A taxi pulled up to an old abandoned barn, the rain pouring so hard onto the car it almost sounded like rocks were being dropped from the sky, a man wearing a dark coat and sunglasses emerged from the car into the rainy night, the cab driver poked his head out of his window and asked loudly, trying to speak over the rain, “Hey! Aren’t you gonna’ pay?”

The mysterious man turned to the annoyed and soaked driver and said in a German accent, “I’m terribly sorry, but you shouldn’t even know I exist.” He then pulled out a silenced HK USP and shot the driver in his right eye, blood, bits of his brain, chunks of bloody eye, and tiny shards of his skull exploded out the back and splattered all over the side of his car; leaving his head at an odd angle and his body in a painful looking position. The German man approached the doors of the barn and opened them; he made sure no one else saw him enter the building even though they were in the middle of nowhere.

Once he had closed the doors he went to the back of one of the horse stalls, the room so old not even hay littered the floor; broken windows were letting puddles of water form and the place had an eerie feeling to it. He opened up the closet at the back of the room and what looked like a wall on the other side was actually a door, he opened the door by simply pushing on it and the door slid to the left as though a machine was guiding it. Once he entered he hung up his coat and hat and continued walking down a blue hall with lights about every two meters on the ceiling, it resembled a hallway found in those sci-fi movies. An elevator waited for him at the end of the narrow hallway, the elevator being barely big enough for the man opened gently as he entered and closed the same.

Two minutes later the man had arrived at his destination, there in front of him was only a door, with a card reader directly to the left of the door. He pulled a card out of his pocket and swiped it through the machine, a small beep and a voice emanated from the machine saying, “Welcome Albrecht Freud.”

As the doors opened, Albrecht returned his card to his pocket and entered a room containing giant computers, thousands of people were working at these computers all of different countries, people running around and spoke quickly, at the top of the room in a glass box looked to be a room for board of directors, only it had no graphs, only blueprints. Computers were facing every wall calculating trajectory, velocity, mass, and calculations involving atoms, the center held one of the most spectacular inventions humanity has never known.

Albrecht walked up the stairs to the glass box where three men were standing; he pushed open the glass doors and dropped a document into the hands of the lead scientist. Gazing through it he would lift his eyes up back at Albrecht and back at the documents, his lips suddenly stopped mimicking the words. His eyes looked back up at Albrecht and the young man said in a confused voice, “Really? Out of all of them you picked this place?”

Albrecht looked down at him and said, “Just because you’re an American graduate doesn’t mean you know better than me, I have my reasons for picking here. Besides, you shouldn’t have even seen this document. But I have full faith that you will keep this secret for the good of humanity; now remember these coordinates because now this document must be burnt.” He took the folder from the graduate’s hands and placed the document in the fire, only giving the others a quick moment to read the cover which was titled “Project: Gates”. “Now have you written the coordinates down?” Albrecht asked the lead scientist.

One of the others chipped in and said, “Yes, Project: Gates’ coordinates have been wri-” Unable to finish his sentence, Albrecht grabbed him by the throat and began squeezing. At first it was slow but he began to enjoy the feeling of his bare hands killing someone so he squeezed harder until a blood filled gurgle that was supposed to be a scream brought him back to his senses. He dropped the man to his knees and the man began coughing up blood as though his lungs were filled with it.

He turned to the coughing man and said in an angry voice, “Never repeat that name, or so help me I will cut you open and feed your living corpse to your children, now get to work.” As soon as he was done speaking the scientists left the room to the lower area and began talking to the others, as he watched over them Albrecht said to himself, “For humanity’s survival.”

Then suddenly a large explosion was heard nearby, not quite inside but close enough for it to be a warning of some sort, then the door to the lab was sent flying across the room as a lone man stood there, he was about the height of a 16 year old being no older than 19, he wore dark shades, an urban military like outfit and carried with him weapons that looked to be twenty years in the future. He said in a voice that contained no emotion, “Party’s over dipshits.” And began riddling the scientists with holes, he entered the glass room to find the German man hiding behind a chair. The soldier looked at the man and said, “You’ve been charged with acts of terrorism and holding of nuclear weapons and for that I’m going to make you shit sideways.” With that the soldier walked towards him and the German man shot his pistol right in his shoulder with no pain on the soldier’s face he said, “Big mistake.” He then grabbed the German’s bottom jaw and began pulling, at first the poor German was able to resist but the soldier was stronger than that and began pulling harder to the point where the German was screaming and then the breaking point was reached. The soldier tore off the man’s jaw with a loud snap and the German was then left there holding his jaw and drowning in his own blood.

