“In this simulation—” Steve tapped the play button “—an incoming gravitational wave triggers sympathetic vibrations in the magical field surrounded by this circle of suitably enchanted crystals, causing the crystals to vary their light output accordingly.” The video was projected onto the large, white screen behind him.

The airy auditorium was packed full of scientists from all over the world, eager to learn how magic, the existence of which became known only quite recently, could easily—and cheaply—put to the test one of General Relativity’s remaining unconfirmed predictions.

As the video was playing, Steve scanned the human audience, judging their reactions. Their eyes were glued to the screen as they listened to the video’s narration, not an incredulous soul to be found. It was almost too good to be true.

The video finished playing; he tapped the trackpad, advancing to the next slide. It felt good being able to use a keyboard and trackpad with ease once again.

“This shows the structure of the enchantments that are cast on the crystals.”

This part of the presentation worried him the most. It was like trying to explain Quantum Mechanics to ancient Romans; it was so far outside their conception of reality. He scanned the audience again. There was no trace of disbelief, no unwillingness to accept the reality of magic. Heck, they didn’t even seem to notice he wasn’t wearing any clothes.

He was about to explain in plain English—as best he could, anyway—what the slide was showing, when his eye caught something out of place at the back of the auditorium, something midnight blue, refusing to resolve itself to his vision. It slowly came into focus, revealing a large pony, a pony with a long horn, wings, an unusually long and flowing starry night mane, and a black metallic collar around her neck. Inlaid within the front of the collar was a huge white gem in the shape of a crescent moon.

Princess Luna.

It all suddenly made sense. He was a unicorn, a sleeping unicorn in a guest room in Twilight’s castle. “This is a dream,” he said, mostly to himself; if he didn’t know better, he’d swear he was wide awake now.

The alicorn considered him as she casually walked down the aisle through the suddenly empty auditorium. Her mane and tail flowed, not as if in a breeze but like in some gently flowing cosmic fluid. She stopped at the front row of seats.

Now what.

In a curious voice, she said, “You truly are familiar with our realm.”

Thoughts flashed through his mind. This was a ruler of Equestria. Okay, Twilight technically was, too, but this princess has been ruling for millennia. Not counting the last millennium. Probably should avoid that topic. First impressions mattered. So don’t stand there like an idiot, say something!

Steve bowed, saying, “It’s an honor to meet you, Princess Luna.”

“You may rise,” the diarch gently informed him.

Steve did so, wondering why she was here. While the dream had, technically, been of the naked-in-public variety, it hardly qualified as a nightmare. Never mind not wearing anything, he suddenly realized that the audience hadn’t noticed he was a unicorn. It was a dream, he reminded himself.

“My sister and I wish to offer our appreciation for the help you are providing us.”

Luna looked at the slide currently being projected onto the large screen. “This is your research back home?”

Steve looked at it for the first time since the dream became lucid.

“Well… not exactly.”

What had previously been crystal clear now looked like gibberish, just some meaningless curved lines around the crystals along with some pointless equations. He knew next to nothing about magic spells, so how could it be otherwise? Surely it also looked like nonsense to Luna.

“There’s no magic in my world, so that”—referring to the slide—”would be absurd. I don’t know enough about magic to even begin to design something like that. That’s just some random nonsense my dream came up with.”

“Yet some magic is there now,” she pointed out, “and I have heard of your special talent.” She was looking at his cutie mark.

So Twilight has been keeping her fellow princesses informed—hardly surprising.

He pondered her statement as he looked at his laptop’s screen. Was Luna implying that his special talent might somehow be useful with respect to that doll? Perhaps she was saying that his dream was implying that. Dreams were her specialty, after all. Yet for it to be useful, he’d have to be able to return home as a unicorn. Didn’t Discord’s gift make that improbable?

Luna was patiently waiting for him to speak.

“I’ll have to look into that,” he finally said, uncertain. Meeting her eyes, he asked, “I’ll remember this when I wake up, right?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling.

“Sorry,” he said, slowly shaking his head, “silly question, I’m sure. While I knew you could dream-walk, that’s… not the same as experiencing it.”

