I was filing the last of Golden Oaks' new fiction shipment when the floor shuddered and a book dropped on my head.

"Ow!" I said, flailing my claws as I overbalanced. Stars exploded in my vision. I stumbled backward and sat down hard.

"Spike?" Twilight called down the stairs. "I think I just felt an earthquake. Are you alright?"

"Ah'm fine," I said automatically, struggling back to my hooves. I blinked and looked down, and my hat fell over my eyes. I pushed it back, along with a lock of golden hair.

I stared at my hoof.

"Or," I said weakly, "maybe I ain't?"

Twilight's head popped out from the upstairs doorway. "Spike?" Her eyes widened. "Applejack? What are you doing here? Where's Spike?"

I shook my head in an effort to clear the disorientation. "Ah think…ah…" My gaze fell on the book on the floor, and reality began to assert itself. "Oh, right! Ah just swung by ta check out that encyclopedia of root-rot treatments I asked ya to special-order from the Canterlot Archives. Must have pulled it half off the shelf when the quake hit." I gripped the top edge of the cover in my teeth, making certain to pull my lips back to keep from getting it damp, and set it carefully down on the table.

Twilight blinked. "That's right! And I told Spike he could go to the market after he finished his filing. I figured he'd tell me when he was leaving, though." She opened her wings and flew downstairs. "How's the orchard doing?"

"It'll be right as rain once ah get Zecora to mix up the recipe on page…" I trailed off as I opened the book.

"On page what?" Twilight landed behind me and glanced over my shoulder. "Hey, that's not an encyclopedia."

I stared down, puzzled. "What's a Darin' Do story doin' in your agriculture section?"

Twilight squinted, checked the cover, and flared her horn to flip a few pages, looking equally lost. "I don't recognize this one. Wait—is she teaming up with Ahuizotl? I've read all the novels! She's never done that!"

I looked back at the shelf I had been standing underneath. "Huh. There ain't any books missing from the shelves there, either."

Twilight gasped, eyes lighting up. "Then this must be the new one! The Canterlot Archives must have messed up and sent us a review copy instead of your encyclopedia!" She began to trot in place. "Ohmigosh, Rainbow Dash is just going to flip! It's not even out for two more weeks! Hold everything, Applejack, I need to read this!" She pushed me aside and sat down in front of the book, enthusiasm lighting her eyes, her horn flaring out as she began riffling through the pages.

I sighed, rubbed my head, and walked around the room. There was no arguing with her when the book addiction hit. Maybe if I checked the filing desk, I could do some research and find a different root-rot cure on my own.

Still, there was a question gnawing at the corner of my brain that wouldn't go away. I walked back up to her as she flipped another page, and prodded her lightly on the shoulder. "One thing don't make sense, though, Twilight…are they in the habit of teleportin' stories straight to the middle of your aisles?"

"No, they send special orders via bookfire to…"

Twilight's smile died away as the implications hit. She pulled herself away from the book, then surveyed me, blinking rapidly. "Spike?"

"No, ah…" I started automatically, but the words died on my lips. There was something weird, some mismatching memory, right back before the book had hit, but…"Ah…don't think…"

"What were you doing before the book fell on you?"

"Walkin' here, of course," I said automatically, then frowned. "But that ain't what ah remember. Ah was filin' things."

"I think we'd better find Spike," Twilight said slowly. With one last reluctant glance at her new novel, she closed the cover. "Or, as the case may be, Applejack. Why don't you check the market while I teleport to Sweet Dragon Acres?"

"Ta where?"

Twilight blinked rapidly. "What did I just say?"

"Sweet Dragon Acres. Ya know, 'steada—" I furrowed my brow, chasing a suddenly elusive memory—"Sweet…Dragon…Acres."

Twilight stood still for a moment, then turned with a grim face to the display case against the stairway wall, opening it up and lifting the Elements of Harmony out. "Discord."

I trotted up. "Now hold up, Twi. He's in Saddle Arabia this week with the Princesses, remember? They said some travel would do him good, and he made a Pinkie Promise not ta cause any mischief while he was gone."

"I don't care. He found some loophole, obviously, and we can't let him get away with…whatever he did."

"He made a Pinkie Promise, Twi. Not even Discord's gonna break a Pinkie Promise. Besides, does this seem like somethin' he'd do? Cause this sorta chaos and then not even be around to laugh at it?"

Twilight's muzzle contorted. Then she let out a deep sigh and put the Elements back down. "I guess not. Besides, the last time this sort of swap happened, it was pony magic—that unfinished spell of Starswirl's."

"You weren't castin' anything upstairs, were ya?"

"No, I was reviewing some schedule assignments for this year's Winter Wrap-Up." Twilight frowned. "But who else could it have been?"

"Some librarian in Canterlot? Might explain the book, too."

