The Day The Reading Died

Spike stopped outside the doors and turned to the five mares behind him. “She’s in here. Brace yourselves.” He turned back and threw open the doors.

The royal library stretched to the ceiling in front of the friends, walls of books filling their vision. In the center of the room, Twilight Sparkle sat perfectly rigid. She was staring straight ahead with bloodshot eyes, her mouth hanging open.

Applejack frowned. “What’s she doin’?”

“I don’t know,” Spike replied. “She’s been like this since I woke up. I think she was up all night.”

Rarity pushed her way through and approached her. “Twilight? Are you all right?”

Twilight sucked in a wheezing breath and shook her head. “No. I am not all right. I am horrible!”

The others crowded around her. Pinkie leaned in. “What’s going on?”

Twilight’s eye twitched.

“I have nothing to read.”

The ponies looked at each other. It was left to Rainbow to roll her eyes. “Twilight, chill, just go to the bookstore.”

“You don’t understand!” Twilight shouted the words and swiveled her head to stare at Rainbow Dash. “I have nothing left to read! I went to the bookstore! I went to Canterlot’s book store! I went to the Crystal Empire’s bookstore and their library! Nothing! I’ve read them all!”

Rarity patted her on the back. “Calm down, darling, you’re just a bit stressed.”

“Of course I’m stressed!” Twilight flung her hooves in the air to gesture at the library. “I haven’t read anything new in almost a week! There’s exactly two-thousand, four-hundred and ninety-three books in this library, and I’ve read all of them at least twice!” Twilight rapidly flew around the shelves, throwing books to the ground. “Slumber 101, A Foal’s Guide to Alchemy, How To Train Your Baby Dragon, Daring Do, the Dr. Hoofington Choose Your Own Adventure series, including all the bad endings and the non-canonical Dr. Zebris spin-off! I’ve read them all!” Twilight descended to the ground. “I even read a copy of Filly’s First Coloring Book I found in a trunk in the attic! And it had major narrative problems from the start, which I guess is to be expected given the age bracket, but still! There’s nothing left for me to read!”

Fluttershy smiled gently. “I’m sure you don’t mean that, Twilight. Maybe we just—”

“It’s true!” Twilight shook her head. “I was worried after visiting the Manehattan library three days ago, so I made up a new spell specifically to detect books I hadn’t read. There was nothing in a five-mile radius. So I expanded it to ten miles. Twenty. Fifty. All of Equestria!” She bit her lip and shuddered. “Nothing. Not. One. Book. I’ve read them all. Every book there is. Every piece of written literature known to ponykind. I even included foreign and ancient languages. Nothing.”

Rarity softly coughed into her hoof. “Darling, not to come off as crude or make any insinuations, but… did you consider including, um, shall we say, mature literature in your findings?”

Twilight grunted angrily. “Yes, yes, I included the porn and erotica! Actually some pretty good plots and characters in them, but not the point! Yes, I’ve read all of them, too! I told you, I’ve read everything!”

Twilight began to pace, her breathing quickening. “Yesterday, I was so desperate for something new I went down to the flower shop and spent four hours reading the instructions on seed packets, and then the ingredients on the fertilizer bags! And by the way, the nitrogen content on the John Pony brand is far too low to ensure healthy cultivation. I know that because I also read gardening manuals while I was there. There was only one I hadn’t read yet, but they kicked me out because the store was closing, so I had to sneak in that night to finish.”

Rainbow held up her hooves. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, back up a second! You broke into the flower shop? You could be arrested for that!”

Twilight scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Oh, please, I didn’t steal anything, now can we please focus on what’s really important here? I broke into the shop to finish reading the flower gardening manuals, and then I moved on to the fruit and vegetable manuals. That got me thinking about food, and that was when I realized Sugarcube Corner wasn’t far away, so I broke into that shop and speed-read all their cookbooks. Twice!” Twilight looked at Pinkie. “Do you know what a trifle is? I don’t, but I know three different recipes if you want to make one!”

“This was last night?” Spike asked. “When did you sleep?”

“I didn’t. I didn’t sleep the night before that, either, I spent it making my new book locating spell. I normally read to put myself to sleep, but I couldn’t read because I know every single thing that’s gonna happen in my books before it happens, and what’s the point of readingifyouknowwhat’sgonnahappensoifIhadnothingnewtoreadthen—”

“Twilight!” Twilight’s head snapped to the side and she saw Applejack watching her. “Look at me,” she coaxed. “Breathe, slowly. In, and out. In, and out.” Applejack did a few breaths to demonstrate.

“That’s a very inefficient breathing exercise. I know of seven others we can try.”

“No. Just breathe, in and out.”

Twilight licked her lips and began to slow her breathing, though it was still deep and fast. “Not working, it’s not working. I need help. Please, somepony help me! It’s been days since I’ve read a new book, I need my fix!” She huddled down to the ground, hugging herself and rocking back and forth on her flank. “The walls are closing in… I can’t breathe… I’m cold, so cold…” She suddenly perked up and looked into empty space. “What’s that, Mommy? No, your little Sparkle has been a good girl! I’m a good girl, Mommy, please let me have a book!”

Pinkie leaned next to Applejack. “This is starting to get weird, even for me.”

