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Inevitabilities

by Sharp Quill

Chapter 37: 37. A Long Game

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Meg quickly scanned the story. It had all leaked: the DNA samples from numerous flora and fauna, and how they were more or less indistinguishable from their earthly counterparts—that is, the ones that had earthly counterparts. Then there were the samples from the fauna lacking earthly counterparts…

“Did something happen?” Fowler asked. She got out her own phone.

“Yeah. You could say that.”

The only good news was that no names had been leaked. The donors of pony DNA had remained anonymous. Crap. The story mentioned the fact that pony mitochondrial DNA was indistinguishable from human mitochondrial DNA. There was no way that wouldn’t rub some people the wrong way.

Meg cringed. “I should never have agreed to it.”

There it was. Her worst fears were coming true. The DNA database reportedly included two human DNA samples, and that one sample had significant similarities to that of a pegasus mare and the other to that of a unicorn stallion, including identical mitochondrial DNA. The story’s author speculated the humans and ponies might be the same individuals. Worst of all, he did not shy away from speculating on the significance of that. The changeling may have been for nothing.

“How many humans have been converted to ponies,” Fowler read off her own phone, “and for what purpose? Why has the president kept this under wraps? Did he authorize it?”

Meg had just read that herself. The story was quoting Senator Routledge.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was threatening the ruler of this nation.” Andy was behind her, reading her phone over her shoulder.

“Oh, that’s exactly what he’s doing,” Meg said. Unless this got fixed real fast, she had no idea how Serrell would avoid impeachment.

The son of King Minos had trouble processing that. “Isn’t that foolishly putting his own life at risk?” He looked at the agents. “You’ll do something about him, right?”

“That isn’t how the world works anymore,” Reubens replied. “Most of it, anyway. The point is, there’s nothing we can or should do about it. This is a political process that must follow its own rules. The president may be removed from office by this process, that is true, but he will suffer no physical harm. If that removal indeed happens, we’ll serve his successor; we serve the office, not its occupant.”

Andy slowly shook his head. “I still find it hard to grasp.” He pointed at Meg’s phone. “I’m starting to appreciate just how indispensable such devices can be.”

Meg wanted to throw her indispensable device to the floor. She settled for returning it to her purse. “I’m dead if my name got leaked.”

“Dead?” Andy asked, genuinely surprised. “Wasn’t I just told the world didn’t work like that anymore?”

“Fine, let me rephrase that: I’ll wish I was dead if my name got leaked.” She added, “And with all the crazies out there, that wish might still come true.”

“We’ll see about around-the-clock protection,” Reubens said.

Meg plopped down into a chair. “Or spend a lot more time in Equestria. Maybe I should do some house-shopping in Ponyville. Oh, I know! I could move into the Golden Oak Library. They still haven’t found a new librarian yet. I could computerize it or something. Sure would make Twilight happy.”

Andy was tapping finger to chin. “Pretty sure I destroyed that.”

“Discord repaired it. Good as new.”

“Really?” Fowler asked. “In Castle Sweet Castle—”

“Season five, remember? Dead wrong, trust me. That was one of the first things I sought out on my first visit to Ponyville. Twilight even gave me a tour. Not a scratch.”

“Right,” the agent said, facepalming. “Season five.”

Andy had returned to the window. “Discord did that, did he?” He took a heavy breath. “He must really have it out for me, to so thoroughly undo what I did.”

“Maybe?” Meg had trouble feeling sorry for him. “I mean, I’m sure that’s part of it, but he’s been learning about the magic of friendship.” She couldn’t believe she’d just said that. “He did it out of friendship to Fluttershy and the other ponies.” Better make it count. “Perhaps you’d might benefit… from some lessons… yourself?”

He broke down in laughter. “I doubt the Princess of Friendship would be interested in giving me lessons. Are you offering to teach me friendship lessons yourself?”

“Uh… not really, no.”

