Dusk at last gave to night, the last rosy blushes fading from the west as darkness revealed innumerable glimmering stars. Atop a hill beyond the reach of Ponyville’s lights, Misty Moonrise adjusted her telescope. The rising moon’s hoary glow made the unicorn’s disheveled hair gleam even whiter, lent her grey coat a silvery sheen not unlike her namesake. This night thankfully mirrored neither Misty’s name nor her veiled moon cutie mark, for it was only on a clear night that the Epona supernova could be witnessed.
“The star is so far away,” Princess Luna had told her, “that the light of its demise is only now beginning to reach us. In truth, Epona expired long ago, but its dying fires still reach across space and time.”
Rarely were such astronomical events visible from Equestria, less still through the lens of a backyard telescope. Unfortunately, the San Palomino Observatory was busy with its own cosmological cartography, which was why Misty had to settle for a less powerful implement in a less ideal environment. But Misty was not one to complain. She was delighted to behold the supernova at all.
Peering through the telescope, Misty brought the fuzzy blur into focus with a wisp of sapphire magic. The pinprick of light, barely visible to the naked eye, suddenly became a gleaming orb of fire and gas. As if frozen in time, the explosion hesitated on the verge of motion. In the very heart of the supernova burned a searing white dot—the collapsing star itself.
Then something blotted out the supernova entirely. When Misty looked up, she could see no clouds, nor bugs that may have blocked the lens. She returned to the telescope and shifted it slightly, but there was no improvement. With a tendril of magic, she tried refocusing the lens.
A patch of white appeared, but it was not the dying star. Black letters resolved across the white surface, indiscernible at first but quickly enlarging:
POLICE TELEPHONE
FREE
FOR USE OF
PUBLIC
ADVICE & ASSISTANCE
OBTAINABLE IMMEDIATELY
OFFICERS & CARTS
RESPOND TO ALL CALLS
PULL TO OPEN
Misty gasped. The letters were not growing larger—they were coming closer! No sooner had she ducked than a wooden box rocketed past in a blaze of flashing light and groaning motors, taking Misty’s telescope with it. The box carved a notch out of the hill as it crashed violently to earth, tumbling helter-skelter down the hillside. By the time it ground to a halt on its side, smoke poured from cracks in the little glass panes ringing the top, soot and soil stained the blue paint in patches, and the doors hung ajar. The light atop the box pulsed in time with the wheezing engine, slowly and fitfully. From within, a warm light fell upon the grass and gouged earth, accompanied by a muffled voice. All around were littered the shattered remnants of Misty’s telescope.
Cautiously, Misty approached the blue box, pausing at the door. Before she could even peek through the gap, however, a grappling hook shot out of the box and latched onto the lip of the threshold. The rope tied to it was pulled taut from within, and the voice from earlier fell to grumbling and grunts of exertion as its owner began to climb. More curious than ever now, Misty shoved the doors wide and peered inside.
An impossible chamber of metal, wires, and light yawned below, deeper and wider than the entirety of the little blue box. The golden walls were peppered with hexagonal-framed roundels from floor to domed ceiling, which was supported by six arboreal beams. A railed ramp led to a raised platform that dominated the room, with a second platform at the first’s center. Upon this stood a peculiar column of what looked to be pale glass, with a series of cylinders contained within it. Encircling the column’s base was some sort of control console covered with knobs and levers, monitors and scanners, buttons and switches, and all manner of unfathomable devices.
Dangling on the rope was a brown earth pony stallion with short, dark hair, wearing a green tie and brown trench coat. And his eyes: clear blue and vibrant with life, but they were old, so very old. Such antiquity did not belong in those eyes, yet there it was—a weary flame, flickering against some terrible darkness that threatened to smother it.
It was then that the stallion realized he was being watched. His grip slipped slightly on the rope, dropping him a few precious inches. He glanced down at the even longer drop below him, and then looked up at Misty and grinned. “Hello, there.”
Being of a quiet nature and not entirely fond of meeting new ponies, Misty was at a disadvantage. How was one supposed to greet somepony who quite literally fell from the sky? After an awkward pause, she settled on giving him a silent wave.
“I don’t mean to be a bother,” the stallion continued, “but could you possibly lend me a hoof?”
Now there was something she could do. Stepping back and summoning her magic, Misty encircled the impossible box with the same aura that glittered around her horn and carefully stood it upright. The rope slackened as everything inside, including the stallion, returned to the proper orientation.
“Brilliant!” exclaimed the stallion, bouncing to his hooves and trotting about the console, checking the dials and meters. “Nothing like being the right way ’round, eh, old girl?”
For a moment, Misty thought he was addressing her. Then she realized it was to the box that the peculiar stallion spoke. He continued rambling—to the box, or perhaps to himself; it was difficult to tell which—as Misty tentatively entered the impossible structure, eyes widening with every step.
The clop of Misty’s hooves brought the stallion’s attention back to her. “Like her?” he asked, leaning casually against a rail.
“It’s…”
“Bigger on the inside, yeah.”
