Unknown Contaminant

Eight dreamers.

They were not professional dreamers, of course. Prodreamers are highly respected ponies, who get paid very large quantities of bits for the simple act of recording their dreams so that other ponies can view them. Granted, the job itself isn't very simple. It involves thinking up a very complex, fantastic dream that most ponies would enjoy, and it has to be done subconsciously. A prodreamer needs to have a very creative mind, but they also need to have self-control when they're asleep. Very few ponies have what it takes to be one, though many would love to be one. After all, what could be more easy than recording a dream?

Out of all of them, Pinkie was the closest one to being a prodreamer. Her mind created all sorts of fanciful ideas, often at breakneck speed. These ideas ranged from partying like there was no tomorrow, to caring for a particular pair of foals. Her dreams were quite vivid, but lasted only a few short minutes before her mind switched gears and started a new one. If she could have mastered subconscious control, she might have made an excellent professional dreamer. That is, if she had ever wanted to be one.

Time Turner had very quiet, rather uninteresting dreams. Occasionally his mind would come up with a giant, fantastic adventure, but that was far too rare for it to make him a candidate for prodreaming. Much more often were dreams about scientific formulae, experiments, and other things that had to do with his position in the crew.

Octavia, the Acheron's captain, had some interesting dreams. Her subconscious mind often conjured up majestic, sweeping symphonies, with her playing the cello in her own odd way, standing behind it and holding the bow in her hoof. These dreams were memories of happier times, back when most ponies still enjoyed her classical compositions. Before she had needed the bits that the company had offered her.

The dreams of the second engineer, Berry Punch, were a very strange assortment. Several of her dreams involved a bottle of an alcoholic drink gnawing away at her head while she tried to pry it off. The rest of her dreams involved a little foal running around her house, or the many parties she used to go to.  The only one that she could say she enjoyed was of an event where she and the foal competed in a giant race that involved pies, eggs, and a mad dash to the finish line against the first engineer. At least, she thought it was the first engineer.

First engineer Applejack's dreams, in contrast to those of her co-worker, were very subdued, and mostly consisted of working in her family's apple orchards. She also occasionally dreamed about her family's gigantic reunions, or conversations with her little sister.

Derpy Hooves' dreams often consisted of flying, something she rarely got the chance to do with her current occupation of navigator. Alternatively, she had dreams about her daughter, both good and bad. There was also a certain recurring dream involving the science officer, one that she wouldn't dare tell him about.

The executive officer, Lyra Heartstrings, didn't really dream in cryo. She felt the prick of the needle go into her skin, closed her eyes, and woke up almost immediately. This made her a terrible candidate for prodreaming.

The ship's doctor was a soft spoken mare named Fluttershy. Her dreams consisted of long nature walks and small chats with her friends.

Oh, and there was the rabbit. Name of Angel. He was an angry little creature, and his dreams were of no consequence or importance.

One essential 'crewmember' never slept, and even if it did its dreams would be nothing but a series of ones and zeroes. This was the computer, a clunky machine nicknamed 'Sparky'. Its primary tasks were to keep the ship on course, check the cargo every so often, and make sure the crew's cryo tubes didn't malfunction. Its secondary task was to monitor radio chatter going across the vast reaches of space.

A particular message stood out from the rest of the endless stream of radio chatter that Sparky received. It had no intended recipient, and it repeated itself in a set pattern. The computer's circuits dwelled over this, before checking what it was supposed to do, according to company guidelines.

And then, Sparky decided to wake everypony up.

***

Lyra Heartstrings slowly opened her eyes. She saw the clear lid to her cryo tube lifting up and away from her. Like every time she had been in the freezer before, she felt like she'd just gone to sleep. Groggily, she placed a hoof on the edge of the tube, and lifted herself up to an awkward sitting position. Pulling at the edge just a bit more, she lifted herself over the edge and onto the hard, cold floor.

