//------------------------------// // 10: Caught/Constant's Story // Story: Constant: Time Guardian // by TimeSpawn //------------------------------// The sky was a bright blue color when Constant finally woke up. He looked around and realized that he was in the farm house. He stood up and looked around. He felt for his radio so he could contact Jethrek, but he found that his satchel was missing. He then looked in a nearby mirror and saw that his perception filter band was broken. He looked outside and checked to see if the area was clear. It looked like there was nobody around, so he turned to the door and turned the knob slowly, only to find himself face-to-face with an earth mare, which startled him. He backed up, and the orange mare followed him into the same room. Constant gulped. He turned to jump out the window, but was stopped when the mare grabbed his shirt. "You ain't goin' anywhere," she said. "Seems, I'm caught, huh?" Constant asked. "You got that right," the mare said, and then she paused. "So you can talk." "Yes," Constant replied, "I can." "Then perhaps you'd like to explain what you were doing digging dirt on my family's property?" the mare asked, putting down a blanket which she was using to hold something. "You can also tell me what this is." When Constant saw it, he gasped. It was the probe he had extracted from their yard. He felt everything he had put into his mission go to waste. There was nothing he could do to stop it from happening. The damage was done. He sighed heavily in both disappointment and fear. This mare looked like she wasn't going to take no for an answer. After all, he was caught digging on private property. “Okay," Constant said, "I’ll answer all your questions with a story…but I hope you’re open-minded enough to believe everything I tell you.” "That depends," the mare said. "You might as well have a seat and start from the beginning." "The very beginning?" Constant asked, surprised. "Sit," the mare said, emphasizing that she meant business. Constant sat down and sighed. "Okay. I might as well. To start, have you ever heard of a race called humans?" The mare paused briefly. "Yes...a friend of mine went to a world where humans exist. She even said that she saw me...in such a form. Are you human?" "No," Constant replied, "But I am a humanoid. My name is Constant. Sorry I didn't introduce myself earlier." "I'm Applejack," the mare replied, sitting down herself. Constant went on with what he was and where he came from. It was difficult to explain it clearly, but he managed to give Applejack an idea of what he was. "But the story actually starts with...the Time War." "So this is going to be a war story?" Applejack asked, raising an eyebrow. "Kind of," Constant replied, "A lot of people know about this war in my universe. It cost a lot of lives, and left devastation in my universe. But my story actually starts on...Hold on..." He calculated calendar time, converting Gallifreyan time with Earth time. “Okay...so it starts on the third day of an Earth week. I had heard news that my home city was destroyed by Dalek laser fire. I was in an inspection and rescue squad sent there to look for survivors. We found a lot of people, but even after that, I kept searching for anyone in my family, hoping and praying that they were still alive.” “Did you find them?” Applejack asked. “You’re jumping ahead of the story,” Constant replied, “but I will tell you. Anyway, I kept searching and searching, not wasting a single moment in the search…and then I found myself standing in the exact global coordinates where my family’s home was. When I dug the rubble, I found them…I can only guess you were asking that question because you were actually wondering if they were alive.” Applejack nodded at that statement. “Sorry to disappoint you," Constant said, "I saw burns on my father, which indicated that laser fire was used in the house before it crumbled…However, no one else was killed in that manner. They were killed when they were crushed by the collapsing building. No chance to regenerate. I wanted to at least give them a proper funeral, so I had my team collect their bodies before leaving the area.” “All your family killed, huh?” Applejack asked… “So that means…you’re the only one left, huh?” “Exactly,” Constant replied. “Anyway, a week later, I was staring down at the city from a cliff…I was angry…disappointed in myself…and sad. My family was dead. I wondered if somehow I was dreaming…so I hit my own leg with a sharp rock. I didn't cut myself, mind you, but it was painful enough to tell me that I wasn't dreaming. It was as real as life could get. And then I got radioed by my squad leader.” He laughed a bit. “He told me that we were being drafted to fight in the front lines. I wondered to myself if fate was playing a cruel trick on me, but given what had happened to my family, being killed in the attack, I had nowhere else to turn. I thought it would be a good break from my surveillance missions, but I was wrong. As I said, a lot of people were lost in the war, and not only Time Lords. Other races fought in the war as well, but I won’t go into so much detail about that. “Anyway, I was fighting on the front lines, when my squadron received orders to return to base and report to the Time Lords council chambers. One thing was certain at that point: No one was up for a promotion. I was right to think that too." “So why did the council call for you?” Applejack asked, getting more curious. “We were assigned a secret mission." Constant went on, "After a long briefing, the head of the council gave me a key to something. I didn't know what until another council member told us that the object which the key belonged to was in a large underground safe in the most secure area. I myself asked them why we alone were assigned to do this. One of the council members stood up, apparently insulted by my question. He glared at me and said that if we didn't move to the safe soon, the Daleks would get their