//------------------------------// // 2: Supposedly Intelligent Life Isn't All That Intelligent // Story: Unlinked Worlds // by Doggyshakespeare //------------------------------// The world was a blur. What is anything? It was uncomfortable, but what is the source of this discomfort? This struggle to comprehend the world was fruitful, to some extent. There were now things to see, but what are they? Nothing was recognizable at first. The discomfort eventually faded into a soothing clarity. Slowly, the brain booted up consciousness and there was life. Twilight Sparkle lay on one of the two hospital beds of room 8 of Ponyville Hospital. "Ugh... Why am I in the hospital?" She tried to recall her most recent memories. Traveling to the Castle of the Two Sisters... finding those pesky mice living in a storage room... dusting the bookshelves that lined the walls... thinking of teleporting... actually teleporting... and what? She couldn't remember anything past the teleportation. What had happened? Had she gotten injured, which was why she was in the hospital? Twilight sensed her whole body, and apart from some sore limbs and a few shallow scratches on her forelimbs and belly, she was fine. She tried to remove her blankets, but as soon as she did so, there was a sharp pain on her horn, like what she felt on the day after her first encounter with Trixie when she had transported an Ursa Minor perhaps a few hundred meters using her telekinesis. It was bearable, but it still hurt. "Ow!" She released her grip on the blanket. I must have overexerted myself with the teleport. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea after all. Instead of saving half an hour, I lost who knows how many hours, or even days! Speaking of which, what day is it? After moving the blankets to the side with her slightly dirty hooves, she hopped down onto the ground and looked outside the window. The sun had risen not long ago. She walked over to the end of the bed and looked at the clipboard. The last entry was on the same day as her teleportation, meaning that it was very likely that only one night has passed. It wasn't a very severe case of overexertion, which is nice. No more time needs to be lost because of this. She glanced up and saw that Spike was on the other bed, sleeping. There was also another creature, and she wasn't sure what it was doing here. Interesting... I've never read about nor encountered a creature like it before. Anyway, how nice for Spike to stay at the hospital to look after me. Not wanting to bother him, she stepped slowly and carefully on the hard floor to decrease the noise created. As she was about to hop back onto her bed, she heard a burping sound, a sound that she had heard many times before. It signaled the arrival of a scroll sent using dragon fire and a grumpy baby dragon who had just been woken up. As predicted, Spike's sleep was rudely interrupted when he belched up a jet of green fire from which a scroll materialized. Twilight was going to grasp it with her magic, but remembered that her horn still hurt, and that she should let her horn rest after a magic overexertion. Spike grabbed the scroll and opened it; it was a letter from Princess Celestia. "Morning, Spike," said Twilight. "What does the letter say?" "Oh, you're awake!" Spike jumped down from the bed and embraced her. "Good you're okay now." "Apart form my horn hurting when I use it, I'm fine." Spike broke away from the hug. "So last night I sent a letter to Princess Celestia saying that you were unconscious." Spike quickly read the letter over. "And she sent this letter back to tell me to notify her of 'any further updates' on your health. Anyway, what happened yesterday? We found you on the ground just outside of our castle, unconscious, so we brought you here." "I was at the Castle of the Two Sisters, maintaining and cleaning, as you know, and I had the idea to teleport back to our home. I guess something must have happened that made me go unconscious, because I have just woken up in the hospital. I'm pretty sure I'm fine, though. What did the doctor say about me?" "They said it was a severe case of magical overexertion, and you'll be fine after a few days. Also, don't use your magic." "It hurting when I use it is a pretty good indication that not using it is a good idea. Why don't you send a letter to the princess saying I'm mostly fine now. Apart from my inability to do paperwork until my horn stops hurting, that is." Spike started composing a letter, and when he was about done, Twilight's attention was drawn to the strange creature on Spike's bed. "What is this?" she asked, pointing at it. "Starlight and I found it right next to where you landed outside of the Friendship Castle. Did you not bring it with you?" Spike asked, confused. "No, I've never even seen this creature. Are you sure I really teleported it with me?" "Both of you made a dent in the ground where you must have landed from the teleportation." "Hmm, that's interesting. How could it have teleported with me, then? Did some of the energy I put into the teleport flow into it as well? But why was it the only other thing teleported, and why was such a creature in the Everfree forest