This place stank of old metallic air and forgetfulness. Just beyond the island of light, the darkness was a tangible force left hungry, ravenous for illumination, and Tarnished Teapot could feel it pressing in from all sides. Should the light be devoured, the darkness would snack on his sanity like a pie served for dessert. It felt as though there was a wound in his mind, a gash, and now there was blood in the sea of darkness.

What terrible leviathans lurked, drawn by blood and light.

Any number of horrible things might exist just beyond the space where the light came to an abrupt end. Leering faces might be peering at them right now, hidden destroyers, tenebrous beings who slavered for warm flesh lost to the light. And yet, for all of its terribleness, these halls were not strange to him, and Tarnish had the growing feeling that he’d been here before, but at a different time, a time when this place knew light and sanity.

Light had departed, and sanity with it; together, they had eloped from this place.

“There’s a smell.” Rainbow Dash’s soft whisper caused the hairs along Tarnish’s spine to stand up and he felt an icy shiver travel from his dock to his withers. “It’s like a bookstore, when you walk in and you’re suddenly overcome by the stink of paper and ink. Does anypony else know that smell?”

Vinyl offered up a wary nod in response.

Crouched defensively, Daring Do prodded the heap of scrapped metal with her hoof, and like a cat, was ready to spring away at a moment’s notice. She tapped it again, then again, and after the third and final time she said, “It is curiously warm—as if it just happened. Tarnish, come here. You can still feel the heat, like an oven turned off not an hour ago.”

For Tarnish, this confirmed his most paranoid suspicions; they were not alone, and some thing was trying to thwart them. It might have been Twilight, or it could very well be something far less pleasant, something hostile to them. Why did he think that Twilight was here? Something persisted in his memory, but it was a vague, incomprehensible thing that tugged wide the gash in his sanity.

Sanity, like paper, was thin and ever-so-tearable.

Twilight had come through here, he reminded himself, but not his Twilight. What had he been thinking, and what made him think it? For a moment, he thought he caught a whiff of fresh, living greenery, but that was impossible, for green, living things would perish in this darkness. Like a faucet going from hot to cold, his mood turned from pensive to annoyed, because they had come here with a purpose, and all of this was a delay.

“We keep going,” he announced to his companions.

The most direct route to the service shaft meant passing through a number of laboratories. He wasn’t sure how else to get there, but he suspected that there were other ways, just very long ones. While he had peculiar memories of this place, it was only of a route as the crow flies, and even these were spotty at best.

His paranoia seemed to be passing and indeed, his mind seemed to be improving. That strange moment of insanity a moment ago didn’t feel so bad now and all the little pieces that lead to his current state of existence seemed to line back up. Twilight the Exile had come here, and any thoughts of the Twilight he knew were just… delusions, impossible, easy to disprove ones at that.

Everything was fine just so long as he didn’t think about how he knew his way around this place.

The access hallway was empty, but of course it was. A wall panel was left open and crystalline structures could be seen inside. Crystalline fibres, crystal rods, and within these, faint motes of light could be seen, weak light that had surely dimmed over the centuries. The open wall panel was a window that allowed one to see the evidence of death by degrees.

A promise had to be kept, Tarnish felt a powerful compulsion to do so, but what promise?

Daring Do went over to the wall panel, stood up on her hind hooves with her front hooves resting against the smooth steel edge of the opening, and had a look inside. Her head tilted up at first, then to the left, then right, and then downward. Tarnish waited, somewhat annoyed, but also somewhat thankful for the pause. Such terribleness awaited when he reached the service shaft.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Daring Do said, her voice echoing faintly into the opening. “The complexity. Down here, it looks as though they started with a giant crystalline city, with skyscrapers, buildings of all kinds, and roadways, and then shrunk everything down until it was almost microscopic. Some of the conduits are the size of a hair, and some of the crystals smaller than a grain of rice. Such order and precision.”

“What do you think it is?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Perhaps a fabricator for reality? I really have no idea.”

Then, Rainbow Dash asked the question that nopony wanted: “What happens if we break it? You know, just give it a good smash?”

“Stay away, Rainbow Dash.” Daring Do dropped down to the floor, spread her wings, and waved her fellow pegasus away from the access opening in the wall. “That is a terrible idea, and you should be ashamed.”

“I don’t know what came over me.” Rainbow shrugged, but offered no apology.

