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Inevitabilities

by Sharp Quill

Chapter 33: 33. Random Is as Random Does

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The morning traffic was infuriating. Maybe she shouldn’t have picked a library dozens of miles away, but Meg was determined to use a computer that had never been exposed to magic. So not only could she not use her own computers, or the computers at work, but she couldn’t use any computer that had been inside the giant magic bubble that had surrounded her Pinkie Pie doll a year ago.

And speaking of the pink pony, Pinkie Pie had said to use “super duper” random numbers. At first, that didn’t seem to make sense. She had been using the best random number generators known to computer science. The problem, though, is that those were technically pseudo-random, as were all software-based random number generators. Eventually, they all repeated. The best simply took a ludicrously long time to do so. And even those needed a seed to start with; how random was that?

To go truly random, one needed a hardware-based generator. But were those reliably random?

Then it had hit her. There was just one, unimpeachable source of randomness: quantum mechanics. And after a little bit of searching on the internet, she discovered that there were quantum mechanical random number generators, and that there were websites that live-streamed those random numbers.

Perfect.

Perhaps she was being paranoid by avoiding any possibility of magical interference with her acquisition of super duper random numbers—not in generating them, not in transmitting them, and not in displaying them. Zero possibility. Twilight had certainly thought so. It also ruled out having a certain pony tag along on this trip who very much wanted to come along.

Meg had been adamant. Random numbers influenced by magic were not truly random, much less “super duper” random. The only way to ensure that no such influence could happen was by excluding magic.

Naturally, Twilight had found a loophole; the passenger seat next to her was occupied by a human—and quite magic-less—Sunset Shimmer. At least as magic-free as Meg herself was as a human. Not much she could about that.

After far too many traffic jams and red lights, they finally arrived at the chosen library. Once inside, it didn’t take Meg long to find the public internet access computers. Sunset did her best to keep up with Meg as she raced towards the nearest available computer.

Meg plopped down into the chair. A web browser was already open. She barely looked at the webpage it was displaying—about some rising pop musician—before opening a new tab and, from a slip of paper, typed in the URL of the quantum mechanical random number generator.

“Not much to look at,” Sunset said.

And it wasn’t. White text on a black background, mostly, and some pictures of the hardware they used. “I don’t care how it looks.” It belonged to the physics department of a university; HTML wasn’t their speciality. Meg had already visited the page, so she knew what to look for. “There. Live numbers.”

She clicked it. A submenu appeared. She clicked “live streams.” Another submenu appeared. She chose “hex.”

A new page loaded, nearly completely black. Meg read the text for Sunset’s benefit: “These numbers are streamed live from the lab.” A series of hexadecimal numbers was already streaming onto the page. Sixty-four were all she needed, maybe only thirty-two. She clicked “stop” once she had enough. Taking out her phone, she snapped a picture.

“That’s it?” Sunset asked.

Meg verified that the numbers were readable in the photo. “That’s it. We’re done.” And if this worked, that meant the time loop’s wave function was now a superposition of 2256 possibilities of presumably equal amplitude. It was an unimaginably huge number, and one that ignored whatever other superpositions there might have been in progress. Fortunately, that was the universe’s problem, not hers.

“I mean, how are those numbers even generated?”

As much as she wanted to get home and try out the super duper random number as the encryption key, she navigated to the website’s FAQ and pointed at the relevant question and answer. “Their device measures quantum fluctuations of the vacuum. They can produce billions of random bits per second. There’s a published paper on what they’re doing, if you’re really interested.”

Her patience having run out, Meg closed the tab and stood up. “Let’s go.”

It took nearly an hour to drive home. Frustrating as that was, it wasn’t as if those random numbers had an expiration date on them. She’d have to think of some way of preserving them until they could be used to encrypt the message in the future.

Assuming they were the encryption key.

She’d know soon enough.

She pulled into her parking spot. With Sunset Shimmer right behind her, she ran to her apartment, unlocked the door, and went inside.

Twilight was already there. That wasn’t unexpected. Agent Fowler was also there, which caused Meg to curse herself. “Sorry, it completely slipped my mind.” Twilight must’ve let her in.

The agent waved it off. “If you think you’ve got the encryption key, no problem.”

