The courtroom was cleared. Courtiers, servants, staff, all had been ushered out. Even the ever present guards had been reduced to a bare quartet around the throne; the rest were stationed discreetly OUTSIDE the tightly closed doors. It was just our tidy little gathering: Celestia, Luna, the Elements of Harmony... and me. Celestia, alicorn, ruler of the sun, coregent of the world of Equestria, regarded me with cool eyes. "And so," she asked, "now that we have, at your request, dismissed any careless ears.... how is it that you, a creature from another world entire, know so much of us?"

I rubbed my eyes as I tried to compose my thoughts. Where to begin? "Okay," I said. "Let me take this from the beginning. But... please be patient; it's.... long and complicated, and it will take some time to get to the point." She nodded, briefly. I puffed out my cheeks with a breath I hadn't known I was holding, and began. "About twenty or thirty years ago in my world, in the mid 1980s, a toy company by the name of hasbro decided to create a new line of toys, especially catered to young girls. A series of small plastic toys, about yea big--" I gestured--" shaped like tiny horses. Tiny ponies, actually, in bright pastel colors and decorative marks on their flanks, and-- important selling point here," I held up a finger--  "combable manes and tails." I smiled slightly in spite of myself. "To promote these dolls and increase sales, Hasbro commissioned artists to create a cartoon... you recall what I told you about television?"

"The moving picture device, yes," Celestia nodded. Twilight nodded in agreement as well; she had been the one to interrogate me about it-- and several other human inventions as well. "We do have motion pictures-- movies-- so we understand some of the concept..."

"Well they made a..a series of moving picture stories, I guess you'd call it, telling about the adventures of these Little Ponies in their magical world.The usual lowest-common-denominator stuff; cute pets, trite songs, stories about tea parties and makeup and dress-up and scads of PINK flung everywhere."" I winced. "It was dreadful." A few of the listeners chuckled; I suspected then that, if not exactly alike, the rules-- and shortsighted gender biases-- of the marketplace were predictably similar here. "oh, it was moderately popular enough, at least with children under the age of five, and they sold a lot of toys... but eventually it petered out. Quite rapidly, in fact. Over the next few decades, The toy company tried to revive interest by reinventing the cartoon that promoted it; nothing quite seemed to stick. In fact the remakes and redesigns went from merely mediocre to outright nightmarish.

Then", after several decades of this, they hired a very talented lady named Lauren Faust. She was an animator and director with considerable experience in making successful children's shows. They gave her and her team of artists and writers free rein, more or less, and sat back to see what she would create.

"And this time, it worked.

"She crafted a whole new show: one that didn't cheat on quality, in art or music or writing. One that didn't talk down to its audience, either. She stated herself that for too long "girl's entertainment" had been an excuse for BAD entertainment... her goal was to make a show little girls could watch, along with their families. And that meant their older siblings and parents too. the results were-- well, they were insane. The show became wildly popular. Not just with little girls, but with teenagers and young adults--- male AND female alike."

"The show was titled "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic." Celestia visibly started. A stir went through the others gathered there. I grinned silently to myself; I could tell that THEY could tell where this was going, and the storyteller in me was enjoying the buildup immensely. "It followed the adventures of a certain unicorn one Twilight Sparkle--" one of the ponies, I think it was Rarity, gave a little gasp "-- the student of Princess Celestia, and her adventures as she and her friends, the Elements of Harmony saved Equestria from Nightmare Moon, and learned the magic of friendship..." the mane six had quit whispering and were making exclamations of disbelief and alarm.

I fished around in the pockets of my tattered coat. One by one I pulled out the tiny plastic figurines and set them on the dais in front of the princess, naming each one as I did. "Rainbow Dash, element of Loyalty, Fluttershy, element of Kindness, Applejack,element of Honesty, Pinky Pie, element of Laughter, Rarity, element of Generosity, and of course, Twilight...element of Friendship-- or MAGIC."

At this visible proof of my foreknowledge, everyone in the room began babbling in confusion. Celestia nosed the tiny plastic ponies at her feet. It was interesting; her veneer of regal serenity was visibly cracked. I'd never seen her look quite so stunned in the show. Her sister Luna was more overt, gaping at me, slack jawed.

It was a full minute before the noise died down enough for anyone to be heard. Rainbow Dash managed to stammer out, "Are you-- are you trying to tell us that we're....that we're NOT REAL? That we're all just like, characters in a book or  something??"  

