Chapter 4: Past and Future

“And you’re sure Rarity won’t mind?” Chance asked, surveying the substantial pile of soft pillows they had acquired from every bed and shelf and closet in the Carousel Boutique. It had taken several trips, since neither of them had the use of their magic, but the other filly didn’t seem to mind. Actually she didn’t seem to notice at all, as though this was the way things normally were. Chance tripped twice trying to drag a huge body-pillow up a set of steps, but in neither case was she seriously hurt. Nor was she laughed at, the way Spike had laughed at some of the things she had said when she first woke up.

“Positive.” Sweetie Belle insisted. “Just so long as we put them all back when we’re done. That’s the hardest bit to remember, but… do you think we should use the table here? I bet we could get the pillows to balance against these mirrors.” The white filly lifted one of the larger pillows into position, and struggled to get it to stop from slipping.

Chance gripped the other corner in her teeth, helping the other position the pillow so it wouldn’t fall. The process of building proved to require remarkable effort to do the pony way, along with balance and coordination that both of the aspiring builders lacked. The structure rose well over their height before it started to sway, and by then it was too late. Cushions came tumbling down all around them, and their fort became an ocean. Sweetie Belle had been right about one thing: Rarity didn’t bother them. With Chance’s measurements conclusively recorded, it seemed that not even an architectural collapse of biblical proportions was sufficient to draw her attention.

She kicked her way to the surface of the pillow sea, feeling as though she ought to spit a stream of cushions from her mouth. As she hadn’t been inhaling them that didn’t happen, but the thought made her smile and then start to giggle. Her companion joined in, emerging from somewhere nearby. “Well, I guess we aren’t getting any cutie marks for construction today.” She said with a sigh.

“Yeah.” Chance agreed, climbing her way onto clear ground. This proved to be much harder than she expected, and at first her flailing just landed her on her back in the ocean, wedged between the table and one of the mirrors. “Wait, what? We won’t get…”

“Our cutie marks!” The other filly proved to be much more expert at this sort of escape, and found her way to her feet much quicker. She began to drag pillows out from around where Chance was trapped, freeing her. “Only the most important thing in the whole wide world!”

Chance had no idea what Sweetie Belle was talking about, but it was obvious she should know. Rather than question any more, she nodded. “Oh. Yeah, sorry. I must not have heard you.” She turned back to the sea. “Maybe we could make them into a pyramid instead. I bet they would be easier to arrange if they were flat.”

“Good idea!” That was it. Chance’s confusion forgotten, they set off together to rebuild what their own clumsiness had destroyed. And again, and again, until they had built themselves a rather fine castle from cushions and pillows and sat proudly atop it (and the table) as its rightfully-appointed rulers.

That was about when the front door opened and Twilight came in. It was snowing again, and a stream of little flakes came rushing in even as the bell rattled. In unison the little fillies shivered, glaring at the intruder to their warm and comfortable space. “Sorry girls!” Twilight shut the door quickly behind her. She wasn’t wearing her saddle-bags anymore, which Chance took to mean she had finished with her errands and brought everything home before coming back.

“Rarity, I take it you got everything you need?” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the fillies, though she looked more amused than upset.

The commotion attracted Rarity, who emerged from her workshop wearing a pair of red spectacles. “Absolutely dear. Chance proved to be most cooperative. I should have something ready for her in a few days. Feel free to drop in-“ She stopped abruptly as she came in, looking in shock at the ruin the fillies had made of her front room.

“I was gonna clean it up!” Sweetie Belle offered shyly from beside her, hiding behind their cushion battlements as best she could.

“Thank you so much for keeping an eye on her while I ran my errands, Rarity.” Twilight offered to break the silence. “Would you like Chance to stick around a few minutes to help clean this up?”

The white unicorn closed her mouth with noticeable effort, shaking her head. “No Twilight, I don’t think so. She didn’t know any better. Sweetie Belle, on the other hoof...” She carefully lifted the pillow she was hiding behind out of the way, placing it somewhere else on the pile. “She ought to tidy this up on her own, to help her remember for next time.”

Twilight seemed relieved, but Chance shook her head. “I’ll help clean it up! I made half the mess, I can’t just leave it all.”

“No Chance, we can’t stick around. I know you want to help your friend, but the storm could start any minute!” She insisted, tugging Chance away from their castle. As she tugged, the whole thing came tumbling down at her feet.