As if in response, the auditorium melted away revealing a starry firmament surrounding them in all directions, save for a modest, deep purple platform under their hooves that glowed softly in the reflected light of an unseen Moon. Steve’s jaw went slack as he looked around. Luna watched in amusement as he walked the short distance to the platform’s edge and looked down. There was nothing to see but more stars, colorful jewels in the inky blackness stretching out to infinity.

The Princess of the Night summoned a small table into existence, with plush cushions on either side. Luna took a seat, and with her magic lifted a tea kettle that had appeared along with the table. In the absolute cosmic stillness, the sound of pouring tea seized the unicorn’s attention.

Steve turned around and nearly jumped off the platform on seeing the table.

That was close.

Then he realized how silly that was; this was a dream.

Collecting his nerves, he walked over and seated himself on the opposite side of the table from the Princess, whose muzzle still bore an amused smile.

“Nothing bad would have happened if you did leave this platform,” she said.

“Yeah,” he replied sheepishly, “I kinda figured that out, this being just a dream and all.” He lifted his cup to his mouth and took a sip. It was at the perfect temperature, naturally. If only all of life could be lived in a dream…

“How do you like being a unicorn?”

The alicorn fixed her gaze on him, her curiosity desiring satisfaction.

“I don’t regret it for a second,” he said. “Not that I wouldn’t be happy to return to being human and have hands again. I’m still amazed at how easy it was getting used to this new form.”

A smug look graced Luna’s face. “That was my contribution to the spell,” she boasted.

“Oh?”

“Don’t get me wrong; my sister created much of it.” The alicorn’s eyes focused inwards as ancient memories came to the surface. “We used to have so much fun changing ourselves into other creatures.” She sighed. “That was so long ago…”

Her eyes refocused on Steve. “Celestia is quite proud that Twilight was able to master it so easily. True, her special talent is magic, but it would have been beyond even her abilities before she became an alicorn.”

Didn’t Twilight find that spell in a book she found in the old, abandoned castle? Perhaps that was only part of the story; there was only so much that could be squeezed into an episode. Regardless, she really was capable of mastering new magic that easily, even magic of that power and complexity. “I can’t even begin to imagine being able to use such powerful magic. Yesterday, I could only do the most trivial of spells.”

“You’ll improve over time,” she assured him. “You ought to find it easier tomorrow, having had a good night sleep.”

“Yeah, Twilight mentioned something like that… but how much time will we have? …if I may ask.” Discord’s gift made little sense if this was to be their only trip here—it was hard to believe Twilight didn’t know about that in advance, not the way she took it in stride—but that didn’t mean they had a lifetime Equestria reentry pass, either.

Luna’s face became unreadable, as she put down her teacup. “We haven’t decided yet.”

At least there’s still a chance. But their time here could be cut short, too, and that was an unpleasant thought. It wasn’t that he wanted to emigrate to Equestria and spend the rest of his life as a unicorn, but he certainly wanted visitation privileges. There were many places to visit and explore, if nothing else, not to mention magic to understand and master.

Almost as if reading his mind, Luna broke the silence. “You’ll be visiting Canterlot tomorrow. Twilight has requested permission for you to accompany her to the Royal Archives and it has been granted.”

She needed permission? It wasn’t hard to figure out who needed to grant it, or what that implied about the particular archive Twilight had in mind.

“Why would she want me along? It’s obvious these archives aren’t open to the public.”

“She believes you’ll be of assistance to her.” The Princess got up on her hooves. “I enjoyed our conversation,” she said, as she slowly faded away. “I’m afraid I must be on my way.”

The morning sun poured sunshine through the window. Steve woke up, to find his muzzle buried in his wife’s mane. This will take some getting used to.

Last evening was definitely an experience he’ll never forget. It was rather ironic, actually; he never cared for clopfics and now he found himself living one. The shower afterwards was… different, too. Not that he was complaining.

He carefully got out of bed, and looked back at the cute orchid pegasus still sound asleep, her wings tightly folded against her barrel. It was picture-worthy, but like an idiot he’d left his phone at home, thinking it wouldn’t be able to get a signal.

