The Fractured World was far...blander than Sci-Fi says it should be. Here we have a desert of grey dust with a slightly green tint. The occasionally rolling thunder came with the blue flashes muzzled behind the clouds. Standing out of the dust dunes, black timbers with various signs hanging in the still air. On top of that, we have various temporal zones layering themselves over the landscape. The ponies wonder past a bakery; partly a blackened wreck, partly intact at night and partly covered in multi-coloured balloons.

"I still think this is stupid..." Cherry grumbles, plodding in front of the Professor. "And my machine's don't break!" Her voice drops viciously.
"I make sure of it."
"It's not the machine, it was the design, Cherry. You stopped us from getting turned inside out or something worse. Perhaps being transformed into cookies." Grey admitted, his eye caught by several fillies halted in mid-trot.
"Cookies? Really?" Teddy cranes around in alarm.
"I dunno..." Gray said blankly, "It was supposed to be a joke."
"Hmm...Perhaps this is a black day after all..." The Professor mumbles.

The four stop before a house that was oddly intact. A brightly coloured, wooden-timbered house like plenty they had seen before.

It was sitting in the dust as thought the world had gone to pot around it. Grey dunes of dust in all directions, no wind or vegetation except from another temporal zone. A tree to the right was poking out of such a zone, as though interested in the activity.

Teddy takes a step forward.
"What are you doing?" the Professor snaps.
"I'm going to investigate?"
"Are you sure?" The Professor asks.
"Well, yeah."
"Good luck!" The Professor said with a slight grin.
"Teddy, no!" Cherry said.
"Go on Teddy! Exploration is needed!" The Professor said with a shooing gesture.
"Teddy! We don't know what's behind there!" Cherry pleads.
"All the more reason to go in!" The Professor overrides.

The door is knocked open wide, swinging slowly on it's hinge. Inside the open living room was a young filly running around in circles on a mat. Her ebony mane trailling behind. Teddy closes the door.

"All-" He's stopped by loud voices muffled by the door. Teddy opens the door again.

"I'm a prisoner here! Why can't I-" The filly from before looked bigger here. Her flank wasn't blank either. Instead, a paint palette. The mane was combed over one eye.
"You want to move out?! How about getting yourself a job? Then you can pack up you stuff an'-"
"There's nothing here?! I've tried!"
"Picking apples? Delivering letters? Making-"
"They aren't taking anyone! We've been over-"
And then they stopped. Abruptly, like a ghost being flushed down the drain when Teddy closed the door.
"I wonder if that works everytime..." Teddy looks round at his comrades, hoof hovering just before the door. He got a round of shrugs from them all, eager to see what might happen. The door it nudged open.

Inside this time is the same mare, her mane flowing down her back in a long braid as she watches something gurgling in a cradle, making odd faces. The room was covered in decorations with all the same stork carrying a bundle through the air. She stood in the wake of wrapping paper and baby things, fresh and gleaming. Teddy closes the door.

Teddy re-opens the door. The living room is now covered in photos all over the walls and the mantle piece above the fire of a small filly with an ebony mane. The same mare wonders through carrying a lunch box as she walks up to the bottom of the stairs, just out of view.
"Come oooon! You'll be late!" She wonders away from the stairs, looking around at the state of the scattered toys and multicoloured dolls, lined up to sit on a sofa.
"And your cleaning up this place when you get home." The door closes again.

The door opens again. The living has gained yet more pictures of the small, filly. Her mother, the only mare that's been seen here, trots through the room, calling to someone: "Hurry! She'll be coming back from Canterlot soon! Hurry! I need to know what that schools been doing to her!" The door closes again.

The door opens and the ebony mane of the mare has gained plenty of platinum in there. She rocks backwards and forwards in the warm glow of the fire in the heath, muttering to the ebony-maned filly on her lap. A dusty photo album to one side, sitting on a table. She rocks gently, falling asleep. The door closes again.

The door opens again to the blank room find it filled with boxes to the ceiling. A brown coated colt wonders around, looking around, feeling pleased with himself. This place was a bargain. The door closes again.

"I'm...I'm going to leave that alone for now..." Teddy said, backing away from the house tentatively. He was half expecting something to pop out.
"The fuck?!" Cherry bursts out with suddenly. "That was like switching radio channels!"
The Professor clears his throat for all the hear: "What we are seeing is a Temporal Reflection. These are merely shadows of another time period, either in the future or the past. Light has and sound has travelled here after reflecting off of the ponies you saw there. Like how we can study the life of a star by it's light, so too can we observe these individuals by the light and sound reflected from them. However, the delay must be utterly different between stars and these ponies as we can hear them too. Light has not had a chance to put some distance on the sound waves and so we are presented in the form the temporal ghosts we just saw."
"OK...So...Why did it change every time I closed the door?" Teddy asks. The Professor thinks for a seconds before shrugging.
"Coincidence perhaps? The Temporal Field here is either particularly weak or only works one way. We may see two-way zones soon." The Professor trots just ahead of them, past the house. "Come along, there must be more than one discovery here."

Onwards they wonder through the patch-work landscape for another few metres before coming to a scene of the town square, ponies walk and chatting while going about their business. Utterly frozen in place as they approached. A pair of fillies were chasing another through the scene while a cart repair-pony was hard at work on a wheel. The stalls were surrounded by customers weaving around, looking for goods and good prices. So, the usual, then.
"Weird...This seems to be the present." Teddy said.
"Our present is probably close to theirs." Grey corrects, as he takes a few steps forwards. "But this is not ours. Professor, do you think this is similar to the reflections we saw before?" He said, walking along the vague divide between him and the ponies in the frozen scene. He stops for a second before walking forwards as he watches the frozen ponies. Then he stops again. Then he walks backwards, watching intently.
"Something up?" Cherry said, walking over to Grey. As she did, she saw the world in the temporal zone move forwards. The ponies and the fillies and the colts chasing after them who appeared from the distance, all came to life as she watched the scene. Animation happened with her movement, died when she halted to gaze with amazement.
"I..err...You, you guys have got to see this!" She said, waving them over with a hoof. "It's soo trippy!"