Meg looked around the empty room. Before the mirror had been moved to its current, secure location at the palace in Canterlot; before it had been moved to a grassy field dozens of miles from the Crystal Empire; before it had been moved to a closet in the back of the ballroom at the top of the Sombra’s old castle; it was in this room, where Twilight had passed through it to recover her Element.

That was a few years ago. Now, all that was in the room was herself, Steve, Twilight, Cadance and Shining Armor… and Discord. What kind of solitaire game is that? she wondered. Something chaotic, she concluded, after watching him pick up a card then toss it down; the card had bounced around a dozen times before coming to a rest.

Twilight trotted to the door. “Please follow me to the departure point.”

Meg exchanged a look with her husband. This is it. She walked over to Twilight, Steve by her side. Cadance and Shining Armor joined them.

The ponies looked at Discord. The draconequus sliced a card in half using a talon. Both halves grew back into complete cards as the nearby cards ran away screaming in terror.

Twilight’s frown deepened. “Whenever you’re ready, Discord.”

“Yes, yes.” He placed one card on top of another. What looked like a black hole opened up, sucked in all the cards, then went poof, leaving nothing behind. He smiled and got up. “That’s four wins in a row.”

“What would a loss look like?” Meg just couldn’t help asking.

Discord made a face as if eating something distasteful. “All the cards would be in some orderly pattern. There are so many of them. It’s surprisingly hard to avoid.”

Okay… That did not sound like a game she had any interest in learning.

“We’re going to the guest room I was staying in at the time.” Twilight began walking. “It’s at the other end of this corridor.”

Meg followed, the others following behind her, as she thought that over. It made sense. Nopony would be in that room, because at that time Twilight had been at Canterlot High.

Most of them gathered inside the royal guest room. Cadance and Shining Armor remained just outside.

Twilight began casting the shield spell.

“Be careful, Twily.”

“I will, Shiny,” she replied, just before the shield cut off all sight and sound of the royal couple.

Twilight’s horn got even brighter. “Discord, you can now add your magic to the time travel spell.”

Would it work? Did they overlook something that would cause the spell to fail?

All Discord had done was close his eyes, but that seemed to have done the trick. Meg found herself suddenly weightless, her wings flaring out by instinct. She resisted the urge to flap them; she’d only bang her head on the inner surface of the shield above her. Looking around, she could see that everypony else was floating too.

No question about it; they were on their way.

Finally, we’ll get to the bottom of this.

Hopefully.

Just because the trip back through time was happening, she reminded herself, didn’t mean they would achieve their goals.

“Any interesting observations?” Twilight asked.

The question had been directed at Steve. His eyes were closed, his horn active. “Nothing unexpected. We’re in a large, more-or-less spherical bubble of space-time. The local geometry is flat, hence no gravity. We’re barely connected to the universe—just a contact patch, theoretically smaller than an atom, allowing us to pass through history without affecting it. The geometry of that patch is massively warped, no question about it.” He opened his eyes. “I assume that means we’re on our way.”

Twilight let out a breath. “That does match the theoretical model. It won’t be long before we know one way or the other.”

“So what’s the plan when we arrive?” Meg asked. That they would arrive wasn’t in doubt as far as she was concerned; Cadance had confirmed it. “I mean, we can’t just go to the mirror. Your friends are there waiting for you to return.”

Twilight’s ears sagged. “I know. And they never mentioned seeing me before I returned through the mirror.”

“Is it asking too much for them to keep quiet about our presence?” Steve asked.

She grimaced. “I don’t think all of them are good enough actors to pull that off, however willing they may be to try.”

“This would be the first time they saw Steve and I—if they saw us. I never had the sense that they’d seen us before when we met them for the first time.”

Twilight looked at Discord. “And they never mentioned having seen you.”

The draconequus smirked. “I can be subtle when I want to be, you know. I just need to create a distraction, and they’ll never know we were here.”

Twilight pondered that for a moment. “Maybe, maybe not. Don’t forget that we’ll encounter Cadance. Perhaps we should start with her. She could be the distraction that clears out that room for us.”

“What’s the fun in that?” he grumbled.

“That assumes we bump into Cadance before we go through the mirror,” Meg pointed out, “not after we come back.”

“I’m just keeping our options open,” Twilight said. “We just don’t know what we’ll encounter.”

Because Cadance wouldn’t tell us. Because you made her Pinkie Promise not to.