He went to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. A quick brushing was called for, so he picked up a brush and started on his mane. After a few strokes, he stopped, and stared at the brush floating above his head, engulfed in a teal glow. I didn’t have to think about it.

So, Luna was right: a good night sleep did make magic easier. He finished brushing his mane and started on his tail. He was starting to feel like a real unicorn. Would Meg’s flying be improved, too? At least he didn’t have to preen, not that her wings looked like they needed preening.

Wait, that was a dream. Did Luna really visit his dream? He’d find out soon enough. Either Twilight will take him to the archives or she won’t. Regardless, he needed to talk to her about somehow returning home as a unicorn. Did Luna visit Meg’s dream as well?

His tail done, he quickly touched up some ruff spots on his coat. He noticed his cutie mark, a grid with ripples emanating from its center. The lines forming the cutie mark seemed well defined, with sharp boundaries. Come to think of it, all cutie marks looked that way. Wouldn’t that require each strand of hair to have different colors along its length? He deliberately mussed up the coat in that area. The lines remained sharply defined, the cutie mark as a whole undistorted, as if it was an image projected onto the coat and not formed by hairs of different colors.

I suppose I can ask Twilight. He brushed the cutie mark, fixing the coat.

Dismissing that from his mind, he went over to the desk where his computer slept, plugged into an outlet. He opened the lid, this time effortlessly, and experimentally began typing using telekinesis. Still nowhere near as fast as using ten fingers, but nonetheless a vast improvement over two hooves. He had no doubt he could do much better with practice.

What about the trackpad? In his dream, he had been able to use magic on the trackpad with ease. He focused his magic on the trackpad and moved it across its surface. There was some reaction, but nothing terribly useful. Maybe with practice… or just use a mouse.

He closed the lid. Might as well see if Twilight’s up.

As he walked over to the door, his magic grabbed the handle, pulling it open. After entering the hallway, he carefully closed the door behind him and trotted down to the library. The door was already open, so he walked right in.

“I’ll be down in a second!” Twilight called out from above.

Steve wandered over to the bookshelves. Unlike at the old library back in town, these were stuffed full of books, highly advanced reference texts on magic predominating but also books on a broad selection of other topics. He also spotted what were probably Twilight’s autographed Daring Do books. There must have been at least two dozen of them. Did one of them really have Rainbow Dash on the cover?

Before he could be tempted to look and see, Twilight flew down from the second level. Steve found that a bit odd; it seemed more in character for her to take the stairs. Then he realize how silly that was, pretending to be the authority on what was in character for her.

“Good morning!” the alicorn cheerfully said as she landed and folded her wings. “Did you sleep well?”

“Best night sleep in ages,” he replied, “though… I did have a strange dream.”

Twilight gave him a knowing smile. “Princess Luna, right?”

Steve silently nodded.

“She thought you handled that rather well, by the way. As she informed you, we’ll be visiting the Royal Archives, but first you’ll be taking a quick trip home—as a unicorn.”

“She told you that part, too?”

“Indeed she did,” she said, giddy with excitement, “and I can’t wait to see what we’re going to find out!” It was the first time he had seen her be her adorkable self. Was she starting to let her guard down around him, now that he was a more familiar pony?

Twilight took wing and hovered. Before flying back up to the second level, she said, “Why don’t you go and fetch Meg. Breakfast will be ready soon.”

As Steve went back to his room, he reflected on last night’s dream with Luna. As neat as it was to experience that, it was also a tad bit troubling; in hindsight, it felt like an invasion of privacy. He could have been dreaming about anything when she popped in. Maybe her subjects didn’t question her right to do that, or were even bothered by it—hell, maybe they’d feel honored by the royal attention—but he wasn’t one of her little ponies.

And how did Luna inform Twilight? Did she visit her dream too? Or was it simply a letter delivered via Spike?

Once back inside the guest room, he found Meg already awake, trying out the preening kit Twilight had left her. He brought her up to speed as he helped out by brushing her coat. It turned out that he was the only one to have been visited by Princess Luna, but could she observe a dream without being noticed?