“But what is it?”
“She,” he answered, “is a T.A.R.D.I.S.—Time and Relative Dimension in Space.”
Misty blinked, finally regaining her wits. She may not know much about other ponies, but she knew plenty about the universe’s natural laws. “Time travel isn’t possible; the laws of physics simply won’t allow it,” she asserted. “Therefore, this isn’t a time machine. What is it really?”
Without warning, the doors snapped shut and the engine began to wheeze and groan anew. The entire room trembled and quaked, lights flickering. The central column glowed with a ghostly pallor as the T.A.R.D.I.S. dipped and rolled.
“No, no, no, no, no! She didn’t mean it!” the stallion shouted above the noise, frantically working the controls. “Don’t listen to the rude pony!”
“Rude?” In a shower of magical stardust, Misty vanished from the walkway and reappeared on the platform right beside the stallion. “Your box—or T.A.R.D.I.S., or whatever it is—blocked my view of the Epona supernova, destroyed my telescope, almost obliterated me—!” The T.A.R.D.I.S. lurched violently, forcing Misty to cling to a rail to keep from being thrown about like a leaf in a gale. “And now it’s locked me inside with its insane pilot!”
“Oy!” the stallion snapped. “My T.A.R.D.I.S. was just fine before you came along! Your magic’s interfering with the spatial and gravitational relativity! If we end up halfway across the universe, it’s not my fault!”
Before Misty could retort, however, everything spun and jerked in riotous madness. Her grip slipped, casting her into freefall for a terrifying instant. Then she smashed into the column, the platform, the ceiling, a support beam. Everything was topsy-turvy. Metal screeched and power surged as the T.A.R.D.I.S. struggled to regain stability, wrenching this way and that.
And then it was over. As abruptly as it had begun, the T.A.R.D.I.S. collided with something solid and steady, and at last was still. It was a jarring impact, but at least the storm seemed to have passed. Fortunately, the T.A.R.D.I.S. managed to remain upright this time, though its pilot and unwitting passenger were slightly less lucky.
A battered and bruised Misty Moonrise found herself sprawled on the edge of a metal landing. With a groan, she began to push herself to her hooves, but stopped as pain seared up her left foreleg. Biting back the urge to cry out, she attempted to rise again, this time keeping the weight off her injured leg. As Misty finally straightened, albeit shakily, a slender, silver rod rolled out of a nearby open doorway and came to a halt before her. It had a tiny cap of blue glass at one end, and all along the length of it were grooves inlaid with some alien metal and inscriptions in a language Misty did not recognize.
Then the stallion stumbled out of the same room whence the silver rod had come. A striped scarf had wrapped itself messily over his tie, a white fedora sat askew upon his head, a plaid overcoat was snagged across his back, an umbrella with a red handle was hooked over his tail, and his trench coat now only clung to one foreleg. He appeared a bit wobbly from the wild flight, but none the worse for wear. In quick order, he shook free of the apparel, save for his tie, and began to scour the floor, muttering to himself.
It was the first time Misty had a clear view of his cutie mark—an hourglass. “I know you! You’re Doctor Whooves, the Ponyville timekeeper.”
“Yes. Well, sort of,” he replied absently, still searching the floor. “Well, not exactly. Well, more like a traveler. And it’s just ‘the Doctor’—the ‘Whooves’ bit is a pseudonym… Blimey, where can it have gone?”
Misty glanced at the silver rod at her hooves. She cleared her throat loud enough to catch the Doctor’s attention and rolled the rod toward him.
He immediately brightened, deftly retrieving the rod and tucking it behind one ear. “Ah, that’s better! Never leave home without your sonic screwdriver, that’s what I always say. Well, almost always. Well—” The Doctor paused, noticing for the first time that Misty was hurt. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he apologized, approaching Misty to get a better look at her injury. “Can you stand on it at all?”
Misty shook her head.
After a thoughtful moment, the Doctor motioned for her to follow him and led the way down the stairs and onto the main platform. There he removed a metal panel, hopped into the cavity, and climbed back out carrying a little white box with a bright green, encircled crescent on the front.
“What’s that?” Misty asked.
“First-aid kit, of course,” the Doctor answered, opening the kit and rifling through its contents. He soon produced a small cylinder with blinking circuitry at each end. “Now, let’s see that hoof. Don’t worry, this won’t hurt a bit.”
Misty recoiled, arching a suspicious eyebrow. “Whenever somepony says ‘this won’t hurt a bit,’ they’re always lying.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I’m not a pony.” The Doctor stepped closer.
Misty matched his advancement with a hasty, if doddering, retreat. She was becoming more and more uncertain of this Doctor by the moment. “What do you mean, you’re not a pony? You look like a pony.”
“You look like a Time Lord,” he countered, raising the cylinder. “Trust me.”
“Why should I trust someone who won’t tell me the truth?”
That made him pause. The Doctor regarded her as if truly seeing Misty for the first time, with fresh curiosity and new puzzlement. Then he sighed and offered her a soft smile. “All right,” he relinquished. “It’ll hurt, but not for very long.”