Perhaps the biggest joke was that all of those scenarios were possible stable time loops. Which one turned out to be reality was a literal roll of the dice. It wouldn’t even matter if Cadance had told them everything. In each possible time loop, she would have said what had happened in that version of the loop. Who knows? Maybe there were possible loops where Twilight had not extracted a Pinkie Promise. Or maybe Shining Armor was involved instead of Cadance. It was all a gigantic superposition of a wave function.

They didn’t get to chose how the wave function collapsed.

“We’ve arrived.” Twilight dropped the shield.

Meg looked around. The guest room looked the same—no, that wasn’t true. There was Twilight’s suitcase, and on the nightstand was a pile of books. The books rose into the air and started flying about the room.

“Discord, put them back.” Twilight then addressed the others. “Everything must be as it was. I don’t remember anything being disturbed when I got back.”

The draconequus pouted. “Fine.” The books returned to the nightstand. “It’s not like I can change anything even if I tried.”

With her magic, Twilight took her time exactingly tweaking the pile to her satisfaction.

“I guess we’re really here,” Meg said. “So now what?”

Twilight answered that by looking at Discord. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but the least chaotic way of getting Cadance’s attention is you.”

He looked askance at her. “You’re joking, right?”

“I wish I was. I’m supposed to be on the other side of that mirror, and nopony here has ever seen these two before. That leaves you. Just… snap you talons or something, appear next to her, and bring her here.”

Discord grinned a predatory smile. “I can do better.”

Before Twilight could object, he snapped his talons. Cadance appeared in the room.

“Wha—? Discord! Why have—Twilight?!”

Twilight quickly shut the door. Cadance spun around at the sudden sound, and spotted the other two ponies in the room. “And who are you?”

“Cadance, please calm down and listen. We’re from the future and we need your help.”

Cadance turned back to Twilight. “From the future,” she carefully said. “Doesn’t that spell last only seconds?”

“Different spell. We’re here as long as we want.”

“So, just to be clear, the ‘you’ in the present is still on the other side of that mirror.”

“That’s right. And we need to go through that mirror, without my friends being the wiser. Actually, it’d be best if nopony knew besides you.”

Cadance cast a scanning spell on Twilight.

“I’m not a changeling, as you can see.”

She nodded. “I had to make sure. It must be important if you’ve brought Discord with you.” She turned to the draconequus. “You are from the future, right?”

“Yes, yes, we all are.”

Her attention fell on Meg and Steve. “And you two are…?”

“Ponies you won’t meet for over a year,” Twilight quickly said. “And when you do, you must pretend you hadn’t seen them before.”

“From at least a year in the future…”

“Look, I know you have many questions, but time is of the essence. We need to pass through that portal in the next half-hour. So if you could get everypony to leave that room for a few minutes…”

“That… shouldn’t be a problem. What about when you return?”

“We’ll return shortly after the present ‘me’ returns, when the portal has supposedly closed for another thirty moons.”

“Supposedly?”

Twilight groaned. “I promise you’ll know everything eventually. You were there when we departed. For now, the less you know about the future, the better.”

“I guess… that makes sense.” Cadance walked to the door. “Wait here. I’ll teleport back once the room is clear.” She opened the door, walked through, and closed it behind her.

Meg looked at Twilight, curiosity in her eyes. “No Pinkie Promise?”

Twilight smiled back. “Not yet,” she singsonged. “I’ll do that after we get back. Since we know I made her promise, that means we have to come back, otherwise there’d be a paradox.”

“Technically,” Steve began, “you have to come back. There’s no paradox if the rest of us don’t.”

“Uh… right.” Twilight added, sheepishly, “Well, there’s no paradox if you do, either.”

Discord rolled his eyes, but thankfully said nothing.

“Nopony is suggesting that anypony will fail to come back,” Meg said, “so let’s just change the subject.”

An awkward silence grew.

“How long should it take Cadance to clear that room?” Steve asked.

“Beats me,” Twilight said. “I have no idea how she could convince them all to leave that mirror, even briefly.”

It was another two minutes before Cadance teleported back to them.

“That took a bit longer than expected,” she said in apology, “but you can teleport to the mirror.”

“Thanks, Cadance.” Twilight went next to Meg and Steve, then looked at Discord. “I’ll teleport these two.” And she did.

Discord and Cadance followed.

The mirror was in front of them. It didn’t look any different to Meg, but there was no reason it ought to have. “After you?” she asked Twilight.

