James stood in front of his class at Twilight's school, he had a prepared lecture ready but changed the script when Pinkie told him about a recent disruption in her class. “I know we've gone over this before, but it's a lesson that often bears repeating.” He said, walking up to the whiteboard and collecting a marker.
“Friendships between species, like every other friendship, takes work on both sides. But there has to be communication and understanding. We always have to remember the differences and make accommodations, which we can all forget when we're so used to our friends that we just stop thinking about those differences.”
“Myself and Tali for example are so physically different that our food poisons the other. No matter where we go we have to find or even make accommodations.”
“Let's bring this a little closer to Equestria: Smolder, would you come up here?”
“Sure.” Smolder casually said with a shrug, standing and walking to join James at the front of his classroom.
“Smolder, it's true that back in the dragon lands your diet was mostly gemstones, right?”
As James spoke his Omnitool activated with a flash and began humming.
“Yeah, uhm … What's that?” Smolder asked as she looked to James, inspecting the light device.
James went pale as he examined the notification. “I'm sorry, this is an emergency and I have to leave right now.” He said moments before violently melting away.
“So-o-o-o what …” Ocellus began to ask before being cut off.
“Free period!” Glallus announced over his friend.
***
“I will break the goddamn barrier myself if I have to.” James growled as he typed out another list of commands.
James sat alone in a room approximately as large as a basketball court, and before him was a massive fabricator, printing parts and assembling them as he worked. The room didn't have the clean efficient feel of many of the locations on the station, even the cargo holds looked nice compared to the room James worked in now. The only concern for this room and the fabricator inside was assembling custom probes. In a word, the room was utilitarian.
The ponies marveled as they saw the equipment working. The contrast to the rest of the station was stark.
“What's going on?” Twilight asked as she approached the man working furiously at a console.
“It can't just be gone, I was just there!” He grumbled to himself. “I can do this.” He added in a whisper.
“James?” Starlight asked, getting as close to the yellow safety line in front of James as she dared. She couldn't get a good look at him, but it was plainly obvious he was focused in a way she had not seen him before.
“Is everything alright?” Fluttershy asked quietly.
With a swipe upward of his hand, James increased the size of the three dimensional model he was examining. Several more keystrokes and the image focused on a part near the center. The object appeared to break apart and each individual piece hovered in the air as James typed out more. Looking from his hands to the image multiple times.
“James!” Rainbow Dash shouted, hoping to get his attention.
“I'm really sorry girls.” James said with a forced calm. “But this is an emergency!”
“Yeah, Smolder told us.” Starlight explained.
“Dear, what are you doing?” Rarity asked.
“Trying to figure out what happened.” James was quick to answer.
“What happened?” Pinkie asked, completely unhelpfully.
“I don't know!” James practically shouted in frustration.
“I think she means what are you trying to figure out.” Starlight said.
“This is a technical problem.” was his only answer.
“Give us something! We might actually be able to help.” Rainbow Dash complained.
James chewed his lip as he started redesigning the image of the machine in front of him. “Alright, so I just got an alert that a universe is gone …” James began.
The ponies all gave each other confused glances as James began to explain.
“As far as anybody understands, that's impossible.”
“What do you mean gone?” Applejack asked.
“Gone. Not there. Not destroyed, not empty, not even missing, just nothing.”
“How does a universe just vanish.”
“I don't know! As far as we know, they don't. It may be some kind of strange seal we don't understand yet, but I have no information to go on.”
“And it just vanished during your class?”
“That's where it gets weirder.” James said, clearly confused. “I was there just last week to pick up a few things. So I thought I'd use the Epoch and go back to when I knew it was still there: but it isn't there back then.”
“It … what?” Rarity asked.
“Exactly!” James said, holding up his finger. “Whatever happened seems to be effecting the universe retroactively, isolating it cosmically and temporally.”
“I think I'm getting a headache.” Rainbow Dash said, rubbing her forehead.
“So what are you building? And how's it going to help?” Twilight asked.
