Zoey swung her legs over the ledge. "Thanks for letting me hang around here all the time, by the way. It's nice being able to travel back to someplace where I can actually be myself, y'know?"

"Don't sweat it. I'll be here for a long, long time," Gadget responded from above. "Maybe even forever, for all I know..."

Zoey leaned backward, staring up at Gadget in her human form as she waved down at her. Her smile visibly wavered with her movement.

"You feeling okay, Gadget?" Zoey climbed back to her feet. "You don't usually sit all the way up there on the roof like that."

"To be completely honest, not really. Do you mind if I maybe vent a little?"

"Shoot."

Gadget climbed down from the roof, flickering between forms for a moment before settling as a pony beside Zoey. "So, you know how I'm... well, dead?"

Man is that a way to start a conversation.

"Yeah?"

"And you know how there's practically an infinite number of us in existence out there?"

Zoey blinked. "...Yeah?"

Gadget leaned back, staring into the speckled abyss that surrounded them. "How come it's only ever you and me in here? Surely, if there's an infinite number of us, then there should be an infinite number of mes here, talking to an infinite number of yous. But no, it's just the two of us. A while back there was another version of you that came by. Helped her get in and out of a few different universes. She found her mom as well, just like you, and also discovered that she couldn't quite go back the same way. The difference is, she found her way back to Lisa."

Zoey's eyes widened. "You--er, she made it back?"

"Yeah. I figured that because that'd happened, I'd be seeing a lot more versions of you passing through. Yet, here we are, sitting in some space outside of any singular reality, alone."

"I... guess that's a little weird, yeah."

"I don't like staying here, Zoey. I know I don't really have any other choice, but like, why am I the one in here? Am I the only version of us that's died and gotten trapped in here? Do you know how long it's been? How long it took before I finally started seeing other versions of myself after I woke up in here?"

Zoey leaned away a little from the ranting filly. "Er. A long time, I'm guessing."

Gadget took a deep breath, closing her eyes as she fell backward onto the porch. "You know, I built this place all by myself. There were scattered rocket guts all over the place when I came to, just sorta... drifting around. It took a pretty long time I think, but I figured out first and foremost how to make, like, the ground."

"What." Zoey wrinkled her brow. "You made the ground?"

"Righto. Actually, you don't know, do you? About how stuff really works in here?"

Zoey shook her head.

"I don't really know for sure either, but it's kinda like magic. Just a little bit. See--" she outstretched a hoof, seemingly calling to her one of the glowing proto-portal orbs. "Like magic. When I first came into here, there wasn't really any floor or ceiling or anything. I was drifting around for a long time, but then I thought, 'what if I just wish really hard for there to be something to stand on', and boom. Floor."

She hopped up and ran off the porch onto the ground around them. "See? Before there wasn't even gravity!"

Author's Note

woah, first-ever scrapped PE chapter. gonna post it anyway 'cause whatever