Gummy found himself next to a body of water riddled with wooden boats and just a few metal ones that spat black smoke into the air. Behind him was a bustling metropolis, for its time, full of noise and bipedal humanoids. The buildings remain low to the ground compared to Canterlot and Twilight’s Castle. These inferior buildings lack beauty and design, they were simply… rectangular.
This planet was his home before Equestria, but not during the time he found himself. He spent his time with Greek and Chinese philosophers, to observe how ancient topics originated and how they were still a work-in-progress for the future. Wether it is to see how those ideas evolved or how the masses of the future never widely followed them. It is also where he learned that the native sapient species here called this planetary body, “dirt”, or Earth. Not to mention having had a little fun during the years of the Roman and Chinese Empires.
This time was different, he had never seen this planet evolve to this technological point. There were ironclads in the water, factories scattered across the urban area, and carriages that had stallions transport humans across town, just like in Manehattan; though they were not the same as stallions in Equestria.
Gummy put together a rather diabolical plan, but one that might finally cure this shaking curse. The bigger the heat source, the better, it seemed logical.
Something less logical was occurring at the same time. Gummy was becoming more emotional and less rational, all because of this indestructible internal shaking. One major influence leading him deeper into emotions was knowing solving this biological reaction was a waste of time. Gummy hated to waste time, but he knew not solving it would be a greater inconvenience, forcing his thoughts to be interrupted and inefficient.
Lamps along the streets lit up as the sun set under the horizon while Gummy traversed the area. He came across a barn facility once he crossed a bridge. A sign read "O'Leary Residence. 137 DeKoven Street" and that the building was closed, but yet lights were on in the adjacent shed.
Gummy phased through the door using simple quantum physics to manipulate the atoms of both himself and the door. Inside, he witnessed four gentlemen playing an illegal card game in the light of a gas lantern.
"Louis M. Cohn," Gummy mentally called out.
Louis M. Cohn worked for the O'Leary family and ran an inside gambling operation, which the other gentlemen were here for.
Upon Louis's name being spoken in a voice that was not his own in his head, he jolted upwards from his cards. "Did one of you just say my name?"
"Nope," one of the other men said.
"Get outta here," Louis demanded at them. "I think we're getting busted."
"Ya sure?" another man asked.
Louis slowly got up from the seat and whispered, "Yea! Now scram!"
The other three men put down their cards, took their money, and left out of the back door.
Gummy walked forward a little bit toward Louis and looked at him. Louis eventually saw the small gator and thought it was adorable.
"Oh, it was just you little fella?" he said relieved. "I thought you were a blue shirt going to bust me."
Louis knelt down before the gator and extended his hand to initiate friendly relations. Gummy saw the gas lantern on the table and formed an idea.
Gummy bit his hand and clung on as tight as the bond between two atoms. The empty space where teeth would have been acted like a suction cup on the man's skin. Louis jumped backward as the gator was stuck on his hand, attempting to shake Gummy off.
To scare the human more, Gummy mentally spoke to him again. "Run."
Louis tripped over the table and toppled over with the cards and gas lantern. Gummy let go afterward and allowed the man to run for his life, then let loose a small smile.
"I wonder if this will be warm enough. With plenty of lumber around me, this should produce a large enough fire to be satisfactory." He watched as the broken gas lantern set fire to the floor below and spread. The fire went under Gummy, who stayed in place hoping to get warm by it or as it grew around him. Eventually, the fire got to the walls, then the roof.
To set fire to the building was not his goal, it was a fraction of it. His plan was to create a conflagration in hopes of finally becoming warm. The fire ate at the shed, then the house next to it, then the neighborhood, block, blocks, and then the district.
The entire time, Gummy was shifting around to the hottest spot while a portion of this city encompassing him was burning. Never did the shiver dissipate. "Oh well," he thought to himself, "I suppose this city will learn not to construct buildings fully made of wood from now on. You are welcome, Chicago."
"What other heat disaster occurred that I can blend into. . ." Gummy thought about his time living on Earth during the days of war and enlightenment; when Earth was his home for a thousand years from 524BC to 476AD. He remembered a volcanic catastrophe that occurred during his stay in 79AD.
He licked his claw with a time and destination in mind and ripped open the air once again, and stepped through.
He appeared atop Mount Vesuvius a few minutes before he remembered the eruption taking place.
"How curious," he pondered to himself. He saw no smoke rising from the volcanic mountain.
Gummy saw no sign of activity when he looked over the edge, just rock. So he laid down and waited an hour. Not even a tremble was made from the ground during his wait. Then, the thought came to him. What if he was the one to cause the eruption in the first place due to this annoying biological reaction to the cold.
He had no time to sit and ponder that his younger self was a few hundred miles away in the city of Rome. Just hours from hearing about the explosion that ended Pompeii. What people will think was a natural disaster.
Gummy had to warm himself up, he must cause the explosion and enter the magma to heat up. He was desperate.
Gummy licked his tail and jumped in tail-first. It acted as a diamond-tipped drill as it pierced the ground like it were melted butter. The impact caused a massive explosion that released tons of gas and pressure from the main vent. Magma deep from below the crust followed the huge cloud of smoke.
He floated in the hot lava, waiting to get warm. It was hotter than the volcano in the dragon lands of Equus, but it still failed to get warm him at all.
"I need something hotter," he said while shivering once again, getting more desperate.
Upon swimming back to the surface, he stood on top of the liquid lava as if it were solid.
Slicing the air one more time, he entered.
Cold tundra and loads of snow surrounded him with no life in sight as he found himself in a valley in between mountains.
A plane flew above him and to the left, it headed right. Gummy licked himself all over to protect from something. It was like he knew what was about to happen, without actually knowing at all. Gummy had seen everything and knew everything, but that did not mean he experienced it firsthand. He was a time-traveling quantum multi-dimensional multiversal biological organism. He had experienced everything and nothing at the same time and no time at all. Confusing? Good. Gummy is not meant to be completely understood.
The plane crossed paths with him vertically, and he waited.
Knowing and not knowing, he counted down to the exact moment the event would occur.
"3. . . 2. . . —" Gummy licked his eyes for the incoming bright light "—1. . . "
The world immediately disappeared from sight as a huge flash replaced it. The world shook as a fireball quickly followed and spread across the valley in nanoseconds.
Gummy embraced it as he felt a little warmth, but not enough to cure this shivering curse.
Once the thermonuclear blast dissipated, a large crater was present, and all snow had disappeared, even off the peaks of the high-top mountains.
"This species only has one instance involving something hotter than this detonation over Novaya Zemlya; the fusion reactor meltdown of 2133 on the lunar surface. This nuclear device only got to one hundred million kelvin, still hotter than the center of the hottest star in the universe, but not as hot as a fusion detonation of four hundred million kelvin."
He created another tear in space-time and entered it.
Inside a lunar fusion reactor, alarms were blaring their warnings as the red-lit facility evacuated. Gummy was next to the solution to the problem — the coolant system override — but it was not meant to be stopped, in this universe's reality, it was mandatory that it detonated.
So he sat there, waiting out the time until it exploded. His protection from the Soviet thermonuclear bomb was still active, so no licking was required.
Similar to the Tsar Bomba test, but with more severity, the lunar base disappeared from sight, replaced by white nothingness full of hellfire. Gummy finally felt some warmth, after all this time. The heat was noticeable, and his shivering paused for only a moment. He fell as the base and ground below him blew out to form a massive crater.
"The power of twenty thousand suns, and still only satisfied my chills for a second. I must leave this universe and temporarily journey to others. Perhaps they will have the means to produce heat beyond this."
Ripping a new tear in space-time, he entered it.