Twilight walked up to her shimmering reflection. “Remember that first step is a doozy.”

“How could I forget?”

The alicorn stepped into the portal and was gone. Discord went through next.

Steve walked up to the portal next.

“Don’t forget: you’ll be sorta human on the other side,” Meg told him.

“Right.” He went through.

Meg took her place in front of the portal.

“What’s ‘human?’” Cadance asked.

Meg’s focus remained on her pegasus reflection. “You’ll find out eventually.”

She stepped through.

Canterlot High stood in front of her once again, only this time no students were out and about. There was bipedal Twilight, standing next to an unchanged Discord, and next to him…

She walked up to her husband, who was busy checking himself out. “That’s pretty much how I expected you to look,” she said.

He looked her over from head to toe. “There are so many questions this raises, but I guess I know better than to ask them.”

“We can’t even blame magic, given there’s none here.”

“The mirror itself is magical,” Steve countered.

“While you two are trying to make sense of this place,” Twilight said, “Discord, do what you need to do.”

He gave her an convoluted salute and vanished.

“I wonder where he went?” Steve asked.

“To the school library, I’m guessing.” Meg faced the main entrance, expecting Discord to return on foot. “The controls for the hyperspace portal are there.”

And it wasn’t long before he came through those doors, not on foot but by wing.

“The hyperspace portal’s open,” Meg said. It had to be open; that’s why he didn’t teleport back—though why teleportation and an open hyperspace portal didn’t mix was still unknown to her. She walked around to the back of the statue, not waiting for Discord to rejoin them.

There she waited, staring at the concrete base. She wasn’t even tempted to test the portal by poking her hand through.

Steve was by her side. He reached for the portal.

She slapped his hand away. “Don’t even think it until Discord is on the other side. No symmetry breaking out there, remember?”

He yanked his hand back. “Right. All the fundamental forces are unified. Bad for things made out of subatomic particles.” He studied with his eyes the concrete base for himself. “I wonder what keeps the air from being sucked out?”

Twilight had joined them. “We’ve never been able to take a physical object from this place back to Equestria. I suspect that material substances here aren’t ‘real’ in a physical sense.”

Steve let out a long whistle. “I can only imagine how many human scientists would sell their souls to come to this place and study it, to find out what ‘stuff’ here is made of. Never mind what’s through that portal.”

Discord drifted around to their side of the statue. “As fascinating as I would find chaperoning a gaggle of human scientists in hyperspace, I can only keep magical creatures functioning in that place.”

That was what Discord had told Meg the last time she’d followed him through that portal.

“Can humans function in this place?” Steve asked. “Would they remain human? Fully human, I mean.”

Discord tapped his chin. “No, I believe not. They’d turn into ponies while keeping their hair color and skin tones.”

Steve shook his head. “Well, that’s symmetry for you.”

“And it wouldn’t do them any good in hyperspace,” Meg said, “because they’d turn human again once they enter it.”

Steve smiled. “Becoming a magical pony is a lot cheaper than selling one’s soul.”

Meg peeked around the corner. Still no activity. “We won’t have much warning. It starts with Snips and Snails running right past here, with Twilight—er, past Twilight—not far behind. Then Sunset shows up—”

Twilight held up a hand. “We get the picture. Perhaps we should wait on the other side.” She addressed Discord. “Can we listen in from there?”

“I see no reason why not.”

A door slammed open. Meg pulled back. “Guys? We need to go. Now.”

Discord sprung into action, leaping through the portal.

Meg was right behind him. A familiar void of absolute darkness engulfed her. She turned around with a flap of her wings. Through a shimmering rectangle came first her husband and then Twilight, both also restored to their true pony forms.

Steve’s mouth hung open. “This is really it. Hyperspace.”

Meg drifted over to the portal, as close as she dared. “Yes, now be quiet. I’m trying to listen.”

Seconds ticked by in silence, then…

“That’s close enough!”

“Twilight!”

“Don’t hurt him!”

“Oh, I wouldn't dream of it. I'm not a monster, Twilight. … Let him go. … You don't belong here. Give me the crown, and you can go back to Equestria tonight. Or keep it and never go home.”

Discord held out a small box with a knob on it. “You can use this to turn down the volume, if you’d like.”

Meg drifted back a few feet from the portal. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

“It’s so weird hearing my past self like that.” The alicorn’s head was down, her eyes closed. “It’s just as I remember it.”

