Chapter 3: History of the Rainbow

[ 3:30 PM Canterlot Time ]

          What the seven non-immortals of this group saw stretched even their minds as to what was acceptable in this land of highly concentrated magic. They saw a cliff-side and a waterfall with no obvious source of water. They saw lush and verdant fields stretch into infinity in one direction. They saw thick forests filled with every possible kind of tree stretch into another. In yet another direction they saw a clear and deep blue ocean, the pool formed by the waterfall emptying into it.

Above them was the strangest sight however. A clear blue sky, not just blue-painted walls of a cave, but an actual sky. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy could feel this space had its own weather, and it was perfectly balanced. Pinkie Pie and AppleJack could feel the ground beneath them was incredibly healthy and pure, like anything could grow here. Rarity and Twilight Sparkle could feel the mana flow in this space, and it was impossibly pure. In fact, those were the two words that perfectly described what was behind the doors as the Princesses closed behind the nine of them, "impossible" and "pure".

          They continued walking through this space until they reached a monument. This monument was incredibly simple by Pony standards. There were six spaces in the middle of a raised platform, all around it were pools of water and various shrubbery. It was as this point that the two Royal Sisters bid their seven guests to sit and listen. There were two more hours until the operation was to begin, and they all had to know what exactly it was they were attempting to do today. Celestia was the first to speak,

"My Little Ponies and Dragon companion,I would like you all to look around you at this small monument. What you see before you is the remnants of the progenitor force to your Elements of Harmony."

Rainbow Dash was confused by particular words being used. "The Progei-what force?"

Luna answered, "More simply put, this is what existed before, and led the Elements of Harmony."

Celestia continued the explanation. "Indeed, Luna. The Elements of Harmony were derived from the residual magic of the Rainbow of Light, after a great cataclysm befell our world and the other world we have spoken of before."

This made Twilight Sparkle perk up. She had seen some of the ancient records. They spoke of a 'sister' world to theirs, a world with an entirely different set of magic, and even the users of this magic were also wildly different. They looked like highly evolved bipedal apes, all manners of browns and tans from light cream to dark chocolate.

 But then, the records of these creatures just ceased, as if something had severed the link and the ancient Ponies just lost all contact with them. Eventually, knowledge of these creatures faded from the minds of Ponykind entirely.

Twilight Sparkle sat there and trembled at the thought, she could not help but speaking; but what she was about to say could shake her five friends down to their cores, "Humans. The world you have been observing is the Human World that we lost contact with eons ago, isn't it?"

"What, Humans,” Rarity exclaimed, “you know those are an old mare's tale! I mean honestly, they looked just glorified apes; a bit skinny yes but primates still the same." Herself nor any of her other friends could even imagine that creatures of legend could have been real, in any fashion.

Celestia figured a reaction like this from all but Twilight, so she motioned all seven of them to gather around her before the platform; there was a long and sordid history lesson about to begin. "My Little Ponies (and Dragon). What Twilight has deduced is absolutely correct. However, in order to explain everything, I must start at the beginning."

"Before I begin, I must warn you what I am about to say, if I were to say it in public, would most likely have every pony that ever heard it repeated believe me or Luna or both of us to have finally gone senile.", Celestia chuckled, quietly musing on how a being that didn't necessarily suffer brain degeneration could go senile. "As I said before, the Rainbow of Light was one the forces that bridged the two worlds you saw represented by those two orbs on the door leading into this Space. As far as me or Luna can reason or research, that Rainbow pre-dates even Luna and myself. This connection worked both ways, the Ancient Humans and Ancient Ponies were in constant contact with each other, sharing ideas and magic.”

“Being industrious tool-makers, they created devices far beyond ours now that utilized their brand of magic, and we showed them how to affect their environment to a degree far greater than what they managed on their own. However, like many Golden Ages, it was not meant to last. Some unforeseen cataclysm occurred in the space between our two worlds, and completely shattered the link. After that, we have no idea what happened to the Humans until we recently began to come back into phase with their world, and we could observe and dive into their information networks."

Celestia paused in order to take a drink from one of the pool-springs around the monument. "After that cataclysm, we only barely managed to stave off a massive ice age. A story similar to what we tell during Hearth's Warming Eve. We as a species only managed this by taking the residual magic from the Rainbow of Light and concentrating it into new entities to be used - these are your Elements of Harmony. All the excess magic eventually became embedded into the material of the world itself; that now residual magic is at its highest concentration here, in this self-contained space, now acting as a silent monument to the source of all Equestrian Magic and endpoint to a bridge to another world."

          Celestia and Luna took a short break from the story to allow the six bearers of Harmony to digest what they heard so far. Applejack was the first to recover long enough to ask any kind of question, "Alright, so I can get that we're all holding somethin that's a piece of somethin way bigger; but how could a whole separate world exist and nopony even know about it?"