After Meg finished making herself presentable, they headed over to the library. Even before they reached it, they could smell the omelets awaiting them. As they walked up to the central table, Twilight was pouring orange juice into three glasses.

“Good morning, Meg! Did you sleep well?”

“Quite well,” she replied, as she and her husband joined the alicorn at the table. “It looks like Rainbow Dash was right; my wings are only slightly sore.”

Twilight replied with a smile. “She usually is when it comes to flying.”

“And thanks for the preening kit,” Meg said as she extended a wing, showing off the neatly aligned feathers. “It did make it a lot easier.”

“I wasn’t born with wings either, so I know what it’s like.” Twilight started to dig into her omelet as she said, “These are daffodil and daisy omelets, one of Spike’s specialties.”

Steve studied the contents of the plate in front of him. “Can’t say I ever had daffodils or daisies before. This ought to be interesting.”

“No, I suppose humans can’t eat those. Well, you’re a pony now and trust me you’ll love it!” She brought a omelet-laden fork to her mouth, and said, “Bon appétit.” Relieving the fork of its cargo, a grin erupted on her face as she savored the flavors.

Steve cut off a piece of his omelet with his fork and picked it up, examining the flower and cheese mixture inside. Better get used to it. He took it into his mouth and gave it a few experimental chews. Wow. He had no idea how it would taste as a human—quite unpleasant, most likely—but to his current palate, it was full of rich and fragrant flavors, not like anything he had ever tasted before.

“See?” Twilight smugly observed.

Something still didn’t add up, though. “But eggs and cheese aren’t what herbivores eat,” he pointed out.

The alicorn raised an eyebrow. “Who said ponies were pure herbivores? Sure, we could survive on just grass or hay, but we’d have to graze all day long and there are better things to do with our time. It gets boring real fast, too.” She drank some orange juice.

“But definitely no meat…”

“No, we don’t have the teeth for it, nor can we digest it properly, and it just doesn’t taste good. I suppose with enough processing it could be made palatable, but what’s the point? That we can eat plants directly is a huge advantage; an acre of land can support far more ponies than it could support griffons, for example.”

Makes sense, when you put it like that, he thought as he had more of his omelet. Not to mention that most of the larger, potentially edible animals were probably citizens with legal rights, including the right not to be eaten.

After they had finished their morning meal, they got ready to depart. Meg and Steve went back to the guest room to put on their saddlebags. When they got back, Twilight was wearing her saddlebags as well. There were also three mysterious plaid pills floating in the air in front of her.

“These pills are how we cross over to your realm. This one time, I won’t be taking you home the way I brought you here; instead, you’ll each take a pill, just like me. That will stop you from becoming human again.”

Cross over like a pony, remain a pony. At least that solved that little problem. Twilight went on to explain how the pills work. She also warned them about the taste.

Soon they were ready to go. They each took a pill. Meg and Steve kept their minds destination-free, as instructed. The pill’s taste made that surprisingly easy. How could a plaid pill actually taste plaid? And why did plaid have to taste so bad?

Twilight selected the destination then signaled everypony to swallow.

The office appeared around them. Steve looked around, taking it all in from a new perspective. He was still a pony, and that made everything seem so much larger.

Out of habit, Twilight took out her magic probe and tested the super-sized Pink Pie doll. “Steve, see if you can sense the magical field in any way.”

Let’s see what this special talent can do. His horn softly glowed teal as he concentrated, eyes closed, his awareness reaching out to the field surrounding him. “Yes… I-I think I can sense it flowing away from the doll. Not very fast, like a somewhat viscous fluid.”

“That would be consistent with my earlier measurements,” Twilight observed.

“I’ll be right back.” Meg took flight and flew out of the room. Waves washed over Steve’s horn.

“Huh?” he said as he looked at the door his wife just flew through. “I sensed that, her taking off and accelerating. But… I never noticed that from a pegasus before.”

Twilight looked expectantly at him. “Pegasus magic doing something to the magical field?”

“Nnnooo… the only time I sensed that was during the sonic rainboom. This is different.”

