Lyra Heartstrings sat on a brown leather couch with a small caking of dust, staring in silence as credits rolled over the flatscreen tv in front of her to the tune of an easily marketable jingle. Her muzzle wrinkled, and one of her ears adorably flicked on occasion as she thought, no hint of an emotion besides mild interest reflected across her face.

"This is entertainment?"

"Meant to make a profit for capitalistic toy companies." I affirmed, crossing my noticeably human arms and leaning against the back of my guest's couch.

"And it... came entirely from the brain of a human."

"Several brains. If you wanted to conspiracy theorize you could pin it on the collective unconscious, I suppose."

"Hmm." The normally talkative and excitable pone sat in contemplation, mulling thoughts over. I humored the idea of taking the opportunity to get some work done, but remained planted.

"Existential crisis?"

"Not really. I still have every bit as much evidence I'm real as I did before. Don't worry, I'm not going to break down crying on your floor. It's just interesting."

Interest rarely remains in one mind. I could exploit this.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

"Sure."

We sat there in silence for a minute, until I finally groaned in realization and fished some spare change out of my pocket.

"How deep do you think this goes? In either way. Back home, it came out a few years ago that the author of a relatively famous book series had actually lived out the adventures she wrote about. It's not the same as this, but can you imagine if your life was a TV Show? What would that say about you?"

"I think it would say we should re-think some early South park episodes."

"I'm not gonna get human references. Anyway, we're both obviously real people in a real world, but somewhere that might not be true."

"And people die when they are killed."

Lyra threw her hooves in the air, snorting frustratedly. "Listen buddy, YOU paid me, YOU want me to get philosophical about something I described as 'interesting'. Maybe you're still in a tizzy because no human predicted their visitors to be cute and fluffy-"

"Harry Turtledove did, but we kind of assumed he was joking." I pointed out.

"I'm not going to get human references, dude! All I'm saying is it makes me think, and if you expect me to be able to accurately summarize my thoughts into neat columns, maybe humans are more different from us than I expected."

I nodded. "I guess that sums it up more finally than any philosophical discourse. No matter the dimension, minds are dumb and reality is a little bit fake."

The credits wrapped up, and autoplay started ticking down for the next episode. Wind gently blew outside, the sun trickled its rays down as it had for billions of years, and time continually marched on, indifferent to the concerns of its inhabitants.

"Hey, want to read some fanfiction about you romancing humans?"

"Whoa, they have those here?"