The Junk drawer

Celestia’s sun glared down over Equestria. It was mid-day and the sun would be shining at full capacity. For most ponies, they’d be getting lunch or finishing off for the moment. But for anypony inside the castle, there would be no breaks now.

Twilight was busy rushing through her books as she had a set of gadgets propped up in front of her. What she was doing nopony knew, but that was the least of their concerns. Spike was curious though, she had been working for a while now and she did not look like she was ready to finish.

“C’mon Twilight, can you just tell me what is so important about what you’re doing? You haven’t even told me what it is that you’re doing,” Spike said as he walked into the empty room. It was empty in the sense that nothing was allocated to it, but it would soon become the room of whatever Twilight was building.

“It’s… something, you don’t need to know yet.””

“Oh c’mon, it’s not something dangerous is it?”

“Okay, fine, it’s not dangerous,” she said pulling herself away from the unfinished project. “This, is a teleporter, at least I hope it will be. It could turn into something else but yeah, it’s intended to be a teleporter.”

“But why do we need a teleporter?” Spiked asked crossing his arms. He did not understand the purpose of them having a teleporter. Twilight could already teleport.

“I’m intending on using it to transport easily between the Crystal empire and here. No need to take a train. I mean, it will be way faster and cheaper. Not to mention the transportation of items.”

“Yeah, I Guess that works out. I mean, the train rides are pretty boring. I swear I fall asleep every single time.”

“I’m also insisiting on using it to get to Canterlot. I mean, it’s closer, but it means I won’t have to be away for long when I’m visiting Celestia. But I also need to put one there so I can easily come back.”

Spike looked at the current unfinished project. It looked pretty reasonable. A frame, some weird devices he didn’t know what they did. A medium sized bottle of mana. “So, what sort of spells would you need to make it work? I’m assuming you already know.”

“Oh Spike, not everything works just on magic. There’s some technology involved too. We need electricity so I’ve hooked it up to a power source,” she said pointing towards a battery. “But it also heavily uses magic, so I’ve hooked up some mana to help power it and make it so anypony can activate it.”

“Eh, whatever, I’ll take your word for it. Magic’s confusing,” Spike said leaving the room.

Twilight had worked through into the evening, setting up the wiring and the spells to make it work. They kind of had to be precise but an offset measurement should be fine. But she wanted to make sure it worked perfectly. She remembered to set it to the Canterlot frequency. “That should just about do it. Oh just imagine, this is the new transport of the future. But it will not be the future then,” she said as she stared down the device. “Spike! Come here, you need to witness the activation of the teleporter!”

A bit later, Spike came running inside the room. “What’d I miss?” He said looking around.

“Oh you didn’t miss anything. I was just about to activate it?”

“Oh, and how do you activate the teleporter?” Spike asked looking around.

“Spike, you’re so silly,” Twilight said grinning. “You press the big red button.”

Sure enough, there was a big red button right there, and it was not hard to miss.

“Oh right, I thought I saw something red.”

“Did you Spike? Did you?” Twilight asked intimidating Spike.

“No… I wasn’t really paying attention, it’s just a simple teleporter, I mean, it’s not like it’s the first. I mean the mirror to Canterlot High…”

“But that’s a portal. It’s different. This is a teleporter. Now, if you want, you can press the big button.”

Spike went over to the button before looking back at Twilight. Twilight nodded back and he turned to face the button. He exhaled and punched the button. A small flash happened and the teleporter activated.

“The Teleporter has been activated!”/b] Twilight announced, as she walked over to it before stopping before it. “That’s weird.”

“What? Was something else supposed to happen, or did I break it?” Spike asked puzzled. He was sure he pressed the button correctly. Was this a special button that had a specific way to press it?

“No, you pressed it correctly. But the portal is supposed to be all black. Not sparkly.”

“How would you know that?”

“A teleporter is all black unless it’s two way in which you see the other side. A portal to an alternate dimension is swirly. But this, is neither.”

“So, it’s supposed to be all black considering we haven’t built one in Canterlot yet?” Spike asked.

“Yes, all black, nothing to see on the other side, but not all sparkly like electricity. I mean, it’s not going to zap us, I can detect that.”

“Well, maybe things have changed. Like your resources are outdated and this is in fact what it’s supposed to look like, but we’re the first, or one of the first to discover the change?”

“That sounds possible, but I’m not too sure. I mean, it’s not like we know of another teleporter ever existing, so the sources could be made up.”

“But we won’t know unless we go through right? I mean, I want to be one of the first, or the first of this era to go through a teleporter. I could even ask Rainbow Dash to a race and secretly use this.”

“I guess, we do have to go through. I mean, it’s like it’s calling me,” Twilight said approaching the portal. “Like Rainbow Dash says, YOLO.”

The two went into the sparkling bits of the device. Their bodies begun to disappear as the supposedly went to Canterlot.