Note to self for future reference: just because a potion tastes like bananas, that does not necessarily mean the ingredients were a hundred percent measured correctly before being dissolved into the brew.
Oh my, wasn't this particular trial proving to be one for the ages! Prior trials had reliably taken me back centuries at will with a simple mouthful of an elixir. Thus far I've studied everything from our first defeat of Discord, to the great Pony Exodus and first Hearth's Warming, to the past affairs of countries both far and close, and much, much more.
So much data collected, and in such a short amount of time, too. I'm not sure if the Royal Archivists will thank their Princess or grumble about her for the amount of new history, and workloads, I was soon to thrust upon them.
Calling back to the trial at present, I was quite certain of one thing: too much pulverized parasprite wing, too little regulatory reagent to manage the raw, awesome power of my magic. There was an excellent amount of Luna's favorite banana juice that I had carefully snuck from the castle kitchen while sister was sleeping, though. One can barely notice the original taste of spoiled milk this time around!
Bananas aside, this will have to be my final trial of the potions, I'm afraid. This was for the sakes of both my poor archivists, and my sense of taste.
When the familiar flash of light overcame my eyesight after gulping down the potion, I could mentally sense the decades and centuries passing by in mere microseconds. I was easily well past the beginning of the Pre-Classical. The Paleo-Pony period seemed the most likely destination, as I had well passed my original intended target, Star Swirl's perfection of the amniomorphic spell, by leaps and bounds.
When I had finally arrived at the potion's endpoint, I was quite at a loss for where I had specifically ended up. I was standing in what appeared to be a long rectangular room that was poorly lit, to my mild displeasure. What little illumination there was from the overhead electric lights shined over an expansive and rather posh wooden table, fringed on both sides by a total of six chairs that lurked in the shadowed portions of the room.
"Wait…electricity? That can't be right," I murmured, confused. Electric lights are only a few centuries old. I would know, I once met the ponies who had invented them. The abundant darkness drew my attention again, and I frowned. "Who inhabited this place, some twin sibling of Discord's named Melancholy?"
Thanks to the mystifyingly anachronistic lights above, I could see well enough to make out the décor, which was strikingly modern by Equestrian standards, another major detail that strongly perplexed and puzzled me. With the walls to my right lined by windows with their curtains unfortunately drawn shut, the remaining walls were occupied with posters written in Equestrian script. Many of them had a strange logo that looked oddly like my cutie mark with a grinning face, and contained text proclaiming "SolCorp. We sell everything under the sun!" and "It's always Sunny somewhere!"
Some of the posters were inconsistent with the themes of the others. For instance, one had a slogan that read, "Keep calm and stop making posters." Another with the heading "Red" depicted some kind of brawny, hairless ape-like creature holding a sandwich, which the poster's caption blatantly misspelled as a "Sandvich."
For the first time in many years, I was at a loss for words. All I could summon was a rather non-regal, "Huh?"
Shrugging it off for the moment, I resumed my analysis of the room.
A flat electrical device, likely a television, hung on the wall in a similar manner to the posters at the far end of the room. Potted plants adorned the corners, and a table stocked with cake, confectionery, and fizzy soda pop stood behind me as I scanned from side to side. This room could easily have been a suite in one of the great towers of Manehattan, or any other great Equestrian city.
"Where, and when?" I asked myself, suddenly wishing I could partake of the refreshments behind me, if only it were physically possible. The fumes from the freshly baked pound cake – It was chocolate! – cruelly taunted me as I tried to ponder just how far I back I had been taken by that last potion.
"Let's see, five, ten, carry the zeros…impossible!" I exclaimed. It had taken me back fifty thousand years!
"…the sky's the limit…which is why I'm telling you, we should totally buy the sky and use it for ad space!" I heard a faint masculine voice proclaim.
My eyes shot to my left as the room's only door opened. Garish light from a hallway spilled in, and I spied several bipedal figures make their way in to the table, shutting the door behind them.
Such curious looking creatures! I was instantly reminded of Twilight's descriptions of the inhabitants in that mirror world. Humans…was it? Quite possibly. What little I could see of them gave the impression of a hornless minotaur, or even more so, a slender hairless ape – much like the "Sandvich" person. Their facial characteristics were obscured by the dark, but I could make out their attire as they took their seats. All were wearing neat and prim suits and ties, common metropolitan wear.
"Nope, nope. Afraid not, Anders. Nooooope," one of the figures replied energetically to the first voice I'd heard, twiddling their digits together playfully on the surface of the table. They sounded female. "You can't buy the sky, silly! What are you, crazy?" She was quiet for a moment, and the others held their breath. "We'll buy portions of Luna, instead! There's plenty of space on the Moon, and we need to claim up as much as possible before the Kremlin try to use all the good maria as a canvas for the portrait of their immortal God-Tsar-President."
