Chapter 32: Temporal Physics 101
Blahsadfeguie stared down at Pinkie Pie with a look of disbelief, bewilderment, joy, and outrage all in one. "You took..." he began, his finger extended, "you found?... you... you're here... but..."
"Wow!" Pinkie gasped. "You look like you've been through a lot!" She looked around in awe, viewing the complex scene behind Blah - the Underworld, battered and winded heroes, scattered equipment, half-pierced hovering brick cube. "This reminds me of that one time I-"
"Please," Blah interrupted, holding his hand up to the pink filly as he slowly stepped around her. "Spare me, just this once." A bit taken aback at first, though understanding, Pinkie nodded, putting her hoof across her mouth in a zipping motion.
Not that Blah noticed. There was no way he could resist the lure of the time machine. The inside was just as he remembered seeing it time after time, in the television show. The large, circular room, catwalk leading up to the central console riddled with buttons, knobs, levers and screens. It was even more whimsical in person. He found himself calling out to the empty room... "D-Doctor?"
"Mm mmhmm mm mmm, mhm!" mumbled Pinkie Pie, causing Blah to do a double take, this time with a puzzled glance. Pinkie 'unzipped' her mouth and repeated herself. "No Doctor in here, silly!"
"Ok, I gathered that," Blah answered, getting a bit anxious. "So where is he then?"
"Where is who?" Pinkie responded innocently.
"The Doctor." Blah volleyed.
"Doctor Who?"
A smirk crept across Blah's face, but his eyes conveyed annoyance. He shook it off. "You don't know who the Doctor is... so how did you manage to get the TARDIS? And moreover, how in the WORLD did you manage to bring it here?" He barely realized it, but his voice raised as he spoke.
"I found it, and I pressed a bunch of buttons!" Pinkie continued, bubbly as ever, unwavering.
"I bet you did..." Blah muttered, now pacing the floor of the TARDIS with his hand clutching his forehead, cradling his aching brain. "But where did you find it? And how did you know what buttons to press to get here?"
"Ponyville! DUH!" Pinkie stuck out her tongue for emphasis, and her follow-up giggle didn't keep Blah from feeling that much more uncomfortable. "And I didn't know... DUH!" Blah's eye twitched as Pinkie smiled the largest smile she was capable of.
The logic fell into place in Blah's mind. "So the Doctor came to Ponyville... left the phone booth in plain sight... or NEAR plain sight... and wandered off... and you found it, went inside, and... started pressing a bunch of random buttons."
"That sounds about right!" Pinkie affirmed. "Except for the 'doctor' part, I still don't know who this 'doctor' is that you keep talking about, oh wait what about that Doctor Whooves? I don't even know if he's a real doctor, he's always running around and getting into all sorts of trouble behind everyone's backs, showing up at the weirdest times, kind of like Derpy Hooves, come to think of it I've been seeing those two together a LOT lately! Almost like they're a couple or something."
Blah just let Pinkie's words fill the silence as he thought about the possibilities. Could this be the eighth universe that got mixed in with the bunch? Or was it just some relic, or odd occurrence, like Astra or the army of dragons... but either way, the TARDIS had to have come from SOMEWHERE... was there some incarnation of the Doctor in this universe as well?
"So what's going on in here...?" Hailstorm entered the box, having rested just long enough to walk again. He was followed closely by Broshi, now carrying Sera again, and the two of them that were conscious started looking at the interior in wonder.
"Wait, what?" Hail trotted out of the box, circled around to the outside and had himself a good stare at the back. The outside didn't nearly match the dimensions of the inside, and his head started to throb at the thought of it.
"It's bigger on the inside," Blah shouted out the door, his patience melting away. "Super-advanced alien technology. No big deal."
"No big deal?!" Hail shouted back, returning to the entrance. "Alien technology, bigger on the inside, no big deal?!"
"It's also a time machine," Blah continued.
"Oh, I get it now, no big deal," Hail repeated, a look of pure exasperation on his face. "We can travel through time in a phone booth and it's no big deal. Seriously, what is it and how did it get here?!"
"It's called the TARDIS, or 'Time and Relative Dimension in Space'." Seraphina was fully awake for the first time in ages. "It's all there, inside Blah's head."
"Welcome back, Sera!" Blah greeted. "I believe we just found our ticket out of here."
"And what a ticket..." The voice was rather new; light, yet smooth. Blah looked towards the voice's origin and saw only Broshi, staring at one of the screens on the console and trying to make sense of the data displayed. Broshi looked back at Blah, and then around the room, noticing that everyone was staring at him. "What?" asked Broshi in the new voice. "I know you like my face, but come on."