She’d rather read the unencrypted message privately, but did it really matter? It wasn’t as if she could keep the decryption a secret forever. “Let’s find out,” she said as she hurried to her computer.

Once there, she got her phone out, brought up the photo, enlarged it so the hex digits were readable, sat down, and put it aside. The computer was next; she woke it up, unlocked it, and brought up a terminal window.

And hesitated.

There were a quite a bit more than sixty four hex digits in the photo. Which ones to use?

“Is there a problem?” Twilight asked.

Did it matter which ones? They were all “super duper” random. If this was even remotely the right track, it didn’t matter which ones she used. Whatever she picked would work.

She decided to use the first sixty four digits.

“No problem,” she said as she rested her hands on the keyboard. She began typing the decryption command: openssl enc -d -AES256 -in encrypted -out unencrypted -K. Now for the key. She handed the phone to Fowler. “Read the first sixty four digits.”

Fowler did so, and Meg typed it in: 42 41 53 ea 19 f6 98 e1 1d ab d6 e8 47 a9 13 4c c7 df 40 f6 7e 39 0c 9a 9e f3 ea 2a 08 d1 43 f3. Though Fowler paused after every byte, no spaces were typed in.

Meg hit enter.

An error came back: iv undefined.

“I keep forgetting the initialization vector.” An eye roll. “Should default to zero if you ask me.” She repeated the command, by first hitting the up arrow, but then adding -iv 0 to the end.

There was no error—but that didn’t mean it had actually worked. The file unencrypted either had a readable message, or, as had always been the case before, it had more binary garbage. If the latter, she’d try half of the digits as a 128-bit key. Twilight, Fowler, and Sunset crowded behind her.

Meg typed the command cat unencrypted and hit enter.

Meg, I'll get to the point. Meet me in the most secure place you know of; you know what I mean. Only Discord may accompany you, for obvious reasons. Some of your questions shall be answered, but others shall not. You know the drill. As the 'super duper' random key worked, you know this is a time loop, so let me restate the above: it is a *fact* that only you and Discord arrive to this meeting. I know you are reading this, Twilight, so don't even think it. I also know Agent Fowler is reading this; you'll just have to deal with Serrell learning about the time travel that's been going on. That's all for now.

Meg stared at the screen, speechless.

“One of these days,” Twilight muttered, “I’ll figure out how Pinkie does it.”

“There’s time travel going on?”

Fowler was looking at her. “No offense, Jessica, but I don’t need this right now. I’m sure Serrell will have many questions, and it sounds like we’re expected to answer them, but…” Meg gave an exasperated sigh. “That’s a problem for Future Meg.”

Sunset kept her eyes on the decrypted text. “It says where, but not when. That’s an odd omission.”

“Not really,” Twilight said. “Just like we’ll pass on the encryption key, we’ll also pass on when the meeting took place. Basically, it takes place whenever Meg decides to show up.”

“Or whenever Discord decides to help,” Meg muttered. “He may not have a choice as to whether to help, but he sure as hell has a choice as to when.”

Twilight closed her eyes in thought. “That… might not be an accident—not setting a time, that is. That makes the meeting time unconstrained, part of the superposition.”

Fowler grabbed her head with both hands. “Could someone please throw me a bone here? I’m sure that time travel has rules, so, like, what are they? Can the past be changed, can you kill your grandparents—I mean, time travel is actually possible?”

It looked like Future Meg has become Present Meg. The sooner she became Past Meg, the better. Bowing to the inevitable, she began to explain. “The past is immutable. We used time travel to witness Susie’s kidnapping—that was the ‘magic’ we used to record that video—but we couldn’t prevent it.”

Twilight chimed in. “We’ve conducted experiments that tried to alter the past, to create a paradox, and every time we failed. Either the time travel spell didn’t work, or it did work but something gets in the way of changing the past.”

“And this meeting… you’ll be meeting someone from the future, it sounds like?”

Meg looked into the bewildered agent’s eyes. “Sure sounds like it.”

“But it takes place now, in our present?—I mean, it’ll be our present when it does take place?”

“Yep.”

“But wouldn’t our present be their immutable past?”

“You got it.”

“If… if they know the meeting time, it’s part of their immutable past, so how can it be unconstrained? You’re making it sound like you—or Discord—have a choice.”