hands on whatever the key belonged to and if they did, it would mean the end of all of time and space as we know it.” “Did you figure it out?” Applejack asked. “ Well, we didn't know what it was until we actually went there,” Constant replied, “On our way, I saw a message on a wall of a building that had collapsed earlier. The message read 'No more'. I didn't understand what it meant. No more what? A Dalek who had fallen nearby also saw the message and wondered what it meant as well. He demanded an explanation. I had no time to ponder it myself. I followed my squadron to the underground storage facility and the leader opened the safe. It was then my job to find what the key belonged to. After a short search…I was surprised to see that the key belonged to a TARDIS.” “TARDIS?” Applejack asked, clearly confused. “What’s a TARDIS?” “The term TARDIS,” Constant explained, “is an acronym for ‘Time And Relative Dimension In Space.’ It’s what we call our time machines.” “Oh,” Applejack said. “Well that explains it…sort of. Anyway, go on.” “I wondered why this TARDIS in particular was so dangerous that the Daleks would want it in the first place, but that didn't stop me. I unlocked the door, and the squad leader directed everyone in the team to take positions in the main control room. My task, however, was not in the main control room. Instead, he told me to go down to the engineering chambers and monitor the space drive, the temporal drive, basically everything to make sure we wouldn't blow up in the process of escaping. One thing you have to understand about TARDISes, though, is that they can repair themselves within a period of time after an attack or a beating, so everything was ship-shape when I went in there. Anyway, everything was set to go, and the TARDIS started flying. The squad leader had ordered that the outer shell of this TARDIS be disguised as a Gallifreyan rocket so the Daleks wouldn't get too suspicious. Everything was going well...until a little later, that is. As I listened in, I heard that we were far enough from Gallifrey for the Daleks not to detect us if we made a temporal jump." “Temporal jump?” Applejack asked. “What in the hay is that?” “By ‘temporal jump’," Constant said, "I mean when a time machine travels from one point in time to another. I thought everything would go according to plan at that moment…but I was wrong. I heard the second technician in my team yell a warning to the squad leader. The squad leader called for evasive action, but it was too late. Something hit our TARDIS hard…like a luxury liner hitting a hard rock due to careless navigation. At that moment, I heard sparks flying in the engineering chambers, where I was. I managed to dodge a few sparks that flew out of the control panel, but I didn't realize that a panel on the ceiling had fallen directly above me. I was knocked out…” “That hard, huh?” Applejack asked. “From the way you described, it seems that these…TARDISes are built to be super-tough.” “Yes,” Constant replied, “They were built to be that way…except TARDISes are grown, not built…I’ll explain the details later…I don’t know how long I was knocked out for, but when I woke up, I found myself looking at the section of the ceiling where the panel had fallen off…Luckily, everything was intact from inside where the panel was…” “I tried reporting in to the rest of my squad using my radio…but I got no response. I walked all the way back to the main control room to talk to the squad leader in person….but when I got there…I almost fainted…My squad was dead. All dead. Except me. They didn’t even get a chance to regenerate.” Applejack was shocked. At the same time her curiosity had piqued. “Regenerate? You mentioned that twice.” We Time Lords have a way of avoiding death," Constant replied, "but we can only do it a limited number of times.” Applejack was silent for a few moments… “So what happened then?” “Well, I found that most of the controls and view screens were still intact, so I checked for a recorded log of what happened. I found it…and what I saw shocked me…Gallifrey…my home…was gone…Not even the Dalek fleet was there… I fell to my knees in shock of what happened. According to the log, there was an explosion right where Gallifrey was…the shockwave from the explosion is what hit my TARDIS, causing it’s systems to go haywire. However, I did catch a glimpse of something in the record a few moments before the explosion occurred…A blue box was moving away from the planet. Only one Time Lord could have had that box…it was the Doctor’s TARDIS.” “Who’s the Doctor?” Applejack asked. “I don’t know his true name,” Constant replied, “Although I was assigned to watch over him to make sure that his activities wouldn't result in universe-ending paradoxes…Anyway…later on, I dismantled several missile rockets and turned them into caskets for my dead crew…I put them in, and left them right where Gallifrey was when it was destroyed. After meditating a prayer, I set off to find a purpose for myself in the TARDIS. I decided to watch over the timeline, making sure that nobody tried to change history for their own benefit. For this purpose, I gave my TARDIS a name…the Monitor. It seemed fitting for the purpose I gave myself. Several years passed, and I had recorded a LOT of history, none of which to my knowledge had been tampered with. Then one day, I was returning to Earth from a far-away solar system when the Monitor hit something. It shook…it rumbled…and everything seemed to double around me…including myself…Soon, the illusion wore off, but I was facing an even bigger problem. The main power core was overheating. I had to run the Monitor very quickly through the vortex to cool it down. One degree above the tolerance level, and the Monitor would have started to fall apart. It shook again…and rumbled…I looked outside to see what was going on. There was no indication of what I had hit. Then the dimensional stabilizers started to malfunction, something I could not afford to