"You... talked..." muttered Blah.
"Yeah, I did," he replied flatly. "You've heard me before." He held his arms out in a wide, confused shrug.
"But never like that..." Hail uttered. "Like, English..."
"Wait... you can understand me...?" Broshi glanced at everyone in turn.
"HA!" Blah snapped his fingers, the noise faintly echoing off the walls. "That's right, the TARDIS has this... psychic aura thing... I forget what it's called but it basically translates every language for anyone standing in it or near it."
"Wow!" exclaimed Pinkie Pie. "I've always wanted to learn every language so I can make friends with everypony in the whole world but with this I guess I don't have to! Learn languages to make friends, I mean." She inhaled a huge gasp of sudden enlightenment. "We can start making friends RIGHT NOW! WITH THE ENTIRE WORLD! Let's go!"
She clamored over to the central console again, but Blah hastily grabbed her tail. "Whoa, hold your horses, now!" Hail rolled his eyes at Blah in the background. "I still have a bit more to take care of here first..." He couldn't believe that he had almost forgotten to claim his spoils of battle, as well as pick up his lance and other equipment. "You guys wait here," Blah instructed as he stepped out of the TARDIS.
Instantly, he felt the intense, hellish wave of heat consume him. He had barely noticed the constant room temperature of the TARDIS, a synthetic oasis in the desert of fire. He'd have to make this quick. First he grabbed his bag, then his Phaselance, and finally, his Demonite pickaxe.
He raised his pick high in front of the cube and picked up where he left off. It didn't take him long to bust a hole big enough to stick his hand through, but he made sure to make it bigger so that he could extract its contents...
Light filled the box and Blah could see all of the goodies inside. He felt like a safecracker. Before him was a handsome pile of gold coins, a dozen healing potions, and a fancy white-and-yellow hammer with a red gemstone in the center of the head.
He pocketed the coins and bagged the potions eagerly, and he reached for the hammer next. It shined in the light cast by the magma, perhaps just a little bit brighter. He felt empowered holding it, like he could smash through corruption itself.
Grinning madly at his new find, he took a running step back towards the TARDIS... but as he did, there was an additional blue gleam in the corner of his eye. Taking a second look into the demonite box, he saw something he had missed the first time: a small gray pencil-shaped device tucked away in the corner. He had to stick his arm in up to his shoulder to reach it, and when he pulled it out, his heart skipped a beat.
The device was similar to a laser pointer, with an irregular chrome handle and a blue light at the end. Like the TARDIS, Blah recognized it easily, but didn't quite believe it. Slinging the nearly full backpack over his shoulder and still holding the device, he ran back to the TARDIS, eager to show it off.
Blah entered the chamber to find that everyone was huddled around a single computer screen, dead silent. Seraphina seemed to be at the controls, clattering away at the keyboard. Even Pinkie looked a bit glum.
"Uh..." Blah voiced, addressing the obvious problem. "What happened...?"
"I've installed Pesterchum on the TARDIS's internal computer," Sera began. "Only one other person is online, out of the entire list of registered Pesterchum users. I am talking to him now."
Blah circled around and found a space to stand, observing the conversation. Upon seeing the username of the other user, Blah raised an eyebrow.
- myriadOracle [MO] began pestering desultoryMonarch [DM] -
MO: Blahsadfeguie?
DM: sera?
DM: ok I'd say I'm kinda busy right now but
DM: you're alive?
MO: Of course. What would make you think that I'm dead?
DM: everyone's dead
DM: well, everyone except me
DM: and... a friend
DM: one friend who is not you
MO: Preposterous. Currently I am surrounded by three friends who are all very much alive.
MO: You've only been out for a few minutes.
MO: I'm not certain I believe that you're really Blah.
DM: what
DM: um
MO: And in fact, the real Blah has just walked back into the Tardis.
MO: Who are you and why are you using his account?
"I left my computer back at Blahtown," Blah explained. "As far as I know, only Cody and Waluigi are there, but... you think someone took my laptop and is pretending to be me?"
"That does not explain what happened to everyone else," Sera responded. "It is as if the entire internet suddenly died. There is more to this story, I am sure."
"We're in a time machine, right?" Broshi chimed in, leaning on the back wall. "You could be talking to his future self."
"That's... actually a good possibility," Blah admitted. Had Broshi always been this insightful, even though nobody understood him before?
The computer pinged, reminding everyone that there was still a conversation going on.
DM: ...tardis?
DM: oh my god you're in the tardis
DM: ...ok this is kind of a bit heavy for pesterchum, please install skype or something and let's do video chat
DM: it'd also confirm my identity
MO: The latest Pesterchum has voice and webcam features already implemented.
