A Crossover

by Dudofall

Marooned?

Chapter Eighteen: Marooned?

I awaken slowly, brushing frost from my eyelashes. Blood rushes in my ears, and they pop as though I'm on an old-fashioned airplane. At first I can see nothing but stars and velvety darkness. Then I spot Twilight. To be more accurate, Twilight spots me, leaning over me to see that I am awake. Her mane is in disarray, and her horn is glowing so much that even glancing at it is painful. She seems to be under duress, if the beads of sweat gracing her face are any measure of such things. I realize all at once that I'm still lying down.

"Hold on!" she yells. I stand slowly, looking for the others. The flageye creature is knocked out cold, and the monitor prototype is damaged. The openings I spotted earlier have grown, exposing his circuitry. I doubt somehow that he is pretending this time. My gaze turns back to the princess, who is frantically scanning the space around us for something. I inspect the ground. It is gray, reminding me somewhat of moon dust. "This was the closest thing I could find to a planet," Twilight grinds out, "but it's on a collision course with a huge star!" It appears we are on some sort of comet. If only I'd started a planetarium instead of a hotel, I would know what kind of space debris we are riding towards our doom.

***

"Maybe he's on vacation?" Bill suggested. He was sitting on the edge of his folding chair, and Mary had typed out a bet to the SECRETARY about how long it would take him to fall out of it altogether.

"My brother would never go on vacation without telling anyone," Armald insisted. "It's like I told you before, he would tell everyone about it to make them jealous of him, then constantly send back postcards from whatever amazing place until the end of the trip."

Anne shrugged. "Maybe he wanted this one to be a secret for some reason. What if he has a secret girlfriend or something?"

Mary sputtered. "That's impossible!"

"Why? What do you think happened to him?" Anne asked.

The scientist threw up her hands. "I don't know, maybe he was banished to another dimension or something."

"Wow! Here I thought Bob only hired sane people for his stupid 'labs'!" Armald exclaimed.

Anne rolled her eyes. "Not to put to fine a point on it, Mary, but that was a pretty wild idea."

"You work in an underground facility where an Artificial Intelligence trying to take over is no big deal! Why is another dimension such a crazy concept?"

"That's different. I've been here since the start, and I saw this place get built. I've never seen another dimension. Always thought multiverse theory was a load of hooey."

"What if it's not? What if a denizen of this other universe was here under our noses all along, hiding from the cameras, and we didn't know about it because Mr. Olde tried to cover it up?"

Allen glanced nervously over his shoulder. "I don't like the sound of that," he grimaced.

"I have to say, that does sound...like a good idea for a horror movie!" Anne laughed. Everyone else joined in.

Mary grumbled. "Horror movies can have truth to them..."

After everyone had finished expressing their mirth, Anne finally took control of the meeting again. "Alright, alright. Now, who has a real idea about where Mr. Olde could be?"

Allen raised his hand. "What if he was kidnapped or something?"

***

What I wouldn't give to be kidnapped right about now. At least then I would be on a planet, air would be taken for granted, and of course I wouldn't have to deal with the piercing glare of Twilight's perilously finite magic. It is difficult to see any sort of light when one has a bag over one's head.

"Got any bright ideas?" Twilight repeats. This must be the fifth time she's made a pun about light without noticing. I am, needless to say, annoyed.

"As of yet, I still cannot think of a way out of this situation, unless Celestia burrows out of the inside of this rock and spirits us all away."

Twilight groans. "I hope she will too, but sometimes she takes this 'hooves-off' approach to things..."

I look over at the flageye, which is breathing, at least. The small creature is only here due to my own justifiable actions. "By hooves-off, do you mean she vanishes without a trace for days on end?"

"Actually, yeah. How did you know?"

"Does she stay locked up in her palace, never solving problems directly?"

"That's a rude way of putting it, but kind of..."

"Does she go to the bar instead of inspecting the latest prototype? Does she ignore all the reports to focus on her hobby? Does she have unrealistic expectations of how quickly her scientists can work?"

Twilight moves closer to me. "It sounds like you're talking about yourself."

I shrug, averting my gaze from her horn, which glimmers in the starlight. "I am starting to realize that I may not be perfect."

"If my friend Rainbow Dash was here, I bet she'd say 'Took you long enough!' or something."

"She sounds like someone-"

"-somepony-"

"-somepony who isn't afraid to say what she thinks. I need more people like that working for me."

"I swear, if you're about to offer me a job..."

"Certainly not. You have a duty to your many subjects that I cannot ignore."

