A Time Traveler's Perspective

I don’t know how much time has passed, but I slowly open one of my eyes. If I’m still in Equestria the best thing that I can do is pretend to be dead. I know that Cloudkicker would be worried if I was back at Equestria, given the whole electrocution thing, but that turns out to be a problem that I do not have to deal with. I can tell from the sights around me, the look of the land, that I’m no longer in Equestria.

This looks like the Earth I know and like.

Part of me thinks back to Cloudkicker for a second, I have to wonder what she’s thinking right now. Well, not right now. She knows where I decided to go. I wonder what sort of marks might have been left there when I left. I don’t see anything on this side, but I chose a field to try to transport from. I have to wonder what it might be like for it to be done in a house.

No, no, this is my victory. This is what happens when I get what I want. This is me, back with my family, on an Earth that is almost devoid of life. That isn’t the best way to think about it, aside from the family part. That’s the good part.

Also, my right shoulder hurts.

It might be an effect from the device. While I’m on that topic, I might as well take it to the workshop to see what happened. I don’t remember it ever electrocuting me, and the only time when I remember that sound being made it ended with me needing to throw it off before it exploded. Today is just a day of firsts, at least for me it is a day of firsts. This is the first time that I got electrocuted by the time travel device, the first time I’ve been ran out of town by a pony, and the first time I ever had sex.

I look down at my wrist, which is actually not as singed as I would have thought, and notice that there is something missing. There is no device on my wrist. The only upside is that I have everything written down about the device in my lab. I just have to head in there, look at it, and spend some time trying to figure out what it is that might have gone wrong. I have to think about the many things that could be different between going forward and going backward.

At least my clothes are still on, that’s something great.

It takes a grand five minutes for me to head over to my lab. That isn’t really enough time for me to come up with many theories. In all honesty, I don’t even know if the problem is in the device. For all I know, it could be something that is not reproducible, it could be something that happened because of a variable that is only found in Equestria. It could be the sweat, I had been fairly sweaty after the activities that had happened that night.

Or it could just be something that happened when you go back.

When I finally get into my lab, I notice that everything is perfectly clean. There isn’t a single piece of paper on the desk, any of the desks. There aren’t any pieces of equipment around, likely having been put in a storage shed. All I have to do is go to the desks, open them up, and find the paperwork. That makes perfect sense, I walk up to the nearest desk and open up the top drawer.

Nothing is there.

No problem, there are more drawers and more than one desk. That is what starts the next step of my day, and that’s finding the pieces of paper in the desk. By the time that I get done, though, there is something that I would settle on rather than finding the specific piece of paper that I’m trying to find. I would be happy finding any piece of paper.

A lab shouldn’t be completely empty, yet mine is.

Okay, this isn’t a time to panic. I just have to remember where it is that I might have put it. For all I know, enough time has passed that they threw it all away. That might be a worst case scenario, but I still have to think about it. If that’s the case, I’m going to have to try to remember everything that I have done over the course of the last ten years. I’ll have to remember the formulas, I’ll have to remember where I went wrong and right, and I’ll have to put another one together.

Of course, all of that only happens if my parents have no idea where my notes are.

The house is a scant hundred yards away, barely far enough for most tests that might go awry in my lab, but I hadn’t been thinking when I built it.

Just like the empty lab, there is an empty house.

The house is two stories tall. I check each of the bedrooms, just in case, along with every other room of the house. Either they’re playing the most intricate game of Hide and Seek, or something has gone terribly wrong. I keep looking around, just to end up in a room that had been my dad’s study. He would come here when there was something that he really had to think about.

There I see it.

There’s a giant map of the nearby area, and a lot of places marked out. I don’t really know what to make of this, so I head over to see if there’s any indication of what it might be. I still don’t see much, but most of the places around us seem to have been marked off. There are the occasional notes, usually something along the lines of ‘not here’. That doesn’t make any sense at all, so I decide to keep looking around to see if I can find anything that gives me a hint about what all of this might be.

I can only hope that they were looking for some new place to stay. Even if I’m left behind, at least they’ll be happy. I look around, the only thing that catches my eye is an aluminum laptop.

The laptop is sitting on the desk, it might tell me about what it really is. All I have to do is open it, put in the password, and then maybe read some of his notes. My dad’s life is fairly organized, enough to where he keeps notes on just about everything that he cares about. I just have to remember which password is his and which is my mom’s. Both of them are similar, but different enough. ‘Bio Son’ is the first guess, which turns out to be the right one.

Immediately, I’m met with his journal.

December 28
It has been an entire year since Roger disappeared. I don’t know what happened, I don’t know why it happened. I just know that it did. The last thing that he told us, on his birthday, was that he had a great surprise for us. I wonder what he had thought about before … whatever it was that took him away from us.

I’m looking, I keep looking. I know that she would want me to keep looking, to find him even if she isn’t around to say how much she loves him.

By now, tears are starting to stream down my face. I have to know what happened, though. A wipe of my sleeve, and a couple minutes waiting, and I’m able to continue.

