Chapter 70: A Dangerous Idea

The bedroom door crashed open, awaking Celestia with a start. For a moment, she panicked, but then she saw that it was just Eric, although he was wearing only his underwear and had no shirt on. His face wore a look of terror that made her own panic start to return. The beard he'd let grow out since they'd come to Montana was missing, and his hair had been cut shorter. That was odd, she thought.

“We have to go back to Chicago! We have to leave right now!” Eric said, speaking rapidly and breathing as if he had just run a marathon.

“What? Calm, down. What's going on?” Concern rose up in Celestia at her human friend's unnatural behavior. At the same time, she made a conscious effort to calm herself.

“We have to leave right now!”

“Why? What happened?”

He looked at her now, slowing his breathing and seeming to compose himself. “I … I don't know. I just had this overpowering urge. This overpowering feeling. We have to go back.”

Celestia nodded her head, climbing out of her bed. “Alright. I'll teleport us there.”

“You can do that?” Eric's raised eyes showed his uncertainty.

“Yes. I remember enough about the landscape to teleport us to a field just outside of the city.” Why did I say that? She thought to herself. It didn't sound right. She'd never attempted to teleport anywhere near the distance between Montana and Chicago. As far as she knew, it wasn't possible to teleport that far. Nevertheless, she decided to give it a try. “You might want to put some clothes on first.”

He shook his head. “There's no time.”

She looked at him dubiously for a moment, but then nodded her head.

“Alright. If you're sure.”

She channeled magic into her horn and there was a brief flash. Then, the two of them emerged in an open field, a small but dense treeline not far in front of them. There was snow on the ground. That was odd. Hadn't it been summer just the other day? It was daytime, but dark, almost black clouds hid the sun in an overcast blanket. Light snow was falling from the clouds, landing softly on the ground and coating the trees. An icy wind blew from the north, ruffling her fur and flapping her ethereal tail in the wind. She looked at Eric, thinking he must be freezing in only his underwear. But he didn't seem to notice the cold. He looked around, turning a quick circle before looking at her.

“I think you teleported us to the wrong place. There's no traffic noise. No constant sound of aircraft from O'Hare.”

“No. I'm sure I brought us to the right place. The city should be just beyond the treeline.” But was she really sure? Maybe she had been right about not being able to teleport them all the way to Chicago and they had emerged somewhere in between. That was entirely possible.

A snowflake landed on her muzzle. It wasn't cold, and didn't melt. Despair began to flood through her as realization hit her like a train. That wasn't snow falling from the sky. It was ash. And the ominous black scud in the sky was not a layer of overcast cloud. It was a thick blanket of smoke. The wind shifted, filling her nostrils with the stink of burning flesh and rubber. The smell of decay, death, and destruction. She took off at a gallop, rushing into the treeline. Popping out the other side, she dug her hooves in, skidding to a halt.

The layout of the city before her was wrong, but the city was in complete ruins. Dense smoke rose from every corner. The magnificent, glass-walled skyscrapers that had once defined the city outline were all gone. Now, twisted metal frames rose to the sky, like tortured black skeletons crying out to the heavens for salvation that would never come. Orange light still glowed ominously where fires still burned. Loud popping and groaning sounds came from the skeletal remains of the buildings as they continued to burn, as if they were crying out in pain. A horrid smell drew her gaze to her left. The remains of four, charred human bodies, including two children, filled her eyes. They had run, trying to escape the city. They hadn't made it.

Pounding feet skidded to a halt beside her as Eric finally caught up with her. He stood, panting for breath, but said nothing as he looked out over the remains of the city that had once been his home. His legs shook, and he collapsed to his knees, his eyes fixed on the horror before him. His eyes appeared to be glazed over, almost as if in death.

