2028
His body felt far away, the only sensation the cold tingling through everything. Two images were emblazoned in his mind. The human stared at the ceiling, body craving rest but his mind afraid of what it would see. The past few weeks, for that’s what it felt like had been him in a solitary room for moments of lucidity followed by nightmares. Celestia, mane a rolling fire that flicked and igniting what was around it while he hid and stared at the massacre. A creature of pure evil, a cross between a human and a pony. An oily black cloud.
John felt his heart racing and rolled onto his side, vomiting onto the floor. His fingers tingled as feeling slowly returned to his body and rolled back onto his back. Whatever he was on felt wonderful, it provided great support and seemed to pull excess heat from his body. Slowly returning his eyes to the ceiling he caught the figure staring at him above the pillow. The turquoise eyes, dark blue fur and billowing mane of the night sky. He closed his eyes.
The portal between Earth and Equestria had opened when he was seven, he had stared at the news when it was revealed wide-eyed at the prospect. But that portal had cost him everything. His brother and parents died during the war. And what did he do? Nearly gets himself killed protecting the Princess of Friendship. His last memory was of overloading a sigil and being hit by the back blast as his duster designed to repel magic came into contact with a field designed to redirect and absorb magic.
“One would think lying in bed for months would get old.”
John sprung forward, away from the voice behind him and fell through the bed. He clutched his chest afraid his heart might explode like an overcharged battery. After gasping and gulping down several breaths of air, he looked about the room. It was a medium sized circular room, in the middle stood his bed, a mass of fluffy white clouds. Next to the bed stood an IV stand along with several monitors. There were two arched windows across from each other that let in cool autumnal breeze. Luna, in her silvery regalia stood by what had been the head of his bed and Twilight slept by a wall with her nose in a book.
The world looked wrong though. The colors all seemed off and different colors of light surrounded the two Princesses. The aura around the alicorns mimicked that of their magically color mixed with black. But where the purple one’s seemed to absorb light, the dark blue one seemed to emit it. The world itself seemed to emit its own energy, he had never felt this on his last visit to Equestria.
“Months?” It only felt like weeks.
“Three months and fourteen days.” Luna nodded.
Snoring could be heard from the sleeping alicorn.
“Do you feel healthy?” Luna asked, not moving from her spot.
“I feel weird.” John looked at his tingling hand. When it had first started tingling he thought the hand was just asleep, but he had no trouble using it.
Luna looked to the cloud bed. “Were you aware that no matter how a cloud is treated a human can never lay on one?” She poked the fluffy matter, it moved and responded to the hoof. “They don’t have enough magic, even cloud walking spells fail on them.”
Mr. Smith hadn’t known that. He knew humans and magic didn’t get along, that Earth itself was rather light on the stuff. People could only cast magic using special tools imbued with magic, artificially created of course, and special symbols or rituals. He had helped design more than a few himself. The scientist then looked to the bed he had fallen through, grabbing onto the edge and pulled himself up. Smith stood up to his six foot height, brush some scraggly brown hair from his eyes and looked at the Princess.
“Your body has been absorbing magic. Is there anything new?”
His mind ran in circles. The world felt so much bigger. He could tell that through the door were two guards although he had no idea what race other than pony. Telling the Princess what he felt about the world. John tried to use the magic, having read plenty on what unicorns did, but nothing. He then tried pulling off and molding the clouds from the bed and his hand went straight through them.
“So the spells did something.” John could see no visible aura around his own body though as he focused on his hand.
“They did. Twilight has spent the past months reading about illicit magical tests on humans. So far there is no progress.” Luna eyes the sleeping alicorn, there was something else in her voice though.
John opened and closed his mouth, there were no words. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to know. “But…” The war had been vicious with atrocities that to call hidden was so be polite. There were still files, but even looking at them could lead to things he didn’t want to think about.
“We know. Nopony or person was to discuss it. There were harsh penalties even on Earth. But this is something special. Do not worry, thou are safe. We know of your past… work. That is why we requested your help from your Director.”
“What work?” John had never done much, spending most of his time in a lab in one world or the other.
“You were fourteen. Your family already dead. Do you remember what you did?” Luna walked around him, eyes moving over his frame.
“No.” He lied. That time was not something he liked to discuss. Living in the middle of a warzone wasn’t a pleasurable experience in Oklahoma.
“Do you remember Quick Wit? The guard you found bleeding by your home?”
John spun around, breathe catching in his throat. “How did you know about that?!?!”
“Tis nothing to be ashamed of. You saved his life. You were able to patch him up and even figured out how to set up a rudimentary shield.”
John Smith kept Luna in his sight as she moved. “He did all the work.”