I have narrowed it down to a few places. It can’t be anywhere nearby, so it might take a few days until I’m able to get back here. I’ll probably leave this here. I’d rather risk anything happening to it. This might be the only thing I have left if I can’t find Roger.

At least I’ll have my memories.

What happened?

From what I can gather, it has been an entire year since I left. I thought I left some sort of note, but apparently something happened. Then the search started. At some point, mom … I don’t want to think about that right now. Dad likely didn’t want to think about it either. He continued to search, though. Maybe he’s still looking for me. I look at the time on the computer, and the date, and realize that it is January 23.

Apparently it has been a while since he was here.

Did he … no, I don’t want to think of that one either.

I have to, though.

There is a very good chance that I’m here, all alone. That means a lot of things. I don’t have anybody to help take care of me, nobody to laugh with or talk with. I don’t know if this is better than where I had just come from, really. I just have to find the notes, I can get to a new time. All I have to do is find those notes, build a new device, and choose a time between now and the time that I had chosen the last time I made the device.

~

Agggh!

I can’t believe it.

The house is practically empty. There’s furniture, there are the things in the study, there’s some rotten food, and that’s pretty much it. It’s like my notes just disappeared off the face of the Earth. I slam my fist down on the table, not knowing what it is that I should really be doing. I don’t even know if I’m going to be able to put the notes together from my memory. It wasn’t that easy to come up with them the first time, some of it came from the fact that I had something to look at.

Another punch to the table later, I start to calm down.

I have to focus.

I have to make that device. Maybe if I do that, I won’t have to go forward. If I go back another year or two, stop myself from making the mistake in the first place, then everything will end up fine. First, though, I have to think about anything that is attached to the project. I have to remember how I came up with it in the first place. All I need to do is focus, think, and come up with anything that helped me to time travel in the first place.

Nothing is coming to mind, though. It is almost as if every single piece of knowledge about the device was expunged from my head.

Now that’s a word that barely gets used, expunged.

I tap my forehead a few times, rather hard taps actually, as if that’s the thing that will fix everything. It doesn’t, tapping a forehead doesn’t impart wisdom. Neither does hitting a head against a desk, but that doesn’t stop me from doing it out of frustration. There has to be something that I can do, some way of figuring out something that might help me to get another working device. At this point, I can’t exactly spend the next ten years working on it.

I don’t know how I would even survive for ten years, not even a single year if it really comes down to it. I can’t hunt, I can’t grow food. I can’t fish. There are a lot of skills that I should have by now, but the fact that I’ve been focused on this one device has kind of stopped that from happening. Before that, everything w’s about reading random books. I know a lot of things, I know how to theoretically hunt or fish or find the right mushrooms, but theory is just that.

Practical use of information is not the same as having the information.

Maybe I will survive though. I know the theory, maybe I can out it to good use. Maybe I will just have to learn to do all of those things, then also make the device, then find a way to make it to where I find a way to get my parents back to life, and finally move everyone to some future. I have to do all of those, because missing any of them makes the others mean less. If I survive but don’t have a plan for the future, and going further into it, then I’m back to square one. That’s even if I’m able to prying my parents back.

If I don’t have my parents, I’ll probably be alone wherever I go.

If I don’t figure out a way to survive, then none of this will matter.

I have a lot of work on my plate. I have to focus, I have to get everything started. I have to find a way to do all of the things that I just laid out. Maybe I can clone my parents, but that’s another thing that will take a long time. Cloning is something that is simple enough, or at least it is a known possibility. I don’t have any of the notes here, but I know that it is possible. Of course, that doesn’t do anything for my survival or making another time travel device.

And now I can’t get Bon-Bon out of my head. For some reason, the memory of her kicking my face just appears in my head. I can also feel the pain, and it actually makes me fall off of my feet. I shake my head a couple of times, there has to be an easy way to get rid of this. I have to focus on the things that I can do something about, not the things u have no control over. That means I focus on cloning my parents, or at least figuring out the essential bits about that, then come up with a survival plan, and finally start working on the device.

This is too much work for one person.

First, though, I need to see what I have to work with. There should be some tools in the shed. I just have to go over to them, and then I can get to work on the first step. I think that means the cloning thing, but for some reason my head starts to hurt. Maybe I just need to calm down a little, maybe I’m stressing myself to the point where I won’t be able to do much of anything. Then again, this is the perfect time to be stressed because I’m alone in an uncaring world.

Alone is the worst.

~

Now I’m here, I’m in the shed. There are a lot of tools here, things that can help me out in the thing I’m trying to do. That’s why I’m here, right, to do something. But what am I here to do? I know that I knew it five minutes ago, but right now I’m drawing a blank. I look at the tube, the one that held me when I was still growing, and then around. Maybe I just came here to get some nostalgia. That doesn’t make much sense, but neither do a lot of things.

Now time to go in and see my parents.