A tortured screech like some kind of banshee drew her gaze back to the city. Aislings were rising up from the far side of it. Thousands … no, millions of them. Far too many to count. Their battle lines stretched from one horizon to the other in front of her, countless rows of black-robed, faceless soldiers. Their work done in Chicago, they marched out of the city, continuing on to their next target. To bring more death and destruction.

o.O.o

“Luna!” Celestia yelled. Her eyes flew open and she jumped out of her bed, her breath coming in quick gasps as she looked around to get her bearings. She was still in her bedroom, and it was the middle of the night. Then she threw open the door with a quick burst of magic, galloping through it. She channeled again, throwing Eric's door open with such force it almost broke off its hinges.

“They're coming here!” she said.

Eric sat up, throwing off the covers. He was in his underwear and his chest was bare, just as he'd been in her dream.

“What? Who's coming here?”

“Armies of the Beyond! Millions of them!”

Eric's eyes rose in alarm, as he climbed out of bed. “Alright … Calm down. Tell me everything,” he said as he grabbed some mismatched clothes from a pile, throwing them on quickly.

Celestia took a moment to calm herself, then proceeded to tell Eric everything she had seen in her dream. After she finished, Eric was silent for several moments. He maintained his composure, but she could see the color draining from his face. Finally, he spoke.

“How do you know the dream actually came from your sister? That it wasn't just some random nightmare?”

“Because the layout of the city was wrong. Luna only knew the layout of Chicago in general terms. From descriptions and a few photographs that James had shown her. So the dreamscape she created had inaccuracies.”

“But you said she got the details of this cabin right. She didn't even know we were staying in a cabin. And she got me right, except I didn't have a beard and my hair was shorter.”

“Yes, but that's because of the way the dreamscape works. Since I didn't need to interact with the cabin and there was nothing abnormal about it, she just gave me a sort of … subconscious command to dream about where I currently was. But I needed to interact with you, so she had to place an actual visual of you in the dreamscape. She only knew what you looked like a from a photo that James had shown her, so that's what you looked like in the dream. With shorter hair and no beard. The same is true of the city. Because it was destroyed, she had to create the visual in my dream. But the visual had mistakes because she doesn't know exactly what Chicago looks like.”

“I still don't see how you can be sure the dream came from your sister. If the city was completely destroyed, and the layout was wrong, how can you be sure it was Chicago?”

“Because she left one building standing. One building that was completely untouched: The Adler Planetarium. A temple of the night sky, and a unique structure that doesn't look like any other planetarium in the world. That choice of buildings was evidence not only that it was Chicago, but that it was my sister who sent the dream.”

Eric was silent. He sat down on his bed, and for a long time neither of them said anything. But she could smell fear wafting off of him just as she had been able to smell death oozing from the charred remains of the human bodies in her dream. Finally, Eric spoke again.

“So now we have another problem we have to think about. And we can't tell anyone about it.” He turned his gaze to the floor.

“Can't tell anyone?” Celestia's eyes widened as she stared at him in disbelief. “Eric, we have to warn someone. The military. The president. Someone,” she said with a bit more shock in her voice than she'd intended. Was he really going to just let this happen? He wasn't going to tell anyone about an impending invasion of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of magical soldiers? He was just going to let billions of humans be slaughtered?

Eric looked up at her again, his eyes defensive. “What do you want me to tell them?”

“I don't know….”

“I don't know either. I certainly can't tell them the truth. What, that supernatural armies of evil are going to appear out of a giant hole in the sky and march over the planet, destroying everything as they go? I might as well grow my beard out and stand on a street corner holding a 'repent for the end is near' sign. They'll think I'm some kind of raving lunatic.”

Celestia bristled and narrowed her eyes slightly. She'd heard the word lunatic used on television and had looked it up in a dictionary. She knew the humans used it to refer to a person who was considered crazy. But she considered the word offensive to her sister.

“Sorry,” Eric murmured, catching her gaze and then lowering his eyes.

She shook her head slightly, brushing it off. After all she knew it was just a slip of habit. Eric wouldn't have chosen the word to intentionally offend her or her sister. He looked up at her again.

“Did Luna give you any clue how much time we have?”

She thought back to the dream for a moment before responding.

“It was winter. There was snow on the ground.”

Eric nodded. “Then assuming Luna has her seasons right – and that's probably a safe assumption since James would have been able to tell her what season it currently is here – we should have least five months before any kind of invasion starts.”

