“Just call me Clockwork.”
The run through the park wasn’t a very long one, in all reality. The Doctor maintained his pace, despite speaking in his fast manner about things that only came across to Velvet as complete gibberish. Daring flew overhead, keeping up easily enough. Velvet impressed herself when they finally came to a stop, and she wasn’t breathing too heavily. After the brief second of pride she felt, the mare finally thought to glance about where they had come to a stop.
Curiously, the Doctor was stepping up to a tall, blue structure that looked a little like a big box. Upon it were the words “Police Public Call Box”. Daring had perched herself on top of the booth like a bird, grinning from ear to ear. While the Doctor fumbled with a key he had been wearing about his neck, Velvet looked up to Daring with bewilderment, before turning her attention to the eccentric stallion and asking, “May I ask why you’ve lead us to this thing?”
The stallion coughed and turned to her, offended, “Thing?!” he said, his baritone voice comically rising a few octaves from the indignation, “Thing?! She is not a ‘thing’! She’s a… beautifully brilliant piece of ancient technology!” He said as he turned back to the lock, once more fumbling with the key, grumbling about how difficult it had become.
Velvet gave him a high browed look, “I can’t say I’ve ever seen one of these before,” she said, wrinkling her nose, “Doesn’t look to impressive. Just like a wooden box,” the Unicorn looks up at Daring, “Are you sure this guy’s not crazy?” She asked, completely nonplussed by the fact the Doctor could easily hear her.
The Pegasus chuckled, “Oh, sure enough he’s crazy. He’s absolutely mad!”
That didn’t make Velvet feel very safe, and she backed up slightly, “You seem very calm about this,” she said in accusation, “How do I know you aren’t mad too?!”
Now it was the Doctor’s turn to laugh, “Oh, Miss Velvet. We’re all mad here. I’m mad. She’s mad. And even you are mad. Isn’t it brilliant?” He finally got the key to slide into place, and he twisted it with a shout of triumph.
Velvet scoffed in offense, “I am not!”
All the Doctor did was turn one of his blue eyes to her and give what he probably liked to think was an enigmatic little smile, “Oh, but you are. You wouldn’t have followed me otherwise,” he seemed to read what Velvet had been going to say next, and was quick to cut her off, “You were fully capable of turning and walking the other way, despite Daring’s beckoning. Are you not a living, breathing, sentient organism with a connection to a field of magic? You are imbued with free will. You could have easily turned around and walked the opposite direction. But you didn’t.”
Twilight Velvet was at a loss for words. He had a point. She had been fully capable of walking off, but she followed nonetheless. Giving a heavy sigh of defeat, Velvet tilted her head as the Doctor turned back to face her, and Daring fluttered down from her perch atop the box, “Alright ‘Doctor’. But I have two things I want to know first. Mainly, how you think all three of us will fit in there. And secondly, what your actual name is.”
The Doctor rolled his eyes, while Daring snickered into her hoof, “Why does nobody here accept that my name is ‘The Doctor’? You all go around calling yourselves ‘Midnight Twinkle’ and ‘Rain Dancer’. Can no one accept a perfectly acceptable name like that?” he sighs, “If you must have something else other than ‘Doctor’ to call me, just call me Clockwork,” using a hind hoof, the strange stallion pushed the door behind him slightly open, the blue plank of wood creaking on its hinges, “As for your second question, well, see for yourself.”
Velvet gave him a distrustful look, and glanced to her Pegasus friend for guidance. Daring Do simply nodded with a sly grin, the look in her eyes clearly reading, ‘Go ahead. It’s perfectly safe.’ With an uneasy feeling in the back of her mind, Velvet took a tentative step away from Daring, and towards the Doctor. As she neared, he stepped aside; a sly grin much like Daring’s gracing his features. Velvet pushed the door open the rest of the way, the creaking hinges giving a whine of protest as she did so. Inside it was very dark, until the Doctor whistled a four note tune, and the lights came on.
Twilight Velvet felt as if she had been punched in the horn and kicked over. What she saw was both astonishing, and absolutely impossible. She whirled about to face Daring and The Doctor, ‘Clockwork’, as they entered. For a few seconds, she was unable to say anything, or even get control of her jaw. But finally, she managed to speak once more, “The interior’s larger than the exterior…” She said, still shocked by it all, “But… But you’re not even a Unicorn! How’d you get this kind of magic… I didn’t even know that this kind of spell existed.”
The Doctor chuckled, “Ah, that’s just the thing Miss Velvet. This isn’t ‘magic’. Or at least it isn’t by your terms. It’s more of a… science thing, really. It is an incredibly rare and nearly extinct science that you are unlikely to find anywhere else.”
He trotted on by the astonished mare to a console in the center of the room. Daring chuckled and gave Velvet a pat on the shoulder, “You’re taking this pretty well, by all accounts. It took me over fifteen minutes to get my jaw working the first time I saw it.”
“What is this thing?” The Unicorn said to nopony in particular.
“There you go calling her a ‘thing’ again!” The Doctor called, peeking around the console irritably, “She’s called a ‘TARDIS’. Time And Relative Dimension In Space. She’s a-”
“It’s a time machine?” Velvet asked in disbelief.
The Doctor gave her another irritated look, and huffed, “Yes, she is a time machine, if you want to put it in Lehman’s terms. She’s a little more than that. She goes anywhere, anywhen.”
Twilight Velvet looked at Daring once again, the Pegasus having shut the door and moved inwards to stand by the console as well, leaning on a rail at the edge of the platform, “Is he serious about this? Time travel spells aren’t very common, nor are they very effective either.”
“I’ve already told you, Miss Velvet. This isn’t magic, it is science. There’s an enormous difference that you would do well to learn.”
Daring noticed that Velvet was about to give the Doctor a piece of her mind, and quickly interrupted and shifted the topic elsewhere, “So! Doc, what’s this big crisis that you needed my help with?”
The Doctor was all too ready to go with the subject change, “Oh! That! It is, quite simply put, the worst possible thing that could ever occur to anybody ever! Be they a Unicorn, Pegasus, Earth pony or Alicorn. But it is even worse when it happens to a Time Lord… I’m bored. So, while I was sitting here in the console room orbiting the moon, I thought to myself; ‘Hey, I should go on an adventure! I need a companion though.’ So I decided to come track you down. I found you, your sassy friend, and now you two are coming with me.”
“And where’re we going?” Daring asked, bouncing slightly from what Velvet guessed was excitement.
The Doctor laughed, “Oh but that’s the best part, Daring! I haven’t the slightest idea! Not yet, at least. I just punched in some random coordinates. So now, all I have to do is throw the switch, and off we go on some wild, random adventure that may very well be dangerous and may even teach us something. But hey, it’ll be fun! Eamus!”
And with that last word, he threw the switch downwards.
Instantly, the TARDIS lurched to the side. The Doctor clung to the console, laughing wildly. Daring had lifted herself into the air, and maintained the same altitude and position despite the shifting room. Velvet had stumbled, and was now clinging to the nearby railing, shouting, “What in Celestia’s name is going on?!” She had to shout in order to be heard over the groaning of the TARDIS.
“Quite simply, Miss Velvet,” The Doctor shouted back, “Science!”
Were one to be watching from the outside, the TARDIS would slowly begin to vanish from sight, carrying three souls to yet another adventure.