“Awww… does she have to go, Twilight?” Sweetie Belle defended, climbing free from where she had been buried. Chance could only look up gratefully. She didn’t know why the other filly trusted her so much already, but it was hard not to return those feelings when they were so freely given. She supposed this was just the way all young ponies felt.

“You know Twilight, she really isn’t any trouble. I had already planned to have my sister and her friends stay here through the storm. She was simply crushed when they couldn’t make it.”

Chance looked up to see how Twilight would react, hope swelling. She hadn’t been here more than a few hours and already she felt closer to Sweetie Belle than she did to Twilight or Spike. Somehow she expected the Alicorn to say no. Sure enough, she watched a complicated series of expressions play across Twilight’s face before she eventually shook her head. “Maybe another time Rarity, but not now. She just got here, and we have stuff to do before she’s ready to fully join pony society.” She turned, looking to Sweetie Belle instead and seeming genuinely apologetic. “Maybe another day. Chance isn’t ready yet. Give it a few weeks. There will be plenty of time to play when the storm is over.”

Chance hadn’t argued after that. After all, Twilight Sparkle had saved her, and she was giving her a place to stay, and all. She felt like a very lucky and well-treated guest as it was, and she would not show ingratitude by arguing with her. “Sorry.” She scrambled awkwardly from the remains of the pillow-fort, tripping over herself more than she did the obstacles until she was out and on her legs again. She resisted fiercely, but mostly that just meant taking very small steps toward the door. Soon she was saying goodbye, and they were walking back to the library.

Chance couldn’t hide how disappointed she felt, though. Her ears and her tail had a mind of their own, and she couldn’t stop them from expressing themselves.

“I’m sorry Chance, I really am.” Twilight walked not far behind her, giving her a friendly nudge. The filly had little to show for her adventure, except a soft set of saddlebags not unlike those she had seen all over Ponyville. Wearing them made her feel somehow bigger than she had felt on the way over, but she wished it wouldn’t take so long for Rarity to make all the different things she had mumbled about. “But it’s a little early to be having sleepovers.”

Chance nodded. “I’m an alien invader.” She mumbled, more to herself than to Twilight. “I wouldn’t let an alien have a sleepover with someone else’s little sister either.”

Twilight looked for a moment as though she were going to argue. She couldn’t, though, and Chance could tell. “It won’t be forever, I promise.” She assured. “I don’t think you’re an invader, if that makes you feel better. I wouldn’t have taken you, otherwise.” She reached out, mussing Chance’s mane and smiling down at her. “Just give it time. Pretty soon you’ll be a normal citizen of Equestria, just like anypony else.”

“You think so?” Chance asked, between shivers. The sky was darkening now, very rapidly. The occasional drift of flakes was turning into a steady whirling, adding to the piles of snow that grew on every surface.

She nodded. “Absolutely.” Twilight Sparkle glanced up at the sky, then back to the filly beside her. It was getting to be too cold for her out here, too cold for anyone. She had a feeling Pinkie Pie would make her regret not introducing the new filly when they spoke next, but that worry would wait for another day. Somehow she felt that even Pinkie would be safely indoors now, no doubt bunkering down with an unhealthy quantity of hot chocolate and whatever else it was Pinkie did when she was alone.

Twilight practically counted the seconds until she was standing in front of the box again. 9,461. Counting had gotten much easier since she had become a Princess, along with just about everything else. Well, except being patient. It wasn't as though she thought anything inside the crate would change in the interim. After all, Luna had said that the object had been known since before her banishment a thousand years previous. While she went about the work of retrieving Chance, her mind was elsewhere.

Aside from counting the seconds, Twilight would keep her curiosity satisfied by attempting to figure out logically what must be in that crate. First, if it had been old 1000 years ago, that meant it probably wasn't made of anything organic. If it was, it would have to be enchanted to survive that long, which seemed unlikely. If it was old enough to date to before the time of Discord, then the constancy of spells could not be trusted.

Still, it was very likely something kept and preserved for this long must have some strange or unique property. The ponies of those days had been known for what? Unicorn magic was still in its infancy back then, before it had been codified into the various Arcana and Schools. Before the cooperation between the tribes, most ponies were concerned almost chiefly with survival. There was no time to build fancy telescopes or experiment with strange magic from distant lands. If she remembered anything from all of those books on archeology she had read, it was that way back then, the only things treated with any deference were those meant to serve a religious function.

