The Machine

by ADRNEL

Chapter XXII~The Library~

It was a dark and stormy day in the big city, and at a pet day-camp named "The Littlest Pet Shop", the pets inside were going about their business, playing, painting and what not, except for a single purple spaniel in a black beret, who was looking out the pet shop window...bored out of her skull.

"Curse this gloomy weather." she sighed to herself as she watched the cars and several brave people go past outside. She thought about maybe practicing her singing but the gloomy weather outside just killed her mood for it. The purple dog just gave another bored sigh.

"Hey Zoe!" popped out a blue mongoose, startling the dog. "What are you doing?"

"Oh, Sunil, it's just you." stated Zoe as she went back to being bored. "I'm just sitting here watching the world spin by"

"That sounds fun, I would love to join you but I have a new toy to try out!" gleefully stated the blue mongoose.

"A toy?" said Zoe, interested peaked after hearing a new opportunity to pass the time.

"Oh yes!" began Sunil. "It's a new prop for my magic show! Want to see it?"

"Anything to pass the time." she sighed, going along with this.

"Great!" The mongoose grabbed Zoe by the paw and took her to another part of the pet shop. "This is going to improve my magic shows!"

Sunil took Zoe to a pet-sized lilac colored box. "I should really change the color of this box first, lilac is NOT my color." he exclaimed in excitement, which is not that often.

"What does it do?" asked a confused Zoe.

"It can make things disappear!" he excitedly explained. "All you have to do is get in the box, then I'll say the magic words...and BOOM! Disappear!"

"Sounds...interesting." In reality, Zoe was not a fan of magic but played along with it so she wouldn't hurt Sunil's feelings.

"Want to be my volunteer so I can try it out?" Sunil asked.

"Oh...uh...okay." Zoe nervously answered. "What's the worse that can happen?" she said to herself as she opened the lilac box, walked inside and sat down.

Sunil closed the box and took out the magic book that came with it. "Are you okay in there Zoe?"

"Yes!" yelled the dog from inside.

"Are the air holes on top working?"

"I can breath!"

"Great!" Sunil opened the book to the correct page and began reading a passage. "Id...cane...evanescunt!" the mongoose chanted while waving around his arms. Nothing appeared to have happened.

"Uh...I'm still in here!" yelled Zoe from inside the box.

"Let me try that again." re-reads the instructions carefully. "Id! Cane! Evanescunt!" the mongoose exclaimed with more confidence, but once again, nothing appeared to have happened.

"Oh what's the use!" exclaimed a frustrated Sunil as he threw the book away. "I'll never be a great magician, I'm just going to be a failure!" he fell to the floor, soul crushed, tearing up.

Zoe heard him and walked out of the box to join him. "Sunil?" she asked with concern.

"I really thought it would work, but I guess I wasn't meant to be a magician."

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll be a great magician...if you put your mind to it...you can do-”

Suddenly, a large bright light envelopes Sunil’s field of vision, followed by an ear splitting boom. The mongoose quickly ducked down and covered his eyes and ears. Just as soon as it began, it suddenly stopped.

Sunil slowly got up to see a shocking site; on the spot where Zoe was, was a dark burn mark, her beret and her collar.

“Zoey?”

---

Chapter XXII
The Library

---

Day 166

Twilight was summoned to Canterlot by Celestia. Twilight probably suspected that it had something to do with Adam since he has been locked up the archives with his time machine for several days. Despite the insistence of Applejack and Mac, the human still felt responsible for Granny Smith's death, he refused to attend the funeral.

"How is he Celestia?" asked a concerned Twilight as she followed the princess down to the Canterlot archives.

"Depends on whether being buried in his work is a good sign or not...he hasn't talked to anyone since he got here, not even the guards who would check on him every few hours or so." explained Celestia as they reached the restricted section of the archive.

In the reading area of the restricted section, they saw Adam there as he wrote down equations on the blackboards that surrounded his space, near the center was the time machine itself, along with all the tables stacked with scientific books and paper. As Adam wrote down the equation, he looked at the blackboard behind him to see that he missed a mistake. "Damn it! I forgot to put the coordinate time in parenthesis!" he yelled in frustration as now he had to do the entire equation all over again. "Come on Adam! You're the one that came up with the concept of proper time so you should be able to do these in your sleep!" he immediately picked up an eraser and began to erase everything.

Adam re-started all over again. "Uh Adam?" chimed Twilight. Adam immediately stopped his frantic writing.

"Twilight?" he turned around.

"I will leave you two alone to talk things out." said Celestia as she walked out of the room.

