The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics says that every particle and parcel of the universe starts in some simple state, and from there it explores every possibility open to it.  It exists simultaneously within each possible new state until at some point, triggered by some still-mysterious stimulus, it chooses one of that infinite number of outcomes and settles on it, and the cycle begins again.

Under this interpretation, when someone decides, say, to go to the circus rather than stay home and talk with a normally reclusive friend, this is because the waveforms of billions of atoms within each of billions of neurons collapse onto possibilities that, jointly, determine this outcome.

Somewhere within this mysterious massive collapse of waveforms, does free will slip in?  Is anyone, in short, to blame?

This story will not answer that question.

Three particle assemblies are of particular interest in this story.  Let us label them Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

Wynken had long blonde hair.  It was bleached, and up close it looked like straw, but it shimmered so that when she walked in daylight, you might mistake her for a sunbeam.  She was unremarkable in photographs, but beautiful when she looked at someone she loved. She gave psychological counselling to people who were in prison for violent or sexual offenses, and loved them even while knowing they might do horrible things to her if they met again on the outside.

Blynken was a little older and a little more unremarkable in photographs.  He had come to this country from East Germany the week after the wall came down.  He would still stop sometimes in supermarket aisles and stare at the shelves.  He only smiled at things that were very funny or very sad.  He had a letter from Publisher's Clearinghouse which he had stuck to his refrigerator with a magnet.  It said, "You Might Already Be a Winner!" It always made him smile.

Nod was old enough to be their grandfather.  He was a short, quiet man who seemed to stand taller and speak more clearly the longer you knew him.  He had left his heart and most of his hair back on other continents in earlier decades.  In World War Two, they'd taken him from his farm in Missouri and put him onto a ship in South Carolina.  After a month of rocking and vomiting below decks in the dark, they dragged him up into the sunlight and dropped him onto a beach in Italy, and he fell in love for the first and only time.  The further away life took him from his beloved Italy, the more he talked about the land and the people who had lived there in the 1940s.

We shall add a fourth character to this story, a writer who fancied himself a scientist, or perhaps a scientist who fancied himself a writer.  He need not be named, since he plays only the part of a plot device, a belt that fails to slip, a butterfly that zags instead of zigging.  He felt such a strong sense of purpose and destiny that he had objectified himself, devoting himself entirely to his work and becoming more tool than person. Thus, this (de)characterization is entirely appropriate.

Some scientists say that the predominance of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is only an accident of history.  They say that choosing one of an infinite number of possibilities at random introduces not just a very large, but an infinite additional complexity to the theory.  The proper response as a scientist, they say, is to assume, until proven otherwise, that this does not happen—that every possibility is realized, every possible path is followed somewhere.  In some reality, horses became the dominant lifeform on Earth.  In some reality, Nod went back to Italy.  In some reality, both of these things happened.  This is science.

Let us call this necessary reality Equestria.

We can therefore take it as proven that one day in Equestria, our unnamed but not yet entirely inequine writer had a pair of tickets to the Bar-neigh and Bay Leaf Circus for Wynken and himself.

He'd bought them a month ahead of time and told Wynken to keep the day clear on her calendar without telling her why.  They were long, slender, elegant-looking tickets, printed on shiny cardboard stock.  The tip of each ticket showed the performance date in bold numbers.  He paused before knocking on Wynken's door and practiced fanning them out in his hoof.

When she answered the door, he did it perfectly, fanning them out just so with a snap of his fetlock, but her face remained an ordinary pony face as she watched.  Then she looked at him and smiled, and he almost dropped the tickets.  He loved her, you see, as much as it was possible for him to love somepony.

But the writer had walked slowly to her house, just one leg at a time, because he'd worn his best white suit and didn't want to get it dusty on the town's dirt streets.  So they had to rush to get to the circus before the elephants and the dragons marched in and two dozen clowns climbed out of a single wagon.  They were almost to Sweet Clover's field just outside town where the circus was when they ran into Blynken.

Blynken opened his eyes wide and rushed up to them, kicking dust from the dirt road all over the writer's white suit.  He said that he wanted to talk.  This was odd, because Blynken never said he wanted to talk.  He would just start talking.  It was odder because he was quiet and earnest instead of loud and poker-faced.

Wynken said that of course they could talk, then looked at the writer to see if that was all right.

And of course it was all right with him.  He didn't care about the tickets.  He didn't suggest they could talk with Blynken after the show.  He tore those fucking tickets into pieces and threw them in the trash, even though they cost 60 bits each and it was the last performance of the year, because you put your friends above your own pleasure in Equestria.