Unless of course, the artifact wasn't pony in creation at all. That left the dragons as the most likely candidate. Dragons usually used metals and gemstones in their lasting creations, which could very well have survived until present day. It was also possible their lesser kin the goblins might somehow be responsible, but Twilight doubted very much that anything made by that foul folk would have survived to present day.

Luna had said it had something to do with Second Chance, which could mean many things. It might be some historical analogy to the culture she had come from, some relic that Twilight could use to understand the filly better. Maybe it was an ancient golden tablet, depicting some dragon ritual used to travel between worlds. It wasn't as though such travel was unknown in Equestria. Many creatures were said to have their origin not just outside Equestria, but the entire world. It was said Celestia dumped most such incursions into the Everfree, but she couldn't get them all.

In the end it was late afternoon before she finally had the chance to open the crate. Spike was cooking dinner upstairs, and Chance had volunteered to help after hearing about Sweetie Belle's experiences cooking. That had not reassured Twilight in the least, but she figured that without Sweetie Belle actually present there was little chance that any number of fillies could foul up a simple salad. It would be worth it even if she ruined it completely, though. Twilight wanted to be alone when she opened the crate, in case it was dangerous somehow. Not that she expected it to blow up in her face, but there were many ways it might be dangerous.

Maybe it would remind Second Chance of home, and make her nightmares even worse! Even telling the filly about it might be a bad idea, if she expected it to have something to do with her when really it was just some esoteric magical device of interest only to an experienced mage like Twilight. So she locked the door behind her, hurried quietly down the stairs, and made her way to the edge of the crate.

As eager as she was to get a good look at what was inside, she intended to do that correctly. Instead of ripping the crate apart with her magic, she calmly removed each nail, arranging them in a similar pattern on the workbench nearby so that she could reuse the crate to send the object back eventually. First the top section came apart, and then each sidewall in turn until the object rested entirely on the crate's bottom section.

She had been right about the straw. Once one of the walls was removed, an avalanche of packing material poured onto the floor. There was so much that at first all Twilight could see was the edge of something metallic and angular. The metal was recognizable to her at once, but she dutifully continued her procedural unpacking until it was complete, holding off her inspection until the object stood unobstructed in the center of the room.

It was a cube. It measured taller and wider than she, constructed entirely of a silvery metal. It was smooth on every surface, without indentation or marking or recess. There wasn't a single dent or scratch visible on the object's surface, which did not surprise her as she saw what it was made from. Mithril, true silver, was the strongest and most durable material in all of Equestria. It was also one of the rarest, as the techniques used to mine it had been lost in the dimmest records of history. Many ponies weren't even aware of its existence, since it was so rare.

Twilight reached forward and tentatively felt the edge of the cube. She had seen Mithril before when she had attended Celestia's Academy for Gifted Unicorns, but never actually handled it. It was surprisingly warm to the touch, without blemish or imperfection of any kind. It was also quite a bit lighter than a cube of metal should've been, which might be because Mithril was so light or might be because it was hollow.

Her eyes were wide as she felt along one of its edges, moving carefully even though she knew there was nothing physical she could do to damage it. No kick would dent it, no knife would scratch it, and no spell would scorch it. She doubted even Discord in all of his chaotic might could influence this object, which was itself Order given form. That was the strength of true silver, and the value. That team of Fet-Ex delivery ponies had no idea they had been transporting something worth more than all of Ponyville combined. And now it was in her trust. This extraordinary artifact, dredged from the distant abysses of time.

She couldn't help feeling a little disappointed as she paced around the object. Twilight had been hoping for something from Chance's world, but this thing was clearly of Equestrian make. Mithril was the magic of the earth, older and stronger than anything a common Unicorn could conjure, but magic nonetheless. If Chance came from a world without magic, than that property alone disqualified that half of her suspicions.

So what did it have to do with Second Chance? She surveyed the object intently with her eyes, but found no trace of disharmony with the smooth central design. Determined, she planted herself firmly in front of it and closed her eyes, reaching out instead with her Second Sight.