“You even risked your life to help him escape from your own military.”
And got placed into detention.
“Then you do the same. Over and over regardless of the side or the consequences. Risking your life to save our sister’s greatest treasure. Thy have earned out trust.”
“T-t-thank you.” He didn’t like how anyone knew that much about him. Where is this going? “I should be getting back to the Director though.” His hands fidgeted. He wasn’t liking this.
“You are still on loan to us. And you are one of the few creatures we can really trust.” Luna sat back down, right in front of the human, placing him between her and Twilight.
It clicked. “You don’t trust Princess Twilight Sparkle.” John murmured. That’s why Twilight knew so little of what was going on. She knew nothing of the guard protecting her, knew magical discoveries and several basics. She’s being kept in the dark.
“She took Celestia’s death badly.” Luna stated flatly. “Follow.” Luna stood, moving to the single door, slowing until he caught up.
On the other side of the door were no guards. He looked around madly, they had to be there.
“They were moved.” Luna’s metal shorn hooves clanked down the dark slap steps. “Twas a test.” The stairs spiraled down, stars shone through small windows across the side of the tower. Through the windows brief glimpse of Canterlot Castle’s other towers could be seen.
The two walked in silence until Luna led him to another room. She opened the door with her pale blue magic and held it open so the human scientist could enter first.
The room was a brilliant white, lit up as if from the noon sun. There were desks throughout the twenty foot square room. One corner was reserved for a mass of wires and metal. He made his way over to the first desk; it was covered with papers and books. Worse than his own desk. Picking up the first stack they were force and thaumaturgical equations.
“Twilight and a few other science ponies went through the wreckage of the time machine’s detonation. There were some schematics, but that is everything they could find or figure out. It is mostly guesswork. We need you to perfect the design.”
John stopped Luna before she could leave. “Who says I won’t steal this thing when I finish?”
“Who says that isn’t what we require?” Luna gave the human a mischievous grin before walking out the door.
***
John continued to stare at the readings. The thaumaturgical imprint was massive. If it detonated a good chunk of Canterlot itself would go up. How do you power such a thing? He tried another small scale test. Maybe if I create a small alcubiere field…
***
“What tis a police call box?” Luna turned her head.
“From a show I used to watch.” He smiled at the blue box he had made. It was a thing of beauty, the door actually opened into a pocket dimension like his old bag making the whole surface stronger than steel as it acted like a solid block of it. “It kept hope alive.”
“Fitting.” Luna replied.
John felt something get tied around his neck and looked down to see a small pendant. It combined the sun from Celestia’s cutie mark with the crescent moon of Luna’s. “What’s this for?” He asked, fingering it. There was a cold magic, too faint to sense to present to feel on contact.
“Tis a tool. In case of help. We shall not remember you; that symbol tis proof of trust. Do not use it lightly.” Luna warned. “If used improperly… it can worsen things.”
John let the warning lie. Time was a tricky… “Wait. Why are you giving this to me?”
“Words have meaning. First Contact War, First Human-Equestrian War. Predicts a second. We can feel winds changing. Another war looms. There is little true trust or respect, just mutual aid for survival.”
“What do you want me to do?? I can’t go back in time! I could mess everything up?”
“Who else then?” Luna asked sounding like she already knew the answer. She kept looking at the box.
“You. Shikaishi. Twilight. Someone.”
“Neigh. We all have lost much. We would all have ones to save above all else. Taken actions we regret.” A tear fell down Luna’s cheek as her eyes closed.
“So you want me to travel back in time and what? Stop a war?” John asked incredulously. That is impossible.
“Yes.” Was Luna’s lone reply as she turned and walked back out of the room. “Tis no one else with as much love for life or brilliance.”
John looked at his machine, it had taken a year to create the thing. Time and Relative Dimension in Space. It would take him anywhere and anytime while he tried to do the impossible.
***
“Tis said that at the beginning of time a war was fought between light and dark.” Luna spoke as she looked at the old book. It was from before the founding of Equestria. “The parents of the sun and the moon gave everything along with that of several other nations to seal it away. It had the power to corrupt a mare’s soul. To darken the brightest of hearts.” She continued to read the vague story, reminded of her own fall but unable to remember how it happened.
Author's Note
Almost made this a first person POV, am still tempted but I don't really have the time to mess with switching with all my other work being in third person. That and I had written two chapters before making this realization.
One of the things that seems to annoy a lot of people about zombies in media is that no one ever knows what they are. So, Doctor Who (the show) exists in this world. Means less shit for me to make up.
