A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to Earth
FIRST CONTACT IS MAGIC
It all started with an odd pattern in the static.
Radio telescopes pointed skywards stopped working quite right, returning funny, glitchy results. Many a befuddled technician spent night after sleepless night trying to run down the loose connection, or glitch in the system, or source of interference that was spoiling astronomers’ results, but without any luck. Finally, in frustrated desperation, one of them broke his NDA to send an e-mail to a trusted friend in the same profession... only to have him write back that his observatory was having the exact same problem.
Their interest piqued, scientists and cryptographers looked closer. Once a period of repetition was established, it was easy enough to isolate the source of the signal; a point in seemingly-empty space between Jupiter and Saturn. It was definitely some sort of message, though not one in any language known to mankind, repeating endlessly over and over again as whatever was sending it drifted listlessly through the stars. Debate raged in the highest levels of government over what was to be done. Should they ignore the probe? Destroy it? Attempt to craft a reply? There was no consensus.
Consensus turned out not to be necessary. The existence of the message had been too widely known from the start to be kept a secret. A small religious sect, convinced that the message was a sign from the divine, simply isolated the signal, pointed a transmitter in the right direction, and sent the same message right back.
It was seventeen hours before the local government detected, isolated, and traced the signal to a small farmhouse in the countryside. The locals woke up the next morning befuddled to find their little town under martial law, with tanks rolling through the streets looking for alien attackers who weren't there. It didn't matter. The reply had been sent, and for a few weeks the signal vanished as the world collectively held its breath.
Then it reappeared, not in deep space but near Earth, making a lazy 26-hour orbit around the planet. A second wave of panic gripped the world as the message started up again. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station were given the assignment of capturing close-up pictures, and the world saw verified alien technology for the first time.
It was weirdly colorful. The popular expectation that it would be a solemnly gray ball of unknown metal was subverted hard when the first images came back. It was some amalgamation of rich brown wood growing into and around a structure of purple, glowing crystals. It even had broad green leaves, waxy and sparkling with the stardust it had picked up over its long journey. This time there was no question what should be done with it. The astronauts captured it on one of their flybys and returned to Earth, their mission cut five months short to deliver the precious cargo to the scientists waiting below, salivating to get their hands on it.
Days passed, then weeks, then months, and the world waited with increasing impatience to hear of some great breakthrough or discovery. Conspiracy theorists, already in overdrive after the last six months of developments, claimed that the secrets were being held back and weaponized to control the populace. Or even worse that the Beacon, as it was now popularly known, was somehow mind controlling world leaders to submit them to the aliens’ nefarious schemes. Several more paranoid military figures suggested that some sort of extraterrestrial combat unit be created to battle whatever invaders might be on their way, even going so far as to stock an underground base in Brazil with a small division of elite troops.
As the months became years, the initial panic died down. The popular media moved on with no new developments to officially report. Unofficially, a rumor would leak out of the secretive laboratory here and there. Whispers of a mutual language being learned from the ground up to communicate with the Beacon, constructed from pure mathematics. When no new signal appeared, no invasion fleet, no credible reports of abductions, the whole thing started to feel a great deal like some sort of elaborate hoax. Amateur sleuths posted lengthy essays on the internet explaining the myriad of ways the first pictures of the beacon had been faked, blowing up those initial images and pointing to what they believed were artifacts of photo manipulation. Life, in general, went on.
That all changed when, three years after the initial discovery of the signal, the laboratory held a press conference. There had been a breakthrough, they promised. Once they’d kludged together a way to talk to the Beacon, everything had progressed much more quickly than expected. Press outlets battled one another to be assigned one of the two hundred seats at the initial announcement, and several dozen less reputable reporters bribed a security guard to let them sneak in and stand in the back. The rest of the world watched the announcement broadcast live on every major news network.