“Twilight?” Fluttershy crept closer. Twilight slowly turned her head to look at her.

“Yeeeees?”

“You need to calm down. What helps you calm down?”

“Reading.”

“What else helps you calm down?”

“Checklists!”

Fluttershy nodded. “What if you made a checklist of all the books you’ve read?”

Twilight giggled. “Did. Fourteenth shelf, southeast side of the room, ten scrolls in from the left. Double-checked it just to be sure.”

“Well, what if you made a checklist of all the checklists you’ve ever made?”

“It’s next to that one.”

“Okay then, um, then…” Fluttershy looked at the others. “Does anypony else have any ideas?”

Applejack snorted. “A good kick to the head? Ow!” She winced and glared as Rarity kicked her hind leg.

“That’s actually sounding like a good idea at this point,” Rainbow Dash said.

Twilight looked at the ground, a crooked grin on her face. Her eye twitched madly. “Maybe I’ve transcended the written word. Reading is obsolete. It makes sense. I’ve created a spell to enter books. I’ve discovered one of my favorite fictional heroines is real. And now I’ve read every book in existence. This is my destiny. I’ve broken the boundaries of fiction and reality. I have become one with literature, become one with creative thought.” She looked up, her eyes staring into nothing. “I can see it… I can see the thoughts all around me, so many books not yet written, waiting for somepony to have their thoughts and put them to a page…” She swiped a hoof in the air. “Come back, little ones! I won’t hurt you. I just want to read you! Let’s become one together!” She looked around and continued to wave her hooves at nothingness.

Spike stepped up to her, reached up, and took Twilight’s face in his claws. He pulled her head down to force her to look him in the eye. “Twilight. Listen to me.” Twilight’s eyes were facing forward, but were still spaced out. “You have to calm down. Let’s take a vacation, all of us, hm? We could go to Manehattan, Fillydelphia, Las Pegasus. You talked about all of us visiting the other world with Sunset Shimmer some time, maybe we could do that. Or we can just look at the map. You said you always wanted to go to Griffonstone, right?”

Twilight’s eyes continued to stare blankly. Then, she blinked, and when she opened her eyes she was looking right at Spike. She pulled back and grinned. “Spike… you’re a genius!”

Spike let out a long breath. “Good. So, Griffonstone?”

“No silly!” Twilight laughed and hugged him. “The other world!”

“Huh?”

Twilight held Spike back in the air. “They have a completely different history, different society, different technology! There have to be books I haven’t read there!”

Spike’s eyes widened. “T-Twilight, that wasn’t what I meant!”

Twilight ignored him and dropped him to the ground, and then ran from the room. The other ponies and Spike chased after her as she ran up stairs and down hallways, until Twilight came to the room with the dimensional mirror in it. She ran up to the machine and began adjusting the controls.

“This is going to be perfect!” Twilight’s face was split in a wide grin as she spoke. “There must be hundreds, thousands of books I hadn’t read in this other world! Ooooo, I could make checklists of which books are common to each world! I could make checklists of features shared between them in general!” She rubbed her hooves together eagerly. “This is just what I needed! I could be there for weeks, months! Years!”

“Twilight,” Applejack began, “you need to take a few steps back and think this through.”

“Oh, don’t be silly.” Twilight laughed. “I’ll come back to check up on you, and you can always use the journal to keep in touch with me. I won’t be gone forever. Once I’ve read a few new books and calmed down, I’ll reconsider everything and go from there.” Twilight pulled the last lever, and the book on the top of the mirror lit up. Sparks of magic flew from it down to the mirror, and the mirror’s surface turned purple, a swirling vortex in the center.

“Don’t wait up for me, girls!” Before they could react, Twilight leapt through the portal, giggling to herself.

The five ponies and lone dragon looked among themselves. Almost a full minute passed without a word. Finally, Fluttershy spoke. “So… what now?”

Rainbow shrugged. “Unless somepony wants to go after her, not a lot we can do.”

Spike shook his head. “I could go, but I’m a dog in that world, I can’t do much to force her to come back.”

“She did say she would calm down and rethink things later,” Applejack said. “Maybe we’ll just give her a few hours.”

Then, the book on top of the portal lit up pink and vibrated rapidly. Rarity ran up to the portal and pulled it down. She opened it and frowned.

“What is it?” Pinkie asked.

“It’s a message, from Sunset Shimmer,” Rarity read off the page. “To Twilight’s friends: Twilight is salivating into my textbooks and asking me where the nearest bookstore is. Is she okay? She just called herself the living incarnation of the conjunction between our nouns.” Rarity closed the book and raised her head. “Well, that’s that.”

Spike raised an eyebrow. “Ya know, without the book in its setting, the portal can’t open. Neither of them can come back anyway.”

Rarity looked from the book, to its setting in the portal machine, to the mirror. She looked at the others, smiled, and carefully set the book down on a table. “So, who’s for lunch?”

Applejack tilted her head. “Uh, Rarity, Ah don’t think that’s right of ya.”

“We’ll put it back later.”

Rainbow gave Applejack a sideways look. “Unless you want Twilight to come back before she had a chance to chill out and go back to how she was downstairs.”

Applejack smiled. “Who’s up for some hayburgers?”