Another chapter, another interlude. Now we are going to discuss some serious business and, I hope, help you realise the importance of your insignificance.

I'm not trying to make contradictions, am I? If you have been an attentive reader (and I hope you have), you must have noticed that the point of my philosophy - and thus, the philosophy of Time - is that since you aren't able to make a change, there is no point in your life. I suggested that one should find the meaning of life in life itself - work to work, create to create, live to live.

But how exactly should one live? It is a question that may be either ridiculuously simple or frustratingly complicated, depending on the degree to which you want to live your life.

Most ponies lead simple lives - they work, eat and sleep. Sometimes they make families. Then foals are born. The parents are happy up to the moment their descendants leave them to lead similar lives. The parents die, contributing to the ever-changing cycle of life in Equestria.

But you know that, right? Because you are probably one of those ponies.

Sometimes ponies tend to live a lie, by becoming famous scientists, artists or warriors. They think they can find excitement in life - in fact, they only pointlessly try to create it. Most ponies die without knowing they were wrong.

Ignorance is bliss, eh?

Some ponies try to lie to themselves by finding that last frontier where they finally can be free.

And what does it mean - to be free? Do they really desire freedom? Or they just hope freedom will give them the so much desired excitement and satisfaction they cannot get?

The frontiers... The frontier between towns and countries, Time and Space, Energy and Matter...

They live a lie, too. I know better - I've been through those frontiers. There are seventeen of them, and I've been through sixteen. The last frontier is a mystery.

When I got so tired from my everlasting life, I guided TARDIS to the last frontier, which name is long forgotten - or maybe not invented? And that's why now I'm here.

I'm nowhere, in fact. Nothing. Void. Nihil. I don't exist - yet somehow I write this. I crossed the last frontier...

But we shall return to our topic. But how can I not live a lie, then? You may ask.

The answer is simple, really.

There is no such way.

You will never get the needed satisfaction and excitement. Ponies created their sea of entertainment so that they could get lost in it, forgetting about life.

Now, if you excuse my unsteady stream of conciousness, I will warn you: the worst thing is to spend your whole life waiting to live.

Unfortunately, that's the way both of the smartest, who understand their insignificance and inability to make a change, and the ignorant, who simply believe that life will somehow open itself to them.

That's what they do: they wait. They bide their time in the blind desire to achieve something without acting.

But life always ends abruptly. As my friend Bulgakov once said, Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal - there's the trick! The same can be said about ponies.

Now better show it than tell it, right? I won't bother the Narrator this time, for my story will be short.

***

Imagine a bright, cheerful, sunny morning in the middle of summer. Equestria blossoms. The struggles between the New Lunar Republic and the Pegasus Kingdom have recently ceased, and ponies celebrate such a nice day by going out.

Friends and couples are lying on the grass, smiling and exchanging glances. Some are chewing on a fresh daisy sandwich or golden hay fries, some are watching the birds, some are playing the games of their own creation. The eternal night is gone. The struggles have gone. The era of dark conflicts and misery has ended. The era of prosperity and freedom has just begun.

And then it all ends. It ends with a flash - no, a bare shadow of a flash. No magical spells were needed. No bombs or weapons were needed. What was needed to destroy the whole planet at once? One failed test from planet 9504. One failed test of a highly nuclear glass cleaner. A mere glass cleaner, albeit an alien one, destroys the whole planet of Equestria, wiping out over 90% of its population.

And no, there is no 'cool zombies' and 'amazingly fearsome radiation' and 'hayloads of adventure', as you may wonder. This is not a book of Fallout: Equestria. This is life.

Those who you would call 'mutants' are just sick ponies, unable to live but also unable to die. Those who magically managed to remain alive hide in caves, like primeval equines, afraid to be eaten by monsters. But there are no monsters, for the failed test from planet 9504 destroyed them as well. I've seen it many times. A flash - and it all ends. I pity them. I pity them all.

But I can't help them. That was an event firmly fixed in Time. The scientist was, is and always will be pressing the button that will unleash a wave of radiation that was responsible for destroying thousands of planets.

Why am I telling you this? Because I have talked to those refugees. And you know what?