"I don't actually...do much for my 'subjects.'"

"I'm sure they're always calling you up to deal with some issue or another. It must be like running a successful Fortune Nine Hundred company."

"Not many ponies have phones in Ponyville. I think Filthy Rich tried to start a phone company, but he wanted to charge too much and Mayor Mare stopped him."

"We were about to become a Fortune Five Hundred company, but then my brother took over..."

"It's kind of strange. Maybe I should have been the one who decided on that. There's nothing more friendly than calling up a friend on the phone."

"Now that I think of it, I can't recall the last time I spoke with him in person."

"My friends at Canterlot High had these amazing little contraptions called smart phones. Sunset Shimmer used them to break friendships...Hm."

I panic as her horn's glow starts to dim. "Twilight, keep casting that spell!" She looks to be staring into space again. The smell of my own breath grows thick in the air, and breathing becomes more difficult. I take one large, deep, shuddering breath and scream.

This finally startles her enough to brighten her horn once more. A single bead of sweat appears on her temple. "Help," she says.

"How?"

She winces. "We're going to have to touch horns."

I shrug. "Very well then." I move closer, keeping my eyes on my horn.

"Just...channel magic through it," she mumbles, "I'll be able to sense your reserves and draw on them while we come up with a way out of this."

I do so. "How long will we have, if neither of us thinks of anything?" Her face looks very purple up close, and shockingly alien.

She furrows her brow briefly. "About two hours." Our horns touch. Not much of anything happens, aside from a brief shock similar in sensation to static electricity. I close my eyes to focus on a sense I'm still not used to, that of magic. I visualize my power as a gray star, pulsating with energy. Twilight's magic hums nearby, strong and wild and intricate. It is admirably orderly, consisting mainly of pipes in a grid that shift in time with her breath. "I'm going to establish a one way arcane pathway," she says. "When I'm done, send as much magic as you can spare through it. There's more to it, but do you understand?"

"I believe so," I reply. A pipe constructs itself towards my magic, moving smoothly. I focus more on it and discover that the outer shell protects a thick core of instructions, which leave room for a narrow pathway in the center. It creates a reverberating thud when it reaches its destination. My heart skips a beat for some reason. I hope I don't have arrhythmia. The pipe passively pulls in a tiny trickle of magic, and I delicately increase it.

"The pathway can handle more than that," Twilight tells me, "I reinforced it just in case."

"Excellent." I push more and more magic into the pathway. It's impossible to describe what this feels like. Wiggling one's nose? That was a weak attempt. Lifting a fifty pound package with one's eyelids? I may be good at marketing, but I'd make a lousy poet. The star shrinks, which I feel more than visualize.

Twilight sighs. "Okay! Now that I can focus again, I've got an idea."

"What is it?"

"We can just fix that machine! It can't be that hard, can it?"

"It can, actually. It was designed and manufactured by an unknown entity, presumably the Monitor, which means that the design documentation is inaccessible."

"Then we'll just see what the inner workings are and fix whatever's broken! What do you expect to be inside?"

Working collaboratively is vital here. "The motherboard handles local processing, I believe."

"Okay, what else?"

"Hmmm. Well, I suppose a cooling system would be needed. We used liquid in the original."

"Alright, I'm picking that up."

What does she mean by that? I continue to channel magic, opening my eyes. Hers are closed in concentration. "Are you scanning the interior somehow?"

"Yeah. There are two flat pieces of material connected to each other by a wire, and a sort of tube of liquid that probably pumps around to disperse heat."

"Theoretically, the second board could provide dimension-jumping capabilities," I say.

"Oh!"

"What is it?" I ask. She sounds excited.

"I just have to reconnect the power!" she exclaims. Thank goodness, I truthfully do not know all that much about computers, especially those designed by another computer. I hear the prototype's familiar starting beeps. "What!" Twilight cries.

"Do not be alarmed, it is merely his starting up indicator," I reassure her.

"But look!"

"Very well," I heed her stipulation. The spine that bisects its body is unlit, and though its metal eye glows a usual light blue, the simple fact is that a chatterbox such as this would never remain silent for so long. "We should turn it off and on," I state boldly.

"You really think that would help?"

"I do indeed. After all, I function much better after a good night's sleep, why should a computer be any different?"

She gives me a look. "Computers are completely different," she deadpans. I smirk. She rolls her eyes and the prototype turns off and on again.

"I'm back!" he shouts, "What did I miss?"

Author's Note:

Edited 8/23/2020 for tenses at the end.