Meg choose her words carefully. “It’s not so much a… choice, but rather… nondeterministic. You can thank quantum mechanics for that.”

Fowler had nothing to say to that.

“It’s how paradoxes are avoided. They would cause destructive interference in the wave function, resulting in an amplitude of zero. They’re simply forbidden.” Meg shrugged. “There are actual physics papers published on it.”

Fowler still said nothing.

“Believe me,” Meg added. “It’s a lot less fun in real life than it sounds.”

“A lot less,” Twilight added.

“How am I going to explain this to the President?”

Meg had a ready answer. “You know that old sci-fi trope of time traveling to kill Hitler as a baby? Totally pointless to attempt that.”

Fowler grimaced. “It’s a start I guess.” She re-read the message. “Who do you think you’ll be meeting? Is that ‘unconstrained’ as well?”

“I doubt it.” If Meg had to bet, she’d bet on a literal Future Meg showing up. Who else would know the encryption key, would know who was present when she had decrypted the message, or would know when the meeting would take place? Anyone I will tell, stupid. The argument against it being her future self was obvious: it’d be fuel for the mother of all temporal paradoxes.

But paradoxes were quantum mechanically forbidden, right?

“And the location?” Fowler asked. “What’s the most secure place you know of?”

A fact known only to those present when she uttered that phrase—or anyone she told in the future. “Hyperspace,” Meg said. “Outside of any universe. No one to eavesdrop.” Certainly not any magic-less humans. And as for that professional eavesdropper, Discord, he’d have to be present anyway.

Fowler stepped back and turned away. “I’m gonna have to sleep on this.” She groaned. “After I write my report.”

“Sorry,” Meg said, genuinely sympathetic. “If it makes you feel any better, at least you haven’t been doing time travel. We weren’t joking about it not being fun.” And she hadn’t even mentioned the predestination paradoxes—which, unfortunately, were due to constructive wave function interference, and hence the opposite of forbidden. Those were as not-fun as you could get.

“Not really.” The agent turned back. “We need to get going. We’re behind schedule as it is.”


Meg and Agent Fowler stepped off the elevator. “We have the entire floor booked, or it will be by the time Castaway returns,” the agent said as she turned left. Castaway was the Secret Service code name for Tirek.

Who came up with these code names anyway? Was there a dedicated bureaucracy? That word didn’t really describe him very well. It’s not like he fell off a boat and washed up on an island—which was, Meg guessed, as good an argument as any in favor of it being a bureaucracy.

“The entire floor?” she asked. That was a lot of rooms. Surely there wouldn’t be enough agents to fill them all.

“Most of them will go empty, but it makes it much easier to secure. You can use one of them, if it’s convenient.”

And be within walking distance of Tirek? “I doubt that’ll be necessary.”

They continued walking. Booking the entire floor must’ve cost an arm and a leg. While it wasn’t the top floor, it was far from the bottom, and it was one of the fancier hotels in the south bay. It was about as “fit for a prince” as one was going to get in this town, which granted wasn’t saying much—notwithstanding what “Castaway” had been told in his Tartarus cell.

Their destination was at the end of the corridor. Fowler swiped a card through the door lock and opened it, waving Meg through. She looked around as she entered. A two bedroom suite—two, really?—full kitchen, large flat-screen TV, fancy ceramic tile flooring that looked like hardwood, plush furniture, potted plants, totally out of her price range. Was every room on this floor like this? Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to spend a night or two here.

If she didn’t mind being a short walk from Tirek.

Meg sat down in an overly plush reclining chair. “Maybe it’s not as large as the palace at Knossos, but I can’t imagine he’ll find much to dislike about modern luxury.”

Fowler sat down on the sofa across from her. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough. It’ll sure be interesting, if nothing else. By the way, do we know yet what will happen when Tirek is made human again—I mean, he won’t be naked, will he? On television?”

“Not really.” That possibility had been taken into consideration. “His clothes at the time the poison joke changed him might return, or maybe they won’t because the transformation became irreversible so long ago. Twilight has no idea. Fortunately, Rarity took that into account. Tirek will be wearing the same outfit he wore during the press conference, and that outfit was designed to be wearable by a human, sorta like a toga. Just need to detach the part that winds up on the ground behind him. Twilight’s sure she can exclude that outfit from the isomorphic mapping spell, so it won’t be going anywhere.”