Twilight's horn shimmered, her eyes flared white, and she stared for a moment at the Daring Do story. "No. There's no spell-activation residue on the book, like there would be if it had activated a remote enchantment when it hit you; and a dweomer with an effect this powerful would need to be triggered from far closer than the capital."

"This don't seem like the kinda spell Rarity would be castin', though, and there ain't any other unicorns in town half as strong as you two."

"So it's a visitor to town, then."

"Or Spike's sister an' her friends. You know how Snapdragon an' Sweetie Belle get when they get ta foolin' with magic."

"Or some ancient artifact activating nearby. Or an alchemical effect, which wouldn't leave residue." Twilight paced as she talked; I could almost see the gears whirring in her brain. "If it's not a spell…do you think it's a prank? Sure, Discord's gone, but this seems like the sort of thing Pinkie Pie would find hysterical, too."

I stopped to listen. "She ain't within giggling range, neither. Ah don't think it's her."

"It sure would be useful if she was here, then," Twilight said. "Her Pinkie Sense would make it much simpler to figure this out."

I looked at Twilight and nodded.

Twilight glanced around, as if tracing a sound I couldn't hear. She looked back at me, still seeming distracted. There was an awkward pause.

I cleared my throat. "Ah agree," I said.

"Sorry, I just lost my train of thought for a moment there."

"Ain't no thing. But we should—"

WHAM! The front door burst open.

"DON'T TOUCH THE STORIES!" Pinkie Pie bellowed at the top of her lungs.

She stood in the doorway, chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath, water trickling from her body and mane to form a little puddle on the floor. There were some strands of pondweed in her mane.

"Oh, hey, Pinkie," I said. "We were just talkin' aboutcha."

"Something weird is happening," Twilight said, then paused and looked her up and down. "Weirder than whatever it is you normally get up to, anyway. I'm glad you're here. We need your help."

Pinkie dashed around the library, glancing around corners and under chairs and on top of bookshelves. "Where are they? Where are they?"

I exchanged a glance with Twilight. "Where're what?"

"The stories! We can avoid all this if—" Her face contorted into an exaggerated grimace. "Twitchy tail! Twitchy tail! Itches of twitches!"

We all dove for cover. Long seconds passed in tense silence.

Twilight cautiously floated a mirror over to her position under the table. She aimed it at the ceiling and shifted it around, checking for objects poised to fall. "Pinkie, you know I trust your Pinkie Sense, but are you certain—"

Pinkie gasped and tensed. "Oh no! It's even worse! DOOZY!" she shouted. "No—the DOOZIEST!"

I raised an eyebrow. "Pinkie…you ain't even shakin' all over."

That's when the earthquake started in earnest.

The three of us scrambled under the table to join Twilight, screaming and huddling together. The library lurched and swayed. Bookshelves teetered and toppled over. In the kitchen, we heard plates and bowls crashing to the floor. Then gravity itself seemed to lurch sideways, and we slid down the slope of the floor, scrambling for hoofholds. The room abruptly tilted the opposite direction, sending books—and us—flying like confetti bits in a snowglobe. Finally, the tremors subsided, and we lay on the floor, groaning.

"At least that's over with," I said—just as twenty or so books appeared out of thin air, and proceeded to slam down on my head as if fired from a cannon.

I came slowly back to my senses to find Pinkie Pie hurriedly scooping those books up. I reached toward one of the new titles, but she swatted my hoof away and slammed the stack of stories into a big cardboard box. Her hoof danced over the surface as she counted. "Nineteen … twenty," she said, then slammed the box-top shut and sighed in relief. "That should be all of them." Her face brightened up for the first time that day. "We're safe again! Yay!"

Twilight sighed. "Good to know. Maybe now, Pinkie—since you seem to know what's going on—we can get some answers?"

Pinkie bared her teeth in a grin. A single drop of sweat trickled down her forehead. "Mmmmaybe?"

Twilight crossed her forehooves. "This is important, Pinkie. I think we deserve some answers. Especially poor Applejack here. While I deeply appreciate everything my faithful assistant has done ever since Princess Celestia had me adopt her from the orphanage…" Twilight blinked and pressed her hoof to her forehead. "See, I remember that, but it all feels wrong, and her memories are messed up too. I don't need to tell you how much trouble there was the last time that ponies switched their roles around, is all I'm saying."

Pinkie shuffled her hooves. "There might be a problem there. Maybe. But just a little one! If you'll play let's-pretend-everything's-okay for a little while, I Pinkie Promise I'll take care of it."

Twilight looked around the library, lit her horn, and levitated the new Daring Do book from the mess on the floor. "Just a guess, but does it have anything to do with this hitting her on the head?"

Pinkie's eyes bugged out.

In a single motion, she was back at the cardboard box, yanking books out. Her pupils shrank, and she drew in a long gasp. She pulled a library book out of the stack of mystery books—complete with Dewy decimal code and a title card hanging limply out of the side.

"No…" she breathed. Her head swiveled back to Twilight. "Did you read it? Did you read it?"

