Snips in time
Monday morning
Celestia's and Luna's reign
Year 10
The room was filled with a cacophony of ticking, all over the walls hung clocks from the four corners of the world, golden clocks, wooden clocks, jelly clocks and clocks made of unspeakable things like dried up ketchup.
Anyone trotting in could tell that this house belonged to Time Turner: That crazy time obsessed stallion, who some other ponies had given the nickname: "Doctor Whooves".
Then somepony did trot in when the lock on the door clicked and opened. A grayish opal unicorn stallion with orange hair stepped inside.
"Hey Doc! You in here?"
It was Snips, who many in Ponyville remembered as a short stubby colt with a funny voice. In the past ten years he had grown out to be a fine young stallion. A tall fellow with a clean row of white teeth (that would make Colgate proud) completed with a spiky mane that said "Dude! lets do something wild!" and a stylish red scarf that was a part of the "Rarity" brand stallions wear, he had previously borrowed it from Time Turner for a job interview.
Yes, one could say that Snips was quite handsome and completely unrecognizable by those who had last seen him ten years ago (it was like that feeling when you meet that fat girl in your school ten years later and she turns out to be a total hottie) only his cutie mark and weird eyebrows remained as proof that this was indeed the same stubby colt from Ponyville.
"I brought some pizza!" he called.
No answer.
Time Turner, or Doctor Whooves, or The Doctor, or whatever he was called on that day, seemed to be absent much to the annoyment of the unicorn.
He dropped the boxes containing the cheesy treats on the table and trotted inside.
"Hey Doc! You mind if I use your experimental, advanced, sound system?"
No answer.
Perfect.
Snips punched in the newest DJ-Pon3 that he had in his "radical" saddlebags and set the volume as high as possible.
He stood there, hoof above the play button, shaking in anticipation.
"Oh man...this is gonna be so rad!"
He clicked the play button and...
*WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB WUB*
One would later say that the amount of wub heard that day broke all the existing wub scales and was the talk of every living thing within a one thousand mile radius from the source.
Snips however had almost fainted yet being the irresponsible young stallion that he was, all he could say was:
"Dude...that was just...whoaaa!"
Fantastic, and, of course, all the clocks in the house lay in ruin. While Snips looked at the clock carnage thinking "Well...I'm bucked." the phone rang. He picked it up with his unicorn magic and listened.
"Judging by the amount of wub I just heard I'm pretty sure you're in my house Snips." said the voice of a very familiar brown stallion.
"Yeah Doc uh...there was a short circuit...thing? Of some kind..." Snips answered.
"Oh I bet! Everypony knows that every time something short circuits it makes the sound of a Vinyl Scratch song!" was the angry reply.
"Yes...its pretty weird, huh Doc?" Snips chuckled.
He attempted at fixing a wooden clock from Neighzerland but the whole thing just crumbled to dust with a distinctive sound.
"Uhh...there goes my Neighzerlandish clock..." the phone sighed.
"No, no! The clocks are fine! Everything with the clocks is just...fine, how are your clocks?" Snips said.
"Good!" grumbled Time Turner "Look, at the moment I don't care, I need you to do some testing in Canterlot park right now! Bring some apples and a drinking straw!" The Doc said and hung up before Snips could ask any stupid questions.
Time Turner didn't care if his clocks got busted? Snips knew immediately that this was big, no, huge! Whatever Time Turner had cooked up had to be something out of this world!
He trotted outside to the cold streets of winter time Canterlot and summoned a simple teleportation spell. With a flash of light he picked up some apples, a drinking straw and appeared in Canterlot park.
"Hey Doc! I brought the..."
Snips was interrupted however when The Doc just grabbed the apples and straws and fed them to a silver colored metal box sitting in the middle of the park.
Snips stared in awe at the apparatus.
"Is that...is that an elevator cab?" he asked.
"Why yes! Yes it is! I built an elevator!" answered Time Turner while he scurried around the cab.
"You built an elevator...in the middle of Canterlot park?" asked Snips dumbfounded. Then he asked something stupid just to annoy Time Turner "You know its missing the elevator shaft right?"
The Doc wrapped his hoof around Snips' shoulders and spoke to him like he was talking to an idiot who thought butterflies were actually made of butter "Oh Snips my old friend, the only elevator shaft this cab has is..." Time Turner waited for dramatic pause "...Is time itself!"
