With slow and pulling steps Time Turner entered his house. Passing through the entrance, he immediately let his saddlebag fall down to the ground and turned towards the kitchen.
A sweet smell notified him of Derpy’s presence—or at least her having baked here, as the kitchen was empty. He went towards the coffee machine and started it. As the aroma of the beverage filled his nostrils, he took a fresh muffin from the table and took a bite. Hmm, chocolate, his favourite.
Today had been a rough day, same as this and the previous week. Several of his new inventions refused to work, and the deadline for putting anything out came dangerously close. It wasn’t the problem of self sustenance that made him worry—with his genius and expertise, he was more than capable of getting a well paid job—but the funding for his projects, his passion.
He had to deliver, and something impressive. Celestia had been gracious enough to fund him building machines that relied on no magic, and at first he succeeded. But with the raise of magically powerful ponies, like Twilight for example, he couldn’t keep up. Especially when a (now former) villain was able to come up with a magic spell for time traveling, his biggest project for building a time machine came to ice—literally, he rebuilt it into an ice machine to make some use of it.
He had nothing anymore to invent. In Manehattan he heard news of a unicorn inventing a spell completely automatising a house building process, and if the trend would go on, every little thing would be done by a unicorn spell.
He took a sip from the coffee, as he heard a noise coming from his workshop. Curious, he passed the door, but as soon as he saw what was going on, he froze in his movement, his mouth wide open.
There was Derpy, having a plate full of muffins and a cup in front of her—this was usual. However, her view was aimed at a machine consistent with several parts of his own inventions, that was working in full capacity.
Now, he wasn’t surprised that Derpy had built her own machine, as it wasn’t the first time she had done it, nor that she used parts of his inventions. What surprised or, to be more correct, shocked him, was the thing coming out the machine: Golden bits, by now a huge pile of them, were falling down a pipe to the ground.
His heart almost stopped from the shock.
“What is going on?” he asked.
“Oh. Hi, Doctor!” Derpy greeted him with her cheerful voice. “How was your day?”
“Derpy, are you printing bits?” He ran towards the machine and took a closer look at the golden coins on the ground. Indeed, these were bits, and being stamped exactly like the originals.
“No. That’s illegal!” Derpy replied.
“Then what is this?”
“Well, I—”
“I can’t believe you’d actually print bits, Derpy!” He was furious. Out of anypony, he didn’t expect Derpy to be the one who’d do such a crime! “Can’t you imagine what would happen if somepony saw this? You’d be in prison!”
“But—”
“We have to turn it off!” He shouted, barely listening to Derpy trying to respond. “And get rid of the bits! Smelting them should be enough, return the material from wherever you got it.”
“Time Turner!” Derpy yelled, making the stallion stare at her. She cleared her throat and continued: “It’s not a printing machine. It takes bits from parallel multiverses.”
He gasped.
“That’s stealing!”
By now he processed the words completely, realising that somehow she made a device connecting multiverses, so he gasped again—it must have looked stupid from the outside.
“No, it isn’t,” she responded. “Well, technically yes, but it’s not as bad as it sounds like. The machine is made to take only one bit of a treasure chamber of each multiverse. No one will bat an eye if there is only one bit missing.”
She smiled, as if she’s proud of her achievement. Well, it was an impressive machine, he had to admit it, but he didn’t feel guiltless around it.
“But why?” he asked.
“You worried about not getting fundings for your projects and got sad, so I wanted to help you out.”
He sighed. Of course she cared for him, and her intentions were as always pure. Why did he think that Derpy would be the one going the criminal route?
Wait, hold on. She was!
But nonetheless, he was touched by her care for him. She always did, she was like this for him from the very beginning they had met. If only he could return her selflessness back to her.
“I—I appreciate it, Derpy, but I can’t use that money. If we let it go into circulation, it will lead to inflation, where the bits lose their worth.”
Derpy raised her right hoof.
“I took that already into account,” she said. “These bits will be only for emergency usage, in case you’ll need a certain part, or in the worst case if your funding is gone. If we’ll use it, I’ll save money from my earnings and bring them here until the inflated value is back here.”
He smiled, as his heart was touched by her selflessness. She was willing to sacrifice her living standard just so that he could continue his work he loved. Nonetheless, he couldn’t let her do it.
“Thank you so much, Derpy, but I won’t accept it. It’s too risky, and I don’t want you to sacrifice yourself for me. Please return these bits to their multiverse.”
Her head lowered to the ground.
“Oh, sorry,” she muttered, barely enough for him to make out the words. “I just—wanted to help you.”