He turned around to face the room. “Just as well. This is now my home. There is no magic here, not even the so-called magic of friendship.” He looked up in thought. “Though I must admit: I’m intrigued by the notion of Discord being seduced by the friendship of ponies. Perhaps I shouldn’t dismiss it so casually.”

“There are ponies here now,” Fowler pointed out, “and they bring magic with them.”

“True, true. And it is good that I have returned, for I understand ponies better than anyone—and by ponies, of course, I mean Celestia.” A smile grew. “There will be need of a new president soon, from what I gather. How does one go about claiming this position, in this new world?”

Meg cringed. Only the fact that it wasn’t an option… But he had a point, she had to admit: he was the only human who could claim to truly understand Princess Celestia. It probably took an immortal—even if a former immortal—to understand another immortal. She sure as hell didn’t understand her.

Reubens humored him. “First, you must be at least thirty-five years of age,” he began. “ Second, you must be a natural born citizen. And finally, you must have been a resident within the U.S. for at least fourteen years.” He delivered the verdict. “You meet only one of the three requirements.”

The former Lord Tirek did not seem like the kind of man who would take “no” for an answer, and he wasted no time in proving it. “And where did these requirements come from?”

“Our founding document, the Constitution.”

“Laws are not immutable,” he observed. “There’s always some means of altering them, even if through old-fashioned force.”

“And that would be true in this case—no spilling of blood required. A constitutional amendment could change those requirements, but the process for doing so is by design slow and difficult. Just to begin the process, you’d need to convince a large fraction of this nation that it’d be a good idea.”

The smile returned. “It appears I don’t have much else to do with my time.”

Reubens shrugged. “It’s a free country; you’re free to do that. Just keep your expectations at the appropriate level.”

Andy laughed. “And by appropriate, you mean not a chance in Tartarus. No, no, I’m not offended. I appreciate a man who tells it to me like it is. I have lived far too long to cripple myself with wishful thinking.” He smirked. “But I happen to have learned something about chances in Tartarus.”

Maybe I should relocate to Equestria.

As unlikely as it was Andy could become President—and even under the best of circumstances it’d take many years—Meg could not forget that he had already won his first popularity contest. That’s why he was here in the first place and not in Tartarus. If anti-pony sentiment truly got out of hand—and given recent developments, that was hardly impossible or even unlikely—would he be viewed as the best chance to defeat the pony threat?

Andy clapped his hands together as he looked about the room. “But that’s all in the future. Right now, why don’t I check out the other modern conveniences this new home has to offer.”

“Sure,” Fowler said. “We could do that.”

“I have to be going now,” Meg said. She really just needed to be elsewhere. “I’ll touch bases later.”

Andy was in the bathroom, checking out modern plumbing. “Bring over that cartoon as soon as you can,” he said as he experimentally flushed the toilet. “I think I’m going to like it here.”


“Thanks for coming on short notice,” Meg said. Sunset Shimmer had just appeared in her home office. She got her saddlebags, put her phone into one of them, and hung them around her neck.

“I checked with Spike,” the unicorn said. “Twilight’s in Canterlot, working with Arcane Scroll. I guess she’s too preoccupied to check her phone.”

How ironic. Canterlot was where she needed to be, and Sunset herself was more likely to be in Canterlot than Ponyville. But not this time. Well, it wasn’t that far for a pegasus. “So Spike’s still in Ponyville?” That would be quite helpful; she didn’t have an appointment, after all.

“I couldn’t have checked with him otherwise,” she dryly noted.

Meg reached for her magic pendant, paused, then decided to take it with her after all. She couldn’t see why she’d need it, but it didn’t hurt to have it, and it wasn’t worth the time or energy to debate the issue. Into a saddlebag it went.

“Okay. I’m ready to go.”

A trans-dimensional teleport later, and Meg found herself in the castle library. “Do you know where Spike is?”

“Over here!” he yelled.

She trotted over to the sound of his voice. He was re-shelving books. “I’d like to send a message to Princess Celestia. It concerns the former Lord Tirek.”

“Whoa. That sounds serious.”

Sunset had joined them. “There’s been a development?”

