If one looked hard enough they could see where the subtle slope began, most saw it before they felt it though, a huge clearing devoid of any vegetation of note. It was easiest to see from the air, the multi-kilometer circle stuck out plain as day when you could see where the trees stopped and the barren earth began. The ‘Zone’, as it was called by most, sat smack dab in the middle of what was once Everfree Forest, now little more than the odd surviving tree or shrub that had managed to grow. It was a strange sight to behold, like a shallow bowl had been etched into the earth, with nothing more than short brown grass taking root.
A few hundred years ago this had been a thick, lush, forest; but now it could barely be called that now that only a paltry collection of trees remained.
The ‘Event’ had seen to that.
One day, without warning, the forest just... exploded. Some survivors reported the air rippling similar to how it looks like on a hot day above pavement, then there was a flash of light, then a blastwave tore through the forest and much of the surrounding area, destroying everything in its wake.
Thankfully, as horrible as it is to think in such a way, only a small group of surveyors had been in that area, had the blast occurred just a few years later it would have wiped the planned town of Ponyville off the map with everything else. So, at least in the initial blast anyway, the death toll was low. In the time after the Event many more died due to the crop failures from the dust from the blast blotting out the sun.
Now, the dust has long settled and life has returned to some form of normal for the ponies of the world. Now the only thing commemorating the spot was a small plaque with the names of the lost etched into it, the Zone little more than a sour memory, few daring to come near.
But not anymore.
By order of the Diarchs Celestia and Luna a research team has been sent to the Zone to discover what happened, and to prevent it from ever happening again.
That is how Twilight Sparkle came to find herself looking out to the center of the depression, the rim of the Zone slowly arching out to her left and right towards the horizon before meeting once more miles away from where she stood with her brother. Shining Armour had insisted bringing a small contingent of his guards along with her team. She’d insisted that she’d be fine with the one’s already here, a small force that served to enforce a no trespassing order into the Zone, but he wouldn't have any of it.
“So... strange.” Twilight mussed, looking out over the landscape.
Her brother let out a ‘hmph’, “Strange doesn't begin to describe it.”
“You’d think that it’d be a bit more... I don’t know” -Twilight shrugged- ”noticeable. Aside from the trees, you’d be hard pressed to tell anything happened here; from the ground anyway. It’s like somepony dug this by hoof, It’s to round, to... perfect, to be natural.”
“Any ideas?” He asked, turning his head as one of his subordinates spoke up as he neared the pair, holding a stack of paper.
“It couldn’t have been a meteor or other type of space borne debris. Anything large enough to leave such a huge crater would have wiped out all life on the planet, not to mention it would have evacuated enough sedimentary rock to leave a depression hundreds of feet deep, not five. Magical and conventional explosives are out as well because there's no associated residue, and it couldn’t be a sinkhole or the like as it’s too symmetrical and it’s located in an inactive area as far as the ground is concerned.” Twilight sighed.
“So... no idea?” Shining lightly chuckled, looking at the papers he’d been given.
Twilight grumbled, looking over at the stack of papers. “What’s that?”
“Station reports from the local guard contingent. In sort, a list of every weird, inexpiable, supernatural thing that ever happened here since the Event. Strange lights, sounds, ponies hearing and seeing things; I’ve looked through most of it and found next to nothing useful, but I thought you could make use of it.” He said, handing her the papers.
She took the papers, giving them a glance. “Thanks Shining. I’ve got some things that I need to get done, so I’ll leave you to your work.”
Twilight turned to her small entourage, smiling as she saw that everypony seemed to be already doing what she needed them to. Tents and the like were going up all around her and some of the equipment was already set up.
She wanted everything to got a smoothly as possible, Celestia had personally entrusted her with this expedition and Twilight wouldn’t take anything but perfection. She knew full well what was at stake and if she could help prevent another cataclysm, she’d do anything in her power to do so.
She watched as an assistant named Swift Winds set up a resonance device, named so because it sent out a pulse of magical energy and gave back readings of everything from soil density to the state of the magical fields in the area, on the edge of the crater. She was going to put up around a hundred of them around and throughout the crater.
Twilight hadn't known her for very long but from what she saw the pegasus had potential. She had a good head on her shoulders, and she enjoyed talking to her. Swift was making her way back to the group when something unbelievable happened. There was a popping sound, like a static charge was being discharged, the air gaining a burnt scent. Then, just in front of Swift the air seemed to shift. Swift either couldn’t see it or didn’t notice as she kept walking. Before Twilight could warn her to stop she walked right into the distorted portion air and simply vanished before everypony’s eyes.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Three years.
Jacob had only been here three years and now the only thing he wanted to do was go back. He hated it here, this place made his skin crawl. He felt constantly on edge, like something was always watching him. It all started the microsecond they found it. Ever since that damned thing showed up on their sensors he felt like he was sitting on a timebomb.
“Blasted Archailects... took this job to get away from this kind of crap.” He mumbled. “What’s this thing doing out here anyway?”