It was a very simple form of magic, one almost any Unicorn could learn. But no Unicorn could perform the spell as an Alicorn could, plumbing the nethermost depths of matter and examining the very particles that made up an object. She would know its every secret and mystery.

Actually, she wouldn't. Her horn began to glow as she looked forward without her eyes, feeling the surface of the object and making it known to her. Twilight had never closely examined Mithril before, and never as an Alicorn. As such, it took only a second of contact before the level of information overwhelmed her, and she dropped to the ground like a puppet without strings.

There was something otherworldly about this object, but it hadn't been in the way she had expected. As she lay in a heap on the floor, she saw the strange shapes and images that had been everywhere within the metal, saw in a way that made the most detailed photograph look like a foal's crayon sketch.

She had seen metal before, seen in a cast iron skillet the way metallic atoms were surrounded by a sea of electrons, sharing and flowing between. That was what made metals such great conductors of heat. That was why the skillet was made from iron and not wood.

Mithril was not structured like this. Rather, Twilight saw what looked to be a lattice of... structures, each one incredibly small but far larger than an atom, each connected to the others with a thousand tiny bonds. It seemed almost as though she were looking at the cells of a living creature. The structures moved and communicated with each other, stored information, repaired themselves when they were damaged. No doubt this was what gave Mithril its remarkable properties: It was practically alive, capable of adapting to different circumstances and repairing damage. Heat became energy which became function.

Twilight Sparkle had only been connected for a moment, but she had no idea how long it took her to process the information her mind had shown her. In the end very little was understood, except to realize where she had seen those patterns before. The structures that made up True Silver were very similar to the construct that had appeared in Ponyville two nights ago. Not identical, but as though the same sort of mind had conceived them. An alien mind, operating on principles no pony could ever really understand, maybe not even Celestia.

She didn't have much more time to think about it, though. By the time she had collected enough of her wits to realize what was going on, someone was knocking on the door and calling out to her. "Twilight! Twilight, dinner's done!" It was Spike. "Twilight, is everything okay down there?"

"Yes!" She called hastily, jumping to her feet and looking for something she could use to cover the cube. An old blanket folded on a nearby shelf did the job nicely, though there would be no concealing just how strange an object this was if anyone got close enough to look. Once it was roughly covered, Twilight put out the light and hurried up the stairs, not wanting to take so long she gave Spike or Chance reason to get curious.

Twilight had been right about at least one thing that night. Second Chance hadn't messed up the salad.

“How’s that, Chance?” Twilight asked, magically adjusting the blankets so that they were as smooth and orderly as possible. “Much better than the sofa downstairs, right?” She had brought the extra bed up from the basement and set it up in her bedroom, on the lower level. On some level she wished there were more rooms in the library so she might be able to have her privacy more often. Unfortunately the basement was occupied at the moment, and she didn’t like the idea of leaving Second Chance all by herself down with her equipment. Maybe in a few years, when she was older and Twilight was surer of the sort of pony she was.

Chance nodded, curling up under the blankets. “Much better, thanks! The sofa was okay, but it was dark and lonely down there by myself…”

The library as it turned out had not been constructed with temperature in mind. Twilight hadn’t noticed until now, though she remembered going about some of her days protected in robes or blanket in previous years. Was it the extra insulation of the feathers on her wings? She told herself that, even though she knew it wasn’t true. “Well we can’t have my little apprentice not getting a good night’s sleep, can we?” She dimmed the lights, retreating only a few paces. “Tomorrow we’re getting half a meter of snow, so that means your first day of magic practice!” She walked past Spike’s basket, which proved to already be occupied with one sleeping reptile.

Twilight did not expect to sleep tonight, not with the mystery of the strange cube still firmly on her mind, but she climbed the little ramp of stairs leading to her bed anyway. She could wait for the filly to fall asleep before heading out at least, so Chance could sleep without feeling like she was being left alone. Maybe that would stop her from having nightmares. There was no way it could be normal for a little filly to wake up screaming every night. Wasn’t it Luna’s job to stop Equestrians from having nightmares? Maybe she didn’t do that for alien ponies. She would have to ask the princess next time she was in Canterlot, or sooner if things didn’t get better for Chance.