DM: ...oh wow you're right I didn't see that
DM: that's actually really convenient
DM: hang on
A box popped up on the screen asking if they wanted to engage in a video chat. Sera naturally clicked "yes" and a camera extended from a small door above the screen. The screen itself lit up with an image of a candle-lit room, various machine parts laid out across a table in the background. In front of the camera sat Blahsadfeguie himself, and from his longer beard and hair the current Blah guessed that he was perhaps a few years older. Sparks flew from off-camera. The Blah on-screen adjusted his hair and glasses habitually, almost the same time as the Blah in the TARDIS. After passing this ritual, future Blah squinted, closing in on the screen, and his eyes immediately grew wide at the sight of everyone standing there.
"Y-you might want to see this," Future Blah addressed an entity off-camera.
The sparks stopped long enough for an adolescent voice to reply, "Not now, this is a very sensitive part! I can't stop until it's aligned properly!"
'There's something familiar about that voice...' thought Blah.
"Fine, fine," Future Blah answered. "But still, oh my God... It's really you guys... And me..." He squinted again. "From the past? What?"
"You'd think he would remember a conversation from the past," Hailstorm spoke up. "Even if it was a few years back."
"I certainly won't forget this," Blah nodded. "You don't remember this at all?"
"It's not just that," the elder Blah added, "You're in the TARDIS... My buddy here is currently working on the TARDIS... meaning you should be from the future if anything... unless you picked up yourself from the past... which would cause a paradox..."
"You are already having a direct encounter with yourself," Sera pointed out. "If a paradox was to happen, it already would have."
"Hang on," cut in current Blah, "you're BUILDING the TARDIS?! Right now?! Your buddy wouldn't happen to be the Doctor, would he...?"
"I wish," Future Blah sighed. "Here, look for yourself, since he seems to be a bit camera-shy." He turned the camera a bit, putting the frame of a phone box into view. Next to it was a short figure wearing a welding mask and putting together a large engine-shaped device. The light from the sparks obscured most details about the figure. "You mind putting that down for 2 seconds so our friends can have a good look at you?"
"You could just tell them who I am, you know... but fine." The sparks stopped. The figure lifted his mask, revealing a yellow and very vulpine face. He was certainly taller, his features more defined and mature, but he still had the eyes of an 8-year-old genius. Tails waved at the camera shyly. "Hi."
"Tails?!" exclaimed current Blah. "YOU made this?"
"Who did you expect? There isn't actually a Doctor in this universe to do it for us," Future Blah explained, leaning into the camera's view.
Tails glared exasperately in his direction. "What is that supposed to mean?"
The receiving Blah sighed. "Nothing." He turned back to the camera. "We've been stranded on this rock in the middle of space for 5 years. Living in such a limited space with the same person for that long, a lot of tension gets generated."
"I know where you're coming from," current Blah sympathized. "Doesn't matter how cool the person is or how much you like them."
"Can we change the subject?" Tails asked. "I've been working on this machine for 5 years now and I still haven't even come close to figuring out how time travel works, let alone the act of safely fitting an entire ship inside a phone booth."
"Yeah, we need a time travel expert..." Future Blah summarized. "Is Astra there?"
"Astra? A time travel expert?" current Blah repeated. "Hah... I'd like to see that. But no, she isn't here. She's busy anyway, with the whole SBURB server thing and all."
"Wait a second," Hailstorm interrupted, "why don't we just time-travel ourselves to wherever these guys are, and give them the TARDIS? Then you won't have to build it in the first place..."
"Ok, of all the things that could possibly cause a paradox, that is definitely one of them," current Blah argued. "But they could maybe... study it, learn how it works, and build a copy of it which is sent back in time along its predestined path to become this current TARDIS?"
A good 5 seconds of silence followed Blah's statement. "...I'm sorry, could you repeat that?" asked Hail.
"You know, that's just crazy enough to work," said Future Blah. "But... we're in the middle of space as I said before, and there's no real way of telling exactly how much time has passed, so how would you find us?"
"I still don't quite understand..." Hail complained again.
"Look man, no point in questioning something if it works," Broshi silenced him.
Future Blah stared at Broshi from his end of the time stream. "...did he just talk?"
"Not important," the other Blah shrugged it off. "Now, um... Sera, could you perchance... like, triangulate their position and time using the information from the video feed, and then travel there?"
"I do not know how the TARDIS works any better than you do," Sera replied. "One day I will have to watch every episode of Doctor Who from your subconscious and take notes."
"Good luck with that, I'm only up to season 3..." muttered Blah.