Snips was not that surprised, he had seen craziness like this from him before.
"Okay...you built an elevator cab in the middle of Canterlot park and you think it travels through time?" Snips said.
"Exactly!" said The Doc "A lift takes you up to the different floors of a building right?"
Snips nodded slowly.
"All I did was create a lift that goes through the different floors of time! Here let me show you."
Before Snips could point out how utterly ridiculous the concept of a time travelling elevator was, The Doc punched the button on the elevator cab.
*DING!* chimed the elevator.
Snips looked at The Doc and rolled his eyes.
"What? It is a lift after all!"
The doors rolled open revealing the interior that was filled with wires, bunch of weird apparatuses Snips could not recognize, a screen from the local Sparkle Technology store and a keypad with numbers.
"This is the time lift!" proclaimed The Doc "You type in the year, or the time floor as I like to say, you want to go to here and the direction, past or the future, here. This is the emergency button and that's the tea dispenser." he said while showing off the different features of the dashboard.
Then he walked over to his saddlebags and picked up something that pulsated with electricity and rainbows. He walked over to the fuel compartment and carefully dropped the thing inside. (and by carefully we mean he threw the thing in like he was making cup cakes.)
The "time machine" sprung to life and streams of rainbow colored smoke poured from the depths of the fuel tank.
"What the hay was that Doc?" Snips asked.
"That..." said the Doc "Is the zap apple I need to create the 1.21 wingpower rainboom that makes time travel possible." he said matter o factly.
"Wait, wait, wait!" said Snips "You telling me that this sucker...is zap apple juiced?"
Time turner slammed the compartment shut with a grin "Righto! now, all I need you to do is jump in and travel ten minutes into the future!"
Snips was pretty confused by all of this yet it was not the first time Time Turner had attempted at building a time machine. This time would, no doubt, be no different from the last times since all those times the time machine had done nothing to travel through time with time related machines that it had at the time...of time.
"Sure! See ya in ten minutes!" he said and hopped in for the amusement of The Doc, fully aware that this would, no doubt, be yet another bust. Let me make it clear to you: he had absolutely no doubts of any kind.
Snips scanned his eyes over the dashboard where everything was written in the good old language of talking magical ponies. Number ten was already typed in by Time Turner.
"All you have to do is press "minutes" and "future" he heard the muffled voice outside the box say."Easy" he thought and reached out to press the buttons.
Now there's one funny thing you should know about ponies, one thing that Snips forgot at that moment: Ponies don't have fingers.
Now, when he reached out to press the buttons all he managed to do was slam his hoof on the dashboard pressing every single button simultaneously.
The elevator jerked downwards and Snips flew off the floor. Needless to say, he did not like the feeling of floating yet he did like the sweet elevator music that sounded off from the speakers.
The numbers on the floor counter spinned, the time cauges spun around wildly, rainbow colored steam rose from the fog machines and the screen on the tea dispenser informed that it was ready to dispense tea at any given time.
Poor Snips was flailing around the air when he heard a loud *BOOM* and then, without warning, everything just stopped resulting in Snips slamming on the floor when gravity was restored.
"Jeez that hurts." he tought while picking himself up. He stumbled on to the door and opened it with a *DING*.
"Hey Doc..." he said " I don't think tha..."but whatever he was going to say was cut short by the sight he saw. Outside the cab was summer, Canterlot was looming in the far distance and in the horizon there lay a very familiar looking town, that same town he had moved away from nine years ago, weirdest of all, it still had that same town house which had been demolished, also over nine years ago.
It was Ponyville, the town of Snips' childhood exactly the same as it had been all those years ago. Snips rubbed his eyes, looked and rubbed his eyes again.
"It cant be" he thought.
"But it frickin is...!"
Then he turned around and looked at the steaming metal box sitting on the grass, there was a number on the top of the cab, a number where the floor number should have been, it was a nice ten years in the past, then it all clicked. The time machine was real, he was there, past Ponyville right before his eyes.
"Whoa Doc..." he said, "this is heavy..."
He rushed back inside the time machine in panic, no way was he going to live his crappy childhood again!
"OK, calm down , you've got a time machine, you can just go back and...have some pizza!" he thought while he frantically looked around for the manual.