"So...what are you working on?" asked the unicorn as she peaked at some papers on the desk.

"Trying to disprove the concept that time is an arrow that hopelessly moves in a straight line into the future." Adam said as he sat down in front of his time machine. "I have been working on a theory that postulates that maybe time and space are actually interconnected...two sides of the same coin...I can picture it making sense in my mind but just how do I mathematically prove it?"

"Look...we're all worried about you...especially Fluttershy, she hasn't seen you since you skipped Granny Smith's funeral." explained the concerned mare.

"Why should I? I don't deserve to be there especially since I was responsible for her death!" exclaimed the human.

"She suffered an aneurysm which caused her to tumble down the stairs and get a concussion." clarified the unicorn.

"She only got that aneurysm because she got angry for snooping around being confronted by her past!" he snarled.

Twilight was stunned from the outburst. "Why do you always blame yourself for things that you can't control?"

Adam just sighed. "Because I refuse to believe that bad things happen without reason..."

"You still blame yourself for Mary's death?"

The human knew that Twilight was right, he just kept quiet, it confirmed the unicorn's suspicions.

"Adam...you now have a new marefriend...someone Mary would gladly approve of...you know finally have an excuse to be happy again and finally resume your life." she said as she sat in front of the human.

"I still hold out hope that I will someday find a way to change the past and save her from such a horrible death." Twilight wrapped the human into a hug.

Adam could not help but be reminded of Mary every single time he looks at Twilight, the hug that the unicorn was giving him reminded him so much of the hugs he received in his past with her.

Suddenly, a large explosion was heard. Both Twilight and Adam broke their hug as a large cloud of dust and smoke enveloped them, they could not see a thing.

"What's going on?!" exclaimed the unicorn just before she was quickly hit by a beam of magic, "AUGH!" she was blown back and crashed into a blackboard. breaking it and knocking it over.

Adam could see a pair of bright red eyes through the smoke as it slowly dissipated. The human stood his ground. "Who are you?!"

The smoke finally cleared to reveal a red-eyed Trixie with another amulet around her neck. "Trixie believes we already met monkey!" she gave a sinister laugh.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT?" he slowly backed his way to the time machine in case he needed to make a quick escape or shield himself.

"To see you gone!" laughed Trixie as the amulet around her neck began to charge. Adam took the opportunity to pull the lever on his time machine to activate the time bubble that surrounded the machine during travel. "Like a fancy shield will protect you from this!" gloated the mare the amulet shot out a gray beam at Adam and his machine.

The human braced himself for the worst as the magic beam hit the protective time bubble and absorb it. He quickly started to hear mechanical grinding and groaning sounds as the bubble around Adam and the time machine turned gray. "That's usually not a good sound."

"WHAT?! NO!" Trixie couldn't believe that the beam could not break through so she immediately used her magic to charge the amulet again and quickly fire another beam.

Once again the time bubble absorbed it, but this made the machine make more bad sounding mechanical noises until it started to tremble. "Oh no...the beam is giving my machine power...too much power!" Adam became worried about the potential of over loading his only way to get back home if we wanted to. He quickly grabbed the lever and pull it to turn the machine off.

But as the time bubble dissipated is it would normally do when turned off...it instead concentrated itself into a single dense ball in front of Adam's eyes. "This is not good."

Trixie fired another beam now that Adam was no longer shield. "Prepare to spend the rest of your life in a dark void monkey!"

"NO!!!" yelled Adam as the beam hit the dense energy ball followed by a blast of sheer white light.

---

Twilight slowly woke up to find herself sore and lying on top of a broken blackboard on the floor. "ADAM!" she exclaimed as she remembered what happened, she got back on her hooves put found no sigh of Adam or Trixie anywhere, just his time machine. Everything was dark and quiet, apart from her, there was nothing else generating any sound or noise.

"ADAM?!" she yelled only to realize a lack of echo in her voice. She ran out the room to find them, but also noticed that her hooves didn't echo either. "What's going on around here?" she ran up the stairs to the main floor of the Canterlot library to find it extremely difficult to look out the massive windows, nothing but bright white light showed through them. "My goodness...this is brighter than Celestia's sun."

Twilight had no idea what to do, she couldn't go outside or risk blinding herself, there was no pony around. "Where is everyone?!"

A sinister other worldly growl was heard, it sounded like it came from everywhere. It sent a chill down the mare's spine. "ADAM?!" Twilight got out of the main floor as quickly as possible but her way was blocked by what appeared to be a large claw slicing through space like it was fabric...something not good was trying to break through as a alien claw reached out from the spacial tear.