As the soldier was leaving he looked at the fireplace, took out a small tube like device and pointed at the fire as it began to make a humming sound. Ashes started collecting and reforming into a document. Once the document was fully reformed, the soldier replaced his small device and took the documents with him. As he was exiting one of the remaining scientists said in a dying voice, “You still haven’t destroyed our greatest creation, this machine will still live!”

The soldier looked down at him, pulled a bullet from his jacket and brought it close so the scientist could see and said, “You see this? This is at first glance a simple 100-grain hollow point bullet, but it contains red phosphorus in dual compressed chambers, I simply have to press this little button, and all the bullets I have fired will explode.” With that the soldier stood up and began walking away, as he exited the door he pressed his little button on his wrist and hundreds of explosions all occurred at once and the facility was destroyed.

A few hours later the soldier, now known as Cole O’Reilly, arrived back at a secret station somewhere hidden in the Rockies. He entered a secret, all white facility similar to the one previously mentioned but with a higher cleanliness standard. He headed up the stairs to a room that looked like the United Nations only it wasn’t the leaders of the country in the room nor was it the military leaders, they were just unknown people with a lot of badges on their chest. Cole walked in and dropped Project: Gates on the table. The Chief and Lieutenant leaned in and looked through the pages and looked at Cole and the Chief said to him, “Good job, Cole, now all we need to do is have our engineers rebuild this machine and we will find out what this thing is and why it was built. We will contact you when this is done for you to investigate it.” With that Cole was gone, no thank you, no yes sire, not even any sign of emotion. Little did this emotionless soldier know that he was going to accomplish something no creature, or any form of matter would be capable of.

******
Meanwhile, somewhere in a completely different universe, in Ponyville, Twilight Sparkle was taking a simple stroll through town when she saw Pinkie Pie being her usual self. Yet something was different about Pinkie today, her entire body was shaking out of control. Twilight trotted up to Pinkie and asked her with a nervous look, “Pinkie, you’ve been shaking like this for the past few minutes, how big of a doozy do you think this will be?”

Pinkie just kept shaking like a vibrating phone on nuclear energy and said, “I dunno Twilight, but whatever it is, it’s going to be a bi-i-i-ig o-o-o-one” Then as soon as the shaking came the shaking stopped. “That’s weird,” Pinkie began, “the shaky-shaky usually means a doozy of a thing is supposed to happen, and nothing happened.” She then trotted off singing like nothing had ever happened to her. Twilight still had a nervous feeling though, she kept wondering what was going to happen, and when? Then she had an idea, why not ask one of her friends who’s lived here for a while. Then Twilight galloped her way to Sweet Apple Acres to find Applejack.

“Hey AJ,” Twilight exclaimed, “You’ve known Pinkie for the longest time, how long does it usually last between her Pinkie senses and when it actually happens?”

Applejack was just finishing gathering apples when she looked at Twilight with a confused look and said, “I dunno Twi, I’ve only seen her tail twitch and it usually last only a couple of seconds before her predictions come real. Remember the doozy though? There were a few hours between the shakin’ and it actually happenin’. I believe that the more violent her shakin’ is, the longer it takes for it to happen.” Then Applejack put her wagon away and walked up to Twilight and asked, “On a scale of one to ten, how bad do you think her twitchin’ was, Twi?”

“I would have to say a ten actually; I’ve never seen her shake that violently, if she was shaking any worse, she would have fallen apart.”

Now Applejack had a nervous look on her, “Well we best be gettin’ ready for the future, I reckon that this shakin’ means something BIG is about to happen in like a few months or so.”

That wasn’t really comforting Twilight, but it gave her the idea she should be prepared for something big. “Well thanks for the help, AJ.” Twilight said as she began to trot away.

Applejack gave her a reassuring look and said, “Twi, this might not be so bad, it could be a really good thing, maybe not a rainbow, and I really don’t know what could possibly be good enough to make a filly shake out of her saddle. But if it’s a good thing, then it’s a really good thing.”

Twilight thanked Applejack for her time and was on her way, the sun was setting and Twilight had some more books to read. But little did the ponies know that their world was going to be flipped upside down.