The sonic rainboom gracefully expanded across the face of a large, 4K resolution monitor. Sitting next to Meg, a middle-aged woman with full-bodied red hair gazed in amazement.

“Twilight actually helped with this?”

It wasn’t even two months ago, but it already felt like a lifetime ago, when both worlds were in mortal danger. “She came up with the equations, after I showed her the forms they had to take. She also supplied the data for the initial state.”

“This is just… the possibilities are endless!”

Meg rotated her chair to face the newest member of the team. “Is this really that surprising to you? I saw the computers in the school library.”

Sunset Shimmer couldn’t take her eyes off the monitor. “I never saw them doing anything like this. I-I just assumed they could only do what the others were doing with them, you know, sending and receiving messages, watching videos, writing papers, stuff like that. I had no idea they were—what did you call it?—programmable?”

And perhaps they weren’t programmable. All attempts to remove physical objects from the mirror realm had failed; they simply wouldn’t pass through the portal, as if it were still solid stone. Disassembling those “computers” revealed components that sort of looked like the real thing, but clearly were not; the technology was mostly an illusion, functioning only by the logic of that realm.

“We’re working on getting one of these for each member of the Canterlot office. Not sure when, but it shouldn’t be much longer.”

The possibilities excited her. “Then ponies and humans would actually be able to communicate whenever they want through e-mail and video conferencing, like you showed me?”

Meg gave her a confident smile. “That’s right!”

But the ponies would not have unrestricted access to the Internet; both governments insisted on that, if for entirely different reasons. The princesses did not want their little ponies to stumble upon a certain cartoon. The season five animatic preview did allay some of their concerns—it had certainly been a big relief to Meg—but that did not alter the fact that the earlier seasons revealed too much personal stuff.

Meg ended the simulation and locked the computer desktop, then stood up and stretched. “It’s getting late; we should get going.”

Meg opened the door to her new, private office, and the two of them walked past rows of empty cubicles, left over from the previous tenant. The floor was now leased by the Department of Energy, in a building not far from home. What few co-workers she currently had had all had previous exposure to The Doll, back when it was the center of attention, and the office’s position within the federal bureaucracy gave it a short and carefully selected path to the White House. Best of all, her new job came with a very nice salary.

An accident blocking a lane made the commute home a disaster. It brought to mind her first solo flight across Ponyville; if only she had the option of flying available to her that moment.

It delayed them long enough that by the time they arrived, Tom was already there, waiting for them, as he had arrived a bit early.

“There was an accident,” Meg apologized as she unlocked and opened the door. “This is April,” she said, introducing Sunset Shimmer. Tom was there to interview her for the position of a judge. That wasn’t the only reason he was there, but he didn’t know that yet.

“A pleasure to meet you,” Sunset said, offering her hand.

If he had recognized “April’s” voice, he did a good job of hiding it. He politely shook her hand, saying, “Likewise.” He was the last to go inside, and gave Meg an ever so subtle “let’s get this over with” look as he went past her.

There was still a bit of bad blood from all the missed meetings, back when Meg was preoccupied in Equestria, and her lack of an acceptable explanation. Fair or not, he wasn’t terribly enthusiastic about someone Meg recommended.

Sunset and Meg sat on the sofa, while Tom took the recliner. After he got comfortable, he leaned forward and began his description of the job. “In this contest, the goal is to do the best impression of a specific pony who is being presented with a scenario. As a judge, you are expected to briefly engage them in a conversation, asking follow up questions based on their responses, which they are to also answer in character. Scoring is from zero to ten, ten being the best. There will be three judges.”

“Yup, Meg explained all that to me,” Sunset said. “Actually, if I’m not accepted as a judge, I was thinking of being a contestant. I’m told I can do a very good Sunset Shimmer.”

His hand quickly shot up and out. “Don’t. I’ll take your word for it.” He lowered his hand and looked at Meg with an exasperated sigh. “Where do you find these people?”

Meg gave him an impish smile. “You’d never believe me.”

“Ready to go home, Sunset?” asked a voice from beside the recliner.

“Not yet, Twilight.”

“You gotta be kidding me.” Tom angrily twisted around in the chair. “You’re here too?” Upon seeing the alicorn, he froze solid.

Twilight gave him a big smile. “You remember me, don’t you? We talked on the phone a while back?”

His mouth worked silently for a few too many seconds, until he was able to break his eyes free and look back at the women, his unasked question painfully obvious.

“Do we see an adorkable lavender pony with wings and a horn?” Meg asked for him.

He merely nodded his head as he struggled to keep his jaw from going ajar.

“Yeah, we see her.”