"Well, not all the way through yet, but—"

"Aaaaaaaagh!" Pinkie screamed, hooves whipping up to the side of her heads. She danced in place for a moment, then whirled toward me. "We may have one last chance. Spike! Quick! Where was The Prestidigitator's Guide To Perfectly Timed Entrances filed?"

"Uh, ah ain't Spike—"

Pinkie's hooves gripped my shoulders. "Tell me!"

"Third bookshelf on the left, second shelf up, yellow cover," I immediately said.

Pinkie was at the loose pile of books in front of what used to be that bookshelf in a single bound. She plunged her head into the mound, yanked a bright yellow hardbound out of the pile, kick-flipped it into midair, and dashed toward the door. The book vanished into her mane as she passed through it. "Remember, DON'T TOUCH THE BOOKS!" she shouted. "Don't read them, don't look at them, and especially don't put anything into them!"

Pinkie zipped out through the door, with speed lines leaving quickly fading chromatic tints hanging in the air behind her. Silence hung alongside them for a moment. The door swung shut with an anticlimactic creak.

"Well," I said, "that was sure weird. Reckon that ain't the end of it, though. We oughta keep tryin' to figure this out."

"That wasn't the Prestidigitator's Guide," Twilight mumbled.

"Huh?"

"You pointed her at The Illusionist's Guide To Perfectly Timed Entrances. The Cutie Mark Crusaders destroyed the Prestidigitator's Guide a few weeks ago, remember? I ordered a replacement but they didn't have any more copies."

I sighed, rolled my eyes, and hoofed at the carpet of books for emphasis. "Twi, don't we have more important things ta think about?"

"This is important! I read the Illusionist's Guide when it came in, and Wanda Believe is a complete hack! Quill and Tiller wrote about ways for even earth ponies and pegasi to tap into the natural magical undercurrents of the world—but Wanda's book was just some pseudomystical road-apples about synchronizing yourself with magical perceptual shifts! Ley-line-of-sight theory was conclusively disproven centuries ago—"

I started sifting through the book piles. "Twilight!"

"—and while Wanda's methods might unintentionally work for unicorns, who are already attuned to spell currents and can perform subconscious compensation for the deficits in her theories, earth ponies like Pinkie…" she trailed off, staring over my shoulder. "Huh. That wasn't there a few minutes ago."

I looked over my shoulder, then did a double-take. Among the many bookshelves that had fallen down in the second earthquake were the ones in the alcove halfway up the stairwell, along the outer edge of the library. At the back of the alcove was a simple, square wooden door, about half our height, set flush into the wall.

We walked up to the one-and-a-halfth floor, peering at the portal. I prodded it with a hoof. It creaked open to reveal a dim, fleshy tunnel, stretching off toward a barely visible light.

"Eugh!" I backpedaled away from the chthonic passage. "What is that?!"

"Interesting," Twilight murmured. "It appears to travel through a dimension at right angles to our own, since clearly this tunnel doesn't pass through the space outside the library." She leaned in and sniffed. "It smells vaguely like grapes."

"Alright, Twi, you know what? This is gettin' weirder by the second. Ah think we'd better take a deep breath, go get alla our friends—"

Twilight crouched and started shimmying into the tunnel. "No time. C'mon, Applejack!"

With a strangled cry, I lunged forward, bit down hard on her tail, and hauled her back into the library. "Twilight! What do ya think yer doing?!" I shouted, muffled, through a muzzleful of hair.

Twilight yelped as she was jerked backward, then flicked her tail away from my mouth and gave me a wounded look. "Investigating, like you said we should."

"This is different!"

She thumped the doorway with a hoof. "Well, it's clearly not a book, and Pinkie Pie didn't give us any warnings about strange extradimensional tunnels."

"Ya ever stop to think maybe a Pinkie Pie warning ain't the only reason not to do somethin'?"

"Think logically, Applejack! You said it yourself, this is getting stranger by the second. Pinkie rounded up those books, but what if more appear? How much longer are we willing to let this weirdness spread before we can understand it enough to deal with it? If we wait long enough to round up all of our friends, how much worse is it going to get?"

"But if we charge in without understandin' what's going on—"

"How are we going to understand something like this without charging into it? We need answers, Appleja…Spike." She touched a hoof to my shoulder and smiled. "We handled Sombra's door. We can handle this, right?"

"But—ah—" I spluttered. I'd never been the eloquent one, and just because the sensible answer seemed obvious in my head didn't mean it was easy to convince my friends with. I looked desperately around the library in vain hopes that the earthquake had made our argument moot by sending our friends galloping toward us. "Twilight…ah, consarn it!" This last was shouted at her rear end as it wriggled fully into the strange tunnel.

I grabbed my saddlebags and lasso and hurtled myself into the moist, squishy flesh of the passageway, crawling double-time after her. "Land's sake, Twilight! At least stick together!"

Behind us, the door slammed shut.