"LEAVE HER ALONE CREEP!" yelled a new voice as a beam of magic scored a directed hit on the alien claw which caused it to immediately recoil and go back to where it came from, closing the tear.

"What the?" Twilight turned around to see an absolutly shocking sight, another unicorn. But not just any unicorn, but it had the same colored fur, the same colored tail and mane, the same pink streak across, only this mane was cut short, this unicorn even had the same exact cutie mark as her...only the major difference was that this unicorn was a...stallion!

"You okay there?" asked what appeared to be the stallion version of Twilight.

"Who are you?" Twilight was confused.

"Your male counterpart Twi." chimed Adam as he walked in following the lavender stallion. "Twilight Sparkle...meet Dusk Shine...Dusk Shine, Twilight Sparkle." he introduced the two to each other.

They both walked circles around each other, they checked each other out, especially the area between their hind-legs. "There's a male version of me?!" "There's a female version of me?!" they both said to each other.

"Adam? What's going on?" Twilight was confused.

"I have no idea...but I am guessing the explosion inadvertently caused by Trixie may have un-stablized the space between universes." theorized the human. "It has to be because from what Dusk told me, there's a separate but similar Ponyville everypony's gender is switched."

"I thought the multiple universes concept was just an unproven hypothesis." stated Twilight.

"Me too." agreed Dusk.

"And now we have proven it." said Adam. "Judging that there is no existent matter outside the main library doors...I believe we are...stuck."

"Stuck where?" asked Dusk.

"Between worlds." answered Adam ominously.

---

"Oh no no no no!" Sunil could not believe that Zoe just disappeared like that in front of his eyes. "What am I going to do?! They'll think I murdered her because none will believe what I just saw!" he quickly picked up the collar and black beret off the floor and threw them in the box to hide them.

"Hey Sunil!" greeted Pepper, this caused Sunil to do a girly scream from getting startled. "Uh..."

The blue mongoose turned around. "PEPPER! What are you doing here?!" he exclaimed nervously.

"To ask when the next magic show will be because Minka and Penny, especially Minka, are getting bored and they want to see this new box in action." explained the skunk.

"Oh...uh...it's not ready yet, I have a lot of practice to do and what not...so please leave me so I can work!" he nervously explained as he sweated bullets.

"Right...I'll go tell them that." Pepper was suspicious but goes along with what Sunil said and walked away.

Sunil sweated nervously even more.

---

"So how are we going to fix this whole mess Adam?" asked Twilight as both she, Dusk Shine and the human go back to the archive room.

"To be honest...I have no idea...this is a completely new concept in physics where I came from." explained Adam as a went to a blackboard. "From what I observed...there is apparently multiple universes outside of our own." draws multiple circles. "Now...the beam that Trixie fired-"

"He's known as Trixter in my universe." interrupted Dusk. "But please continue."

"Right...so what if that beam plus the energy from the time machine's time bubble result in such a large discharge of energy that it literally pushed us out of a universe and into the void between them?"

"We were blasted out of a universe?" exclaimed Twilight.

"But how in the world did I end up here when I wasn't even IN an explosion like that?" wondered a disbelieving Dusk.

Suddenly, large bright flash interrupted everything, followed by a loud "pop" sound.

"-anything." said the new arrival.

The two unicorns and Adam look on with shock to see a purple talking dog come out of literally nowhere. The purple dog quickly realized she was not in the pet shop anymore. "How did I get here? Where am I? Who are you creatures!" exclaimed the dog as she demanded answers.

"Uh...my name is Dusk Shine...what's yours?" the male unicorn introduced himself.

"Zoe...Zoe Trent...future diva...how on Earth did I get here?!" she demanded.

"That depends...how familiar are you with not-so-much-theoretical-anymore physics?" asked Adam.

Zoe said nothing. "I demand you come up with a way to get me home this instant!"

"That's what we were working on before you got here." explained Twilight.

"And...?"

"We're on the explanation stage." answered the human.

Dusk turned his attention back to Adam. "So how did me and Zoe got here since the explosion occurred in YOUR universe and not ours?"

"Maybe the explosion had a ripple effect across the universe, the explosion probably randomly transported you two here." theorized Twilight.

"Why me?!" exclaimed a disbelieving Zoe.

"Because you just won the ultimate lottery." answered Dusk.

"Curse my good luck." the dog sighed.

"But how are we going to get back to our own respective universes?" asked Twilight.

"Yeah...I have a future where I come from!" exclaimed Zoe. "You know, whenever Blythe had a problem with her computer she would just reboot it." she said offhandedly.

"Wait...reboot?" Adam was curious by what the purple dog meant.