anyway?" Twilight stood there, deep in thought. "Could this be a new organism nopony has seen before?" "Why don't we take a look at where you landed, and see if we can find more clues there?" suggested Spike. "That's an excellent idea! Let's go." "Let me finish this letter first." He scribbled a few more words, rolled up the scroll, and sent it off using dragon fire. Twilight and Spike exited the room, with Spike holding the creature in his arms. As they walked down the hall, they encountered a nurse. "Are you feeling better now, Princess Twilight?" "Yes, I'm fine, except for the horn pain that follows magical overexertions." "Okay, let's get you checked up one last time before you leave the hospital." The nurse went into room 8 and returned with the clipboard. They descended the stairs and entered Doctor Horse's office. After a checkup which included temperature readings (her horn had already fully cooled) and a few questions about her health and what had happened, they were out of the hospital and were walking back to the Castle of Friendship. "Okay, what explains this creature?" asked Twilight, examining the creature Spike was holding. "Since you've never seen anything like it before, it's pretty likely that it's a new species of organism," replied Spike. "True, and the Everfree is still quite a mysterious place, so it is possible nopony has discovered it yet. But that leads, again, to the question: how was it able to be teleported with me? I guess I could have just accidentally teleported it with me, but that is, I think, rather unlikely." "Maybe it has teleportation hijacking powers," suggested Spike. "That seems rather unlikely as well. My teleport was a very long distance teleport, and that needs a lot of energy to both raise the magicons' energy level and propel me forward, or equivalently, increase my kinetic energy. I have control over the energy flow, which has to be precise so I don't teleport other things with me. For it to evolve this kind of precise redirection of energy it would have to be in contact with ponies for a long, long time, or their species would also need to be able to teleport. It couldn't have been in contact with ponies for that long because nopony, as far as I know, knows about them, so the only logical explanation for hijacking powers is that its species can teleport, and that it can trace my teleport as well. Tracing a teleport requires a way of detecting the magical field accurately, but it doesn't have a horn, so it is very unlikely that it can do that. Additionally, if it could, it would need a lot of energy to teleport that much distance, as well as a lot of luck for it to land beside me." "So it doesn't have teleportation hijacking powers?" "Right, it is extremely unlikely that it does," said Twilight. The two reached the path that connects the castle to the rest of Ponyville. The crash site was just ahead of them, and they approached it. A pony-shaped dent in the ground could still clearly be seen. There was also a smaller dent where the creature had landed around 30 centimeters off to the side. As Starlight had remembered, the orientation of the impact did look like both Twilight and the creature hit the ground from the direction of the Everfree Forest. Twilight noticed this. "So that's where the creature was found?" she asked, pointing at the smaller dent. "Yup." "The magnitude and the direction of the impact both match mine, which means that it almost surely also teleported with me, so we can rule out that it was just a coincidence that it was also found here," explained Twilight. "It is therefore quite likely that I accidentally teleported it with me. Perhaps we could take a photo and make detailed drawings of the crash site later, but let's go back into the castle for now." Twilight and Spike walked the rest of the way back to the castle. They opened the door and walked inside. "Where's Starlight?" "Oh hey, you're back!" Starlight walked down the stairs to the main hall. "Are you feeling better now?" "For possibly the fourth time today, yes," replied Twilight, slightly frustrated. "Nice. So what is that creature?" "Twilight doesn't know either. Based on our observations, we think that she accidentally teleported it with her," said Spike, holding it as the three walked down the hallway towards the library. "Oh? That's interesting. Spike, remember I said that telekinetically carrying you to the hospital felt kind of weird? I tried to recreate the effect with some books, and I couldn't do it," said Starlight. "What did it feel like?" asked Twilight. "It just felt like Spike was a lot heavier than he should normally be." "Are you sure it's not just the creature that's being heavier than it looks?" "I'm not sure, but let me try." They got to the library, and Twilight put her saddlebags down on a table. Starlight tried to lift the creature from Spike's arms with her telekinesis. The act took a lot more effort than expected, but she was able to lift it up after the initial moment of unexpectedness. She dropped her telekinesis. Suddenly, the creature started to cry, much like a foal would, and wiggled within the towel that wrapped around it. "Whoa, what's happening?" asked Spike. He