“Isomorphic mapping spell? That’s what it’s called?”

“That’s what she called it when she used it on me and Steve. Better than calling it ‘that Breezie spell,” I guess.”

“Yeah, I suppose. Any idea yet what you’ll be doing at his release?”

“Other than being seen next to a changeling impersonating me? I hope that’s all I’ll be doing, quite bluntly.”

“It was, uh, never mentioned where you got the changeling…”

“Not from Chrysalis. That’s all I can say, unfortunately. Bit of a sensitive subject. I’m sure you can understand.”

“But that changeling won’t be returning with us, right? Just making sure there hasn’t been a change of plans.”

“Nope, it’s staying in Equestria. We don’t know if changelings can even survive in our universe, and this one has not volunteered to be a guinea pig.” Meg smiled. “So there’s nothing to worry about.”

“For now anyway.” Fowler checked her phone. “What did Twilight mean when she mentioned Pinkie Pie? Please don’t tell me she came up with that key!”

“No, she didn’t come up with the key.” Apparently, Twilight didn’t give Fowler the whole story. Meg couldn’t see any reason to hold back the details. They seemed harmless enough. “All Pinkie Pie told me was that I needed to use a ‘super duper random key.’”

Fowler blinked. Several times. “That’s it? Was… that one of her hunches?”

“You got it. She said it was ‘just a hunch.’ But the way she was looking at me. Really focused. It was weird.”

Fowler leaned back. “Can’t look a gift horse in the mouth—uh… excuse the…”

“It’s appropriate.”

“Right. So, what do you think she meant? Try random keys? I mean, surely you’ve tried that?”

“Yep, been doing that. Until now it hasn’t worked. No reason it ought to have worked.”

“No, of course not. So you were using the wrong random number generator? She did say ‘super duper random.’”

“Yes, she did say that.” Meg didn’t feel like giving a lecture on the subject, but if she didn’t give it now, to Fowler, she’d probably have to give one to Serrell himself. It wasn’t hard to figure out who would find it easier to understand. “Software can’t really generate random numbers, only pseudo-random numbers. They all repeat eventually.” Meg got up and walked to the kitchen. “So none of them are truly random, never mind ‘super duper’ random.” The appliances were all much nicer than what her apartment had.

“So, hardware?”

Meg looked inside the refrigerator. It was empty. “Quantum mechanics. It’s the only unimpeachable source of randomness. I got the key from a website that live-streamed numbers generated from quantum fluctuations of the vacuum.”

Fowler stood up. “But why would that happen to produce the correct key? The odds are still infinitesimal.”

Meg sighed. “Because it’s a time loop. The random bits, being quantum mechanically generated, form a superposition. That superposition of the wave function includes every possible key. One of them gets picked when the wave function collapses, but which one gets picked doesn’t matter. Not if it gets sent back in time in the form of an encrypted message. I simply save the key so that it could be used to encrypt the message in the future.”

A thought occurred to her. Why not save the message too, so that it wouldn’t need to be written in the future? Hell, save the encrypted message, so there’d be no need to save the encryption key. After all, that message would get written anyway, one way or the other, so why not save the bother of encrypting it?

It made her head hurt.

Fowler joined her in the kitchen. “That still doesn’t explain how Pinkie knew this would work.”

There was only one thing to say to that: “Because she’s Pinkie Pie.”


Meg and Agent Fowler walked down the eerily deserted hallway of the convention center. Posters and signs from the previous convention just ended had yet to be taken down. Meg pointed to a room up ahead. “This one is about the right size for a modest birthday party. I know it’s off a main hallway, but perhaps that’s a good thing—you know, hiding in plain sight. Don’t forget that Twilight can magically secure the room.”

“Let’s take a look inside,” Fowler said, not committing to anything.

They stopped in front of the closed door to the room. Meg opened it and held it open for the agent, and she followed her inside.

It was the typical nondescript conference room. Rows of uncomfortable chairs were laid out, all facing a long table at the front of the room. “Not sure what to do about the chairs,” Meg said. “We need them here for the other events that’d be scheduled for this room. I guess I can ask Twilight if she could teleport them all to her castle when we set up for the party, then teleport them back afterwards.”