Most of them were waiting to begin 'real life', as they posed it. Fillies who expected their first loves. Young stallions who expected to contribute to the military of their homeland. Mares waiting for fame and stallions waiting for fortune. Novice artists waiting for their talent to unleash and make them write, draw, compose - create!

Marines who lost their sea. Pilots who lost their sky. Adventurers who lost their world, and with it the point of life. Teachers and librarians who commited mass suicide at the thought that all knowlege of their world was gone with the books. Farmers who spent countless hours weeping over their lost crops and tremendous fields.

Magicians whose magic was disabled because of the radiation. Parents whose children died in pain, alone and forgotten, crying and calling for their mommies and daddies who never came. A death from radiation is a horrible death.

Barrens.

The violated lands, clinging to what was spared by the merciless and mindless radiation.

Dirt, dust, stones and sand. That was the world ponies had to live in. They lived, but never accepted it. Fortunately, not for long. They would all die within a hundred years.

Their hopes and dreams became crushed by the overwhelming tidal wave of shattered reality.

They were waiting to live their lives - but they never managed to begin. They all died from harsh weather, famine and viruses that awoke due to the radiation fallout.

That's how Equestria ended. That's how everything ended. I've seen it so many times...

You know, I've seen many things. I've seen children shattered into pieces via ancient devices of torture. I've seen innocents burned alive at the stake because of their beliefs. I've seen whole civiliztions die during endless and merciless wars. I got used to it, eventually. When you get used to it, it becomes easier to bear. You may say that now I have a heart of stone. True - now I don't feel sorry, miserable or sad. I forgot those feelings long ago. But there is one memory that will haunt me forever, as it seems. It will sound ordinary to you but it is the worst thing I have ever seen in my entire life.

After the radiation fallout became rather harmless, ponies left their cages. They began to restore the lives they've lost - the lives they so wanted to reclaim. I knew that all their attempts were in vain. They would all die soon. But I never told them. 'Contemplate, never interfere', remember?

One day, I saw an earth pony pulling a carriage. His steps were slow and sloppy, his head hung low and he looked really miserable. I came up to him, helped him with the carriage, and we started to talk. He was a revolutionary once, fighting for freedom in the Solar Empire. Then he emigrated to the New Lunar Republic to go underground. He kept fighting against the Pegasus Kindgom. And then the Flash occured. He got separated from his son, his only child. His only hope left after the royalists had tortured and killed his wife. I felt very sorry for that stallion, for the first time in many years. Don't know why, really. I suppose there is such thing in the Universe as soulmates (not in the way you have just thought). Anyway, my pity for him was so strong that I decided to give him answers. I don't do it. I know common ponies must not know about what they're not supposed to know. But that time, I made a change in my life. I offered him to ask me anything - he knew I would know any answer.

Did he ask me about the future?

No.

Did he ask me about his son?

No.

Did he ask about how exactly his wife died?

No.

He asked me: What now, Doctor? What now? His blue eyes were dry but it could be clearly seen that he was crying. Silently weeping with no tears, with a stoic experssion on his face, an expression of those who had lived through such difficulties that they were privileged to say: 'My life was not in vain." But his was, and in that one question, the yell of that broken generation united, appealing to some miracle of justice. There's no justice. There is a cause, an event, and an inevitable repercussion. That's it. That's how the Universe works.

What now?

For the first time, I didn't know the answer. I couldn't answer. I stopped the Time, and I ran away. I ran far, far away, without stopping, my only companion being the forgotten feeling of tears streaming through my eyes. I never saw him again. He died, like the others, with the beam of the final Cataclysm. But I never forgot those dusty, dry, lifeless eyes. It seemed as though they themselves were asking me:

What now, Doctor? What now?

What now?..

***

I'm not going to give you any advice today. Who am I to judge? I even can't help myself draw a route out of my brain for the humiliating and confusing thought haunting my mind.

I'm confused. I'm embarassed. I'm clueless. But I still live. I still go on. You may agree or not - to give up isn't the worst option, contrary to what most ponies say. But I will live to live. That's my philosophy. That's the philosophy of Time. The God I worship and the Devil that kills me.

I will still search for the meaning of the meaningless Universe.

Because that's life. And that's how it goes.