ignore. It took some time to coax them to work again, but I managed to make it just in the nick of time. When I checked the status of the power core, it seemed fine at that moment. Then the computers started telling me that there was a navigational error. They couldn’t make heads or tails of the area around the Monitor. I looked at one of the view screens to find that I was headed for this world. However, I no longer had control of the spatial or temporal drives, which meant that I was going to crash. When the Monitor penetrated the atmosphere, however, I was able to give it a course to follow to make the crash less severe. I held on for dear life, unsure of whether or not I was facing death.” Applejack looked at Constant from foot to face. “Well, you sure look like you went for a rough ride…” “Yes, I did,” Constant went on, “When I DID land, I was knocked toward a wall and rendered unconscious. When I woke up, I started looking for where I was. The computers couldn't determine the exact location because of the…quantum variance in this universe. So I told the computers to disregard the quantum variance and theorize as to the location.” “I have no idea what a 'quantum variance' is," Applejack asked, "But did it work?" “It did,” Constant replied. “And I found that I am in the right place…but the wrong universe. So I decided to set up probes here too so I could find a way to get back to my own universe. That’s what the device over there is, a probe to record events over a very long period of time. That probe has recorded to the point that it can’t record anymore. I came here to replace it." “So you've been watching us?” Applejack asked, and Constant could tell at that point that she was getting a little mad. “Yes,” Constant confirmed, “But only so I could find a way to get back to my universe. I decided to watch events here too, in case someone did decide to change the timeline for their own benefit, but the probes were mainly set out for the purpose of finding a way back to my own universe.” “It still feels like an invasion of privacy,” Applejack said, looking down slightly with a frown. “Yes, that’s the kind of reaction I’d expect from anyone at this point,” Constant admitted, looking down, “However, unless someone tried to change the timeline, as I mentioned earlier, I usually disregard everything which I consider unrelated to my personal objective.” “And by ‘personal objective’, you mean finding a way home, right?” Applejack asked. Constant nodded in response and looked to her. "I know it all sounds far-fetched, Applejack, but everything I have told you is the truth." Applejack looked at him carefully… “Well…I’ll admit…I see no clue to support the idea that you’re deceiving me…so far anyway.” “One thing does concern me, though,” Constant said. “I buried that probe in that very spot about one hundred and forty years ago. I hope it didn’t affect any of your crops.” “Well, I didn’t see anything wrong with the trees, so you can relax about that,” Applejack replied. “Although if something did happen…” “You would have had stern words for me, right?” Constant guessed. “Well that," Applejack nodded, "and I would have had you pay for the damage you caused.” “All of it, I’m sure,” Constant said, thinking about what the consequences would have been if there was damage over a long period of time. “Hold on an apple-buckin' minute,” Applejack said, “When you first landed, where exactly DID you end up?” Constant looked to her… “On a rock farm,” he replied, “The Monitor had automatically disguised itself as a large rock some time after it landed.” "As a rock?" Applejack now had a look of realization. Constant looked to her now..."What is it?" “Well, it’s probably nothing," Applejack replied, "but…while you were there, did you see a grey pony wearing a…blue dress?” “Why yes, I did,” I replied. “She tried to shatter the Monitor thinking it was a rock." "Okay, now I'm starting to believe you," Applejack said, "Why?" Constant asked, "Do you know her?” “She’s my friend’s sister,” Applejack replied. “She’s been looking for that rock for weeks now.” “Well,” Constant sighed, “looks like I’ll have to explain myself to another pony, then. Meaning I’ll have to expose myself more than I find acceptable.” “You mean you meant to keep yourself hidden this whole time?” Applejack asked with a raised eyebrow. “Time Lord, time traveler, yes, Applejack," Constant replied, only slightly irritated, "I DID mean to keep myself hidden. If anyone else found out about me…do you realize the consequences?” Applejack thought hard…”Okay…assuming you ARE telling the truth about where you came from, who you are, and all that…You’re hiding yourself so others won’t know about you and your fancy time machine, because you’re afraid it might fall in the wrong hands. If it did, then the pony who uses it may try to change events to their own benefit.” “Exactly,” Constant said. “I just hope now that I---“ Then they heard a thump. Constant looked outside and saw a tall red earth pony kicking a tree...”Strange,” he said, looking up, “The apples on the other trees are ripe. So why aren't they falling from this one?” It all added up. “It’s harvest season, isn't it?” Constant asked Applejack. “Yep,” she replied. “We’ll be selling our crops tomorrow.” The red pony kicked again. Once, twice…three times…but the apples still did not fall. Suddenly, Constant realized why the apples were not falling. “That’s not a tree,” he said, his eyes wide. “Huh?” Applejack asked, confused. “That’s the Monitor!” Constant exclaimed. “If he keeps kicking it, it’ll defend itself by whatever means necessary!” He ran out of the room, downstairs, and out the kitchen where a light green, elderly pony saw him running out and squinted her eyes to see if she was seeing things. She saw Applejack running in his direction. “Constant, wait!” Applejack called out. The elderly pony’s eyes went a little wider. “Boy howdy, don’t all the craziest things in the world start happening here!”