Luna fielded this question, "There are infinite number of cosmos large and small that exist along ours in their own spaces. Some are made of nothing but empty, still particles; effectively 'dead' and waiting recycling. Some are roiling pits of pure energy, no sense or reason to anything. Most however are functioning universes; although there is nothing to say they work in a way that we'd recognize. The world we were connected to was a part of one of these latter universes."

Twilight was already trying to simplify the story. "Ok, I think I got the gist of what you've just told us. One, this particular space is the source-point of what used to be the singular source of magic for this world. two, That source of magic helped connect us to an entirely different world. And three, some kind of cosmic disaster shattered the bridge and our source of magic, which we had to turn into the six Elements of Harmony now."

Luna congratulated her on being able to reduce the story down to its salient points so quickly, remarking to herself she might have been her protégé if her jealousy hadn’t flared up so badly it required her being sent Moon all those thousand years ago.

Pinkie Pie then began to attempt to put two and two together. "Ok, so we have the Elements of Harmony and you all have your own power, are we gonna try and make a new Rainbow of Light or something?"

Celestia responded, "No, with our current resources we can only create an imperfect substitute, and it would only allow those that use Equestrian Magic to traverse it."

Rainbow Dash asked a question she really didn’t want an answer to, but somehow it escaped her lips anyway. "Well, just how much power would it take to actually rebuild the Rainbow of Light?"

Luna answered, "To use the energy released from your Sonic Rainboom as a reference point; consider having ten million of those events, all occurring within a space of 1 cubic standard horse-length, simultaneously. This phenomenon would then need to occur repeatedly over the span of 1 year, in order to roughly equal the amount of energy to form and sustain the Rainbow of Light for ten days, give or take three hours. Or to be more blunt, an amount that, if not restrained, would reduce this entire realm to ashes several hundred times over."

Rainbow Dash did not know what made her feel worse: the techno-babble or the feeling of gross inadequacy.

Celestia and Luna exchanged glances, they had explained the purpose of the meeting here, but now they had to explain the why. They were dreading this, because neither of them had any ability to foresee how their charges would react to this part of the story they had to tell, and they only had this evening to commence the operation; lest they lose another 3 months in re-attempting it.

[ 4:00 PM Canterlot Time ]

          Celestia was now standing on the raised platform of the monument proper, marveling at how well the inscribed magic circle had held up all of these millennia of disuse.

She then turned around to address the Bearers properly. "Now that we have established the what we are attempting today, we now need to establish the purpose in constructing this bridge to the second world. When we first began looking at the world, it was entirely alien to us. There was almost zero magic, there were gigantic areas of rampant and unrestrained urbanization and industrialization, and the wild flora and fauna was dead or dying.”

“But what disturbed us most were the people. They were just shuffling to and fro from place to place, seemingly no purpose to their motions. It was like watching a gigantic group of creatures being mind-controlled, yet we could perceive no source of this control. Then we saw them. There were these Domes made of some material, the beings that lived in them lived protected from the ravages of the outside world in their view. Their plants and animals were healthy as far as they could tell. They had plenty of fresh food to eat. Honestly the idea sickened us - we couldn't tell what kind of creature would establish this order of business and think it to be right in any way. "

          "That was before we began trawling their history - that shocked us even more. Rampant wars, genocides, slavery... we thought these were the signs of a species that had gone insane. That was until we got all the way back to the beginnings of their civilization. Once we did, everything we had seen until that point made sense. While Pony Society was built around co-operation because we could actively manage our environment, they could not. At some point their magic simply ceased working; there were no clues left behind so we cannot even hazard a guess as to why it did. They were left to a world that was cold, desolate, and cutthroat. Eventually, humans had to become the same way, otherwise they would have gone extinct."

Everyone gasped, trying to contemplate a world where they had no control over anything and were left to the mercy of forces larger than themselves. Fluttershy figured it would have been like trying to live in the Everfree Forest, but now the Forest was a whole world.

"The hyper-competitive death game life became on Earth began to plague Mankind as a society. While Ponies are not immune to the psychological monsters of Greed, Envy, and Hatred, Mankind seemed especially brutalized by them. They were locked in a constant mental war, yet, over the long haul, they had begun to progress and expand their territories. Not disease, not plague, not natural disaster, nothing could ultimately stop their expansion, even if the expansion was not even and uniform.”

“But eventually, they had run out of places to expand. So then they began to develop mentally; their science had become their replacement for magic. They began to utilize the primal forces of their universe to their own ends. Perhaps if they were given more time, and were in and environment that was more forgiving, they would not be in the condition they are in now."

Applejack raised her hoof in order to ask a question. "What do you mean 'be in an environment that was more forgivin'? Couldn't they just do it on their own, it seemed like whatever had happened all those years ago haven't stopped them."