Celestia ceased her inspection of the tiny pony statues and raised her head. She looked at me, her expression enigmatic, as she waited for my answer. The others looked at me as well, with expressions ranging from confusion (Pinky Pie) to outright stunned horror (Rainbow Dash and Twilight.)

I'd pondered how I would answer this sort of thing. It's what hopeless fan nerds do, after all. I did my best to express myself... "No,absolutely not," I said. "I'm a little too materialist for THAT nonsense." I pointed at myself. "Look, I'm here, right? And I have to accept that I'M real. Cognito ergo sum.

" And if I accept that, and I accept that I'm really... here, in Equestria, then I have to accept the ponies, Equestria, et al--- is just as real as I am. As just as-- as complex and detailed and structured as I am. That it didn't blink into existence just because I or anyone else imagined it, and that it's not going to go away in a puff of logic when I close my eyes or look away." I snorted and rolled my eyes. "Anyway, I'm really not willing to assign power over reality itself to something as MUSHY as a human mind. We have trouble visualizing the way a single atom works, much less an entire universe of them. The mind does not create reality, it is how we discover reality."

""A is A," so to speak?" Celestia said. I thought I caught a twinkle of amusement in her eye.Ah, an objectivist alicorn. There was a joke in there somewhere.... I shrugged. "So to speak," I agreed.The tension in the room seemed to lessen slightly. having your own objective existence reassured will do that, I guess. Whether you stand on your own two feet or on four little hooves.

"Then how do you explain this.... convergence?" Princess Luna said, delicately tapping one of the pony dolls with a hoof.

I blew out my cheeks and ran one hand through my hair. "I don't know," I said, shrugging hopelessly. "You have to understand. I'm no scientist or theoretical physicist or philosophy major or whoever it is you'd talk to in order to figure this sort of thing out. I'm just a really well-read fat guy who spends way too much time on the internet arguing about weird stuff with even weirder people.

"Your world exist, my world exists.... Maybe it's just that there are so many worlds out there that sooner or later one will pop up where someone JUST HAPPENS to write a story about what's happening on another. Infinite monkeys on typewriters, sort of thing. Maybe great minds think alike-- or at least think enough to imagine other worlds accurately. Or maybe, I dunno... my favorite theory is that maybe.... the universe leaks."

Celestia creased her brow at that one. "Explain."

Immediately I was spinning off on one of my self-imposed fad theories. "Scientists in my world believe that while our universe is self-contained, closing back in on itself..." I sketched out a bubble-like shape with my hands in the air "...they think that it might also be, well, porous. Perforated with with countless trillions of wormholes--- tiny pinhole tunnels, too small for even a single atom, linking it to other universes around it. This is just metaphysical babble on my part, but maybe...

"Maybe things seep over. Maybe ideas, thoughts, memories, concepts can seep through from one world to another, And certain receptive people pick them up. " I shrugged expansively. "Maybe that's all 'creativity' really is; just someone getting a brief wavelength of another world through the walls of the universe and running with it. Of course, it could all be a pile of horseradish, too..." I looked around me at the castle full of ponies. Tool using, clothes-wearing, ENGLISH SPEAKING ponies, who wore saddles without riders, used cups with handles despite having no fingers, and whose culture, what I'd seen of it, looked like it had been scavenged, higgledy piggledy, from Smithsonian archives and Hollywood backlots. "Then again...." I muttered to myself.

"So this 'Lauren Faust," Twilight butted in, "has been, er, watching our world? Is this why you have been playing your information so close to the vest, because you didn't want to look like a spy?"

"Or 'acause he IS a spy," Applejack said suspiciously. "Using his telly-vision to watch us...."

"Um, yes, I've been watching. But you have to understand, the information about Equestria is....really sparse. The show we watch is made up of weekly episodes, each about twenty minutes long.  Plus it's a kid's show, after all; so they weren't going to put up anything too, umm, personal or intimate...." I trailed off awkwardly. A few of us present cleared our throats. "But I knew it would be really, well, disturbing-- so I figured I'd better keep all the details to myself, at least at first."

"The other thing is.... well, again, it WAS just a show, after all. and when I arrived...."

".... And when you arrived, you feared that your Faust might have shown you our world through rose-colored glasses, am I correct?"