We had just enough time to look over our shoulders at the new and ominous darkness before gravity shifted. We plummeted forward toward the light, scrambling fruitlessly for hoofholds in the slick tunnel, screaming our heads off—

"—itself is at stake!" Pinkie Pie says.

Where am I? It's dark. There's a weird, oblong window, like looking out through the eyehole of a ghost costume. In that window—

Pinkie Pie is facing me, shaking my shoulders intently. She is dripping wet, and has a panicked expression on her face. We are in Sugarcube Corner.

I am also Pinkie Pie. I smile back at her—

Wait, what?

I shake my head in the darkness. I am Applejack. I am disoriented. I glance back through the window, and everything falls into place. I am also Pinkie Pie—

I smile back at the wet me who just burst into my kitchen. "That's great! Because when we get it fixed we'll be able to have the biggest party ever!"

"But it's not GOING to be fixed! Didn't you feel that earlier? The dooziest of all doozies! It wasn't even a ME doozy, it was an EVERYTHING doozy!"

"Hmm." I tap my hoof to my chin. "Nope. I'm pretty sure you felt the doozy. I was here baking."

"Nngggh!" Wet Me pulls at her mane with her hooves. "Slightly More Clueless Me, for once, would you listen? This is serious!"

"Applejack?" I say in response.

I blink in surprise. I didn't say that. But it came from my mouth.

Also surprised, I pull back from the screen and stare around the darkness. It's completely featureless. I lean forward again.

"What was that?" Wet Me says.

"Twilight?" I ask, focusing on my muzzle, shaping words from the darkness and pushing them through my mouth with a hint of a Badlands twang. "Is that you?"

"No," Wet Me says. "It's—" She gasps. "They found it! Pinkie, you've got to stop them!"

"Sort of," my mouth says, voice a little lower than usual. "Listen. I think we're both in Pinkie Pie's brain." There's a short pause. "Ooooh," my mouth says in its usual tone, and giggles. "It tickles when they do that!"

Wet Me grabs me by the sides of the head and pulls my face in, muzzle almost touching mine, looking more serious than I've ever seen her. "Twilight. Spike. You have to stop this. Walk away now—just walk away. The more you meddle, the worse it gets."

"But we can't just leave—" my mouth starts, then clamps shut. I wave a hoof frantically. After a moment, I unclench my jaw. "Girls?" my mouth says in my usual bright chirp. "Do you mind if I handle this one?"

My mouth says "Go ahead, Pinkie." There's an expectant silence. I assume control of my muzzle for a moment. "Uh, sure?"

"Great!" I say. I bring my hooves up to Wet Me's shoulders and smile sweetly. "Don't be silly, Allegedly Wiser Me. Didn't we learn anything from Season 2, Episode 20?"

Wet Pinkie Pie stares at me for a moment as she does mental math.

"It's About Time."

Her hair begins to wilt. "But this isn't—"

"Up-bup-bup!" I put a hoof onto her mouth. "Even without getting into the thorny issues raised by questions of predestination, you have to acknowledge that your presence here assumes a number of necessary preconditions, and were you capable of influencing them in any significant regard, breaking that causal chain would do more existential damage than anything you're accusing them of."

"Slightly More Clueless Me, if you'll just listen—"

"You remember this conversation too, don't you? From the other perspective."

"But—"

"Doooooooon't you?" I lean forward.

She sighs. "Yes."

"So, no, I'm not going to stop them, for the same reason that you remember back when you were me."

She stares into my eyes earnestly. "But that reasoning is based on a faulty interpretation of the danger. This isn't a paradox problem, it's—"

In the background, a little timer went ding.

With a sickening lurch, darkness reclaimed me. Then my inner ears went crazy. I flailed around as my body was pulled in seventeen directions at once. Light exploded into my eyes, and the wind wrapped itself around me, and as two screams intermingled in the chilly morning air, Twilight and I plummeted toward the levee above Ponyville Reservoir.

"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH—Oof!" We hit the ground, knocking the wind out of us, and bounced down the slope to plunge into the icy water with an enveloping splash. I flailed to the surface, coughing and spitting, and dragged myself back up onto the shore, chest heaving for air.

Twilight recovered first. "Wings," she said, shoving drenched bangs out of her face and stretching out her waterlogged extra limbs. "I keep forgetting about those."

I took a few extra gasps and then reached up to wring out my hat. "Why do ah keep listenin' to your fool ideas?"

"That portal took us inside Pinkie Pie's head. Do you know what this means, Applej—Spike?"

"A metaphysiological can o' worms that ain't none of us equipped to deal with?"

"Answers, my faithful assistant. Answers."

"Seriously, Twi, ah've seen a world that no mare should see."

"I, for one, intend to fix you." She smacked a hoof down on the ground with a wet plop. "We're going back in there."