My brow rose at the mention of my younger sister's name and the outlandish words as many of the others started applauding with their hands lightly, presumably in agreement. Someone got up and approached the windows. They drew the curtains, letting in sunlight and finally bringing the illumination to a more pleasing level.
"You have my thanks," I declared, despite knowing there would be no reply.
Outside the plate glass, I could make out a snow-capped mountain and the skyline of a large modern city, as I had been expecting from this strangely advanced era. Most of the visible skyscrapers were similar in architectural style and varied in height, except for a much narrower, needle-like spire with a circular windowed top that completed the city scene in a most iconic manner.
I could see the humans in more detail as well; I was about three quarters certain that that's what race these people must have been. Their skin colors were differing shades of light and dark brown, and the manes upon their heads ranged from golden, to brown, to pink and red. Beautiful, but a far cry from the vibrant and diverse colors of ponies today.
"Well now, anybody else have some bright new ideas to present for today's meeting?" The female asked, parting locks of her curly pink hair, allowing me to see her eyes, which were a light cerulean, if I remembered my colors correctly. A hand raised and I looked over. It was someone other than the first known as Anders.
"I do, Paulina!" He cleared his throat. "I propose that we consider investing some corporate stock in a new business venture on Mars!"
"Lay it on me, Hakim!"
"Unobtanium mining, madam CEO! It would be a perfect cover for our illegal nanotechnology division that uh…may or may not allegedly exist."
"We already make beaucoup bucks refining starship fuel extracted from the Sun; a tried and true, pre-existing venture that is totally certain to never carry any substantial risk," Paulina the CEO stated. I presumed she must be the leader of this 'SolCorp' business whose logo adorns the room. "Hmm…nope. I'll pass. Sorry."
The human named Hakim lowered his head and looked sadly at his timepiece, disappointed. I felt a little sorry for him, but felt more curious than anything. These beings once harnessed my Sun as a fuel source for their spacecraft? Such an idea in the present is only the stuff of science fiction!
"I know!" Somepony…or rather, somebody else declared. "Why don't we covertly tie the Sun to one of our experimental gravity well generators here on Earth? With a little tug, we could make it night or day at will!"
"Hogwash," Another human replied, causing a murmuring to pick up amongst the group. "That'd be like Ander's garbage about buying the sky, it's impossible! You can't just 'tug' at a star and make it rise or fall in the sky, willy-nilly! What a money pit if ever there was one. Are we seriously running out of good ideas, here?"
While I could empathize with the human's thought process, the irony of his statement in light of myself was almost too much for me! I suppressed a giggle, holding a hoof to my muzzle.
"Not quite," Paulina answered, standing up from her chair. "Since no one else seems to have anything new, I think I'll unveil my plan. It's been dancing around in my noggin for quite a while!"
There was a sound of someone eating in a most impolite fashion behind me, and I turned about, slightly startled. A pink earth pony had manifested at the refreshments table, and was happily helping herself to its contents. I recognized her at once; it was one of Twilight's friends. "Pinkie Pie? Whatever are you doing here?" I asked her, flabbergasted once again.
Pinkie Pie glanced at me, and her eyes lit up excitedly. "Hiya, Princess Celestia!" she greeted, bits of rogue chocolate sliding off her muzzle.
"How…" My inquiry was brusquely interrupted as the young mare held the tip of a forehoof to her lips, making a 'Shh' sound. My patience with Pinkie Pie remained vast, but nevertheless, my face still fell into a frown.
"We're almost getting to the good part," Pinkie Pie whispered. I assumed she was referring to this historical moment itself, so I left her to the treats and returned attention to the humans. The female known as Paulina was still introducing some new plan of hers. If they had discussed such things as the manipulation of my own Sun on a regular basis, then this plan must have been most profound.
"Now, in light of recent global diplomacy, it's clear that Humanity has at least another fifty years before the fighting between the Red Empires and the Blue Corporate Coalitions renders our home too dreary and depressing to live on any longer."
"This again?" Anders interjected. "With all due respect, every major civilization-endangering problem so far has been dealt with. There's no realistic reason why we'd ever have to abandon the Earth completely! Besides, most of the colony worlds are agrarian, and full of frontier yokels and nature hippies."
The pink-haired CEO made a tsk-tsk noise I assume most have been to express displeasure. "While it's true that our giant walls have dealt with sea levels, and it's a fact that our scientists have somehow managed for the past century and a half to prevent the obnoxious Draconequii from completely remaking the world in their image, our greatest problem still remains. That problem is our own internal squabbling across the Earth and the sheer reluctance to just cheer up and make nice!"