He went to her and put a hoof on her shoulder.
“Hey, Derpy, look at me.”
As their eyes met, he could make out the sadness in her expression and tears appearing in her eyes.
“I’m impressed. I really am. And I’m touched by your care for me, but I’d feel guilty making your life financially more difficult just so I can work on my own inventions.”
Her lips raised to a faint smile.
“Besides, it’s time for me to move on. Unicorns get more powerful in their magic, making my inventions useless. There were many similar periods in history, so it’s best for me if I find a better usage for my expertise in machines. Don’t feel pity for me, Derpy, and thank you for always being there for me.”
She wiped her tears away and gave him a hug, which he returned.
“Thank you too,” Derpy said as she detached from him. “I’ll remake it to return the bits.”
“Speaking of the machine, how did you make it?” he asked.
“Oh, that wasn’t too difficult,” she replied, her voice returning to her usual cheerful sound. “I used your abandoned time machine, five paper pieces, your hair raiser”—she presumably meant the Tesla ball—”your pinball machine, your vacuum cleaner and the plane; rebuilt and combined with your air heater.”
Time tried to think of how exactly she was able to make these seemingly random pieces piece together into a multiversal bit stealer, but didn’t find any logic in it. It’s probably, like in previous cases of her makings, small parts in each of them that are mutual to their intended purpose. However—
“What air heater?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Derpy asked. “You always had an air heater in the kitchen.”
Then it clicked for him.
“Oh, you mean the toaster?”
“The— What?“ Derpy stood up.
“The toaster. Where you make toasts.”
She stared at him, not moving a single muscle of her body.
“What do the numbers mean?” she asked.
“What numbers?”
“On the side at the rotary control.”
“Oh, these? They show how long the toasters are heated.”
“Not how hot?” Derpy grabbed him by his shoulders, her eyes widened from panic.
“I mean, the longer it heats, the hotter the toasters get,” he replied. Why was she so scared?
“Is the temperature generated the same on each setting?”
“I’m sure it is.”
“This is bad, this is bad, this is bad,” she muttered and ran towards the machine and pulled on a lever to turn it off. “This is bad, this is bad, this is bad—”
As she was muttering this phrase on repeat, she quickly removed part of the machine.
“Why is it bad?” Turner asked.
“It didn’t work as intended!” she responded. “The bits— They're not from multiverses, they're from a single parallel universe!”
He took a look at the pile of bits and gasped. The amount of transported bits was a fortune, to say the least. Who knew what chaos was happening in the other world? He didn’t want to imagine it and helped Derpy out with what he could.
“Screwdriver!” Derpy said and took the Tesla ball and the plane. Time Turner reached for the toolbox and gave her the asked tools. With a curious look he watched her rebuild the machine.
Despite Derpy having the reputation of being clumsy, she had talent in making unrelated machines work in a new way. He was a different kind of maker, as he built a machine from nothing into something, while she combined machines into a new one. And as she was watching her reattach the single parts and connect the wires, he got even more impressed on how she was able to know what to do, as there was no logic that he could see.
If he only had a similar mind and could—
“I have no idea how to reverse it!” Derpy suddenly cried and layed on the ground. “We’re screwed! The parallel universe is now bankrupt and we have illegal money!”
“But—how did you even make it in the first place?” he asked. “There was some kind of logic you must’ve had in mind.”
“I have no idea! I—ahhh!” She ran around in circles as she screamed.
Time looked at the machine parts in front of her. In her panic, she had worked too fast and hastily, resulting in the device suddenly falling apart. However, as the toaster fell to the ground and broke in pieces, it revealed something inside of it.
He laughed, and as he laughed, he couldn’t stop himself and laughed louder, making Derpy stop in her movements.
“Why are you laughing?” she asked in a hurt voice. “Are you laughing at my misery?”
“No! It’s just—” He took a deep breath to calm down. “Look!”
Curiously Derpy looked at the toaster he pointed to.
“And?”
“You know how every machine here is my own creation?”
She nodded.
“And whenever I build something, I add many extras to them, some even being ‘unnecessary’, as some clients have told me. I forgot about it, but this toaster has a chocolate bit maker!”
Derpy took a closer look at the small addition to the toaster, and when she saw its function, she chuckled.
“These aren’t bits from another universe?” she asked.
“No, Derpy. They all are just chocolates!” He took a bit and bit through it. “See?”
She took a bit and ate it.
"Oh, yummy!” she responded.
They laughed in relief and ate the chocolate bits. There was no bankrupt universe, and they had never been criminals.