The three lead scientists came onstage, looking exhausted but excited, and called for order and quiet. They had no intention of burying the lede. Since they’d established a reliable means of communicating six months ago, everything had proceeded quickly from there. The Beacon wasn’t simply a repository of information, some extraplanar version of humanity’s Voyager. Once they had started talking to it, it talked back. Their initial hypothesis had been that it was some sort of artificial intelligence construct, or simply a completely new form of life. But the Beacon had corrected them. They were not speaking to something inside the Beacon, it was simply a conduit. They were talking to someone on the other side of it, and that intelligence had a message for them; We’re coming.
It took forty-five minutes to calm the resulting panic that swept through the reporters enough to continue.
Yes, the species on the other side was already on their way. They were able to communicate faster than light, as they’d demonstrated. Using the plans the entity they had spoken to had shared with them, anybody with fifty dollars, access to an electronics parts store, and a working knowledge of basic circuitry could do the same. The devices were mind-bogglingly simple and according to all known terrestrial science they shouldn’t have worked at all. Yet somehow, they persisted in turning all the knowledge mankind had about the universe on its head simply by existing and functioning, drawing on some completely foreign set of scientific principles that worked alongside and sideways to the physics humanity was already familiar with. Apparently, the lead scientist had declared without quite managing to hide the scorn in his voice, they were simply magic.
Despite this, physical travel across the vastness of space was another matter entirely. Their species had mastered teleportation, and could even open a portal between their worlds. There was a single catch, however. The portal could only be opened from Earth’s side. That meant that someone from her world would have to make the trip, the sublight, millenium-long trip, to contact them before they’d ever be able to have face-to-face communication. Nobody alive today, or their children, or their grandchildren, would ever meet an alien in the flesh.
Still, though, the entity felt the sacrifice of a few brave individuals who’d volunteered to be wrapped up in a stasis spell and sent drifting through the stars would be worth it to open up our worlds to each other, and hoped that in the intervening time they might get to know one another better. Her population had access to all sorts of communication tricks, and many of them were already clamoring for an alien pen pal. One of the secondary researcher chimed in at that point that he’d already fallen into the habit of communicating with the entity by name. It had been something of an inside joke among the lab workers to preface any communications sent through the Beacon with a sincere if simple greeting: Dear Princess Celestia...
Over the coming days, the internet exploded with speculation about the creatures on the other end of the Beacon. Powerful corporations brought unbelieveable political pressure onto the relatively naive and sheltered team of scientists to release the plans for the communication devices to their in-house researchers. It was rumored that one telecom conglomerate paid an unheard-of fifty billion dollars to win the initial rights to the technology.
It was, perhaps, the worst investment in modern history. Like most secrets, this one went unkept. Plans leaked. Schematics appeared online. What the executives of the company hadn’t counted on was just how simple the devices were to reproduce. It wasn’t long before every garage hobbyist was cranking them out; they could be assembled in three or four hours once you knew what you were doing. The company tried to sue the problem out of existence, but it wasn’t long before most of the developed world who wanted to contact the other planet could. A culture not unlike the olden days of ham radio flourished in the gray zone of trademark infringement, with humans broadcasting their written messages to the other world. Early models of the devices, especially those put together in a slipshod manner, were notoriously unreliable. It was easy to end up replying to an alien other than the one you meant to, or be dropped into the middle of a conversation without any context whatsoever. Still, those sorts of quirks added to the charm and novelty of it all, in a way. Publishers rushed to translate and publish alien collections of literature and poetry, while forgotten authors of little renown found a second life in a fanbase they never could have anticipated.
After the initial freak out and concerns that the aliens were insidiously corrupting the minds of the device users through some never-specified mechanism began to fade, the devices slipped once again into the background of everyday life. An entire generation grew up without ever knowing a time when one couldn’t send messages to an alien world. Engineers communicating with their equivalent experts in the other world shared ideas and theories with one another, and gradually found ways to refine the communication equipment. The first major breakthrough, announced on the thirtieth anniversary of the initial contact with the Beacon (an artifact now on display in an out-of-the-way corner of the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC) was the creation of devices that in addition to transmitting text could also send sound. For the first time, Earth heard the voice of one of these ‘pony’ creatures they’d been writing back and forth with for so long.
The first (known) instance of interplanetary phone sex occurred eleven hours later.