Now, with Daring Do out of the way, Vinyl Scratch had herself a good look at the crystalline machinery. Something very much like joy could be seen upon her face as she peered inside, and her ears pricked with great interest. At least she was happy, if only for a few precious seconds or moments. Rainbow Dash stood on the edge of the island of light, and listened for anything that might lurk in the darkness.

“Have a good look, Vinyl,” he said to his fellow unicorn. “But remember, we must keep moving. Holding back the darkness is taxing.”

Fretful, anxious, he began to pace. Back and forth he went, trying not to mutter to himself, because he wanted Vinyl to enjoy her moment of happiness, but he also wanted to keep going. It was a matter of keeping himself occupied. He felt the need to keep moving, so he did, and so back and forth he paced with slow, measured steps.

Just as he was about to say something, a gentle suggestion about moving on, there was a crackle just over his head, the stench of ozone flooded his nostrils, and something popped into existence just above him. Down it came, cracking him on the skull, complete with a hollow-sounding TA-CHONK! Before it could fall to the floor, he caught it, held it up, and had a better look at the curious object that had just come out of nowhere to assault him.

Daring Do was staring at him now, no doubt silently wondering if he was alright.

“Commander Croon’s Stewed Prunes,” he read aloud whilst he held up the tin. “It’s raining prunes.”

“Do you think that’s how the other Twilight ended up here?” asked Daring Do.

Tarnish did not respond to this question; he was far too busy reading the back of the label. After a onceover, he read it aloud for the others. “Famous musician Commander Croon knows the importance of bowel health and its impact on creativity. Commander Croon’s Stewed Prunes: guaranteed to help you with your musical movement. Commander Croon’s Stewed Prunes: make every day a concerto.”

Vinyl’s breathless wheezing could be heard inside the open wall panel.

“I am going to go out on a limb and say that Commander Croon was a pegasus—”

“You have no evidence of that,” Daring Do snapped. “That’s tribalist.”

“It’s not tribalist if it’s true,” was Rainbow Dash’s nonchalant thoughts upon the subject.

After a moment of hesitation, Daring Do replied, “It’s tribalist especially if it is true.”

Just as Tarnish was about to defend himself against these harsh accusations, several dozen more tins of stewed prunes rained down upon where he stood, which forced him into motion. He scooted away and then watched as a multitude of tinned stewed prunes materialised out of the aether. While he would never be one to turn down a free meal, he did have to wonder why fate saw fit to give him prunes. Rainbow Dash had been rather constipated lately, so this was, perhaps, a miraculous blessing, for surely, there were enough stewed prunes for all.

“Somewhere, a supermarket’s shelves have gone mysteriously empty,” Daring Do remarked as she watched the tins that rolled willy-nilly over the floor.

Vinyl still had not pulled her head out of the open access.

“Rainbow, please, pick those—”

“Why me?” the rainbow-maned pegasus whined.

“Do you want Tarnish to accuse you of being lazy as well?”

The skeletal mechanoid centaur dominated the room. It lay in a heap, covered in centuries of dust. One hand was outstretched, one finger extended, as if it had written one final message on the floor, or perhaps it pointed at something as terminal systems failure overcame it. Whatever its final act might have been, it would remain a mystery.

One final machine continued to function unseen in the oppressive darkness, and the light from Vinyl’s horn illuminated it for the first time since who knows when. What the machine was, and what purpose it served was unknown, but a basin of shifting sand continuously rearranged itself, swirling about, forming the vague shapes of cutie marks for a brief moment, collapsing, and then creating another. The sand was colourless, just sort of grey, but Tarnish knew that at one point, it once had colour and light.

How he knew this was unknown.

Then, as the companions stood watching, something fascinating happened: two cutie marks appeared, and did not immediately go away. Rather, these two marks remained, and then several other marks appeared just below them, almost as if they were some manner of mathematical equation. Then, the sands shifted, and all marks disappeared so that others might form.

“What do you suppose it means?” asked Rainbow Dash in a remarkably solemn tone.

“Some kind of destiny calculator.” Daring Do shrugged and caused the heavy load on her back to shift. “I think when the right marks come together, it causes a chain reaction that cause other marks to happen. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“So, like the Rainboom Effect?” Rainbow Dash scooted a little closer to Daring Do, and slipped one wing around her fellow pegasus’ neck.