“I'm building a probe to go backwards through time, find any opening back to that universe and get there. I'm also supercharging it's transmitter to hopefully force a connection wherever it ends up so I can reestablish a tunnel to them.”
“Maybe the answer is magical.” Twilight offered.
“I doubt it, but I'll give anything a shot.”
Rainbow Dash had sat on this question for a minute now, and couldn't wait any longer to ask. “I get it's freaky, but what about this universe has you working so hard to find it again?”
James sighed as his furious work slowed slightly. “I know some of the people there, you met one yourself. It's Piccolo's universe.”
“Regardless of why, it's important that we do what we can. What if they need help?” Twilight said, “I mean that sounds like a serious problem.” Twilight immediately formed a plan and set about giving orders. “Alright I'll search my library, Starlight, you take the sorcerer's guild. Rarity, you go through Canterlot's library.”
“What about us?” Pinkie eagerly asked.
“Ponies aren't the only ones with magic: Pinkie, you go to Mt. Eris and see what the hippogryphs may know.”
“Okay!” Pinkie excitedly said, only prevented from running off by Applejack biting her tail.
“Uhm … what are we looking for?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“Anything that can help.”
“And we have no idea what that may be.” Starlight reasoned.
“Besides, universal travel is different to planar travel. You have doorways to other planes: Planes are contained in the same universe, always connected and can be slipped through. Universes are separated and have to have connections built.” James explained, “That's kind of a basic explanation, almost to the point of error. It's definitely not that simple.”
“Can't we do anything?”
“I'll happily take any help you can give me. I just don't know what that would be.”
Over the next two days James never left the room, barely even the console. There was always some new problem, or new idea. And there was always someone there to watch him.
It was on the third day that Applejack heard James sigh and quietly say “Finally” before she heard him collapse where he had been standing.
“Oh for crying …” Applejack sighed as she looked for the com panel to make a call.
***
James sat up abruptly, looking around to find himself laying in bed with one of Washu's medical unit's attached to him.
“Don't worry.” Lucca said as she noticed him sitting up. “It wasn't serious, you just worked yourself to exhaustion.”
“Yeah, yeah.” James said dismissively. “But what about the probe?”
Lucca walked over to him and felt his forehead and handed him a cup of hot green tea. “Probe's ready for launch. As soon as your vitals steady out you can go launch it.”
Lucca sat on the bed next to him, placing her hand on his shoulder, “James, I think you need to be ready for an answer you don't want.”
James sipped the tea and nodded. “That's why I can't give up yet. I need to understand what happened …”
“No.” Lucca quickly interrupted. “James, we may not be able to get an answer. We have the most advanced technology available to any universe we're in contact with around parallel universes, and we only barely understand what's going on. I'm certain there's a reason too, but we could be decades away from uncovering that reason. If we ever do.”
“But …”
“Failure is an option.”
James quietly nodded and looked back up to Lucca only to be interrupted as he opened his mouth.
“I need you to tell me that.”
“If …”
“James.” Lucca repeated firmly.
With a deep breath James closed his eyes and repeated, “Failure is an option.”
“I know how hard it is to accept that. We've both come face to face with loss so many times through our lives.”
James silently nodded. “But what about them?” He whispered.
“I'm going to believe they're alright until there's evidence otherwise,” Lucca calmly said. “The only thing we know right now is that we can't contact them in any way. That tells us nothing about how they're doing.”
“You're right,” James admitted, “but I just can't shake this feeling that something is terribly wrong.”
“You're just trying to take the blame for something you have no control over.”
“I just need to find out.”
“Of course. And I'll do what I can to help, like getting the probe in place and boosting it's power even more.”
“Thanks.”
***
James and Lucca sat in the pilots chairs of the runabout, maneuvering into sight of the probe James had spent nearly a week building. The couple wasn't alone as the ponies had insisted on joining them, and Tali was glued to the sensor readings at the tactical station.
“You really don't have to be here,” James insisted, speaking back towards the ponies.