New capabilities brought about new problems. While both worlds had agreed on a written language, there were a lot of different ideas about how the words should actually sound. Rather than try to get everyone to agree to a single standard, most users found it easier to learn at least one native language from the other world. A bizarre, makeshift economy of facts and trivia sprung up, since there was nothing else to trade. Within a few months, knowledge about Equestria’s social structure and ecology became a major status symbol, while bastardized versions of their words started to slip into day-to-day use as the newest form of slang. Concerns that the aliens would be more technologically advanced than the Earth proved completely baseless: If anything they seemed to be the ones who were hopelessly out of date, and eagerly lapped up anything we would share.
A year later, we’d shared enough information with them that they were able to build the first modem their world had ever seen. Once they’d integrated it into the communication devices, the information exchange exploded. Pictures, videos, music, it could all be shared efficiently at last. Digital, cryptography-based currencies, an early twenty-first century idea that had never quite caught on the way its most ardent supporters had hoped, enjoyed a second renaissance as a way to finally transmit value between worlds without having to rely on an awkward information-bartering system. Experts in subjects the Equestrians were interested in found themselves working for bosses light-years away who they would never meet face to face, video chat exempted.
Interest turned to the biology and physiology of the aliens. Scientists spent decades slowly building up the knowledge base of Equestrian physicists and chemists, while fuming about their inability to just collect a blood sample and analyze it themselves. It seemed ridiculously unfair to have a window into this world with so many bizarre, unexplainable phenomena, tantalizingly close but infinitely far away, and be unable to directly study any of it. Many despaired over having the capabilities to genetically engineer a human being in an infinite variety of ways, while questions about the biological origins of something as fascinating as telekinesis were met with a shrug and a ‘that’s just how it works’ from their pony counterparts.
The painstakingly slow affair of teaching the ponies how to build what to humans seemed like the most primitive of tools and, more importantly, teaching them the principles by which they operated was, tragically, one that several generations of human scientists would not survive to see to completion. Still they toiled, patiently explaining again and again what we’d discovered about how the universe worked, screaming silently whenever a backlash from more traditional ponies stole away their most promising students. Luckily, Princess Celestia gently but firmly insisted that her scholars keep an open mind about such things, and as older generations died off new, more open minds took their place. There were ponies who lived through a fifty year period during which Equestrian society developed more radically than it had over the previous thousand.
Every self-respecting biologist in the world hung over their communicators with bated breath on the day the pony genome sequence was due to be released. The basic structure of their genetic information had been unlocked long ago. In a few, very broad ways, such as its double helix structure, it did resemble human DNA. Still they could hardly be called compatible: in addition to adenine and guanine pony DNA used two other sets of base pairs. Cytosine and thymine were absent entirely. Still, the interest in finding some sort of biological basis for the ‘magic’ that permeated their world was intense. All the ponies’ previous attempts to teach humanity the techniques for channeling or using it ended in failure. There was clearly something ponies innately possessed that humanity simply didn’t.
The data from the genetic sequencing experiments raised more questions than it answered. Finding the single gene or sequence in the oceans of data they’d just had dumped on them was an exercise in trial and very costly error. A few geneticists, encouraged by the similarities between our species, flaunted all ethical considerations in their drive to create a human-pony hybrid. Their patients, culled from the ranks of the poor and the desperate, never survived.
Until the day when one did.
The first hybrid wasn’t all that impressive to look at, and most people on the street wouldn’t have thought her any different than a conventional human being at all. The yellow irises of her eyes might have been a tip off, but cosmetic modifications weren’t unheard of among the rich and eccentric. The twin patches of flesh-toned feathers growing from her back would have raised a few eyebrows. But what really made her special was the way she could hold water vapor in her hand, and shape it like modelling clay.
The doctor who had made the breakthrough was instantly stripped of his medical license and thrown into jail, and the subject herself wouldn’t last more than another two years. Still, her very existence proved that such a thing was possible, and the race to refine and improve the technique was on.