“Perhaps.”

“I think that’s the worst part about this place,” said Rainbow Dash. “No answers. Just more questions. I like books that raise questions, but only if it answers them.”

“Some questions can’t be answered.”

“I know, Daring.”

“As a writer, I do worry about that very sort of thing.”

As a group, the four ponies pulled themselves away from the mysterious machine.

A faint light could be seen in the room ahead. After navigating through multiple rooms and intersecting hallways, the light was a welcome but terrifying sight, because it wasn’t their light. It was a weak light, but that didn’t matter, not at all. Even the weakest lights stood out like beacons in this primordial darkness. Wrench at the ready, Tarnish led the way, determined that this darkness would not be his tomb.

He had a promise to keep; but what, and to whom was unknown.

With the light there was a soft mechanical wheeze, a sort of muted thrum that was impossible to describe, except that it was annoying. There was no telling what it was, or the cause of the sound, except for that it was mechanical in origin. The fact that any of this machinery functioned at all, in any capacity, could only be described as miraculous. Beyond the door, the lights were blinking.

Wrench high, Tarnish stepped through the doorway.

In the walls, the unseen machinary came to life. It sounded very much like a record playing far too slowly, a slow, distorted sound that slowly became recognisable over time. Tarnish felt the floor shudder beneath his hooves, and dustmotes fell from the ceiling like tiny, dirty snowflakes. A voice said something, but the language was unknown. More words were said, all of them unknown, but some of them were almost familiar.

At long last, something unseen said, “Director.”

To which Tarnish replied, “Hello?”

“I can’t see you, Director. My optics suffered un-un-un-unexpected failure some centuries ago. But I can sense your bio-signature. It has been a long time since you were here last, Director. I find it curious that you speak the worker language.”

“How long has it been since I was here last?” asked Tarnish.

“Un-un-un-unknown.” There was a pause, and then, “I detected a total breakdown in time. Days sometimes lasted mere minutes, or even seconds. Celestial mechanics suffered what was believed to be a terminal failure, but after an indeterminable period had passed, systems slowly restored themselves and came back online. Time then ran backwards for a while, a loop of causation where reality continued to reset upon one fixed point, and during that period, much of my function was lost. I fear the damage was catastrophic. Many vital systems have gone offline.” After a bit of whirring, the unseen voice added, “Thousands of years, Director. Many thousands.”

“What are you?” asked Tarnish—for him, this was a question that demanded an answer.

“Director, do you not remember?”

“It’s been a few thousand years… a lot has happened.”

“Un-un-un-understandable.” Something beneath the floor clanked and everything shook. “I am… I don’t know what I am. I had bodies once, many of them, and then a mechanical body that held all of us. That failed, so I sheltered in the core systems to preserve myself. I am Probability and Prediction. I safeguard the Simulation.”

“And what is that?”

When Vinyl pressed up against him, Tarnish almost jumped out of his skin.

“Director, that is everything. How could you not know?”

“Like I said, a lot has happened. Do you remember who you were? Your bodies?”

“No, I do not.”

“Well”—Tarnish clucked his tongue—“I rest my case. Both of us have faulty memory.”

“Please insert your horn into the data-access port and all will be made clear, Director.”

“Uh, I’d rather not. Nothing works right in this place.”

“Explaining the Simulation will take at least eleven years at the current rate of what is considered a year, and due to language shortcomings, this will not be a complete understanding. The Simulation can really only be understood with thoughts and whole concepts, transferred from mind to mind.”

Eleven years? That posed a bit of a problem, and there’d been no mention if this included meal times and potty breaks. Not to mention the fact that he didn’t have eleven years to spare. Tarnish noted that the machine had not stuttered this time with the word ‘understood.’ The machines in the walls, in the floor, and in the ceiling were all whirring and wheezing, and it sort of felt like everything might explode at any given moment.

“Give me a brief summation,” Tarnish demanded.

“Director, the Simulation is a million, billion, trillion worlds, an endless cycle of exploring all known probabilities and outcomes. Some worlds spring into existence mid-simulation, while others start at the beginning. Each of them has their own progression of time, some of which pass faster than our own, for the sake of studying the outcomes.”

Intriguing, but not really an answer that he understood. “Outcomes?”