Steve wandered around, senses open, but not picking up anything new, just more something from his wife as she moved about the apartment, though weaker due to distance.

Twilight went airborne and hovered, causing him to turn his head in her direction, even though his eyes were still closed. “You sensed that too,” she said.

He opened his eyes and saw her hovering. “Yeah. A strong surge as you lifted, but now…” He walked around her. “It’s mostly static now, whereas before it was dynamic, something radiating.” He stopped in front of the alicorn, shaking his head. “I don’t have better words to describe it,” he apologized.

Steve looked again at the door as he said, “Meg’s coming back.” Twilight turned to look at the door, and sure enough, a few seconds later, a pegasus flew through the door and set down on the off-white carpet.

Uncomfortably aware she was the center of attention, Meg said, “What?”

“I’ve just discovered that my special talent allows me to sense pegasus flying magic at work—but only in our universe, for some reason,” he said as Meg looked on in confusion.

Twilight lowered herself to the floor. “Maybe it isn’t just pegasus flying magic.” The chair suddenly surged a few feet off the ground, embedded in a lavender glow, then a few seconds later gradually returned to the ground. She looked at Steve expectantly.

“I sensed the same thing as before,” he said. “Something about changes in momentum or suspending an…”

Changes in momentum… Pegasi violated conservation of momentum. Unicorn levitation violated it too; there was no equal and opposite reaction on Twilight’s horn. Conservation of linear momentum was implied by the symmetry of spatial translation; the laws of physics are the same everywhere. Violation was impossible. Yet when it appeared to be violated, something was radiating he could sense, something that magic didn’t need to use in Equestria’s universe, where the laws of physics were negotiable.

My dream. The dream that Luna visited, where he had used magic to design a gravitational wave detector. Gravitational waves can carry momentum. That was the equal and opposite reaction.

Twilight and Meg were looking at him, blinking.

“I think I’ve got it figured out,” he finally said. “I’m sensing gravitational waves. The momentum they carry is the equal and opposite reaction.”

“And these waves ordinarily are undetectable?” Twilight asked, her tone growing more serious.

“Yeah, it takes incredibly precise measurements over a large distance to detect the minuscule warpage of space they cause as they pass by.”

“Can your realm’s existing detectors detect a pony this way?”

“Uhhh… hmmm…” Steve tapped his hoof to his chin as he thought it over. “No, because ironically they’re too sensitive. Ponies won’t put out strong waves, but a pony is going to be like a trillion times closer than any astronomical source they’re designed to detect. It will peg the meters, so to speak, looking like a transient failure, probably interpreted as a vibration from the ground that wasn’t properly filtered out.

“Also, the waves put out by ponies are highly directional; the odds they’ll hit one of the few detectors that have been built is low.”

“Never mind the three that would be required to do trilateration,” Twilight observed.

“Correct.”

“And you’ve never sensed these waves back in Equestria.”

“Also correct. Magic gets the job done without them there. I’m curious as to how magic knows how to use them here.”

Twilight did not reply immediately. “That’s a good question, but it doesn’t completely surprise me. It’s in the nature of magic to “magically,” so to speak, work out the details of how to accomplish a task. Much of the art of spell casting, as I’ll soon be teaching you, is in correctly specifying the task.

“So,” she summarized, “the big takeaway from this is that magic can directly manipulate space-time here, like, say, the space-time occupied by that doll. I now know what to look for in the archives.”

She looked at each of the other two ponies. “Ready to head on back?”

“Actually, not yet,” Steve said as he moved over to the doll. “I want to see how far my special talent goes.” Twilight positioned herself to observe, eager to find out herself.

The unicorn lit up his horn, touching it to the doll. He closed his eyes, clearing his mind, sensing the magic and the space-time through which it traveled. It was flowing from somewhere. He tried to follow it back to its source.

In the center of the doll he found the entry point into this universe. It wasn’t a hole, exactly, but more like a permeable boundary, where magic was oozing through after making a turn that’s orthogonal to all three spatial dimensions. The magic was incredibly dense, almost congealed, able to flow only because of the incredible pressure behind it. It began to thin out immediately and spread as it hit the relative vacuum of this world.