Looking around, Lyra noticed that she was the first one up. She sighed. According to a little tradition, this meant that she had the dishonor of trying to get the ship's food dispenser to make something that didn't taste like ash. She took a careful step, stumbled, regained her balance, and made her way towards the large door at one end of the room. Perhaps, she thought, I can get to the mess before—

"Hey, Lyra..."

Lyra stopped at the door, and without looking back she said, "Yes, Pinkie, what is it?"

"Ya got a really bad case of bed mane."

"I had no idea, thanks for telling me, Pinkie."

"You're welcome!"

Lyra's horn glowed as she lifted the clear little card she had on a necklace up to the door. With a soft hiss, the door slid up into the ceiling, revealing a corridor just slightly taller than Lyra. When she heard a loud thump, she turned around to see what had happened.

Time Turner had fallen out of his tube, and was trying to get back up.

"I don't know how," he said, "the two of you can get out of these things so bloody quickly..."

"Lots and lots of practice," Lyra said as she walked out of the room and down the corridor. As Pinkie helped Turner up, the rest of the crew started pulling themselves out of their tubes. When Octavia pulled herself out of her tube, she noticed a small, blinking yellow light in the wall in front of her.  She frowned. Well, she thought, at least it isn't red.

"Morning, 'Tavi."

"Pinkie, you know I don't like it when you call me that, right?"

"Sorry, Octy."

Octavia lifted a hoof to her head. "OK, Tavi's fine. Just... Nevermind..." As Octavia walked out of the room, Pinkie said a cheery good morning to Berry Punch and Applejack, before moving on to another tube.

"You know what I want to know?" Berry Punch asked, lightly jumping when she touched the floor.

"Nope," Applejack said as she set her prized stetson down on her blonde mane, "Ah don't."

"How come Sparky keeps this room so friggin' cold all the time?"

"Because, Berry, that thing's got the brain of a sun-fried slug, an' you know it."

"Right, I forgot about that..." The two of them soon wandered out of the room.

Derpy Hooves woke up to a rabbit bouncing on her head. When she was just about to lose her patience at him, a pair of yellow hooves grabbed him and lifted him away from her. As Fluttershy scolded the rabbit, Derpy pulled herself up and out of her tube, stretching her wings as she hopped onto the floor.

"Angel says he's very sorry about that, Derpy."

I'm sure he does, Derpy thought. "You don't need to defend him, Fluttershy."

"I wasn't defending—"

Pinkie butted in, "Hey Derpy, Fluttershy, it's really, really, really cold in here, how about we all go to the mess-slash-cafeteria and get some breakfast, huh?"

Derpy and Fluttershy looked at each other for a moment, and then followed the pink pony out of the cryo chamber, with Angel following them.

***

The mess area was a small room in the center of the Acheron, with a table surrounded by a couple of couches that everypony crowded into. Striking up some happy conversations, the group ate the autochef's latest production as quickly as they dared.

"What the hay is this even supposed to be?" Berry grimaced at the foul tasting substance she'd just put in her mouth.

"The box said 'apple' something," said Lyra.

"Ah take offense to the idea that this is sp'osed to be apple anything. It doesn't taste anythin' like apples," Applejack said.

"Well, you'd know, that's for sure. And for the record, this 'tea' is most definitely not tea." Time Turner got up to fill his glass with a different drink.

"It makes a mean cupcake, though. And I mean mean, like it'll kick you in the gut if you're not being careful and-"

"Right, Pinkie, I think we all had one of this thing's cupcakes...Hey, you know what, I think we should talk about the bonuses."

Octavia rolled her eyes. "Derpy, we've been over this. You and Fluttershy get what you agreed to get. There's no changing that."

"Yeah, but everyone else gets more than we do. Heck, Berry and AJ make more than Fluttershy does." Derpy leaned over the table, her hooves crossed in front of her dish. Fluttershy continued eating her 'apple something'.

"I don't really mind, it's just that—"

Time Turner returned to his seat. "Octavia, Sparky wants to talk to you."