Celestia nodded her head, but still felt very uneasy about the idea of not telling anyone. A queasy feeling, like bile churning in her stomach, rumbled through her. She continued to stare at Eric, her expression reflecting her distaste about it all.

Eric took a deep breath, let it out with a sigh. “Alright … Look, I'll tell someone.” She smiled slightly as he gave in, but then he continued. “After you have gone back to Equestria. Assuming I can get anyone to believe me, which I highly doubt, that will still give them at least four months to prepare for this invasion.”

She frowned, but nodded in acceptance of the compromise. But a nagging thought bit at the back of her mind. He doesn't believe me. He doesn't want to believe me. He thinks I'm overreacting about a common nightmare. But then again, would I believe it if I were in his place?

Eric sighed again, bringing her attention off the thought.

“I'll be lucky if I get out of this without an involuntary commitment to the psyche ward, you know.” Celestia couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

“I … need to go talk to Captain Swordstorm about all this. Try to get back to sleep, Eric.”

“I will.”

Celestia stepped outside of his room, using magic to close the door. This time, she was much more careful and quiet than she had been when she'd opened it. She walked down the hallway a short distance, opening the door to Captain Swordstorm's room. He wasn't there. "Outside patrolling again, I suppose," she said with a frown. She wished he'd stop blaming himself for what happened, but she'd already made the mistake of confronting him about it and he'd only gotten angry with her. Royal Guards had an overdeveloped sense of honor sometimes. To imply that something wasn't their fault and that they'd done the best they could, was an insult to their honor because they felt it was accusing them of incompetence. They'd rather believe they had failed at something, and could have done better if they'd been more careful or tried harder, than believe that they'd done the best they could, and it still wasn't good enough. And so she'd learned to just let them accept blame, even when she didn't think they should.

As she turned to walk outside, she thought about what Eric had said again. About ending up committed to psychiatric ward if he told anyone about her dream. The thought made her frown. Eric and his students would likely be in a lot more trouble than that before this was all over. Criminal trouble. After all, they were going to break into a scientific research center, commandeer the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, and use it to try to send her home. More than likely, Eric and his students would all be doing prison time. And they'd be doing it for her. Many times, she had thought about offering to take them all back with her. To give them asylum in Equestria. The only reason she hadn't asked them yet is because she didn't know what she'd be taking them back to. Perhaps, she'd be taking them back to a world that was already dead, or would be dead soon. But her dream had made that concern irrelevant. This world was just as doomed as Equestria if they couldn't find some way to stop the Beyond. One aspect of the dream made her smile a bit, though. The fact that Luna was able to control Celestia's dreams could only mean Equestrian forces had found Luna, and they had successfully rescued her. Her sister was back in Canterlot where she belonged, and would now be ruling Equestria.

o.O.o

James sat a table in the special archives section of the Royal Canterlot Library, paging through one of Star Swirl's journals. His tongue felt dry in his mouth and he wished he had a cup of tea to drink, but library rules didn't allow any beverages in the special archives section. These journals and books were one of a kind. Priceless historical literature. The risk of damaging them by spilling something on them was too great. It was also somewhat cold in this part of the library. But fires weren't allowed in this room for fear that they would dry out the pages of the historical treasures. Yes, copies had been made. But these were the originals. The book he was paging through now had been hoofwritten by Star Swirl himself. Its pages were worn and yellowed by time, but the library did an amazing job of preserving these originals. James felt privileged and somewhat in awe to be holding an actual journal written by one of Equestria's greatest legends. A piece of Equestrian history that was more than a thousand years old.

Ever since he'd told Twilight that Luna had given them her blessing to be together, he had felt like a great weight had been lifted from him. And Twilight had a new spark in her step, and her mane, tail and coat seemed to shine with a new brilliance. Not having to worry about breaking up with each other or going into hiding had allowed them to focus all of their attention on stopping the Beyond. The two of them had been working much better without that threat looming over their heads. And Luna had been right about another thing: His loyalty to Twilight Sparkle really did make him more loyal to Equestria itself. He was determined to protect her homeland, and by extension, his adopted homeland. He turned his attention back to the book, flipping another page.

