Author's Notes:

This one starts kind of weird. Stick with it; it makes sense soon enough.

Flim stood over Flam’s unconscious body, shaking with rage. He flicked Flam’s fallen revolver up off the floor with his magic, screaming like a mad horse, clicked back the hammer, and swung it towards me. I knew when he pulled the trigger that the bullet was going to hit me — I could calculate its trajectory in my head. There was no scenario where I wasn’t hit, and hit badly.

Back up a bit.

Flim and Flam and their intimidating bodyguards stood over us, watching as I inhaled glowing blue powder off a mirror. Fire rushed through my sinuses and directly into my brain. The universe exploded, and time came unraveled.

Back way, way up.

The red-tinted darkness echoed with the beat of a massive drum. I was safe and happy. Suddenly a line split the darkness. Gigantic hooves reached through and pulled me out of my mother’s guts and into a world of light and blood and noise.

Okay, that was too far back.

“Darling, this is still my boutique. Did you think you could make a couple of bits on the side laundering gems and I wouldn’t find out?”

Sassy huddled in the corner of Rarity’s office, a look of terror on her face. Rarity’s magic glowed around Sassy’s throat. She had tried to flee when Rarity had told her what she knew, and when that had failed she had tried to fight back, but Rarity was an experienced magic fighter and Sassy was not.

“Are… are you going to turn me in?”

Rarity laughed. “Darling, if I were going to do that you’d be talking to the Royal Guard, and not to me. I never get my own hooves dirty if I can avoid it.”

Sassy glanced at me. “What about her? She’s CGS, isn’t she?”

“Bent. And not just sexually,” said Rarity.

Sassy stared at me. I smirked.

“She has connections that can keep us in the law’s blind spot. Though she will require a cut of the profits as well,” said Rarity.

“I can’t… I can’t make those decisions,” said Sassy.

“Well, darling, why don’t you take me to someone who can?”

The conversation slowed to a halt, like gradually turning down the speed on a record player. I was aware that somewhere in time, I was about to die. I had to get back there.

Forward a little.

Too far forward. The bullet slammed into me, tearing through my hide. It ricocheted off a rib and tore apart a lung. It was heading for my heart. I was going to die.

Back. Back. It doesn’t matter how far. As far as I can go.

My daddy was hitched to his plow, dragging it through the dirt as I marched in front of him, digging up rocks and dragging them out of the way. The noonday sun was hot, horseflies were buzzing around both of us, and I was tired and thirsty but happy to be working with my daddy.

I should be safe here for a little while. Time to think.

So. I had taken crystal math to prove to Flim and Flam that I was telling the truth when I said I wanted to work with them. They’d watched too many crime plays if they thought that made any difference. Then things got weird. I seemed to be going back and forth through my own timeline. Crystal math wasn’t supposed to do that, was it? What did I know about crystal math? Not a lot, I had to admit. It was rare stuff, and dangerous; not the kind of thing you get to work with in geology school.

“I think it’s about time we had some lunch, don’cha think?” said Daddy.

Wait, I remembered this day. I was eight. My family would go to the market later this evening, and I’d buy a copy of Cattlehouse-Eight for a quarter-bit. It would become one of my favorite books.

“Wanna help me get unhitched, little sprout?”

“Okay, Daddy,” I squeaked, and pronked over to him. I helped him undo his buckles. The smell of his sweat filled my nostrils and made me tingle inside. At this point in time he was still healthy, powerful, and gentle. He still seemed like the biggest, strongest stallion in the world. He was purple with a ginger mane like me, though I’d gotten Mommy’s hair. I wondered if I could tell Daddy about the cancer growing in his gut before it was too late.

“What’th Mommy making for lunch?” I asked.

Nope. I couldn’t. I was only observing. That didn’t bode well for the bullet.

I stayed where I was for a while. It was good to see Daddy again. We ate lunch, we worked all afternoon, we went to the market. After he kissed me goodnight, I waited until I could hear him talking to Mommy downstairs, then lit a candle and read about how Pony Pilgrim had come unstuck in time.