"What is she doing?" Broshi had kicked off of the side of the ship, onto his feet again, and was pointing towards the other side of the console, where Pinkie Pie was hard at work manipulating knobs.
"Pinkie..." Blah had almost forgotten she was there. "I don't think you should be touching those..."
"Oh, don't be a silly billy!" Pinkie replied. "You can't just have a conversation with somepony, even yourself, if they're not in the present! Also, they're in space, on a rock, space is space, and rocks are rocks! And trust me, I know my rocks." She did not hesitate for a moment in running around and operating the switches and buttons. The cylinders in the central tube began to move and the TARDIS mildly quivered along with it.
"Wh... what is she talking about...?" Hail queried quietly. Pinkie was starting to scare him.
"She has a point," Sera noted. "Pesterchum does not have the capability to communicate outside of the present time, unlike Trollian which is unavailable in this universe."
"I thought that was the TARDIS pulling some kind of wibbly wobbly timey wimey thing," Blah admitted with a shrug.
"Ha... oh, Blink, why are you the best episode," Future Blah mused as the TARDIS began to fade, and the whirring of its engines droned on.
To the inhabitants, the whirring continued, and then stopped, along with the engine, the TARDIS stabilizing. Future Blah and Tails were still on-screen in Pesterchum, and they were both staring, transfixed, at an object off-camera.
With a deep breath, current Blah opened the door to the outside.
Future Blah stood up, and the two Blahs looked face-to-face, in the flesh. It was almost like looking into a mirror. A mirror in which a 5-year gap separated the reflections.
"Well would you look at that..." both of them uttered simultaneously.
"She was right?!" Hail gasped, peeking out of the door from behind the younger Blah. "You WERE in our present..."
"But that doesn't make any sense," Tails cried. "You're obviously younger..."
"We're the same age," Young Blah blurted out.
"What...?" Older Blah asked.
"Think about it. We were able to talk in the same time frame. Without causing a paradox. In your past, all of us are dead. You don't remember this meeting as it took place through my eyes. Not only are you an older version of myself, but you're from an alternate timeline. A parallel universe."
"But," Alternate Blah countered, "I thought it was impossible to cross to an alternate universe using the TARDIS..."
"Yes, but that's Doctor Who logic," Blah refuted. "The Doctor Who multiverse is not a part of this multiverse. But guess which multiverse we know for a fact IS, that has its own rules for time travel?"
Alternate Blah looked up sharply, in a fit of realization. "Homestuck!" He began to pace the floor. "Which means, every time you time travel, or make a decision for that matter, you immediately create and/or enter an alternate universe... but there is always exactly one 'alpha' timeline - the one that's 'canon' so to speak."
"Exactly! So I must be from the Alpha line, and you're from a universe in which we've failed and everyone else is dead. But that is not so in my timeline, far from it in fact! We just killed the Wall of Flesh after all." He held up his favorite prize from said battle, the Pwnhammer.
Alternate Blah, teary-eyed, could not prevent himself from spontaneously hugging his Alpha self, fueled by the notion that not all is lost after all. "You have no idea... how devastating it was..."
From then on, as the two embraced, there was silence among the rest of the crowd. They weren't entirely sure what to say, considering the first half of that exchange was nothing but jargon to them, and the second half was all that needed to be said on the matter.
Seraphina herself shed a tear. "I can see them... all of their deaths... the Wall of Flesh devoured all of them... Blah himself barely escaped... but so did Ipsus, who went on a rampage on the surface. Astra was the first to die. Without the others, the rest of the session fell apart and the Earth was destroyed. It was all Blah could do to hunker down with Tails and ride the shockwave." The Blah's hug tightened as he heard that reiteration.
Tails nodded. "He told me our only hope then was a time machine, and he described the TARDIS to me... so I tried, but that sort of technology is just too advanced to recreate from someone's memory of a fictional program in which it appeared."
"So how did we GET to this universe, then?" Broshi was leaning on the doorway, his arms crossed. "You couldn't have talked to Omega Blah over here in the first place without being on the same timeline, am I right? So we were already here."
'Omega... I like the sound of that,' thought Alternate Blah as he released his clone.
"We were in the presence of demons," Sera suggested.
"Yeah, maybe time and space work differently in the underworld? I dunno." Alpha Blah shrugged. "Could also be why we didn't notice that the Earth exploded while we were there. We may never know."
"Either way, this universe is no good," Broshi continued. "We have to get back somehow."
Everyone turned expectantly towards Pinkie, who had made herself at home balancing a top-shaped component on a rear shelf. Feeling 12 eyes on her at once, she turned around. "What? Don't look at me, I don't know the first thing about parasol universes!" She giggled and returned to her toy.