Our second time, we went in prepared—or at least as prepared as we were going to get. I put on a miner's helmet, and Twilight brought a glowstone. We both clipped on climbing harnesses, and I tied two separate lengths of rope between us. She put on a saddlebag full of various meters and detectors. I packed a towel.

Twilight wanted to bring the books that Pinkie Pie had boxed up. I argued against it. The debate became moot when we couldn't find the box where we'd last seen it on the library floor.

I tied a tight slipknot around the mysterious portal's inner doorknob as we passed through, and spooled out the rope little by little as we inched forward through the tunnel. When the door slammed shut behind us, I jerked the rope taut. Neither of us was entirely surprised when it suddenly went slack and we plummeted through the tunnel like before.

The light at the far end hurtled toward us, but it seemed weaker, more diffuse. Then it was upon us—

—I am back in the darkness, featureless except for the big window of light. It's a solid square of muted dark grey, with nothing but the word "ERROR" in thin red letters.

I pull back from the window. I fumble for my body. Saddlebags and straps—a rope, into the darkness—

I tug at the rope, twice, sharply.

The rope tugs back—

The tug broke me out of my trance. I fumbled for my headlamp. The darkness receded, leaving a wet and meaty room in its place, with some sort of screen embedded into most of one wall, and a tiny tunnel in the ceiling leading out into darkness.

Nearly within hoof's-reach, Twilight Sparkle was fumbling with her pouch to pull her glowstone out. Our eyes met. We nodded at each other, then looked around.

"Pinkie Pie's brain," she said. "Who'd have ever thought?"

"Not a lot here," I said, taking a cautious step forward on the slippery surface.

"Applejack. Be nice." Twilight blinked and pressed her hoof to her forehead. "Spike. Apple…Spike."

I looked slowly around the featureless walls of meat. Not entirely featureless—on a side wall was a little silver plaque that read "ANTECHAMBER OF BLATANT METAPHOR". I looked back at the grey screen, getting a little queasy. "That error there don't seem right. Ya don't think somethin' happened to her, do ya?"

Twilight frowned. "I think if something did, we wouldn't have been able to come here. But you're right, that is odd."

"Maybe she's blockin' us out. She did know we'd be comin', ah think."

"I certainly hope not. She's been friends with Spike long enough to know how important Honesty is."

"Well," I said, double-checking my ropes and looking up at the entrance tunnel, "not much more to do here. I reckon we'd best figure out how to get back."

"Or," Twilight said, pointing, "we could just go through that door in the back wall."

"What d—oh."

By the time I walked over to the door labeled "TOTALLY NONSUSPICIOUS AND WELCOMING PLACE OF HARMLESSNESS," Twilight already had tested the doorknob and found it unlocked. I leaned in toward the sign and squinted. "HAZARDOUS MATERIALS ARCHIVE" appeared to have been recently erased from the sign, with only faint discolorations remaining around the former edges of the letters.

I put a hoof on her shoulder. "Seriously, Twi, we gotta stop 'fore somepony gets hurt."

"Up-bup-bup! Science!" she said cheerfully. Then she gave me a more serious look, and said quietly, "I did see the sign, Applespike. I'm not stupid. But this is Pinkie Pie—she wouldn't hurt her friends."

I sighed. "Ah sure hope so."

Twilight pushed open the door, and we stepped through into a small, well-lit metallic room. There were only two things on the floor: a familiar cardboard box, and a rolled-up parchment that looked like it had some sort of diagram on it.

Twilight lifted a hoof in front of me, halting at the very edge of the room. She lit her horn. The box shimmered and lifted into the air, its lid swinging open. It was full of the mysterious books that had appeared during the earthquakes.

"Ah'm pretty sure ah don't want to think about how she got those books in here," I said, head already starting to hurt.

"Then don't. I'm pretty certain they're just symbolic representations," Twilight said, closing the box and setting it down. She trotted up to the map and unrolled it with a hoof.

"Ah'm not feelin' particularly symbolic," I said, patting my chest.

"Hm."

I sighed again. Most likely, the best I could hope for at this point was to let this play out and keep Twilight from getting into too much trouble. "Where we goin'?"

She pointed. "The Tree of Knowledge seems like a good target."

"But it's behind the Chamber of Climactic Confrontation."

"So much the better! Plus, that's right next door."

"No, it ain't. It's next to the Crucible of Bad Decisions."

"Which is the only exit from the Antechamber of Blatant Metaphor. Plus—" Twilight pointed—"that door right there says CHAMBER OF CLIMACTIC CONFRONTATION. So let's go."

"Already?" Pinkie Pie said, looking over our shoulders at the map. "What's the hurry?"

We yelped and spun around.

"P-p-pinkie?" I said. "How'd you get here?!"

"Through there, silly!" She smiled and pointed behind her at the open door of the the Antechamber of Implied Paradox. "So how're you enjoying the Far Side?"

"The what?"

"The Far Side of the Wall!"

"Ah thought this was your brain?" I said weakly.