“You’re so lucky to have a teacher.” She went on, though now she was in bed herself and couldn’t see who she was talking to easily. She spoke quietly so as not to wake the slumbering dragon, but wasn’t too worried on that front. Spike had slept through worse. “When I was a filly, I had to learn almost everything from books. With nopony to help me and give me advice…”

“I’m very grateful,” Chance murmured groggily. It sounded like the filly was already fighting to stay awake. But then, she hadn’t slept very well last night, and it was already later than most parents would let a young filly stay up. Maybe Twilight ought to institute an earlier bedtime? Chance kept talking, half awake. “I taught myself non-deterministic C when I was growing up… old tutorials on the net… took forever to figure out how pointers work… never thought I would see a pony outside a petting zoo…” Her muttering grew less distinct over time, and in very short order she was asleep.

Twilight listened of course, though what the filly was talking about was so without context that it was easy for her to get lost in thought and drift off. Maybe a few years ago the warmth of her own bed and the exhaustion of such an eventful day might have been enough to ensure she fell asleep before the time she had intended to sneak away. Now though, things were different. Twilight wondered if she actually needed to sleep at all, or if she kept sleeping out of habit. Maybe she should ask that in her next letter too.

When she was well and truly sure that her departure wouldn’t wake anyone, Twilight closed her eyes and forced the concentration it took to teleport short distances. What had once been a strain had become easy through constant practice. Now that she was an Alicorn, teleportation was easier than ever. No longer was she clumsily bridging two points of space, tugging them together like a foal’s crude crafts project. Now she could see the truth, could see that separation was an illusion and all space was superimposed upon itself.

These realizations were powerful and terrifying each time she made them. Wonderful because whenever they happened it seemed the entire world stood still. For a moment, an amazing moment, it would seem as though she understood. A feeling like all creation was known to her, every second of every minute from the first to the last, from one edge of Equestria to the other.

Of course those moments were short-lived, and their departure left her only with a powerful sense of longing. Was that what it felt like to be a princess? She might have been changed in body, but mentally she often felt like the same filly Celestia had agreed to take on as her personal student, all those years ago.

The library was dark and empty, or nearly so. “Oh, Owlicious.” She smiled. “Would you like to help me with some research?”

“Hoo”

“Excellent. Come with me.” She walked past several of the shelves, lifting book after book from the shelves as she passed, so that a small cloud followed with her. “I’m sure you can keep a secret.”

“Hoo”

Twilight shut the door to the basement very quietly behind them, locking it. “Exactly! It isn’t as though you could tell anypony if you wanted to. Except maybe Fluttershy, but she wouldn’t know what you were talking about.” She narrowed her eyes in mock suspicion, then turned away and led the way down. She flipped on the lights, removed the blanket, and arranged the tomes she had brought on one of the desks nearest to the cube. Owlicious perched himself nearby, watching with apparent interest. It was hard to tell an owl’s emotions.

“That’s right Owlicious, I’m going to see if I can find anything about this cube here in any of these books. Princess Luna said that this thing had been in Equestria for a very long time, so it’s got to be in some of these books on ancient cultures, right?” She spread the books out on the surface of the desk, selecting one that looked promising. ‘Equestria’s Ancient Inhabitants’ looked as though it hadn’t been read for a very long time. “Let’s see what we can find!”

Hours passed, it was hard to say how many. Twilight had powered through three-fifths of the books she had brought down without success. She had begun to actually feel tired, and was nearly asleep at her books, when a loud “HOO!” Startled her back into alertness. She had been turning pages for some time without actually reading any of them, muttering as incoherently as Chance had earlier.

“T-thanks, Owlicious. You’re right, I ought to get back upstairs. That filly wouldn’t be able to sleep as easy next time if she thought I was going to sneak off.” She got up and moved to close the book, but the owl abruptly landed in it, glaring at her. “What?” She asked, through an exaggerated yawn. The owl lifted free of the book she held in her magic, giving her a better look. Her cube was depicted in vivid illustration, set upon a plinth in some sort of temple. Twilight’s eyes went wide and she focused herself intently on the text, soaking up the information like a sponge.