John Smith looked around his TARDIS. Despite the outside being a three foot box, inside was bigger than any place he had ever lived. The control room was at least fifty feet in diameter with the control spire in the middle. Below the spire, under the walkway, was where all the wiring spread out from and made it an easy to access mess. The spire itself was a polished chrome filled with dials and readouts. The shape of the room was semi-spherical so the different exotic particles could bounce around, the mirrors along the walls aided in that even if they were a bit tacky. The designs were only half his.
He looked at the dials, trying to remember what the various buttons and levers did. He hadn’t put them all in or hooked even half of them up, it had been too much work for just one person. John pulled and turned knobs at near random, going more off of intuition based on his own designs and what he knew of Mrs. Sparkle.
A readout popped up on of the screens with a date. A few twists of an old rotary dial until he found the proper date. December, 20th, 2012, near midnight. He slammed the floor bound lever with his foot, using the hand holds around the console as the TARDIS took off, giving a sick wheeze as it bounced around.
For all I know this is just bouncing around Canterlot Castle and causing a proper mess.
One final crunch cause his machine to stop moving, unfortunately for John he didn’t stop, his face slammed directly into the spire. His feet then went out as he grasped his pained nose. The young doctor then proceeded to smack his chin on the console and ass on the floor. “If this is just some prank by the Princesses…” John muttered before checking his jacket pocket. It had taken a while to construct this machine, far longer than expected. So when he had some downtime it was spent coming up with a plan. It was rather simple, return to when the Alcubierre drive first malfunctioned; show them his numbers for why it would fail. Problem solved. “Then I will buy a nice house in the middle of nowhere, park my time machine, and never see another person or pony for months at a time.” A calm life, that sounds blissful.
His formula was still right where it belonged. John slowly returned to his feet, grabbing onto rails as he stood. “Next, visit an actual doctor to check for a concussion.” The world around him kept spinning, and whatever he had for breakfast made a last ditch rebellion to escape.
John fumbled out the door, closing and locking it behind him, then looked out at the vast desert. It wasn’t that he didn’t think the machine would work, he was almost positive it would, or blow up in a marvelous fashion. But his mind still had trouble processing that the view had really changed.
To one side of his machine sat a chain link fence topped with razor wire, far in the distance on the other side sat a white bubble tent. “Thar she be.” Hoping his dizzy walk would look more like a swagger and thankful almost no one would be around to see. After a few minutes John could approximate a normal human, or at least one that hadn’t been bounced around time and space.
Halfway to the facility John Smith is stopped by a professionally dressed man. He could have been Secret Service. “I’m afraid you aren’t allowed to be here sir. I must ask you to leave.” This guard’s voice was breathy, as if he had been running. His age was hard to peg down; he had a physique of a long distance runner with absolutely no hair anywhere visible. There was also no sweat in the pale moonlight that would indicate he should be breathing hard.
“But the Alcubierre Drive in there will go critical. The professor wanted me to run his number just in case. He forgot to carry the one.” John forced a laugh and pulled the calculations from his pocket.
The guard considered it for a moment, looking at John, the paper, and the surrounding desert, brows knitted. “I assure you that it is all under control.”
“I can tell you that it isn’t.” John used the hand holding his papers at the facility. “If we don’t do something that drive is going to go critical!”
The guard wasn’t budging. “I can tell you everything will happen just like it’s supposed to.
“Why don’t we call your boss and let him decide then. Would hate for you to lose your job.” He felt the seconds ticking away. “There’s no way you can know what’s going on here.”
“What are you?” The guard had one hand on a radio and the other resting by his leg. “How are you absorbing magic?”
Smith took a step back. How does he know about magic? It doesn’t even exist here yet. How can he even SEE magic? That requires specialized equipment. He reached into his pants pocket for the small gift a friend left him, a special gun that had destroyed the first iteration of the TARDIS. Before John’s hand was even out of his pocket though the guard had a 9mm trained on his chest. He saw two flashes as pain blossomed in his chest.
John falls onto his back, it was the worst pain he had ever felt.
“I know the calculations, it was much more than a missing decimal. It will just be written up as human error.” The guard reached down and took Shikaishi’s gun from John’s pocket. “Yet somehow you know about this and have this odd gun.” The guard flicked the gun into a pile of sand. “But soon that bullet in your heart will kill you and the explosion will remove all traces; on both sides.” He then walked away, straight at the white mass spreading from the research facility.
The pain was spreading through John’s body. What had started in his chest and worsened with every beat of his weakening heart soon felt like every cell in his body was being ripped apart. The magic his body had been storing now searched for a way out. The golden glow of his body was quickly overshadowed by the expanding explosion of humanities first interstellar drive.
