2 Gourds 3336
Very anomalous data came in from the sensor network. Not quite sure what to make of it. Some sort of localized shearing in space-time, but with negative divergence. Triangulated it to the ruins of Hoof Hills, South of New Equestria, about 145°15’ E, 5°15’ N, happened around yesterday evening. Given the distributed nature of the network a random sensor failure must perforce be excluded, but we need to exclude other sorts of glitches... the network has been very reliable. I must consider the possibility that the data is correct, as troubling as that is. Of course it could be this actually represents a regular retrodivination attempt, with its typical positive divergence being masked by some sort of arithmetic error. But what if it’s not?
What could this represent -- an attempt to change the past? It may have been successful in some respect, which is incredibly worrying. In all my vast experience this is not a power I have known any sort of being to possess - is not the outworking of causality sacred to the universe above all else? Or is it something that does occur, but hitherto undetectably? The idea of anyone possessing such power is worrying... but imagine the possibilities... I really could put things right.
Ruby and her team have been mucking around that region for artifacts... it’s a bit distrustful I suppose but I can’t help but suspect mischief.
A strange mare, a wizard named Cold Spell, showed up uninvited on the Island today. (REDACTED) For a wizard she seems dense, I thought the jig was up a couple times... all the better, I suppose, if she is harmless and can be sent on her way. We can ensure she won’t mention us. But I can’t help wonder if there’s some connection to the negative shear anomaly.
Anyway, tomorrow - more work on the spaceship, of course; plus if time permits I need to work in some time to think about this phenomenon, operating under the assumption that it is real. And of course I must wonder how it could be harnessed... I know I shouldn’t.
3 Gourds 3336
That ice wizard attacked me. She stuck the horn ring from the nightstand on me... serves me right for using one I can’t break out of easily, I should have known better. Lucky she didn’t know I’m an alicorn or I could be dead. She’s got an uncompletable geas now and doesn’t know it. Enjoy your little quest, Frosty the Snowmare, and don’t come back. Mean, I guess, but I don’t want to think about what (REDACTED) would have done. Probably something gruesome and violent...
Work on the ship went well, at least.
I thought more about the negative shear anomaly.
I’ve realized it’s probably a foolish idea to imagine any conscious observer doing this. It must necessarily occur without volition: suppose something bad happens, so I want to use this... retroactive causation ability, shall we say, to change events that lead to the bad occurrence. If I succeed, I will remove the cause for me using the ability in the first place - the classic “Granddam paradox.”
I suppose the most likely explanation is that this is some phenomenon unconnected with sentient life. But would there be a way to circumvent this paradox somehow, so that the phenomenon were still useful in preventing some negative outcome?
(REDACTED) outside of our reality in some way, such that alterations of our timeline would be known to the agent and that the alteration would not undo its “triggering” condition. Some of our work with the sensor network, I think, could actually be the key to this. I want to think that if we could somehow take our results in paradox engineering and use them to create a sort of “bubble” of unaltered reality in which this agent could reside...
... It all seems very complicated. I think I’ll settle for reconfiguring the sensor array for better sensitivity toward this for now. And who knows, maybe it was just all an error of some kind.
Some very interesting developments on the Elements of Harmony situation... apparently Cold Spell’s mercenary acquaintances have some of them. Very unexpected. And yet I wonder, if perhaps they had something to do with the anomaly? Cold was messing with my scrying equipment in the lab today before her attempt to do me in, and she tripped a paradox breaker scrying on them. There’s clearly something significant going on here.
19 Gourds 3336 AE
It happened again! I can’t believe it, twice now, and never before in all the years of the sensor array collecting data?? Techs last time said everything checked out, and now it’s happened again, another negative shear event... different location. This time it was in the Edge, just this morning. Again near where Ruby is messing around, coincidence? Or... her last report did say that Cold Spell’s friends, the possible Elements, were in the area as well, going for Loyalty supposedly in the Daverwood. Interesting. It couldn’t be related to the Elements assuming bearers, since Flynn’s didn’t do it, nor did the others we know about...
I’ve sent a team with sensitive equipment to the Edge to investigate.
21 Gourds 3336 AE
The team managed to get quite a bit of data from fruit-and-cart correlations... a meticulous piece of forensic work. Pity my work with the Harmony prevents getting more involved personally. The sheer anomaly originates near a hotel, the Whale’s Egg (no doubt a reference to those maggots). The bartender identified the Great Gabrio as having been seen nearby - one of the new Bearers. Ruby hasn’t reported in, so I suppose it could technically be her too... should have someone scry her.
What does this mean? I’ve never seen anything like this. Have these people, or some subset of them, already managed to apply some sort of retro-causal magic? Is that why they are ending up with the Elements?
My worst fear is that somehow the Dread Pantheon are behind this, seeing that the Elements find their way into the hooves of unworthy bearers before they appear and finish us off. They learn from their mistakes. But there must be limits to this power. Logically, either some entity external to these people and, at least in some sense external to our reality, is necessarily required... or they are doing it themselves and have developed some way to exclude themselves from their effects. Neither possibility is comforting.
26 Gourds 3336 AE
Azathoth’s spiked nutsack, it happened again, a third time and just days after the second! Another causality sheer event, again with negative divergence, this time in Slag Hollow, yesterday evening. Investigators already on their way per standing orders. As soon as time permits I need to make an experimental investigation of this -- and keep these Bearers close. They mostly seem benign... what about this Emerald, though? Not a bearer, at least not yet, and according to her dossier an accomplished wizard who studied at the Crooked tower and who is part of a family we drew from repeatedly for the alicorn project. Could she have unlocked some dark secret of causal magic? I worry I am headed for a reckoning with this force, and whatever they may say to the contrary, I must be prepared for a confrontation if things go poorly.
