“Waveform?”
I was standing, yet again, on a doorstep. This one belonged to the DJ mixer Waveform, a pony with even fewer social skills than myself.
“Come in!” was bellowed form the other side of the house.
I entered and found myself in a nondescript hall. Really it was, the most that could be said about it was that there were doors in it.
“I’m in the mixer room!” issued from behind one with an old vinyl on the front. The room beyond contained a digital mixing station, a sound board, and Waveform himself. The only other thing in the room was the posters for Vinyl Scratch concerts that were matched one for one by posters of his own concerts.
“Hello, I got the new banners from Spectrum,” I said, pulling one out of my saddle bags.
“Good, chuck ‘em in a corner.”
I did so, placing the banners in an empty corner, then waited for the other stallion to say something. When nothing happened, I swallowed. I normally would have just left. But Spectrum was trying to get me to be more sociable, and that meant that I was going to have to try and start a conversation.
“So, uhh…” I began, and Waveform turned his baleful gaze on me. “What are the banners for? Nopony’s actually told me.”
“They’re for the concert,” Waveform replied shortly, “that’s being held tomorrow.”
“Oh, um… you do concerts?” Waveform looked on flatly. The many posters for said concerts that adorned the walls seamed to be staring at me as well. “Uhh… yeah… don’t you get competition? Isn’t there some famous DJ who lives around her already?”
“Yes, Vinyl Scratch,” Waveform replied, just as shortly. “She’s in popular demand in places like Canterlot and Manehattan, so I take all the DJ jobs ‘round here.” His eyes softened and his voice gained some emotion, was that - excitement? “She’s actually coming back from a big gig in Fillydelphia today, and then she’s going to be at the concert tomorrow. With me!” He lifted one of the banners which showed heavily stylised versions of himself and a mare whom I recognised as Vinyl Scratch. Written across the image was the message: ‘DJ Pon-3 & Wavs’. You could practically smell the anticipation coming off the stallion.
Now that he had loosened up, he seemed to want to keep talking. “Hey, you want to see the Lady Margolotta?”
“Who?”
Waveform gestured for me to follow him, then led me round the back of his house to a cart with a tarp strapped over it. He pulled away the tarp, revealing the huge mixer desk and speakers from Hoofcraft’s shed.
“This,” he said, “is the Lady Margolotta. She has a frequency range of 8Hz to 24kHz, and an upper volume of, well…” Pulling the tarp further away, he jumped up onto the cart and opened a compartment behind the desk revealing a large octahedron crystal. I tried to follow, and failed. “This is an anti-resonance enchanted talisman, it’s a safety measure in cas-” I jumped up into the cart, but over compensated, hurling myself head first into the console. My head impacted with the talisman. We froze, I slowly pulled my head away, the crystal was still intact.
Waveform let out a sigh of relief. “Well,” he said, “that was clo-”
The stone crumbled into dust.
“No!” he cried, falling to his knees and trying to scoop up the dust in his hooves. Then he turned on me. “This is all your fault! I can’t use her safely now!” He dragged his hooves down his face. “This was going to be my one chance to play with Vinyl Scratch! And you crushed it!” He pointed an accusatory hoof at the pile. “Into DUST!”
Suddenly, there was a bright flash of light and a sound like a plunger being pulled from a sink.
“Marty! You’ve got to come back with me!”
There was also suddenly a dark blue unicorn with a brick red mane and tail hanging his forehooves around my neck.
“Argh! What the Tartarus?”
Waveform gaped at the newcomer. “Ex? What are yo-” but I interrupted.
“You know him?”
“Yeah, he’s the fifth member of our little group of friends, Extralateral.”
“He’s nuts!”
As if to corroborate, the stallion came out with; “Back, back to the future!”
Waveform frowned. “He is a bit, but he doesn’t do any harm, when he turns up it usually just means…” Waveform’s eyes popped wide. “Oh nonononono!” he tried desperately to back-pedal off the cart, but Extralateral grabbed his neck with a fetlock and pulled him in close.
“Roads? Where were going we don’t need roads!”
We disappeared in a flash, with a sound like a plunger being pulled from a sink.
* * *
I was lying on something hard and cold, I opened my eyes, and-
Crystals.
There were crystals everywhere; the ceiling, walls, and floor were all made out of the stuff. Waveform was lying a few feet from me, and Extralateral was bouncing happily across my field of vision, apparently completely unaffected by our sudden shift. I groaned.
“Where the Tartarus are we?”
Waveform pulled himself to his hooves. “Well, I wish I could say we where simply in the Palace or the Crystal Empire, but thanks to Extralateral, I doubt that’s the case.”
Now that I could get a good look at the stallion in question, I finally noticed his cutie mark; the shadows of three ponies layered on top of each other, the middle solid and the two flanking it translucent.
“That was a teleporting spell, wasn't it?” I asked.
“Not… exactly.”
I fixed him with a look. “What do you mean? ‘Not exactly’?”
Waveform sighed as he looked around. “Ex has a… talent. A talent for understanding the boundaries between worlds. He thinks in five dimensions, normal ponies can only think in four.” He started walking around, exploring the cave we were in. “Three basic dimensions; up and down, left and right, backwards and forwards. The fourth is time, but there is a fifth; world index. By moving on that dimension, you can travel between worlds. Ex understands how to do that.” He stopped. “No, he just doesn't just understand it, he sees it, breathes it. Pony minds aren’t built to think in five dimensions like that. Apparently he just… cracked.”
I realised my mouth was open and closed it. “How do you even know this? ‘Cause he clearly didn’t tell you.” I gestured at Extralateral, who was slowly licking his way across the floor. “Did he?”
Waveform shrugged. “The first time he transported us we ended up in a world that was one massive telepathic super consciousness. It could read Ex’s mind and tell us what happened.”
My left eyebrow walked the high wire.
“What?” he asked. “That’s what happened! You’re in an alternate dimension and you’re questioning this?”
I conceded that. “So how do we get out of here?”
“Just grab onto Ex and hold-” he looked over at Ex and gasped. “No, nonononono!”
Extralateral was floating in his own magic field, spinning himself with soft ‘wheee’ noises. Waveform dived for the unicorn, but before he reached him the stallion’s horn exploded, dropping him to the ground with soot on his face. Waveform looked on in horror.
“He burnt out,” he mumbled under his breath. “He burnt out!” He turned to me. “He burnt out his horn so now he can’t do the spell to get us home! We’re trapped here!”