Title:           Saddled – Chapter 2
Author:          Anonymous
Pastebin link:   http://pastebin.com/bZAkL9Gj
First Edit:      Thursday 30th of July 2015 11:48:04 PM CDT
Last Edit:       Thursday 30th of July 2015 11:48:04 PM CDT

        With a dramatic surge of magical energy, a brand new being found itself suddenly existing. Having never existed before, this was a new and very puzzling experience for the zygotic demidraconequus. This was a very intriguing phenomenon, so it decided to try to suss out exactly what this whole "existing" thing was all about.
        It knew it was existing, because all the thoughts it was having had to come from *somewhere*; it seemed absurd on its face to attribute actions to a non-existent entity, or even to call it an "entity". Whatever the source of the thoughts was, it seemed reasonable to call it "self".
        Of course, this didn't take it very far. It observed that "self" was not a closed system; it was receiving inputs from… somewhere. Self considered that these were just signals from another part of Self producing the illusion of externalities, but that idea seemed… far-fetched. After all, these inputs didn't seem to correspond to any actions undertaken by Self, or have any internal cause that Self was aware of. Even if it were true, this hypothesis would imply the existence of at least two entities that were in some way distinct from one another: the Self and the Deceiver.
        Self, therefore, decided to operate off of the working assumption that it was not just existing, but existing in some larger Context in which it was not the only entity to exist. Since Self had learned of its own existence by observing the results of its own actions, namely its thoughts, it figured it was possible to learn about the nature of Context by observing the results of *its* actions, namely the Inputs being experienced by Self. Even if the Context was only the Deceiver, observation would allow the Self to better understand the Deceiver, and hopefully better predict which Inputs it would produce next.
        The first thing it noticed was that the inputs were multitudinous and rather varied, which suggested that the Context was populated with a plethora of different entities. Furthermore, distinct entities tended not to coincide with one another, but rather had a definite Separation between them, with a variable degree. It quickly became apparent that not all of the Separations were the same, even when degree was taken out of the picture; there were degrees of all different kinds. After some trial and error, Self discovered that it needed three distinct measurements of degree to describe every Separation.
        However, even these three Degrees weren't quite enough to describe a Separation, because in truth there was no one Separation between any two Entities; these changed. Self found it necessary to specify a fourth Degree to specify how far along in the progression of these different Separations. This new Degree of Progression seemed fundamentally different from the three Degrees of Separation in that it seemed to operate almost entirely in one direction, but upon closer inspection they appeared to be tied quite closely to one another, so Self felt comfortable stating that the Context had four Degrees.
        The Entities weren't all identical either, however; they produced a wide variety of different Inputs. Self quickly realized that a lot of these differences could be accounted for by Degrees, and by how quickly Separations were changing with respect to Progression, but that still left several differences unexplained. Self began categorizing all the different Entities that were giving it Inputs.
        Meanwhile, in the macroscopic world, Rarity was panting, her front half covered in a thick layer of dust, clinging to her due to the copious amounts of sweat. She took a large gulp of her water bottle, which was only half empty. She regretted cutting her exercise short, but she just couldn't stand to be so filthy for much longer. A smile spread across her face when the Boutique came into view, and she picked up her pace,
        Inside her, however, her offspring was concerned with much simpler concepts. It had catalogued all of Entities it was perceiving, in a system that ended up having lots of different categories and subcategories. Self would have to modify the system if it encountered new types of Entities, but it was a good first draft.
        One thing that Self noticed when cataloging the different types of Entities was that their behavior changes in the proximity of other Entities; the Entities were interacting with one another. They were attracting one another, repelling one another, splitting, merging, clumping together, breaking up, and so forth. In the process of cataloging the different types of Entities, Self ended up counting four… no, five different Interactions that the Entities were undergoing.
        It also became evident that, even within the exact same category, Entities produced Interactions of varying intensities. Some Entities just had more… oomph than others. The amount of Oomph an Entity had wasn't fixed; an Entity could gain or lose Oomph through an Interaction. It seemed, however, that the Entities were only trading Oomph among themselves; Self never experienced an Input that indicated Oomph appearing without a source, or disappearing without a destination. In fact, upon closer examination, the Entities themselves seemed to be *made* of Oomph.
        As it was observing the Interactions of various Entities, it's attention was soon drawn to a particular cluster of Entities, accompanied by and tightly tied to an intricate and complex matrix of Oomph. A large quantity of Oomph, in fact, of the variety associated with one of the types of Interaction that Self had identified. The properties of this Matrix seemed to shift in accordance with Self's thoughts. No… that wasn't right; the response was too quick to be caused by an Interaction. The changes were instantaneous.
        In fact, the Matrix didn't seem to be *responding* to Self at all. All of the changes it underwent could be traced back to either a previous state of the Matrix or an Interaction with an Entity in the Context. Self was forced to conclude that the Matrix, in fact, *was* Self… or at least *part* of Self. Self's thoughts weren't simply abstract concepts; they were patterns in a Matrix of Oomph, a Matrix that was closely bonded with, and held together by, an organized cluster of distinct Entities. So Self wasn't an Entity at all, but rather a *collection* of Entities, going about their usual Interactions.
        Completely oblivious to the new life-form's existential crisis, Rarity entered her bathroom. Before she stepped into the shower, however, she glanced at the mirror that doubled as the door to the medicine cabinet. Was she going to be long enough before finishing her exercise that it made sense to use the mouthwash? She decided that the most practical approach was to simply take an extended shower, long enough for the mouthwash to sit on her teeth, and then finish her exercise after she'd dried off. Satisfied with this plan, she opened the cabinet and retrieved the bottle of mouthwash.
        Her passenger had also reached a conclusion. Okay, so Self wasn't an Entity, but rather a structure, composed of multiple interconnected Entities and an associated Matrix of Oomph. That was fine; it wasn't the end of the Context. In fact, upon further reflection, being a Structure was *better* than being an Entity. Entities were boring; they just bounced and jiggled about, swapping Oomph in their simple Interactions. As a Structure, however, Self was complex enough to actually *think*, and to experience Inputs that told it about the Context and its Degrees, and the Entities that populated it, with their Oomph and the Interactions that controlled them.
        Since Self was a Structure in the Context, and Entities in the Context could influence it through Inputs, Self wondered if the reverse was true. If Self could influence the Context, that would be good to know, because Self could change Context to better suit its goals, rather than allowing it to simply progress on its own. And so, Self concentrated on the Oomph that permeated the nearby Context, and willed it to coalesce into an Entity. Marvelously, the Context obeyed, and a brand new Entity appeared, only to be quickly whisked away by an Interaction.
        This gave Entity an idea. It could vastly accelerate the speed at which it learned about Entities and their Interactions if it could set up different scenarios and watch them play out, rather than only working off of what Interactions just happened to be occurring. And so Self created two of the Entity next, very close to each other, and watched as they sped off in different directions. It repeated this many, many, many times, in rapid succession, observing each time how the Entities behaved before they were whisked away by external Interactions.
        Once the second hand was back at the top of the clock, Rarity briefly gargled the mouthwash and then spat it into the sink. When she lifted her head back up from the sink and glanced at her reflection in the mirror, she noticed several stray hairs in her mane that were practically standing on end. She sighed and ran a hoof over them, to no avail. Frustrated, she climbed into the tub. After taking a deep breath to calm her nerves, she reached to turn on the water, only to yelp and pull her hoof back when a bolt of static electricity leapt from her hoof to the shower knob.
        Holding back the urge to curse, Rarity winced and shook the affected hoof before inspecting it closely with a quizzical look on her face. "Hmm, that's odd…"