Princess Celestia said gently. Dang perceptive pony.

I nodded."That DID cross my mind when I figured out where I was, yes," I admitted. "The show had been made for small children, I had no idea how much she had watered down what she had, er, 'seen.' Or what she hadn't shown at all. Heck, the fans of the show spend hours every day arguing over the details that the camera DIDN'T show.... For all I knew, your culture could have had severed heads on sticks just offscreen." I turned red when I realized she might have been insulted. "N-not that I thought that--- just an example by exaggeration--"

"I trust you've found no severed heads, all the same," Celestia said with dry amusement, an eyebrow raised. A couple of the fillies giggled.

"I could make a list as long as my arm of things I wasn't sure about," I confessed. I reflected; the truth was even stranger than the fiction. What most of Earth's fanfic writers-- especially the Human In Equestria fanfic writers--- didn't seem to take into account was that, were Equestria to be real, then the bronies were essentially learning about an entire world by looking through a very narrow keyhole..most of the fans who'd written stories about visiting equestria had tended to forget that the show was a cartoon, and that cartoons, and cartoon physics, weren't generally literalisms, but were visual shorthand for more complicated concepts. I'd gotten to know Pinkie Pie; she had emphatically NOT exhibited any of the reality-bending abilities attributed to her on the show, and especially in fanfic. She was just a ditz. A bubbly, lovable ditz, with a bizarre Pinkie-Pie logic that could make your brain hurt, but a ditz all the same.

As to physics, save for the situationally altering effects of the magic that permeated everything, they were generally stuck with at least the basic Newtonian laws. While Twilight DID have a truckload of junk fall on her head some time ago, she most certainly didn't have an anvil braining her. ... hammerspace and Bugs Bunny pockets were in notable absence as well; one of the things NOT shown on screen, ponies wore saddlebags and other pocketed accoutrements almost continually.Twilight, for instance, had a clever sleeve on her front left leg that held a pencil, chalk and other writing implements, and Spike never went anywhere without his fanny-pack. Mundane utility was far more prevalent than the show indicated. The physics of Equestria, it seemed, had more in common with Earth than with Warner Brothers Or Disney. And I did have to note a considerable lack of pastel pink and hearts in the local decor.

But still, for the little material details, the big ones--- the culture, the atmosphere, Rarity's generosity, Fluttershy's kindness, and certainly Princess Celestia's benevolence--- were right on the money.

"If anything, I've been surprised and relieved about how accurate the show is to depicting your world," I said. "small details are different, or were left out, but the general gist was right. Equestria is a kind and gentle place, and its people-- ponies-- are generally decent folk."

"And what others of your kind?" Celestia asked. "Were there other reasons you have been so reluctant to tell us of where you are from?"

Ah me, down to the nitty gritty. I looked down and thought it over soberly; this could get VERY touchy. I am not of the "humans are monsters" school, or at least did not want to be. I didn't want to leave her fearful of humanity... but I didn't want her to be incautious or misled, either. I was going to have to pick my next words carefully.

"You have to understand, your Highness," I said,"humanity is... complicated. Our species is essentially alone. We are the only intelligent creatures in our world, we are omnivores, and predators, and we are the dominant species on our world with a vengeance.

"And we are one hell of a mixed bag. We have dozens of nations in the human world,ranging from peaceful democracies to tyrannies to blood crazed banana republics. There are hundreds of religions and thousands of languages and cultures, some of them peaceful, some of them crazy violent. War is a common occurrence; always, somewhere in the world, there is someone or other who can't stand to know that his neighbor lives while he does. For every group of people who would greet you with joy and wonder and praising heaven for such wonders, there is another who would kill you on sight out of fear, or ignorance, or in the name of their god. For every group that said "we come in peace, live long and prosper", there is another that will be cold and ruthless and treat you like lab experiments, perfectly willing to dissect you for some idle scientific curiosity." Some of the ponies looked shocked at this.

Celestia, tellingly, did not. I pondered why, and made a mental note to inquire more closely about Equestria's history at some later time...

"Let me restate... many humans are good and kind, and many can be decent, given a chance. But collectively? We are unpredictable, and dangerously so. My best advice for dealing with humans would be "Warning: Volatile. Handle with care." I pursed my lips. "If for some reason humans come into Equestria, be ready to greet them in peace... but make sure you do it from a very obvious position of strength."