Government laboratories, especially military-controlled ones set up by generals enthralled by the tales of what a powerful unicorn was capable of, pushed the envelope of what could be accomplished with little regard for what should. Earth pony attributes, such as improved speed, strength, and durability, were unlocked first. They were natural outgrowths of genetic modification programs that were already underway to engineer a better soldier, and for a long time the official story was that the labs were only using well-established and medically acceptable enhancement techniques. This became considerably more difficult to pass off as the truth when pictures of one of the volunteers with unusually purple body hair surfaced on the 'net.
It wasn’t until the military successfully hybridized a human soldier with a unicorn that things really began to get out of control. At that point there was really no sense in trying to hide it. The spiralling horn jutting out of the anonymous volunteer’s forehead was unmistakable. The prospect of facing soldiers with magical capabilities on the battlefield, or the prospect of them being used as special forces against them, pushed other countries to accelerate their own efforts in a psychic arms race of global proportions. Tensions rose between the nations of the world as the balance of power teetered and shifted. No state really knew what the new magically-enabled soldiers they might have to face were truly capable of.
The ponies, meanwhile, weren’t so stupid that they didn’t see what was happening. It could hardly escape their notice that there had been a sudden spike in demand for magical training techniques and books describing the advanced magics that no human had been able to reproduce since they’d first contacted us, so very long ago now. Still, for the right price, some ponies were willing to provide the requested teachings and knowledge.
The tension only grew over the next decade. Private corporations and defense contractors did all they could to snap up any soldier with even a hint of magical aptitude. Some con artists even went so far as to have purely cosmetic horns grafted onto them in the hopes of scoring the obscene wages being promised to any hybrid with sufficiently flexible ethical standards. Until one day, at a conference where several world leaders had gathered to discuss the potential applications of pegasus hybrids as a means of geoengineering, somebody blew up the building.
It was never confirmed for certain whether the blast had been set off by an agent of some government or another, by some disaffected former test subject with a grudge, or just a psychopath who’d gotten their hands on a magical device. Criminal forensics of magic wasn’t even a field; how could it be with so much about the topic still unknown or unexplained? So in the absence of facts, theories that hardly deserved the title sprung up instead. Most of them conveniently corroborating grudges the theorizer had already happened to possess. Accusations flew, and the ongoing cold war suddenly turned hot.
In terms of property damage done, or lives lost, or geopolitical impact, the series of linked conflicts that came to be collectively known as the Magic Wars weren’t really all that bad. They barely lasted even six months. Magic or no, humanity had always been exceptionally creative at finding ways to kill things. But the outsized impact of the magically-gifted made a powerful impression none the less. The generals also discovered the hard way that magic was an unpredictable and dangerous thing; As many lives were lost to friendly fire from a hybrid that had lost control, or one who’d pushed themselves too hard and fallen victim to a wild magic surge, as to enemy spellcasters. Power had been easy for their geneticists to grant, refinement and control had proven more elusive.
As the images mounted, the accounts of survivors who had seen office buildings and tanks and hospitals collapse on themselves when a single man gave their support structure the strength of pulled taffy, or transformed an enemy soldier into some biologically infeasible collection of animal parts, or simply gathered up and projected so much energy that one couldn’t tell where the sound of the blast ended and the sounds of the screams began, the people of the world took a collective step back from the edge of total insanity. The international rules governing the conduct of warfare were updated to reflect the idea that magic-based weapons were unacceptable in large-scale conflicts, and things settled down once again. After the shock of the initial bloodletting, the world took a decidedly anti-war turn; a century-long Pax Arcana of relatively fewer major conflicts.
The ponies watched the whole display with a certain degree of befuddlement. Magic had been a part of the way they waged war for as long as anypony could remember, including the millennia-old immortal ones. Indeed, they had come to the exact opposite conclusion. Human weapons and technology deployed to the battlefields of Equestria had horrified them the same way magic had horrified Earth, and been outright banned just as rapidly. Still, the Pandora's box of hybridization had been unlocked by humanity, and all those pony scientists humans had trained up to get the genetic information in the first place were following along the same path. Apparently, there was a certain segment of their population that was utterly fixated on the prospect of growing hands.