Both Blahs chuckled to themselves quietly. "Heh heh... 'Parasol universes'."
"So if you don't mind me asking..." Hailstorm said, walking around and examining the lab, "How did you survive in space all this time?"
"I built an oxygen recycling unit," Tails explained, patting a machine in the corner proudly. "As for food, we just-"
"Oh God," Alpha Blah interrupted, "don't tell me you recycled your own-"
"Nononono NO, don't even go there," Omega Blah hastily counter-interrupted. "We have this." He indicated the opposite corner, which housed three very familiar machines.
"Whoa!" The other Blah immediately jogged over to inspect the machines. "A Cruxtruder... an Alchemiter... and a Totem Lathe... where did you get these?!"
"It's a long story," Omega dismissed. "We would use them to alchemize stuff other than food, but we only have build grist, and a finite amount of it, so we really have no choice..."
"Plus, we don't have a Punch Designix," Tails added. "We have to punch cards by hand. Took us a while to learn the algorithm necessary to figure out where to punch the holes - and also to get the holes in the right shape using only a circular hole punch. By the time we got one template made, we were down to just a few cans of beans."
"I'm getting SO sick of beans," Omega pouted.
"You've had enough grist to live off of beans for 5 years?" Blah scratched his head, trying to do the math, but the numbers were a bit too far out there.
"We would have been late arrivals to the session, so we got a TON of build grist," Omega explained. "We had no idea how long we'd have to survive here before the TARDIS was complete, so we didn't dare try to alchemize something else. Right now, we have... how much, again?" He turned to Tails, who glanced at a computer screen.
"27,289 out of a maximum of 62,500," he replied. "At 2 grist per can, 3 meals a day for each of us, for the past 5 years. Give or take."
"...you started with an even number, spent only even numbers at a time, and you wound up with an odd number?" Blah questioned. 'And one ending in 89, for that matter...'
Tails shrugged. "We were one grist short when we started. I have no idea why."
"Ooh, what's this?" Pinkie Pie poked at a faint flashing light, the source of which was obscured by the frame of the in-progress TARDIS. "It's so shiny..."
Both Blahs peered behind the frame and saw what Pinkie was talking about - a flashing orange-ish sphere of energy, a spirographic pattern embedded within it. It was avoiding Pinkie's touch. "That would be the Kernelsprite," Omega said. "We had no use for it, so it just kinda... tucked itself away in the corner. It's not like we can enter the medium now."
"What is a Kernelsprite for, exactly?" Hailstorm asked, having never been debriefed on the subject. The original Blah wasn't listening, however; he instead made his way to the window, his curiosity getting the better of him again.
"You're supposed to throw something into it," Omega explained, "or, as it's called, 'prototype' it... and when you enter the medium of SBURB it transfers the 'data' of whatever you gave it to the game and causes the battlefield to evolve. Then it becomes a 'sprite' with the embodiment of whatever it contained and serves as your guide and helper. But I don't think we CAN enter the medium from here, we never even got a countdown."
"Are you sure about that?" Blah queried, staring out at the endless black expanse of a landscape. There was only a single, barely visible point of white light in the entire abyss. "After all this time, do you ever bother to look out of the window?"
Everyone exchanged glances for a moment, then crowded around the three windows on the side of the lab that Blah had chosen to look out of. This clearly wasn't the Milky Way Galaxy.
"What is that...?" Hail squinted at the distant light.
"I have an idea..." Blah started. He turned towards Omega Blah. "Prototype yourself."
"What?!" shouted Omega. "But..."
"We have an extra Blah from a doomed timeline. If we're prototyping with anything, it'll have to be you."
Omega flinched. He did have a point. And becoming a sprite did have its benefits. Plus, he didn't know what he would do with himself if everyone here made it back to the alpha timeline. "Alright... here I go then..." He approached the frame of the unfinished TARDIS, preparing to squeeze through and reach the sprite, but before he could, the sprite itself flew out from its cubby hole and presented itself to the open. It hovered rapidly in front of Omega as if excited about what was about to happen. Taking a deep breath, he leaped into the sprite, creating a blinding flash of light.
Everyone covered their eyes, except for Pinkie. When the light faded, neither Omega Blah nor the kernelsprite were there - what floated there was something entirely new. It was a ghostly white figure, complete with a wispy tail replacing its legs. It had the pale white arms and head of Blahsadfeguie, his eyes missing entirely - only his glasses were left.
"My God," said the Blahsprite in an ethereal, echoing voice, staring at and through his own hands, "I'm already a fully fledged Sprite... instead of just a ball with a new face... which means..."
"We're already in the Medium," Blah nodded. "That white light up ahead... is Skaia."