It was a good thing, too, because they learned that most of Blynken's smiles that they had thought had been happy had really been sad.  He didn't feel like he Might Already Be a Winner.

They all talked late into the night.  I don't know if they found the magic words that make sad people feel better.  I used to believe in these words, but now I think maybe they only exist in Equestria.  Perhaps these words are well-known in Equestria.  Perhaps they're printed on the sides of milk cartons, instead of pictures of people who've disappeared like smiling circus magicians.  Perhaps it didn't matter what they said.  But I know Wynken remarked later what a good thing it was that they talked with Blynken right then, because otherwise he might have changed his mind about talking by the time the circus was over, and they might never have talked, and who knew what might have happened then?

The next year all three of them went to the circus and saw the elephants and the dragons and the two dozen clowns, and they laughed and cried, and the writer loved them both as much as he could love somepony.  And when Wynken realized that that really was as much as he could love somepony, but it still wasn't enough, it was natural for her to shift some of her love from him onto Blynken, so they were all as good friends as they had been before.  She didn't latch onto the first stallion to pass by.  Blynken was a good pony with a good heart, not a stallion whose eyes slid across other ponies as if they were decorations. He wasn't eager to play with new ponies the way a foal is eager to play with new toys.  The writer accepted it gracefully, and never got drunk and called Wynken on the phone begging her to come back, or sent her photos taken by a private detective of her new lover with other mares.  There are no restraining orders in Equestria.

So Wynken, Blynken, and that other pony were all still good friends when they met Nod.  Not many ponies really met Nod.  Nod never spoke to anyone.  He came to the library every day to return a stack of picture books and check out a different stack of picture books.

They asked him why, and he said he had no family, and all his friends were gone, and his eyes weren't good enough to read the little letters in the other books in the library.  The picture books were mostly for foals, and he'd read them all before, but he didn't know what else to do.

So Wynken, Blynken, and that other pony decided to all trade addresses with Nod, and they promised to write him letters written in very large hoofwriting, so that he could read something else besides picture books.

Nod, to their surprise, wrote to each of them every week.  He wrote about sitting on his porch watching the moon pass behind the leaves of the oak tree his great-great-grandfather had planted.  He wrote about what kinds of flowers grow in what kinds of soil, and how much sunlight or shade each needed.  He described the tiny piece inside a self-winding watch that turns a wheel to wind a spring every time you move your hoof.  He warned them against eating too much peanut butter.

He wrote with large letters and used capitals and exclamation marks freely.  He wrote on broad sheets of vegetable parchment, not on dozens of strips from the wrappers of straws that he had to smuggle out of a cafeteria.  There are no old ponies' homes in Equestria.

Most of all he wrote about Neighples and the war so long ago.  He wrote about how, when he'd arrived, the water in the harbor was crystal clear, and so full of sunken ships that they couldn't anchor near the pier.  They'd had to trot across a floating bridge of planks, with seaweed-covered ships flashing in the light beneath them each time a wave rolled by.  They'd saved up cans of white gas to eat wormy army chow by "candlelight" while a local stallion serenaded them in a foreign language.

And they all wrote him back, in the magical kingdom of Equestria.  They weren't doing anything so goddamn important that they couldn't take the time to write back to an old pony who was racing to set down and pass on everything he knew to somepony, anypony who would listen, before it was lost.

The writer pony was too poor to travel and too busy writing and sciencing, but Wynken had always wanted to see the lands across the sea.  So Wynken and Blynken decided to go with Nod across the sea, where he could see Neighples one last time.  That's where they are today, across the sea.  The writer keeps their houses ready for them.  Wynken's kitchen is waiting for her to bring back the set of Prench dishes she's always wanted.  The walls of Blynken's bedroom are still as white as a clean hoofkerchief.  There are no shotguns in Equestria.

Wynken, Blynken, and Nod never interacted in our universe.  Their waveforms each collapsed separately.  But in some reality, Blynken, Wynken, and Nod stood on the aft deck of an ocean cruiser as it pulled away from the pier.  That's how I remember them—Blynken holding his foreleg around Wynken while her mane streamed behind her in the wind, while Nod hopped up and down, pawing at them and babbling about Neighples, so that they looked like parents hectored by a large, eager child, as they set off for new adventures across the sea, adventures too extensive and exciting to recount here.

And that's what happened to Wynken, Blynken, and Nod in Equestria.  Shut up.  Shut up.  I swear that's how it all happened in the magical kingdom of Equestria.