Meg scanned the void, looking for what she knew not. What were they supposed to see when the leak began? “It shouldn’t be much longer.”

“Oh, please! What exactly do you think you're going to do to stop me? I have magic, and you have nothing!”

“She has us!”

Twilight sighed. “Not much longer.”

They continued listening. As the Twilight on the other side of the portal said the fateful line, the Twilight on this side echoed them: “The crown may be upon your head, Sunset Shimmer, but you cannot wield it, because you do not possess the most powerful magic of all: the magic of friendship!”

“No! What is happening?!”

“My Element has reached out to the others back in Equestria,” Twilight said, talking over her past self. “The damage that caused the leak is happening right now.”

Steve looked around. “So what are we supposed to see?”

“A tube, sorta,” Meg said. “A glowing green tube.”

Twilight spun around. “I see nothing. Literally nothing, besides us and the portal.”

With a flap, Meg drifted through the endless void closer to Discord. “Let me guess. We need to be ‘rotated’ to see it?”

“Probably, but not yet. It hasn’t formed yet.”

“How long is it supposed to take?” Twilight asked.

“More to the point,” Meg countered, “when will they show up?”

Twilight shrugged. “After it forms?”

How long could they wait? Probably as long as Discord could stay awake, Meg figured. Perhaps even longer. But what if they were way too early? What if it took weeks for that tube to grow across the hyperspatial void to her own universe? Only after it had done that would the mysterious agent bind it to her doll. Right?

Steve’s horn began glowing brightly. “Let’s see if my special talent can sense anything.”

Everypony held their breath.

He winced, but persisted.

Meg drifted over to him. “Is it that bad out there?” She knew all too well that it wasn’t exactly “normal” outside this bubble that Discord had created for them.

“Bad isn’t the word I’d use.” His horn went out. “Outside of this little bubble of ‘normality’ we’re in…” He struggled for words. “I don’t know how to describe it. It’s alien. I can’t make sense of it. That I’m familiar with all the theories… it doesn’t help.”

“So you can’t detect the beginnings of the leak?” Twilight asked.

Steve shook his head. “Not unless it was inside here with us, but then all of us could just see it.”

“Yeah,” Meg said, “it’s hard to miss—so long as we’re rotated in the right direction.”

“I wonder if that… hyper-dimensionality would affect my magic.” He shook his head again and looked at Discord with new appreciation. “How do you do it? Making this bubble for us where the laws of physics are compatible with our existence, never mind keep that outside. The middle of a neutron star is a more hospitable place for us. Hell, the center of a black hole might be more hospitable to us!”

Discord rubbed his lion knuckles against his chest in pride. “A simple matter of using its own energy against it. But it does require my constant attention.”

In other words, for as long as Discord could stay awake. However long that was. Meg hoped they wouldn’t have to find out how long that was. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t chaotically fidget out here. He can’t afford the distraction.

Twilight drifted slowly, carefully, to the boundary of their bubble, and tried to examine it for herself with her magic. “What is out there? Theoretically speaking.”

“Our best guess?” Steve said. “A quantum foam so energetic that all the fundamental forces—electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear force, gravity, and I guess magic as well—are unified into a single force. It is from that foam that space-time bubbles randomly pop into and out of existence, and—unimaginably infrequently—a bubble manages to inflate enough to sufficiently lower its energy density to break the symmetry that unifies the forces, creating a random set of physical laws, and becomes a new universe.” He peered into infinity. “Matter as we understand it cannot exist out there. I was really hoping my special talent would be up to the task, but it doesn’t look like it.” He let out a sharp chuckle. “There goes my Nobel Prize in Physics.”

Twilight tapped the boundary. It flashed in response.

“I’d rather you didn’t do that,” Discord said.

Twilight sighed at the void. “What are the odds that two adjacent realms would wind up with the exact same physical laws, besides the laws of magic?”

Steve shrugged. “Being near each other wouldn’t make a difference; it’s all due to quantum fluctuations at the Planck scale. The odds are close enough to zero that it might as well be.”

“And yet it appears to have happened.”

“Maybe that’s proof our theories are full of crap. It’s not like we had a shred of evidence one way or the other—at least until now.”

“But your theories do predict that out there, this ‘quantum foam’ from which realms arise.”

“Like I said: at least until now. I don’t know. Just because they’re not utterly wrong doesn’t mean they’re totally right either. And I don’t see how we can perform experiments out here—out there.”