"Restart." she clarified.

This gave Adam a blast of inspiration. "I can't believe I am saying this but...ZOE YOU ARE A GENIUS!" Adam excitedly exclaimed that he finally came up with a solution.

"Oh...why thanks," Zoe giggled and was touched. "I do have my moments at times."

The human went back to writing on the blackboard.

"It is postulated that for every action...there's an equal and opposite reaction...in order to gets us back to our respective universes we need to recreate the energy from that explosion...and the only way I know how, short of finding a homicidal Trixie, is to blow-up the time machine which will reboot everything back to normal."

"WHAT?! Destroy the time machine?! But that's your only way of returning home!" Twilight was in shock that Adam would consider doing such a thing to his most prized possession.

Suddenly, the whole library shook as cracks formed across the walls and floor, bright white light emitted from them. "What's happening?" exclaimed the female dog.

"The system is becoming unstable...anything that is not from this universe is breaking down from the harsh conditions of the void." explained Dusk as the shaking stopped.

"I must get going." Adam quickly climbed aboard his time machine.

"ADAM NO!" yelled Twilight as she climbed in after him.

"I'm sorry Twilight...but I must do this...to get everything back to the way they should be." explained a determined human.

"Will you be able to survive this?" Twilight was worried that she will never see Adam again.

"I am not sure...best case scenario...I will survive, everything will return to normal with only me having any memory of this." he stated with uncertainty.

"And the worst case?"

"Die and have all my particles and consciousness dispersed across the multi-verse...but the rest of you will be okay."

"Before you go...there's something I always to tell you."

"What is it?" Adam got himself ready to start the machine.

Suddenly, Twilight went in and passionately kissed the human on the lips. To the human, it felt right, it felt like it was Mary kissing him...but the thing he was kissing was not even human. To the unicorn, it felt natural, it felt perfect, it felt...magical.

Dusk and Zoe looked on with surprise as both the mare and human broke the kiss. "I'm sorry." admitted Twilight.

"For what?"

Twilight suddenly used her horn to send the human an electrical shock, which caused him to loose consciousness. Adam slumped over and fell out of the machine and to the floor. Twilight sat herself down in his place. "I will not risk loosing you Adam...at least with my magic I will hopefully be more likely to survive the journey." she pulled the lever and the machine started to go.

Dusk and Zoe stood back as the machine was enveloped in gray light. "What is that unicorn doing?!" asked Zoe.

"Doing what I would also do if the human was female." explained Dusk.

The machine suddenly disappeared in a bright gray flash.

---

Twilight found herself travelling through the white void between universes, it was nothing but white in all directions. As predicted, the harsh conditions of the void started to dissolve the machine away. "I love Adam...no matter where I end up!"

The unicorn mare closed her eyes and braced herself for the explosion that should result from the machines destruction, but instead, she started to feel like she was spreading, like she was living and dying multiple times across multiple universes. "No matter where, when or in what universe...I will always fall in love with you...even if I can't have you...I will always be in all of your lives." she thought to herself as everything went dark.

---

At the pet shop, Sunil was curled up on the floor as he waited for the inevitable to happen; get blamed for Zoe's disappearance.

Suddenly, a large bright light envelopes the blue mongoose’s field of vision, followed by an ear splitting boom. "Oh no! It has come for me!"

The mongoose quickly ducked down and covered his eyes and ears. Just as soon as it began, it suddenly stopped.

Sunil got up and found that he was still in the pet shop, he was still where he was. "Huh?"

"Hey Sunil!" exclaimed a voice as it startled the mongoose. He quickly looked back to see that it was Zoe herself, back.

"Zoey?! Is that you?!" he could not believe the sight.

He was quickly grabbed into a tight hug from the dog. "You have no idea of the weirdness I have been through!" she exclaimed. "It is so good to be back with friends." she sighed.

Sunil just smiled and rubbed her back to comfort her. "Me too Zoey...me too."

---

February 12, 1875

"It's a girl!" exclaimed a midwife as she brought a new baby into the world.

"Let me see her." panted an exhausted mother. The midwife gladly showed the baby girl to her. "Oh how strange...she has lavender eyes..." the mother has never seen such a sight before. "...but they look beautiful on her."

"What will you be calling her Mrs. Oak?" asked the midwife.

"Mary...Mary Oak." smiled the exhausted mother at her new beautiful daughter.

And life went on...

TO BE CONTINUED...

Author's Note:

Whew...that was an epic.

Anyways, the next chapter will be a direct continuation of this one.

Enjoy.

Comments

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Great Scott!