Luna offered this response, feeling her sister needed a break from speaking anyway. "Bearer of Honesty, in our world, Ponies are more or less free to pursue their own talents so long as they do not directly interfere in the business or pursuits of others. Sometimes this causes conflict, sometimes it doesn't, but in general we are able to resolve this differences amicably. Humans however, due to the uneven nature of resources in their world and their general scarcity, generally don't resolve these differences peacefully. Many ideologies have arisen, preventing the artistic from sharing their works. Industries have arisen, attempting to crowd out and control the flow of revenue to enrich themselves at the expense of others. The basic notions of competition had stretched from the physical to the abstract, and those who were already entrenched would do anything to preserve themselves.”

“However, the march of progress left many to the dustbin of their history; many institutions and entire nations became so rigid and brittle they could no longer adapt, and they simply ceased to exist. However those that still had resources or gained them suddenly; instead of seeing the need to become more flexible, instead became intransigent. Wars, both physical and cultural began to be fought. Unfortunately for the larger population, those with resources seemed to win each time. But those victories have come at an extreme cost for the supposed victors."

Although the six Bearers were still mostly ignorant of the exact specifics of things, they felt that what Luna was about to tell them would be nothing they otherwise wanted to hear.

"Quite simply, in their need to preserve their profits and standing in the greater society, they failed at industrializing in a way that would maintain their environment - fear of losing their money or position caused them to blithely ignore or hate those that'd tell them their path was self-destructive. People, just needing money to purchase food and shelter, did whatever they could do appease those providing them with work, if for nothing else a few extra coins of pay. Many movements sprang up, attempting to make the payment structure more fair to themselves, the workers, but eventually they fizzled as the wealthy browbeat the politicians into line, at least those who weren't of the wealthy themselves.”

“Other movements sprang up, attempting to warn the public of the dangers of this malformed industrialization, how the world's climate and environment could not be managed given their abilities at that point, so they had to be extremely careful how they produced their finished products. These warnings fell on deaf ears though, the whole of humanity is being forced to suffer for the sins of an so-called elite few. We frankly find this situation for our ancient allies to be unbearable."

          Luna still was not finished, and then began to get to the real meat of the issue. "The elite eventually saw the error of their ways, and the population felt hopeful that finally the whole of humanity could do something to make their world a better place. However that was not what the elite of this world seemed to have in mind. Instead, the final hammer on the public's psyche was dropped.”

“The Domed Cities, the supposed salvation for the population from the ravages of a world gone mad, were only to be for those who could afford it. The wealthy and well-connected were effectively abandoning the rest of mankind to suffer the wrath of a world alone. The machines the wealthy created had taken away their purpose, hardly anyone could be employed anymore. Their art soon began to suffer as well, the wealthy no longer wanting to bother with the needs or concerns of flesh-and-blood people. Soon virtual people began to take the place of performers, mechanical puppets did the work of healthy people, for virtually no cost to the owners of industry. "

          Luna was struggling to hold an aura of neutrality, starting to sound more like someone preaching than someone teaching. "Billions upon billions just left to fend for themselves, their only solace was a world-wide information network to occupy their minds and machines that could manufacture enough food for them to fill their bellies. But even this will not last. Those with power, instead of wielding it to help preserve their species, may have damned it to extinction by their malfeasance. Their domes are imperfect and their energy sources unreliable. The weather and pollution of their world grow worse and worse. If the current trend is not arrested and reversed, Earth itself will be rendered barren wasteland, through war or otherwise."

 [ 5:00 PM Canterlot Time ]

          The six Bearers had been transfixed by Celestia and Luna's rhetoric. They had effectively volunteered for a mission of mercy now, they were going to go help these people escape the hell that was not of their own choosing. Celestia and Luna directed them along the platform. It was an incredibly complex magical array, which needed the 6 Elements of Harmony and another source of raw magic to amplify it enough in order to form a link.  As Luna stated, there was not enough raw energy in order to recreate their end of the bridge, but a reasonably stable link could be formed that'd get Ponies to and fro from the other world and Equestria.

 But there was a problem. How exactly do you keep an entire species from jumping off the proverbial ledge? They collectively asked Celestia this question, and Celestia began to think for a few moments. It was a question herself and Luna had been debating these last few months. All of the information they had to dredge up and process, all of the simulations they had to run. No matter what they tried though, all of the simulations were leading them to the same conclusion, and that conclusion disturbed the both of them. Celestia sighed heavily - she knew what she was about to say might shock them so badly they'd want to run and leave and never have anything to do with either of them again; she again inwardly prayed they were of stronger mind than that.