He tried to follow it past that boundary, into what he assumed had to be the hyperspace separating the two universes. It was difficult to get his magic to move against the flow, but at the same time the incredible density of the magic provided the fuel he needed to do it; even then, he could barely sense the other side of that boundary.

But it was enough. Strain was accumulating. The volume occupied by the permeable boundary was slowly growing, expanding as the pressure increased. The surface area of the boundary was increasing with the square of the radius, but the volume through which magic seeped increased with the cube. Something had to give eventually, metaphorically ripping a hole in the continuum. He couldn’t begin to imagine what would happen, but it couldn’t possibly be good—for either universe.

His legs turned to jelly as blood pounded in his ears. It’s a ticking time bomb. He fought the need to gallop as far away as possible. There’s no place to run, he told himself, not on this planet, not on any other planet in this solar system, maybe not even on the planets orbiting the nearby stars.

How does Twilight deal with these armageddon scenarios? She may be used to dealing with them, but it was new to him. Was there anything he could do about it? He shook his head. Maybe after years of serious training, if even then, but right now? There was nothing he could do.

He couldn’t even report it to the authorities here. They’d think he was crazy, first of all, and there was nothing they could do either. The only pony who could fix this was the lavender alicorn standing next to him.

Steve reported his findings, trying to keep his voice steady. He concluded, saying, “It’s hard to put a time on it, but I feel like maybe three to six months before it blows.”

Twilight had taken it all in without saying a word, maintaining a stoic expression. Steve guessed she wasn’t much surprised by what she had just heard. She confirmed it, quietly saying, “Sounds about right. Ready to go?”

“Hold on a minute,” Steve said accusingly. “You knew our world was in danger too, and you never thought to tell us?”

Twilight sighed, her eyes downcast. “I didn’t know that for a fact, but it doesn’t shock me.” She lifted her head, meeting his eyes. “Would you have done anything differently if I had told you?”

He couldn’t shake the feeling she wasn’t being completely honest, that she was leaving something out, but did it really make a difference? Regardless, that hole needed to be plugged.

“I… I suppose not,” he admitted, as he turned away from both the doll and Twilight. “I sort of wish I didn’t know it now. I’d sleep better.”

“Tell me about it,” she joked, trying to break the sour mood. “Ready to go?”

“No, not quite yet.”

While he was here, he might as well see what else he could do or discover. He closed his eyes once again and focused inwards.

When the time came to invoke the return spell, he would return to the location within Equestria from which he departed. The wormhole between universes that brought him here could not have completely gone away; it must still be connecting him to that location, a dormant shadow of itself, but able to be revived for the return trip.

After searching for a few moments, he found it. The nanoscopic terminus was inside his head, magically bound in place. He tried to follow through the connected wormhole, but had even less luck than with the doll; in its current state, it forbade the passage of magic, or pretty much anything. Understandable, if inconvenient to magic users.

Nonetheless, it gave him an idea, one that did not require magic to flow through a wormhole. Steve opened his eyes, then jumped onto a chair so he could see the top of the desk. His cell phone was where he left it, recharging. It started to glow teal as it was unplugged and levitated towards him.

He jumped back to the floor, to questioning looks from the others. “I want to try something.”

He focused his magic on the antenna, creating a wormhole with one end anchored on the antenna and the other here in the room. As with the one inside the doll, this wormhole attaches at either end at right angles to all spatial dimensions, like the end of a pipe against a flat surface, making it impossible for matter or energy to enter or exit, unless assisted via magic. Only electromagnetic radiation with a frequency range of high megahertz to low gigahertz shall be so assisted. While magic is not allowed inside this wormhole, magic at both ends stabilizes it, keeping the inherently unstable wormhole from collapsing.

“Meg, where’s your phone?” He put his own phone in a saddlebag, along with a USB cable so he could charge it off the laptop.

“In my saddlebag,” she said as she took it out. “I know it won’t get a signal there, but I wanted to take some pictures and have some games to play.”

“You’ll be getting a signal if I’m right about this,” he said as he did the same thing to her phone. She gave him an intrigued look as she put her phone back into her saddlebag, but not as intrigued as the look Twilight was giving him.