A confrontation with an enemy who can rewrite the recent past. Terrifying. And no clear indications of what the limits are on spatial or temporal locality, beyond that it seems to be limited to less than a few hours -- but isn’t that all the time in the world to win a fight, or interrogate me until they find just the right words to make me slip up with something, and ruin everything?
Well, maybe they do have this power but are planning to use it for some benevolent end. But they didn’t use it to undo the disaster in New Canterlot... or any number of other issues. Maybe the ability was recently developed -- some secret unlocked with the corrupted Element of Honesty perhaps? I shudder to think.
Still. However optimistic or pessimistic I am about this, pragmatically it’s clear I must be prepared to defend against it. Even if, as I fear, I must (REDACTED)
---
8 Rye-Planting 3336
Well, “and having writ, moves on” my furry white ass. Apparently the Moving Finger has no problem backtracking for the presumptive Bearers of the Elements.
There can be no doubt remaining that they have the most intimate association with the negative shear phenomenon. During a conversation with them by crystal ball, another event occurred. It was smaller in magnitude than the others, but correlated to their location with exquisite precision thanks to the main communications instrumentation. If my theoretical assumptions are correct, based on the sensor data, we lost somewhere between thirty seconds and a minute of apparent time. What did they take from me in that time? Do they know themselves? I can only speculate about it this time, but the experiments I set up in the special monitor room seem to have been completely successful, so perhaps I will soon know what exactly is going on here. Once more an enigma yields to methodical inquiry... I will have to scale up the prototype tonight and catch up to the caravan to Nevershyed tomorrow.
Some of them clearly have their doubts about me. They remain on the whole cooperative. They want Flint to join them. I have misgivings but I can hardly reveal them by objecting to one Bearer joining the others. I... worry.
9 Rye-Planting 3336.
Caught up with the caravan, took a nap... for like five hours. My sleep is so messed up lately. Not too much luck scaling up the shielding prototype though I had more success getting an integrating chronological discrepancy meter miniaturized. After I finished it I was left wondering exactly what the point was. Obviously so I can detect these anomalies. But what good does it do, really? What good is it to detect what I can do nothing about? I can’t risk telling them about it so it’s not like I’m even putting a big “tamper evident” sticker on my forehead.
10 Rye-Planting 3336
... Eventful. Met the Elements. There was another anomaly when were talking. Prototype integrating detector worked, but it shorted out and fried. Must have been too close. Good thing my all-purpose alicorn disguise capes are fireproof. I made an excuse and ran away to deal with it but I’m sure they noticed how unnerved I was after. I don’t think I can deal with this much longer. Maybe it’s better just to take my chances. They seem so sincerely nice to me. Of course maybe all this is just suggestive of the fact that they themselves know thing about it. Maybe revealing what I know stands to get me nothing - just making me sound weird and paranoid to my new friends - but whoever or whatever’s responsible for these anomalies becomes completely informed.
I’ve also learned that I’m not the only one who has detected the anomalies. Genius Loci seems to have picked them up on an instrument he built to monitor his retrodivination experiments. Fortunately it’s crude; he has a single detector and has only resolved the anomalies in time, not space. I think he might think I’m responsible for the anomalies, though. I told him Risen Bones is gone, at the insistence of the Elements, and while that seems to have won his support for the new order in the North, I’m fairly sure that he’s just decided that it’s futile to try to stand against my supposed freaky time travel powers and that cooperating maximizes his odds of survival. Or maybe I’m just imposing my own feelings about the matter on him.
I’m strongly considering the possibility that the Elements - the artifacts not the ponies - are responsible for the anomalies. Ponies have long believed that the Elements, having agency, are godlike entities with a mysterious will beyond our ken. Taking a modest conjectural leap, suppose that the virtuous behavior of the Bearers is in some way enforced by the Elements - not by controlling their actions directly, but by somehow forcing time to skip back, blotting out some misstep and making them try again? No, that can’t be quite all there is too it - wouldn’t they do the same thing again? Surely there behavior isn’t that chaotic, with their actions dominated by nondeterministic quantum effects. There must be some additional effect on them. Perhaps it is subtle and doesn’t rise to conscious knowledge? Or perhaps they’re fully aware, and, like me, afraid to mention it for fear of disturbing the incomprehensibly powerful entity or entities responsible. The Elements may well have vastly different perceptions of what is truly important, explaining why the massacre in New Canterlot wasn’t reversed, but what may have been some minor conversational blunder involving me was. Hmm, I suppose that’s sort of flattering - I evidently have some greater purpose in the Elements’ “plan.” But who knows what. Maybe I’m fated to be decorating the garden in front of Castle Hues - no, castle Akasha - for the rest of eternity, the first monster the reunited Elements bond over. Depressing. Way too pessimistic, maybe. They seem like such nice people, but then people can change. (REDACTED)
Still not sure if I can keep putting up with the uncertainty even if I should. Flint is going to be with them. At least I’m sure I can trust him to tell me if there’s any conscious involvement of the Bearers in this, and at the rate the anomalies occur I should have an answer well before the Bearers leave the Northeast. That should guide my decision. 