When the manual was nowhere to be seen he pressed randomly at buttons.
"This is the emergency button right?"
*BEEP*
A cup fell down and filled with some hot liquid and sugar.
After a particiluary comfortable tea session Snips punched the obviously big red emergency button.
"Snips!" the computer crackered in a female voice.
Snips was startled and he jumped, nearly pouring the tea all over his face.
"Is that an AI voice of a hot babe?" he asked.
"That is correct." said the computer. "I am Sparkle 2000 of the Sparkle Technology artificial intelligence creation program. Time Turner the stallion is my master and you are Snips, my masters assistant for the past five years. The master I have does not know me in this time stream... analyzing...I have concluded that you are now my master."
Snips rubbed his head in confusion "Uhh...ok so what can you do to help me?"
"Oh!" said the computer "I'll do anything for my master" she said "and I do mean anything...master."
Snips took a step back, these Sparkle AI's were always given too much freedom. Snips had heard rumors that their creator wasn't fond of enslaving anything capable of intelligent thought always stating that "friendship is magic" even if that friendship was between you and a computer. "Aww jeez...you're not gonna go all wild AI on me are you?"
"Oh master... I would never do such a thing...unless of course you'd want me to"
The computer said in a very un-computer like voice.
"What are you gonna do? Kiss me with wires?" Snips said jokingly.
"Time Turner has seen to that, do you see that heart shaped button?" said the computer.
Snips looked around.
"All right, I see it."
"Press it"
"What does it do?" said Snips.
"It opens..." the computer said "...the secret compartment" it whispered.
"You can keep your secret compartment!" Snips said while he scrambled away as far as possible from the button."Look, computer, what I need to do is get back to the future!"
"Oh just call me Sparkle, master."
"The future. Now!" said Snips in a serious tone.
"Sparkle" gave up and answered in its usual computer voice: "To get back to the future you will need to fuel up the time machine. You'll have to find different basic fuel source items like apples and drinking straws and toss them into the fuel compartment." said Sparkle.
"The items don't happen to be in the time machine?" said Snips fully aware that he might have to revisit the town of his childhood.
"No, but I have located the nearest town of Ponyville which has the needed items."
"Great!" said Snips.
Then he stood there waiting for answers but the computer said nothing.
"So...what are the items?"
"I'll tell you..."The computer answered."but only If you press the love button!" Snips couldn't believe it! The AI was going rogue!
"No! I'm so not pressing anything" he said.
"Well, good luck finding the items then!" the computer huffed.
"What! Are you kidding me?!"
"The love button, press it."
"I'm like your master right? I command you to tell me!" Said Snips.
The computer said nothing.
"Cmon...Sparkle" Snips said in a pleading tone. Apparently he pulled the right wires since the computer answered.
"Fine!" said the computer "but I'll only tell you one item at a time."
"What! Horsefeathers!"
"Horsefeathers?" asked the Sparkle confused "What you'll need first is the Equestrian dictionary: 700 words of pony language explained by Ink Spots the unicorn." the computer said.
Great, the first item in the list had to be some rare book. Snips went through his childhood memories and remembered that there was a library somewhere in town back when he was still a colt. It was run by some nerdy mare or something, totally uncool.
"I think I know where to find that!" he said confidently.
"One more thing" said the computer "You can not mess with the time here. Do not interact with your past self, don't do anything that could change the timeline and most importantly nopony here must find out who you are or where you're from!" The computer was being dead serious.
"Let me guess...the space time continuum and collapsing have something to do with this?" asked Snips.
"Something along those lines." said the computer.
"How am I supposed to go anywhere then? The ponies here know me! Well not me but the past me, who is me but not me and...uhh..." Snips took a little break and collected himself "We have the same cutie mark!"
A hose fell from the ceiling and, without warning, it sprayed grayish opal dye on Snips' flanks, he yelped but the cutie marks were hidden.
"I like it when you scream like a girl" the computer laughed.
"I did that girlish scream on purpose, thank you very much" said Snips confidently.
"Sure."
"What about the rest of me? I still look a lot like, well, me!"
"No worries! We have a disguise kit in the time machine just for that!" the computer said happily.
"Where is it?" Snips asked hopefully.
"Just press the love butto..."
"Thats it, I'm leaving."
To be continued in:
Time paradoxes and pink party ponies