I couldn’t stay here. I didn’t know if I was really traveling in time, or just remembering. Maybe I was already dying, and this was just my brain mopping the floors and putting up the chairs before the lights went out.

I tried to dig up what little I could remember about crystal math. A drug so nasty that even Luna, princess of darkness and debauchery, agreed it should be illegal. Stimulant. Powerful. Highly addictive. Usually snorted or injected, though you could also swallow a small crystal like a pill if you didn’t mind a reduced effect. It enhanced intelligence, especially computational abilities, but you had to be extremely smart already to handle the extra horsepower. Most ponies who used it just went temporarily insane — which might be what was happening to me right now. Habitual usage inevitably lead to brain damage and death. Light Bright had tried it once. He said it was like being strapped to the front of a moving train with the multiplication table screaming in your ear.

I concentrated, skimming forward through the next ten years, trying to find the lecture I was looking for. Anomalous Mineralogy. Freshman year. I found it easily enough, but I kept flubbing the landing. Finally I just stopped a week beforehand and sat through an entire week of college. This was during the period when I’d been experimenting with heterosexuality, so there were a number of awkward dates and sloppy but unfulfilling make-out sessions with Harry Hooves.

Some of those make-out sessions ran pretty long. My past self was half asleep the morning of the lecture.

Coffee! More coffee! I hissed internally. I wasn’t going to endure a week of half-assed tonsil hockey just to sleep through what I needed to know.

Past me slung her saddlebags over her back and put her tray — with its single empty coffee cup — in the dish window of the Smart Cookie Hall Cafeteria and headed for class.

Wait. I remember this day. I remembered drifting off in class very clearly. No wonder I couldn’t remember anything about crystal math!

Coffee! Get. Another. Cup. Of. Coffee. My head hurt. My past self stopped and put a hoof to her head. She wobbled on her hooves. She turned around and filled the biggest takeaway cup she could get with burnt-tasting dining hall coffee, mixed with a little bit of hot chocolate to mask the taste.

I’d changed history. I was traveling in time! What the actual buck?

“Digranualar Mezapronenite, better known by its street name ‘crystal math’, is a particularly interesting substance.” said professor Gumption. “It is composed of non-interacting monads formed into a hexagonal tesseract. Technically, it’s not a mineral at all, but a folding of space-time that our senses perceive as crystalline matrix.”

So that was how it worked. Yes. The passage of time is an illusion; all moments are equally real. Panicked by the prospect of death, I had somehow been able to use the four-dimensional nature of crystal math to detach my consciousness from the present moment and move back and forth along my timeline. Of course, this view of time would seem to rule out free will. And yet I had been able to change my own actions! Past me scribbled notes furiously. With enough finesse and willpower, I could definitely interfere in past events, though Faust knew what I’d do to causality if I did. It was a terrifying prospect — no wonder this stuff was illegal!

Across the auditorium a gray hoof went up.

The professor sighed. “Yes, Maud?”

“If we know that something as strange as crystal math is real, then why do you continue to deny the possibility that aurthurium exists?”

I felt my past self roll her eyes. Present me didn’t agree. Maud had shown me quite a bit of evidence since then.

“Find me a sample of aurthurium, Maud, and we’ll talk.”

“I can’t,” said Maud. “There’s a conspiracy to cover up its existence.”

The class laughed.

Pain lanced through my chest. The pain pulled me forward in time. I was in Flim and Flam’s office over Vanilla’s. There was gunfire, and the whistling of flingstones. Windows were breaking. Rarity was rushing towards me. I was dying. I gritted my teeth and concentrated as hard as I could.

Back. Back.

I was leaving Pinkie Pie’s party with Rarity. I fell to my knees in pain.

“Oh my goodness, Frazzle dear, are you all right?”

Back. Further back. There was something very important I needed to do.

I was in my bed, back on the farm. Daddy was huge. Bigger than the sky. I couldn’t be more than six. He was sitting on the edge of my bed, reading to me by candlelight. I sat up, and thumped him on the shoulder.

“Daddy. You’re going to start having stomach pains in three years. It’s not indigestion. It’s stomach cancer, and you have to go to a doctor as as soon as it starts.”

