian passport. “So who stamps the passports here?”