          Celestia took that leap of faith, "Both myself and my sister have been in deep deliberations between ourselves about how to handle this situation. The idea in general was to bring the humans to Equestria and house them here while we figure out if anything could be done to help repair their world. So we began running magical simulations based upon the physical structure of both modern Ponies and modern Humans.”

“Modern Ponies, i.e. us, can travel to and from Earth without much trouble. We would have to take precautions against the pollution, but that is not a terrible issue for us. Modern Humans however, have it far worse. If a Human was to come to Equestria, they would fall deathly ill. The background magic in our world is now poison to them. Unless we constantly shielded them from the raw magical radiation, they would most likely only survive a maximum of 72 hours, dying from accumulated radiation poisoning. Thankfully, actively invoked or processed magical spells and treatments do not harm the human body as far as we can tell, most likely it was embedded into their DNA from their ancestors having used magic as well."

          The Six Bearers all discussed amongst themselves what this meant. They simply could not bring Humans from Earth into Equestria, not unless they were to die within 3 days. No one could call that saving anything.

“Couldn’t we just use our magic to fix their world?” Rainbow Dash asked, hoping there was a simple way out of this problem.

Celestia sighed as she replied. “The problem with that solution is the scale and time-frame. Compared to Equestria, Earth is simply gargantuan. It would take years, possibly decades to repair the damage, and the raw magic that'd have to be funneled through the proposed portal would introduce the same potential for mass radiation poisoning that relocating them here as-is would.”

The phrase ‘as-is’ set Twilight's mind to racing, the implications making her queasy. She then asked a question to hopefully alleviate her fears, "Princess Celestia. Princess Luna. With all due respect. I'm trying to think through how this all could work. And quite frankly, I cannot come up with a solution. But you wouldn’t have us doing this if there wasn't one you all already had in mind. So please, I need you all to tell us. What exactly it is we are about to embark on?"

Princess Celestia's aura of motherly affectation suddenly turned cold. She had shifted from the visage of a matron to that of someone who was not only a ruler, but one who held power for a very long time, and good chunk of that time absolute and unquestioned.

But her seeming coldness was not due to the probing questions of her student. No, this was for the future she foresaw. "My Little Ponies, Bearers of the Elements of Harmony. What I am about to say does not leave this room, until certain events, if they unfold, do unfold. I cannot stress enough how VITAL it is that none of what I am about to say is leaked to anyone unless myself or my sister are the ones to tell them.” She pounded the ground with her hoof hard enough to cause a tremor, but not hard enough to damage the platform she was standing on.

“Effectively, time has become their enemy. If it were earlier in human history, this solution would not even be broached in the way that I would suggest it. However, when myself and Luna speak of how close humanity is to destroying itself, we are being completely honest. Humanity, if current trends hold, is about one major plague or natural disaster away from breaking down entirely. Luna has already begun developing a countermeasure however, but I fear that what we would ask of them may be too much for even the most desperate of humans to agree to."

The Six Bearers braced themselves for what Celestia was about to drop on them, they had no idea what was about to be said, but it couldn't have been good given her tone.

Celestia continued, "In theory, through a combination of their technology and our magic, we can fabricate a new body, fully functioning and living. However, this body would be, instead of a modified human body, a genetic match to our own bodies. In effect, the only way we can save humanity, with the short time they have remaining, is to turn them into Ponies."

Twilight's heart sunk, her mind having already raced to that conclusion and now Celestia was confirming it. Humanity was sitting on a ticking time-bomb of a planet, and the only way to evacuate them in any reasonable quantity was to alter their forms into one compatible with both the means of transportation and their new environment.

But how could they just show up one day and say "Hey new species we just found, your world is about to implode, but if we make you all like us, everything will be good to go." None of this made any sense at first blush, it wouldn't make any sense to the humans either. But at the same time, in its own way, it made perfect sense. All Six of the Bearers each tried to reason out what the ramifications were in their own way, and all of them eventually worked themselves into mental knots. Which wasn’t good since show-time was in about 10 minutes.

          Celestia and Luna silently nodded to each other as they took position at the center of the formation. The Six Bearers of the Elements of Harmony, the only beings that could forge the bridge, simply sat frozen in place, not knowing what exactly to do or say given all the information that was just dumped squarely on their heads. The Princesses both feared this, and figured they had to use their trump card. They began to activate the magical array, but not to form the bridge itself, at least not yet. The Elements of Harmony had to be at their peak of power in order for the new bridge to last, and having the Six Bearers completely awash in doubt and confusion would not allow that.

Luna yelled to all six of them, attempting to snap them out of their stupor. “We were afraid that once we gave you the full details of our plan, confusion would set in. If we had more time we could have gradually explained it to you all, however time is something we are running short of. Therefore, we will project your souls onto the Earth for you to briefly observe the conditions of its people.”

Before any of the Bearers could object, they all found themselves as ghost-like apparitions on the Earth.