Still a little wary, Misty limped over to him and gingerly extended her left foreleg. The Doctor took it in one fore hoof and applied the cylinder with the other. A sharp needle shot from the cylinder and jabbed into Misty’s flesh like a thunderbolt, enflaming an entirely new kind of pain. She jerked reflexively, but bit her lip against a yelp.
“There we go,” the Doctor asserted, setting the cylinder aside and releasing Misty. “Give it a minute or so, and you’ll be good as new.”
“What was in that?” asked Misty, rubbing the sore spot where the needle had pricked her. The entire limb was already tingling ferociously, not unlike the pins-and-needles sensation of restoring circulation.
“Regenerative enzymes,” returned the Doctor as he packed away the first-aid kit. “Clever, really, harnessing the genetic regenerative sequences of salamanders to heal ponykind’s aches and pains. It’s all the rage in the thirty-first century, if you can believe it.”
Misty definitely believed it. There was hardly any pain left in her foreleg now; it was almost as if she had imagined the injury. “I’m sorry,” she said, “about earlier. I don’t usually vent my frustrations on ponies—or on Time Lords, I suppose.”
“Ah, no harm done,” the Doctor assured her, checking one of the monitors at the control console.
“Did my magic really cause your T.A.R.D.I.S. to malfunction?”
“Nah… Well, it did, yeah. Unicorn magic makes her go all funny, has ever since that time Roseluck and I visited the moon. Good rule of hoof—never visit the moon when alicorn sisters are squabbling. Never mind that, though. The T.A.R.D.I.S. only acts up when your magic’s active, or when it’s been active recently. We should be fine now.”
“May I ask why you crashed into the hillside, then?” Misty requested, examining the console curiously. She had never before seen such strange and advanced technology. It was all rather exciting!
“Oh, that was just a little gift from the Cybercolts. They tried to ‘delete’ the entire Katze system, so I blew the reactor core of their megaship and programmed the computers of their outfliers to self-destruct.” There was no malice in his voice. The mass annihilation was only a matter of fact, a deed that had to be done. “They managed to hit the T.A.R.D.I.S. as we were leaving and her shields were still repairing themselves, so we went a touch off course.” He glanced up from the monitor at Misty, gauging her reaction.
However, she was staring at him not in horror, but in wonder. Her eyes were wide with the amazement and joy of a small foal on Hearth’s Warming morning. “The Katze system?” she gasped. “The binary star system in the globular cluster within the fifth quadrant of the constellation Leo? The system with five life-sustainable planets, two gas giants, and three dwarf planets with elliptical orbits?”
The Doctor grinned broadly. “Oh, I like you. What’s your name?”
“Misty Moonrise.”
“Welcome aboard, Misty Moonrise!” The Doctor spun a gear and pulled a lever, and the T.A.R.D.I.S. roared to life. The glass column gleamed as its inner pistons sprang into action once more. Tremors set the whole room to vibrating as the engine carried them into the currents of the unknown. Dashing about the console working the controls, the Doctor all but thrilled with elation.
Misty wrapped both forelegs securely around a rail to avoid a repeat battering. Now that she knew a little of what was going on—admittedly not very much, but enough—the seeming chaos of the T.A.R.D.I.S. in action was not terrifying, but exhilarating! Where was the Doctor taking them? More, when was he taking them? To what mysterious frontier were they hurtling through all space and time? What adventures awaited them beyond those doors?
When the T.A.R.D.I.S. finally grew still, light filtered through the frosted panes like rippling water, beckoning.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” urged the Doctor, darting toward the doors. “Allons-y!”
Misty raced up the ramp after him. She skidded to a stop beside the Doctor as he lifted the latch and swung the doors wide.
Before them spread the vast void of space, sprinkled all around with pinpricks of light. A great cloud of dust, debris, and gas surrounded a gigantic orb of searing white. Bits of rock and ice were burned away or sent reeling as the gas and fire expanded in all directions from the dying star. Lights and colors indescribable flooded all nearby astral objects, including the T.A.R.D.I.S. and its passengers. The heat that should have accompanied it all was strangely absent, though.
“How is it we aren’t being incinerated?” Misty queried, wonderstruck.
“Temporary heat particle shield, maximum intensity,” explained the Doctor, also marveling at the incredible display. “We can’t stay long, but I figured this would make up for wrecking your telescope and ruining your evening.”
Misty gasped, somehow tearing her gaze from the supernova to instead level incredulous eyes upon the Doctor. “You mean, this is Epona?”
“Oh, yes! Brilliant, isn’t it?”
Misty returned her attention to the dying star. The enormity of it, the scale of the celestial devastation, the sheer beauty—it was almost beyond imagining. For a unicorn who had always spent her nights stargazing and her days pouring over astronomy books, who dreamed of dancing among the stars and floating in the nothingness between all things, who lived for the smallest astronomical discovery and longed to explore the vast reaches of that glittering unknown, this was rhapsody.
“More than anything,” she whispered. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“Hey, what are friends for?”