tried to hold it still in his arms but it squirmed, trying to get out of the cloth. Spike made the decision to unwrap the towel, freeing the creature. "How is that even possible?" she asked. "It felt like it had a weight of several ponies combined, or more. How heavy is it, Spike?" "Just a few kilograms. Why was it so hard to use telekinesis on it?" "Well, we have found meteorites from outer space, and some of them are harder while others are easier to perform magic on," replied Twilight. "The difference isn't usually very drastic, but we have encountered ones that feel like they weigh more than ten times than they actually do." "So you're saying that it's from outer space?" asked Spike. "Not necessarily. It's rather unlikely, actually, since it came with a towel, and towels tend to burn up when they enter the atmosphere at high speeds. Plus, it would very likely have died from falling from those kinds of heights, but it is evidently still alive," said Twilight. "Still, it's a good point. Being so hard to use magic on suggests that it isn't from Equus, as all objects from the planet have pretty much the same magicon density. If it isn't from outer space, where is it from?" The three examined the creature, now that they could see its actual body. It had four appendages: two that resembled minotaur arms, but ending with hands with five instead of four digits, one of those five being opposable. The other two are kind of similar to the legs of a dog, but the bottom of the feet are flatter. Again, the feet had five toes attached, but unlike the hands, there were no opposable digits. Its skin was a brownish color, and its whole body was smooth and furless, except for a bit of a dark mane on the body part that is, presumably, its head, as it resembled one. The creature wore a white diaper around its groin. It was also still crying loudly. "Why does it have a diaper on?" asked Starlight, performing Silentium, creating a silencing bubble around it to muffle its crying. The room was suddenly quiet again. "That's a very good question. Maybe somepony put a diaper on it? If that were true, which is very likely, then somepony else must know of this creature. But then again, how did it end up in the Everfree forest? Also, continuing from our conversation earlier, how did I not notice that I had teleported it as well? Perhaps most importantly, why does it have such low magicon density? Ah, so many questions!" Twilight was prancing around the library, a bit annoyed but excited by the sheer amount of mystery surrounding this creature. "What if it came from... no, that wouldn't work. But what... oh! That somepony could have gone... hmm... Maybe it's supposed to..." Spike examined the diaper closely, but not too close as for his head to get inside the bubble. The diaper appeared to have a shape slightly different from the average pony foal diaper; it had a bulge in the middle whereas pony diapers didn't. In addition, Spike noticed that it did not have a hole for a tail to go through. In fact, the creature did not have a tail at all. "Um, Twilight? This doesn't look like a diaper for a pony," said Spike. "Look, it doesn't have a hole for a tail." "What?" "Look." Spike grasped the creature so that she could see its behind. "Wait... so its species makes diapers?" Twilight looked at the diaper closely, studying it. Instead of a hole where she had expected, diaper material covered the area seamlessly. She prodded the diaper with her forehoof. "It is different from the diapers the baby Cakes use, but at the same time this seems like it was mass produced. The only explanation I can think of is that its species makes diapers, which means that they are sapient, intelligent, and they're from an advanced society. But, wh- how? How could there be an advanced civilization in the Everfree with a proper industry that we've never seen before? That doesn't even make any sense!" "It doesn't look very intelligent," noted Spike. "That... That is a good point. Maybe it's just a baby, and that's why it has a diaper on." "It's probably not from the Everfree Forest, then," said Starlight. "What if there was another world full of these creatures and you somehow teleported one of them here? Then you have all your mysteries solved." "Okay, but where is that other world? There aren't any port-" Twilight's face grew from a thinking face into a big smile. "YES YES YES! The creature must be from the mirror portal to that alternate dimension where everypony was a creature that stood on two legs and had fingers... like that creature!" Twilight galloped out of the library, up a few flights of stairs, and into the room where the portal was kept. It was off and the book wasn't even on the machine. For a tiny duration of time, a memory of where the book was located went through her mind: she kept it in a drawer in her work room. Spike and Starlight entered the room. "You teleported from the Castle of the Two Sisters to here. It was nearly impossible that the creature did come through this portal," reasoned Spike. "That means that this is a new discovery," said Twilight excitedly when the three were back down at the library. "Spike, take a letter. Dear Princess Celestia..."