"Nopers! That's just the easiest way to get here." She clopped her hooves excitedly. "I've always wanted to bring my friends through! We can do so many fun things here! Infinite fun things, girls, you have no idea!"

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "So how come the other you tried to stop us?"

"Oh, that?" Pinkie waved a hoof at the box of books. "I think she just got scared about those. C'mon, let's leave them behind! I can take you to the Hall of Literally Unimaginable Awesome Offscreen Parties and the Happy Ending of Pleasant Eternal Ignorance!"

Twilight gave Pinkie an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry, Pinkie, I really am. But the only reason we're here is to figure out what's happening with those books."

Pinkie bit her lip. Her smile fell away.

"Twilight," she said quietly, "can I level with you?"

"Of course you can, Pinkie," Twilight said, looking earnestly into her friend's eyes.

"I didn't believe what Older Wiser Me said, so I read one of the books. Just one. She said there was a single book in that box that wasn't dangerous to me, and if I read it I could explain to you everything you needed to know, but I couldn't let you touch any of them." Pinkie swallowed. "She said that she remembered not believing Older Wiser Me, just like I didn't believe her…and she remembered reading the book, just like I did…but she was very specific that she never let you put your hooves on any of them. I'm…I'm gonna go off-script here." Pinkie's voice grew faint. "I don't wanna lie to my friends, so I'm gonna give you that book to read."

Twilight pulled Pinkie into a hug. "Thank you, Pinkie. That means a lot. I won't break your trust."

"But you have to understand," Pinkie said urgently, "that according to Older Wiser Me, the other books are basilisks."

"Say what?" I interjected. "Ah'm pretty sure I know what a basilisk is, Pinkie, and those lizards ain't made outta paper."

Twilight tilted her head. "I think she's using the term in its information theoretical context," Twilight said.

"Right."

I stared back and forth between them. "Still lost."

"A 'basilisk' refers to a concept which causes harm to you simply by being communicated to you and being thought about," Twilight said. "It's a hypothetical construct popularized by author Drayvid Langpferd. Philosophy students and speculative writers love to construct fanciful tales about them. However, unlike actual basilisks, they don't, and can't, exist. The very idea is ridiculous."

Pinkie hoofed the ground and looked away. "Older Wiser Me did seem pretty sure. She said simply reading those books could lead to, quote, catastrophic existential catastrophe, and she even said it with the italics."

"And when one 'a these books hit me in the head, that's when I got changed?" I asked.

"Nope actually! That was the 'safe' one."

Twilight blinked. Then she broke into a wide smile.

"Well! In that case," she said, "I can solve all of our problems, and I might not even have to read the book that the other you didn't want me to read."

Pinkie Pie blinked. "You can?"

"It's very simple," Twilight said smugly. She lit her horn and opened up the box. "Which one's 'safe'?"

"The…the green one on top," Pinkie said.

Twilight floated it out of the box and toward herself, deliberately keeping the spine toward the ground so we couldn't see the title, and opened it to the first page, averting her eyes from the text. "It's an application of simple logic!" she said proudly. "The other Pinkie Pie warned us against putting anything inside the books, right? That implies that the books contain the power to consume things. And it's the other books that are the existential danger, right? So what if we take one of those books," and Twilight grabbed another of the stories from the box, "and—hnnh!—put it inside—"

A faint tang of existential finality reverberated through my bones. With the lingering scent of grapes, history changed.

Pinkie's body spasmed, and she staggered backward. Recognition sparked in her eyes.

"Nooooooo!" she yelled, flinging herself forward in a tackle. "Twilight, stop!"

Twilight startled at the shout, reflexively holding the green book up to protect herself. As I stretched a hoof forward in helpless horror, watching as if in slow motion, I saw Pinkie's front hooves impact the blank page and sink in—


* * * * * * * * * *

Pinkie Pie regains consciousness within a story, staring across the words at Pinkie Pie.

She shakes her head, thoughts slow and muddled, and works her jaw. "Pinkie?"

"Pinkie!" the other Pinkie Pie cheerfully responds.

Pinkie Pie struggles to her hooves and glances around. "…Pinkie?" Her eyes shoot open, and her hoof flies to her mouth. "P…pinkie?" she adds.

"Pinkie pinkie pinkie!" her counterpart enthuses, beginning to pronk.

"Pinkie!" Pinkie shouts, glancing around wildly. Nothing about the featureless landscape catches her interest—until her eyes momentarily sweep past you. Pinkie does a double-take, then lunges in your direction, shoulder forward as she impacts the wall and tears through—

"Pinkie!" Pinkie yelps in pain as she bursts out of herself.

Pinkie stands up, dazed. Pinkie and Pinkie stare at her.

"Pinkie," Pinkie pleads, then gasps and grabs a paper and pencil from her mane. She scribbles feverishly, and holds the paper up: PINKIE PINKIE PINKIE.

"Pinkie," Pinkie moans.