“You find anything yet?” Twilight asked. He looked over at her to see her closing the page of one book and levitating another one over.

“The Beyond behaves a bit like strange matter. It converts everything it touches into more of itself. But strange matter is unstable. It evaporates before it can do any real damage. And yet the Beyond is stable.  The question is why. Why is it stable? What can we do to destabilize it and cause it to consume itself? To evaporate on itself?”

He returned his attention to the page he was looking at now, closing the book and opening a new one, scanning over a few pages before looking back at Twilight and continuing.

“Star Swirl wrote down this multiple page equation more than four hundred times over a period of twenty years. He never finished it, but he was clearly obsessed with it. It consumed twenty years of his life until he finally gave up on it. He never did finish it. He could never get it to balance.”

“His equation on the stability of deep matter you mean? He never solved it. No pony ever has. Today, most of our physicists think it's unsolvable.”

James nodded. “Star Swirl's colleagues believed protons, neutrons, and electrons were the smallest types of matter. The building blocks that all other matter was made from. But Star Swirl thought they were wrong. He discovered subatomic particles. He discovered hadrons, mesons, and baryons. The stallion was a genius. He discovered these particles more than a thousand years before we humans did. But then … he made a mistake. He thought he'd found the smallest particles. The fundamental matter of the universe. And so he never discovered quarks. He never even looked for them.”

James grabbed a piece of scratch paper and a quill, dipping it in the ink and scribbling furiously on the paper, a growing excitement pulsing through his veins. A few minutes later, he stopped and looked up at Twilight. He wasn't able to stop himself from smiling.

“I solved the deep matter equation.”

Twilight's jaw hung open for a moment as she looked at him in disbelief before responding.

“Star Swirl spent the better part of twenty years trying to solve that equation. You're telling me you solved it in twenty minutes? Despite never having seen it until today?”

“Star Swirl could have spent a hundred years trying to solve it. He never would have been able to because he didn't know about the existence of quarks.”

Twilight blinked, then levitated a piece of scratch paper over to herself and begin scribbling frantically for a few minutes, glancing over at the equation in the open book a few times, when she finished, she frowned and shook her head.

“Even after trying all of the quark types it doesn't balance. You must have made a mistake in your math.”

James moved to sit next to Twilight, leaning against her, her warm fur pressing to his robe as he looked over her work. He pointed to a part of it.

“Ah. Your physicists think there are only five types of quarks. There aren't. There are six. Star Swirl's equation requires a top quark. It has a one-half spin and a two-thirds positive charge.”

Twilight scribbled again for a few minutes, then looked up at him, her eyes full of wonder.

“It balances,” was all she said.

“That's why the Beyond is stable. That's why it doesn't evaporate,” James said, trying to contain the excitement in his voice. He stood up now, pacing as he continued, following a chain reaction of thoughts in his head.

“What is the opposite of something? It's not nothing. If we use the analogy of a proton. The opposite of a proton isn't an electron. It's an antiproton. The opposite of something isn't nothing. It's … well, it's anti-something.”

He stopped pacing and turned to face her again, a cyclone equations and ideas storming in his brain as he continued speaking.

“What is the Beyond but the proto-material left over from before the beginning of the Universe? The remains of an imperfect and less than one hundred percent efficient reaction?”

“I'm not following you, James.”

He stopped and put his hands on her shoulders now, barely able to contain his excitement.

“What if we could use deep magic … What if we could figure out a spell you can cast. A spell that splits a god particle at its nucleus?”

Twilight blinked and shook her head. “I don't understand. What good would splitting a Higgs bosson particle do?”

“No no no, not that god particle,” James said with a shake of his head. “The god particle Celestia was talking about. The fundamental building block of the universe.”

Twilight's eyes went wide and she recoiled slightly, his hands falling off of her shoulders.

“James, that's madness!”

“Is it?”

“You want me to re-create the Big Bang!”

“Yes.”