For the heck of it, he repeated the process one last time with a tablet. Into his saddlebag it went, just fitting. He looked at Twilight expectantly.

“Ready now?” she asked with a quirked eyebrow.

“Yes,” he said, nodding.

After they returned to the library, Steve got out his phone. It was showing a signal, both cellular and wifi. He carefully “tapped” out his password using magic to unlocked it. He tried checking for new e-mails, and it did so without complaints, not that anything new arrived in the last few minutes. For his final test, he tried calling Meg’s phone.

From within her saddlebag a ring tone was heard. Meg took the phone out with her mouth then put it on the floor in front of her. She accepted the call with a hoof-tap, then lowered her muzzle to the phone. “Caller id says it’s you,” she said.

“Sounds normal,” he replied and ended the call.

Twilight had walked over to the phone on the floor, fascinated by the voice coming out of it. “You can talk to each other no matter where each of you are?

“Pretty much. Both phones have to be within range of a cell tower, but these days you have to be in the middle of nowhere not to be.”

“Cell tower?”

Steve grimaced. “It’d take too long to explain,” he said, despite having learned the hard way in the past few weeks how much that annoyed Twilight.

The annoyed pony then asked, “And what you did puts your phones within range of a… ‘cell tower’… even here in Equestria?”

“Exactly.” Steve then explained what he had done and what gave him the idea. The alicorn became so absorbed in her thoughts, it almost seemed like she stopped paying attention to his words.

“So that’s what those pills are doing,” she said to herself, tapping her chin. “This will really help me reverse-engineer them.”

So, Discord didn’t give you the blueprints? No, I suppose he doesn’t work that way.

Meg picked her phone up off the floor with a hoof, took it in her mouth, then put it back in her saddlebag. Steve just noticed that the phone had shown no evidence of having been in her mouth before; that is, it didn’t get wet. How odd, he thought.

“I better get going… don’t want to keep Rainbow Dash waiting,” Meg said as she started to hover above the hardwood floor. Today she was going to get an introduction to weather magic.

“Just a sec,” Steve said, as he positioned his phone for taking video. “Hover next to those Daring Do books.”

She did as instructed, adjusting her position in response to Steve’s hoof movements.

“Okay,” he said as he began recording, “now wave for the camera.” Meg gave a silly smile as she waved a hoof above her head for a few seconds. After she dropped her hoof, letting it freely hang from her body, he stopped recording.

Meg quickly flew over to his side and watched along as he played back the video. “Wow. I look just like any other hovering pegasus.”

“Yes,” he sighed, “impossibly cute.”

She gave him a quick nuzzle. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Gotta go.”

Meg backed up, turned around, and flew out the door.

“May I see that?” Twilight asked as she walked over.

“Sure.” Steve replayed the video from the beginning and held the phone in front of the mare. Twilight intently watched and listened to the playback.

Once it had finished, he belatedly asked for permission. “I hope you don’t mind. Our time here may be limited; it’d be nice to have these pictures and videos to reminisce by.“

“No… I don’t have a problem with that,” Twilight replied as she studied the icons that had popped up around the final frame of the video. “I find it incredible how much this tiny device can do. I’ve seen similar devices… elsewhere… but I never had a chance to get a close look at one.”

Elsewhere, he thought as he turned to look at her. It was practically an open secret. This seemed as good as time as any to get it out into the open. “By ‘elsewhere,’ you mean the other side of a certain mirror safeguarded by Princess Cadance, correct?”

Twilight continued to study the phone’s display. “I suppose you know about that too,” she said in a flat tone.

“Sunset Shimmer stealing your crown to get the Element of Magic?” he asked, treading carefully, there being something off about her tone.

“Yep.” She turned and slowly walked away, not looking at him.

This wasn’t making a whole lot of sense. Didn’t that have a happy ending?

“I’m sorry… that was not…” She lowered her head and exhaled. “It’s not something I care to talk about.” She turned around and gave him a forced smile. “Let’s go out to the balcony. The chariot will be here shortly.”