Pinkie and Pinkie look at each other, then back to Pinkie, then back to each other. Pinkie blinks. "Pinkie?"

Pinkie nods sadly, catching on. "Pinkie…"

Pinkie pulls a small hoofgun from her mane, pointing it at Pinkie and pulling the trigger. A small pole shoots out from the barrel, and a flag unfurls: "PINKIE". Pinkie clutches a hoof to her chest, staggers, and falls dramatically onto her back, her eyes going blank. While Pinkie is staring down at the body, Pinkie pulls a giant foam mallet from behind her back, and bops Pinkie on the head; her eyes immediately turn to little X's before she crumples to the ground, where they go blank. Finally, Pinkie pulls out a little vial of ominously bubbling liquid, labeled "PINKIE", uncorks it, and drinks it. She clutches at her throat and falls to the ground, eyes blanking out.

All is still.

THE—

—Pinkie opens her eyes lifts her head, sneaking a peek around. Pinkie smacks her on the shoulder. Pinkie guiltily falls back to the ground again, and her eyes fade back out.

All is still.

THE END
THE END
THE END
THE END
THE END
THE END
…

—and as the book swallowed Pinkie, she vanished with an ominous finality.

"Huh," Twilight said.

"Holy buck," I whispered, reeling.

Twilight tilted the green book, peering up into it at an angle. She flipped it upside down and shook it, but nothing came out. "I…really wasn't expecting her to do that."

"Twilight, stop," I said urgently. "Listen ta Pinkie."

"In a moment." With a shimmer of her horn, the other 19 books lifted out of the box, and shot into the waiting pages of the green book. Twilight snapped it closed with a smirk. "There, all safe."

"Safe?!" I erupted. "One 'a our best friends just vanished into that cosmic catastrophe thingamajig along with all them basilisks—"

"Applespike," Twilight interrupted smugly, "let's not forget, we've seen Older Wiser Pinkie. She'll be fine."

I threw my hooves up in the air. "Then what makes ya think you've solved the book problem?!"

Twilight stared at me, a rigid smile fixed on her muzzle, the color slowly draining from her cheeks.

"Aaaaaaagh!" I screamed, stomping toward the Chamber of Climactic Confrontation and kicking open the door. It wasn't like that was going to make things any worse.

Except that the room was empty.

"Unh?" I said, glancing around in confusion. Nothing at all.

I heard hooves gallop into the room behind me. "Applespike! Wait! I've figured it out—"

And in the background, a little timer went ding.




I slogged into Golden Oaks Library, leaving a trail of icy water behind me, spitting pondweed out of my muzzle.

"Look, I really am sorry," the dry, winged Twilight said. "If we'd been thinking, we could have put the towel in my saddlebags."

"Ah really don't care," I snarled, then sighed. "Ah mean it, Twilight, that don't even register right now. You keep sayin' yer gonna fix things, an' now you say you understand it all…at this point, savin' it all or blowin' it up is all the same to me. Let's just get 'er over with."

"It's very simple," Twilight said. "See…the green book is us."

I rolled my eyes. "Ah think ah figured that one out 'round the time ya fired like eighteen books at my head."

"Which implies we're fictional," Twilight said. "We only exist because that story exists."

"So what?" I turned back to Twilight, wet, tired, and bruised. "Ah'm sick of all this already, Twi. Ah ain't a philosopher, I'm an apple…shelver." I shook my head; there were still too many conflicting memories swirling there. "Am ah supposed to give a flyin' road apple about the existential imprecations?"

In response, Twilight simply lit her horn. A green book floated out from her saddlebags and in front of my muzzle.

My eyes flicked across the title. "A Basilisk For One." Twilight smiled, floated over a quill from her desk, and opened the book. "All existential implications aside, Applespike, we are literally a creation creating themselves. We've just unlocked any ending we want." The quill flashed across the page. "And…Applejack…turned around…to find cake," she dictated as she wrote.

I glanced behind me. My eyes widened. There was a cake on the central library table.

"It's not adding it in word for word, but you see what I'm talking about. So here's our problem solved: 'Then Spike and Applejack returned to their proper roles and got their proper memories back'," she added as she wrote.

I waited.

"Uh, Twilight? Ah'm still me."

"Nhn?" Twilight looked up, puzzled. She flipped back to the beginning of the book. "Huh, that's weird. This has Spike going with me on my adventure. Well, that's easily unfixable." She scribbled a sentence onto page 1. "Spike and…Applejack…switched places."

The scent of grapes permeated history again. I blinked, staggered back, and landed on hindclaws instead of hooves, windmilling my arms briefly for balance.

"Pinkie wasn't thinking nearly big enough!" Twilight said. "We can not only fix everything that went wrong, we can fix anything that could go wrong." The quill started flashing again. "We found the mystery books, and read them, without any negative physical, mental, emotional, or psychological consequences to Twilight, Spike, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, or any of their other friends, or anyone who they showed the stories to. No further conflicts began, and we all lived long, happy, and idyllic lives. The green book vanished and became permanently inaccessible, so that nobody could ever use it to start trouble or undo Twilight's changes. The end."