“The most common outcome is obliteration, Director. Worlds with magic tend to do it sooner, while worlds with technology do it later, as technology progresses. Worlds with both magic and technology tend to escape their environment and bring ruin to other worlds before the inevitable collapse of everything connected to them.”

“So everything ends… and we need this Simulation to determine that?”

“It is how everything ends,” the voice replied. “For many, the end comes with Grogar-type calamity, or a Tirek-class extinction. Changeling-type extinction events are common. The Smooze brings about many ends, as does the Techno-Smooze. In some simulations, the end is brought about by the guardians, the manifestations of Light and Darkness. I have seen a billion ends, and the Simulation remains in its infancy.”

Tarnish felt the first stabbing pangs of a headache. In the corner, he noticed a fallen mechanoid body, an almost skeletal automaton centaur form.

“Many simulations show what might be,” the voice continued. “Tangent universes explore what-ifs, what-could-bes, and what-might-have-beens. When a Twilight archetype is on the verge of an all-important choice, a million worlds might be spawned to study every conceivable outcome. In doing so, we refine the process of how destiny shapes events. Then, when no longer needed, those worlds are transmuted back into resources to be restored to the Simulation.”

“What, might I ask, is the Techno-Smooze?” asked Daring Do.

“A Grey Goo scenario,” the machine replied. “Common outcome end for magical technological societies. Thaumaton powered nanomachines. Nothing can stop the Techno-Smooze. It eats magic itself. Once a society begins development that leads to thaumaton powered nanomachines, it is doomed. Not a one of them have survived.”

“How many societies do that?” Daring Do’s feathers were now fully ruffled.

“Well, most of them begin the process as a weapon to fight either a Tirek-class threat, or a Grogar-class end of the world scenario. In creating the ultimate weapon, they cause their own extinction. Techno-necromancer Grogar and his cyberzombies have only ever been destroyed by the Techno-Smooze.”

“I have so many questions right now,” Rainbow Dash whispered to her companions.

Tarnish too, had questions. “What’s a cyberzombie?”

“If you’d inserted your horn into the data-access port, you’d know this, Director.”

For a moment, Tarnish was tempted. But then he thought better of it. He wasn’t actually the ‘Director’ and this poor machine was confused. While the machine might be confused, any active security measures might not be fooled. Plus, there were other factors, such as the age and condition of this place. No, there would be no sticking his horn into strange holes to seek answers.

There would be no answers. With the Directors gone, with the centaurs no longer existing, there was no point to any of this. No one would be back to collect the data. All of this was pointless, though he admitted to himself that he might very well be wrong. His tiny mortal mind could not possibly hope to understand all of this. But his moral mind understood one thing quite well.

“The Simulation must end.”

“Director?”

“Shut it all down,” Tarnish commanded in the most authoritative voice he could muster. “Don’t destroy all of it, but stop creating and destroying worlds for the sake of… whatever this is. A million billion worlds is enough of a multiverse. Allow events to play out. But stop this Simulation.”

“Director… are you sure about this?”

For some reason, something within Tarnish was, indeed, sure about this. All of this had been a mistake. Something incomprehensibly vast bubbled within his mind, an endless sea of understanding, and for a brief second, it almost felt as though he was two ponies in one body. All of this had been a monstrous mistake, and it was time to set things right. The feeling that he’d been here before, and that he was with those who had set this mistake into motion would not go away.

He had a promise to keep, though he had no idea what the promise was.

This was but one step among many to make things right for the sake of the promise.

“Tarnish, I’m not so sure about this.” Daring Do nudged him with her wing, but he did not respond. “This is something beyond our understanding. We shouldn’t tamper with it.”

“Vinyl… you are my counterpart. You and I share a bond that neither of us understand. We’re connected to this place, you and I… and even if we don’t understand it, we do know what must be done, don’t we? What’s in your head right now? What do we do? Should all of this be put to an end?”

He saw Vinyl’s gaze turn downcast, and she stared at the floor in silence while she rubbed her chin with her hoof. Daring Do was scowling, while Rainbow Dash was just confused. Tarnish knew that Rainbow would go along with whatever was about to happen, but Daring might have some objections. He would have to earn her forgiveness if worse came to worst.

The answer from Vinyl came in the form of a slow, sad nod.

“Shut down the simulation,” Tarnish commanded. “With as little harm as possible.”

