> Wait... Wat?
>  by delfin
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Could you repeat that, please?
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’ve been studying time for quite a long time now. I remember that one day, I just questioned what time really was. I didn’t have an answer from there. So, from then on forth, I became quite the philosopher. I really never got all that far in my studies though; I mean, I really didn’t quite understand it all that well. I read every single book that even had the word ‘time’ on the cover, but to no avail. I even asked Celestia for help, but even her, with all of her wisdom and knowledge, wasn’t able to answer my questions. But guess who was able to answer my questions? Somepony who I never thought even had the capability to understand anything about time: Pinkie Pie.
Now, I’m not saying that I thought she was dumb or anything, not at all, but I didn’t expect her to tell me what she did. The truth is, what she told me really changed the way I looked at, well, everything.
What did she tell me you ask? I’ll tell you.
While I was walking outside, I stopped in the middle of a road and looked up at the sky. The clouds seemed quite interesting for me, for some reason.
“Oh! Hey, Twilight!” Pinkie Pie called, as she galloped towards me. I felt quite annoyed at her as she came over to me, which was strange; usually, I don’t get annoyed at anypony.
“What’s up?” Pinkie Pie said to me with a huge smile on her face.
“Oh, um nothing, Pinkie. Just thinking is all,” I responded.
“Thinking about what?” Pinkie replied.
“Um... Time...” I said back. She cocked her head a bit.
“Time? Oh! I know a ton about that!” Pinkie replied. I chucked a little bit at what she said; I doubted that she really knew what she was talking about.
“Oh, that’s good,” I awkwardly replied. “But I really have to get going Pinkie,” I said, wanting to read some more books and get some more knowledge.
Pinkie looked down for a few seconds.
“Twilight, let me tell you about a dream I had once,” Pinkie said with a serious tone on her voice.
“Oh, um.. no, I really think I should get going…” I said, wanting to leave. Pinkie looked up at me.
“No, Twilight, I actually think this could help you,” Pinkie said, She looked pretty serious, so I agreed to stay and hear about her dream.
I had no clue that what Pinkie was about to say would be so… coherent.
“All right, have a seat, Twilight,” Pinkie said in a very serious tone, not sounding like her normal self at all.
“So, this author wrote a book called "The Present", and he wrote really fast. It just flowed right out of him. He felt that he was sort of channeling it, or something. But anyway, about four years after it was published, he was at this party, and he met this mare who had the same name as the mare character in the book. And she had a coltfriend with the same name as the coltfriend character in the book, and she was having an affair with this other colt, the chief of police, and he had the same name as the chief of police in his book.
"The mare told him all of this stuff from her life, and everything she's saying is right out of his book. That's totally freaking him out, but what can he do? Shortly after that, he was going to mail a letter, and he saw this kind of, umm, you know, dangerous, shady looking colt standing by the road. But instead of avoiding him, which he said he would have usually done, he just walked right up to him and said, "Can I help you?"
"And the colt said, "Yeah. I just got mugged and I need money for the bus...” So he pulls out his wallet, and he hands him some money, which he said he never would have done. And then, he thinks, "Hey, this is in my book too. This exact colt. Everything."
" So this whole episode is kind of creepy, right? And he's telling his friend about it, you know, describing how he wrote this book, and then four years later all these things happened to him.
"And as he's telling it to him, the friend says, "That's the Book of Equestria. You're describing the Book of Equestria."
"But the stallion says, "I've never read the Book of Equestria." So he, you know, goes home and reads the Book of Equestria, and it's uncanny.
"Even the characters' names are the same as in the Book of Equestria. Now, the Book of Equestria takes place in 50 A.D., when it was written, supposedly. So this author had this theory that time was an illusion and that we were all actually in 50 A.D., and the reason he had written this book was that he had somehow momentarily punctured through this illusion, this veil of time, and what he had seen there was what was going on in the Book of Equestria. And he had this idea that something had created this illusion of time to make us forget that Nightmare Moon was about to return, and that we're all in 50 A.D., And that's what time is.
"That's what all of history is. It's just this kind of continuous, you know, daydream, or distraction. And so I read that, and I thought that was, well, weird.
"And then I had the dream, and there was this colt in the dream who was supposed to be a psychic. But I was skeptical. I was like, "You know, he's not really a psychic; you know I'm thinking to myself." And then suddenly, I start floating, like levitating, up to the ceiling. And as I almost got through the roof, I'm thought, "Okay, Mr. Psychic. I believe you. You're a psychic. Put me down please." So as I float down, and as my feet touch the ground, the psychic turns into this creature, and this creature is Discord.
"Now Discord was looking pretty weird, like he was blurry and mumbled up. So we're walking along and Discord turns to me and says, "Let me explain to you the nature of the universe, Pinkie Pie. Now this author is right about time, but he's wrong that it's 50 A.D. Actually, there's only one instant, and it's right now, and it's eternity. And it's an instant in which something is posing a question, and that question is basically, ''Do you want to  be one with eternity?''
"And we're all saying, ''No thank you. Not just yet.'' So time is actually just us constantly saying no to this invitation. I mean, that's what time is. There's just this one instant, and that's what we're always in."
"And then he tells me that, actually, this is the narrative of everypony's life. That, you know, behind the phenomenal difference, there is but one story, and that's the story of moving from the "no" to the "yes." All of life is like, "No thank you. No thank you. No thank you," but then, ultimately, it's, "Yes, I give in. Yes, I accept. Yes, I embrace."
"I mean, that's the journey. Everypony gets to the "yes" in the end, right, Twilight?”
I couldn’t believe it; I felt completely empty, blank. I felt confused. I felt like this was a side to Pinkie that no pony ever knew.
“Twilight? Did you hear me?” Pinkie asked.
“Yeah, I... I did,” I quietly said, still in shock.
I looked down, then I looked back at Pinkie, and walked away.
“Twilight! Where're 'ya going?” Pinkie said, sounding like her normal self again.
“I’m… I’m going to go rethink a few things…” I replied. Pinkie had really blown my mind.
Forever.