The offending object took the form of a huge computation node, over a hundred kilometers in diameter, nearly a thousand if one counted its heat dissipation array. A normal sight, even here in the Outer Volumes, but what was inside of it was what mattered. According to the ships scans and data packets they’d found it’s unsecured storage spaces, this thing was a Tipler Oracle. That alone made him want to cut his losses and run, but alas he was stuck here as this ship, the ‘Smooth Rider’ was the only relativistic ship around for lightyears. This thing could be three and a half millennia old, though from the look of it this one was a leftover from the Oracle War.
That made him even more apprehensive, if that was even possible.
This thing was a giant overly-glorified calculator, and the Archailects killed billions of non-transapients like him in the crossfire of the Oracle War over a handful of them. Understanding how one worked was beyond any non-transapient, but Jacob knew that it allowed Archailects to solve problems that even they couldn’t under normal circumstances.
Then the people he was supposed to be ‘protecting’ had the wonderful idea to try and contact its controlling Intelligence. Thankfully, nothing responded to the millions of handshake requests they sent. Unfortunately, it let out a power surge that nearly overloaded the ‘Smooth Rider’s’ sensor suite. That was about two years ago.
It had been quiet ever since and its emissions had gone back to what they were when their expedition team had found it.
“Strange, don’t you think?” A rumbling voice purred from behind, and above, him. “That the Archailects would leave such a thing alone and unguarded.”
“Horrifying more like it. They never give anyone anything without getting something in return. There’s probably a damned Archailect skulking in there just waiting for us.” Jacob said, looking up at his boss.
Kerrigan was a nice enough woman, for a Siberoo anyway. She was three and half meters tall and weighed in at over a ton. To say she scared him at first would be a hilarious understatement, to a nearbaseline human like him a Siberoo was like something out of a story meant to scare kids. She was covered in golden fur with a black stripe that stared at her snout, went across the top of her head and followed her spine to the end of her tail. Siberoo were crosses between siberian tigers and red kangaroos, they first emerged out of the early interplanetary era in 240AT and were made to be the perfect search and rescue animals in cold climate conditions. She could be a bit brash at times, but he’d gotten used to it over the twenty years they’d spent together on the ship.
“Something wrong?” She purred, leaning down so her face was next to his, her eyes gleaming.
“No.” He quickly said, looking away.
Kerrigan let out a small worried growl, “Come on Jacob, I know when you're lying, you're not very good at it.”
“I know. It’s this place, you know? It’s just getting to me.” He said, sighing. “It feels like I’m being watched by that damned thing.” He pointed to the huge sphere on the display.
“It’s a surprise to all of us, it’s not like it was on the contract when we bought the system. We’re just trying to make the best of things. I mean just think of what this could mean to the company!” She said, letting out a growl of excitement.
“Forgive me if I withhold my enthusiasm Kerrigan, but I’m just not comfortable here. I mean, were in a system with unclaimed godtech, we’ve got the MPA’s warships on the prowl all around us, the damned Amalgamation border isn’t a hundred lightyears away.” Jacob said, exacerbated. “I wouldn’t be surprised if an Archailect came in and started wrecking everything.”
“I didn’t take you for a Hider.” A new voice said, sharp and high pitched.
Jacob and Kerrigan both looked down to kind that the only other non-virtual on the ship had managed to sneak up on the pair.
The voice belonged to Tvala, a Tavi female and the ship’s maintenance tech. She was the smallest of the treo at about a meter tall, half as short as Jacob and an ant to Karrigan. She normally rode around on Jacob’s shoulder or in Kerrigan's pouch but she opted to stay on the ground for now. She was covered in coarse black fur for the most part, splotched with patches of white and greatly resembled a Earth meerkat.
“I’m not a Hider, I just tend not to feel safe in the middle of a warzone.” He said.
“Nice to finally see you up.” Kerrigan purred, breaking the quiet, her head bobbed as she watched Tvala jump up to Jacob’s shoulder. Normally she’d have to crawl up his body, but the microgravity of the section of the ship they were in let her jump all the way up.
“Not like we’ve got much else to do.” She yipped, letting out a toothy yawn. “The others handle most of the stuff.”
The ‘others’ were the crew members who resided in the ships virch-world. The ship had enough computational material for over a hundred thousand minds but not over ten thousand were on board, they had be using the rest of the ship storage space and processing power to study the Oracle they had found.
They had originally been contracted by Stellar Dynamics to scout this star cluster for raw materials and potential planets that they could come back later and break down, but all that went out the proverbial window when they found the Oracle. He had questioned why they would even need to bring three organics on such a mission as the three of them were such a huge drain on materials, but the company had insisted.
He had a feeling that they knew about this thing all along.
He voiced his concerns to Kerrigan and Tvala but they had told him to stop complaining, to not worry.
He guess’d they were right, after all, it was easy pay. It’s not like anything’s likely to happen anyway.
That’s when the alarms started.