“I know,” Twilight said “but it's something that's important to you, and even if we can't help we want to give you our support.”
“And we appreciate that.” Tali said as she adjusted the sensor to accommodate her Omnitool. “This has been more than a little troubling.”
“Alright James,” Lucca said calmly, looking at her display. “We're coming up on it now, you should probably stop now.”
“Stopping now.” James said, touching the control panel.
“There it is.” Lucca commented, looking up and out towards the cylindrical device. “Ready James?”
“Yeah.” James calmly said as he typed out and submitted it's instructions.
The pod seemed to glow blue briefly before only a single indicator light flickered on it.
“I guess it wasn't supposed to do that.” Rainbow Dash said, looking over James' shoulder.
“Not ideally,” James commented, “but that doesn't mean it failed.”
“Tali?” Lucca asked as she inspected her control panel.
“I've getting the data now.” Tali confirmed, “But it's going to take a few minutes, we're talking about five hundred years of data after all.”
“But nothing happened.” Applejack commented.
“It went back in time,” Lucca explained, “It just didn't move from this spot. At least not subjectively.”
“Five hundred is actually longer than I was expecting.” James casually said.
“Is that good or bad?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“We'll know when the data finishes downloading and analyzing.” James explained.
“Well, what was supposed to happen?”
“It was supposed to go backwards through time, checking constantly for the presence of that universe. If found it would travel over and signal us right about now if everything worked.”
“Anyone interested in a card game while we wait?” Tali offered.
There was a wave of agreement through the craft, with the only one sitting the game out being James.
“I'll just be up here monitoring things.” He offered, looking over the panel in front of him once more.
“James, my onmitool will alert us the moment the data is done transferring. And I've already got the exclusion filter operational.”
“I think I'm still better off up here right now.” James quietly said.
“You mind if I stay up here too?” Starlight asked, looking to the group.
Soon, the room was empty of all but James and Starlight.
“Will you talk to me?” Starlight cautiously asked once they were alone.
“Of course.” James answered, confused as to why she might think not.
“Why don't you tell me about the people you knew there?”
James closed his eyes and sighed. “Where do I even begin,” he started.
***
“Makes sense you'd be here.” Rainbow Dash said as she walked into the castle's bar. “Though I was thinking you would be the one drinking.”
James sat at the bar beside Lucca and Tali, the only one without a drink. “Yeah, one of us needs to be responsible.”
“Join us, we're having a toast.” Tali said, clearly having made several toasts already. “This time … to Bulma, and that bosh'tet husband of hers.”
“Here here.” Lucca said, raising her glass halfway before taking another drink.
“He was such an ax'kah … but he really cared about her. Under all that ego and pride, he cared about them all.”
“I take it asking Washu didn't go well?” Rainbow Dash asked uncomfortably.
“Asking wasn't the problem.” Tali said as she put her drink down.
“We had a literal deity helping us …” James began, frustration breaking his voice.
“Two,” Lucca interrupted, “Tsunami helped as well.”
“ … and the best answer available is: It's just gone.” James finished.
“Isn't there anything else you can do?” Rainbow Dash asked, trying to sound hopeful.
“The only option left … isn't an option.” James answered, clearly depressed.
“Why not? If it could work, you need to try it!”
“Because it won't work.” James answered, looking up at her. “All it would do is make empty facsimiles of them. Nothing more than echoes of our memories.”
“What about finding them in another world? That's a thing right?”
“Wouldn't be them,” Lucca said with a shrug. “Besides, we're already looking for one like it so we can at least continue some of our trade contracts.”
“So you're giving up?!”
“It's not giving up when you've done everything you can, and even some things you can't.” James countered.
“Isn't there anything we can do?”
With a nod, James pulled out a jug Rainbow Dash recognized as coming from Sweet Apple Acres and poured a glass of cider before pouring a second liquid in.
James gestured to the seat, nodding as Rainbow Dash joined them. “We can mourn.”