Octavia, thankful for the excuse, got up and walked to the short, narrow hall set in the wall. Opening the door, she entered the small room, and sat down at the computer's interface chair. A small, black screen was set in the wall directly in front of her. Green letters soon appeared on the screen.

"GOOD MORNING, OCTAVIA"

Octavia never really understood why the computer did that. It always made her feel weird, the computer directly addressing her. She shook off the feeling and carefully, since it was a difficult task with hooves, typed in the question that had been nagging her since she saw that blinking yellow light.

Meanwhile, the rest of the crew minus Applejack, Fluttershy, and Berry, went to the bridge. The Acheron's bridge was a cramped, small place that was only intended to be used in the event of docking and landing, and as such was one of the least comfortable places on the ship. Derpy sat down at her station, uncomfortably close to that of Time Turner's. She tried to ignore him and keep her wings folded down.

Lyra pulled a bulky monitor in front of her. Examining the grid pattern on it, she said, "Contact Canterlot Control. Lets see if we can dock somewhere close to home this time."

Pinkie Pie pushed a few buttons, searching the radio channels for the right frequency. Her face scrunched up in confusion.

"Well, that's weird. They're not answering."

Lyra squinted at her monitor's grid patterns. "You sure about that?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"Derpy, would you check our position? Maybe we're not facing the right way."

The gray pegasus flipped a few switches, and rotated a small stick in the middle of her station's desk. On her monitor, a view of stars slowly changed to that of a giant, ringed planet.

"Uh... I don't think we're home yet," she said, "the closest planet's some gas giant," she said. For a moment, silence lasted throughout the bridge. It was Time Turner who broke the silence, voicing what everpony was thinking.

"Well, why the buck are we out of cryo and orbiting some gas giant?"

In the engine compartment of the ship, Applejack and Berry Punch sat at their own stations, listening to the intercom.

"Did you hear that?" Applejack asked.

"Yeah," Berry said.

"Ah'm tellin' ya, there'd better be a good reason for this. Ah've already missed Apple Bloom's birthday this year..." Applejack leaned over, grabbed a small flask from the floor. "Cider?"

"Yeah-Uh, N-no, I'm..I'm fine."

"Sure?"

"Yeah...Yeah, I'm sure." Berry tried not to look at the flask, and tried to ignore the enticing smell of the beverage inside of it...

***

The crew had gathered in the mess once again, only this time there was no cheerful conversation about the poor quality of the autochef's food. Octavia stood before the rest of the group, leaning on one of the couches.

"I think by now you've all realized that we're not home..."

"Yeah, care to explain that?"

"What do you think I'm doing, Lyra? Now, as I was saying, Sparky has picked up a distress call from an off-world colony."

The group erupted into a brief moment of conversation.

"Settle down, settle down. Now, it just so happens that we're the closest ship to the colony in question. And that means we get the unfortunate honors of going down there to help the colonists out."

"Uh, I don't mean to be a party pooper, but we aren't exactly a rescue ship," Lyra said. Fluttershy looked at Lyra like she'd grown a second head.

"Well, yes, but that doesn't mean we can't just sit and not do anything. Why, I-"

"Fluttershy," Octavia's voice was calm as she spoke, "I'd like to finish, if you please? We're going to have to go in regardless, because if we don't then the company won't pay us. That means no bonuses, and no bits." Derpy shifted uncomfortably. "Before we land, though, I thought you all might be interested in hearing the distress call, so I had Sparky make a hard copy of it." Octavia pointed at a small tape recorder sitting on the table.

"I was wondering what that was for," Pinkie said.

Octavia continued, "I'm going to warn you now, it doesn't sound good..."

Octavia pressed a hoof onto the play button of the tape recorder, and the group all leaned just a bit closer to hear it.

"Mayday, mayday, mayday. Is anyone ou—ere? This is the New Canterlot colony, emer— channel. We found something, in the ice... We found... —elp, repea— ...Unknown—Mayday may-...Mother of Celest—" What followed was an unholy shriek, the pony who had been speaking's screams and the sound of tearing flesh, and then only that horrid shriek until the tape ended.