Barring a few unlucky and heavily-modified individuals, most of the hybrid soldiers who made it home from the Magic Wars were perfectly fertile, and their mutations were passed along to their descendants. While the nations of the world tried their best to limit the spread of the technology to mix the species further, political pressures carved out exceptions like a river wearing away a boulder. A cure for Tay Sachs (that had the side effect of giving one's baby functional wings) here, a way to grow replacement eyes for the blind (eyes which just happened to let one see the flow of magic through the world as a unicorn would) there. Not to allow such treatments for the sick and crippled seemed no more acceptable than denying an insulin injection to a diabetic. And so the cycle of growing familiarity and acceptance turned onwards.
Pony hybridization moved from the realm of medical treatment into that of a fashion choice. Growing an orange coat of fur was no different than getting a large tattoo, say, and in colder climates a great deal more practical. More traditional factions railed against the process, arguing that humans should only be permitted to copy the genetic information of Earth species into their bodies the way God had originally intended. Why else, after all, would he have given all of His creations the same sort of DNA, and the ponies their own incompatible genetics? But they were on the losing side of history, and their great-great-great-grandchildren would read their accounts and arguments, then turn the page of their book with unicorn magic and chuckle at how quaint the notion seemed.
The pony vessel sent out so long ago began to grow near to Earth, a very different Earth than when it had initially left. Even though the ponies were a familiar presence by now the final approach still carried with it a measure of excitement. Some humans, although what that term even meant now was getting awfully fuzzy, decided to commemorate the occasion by converting themselves to entirely Equestrian biology with the intention of galloping through the portal and never looking back. Genetic engineering had long since been sufficiently reconciled with transformation magic that such a thing was no more difficult than changing into a new pair of pants. News reports from Equestrian spoke of a similar surge in demand for the 'human classic' model on their end.
Individuals on both sides started to plan out ways to profit from the upcoming connection. A futures market sprang up as people haggled trades between goods of very different relative scarcity. The human fascination with gold had never gone away, while Equestrians had their own equivalent in that impossibly rare metal: aluminum. Some were interested more in the personal element. Lovers who had built up relationships of decades gushed to one another as they planned to meet up for their first real dates, hoping to go from star-crossed to star-crossing. Others found that, with the prospect of actually meeting the individual that voice and picture belonged to staring them in the face, they had suddenly come down with cold feet (or hooves, as appropriate) and decided they'd rather see other people.
The ship landed without any complications, other than a brief scare where it looked like one of its parachutes wouldn't deploy for a moment. The ponies inside, yawning as they rubbed a thousand years of sleep from their eyes, stepped out of the ship into a world that was, to them, both alien and familiar. A few of them seemed a tad miffed, actually. They'd given up their entire lives back home to make the trip, the least we could have done was be a bit weirder. It had to be explained to them that, no, another ship hadn't beaten them here. That pegasus over there really was an alien. Yes, even though she sort of reminds you of your aunt. Eventually they accepted the explanation and brought out their precious cargo: an obsidian sphere that drank up any light that touched it. Anyone in the crowd with a modicum of magical senses could hear it calling out to its twin, so far away now but not for long.
With great fanfare, the equine astronauts were paraded from the landing site to the facility that had been constructed to be the portal's long-term home. Equal parts museum, airport, and shopping mall, the complex spread out over an entire city block in every direction. In the great central chamber, against one of the far walls, a small recess had been carved out to the precise dimensions to house the sphere. As it was fitted to the socket, assorted world leaders took the opportunity to deliver speech after speech to the crowd that had gathered to witness the occasion. Overhead, a live video feed from Equestria showed the familiar figures of Princess Luna and Princess Celestia doing the same before a crowd not so different from the one here on Earth. Finally the preparations were complete. The travelers from Equestria stepped up to the orb to activate it. Their horns began to glow.
With a single spark the portal began to open, but the invasion was already over.
Author's Note
The first (known) instance of interplanetary phone sex occurred eleven hours later.