He stopped reading and turned to look at me, looking confused. “Where’d you learn all those big scary words, little sprout?”

“You have to listen. You have to listen, Daddy. You’re going to die.”

He stroked my head. “Aw, sprout, you must’ve drifted off and had a bad dream. Daddy’s fine.”

Pain jerked me forward again. I dug in as hard as I could.

Our meeting with Jack that morning flashed by. Rarity and I had exchanged apologies in the hall after the meeting, and had quick, brutal make-up sex in a disused office. I still had Rarity’s toothmarks on my plot when we talked to Sassy later that day.

Confronting Sassy again. While we were talking, I shifted my badge from my left breast pocket to my right. The pain in my chest didn’t get any better. Oh well. It was worth a try.

Flash forward. Vanilla’s brothel. The madam, Vanilla Delights, watched warily as two strapping goon-ponies — with brass horseshoe and broken kneecap cutie marks respectively — led Rarity, Sassy, and me across her foyer, through a door marked ‘employees only’, and up the back stairs. I desperately hoped Vanilla wasn’t involved in this. Not that I ever frequent her establishment. I would never do that.

The back areas had the same burgundy-and-dark-cherry decor as the customer area. Crystal lights dressed up to look like old-fashioned gas lights hung on the walls. I took stock of the goons escorting us. Tough ones, and clearly packing revolvers under their suit coats. Revolvers. Rubbish. Limited ammo, slow rate of fire, prone to jamming, and always lethal — the user had no control of projectile velocity. But they looked lovely. A unicorn weapon in all respects. Earth ponies could fire them with their mouths if they wanted to for some reason, but we had a saying — never bring a gun to a rock fight. If only they hadn’t taken my quiver of flingstones off me at the door.

Horseshoes opened the last door on the left. Two lanky, red-maned unicorns were sipping brandy in plush recliners. Black suits. Black boater hats. From the look on her face, Rarity had met them before.

“Flim. Flam,” said Rarity. “I might’ve known.”

“Just a pair of honest business ponies trying to make an honest day’s profit,” said the one with the mustache.

“And what, I say, what brings us the pleasure of your company on this fine evening?” said the one without.

Rarity tossed her head. “Well. I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn that my employee here” — she inclined her head towards Sassy, whose back knees were shaking violently — “has been using my fine establishment as a front for a gem smuggling operation. And worse, she did so without taking the trouble to first obtain my permission!”

“Shocking,” deadpanned mustache.

“How very gauche of her,” agreed the other.

“Yes. And to make matters still worse, the gems being smuggled are of a heavily proscribed nature. If I may?”

Flim and Flam nodded. Rarity levitated a chunk of crystal math out of the dark trenchcoat she was wearing.

“Why, I’ve never seen anything like this before. Flim, have you?” said the one with the moustache.

“I have no, I say, absolutely no idea what I’m looking at, Flam,” said the other one.

“Don’t play dumb, boys,” said Rarity, tossing the gem into Flim’s lap. “So. I certainly don’t want to involve the law in this matter…”

“An interesting thing for you to say…” said Flim.

“…because we happen to have been informed that your skinny purple friend is an agent of the Canterlot Geological Survey. What could have given you the temerity, the gall, the gumption, and dare I say it, the unmitigated stupidity to bring an officer of the peace with you to lay these baseless accusations at our hooves?” said Flam.

“Added value,” explained Rarity. “I’m here to see that I’m fairly compensated for services that I am already providing. But I understand that you’re unlikely to be happy about paying for what you’ve previously been getting for free. Frazzle here feels that the Principality does not sufficiently compensate her for her services, and, given adequate remuneration, would be interested helping keep your operation out of the government’s view.”

I nodded. I find when it comes to subterfuge, I do best if I keep my mouth shut. Especially when woozy with pain from something that hasn’t even happened yet.

“We are of course, blameless of any wrongdoing. But if, and I say if, we were to consider your proposal…” said Flam.

“…we would first require a gesture of good faith. A demonstration of Frazzle’s willingness to play ball,” said Flim.

Were they going to make me kill somepony? I really hoped they didn’t make me kill somepony.