“What about the party decorations.” Fowler raised an eyebrow. “Would I finally get to see Pinkie’s party cannon in action?”

“That...” Meg tilted her head back and forth. “Hasn’t been decided yet. Twilight wants to investigate the magic of that cannon first.”

“Probably wise,” Fowler said. “And the other candidate room?”

“Pretty much the same on the inside. Only difference is that it’s off the beaten path, at the end of a corridor.”

“Easier to secure, but harder for reinforcements to arrive if necessary.” The agent thought it over. “But maybe that doesn’t matter much, not with Twilight’s magic and her ability to evacuate everyone to her castle.”

“Magic certainly does make a difference.”

“Yeah, it sure does. Too bad it can’t help with Castaway. Are the princesses still adamant about that?”

“I’m afraid so. They won’t lift a hoof to protect him. Once he’s here, he’s our problem.”

“Guess I can’t blame them.”

“I’m not sure he’d accept their protection even if they offered it.”

Fowler waved it away. “They’re not, so it’s academic. Is it safe to say Castaway will make his appearance in the biggest room here?”

“You better believe it,” Meg said. “And do you have to keep calling him Castaway? There’s no one here but us.”

Agent Fowler shrugged. “It’s a Secret Service thing. You never know who might be listening.”

That seemed excessively paranoid. Even Discord couldn’t eavesdrop on them here. Probably. It wasn’t worth arguing about. “That’s our next stop.”


The night sky beckoned above Luna’s observatory, the telescope pointing at the one star vastly outshining the others. Twilight was currently looking through it, Luna next to her. Steve was off to the side, trying to study the star via his own magic. “I’m not really getting a clearer picture,” he said. “I’m not sure it’ll make much of a difference no matter how much closer it gets. I mean, magic is your special talent, not mine.”

Twilight pulled back from the eyepiece, frowning. “Unfortunately, it’s your special talent that’s letting you sense anything at all at this distance. Luna’s modification of the spell doesn’t do anything for me.”

“That was not its purpose,” Luna said.

Twilight’s head sagged. “I know.” She attached the spectroscope she had constructed, following the design principles she had acquired from the human version. “But we seem to be stuck. Steve can sense the magic, but can’t dissect it the way I can; while I can dissect it, but I can’t sense it at this distance.”

The device was attached. It was surprisingly simple, little more than a piece of glass in the appropriate shape. Ponies knew that a prism could spread light out into a rainbow, but they had never suspected that scientifically useful information resided in that rainbow. It was from human science that Twilight had learned of spectral lines and how they could reveal the makeup of light sources. Those lines were rather thin and easily blurred. The trick was in making the prism’s shape precise enough and its composition uniform enough to render the lines sharp and clear.

For now, a sheet of white paper would reveal the lines to their eyes. Twilight moved it into place. The sheet reflected the expected rainbow of colors, but no lines. They had tested it against the light from a candle flame, so it ought to work, but it was a bit tricky getting everything lined up properly.

“What if we could get right next to a star?” Steve asked.

Twilight rolled her eyes, as she continued to fuss with the setup. “Well, sure, but we can’t.” Lines still refused to appear. Was it because there truly were none? Or were they being blurred out of existence?

“Maybe we can.”

“Truly?” Luna asked, intrigued.

“I’ve been thinking about it. We can use the time travel spell, except instead of traveling a few years into the past, we travel a few million miles into space. We just go in a different direction, spatial instead of temporal. We still need a force field to keep the air in once we arrive, of course, but it’d be little different than the one needed for the trip itself. Sure, there’s also the small matter of escaping the planet’s gravitational field...” He shrugged. “But here in a realm where magic laughs at the conservation of energy, that really is a small matter.”

The two alicorns thought it over. “I doubt Discord would be interested in this particular trip,” Twilight said. She looked up at nothing in particular. “Would you?”

There was no answer. There rarely was. Did he really eavesdrop as much as everypony thought he did? “But we’re not traveling anywhere near as far, if I understand this correctly, so we probably don’t need his magical assistance.”

Luna broke out in a smile. “I would be happy to assist, for I also desire to examine a star up close.”

Next Chapter: 34. It's About Time Estimated time remaining: 2 Hours, 11 Minutes
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