No, that isn’t right. I just came from in there. It feels like my head is in a vice right now, I have to go somewhere else. There’s something about this room, this shed. It feels so constricting, like the walls are starting to move inward. I know that isn’t possible, walls don’t move unless they have some sort of motor. And these walls don’t have any sort of motor.

Reasoning it out in my head, though, doesn’t hello much.

I have to go into the open.

Soon enough I’m sitting on a hill. There is plenty of grass, contrary to what I’m used to, and the stars are beautiful tonight. Of course, this brings the question of what I’ve done all day, I know that I feel tired, worn out, kind of stretched. I feel like butter that has been spread out over too much bread. But what did I do today? Why can’t I remember anything? I shake my head again, this feels like something I’ve done a lot today, and then look at my hands.

“Something isn’t right here. What’s wrong with me?”

“Would thou likest us to tell thee?”

A new voice, this is great news. It doesn’t sound like any voice that I know. Maybe that is something that happened while I was gone. There is now a new person. I don’t know if I like the trade that I’ve made, but the least I can do is turn to face this new person. “If you know, then you’re welcome to te-“ I stop as I finally turn around to see what it is that I’m talking to.

Everything come back to me as I stare at a horse. She is midnight blue, with flowing hair of approximately the same color. Her head has a horn on it, and there are small wings on her sides. I recall the name Alicorn, which is what Twilight told me back then. I remember all of the pony things, the horrible things. I remember the few good things, I remember Cloudkicker and Spike.

I remember what I had seen upon my return.

Is this how it started? Maybe this is why my parents aren’t here. Maybe it is this Alicorn, whoever it is, that has caused this. I know that this Alicorn looks like … I don’t even remember. I frantically throw my hands up, and back away. “Please. Just leave me alone. I didn’t do anything to you. I just wanted to be left alone. I just wanted to be left alone…”

I rarely panic, but when I do it’s because I’m about to die.

It looks at me with a shocked expression. “We come here not to hurt you, but to help you.” I don’t know why it says we, but the first thought is that we’re not alone. There have to be others, and they’re all around doing their normal things. Maybe this one is the one that is here to see if I can out up any resistance. The others will show up and start eating me. That is the only thing that could have happened to my parents.

I have to get out of here.

I quickly turn away from her, which is likely not my smartest move, and start to run away. About five steps, and then I have to dodge around a large white Alicorn. This is another of these things that are obviously trying to kill me. The first obviously sent the message somehow, and now they’re going to try to eat me. I know I should probably be able to name these, they seem familiar, but my mind is focused on the idea of being able to get out of here alive. Everything else comes secondary to that.

Suddenly, I feel a stab through my chest. When I look down, I see a dark blue horn piercing through. It’s strange, so bizarre. I’m dying, yet there’s no blood. That isn’t the only thing, though, there’s another thought. I can’t help but think about is how Applejack is the winner here. She obviously didn’t want me back there, and then I left. Now I get stabbed by an Alicorn, so there’s no chance of me trying to return. Maybe I’m just being paranoid in these last few moments of life.

Everything is growing dark, and I cough up a little blood before my eyelids start to grow heavy. What do you know? There is at least a little blood before I pass away. That has been bugging for the last twenty or so seconds. It’s a real shame I don’t believe in an afterlife, being able to see my parents again would be amazing. It’d be easier to believe in that, but I think it’d be dishonest to believe it just for that reason.

Oh well, at least I don’t have to worry about being alive when the eat me.

~

Suddenly, my eyes open.

Well, I’m not dead. That’s good news. I really didn’t know what to think when that Alicorn had shoved her horn through my chest.

I sit up, slowly. My hand goes to my chest. It is rather unclothed, and it is lacking in the hole department. One of those is good news, the other is that I’m not wearing a shirt. I know that, somehow, somebody will be able to tell me how any of this makes sense. Next comes the feeling, one that I have had a lot during my time here. I have this feeling that I’m being watched. I turn to my left, and I see a whole gang of ponies. There is Cloudkicker, Lyra, Bon-Bon, Twilight, Spike, and Rarity. There are a few more that I don’t know, and quite frankly don’t want to get to know.

Bon-Bon is here, that is enough reason for me to want to leave quickly.

I jump up out of the bed, which is a surprise to me that I can actually do that, and start to sprint for the door. The pain is pretty bad, but I have to ignore it for now. I have to get out of here, to go anywhere else that isn’t here. There is one problem, one that soon enough hits. That problem actually only takes about three steps from the bed, when I double over. Apparently I can’t ignore the pain, at least not as much as I hoped I could. I still don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I feel rather faint. Next thing I know, red bile is spewed out of my mouth. Puking up blood definitely isn’t pleasant.

Once more, my vision fades. Maybe if I’m lucky, this has all been a bad dream. A dream within a dream, maybe, since I’m not exactly keen on the idea of having a horn shoved into my bad. If I have to choose between the two, being stuck in this place or having been skewered … I think I’ll have to give that choice some time before I make it. Both have their upsides, both have their downsides.