Flam gestured for his goons to drag a table into the center of the room. It had a large hoof mirror and a straight razor on it. It also had a stone ashtray in the near corner that I would already have made use of later in the timeline, if that makes any sense. Sometimes I do get things right on the first try. Flam crushed the crystal gently on the mirror, and divided it into lines with the razor.

“There,” he said, pushing the mirror over to me. “Prove you are not acting as an officer of the law.”

I struggled to keep a straight face. If they were going to give me an excuse to do drugs at work, I wasn’t going to pass it up. Jack would understand. Anyway, you know how the rest goes. I can’t write about Rarity’s ensuing negotiations because I don’t really remember any details. Things only got really clear again when they handed her a suitcase full of Principality scrip.

The next seven seconds were very busy. I slowed my perception of time to a crawl. I didn’t have a lot of timeline left. I needed to make the most of if. The first thing that happened was that the EUP pegasi who had been observing the transaction started coming through the windows. Sassy hit the floor — she wasn’t completely stupid, apparently. Rarity’s horn flashed, I heard a sickening squishing noise, and the goon next to me — Horseshoes, I think — went down clutching at his groin. Rarity wasn’t above fighting dirty.

Rarity turned to the other goon, who had his gun halfway levitated out of its holster. The gun froze in midair, and Rarity and Kneecapper stood, horns blazing, eyes locked, stuck in some sort of magical unicorn slap fight. I grabbed the ashtray with my mouth. Actual cigarette ashes in it. Yuck. But stone — good, solid stone. It felt like it was a part of me. Marksmanship was hardly my strong suit, but at this range I could hardly miss. Future pain seared my chest. I was having a hard time focusing.

Flam rose out of his chair, levitating a revolver out from under his suit coat. The first time through, I had flung the ashtray at him, cracking his skull and knocking him out. I knew exactly where that future lead. Flim would pick up his brother’s gun and shoot me in the chest. The pain I was feeling told me that relocating my badge to the likely point of impact wasn’t going to be enough to save me. I concentrated until my head hurt, nearly stopping time. The effort made veins throb in my eyes. I didn’t know how long I could hold it. I needed to think. I realized that Flam was aiming at Rarity. He didn’t see me as a threat. Typical racist unicorn.

I didn’t want to die.

Without thinking, I flicked my head, and sent the ashtray spinning in a perfectly calculated ballistic arc into Flim’s forehead. The pain in my chest vanished instantly. Flam pulled the trigger. I spun and kicked the table up, drug paraphernalia flying off of it as it slammed into him. But I was too late. I heard Rarity cry out. I looked up and saw her collapse. The goon she had been fighting went down in a hail of flingstones. Rough pegasi in black armor had to pull me off of Flam so they could cuff him. I’d gotten a few good kicks in. Not enough to give him more than a bloody nose.

———

I was outside in the street, sitting on the back of an ambulance, a blanket over my shoulders and a cup of coffee in my hooves. Police wagons were everywhere. Jack and Maud were there. Maud said they’d found over three million bits’ worth of crystal math in Vanilla’s basement.

I was still high. Math hammered through my veins, keeping me constantly aware of my pulse, body temperature, blood pressure, and blood oxygen levels. Police lights flashed 255-79-160, 135-204-255, 255-79-160, over and over and over. I wished they’d stop.

I had watched them wheel Rarity into an ambulance. She was alive and lucid. We had touched hooves. Some of Flam’s nose blood smeared from my hoof onto hers. She thanked me for saving her. The paramedics said she’d be fine. She’d be fine. But I knew she’d have a scar. And every time I saw it, I’d remember how I’d failed.

I tried to go back into my own timeline again, but however I’d blundered into that trick I couldn’t do it any more. I wished I’d left well enough alone. I could have given my life for Rarity. In that room I hadn’t wanted to die. But now I felt so guilty that I thought that being dead might be better.

Maybe it had all been a hallucination? That did seem like the simpler explanation. Maybe I was only a coward in my dreams.

Maud sat down on the tailgate next to me. She put a foreleg around my shoulders. She was warm — 37.5 degrees centigrade, to be exact. I put my head against hers and closed my eyes.