That gave him precious little solace.

Twilight trotted over to the sofa, jumped up, and made herself comfortable. “I had a talk with Lyra, by the way.”

Tom looked clueless.

“That scenario you gave me; it got me thinking. Anyway, you can rest assured she’s not plotting to kidnap any humans and do ‘research’ on their hands.”

That was a very different summary of her conversation with Lyra than the one she gave Meg. The subject of humans was never even raised, not explicitly.

Lyra did minor in archeology, and on one dig the mint green unicorn did find an ancient flute that was oddly proportioned, but everypony explained it away as having been made for minotaur children. After graduating, she stuck to music performances, having decided that field work was not for her.

Nonetheless, she had remained in contact with a fellow student and early pegasus marefriend, Guiding Star, who pursued field work with a passion. They rarely saw each other since they broke up, long ago, but she still lets Lyra know when she finds an unusual ancient musical instrument. Beyond that, Lyra wasn’t willing to say more until she could contact her—which might take a while.

Twilight found that easy to believe, as she was unable to locate Guiding Star herself. It was no doubt an occupational hazard of being an archeologist, especially one who frequently went exploring out on her own. At least her attendance at Canterlot University could be confirmed.

Tom finally found his voice. “W-What about all those… other things you said on the phone.”

Meg answered first. “You mean, like, Rainbow Dash teaching me pegasus magic? Yeah, that was all true. By the way, that really was her you heard on that second call. Her ego really is that enormous.”

“Yeah,” Twilight conceded, “but she’s still a true and loyal friend.”

“Don’t forget awesome,” Meg added.

“No, we mustn’t forget awesome.”

“The mirror version was like that too,” said Sunset.

“Anyway,” Twilight said, getting back on track, “yes, everything I said was the absolute truth, and you didn’t believe a word of it.” She giggled at the memory. “Celestia found that quite amusing.”

“That was Celestia,” he muttered in disbelief.

“Uh huh.”

Suddenly he stood up. “I think I’ll be going now.” Without waiting for a response, he left. They heard the front door open and close.

“Well,” Twilight said. “That was an interesting experiment. What do you think he’ll do?”

“I dunno,” answered Meg. “Probably not much from the look of things. If nothing else, he may finally get over my missing those meetings.”

“Whatever he does, let me know and I’ll add it to the report.” Twilight hopped off the sofa. “Let’s go home, Sunset.”

“Can’t wait to get my horn back again,” she said as she stood up.

The two Equestrians vanished.

Meg closed her eyes and leaned back.

I wonder what Serrell will think.

He’d be getting a copy of that report. It was all part of cooking up a strategy for gradually waking the world up to the reality of ponies, to do better than simply shocking everyone with sudden hard proof. Perhaps let ponies become the next Sasquatch or UFO sighting craze, most not really believing it, until one day… Whatever, they’ll come up with something.

Then she’ll have to deal with the consequences, but at least she wouldn’t have to do so alone.

She went to the home office. The two pony dolls on top of the bookshelf seemed happy to see her. The one of Derpy still lacked an autograph. One day she would figure out a way to approach her for one that wouldn’t freak her out.

She sat down in front of the computer and watched, for the nth time, the season five animatic preview that Hasbro had released. That she had watched it at all had, naturally, upset Twilight—avoiding time loops and all that.

But it turned out not to be a problem. Nothing it showed had happened, nor had any reasonable chance of happening. A mysterious map of Equestria popping up inside the circle of the thrones? A map that sent the Mane Six on mysterious quests? A town where all the ponies had the same cutie mark? No evidence that any contact with humanity had ever taken place?

Twilight had it all checked out, of course. The possibility of there being such a magical map in her throne room was absurd to her, but look for it she did.

There was no map.

She had also organized a search for that mysterious town, in the general region identified by that map in the animatic.

Again, nothing.

And there was going to be a sequel to Equestria Girls? No way could that have had any connection to reality, not when the mirror realm remained depopulated to this day.

Whatever it was that had turned that cartoon into a documentary, it was no more. Why? No one and nopony had a clue; but then, there was still no clue as to how or why it ever was.

Perhaps the “how” will never be known, but as to the “why” it had stopped… Meg could never prove it, of course, but in her gut she was certain: it had served its purpose.

Author's Notes:

And with that, Destinies is concluded. A sequel is planned. If you wish to be notified when it comes out, you know what to do. It will be many months before that happens, though. There are other projects I plan on tackling first.

I might do some side stories. If that happens, they’ll be added as additional chapters, clearly marked as side stories, after this epilog. Regardless, Destinies has been marked complete and shall remain so marked.