-some accounts describe the Jebr stone as possessing the ability to vocally communicate with ponies, though as the stone has conclusively been demonstrated to be devoid of magical properties these accounts can be safely discounted as fanciful depictions and fictionalization. One cannot however discount-

Twilight abruptly turned the book over, looking for the title. ‘The History of Equestrian Science’ hardly seemed like a particularly relevant source. Why had she even grabbed this book? Twilight flipped to the index, and skimmed briefly through the summary on the following pages. Evidently the tome attempted to record the major advancements in mathematics and science over the ages, describing major findings and their sources. Returning to the page of interest proved that the so-called “Jebr Stone” was very early in the section about math, only a few pages in. She resumed reading.

-its importance in the development of our present mathematical model. The stone was reportedly first discovered by an Earth-tribe farmer when clearing a section of forest for cultivation. Early descriptions of the Stone almost always describe it being covered with symbols, symbols which were said to change and move over time.

The modern reader will no doubt discount descriptions of a non-magical object capable of responding to external stimuli as entirely fanciful. It was only quite recently, after the advent of electricity, that previous stories about the stone were taken seriously. Please see the “Modern Experiments” section for more.

We can only speculate at how ancient earth ponies managed to provide the stone with electricity, for none of the old accounts or records indicate this requirement. Indeed, the only post-Discord account describes the stone as it is now, smooth and evidently inert.

However they did it, accounts agree that the symbols were the same as those we use to this day to represent numbers. Since the properties of the stone have been verified via modern electrical experiments, many archaeologists have been forced to reconsider their theories on the origin of…

Twilight skimmed over the parts of the text that didn’t seem as relevant to her, such as the book’s intended subject. This wasn’t the time to study the origin of ancient math and science. Some of it, however, was too interesting not to read. According to the book, the stone reportedly taught the basics of arithmetic to the Earth Ponies who found it. Everything from the symbols for rational numbers to the way to calculate area.

There was only one problem: The stone seemed to be getting impatient with the ponies it was teaching. According to the book, its puzzles became too complex for the ponies of its day to learn. Eventually new developments ceased, and it became an object of religious significance more than a source of knowledge. Once Celestia and Luna had risen to power, the “Cult of Jebr” had fallen out of favor, and the stone had been boxed away.

Dr. Greymane of the Royal Academy theorized that the records of the Jebr stone might indicate the stone itself possessed sophisticated mechanical properties, such as those devices that were at that time only in their infancy in Equestria. With the aid of a Pegasus weather team and an exceptionally cooperative thunderstorm, Greymane’s team was able to provide constant electrical power to the Stone for several hours. The description of his experiments, in part, follows.

“We used three kilometers of looped copper wire to guarantee consistent voltage. If the Jebr stone was a mechanical device as I theorized, than it might very well have limitations exceeded by a lightning strike, just as most modern apparatus. The application of current produced immediate effect upon the stone. A light came from within, and the surface was transformed. Sections rose and fell as though animated by some internal force, though spell verified no magic was at work.

The symbols eventually stopped changing, leaving graphical descriptions of various objects from nature on each face of itself, rendered more clearly than any artist of any skill could depict. This aside from the face to which the current was applied, on which the surface was changed only enough to delineate itself into a rectangle along with a message in an ancient Equestrian dialect.

Unfortunately we were unable to maintain voltage for more than a few hours, and the effort of creating it for even that long had destroyed most of our equipment. It is unlikely we will be able to repeat the experiment until electricity proves easier to produce and control. Much later, we were able to obtain a translation to the message we had seen on the stone. The most correct translation appears to be ‘Harmony?’”

Twilight bookmarked that section of that book, placed it back onto the shelf beside all the others, and turned her attention back to the cube with a newfound feeling of respect. She walked over to it, feeling it again with one hoof. “So you taught us math, huh?” She asked, sliding along a perfect edge without seam or crease or dent. “A box. A box that uses electricity to teach math.” After what she had seen during her sight spell, Twilight had no doubt that old Graymane was dead-on in his assessment that the cube was mechanical. But what was its purpose? Why did it provide puzzle after puzzle instead of answers?

It was early in the morning now and Twilight was feeling the effects of her exhaustive search. She already had some ideas about how she could discover the answers for herself, but none of them could happen tonight. With a respectful nod to her helpful pet, Twilight crept back up the stairs to bed. She wondered if Luna would be sending an electrical generator tomorrow.

Author's Notes:

Another chapter done! I regret leaving the last chapter off on such a cliffhanger It seems like there's no way to live up to imagination. Nevertheless, here it is anyway. Hopefully the excitement can continue for many seasons to come.