“You could say that. Nothing urgent urgent, really. I mean, maybe it’ll be a catastrophe some day—but not today, tomorrow, or even next month. Regardless, Celestia did ask to be kept informed about Tirek-related developments, so…” She shrugged. Quite honestly, it was more an excuse to see her so she could discuss a different subject.

“I’ll be right back.” The baby dragon ran off, presumably to get paper and quill.

“Just how catastrophic are we talking about?” Sunset asked.

“He apparently wants to run for president someday. Fortunately, that’ll be—at best—a long, drawn-out process, but what if he taps into something, some anti-pony sentiment simmering out there? I mean, he’d have to, to have any chance at all, and that sentiment may be the biggest danger of all.”

“If you say so. I’d’ve thought his biggest support would be from pony supporters, him being an honorary Equestrian and all.”

Meg spotted Spike rushing back, paper and quill in claw. “That doesn’t seem to be the platform he’s interested on running on, if you catch my drift. Very much ‘I’m the most qualified to protect you from Celestia.’”

Spike grimaced. “Yeah, I’d think the princess would want to hear about that.” Quill hovered above paper. “What’s the message?”

What should the message be? Best to keep it simple. “I need to talk to you about Tirek. He’s expressed a desire to become President.” It was probably unwise to overstate the urgency. It wasn’t after all a drop-everything emergency, not even remotely. “Fortunately, that will be a lengthy process at best.”

Spike looked up at her expectantly.

“That captures the gist of it. You can send it.”

The dragon rolled it up and bathed it in green flame. “I’ll let you know when I get a response.” He went back to his task of re-shelving books.

So now what? There was no telling how long she’d have to wait for a response. It could be seconds—or hours. She glanced about the library. She didn’t feel like reading anything to pass the time, but leaving the castle would be bad if Celestia did reply quickly. It was at times like this she really wished Celestia had accepted a phone.

“We could talk shop while you wait,” Sunset suggested. “Twilight wants me to assist her in writing simulation software for the stellar magic she and the professor are studying.”

“Sure, we can do that.” Anything that would get her mind off her problem was welcome. Meg headed toward a reading area. “You probably want to use as a starting point what I wrote to simulate a sonic rainboom.” They didn’t need her direct involvement; both had acquired sufficient programming skills in the past year, and obviously they had the domain expertise she lacked concerning magic.

“Twilight already thought of that, but the magic is so novel and complex she’s not sure how useful it’d be. She wants to use simulations as a form of experimentation for deciphering how the magic works.”

She was afraid of that. Steve hadn’t gone back to that star with the others because the magic was beyond his comprehension. There really wasn’t much she could do to help. And that star just had to be a diamond, just like in a human nursery rhyme.

Why she continued to be surprised by new “coincidences,” she didn’t know. She’d have thought she’d be used to it by now. She returned her attention to the unicorn. “Yeah, that makes sense. You don’t want to experiment on the star itself.” Who knows what could go wrong with that?

“We still think it’s a useful starting point, as a framework for finite element analysis. We just have to rewrite the equations simulating the magic, right?”

“I would think so.” Those equations had come from Twilight in the first place.

Except…

“Maybe not,” Meg said. “If it’s messing with space-time geometry—and that’s the point of what the stars are doing, to keep the size of this realm constant—then that affects the grid of finite elements being simulated. That’s a lot more complicated.”

That wasn’t the answer Sunset was hoping for. “How much more complicated?”

“Potentially? A lot more. The very geometry of the finite elements would be changing over time. I can give you the merging black holes simulator to look at. It doesn’t get messier than that.”

Definitely not what the unicorn wanted to hear.

“That’s the worst-case scenario,” Meg hastened to add. “I guess it depends on what the stars are doing. It surely can’t be that bad. After all, if they were messing with space-time to that extent, nopony would have been able to get right next to them.” And survive, she didn’t add.

Perhaps it had been incredibly foolhardy to attempt it. No, her husband’s special talent would have detected that long before they had gotten close enough to be harmed.