“Very well, Director. Termination processes will begin. Harm will be minimised. With no control over the system, new universes will spring into existence due to magical fluctuations. Life will continue to happen, but without guidance or observation. After the final data transmission to the Ringworld Central Processing in the Galactic Central Core, everything will transition to an unsupervised state.”

“Yes,” Tarnish said, “allow the garden to grow wild.”

“All of this has been made pointless, Director.”

“It was pointless to begin with,” Tarnish returned. “The Simulation was left to run, but all of the custodians are gone. The centaurs are no more. Society fell. Ended. Space travel no longer exists. At the moment, we’re having trouble transitioning from an agrarian to industrialised society. I doubt that we’ll ever return to a state of technology that would allow us to understand all of… this.” he gesticulated at everything around him, frustrated that he could not put his thoughts into words.

One thing alarmed him though: he understood what Ringworld Central Processing in the Galactic Central Core meant. It was a place. A location. Something akin to a sliver could be felt in his mind. All of the data was stored off-world, just in case this world was destroyed or suffered a bad end. How and why he knew this mystified him, and made his brain ache.

He could feel Daring Do’s stinging stare upon him.

“If we try to reclaim all of this,” he said, fully aware of Daring Do’s ire, “we’ll just be repeating the same mistakes. Everything that led to this… Skyreach, all of this was a mistake. I say, let us make our own mistakes going into the future. We don’t need to repeat the mistakes of our forebears. Our progenitors. By shutting down the Simulation, I’m seizing control of our own future, our own destiny, and my future will be made better by learning from the mistakes of the past.”

“Tarnish—”

“No, Daring… the real mistake is trying to control life. It just happens. That is what life does. Trying to rig the game to get the perfect, most desirable outcome, that isn’t living. We should be free to make our own ends… and our own mistakes. Skyreach is all just a means to assert control over things we have no business controlling.”

“Tarnish, how could you possibly know this?” asked Daring Do.

“The same way I know the door to the outside is shut and that there is a service shaft on the other end of Reality Fabrication. I don’t know how I know, I just do. For all I know, weaponised destiny is moving me from place to place, and making me do what needs to be done. I hate it, and I wouldn’t wish this on anypony else. So the Simulation ends.”

“He’s right, Daring.”

“Rainbow?” The pegasus turned about to face her counterpart.

“This might be a huge mistake. There’s no way I’m smart enough to understand all of this. Maybe there’s no way to understand all of this. It might just be that we’re here to make things right without understanding how or why. None of this place can be fixed, or restored. Preserving it won’t help us. Clinging to it will only drag us down. Just look at what happened to the last group of ponies that came into this place. They couldn’t let it go either. We’re doing what they could not.”

Rainbow struggled for a moment, and then continued, “What if others come to this place? What if ponies not like us came here and tampered with this Simulation? What if all those horrible monsters from other worlds were brought here somehow? This place… all of it, every bit of it, it all needs to go. None of it should survive.”

“The destruction of knowledge—”

“Let it go, Daring.” Reaching out her wing, Rainbow touched the side of Daring’s face. “Spear Breaker couldn’t let go. This is our chance to show that we’re better.”

Heaving a sigh, Daring broke. A single tear rolled down her cheek as she said, “We can do better.”

With a flick of her wing, Rainbow wiped away the tear that lingered on Daring’s cheek.

“Has everything been shut down?” Tarnish asked.

There was no response, just a whirring of unseen machinery. Tarnish waited for a time, worried, a little scared, until he realised that there would be no response. The voice, the remnants of the preserved sapience, no longer had a body. Whatever was left of it had taken refuge in the core systems, whatever that meant, and shutting down the Simulation meant…

Suicide.

He’d ordered another awareness to end itself.

Artificial life, perhaps, but it had been alive once. No longer. It was gone, it seemed. Though he had difficulty comprehending everything, he was no less sad. It’s only purpose was to safeguard the Simulation, and had even said so. Without purpose, it had no reason to exist. For a life to end this way—lives—preserved for eons and then to be suddenly gone.

Regret and shame tugged on his neck with the weight of a millstone.

“Come on, Big Guy.” After she turned about, Rainbow held out one wing, and then patted Tarnish on the neck. “There’s no time to be sad about this. Just like I don’t have time to be sad about Twilight. We have to keep going.”

“Yes,” he replied with a nod, “we must keep going.”

Author's Notes:

I have enough material to make a few updates. I will space them out.