Meg kept her focus on the void, looking for the developing leak, looking for the mysterious them, looking for anything. “Discord, are you sensing anything yet?”

Twilight drifted back to the others. “Shouldn’t it have started by now?”

Everypony looked at the draconequus.

He closed his eyes. For a few seconds, silence.

“Yes. Yes, I do believe it has formed. Follow me.”

He started to rotate.

He rotated back to them. “Ah. Right.”

Discord floated over to each pony in turn and rotated them. An endless plane, softly glowing in a deep red, was before them. A portal-shaped patch of the plane was tinted yellow, and from that extended a green-glowing tube.

It was just how Meg remembered it, except this time the tube was growing, reaching out to her universe. “Now we wait for them to show up.”

“Should we be this close?” Twilight asked. “We don’t want to scare off whoever they are.”

Meg was about to point out that the past couldn’t be changed, that they would not be scared off—until she realized that all of their deaths would also be consistent with an unchanged past. Did they want to bet that was beyond their means? Or incompatible with their goals?

“They shouldn’t be able to detect us,” Discord said, ”so long as they don’t stumble upon our little bubble.”

“Keep us a safe distance away,” Twilight said.

They followed the tip of the magic-laden wormhole as it extended across hyperspace, picking up speed as it got ever closer to humanity’s space-time. No one else had shown up. No one was guiding the tube.

Discord gave everypony another round of the periodic hyper-rotations, needed to match the curved path of the tube. Another endless plane popped into view, this one a deep, almost ultraviolet. It was impossible to tell how far away it was, but time was clearly running out.

“What are they waiting for?” Meg asked.

“Is it heading for the doll on its own?” Steve asked.

“Even if it was,” Twilight said, “it’s not going to cast that binding spell on its own.”

They continued following the ever extruding tube. A few more minutes passed.

Discord shot forward, magically pulling the others behind him. He reached the tip of the growing tube and held it in place. “It was about to make contact, and we’re nowhere near the doll.”

The tip bulged as it filled with Equestrian magic. They didn’t have much time.

No one else was around. There was nothing besides them, the tube, and the human universe. “Where are they?” Steve asked. “What are they waiting for?”

“How much time do we have?” Twilight asked Discord.

“A few minutes at best.”

The bulge grew. Letting it burst was not an option—could it burst?— even ignoring that the past could not be changed.

They were conspicuous by their continued absence.

The bulge had gotten so big, it was threatening to engulf the draconequus as it tried to go around him, ever pulled to the magic-less universe in front of it. “I can’t keep this up much longer,” he said, his voice strained from the effort.

They needed to do something, anything. “Can you direct it to my doll,” Meg asked, “to buy more time? Maybe they are waiting for it there?”

Discord slowly backed away from the tip, guiding it to a new path. The bulge shrank as it resumed extending in its new direction. “It won’t buy much time,” he said.

The endless plane was featureless to pony senses, but eventually Discord slowed to a crawl. “It’s over there,” he said, pointing. Meg had to take his word for it that the Pinkie Pie doll was on the other side of that featureless boundary to her universe.

They were still nowhere to be found.

Another minute passed.

The bulge was starting to build again, their movement too sluggish to prevent it.

No one else had shown up.

No one else was going to show up.

“Twilight,” Meg slowly began. “About the spell that bound this thing to my doll. You said it was one of Star Swirl’s, right?”

“Right. Only a few ponies know it, and they’ve all been accounted for.” She waved a hoof about. “Do you see any other ponies?”

“You know it, correct?”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course I know it.”

Meg stared at her in silence.

“You’re not suggesting…”

Meg waived her own hoof about. “Do you see Star Swirl the Bearded anywhere?”

Twilight watched the bulge grow larger. “You can’t be serious.”

The bulge was threatening to engulf Discord once more. “A decision would be nice, like, right now?”

It was all becoming crystal clear, painfully clear. “Don’t you get it? There are no others. We are the ones who bind that… that thing to my doll, and we do it because that’s what this stupid time loop requires us to do!”

No one chose her doll out of all the possible attachment points. No one chose her to play a role in some grand scheme. She couldn’t even claim to have made the choice herself, right now, for altering her own past was not a choice she was permitted to make.

She couldn’t deny it anymore. I really do have to break Tirek out of Tartarus—and maybe those goons really did kidnap me at work. Would they stumble onto other time loops? Maybe that’s what the circles in her cutie mark really stood for: time loops.

“Just do it, Twilight.”