Spike burped up green flame, and a scroll materialized.

“Your probably right,” Sunset said. “But I guess we’ll see.”

Meg got up and quickly flew back to Spike. He handed her the scroll. She unrolled it. “Come to Twilight’s throne room,” she read. She looked up. “She’s here?”

Spike shrugged. “Sounds like it.” He shelved another book.

Sunset trotted up to them. “You shouldn’t keep her waiting.”

Did Celestia just come all the way from Canterlot? No other explanation seemed likely. If it was that important to her… “No, let’s not keep princesses waiting.”

She held out the unrolled scroll in Spike’s direction. “Uh, could you dispose of this?”

“No problem!” he said as he took it back.

“Well, I guess I’m off to the throne room.”

Meg took wing.

She arrived moments later. The doors swung open as she approached, glowing a soft yellow. No question about it; Celestia was here. The doors closed behind her once she was through.

“You have news concerning Tirek?”

Celestia stood off to the side of the circle of thrones; they were sized for ponies, not mature alicorns. Meg landed in front of her.

Get the easy stuff out of the way first. “He’s expressed a desire to become president. That isn’t possible under our current laws, but, as he pointed out, laws can be changed. And it’s true they can, though changing the relevant law is a slow process. But if he actually pursues this…”

“Please continue,” Celestia said, encouraging her to do just that.

“I’m concerned about the damage he could do just trying, even if he fails. He’ll position himself as the only person qualified to protect humanity from… from you.”

“I see.”

There wasn’t much to be read from how she’d said that. “The gift of a dodo from the griffons might have backfired—you know about that?”

“Twilight had informed me.”

Of course she had. “Like I said, it might be backfiring. It’s fueling anti-pony sentiment. The question being asked is how dodos wound up in this realm. It’s being spun as an act of theft—or an act of fraud if that bird wasn’t actually a dodo. Which raises the question, also being asked, what else was appropriated?”

“Curious that a dodo would trigger this. There are many flora and fauna common to our realms; we hadn’t been accused of stealing those.”

“Because the dodo is extinct in our world? I don’t know. Maybe because it’s a convenient attack against the President. It’s too soon to tell, but…”

“I think I see the problem. Tirek intends to use this to his advantage.”

“That’s what it sounds like. I’m not sure he appreciates just how unlikely it is he can be elected president, or if that’s even his goal.”

Celestia closed her eyes in thought.

A moment later, she reopened them. “I doubt he knows himself at this point. It’s difficult to imagine he’d be satisfied with an elected office, no matter how powerful. He’ll certainly want to be a player, and this may be his means of entering the game.”

“You don’t think he’ll try to drive a wedge between humans and ponies?”

Celestia frowned. “I didn’t say that. I’m certain he would if he could, but I feel it’s more of a means to an end than an end unto itself. Understand that end, and he could be managed.”

Meg’s head sagged. “You make it sound easy.”

“It’s not, not even for me, and I know him perhaps better than anypony alive.”

“Better than Discord?”

Her eyes twinkled. “I did say ‘perhaps.’”

And it wasn’t as if Discord would be helpful in this matter anyway. It just wasn’t his nature.

Meg sighed. “There’s been another development, one that could also blow up in our faces—mine, especially.”

“How so?”

“Many DNA samples were collected from Equestrian plants and animals. The fact that they were collected has leaked—possibly because of that dodo.” She needed to explain it better. “We’ll soon know if it’s a real dodo from its DNA. That put the whole DNA thing in the public consciousness. That led to demands for more DNA samples, to see what else was ‘acquired’ from us…”

“Which made it easy to leak the fact that those samples have already been collected.”

“Right. The worst part is, those samples include two each from myself and my husband: one human and one pony.”

Concern graced the alicorn’s muzzle. “And you’re afraid it will lead to your identity being leaked.”

“Even if it doesn’t, now that word has gotten out that humans have been changed into ponies, it’ll fuel those Conversion Bureau conspiracy nutcases. They won’t even ask if the transformation had ever been reversed. Hell, just the fact that all ponies appear to have human mitochondrial DNA may set them off.