"Twilight," I started, raising a claw, but she had already snapped the book shut. It began to fade, then popped out of existence with one final burst of grapes.

"Hey, how about that!" Twilight said brightly. "The box of books was here all along—it just got buried underneath a bookalanche." She cleared the library books off of the boxtop, then made a face. "Come to think of it, I should probably have had our story clean up the library for us."

"Do you really think that what you wrote worked, though?" I asked, finally feeling cautiously optimistic. I walked over to the box and peered in. There was that Daring Do fic, right on top of the stack—and underneath it, one called "The Simple Life," with Prince Blueblood on the cover.

"Remember," Twilight said, "we already know that these aren't basilisks, even before the changes I just made—after all, I read through most of 'Collaborators' earlier, remember?"

"Hey, yeah, we both read some of that," I said. "I remember that one—it was just a novel about Ahuizotl serving Daring Do with a restraining order, and then the two of them writing her next novel together."

Twilight squealed. "It was pretty good! I'm looking forward to getting back to it. But first, I'm curious what else was here." She floated another book off the stack. "Vinyl Scratch Drops The Title?" She squinted, puzzled, and riffled through it. "It's about Vinyl switching places with you for the day. I don't remember that ever happening."

"Didn't you say that we were fictional?" I pointed out. "Maybe that's an unrelated story by a different author."

Twilight laughed. "Yeah. Well, maybe I should have written you into that universe. It looks like you come out pretty well in that one."

I grinned, picked up a story called "Beauty and the Beast," which looked from the cover like a sweet and innocent fairy tale, and grabbed a chunk of cake in my other claw. "I don't know, I think we've got it pretty awesome right here."

WHAM! The front door burst open.

"DON'T TOUCH THE STORIES!" Pinkie Pie, who was still slightly damp, bellowed at the top of her lungs.

There was an awkward silence as Twilight and I exchanged glances. Pinkie stared at our little reading party in unalloyed horror. One trembling hoof went to her open mouth.

Then Twilight and I burst out into laughter. "Sheesh, Pinkie, you look like you got run over by a catastrophic catastrophe," I said. "It's all 100% guaranteed safe now. Come have some cake."

Pinkie worked her jaw. No sound came out. She took a trembling step backward, then braced herself against the doorway.

"It…it is?" she said faintly.

"Guaranteed," I said, and tossed her one called "Celestiology". It had Princess Celestia and Princess Luna fighting a dragon on the cover.

Meanwhile, Twilight riffled through some of the other stories. "'Title Drop'? 'Vinyl Scratch Drops The Title'? 'Don't Worry, We'll Think Of A Title'? Sheesh, what's up with all the 'Title' titling? And 'Fight or Flight' is a story about stories. I guess all these authors must think highly of meta-stories or something."

Pinkie Pie fainted.

"Whoah, whoah, what's all this about?" Twilight said after we'd rushed over and woken her up. "Safe, remember?"

Pinkie reached up with a trembling hoof. "You don't understand," she whimpered. "You never did. The danger of the books was never to you…it was to us."

Twilight raised an eyebrow. "But I made sure that—"

"And now you're talking about the other stories and that's against the rules and we're gonna get disqualified!" Pinkie Pie wailed, her hair flattening.

Twilight looked back at me uncomprehendingly. I shrugged. Twilight shrugged back.

"Seriously, Pinkie, chill out," I said. "Have some cake."

Pinkie blubbered a little bit more, then wiped her cheeks with a pastern and took a deep shuddering breath. "I might as well," she mumbled. "The damage is already done."

Twilight flipped quickly through the rest of the pile. "Here, give 'Appellation Mountains' a shot. Maybe you'll like it. It's one of the few stories with you in it."

Pinkie took a bite of cake. Her hair poofed out. A hint of a glimmer returned to her eyes.

"Oooh, really?" she said, snatching the book and flipping through it so quickly that her hoof was just a blur. She giggled. "Wow, I thought the Barony of Rocktopia was common knowledge."




EPILOGUE

I reached for another of the stories in the stack of Pinkie Pie's cast-offs. It must have been a good one, because she had been giggling furiously throughout.

"Twilight?" I asked, flipping through the first few pages. I was in it! That always spoke well for a story.

"Mmmm?"

"What's a tittie?"

"WHAT?!" Twilight screeched, snatching the book away from me.

"Hey!"

Twilight flipped through the pages, her cheeks paling from purple to pink and then flushing to hot red.

"And can I go bail with Apple Bloom? It looked like she was having fun."

Twilight's mouth opened and closed. No words came out.

Seconds later — when I was lying sprawled on the floor of the bedroom, rubbing my aching hiney — I yelled back downstairs, "Whatever happened to no negative consequences?!"