“But if it does get out that I’m the one, or Steve…” She grimaced. “We may have to seek asylum here, for our safety.”

Celestia was quiet.

Too quiet.

“Is… there a problem with that?”

“Personally, I have no objection to granting you asylum. I can’t image Twilight or any other princess objecting either. We would all be concerned for your safety.”

Something wasn’t right, but Meg couldn’t put a finger—or hoof—on it. “I hear a ‘but’ coming.”

A wan smile. “Not so much a ‘but,’ but an observation: asylum, should it be needed, would be at cross-purposes to your cutie mark. Destinies cannot be sidestepped so easily.”

That was a good point. A terrifyingly good point.

“Nonetheless it would be granted. Just understand it probably won’t make your problems go away.”

Not if it was her destiny to be the intersection of the worlds of ponies and humans, or to be involved with all these time loops, or whatever the hell her cutie mark was supposed to mean.

That was the problem, wasn’t it? What did it mean? What did butterflies have to do with kindness? Diamonds with generosity? Apples with honesty? Balloons with—okay, that one kinda made sense. The point was, cutie marks didn’t come with instruction manuals. For all she knew, her cutie mark would be just fine with spending the rest of her life in Equestria. Maybe what her cutie mark really meant was that she had a talent for spinning two hula hoops at the same time.

“Would you care to share what you’re thinking?”

Meg looked up at the princess. “Do you happen to have a pair of hula hoops I could borrow?”

“Hula hoops?”

“I guess ponies don’t have those.” Meg sighed. “It doesn’t matter. I’m simply in denial.”

“I truly wish I had sage advice to offer.”

“I know,” Meg said with growing despair. “This one is for me to solve. Maybe when I talk to my future self—or whoever shows up—I’ll get some real answers. Maybe. But Discord has to stop hiding from us first.”

“He is waiting for what he feels is the right moment.”

“Huh? You’ve been talking to him?”

“He has not been hiding from me, no.”

“Then why—no, there’s no point in asking. Even if he told you, the answer is not likely to make me happy.”

“One could say that you already grasp the essence of that answer.”

Celestia’s practiced composure revealed nothing more. Essence? Did that mean that he would only make us unhappy if he hadn’t been hiding from us? We’re unhappy that he was! And since when did he care about anyone else’s happiness?—other than Fluttershy’s. Or was it about waiting for the right moment?

It was a waste of time thinking about it, much less worrying about it. The “right moment” would eventually come, she thought sourly; the immutable time loop made it an inevitability.

Another thought came to her: what if something had to happen first, something to set up the proper preconditions for that meeting? But how would Discord know anything about that? No such thing was hinted at in the message from the future.

“I don’t know,” Meg finally said. “I guess I took up enough of your time? I’m surprised you came here, quite honestly.”

Celestia giggled, to Meg’s surprise. “I was more than happy for an excuse to escape that meeting with those nobles. I might have left them with the impression that that urgent message had come from Princess Twilight; it was sent by dragon fire, after all.” She turned serious. “But I was not joking when I stated my desire to be kept informed of Tirek’s progress, and that desire still stands. Whatever he has in mind, these are but the first moves in a long game.”

A game in which Meg had no choice but to be a participant. “I think he wants to talk to me in private. He’s suggested a marathon of the cartoon as a pretext.” She’d do it, but she’d make damn sure those agents were only a scream away. “I guess that’ll be his next move.”

Celestia nodded. “I would agree.”

“And, uh, for the record, he’s going by the name ‘Andy’ now. A new identity for a new life, and all that.”

“Twilight has informed me. For the time being, I prefer to use the name I am familiar with.”

Meg shrugged. “Since you two won’t be meeting face to face, I guess it doesn’t really matter.”

“Such a meeting does seem unlikely.” The diarch stretched her wings. “I shall be returning to Canterlot.”

Celestia teleported away.

Next Chapter: 38. Centaur's Gambit Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 2 Minutes
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