Mention of Discord's kind made me tense up, and I was now hanging over every word, eager to not miss a single thing that was said.
"What we need as a people is a vacation; a vacation to end all vacations!" Paulina exclaimed. "Moving all citizens off world and to the Colonies or through dimensional portals for a few centuries would leave the Earth to her own devices, which is where my plan comes into play. How many of you are familiar with recent news in the biotech industry?"
For just a few centuries? I've never seen a human inside or outside of Equestria, nor any mention of them. Something must have happened, or they changed their minds about coming back. Although...with so little evidence or proper context, I could speculate on this topic for ages. And biotech? Nanotechnology? Humans must harbor quite a fondness for their technological prowess. It would be understandable, given their apparently miniscule magical capability.
"Let's see…some researchers in Mumbai perfected a group of simians with neuron counts equivalent to that of humans. Heard they call them 'upgrapes' or 'smartpanzees', something like that," one replied. "There's also the massive chimera projects that William Big's Iron Enterprises are currently beginning."
"Uh, they did also successfully clone a living dinosaur at some park back in January," Hakim added.
"Dinosaur? Interesting, I believe I had once seen a giant lizard referred to as such through Star Swirl's mirror during our many escapades," I mused aloud.
I saw Pinkie Pie appear in the corner of my eye as she walked up beside me. "That's pretty cool, Your Highness! That time where they nearly got wiped out by the giant space rock made me really sad, though."
What? Never mind. Probably better if I didn't ask…
"Yes!" Paulina exclaimed, taking her seat again. "My own family on my father's side owns a limestone quarry operated by healthy Wooly Mammoths straight from the Ice Age outside Helsinki. Point is, we can engineer life itself in today's world! Sure, you may be asking, 'True, but what does that have to with anything, silly?' Well I'll tell you! While left on her own, the Earth will need a very special group of sapient species to watch over her and make sure the proper environmental conditions as we know them are retained while we're away. It would suck to return to a world that looks like a dirty snowball if something beyond our control went awry, wouldn't it?"
The CEO had a point at the end, there. That would be a most unpleasant experience. I was quickly developing a strong hunch as to where Paulina was going with all this. If true, the implications might just throw me into a torrent of existential thought.
"It's a bit of a leap," one of the other females in the room pointed out. "SolCorp of course possesses the financial and political assets to pull of such an unprecedented and ambitious measure as the evacuation of Earth for one reason or another, but it all hinges on these…creatures…of yours. What did you have in mind? Our R&D branch can probably handle anything you throw at it."
"Always good to know, Meghan. Let me show you guys…" Paulina waved her arm towards the television on the wall, and I watched as the screen flickered to life.
My jaw dropped. I could only properly describe what I was seeing as nothing less than the blueprints of everything I knew.
"See, my older sister Madeline and I drew inspiration from mythology, the Draconequii, fantasy media, and a whole plethora of other super-duper cool stuff in these initial designs!" Paulina explained. "The winged pegasi will in time develop capabilities for atmospheric manipulation, like cloud seeding, for example. The 'baseline' variety will be suited for the masterful upkeep of plant life so that the Earth stays forever green. Lastly, the horned unicorns' abilities are a blatant rip-off of your average Draconequus' hocus-pocus," her voice fell to a whisper. "Shh, don't tell them we stole magic from em'!" I heard Pinkie Pie giggle beside me, but I kept my focus on the human.
Paulina returned to her normal speaking voice and beamed at her colleagues. "Isn't that exciting?"
"Yes of course!" Anders interjected. "But may I ask, why an equine-inspired design, exactly?"
"Because why not equines?" Paulina retorted, winking in my direction. I heard Pinkie Pie giggle yet again, but I'd already had my fill of the bizarre today, so I ignored it. I could already sense that this vision of the past was about to conclude, and along with it my entire set of experiments, so I could not afford to miss anything. The CEO began pulling out some documents from a manila folder and dispersed them to the others, who read them eagerly.
Appealing to my inquisitiveness for just a brief second, I looked to my side again, only to find that Pinkie Pie had vanished as mysteriously as she had appeared. I don't even…
"I presume that besides these three, there will be many more species of these ponies to come, such as a combination of the original three?" Meghan inquired.
"You betcha!"
"We could even help guide the growth of their future civilizations with the new crystalline-based quantum computing framework we've perfected at our facility in Missouri," Hakim proposed. "The magictech 'Harmony' Project."
"Yeah. Best to give them as much of a good head start as possible when we leave," another of the humans added. Our legacy isn't just going to be a bunch of empty cities and a whole geological layer of Bart Simpson dolls. We have tons of other creations we'll be leaving behind, as well."
"Ladies and Gentleman of the Board!" Paulina declared, standing up once again. "We're only just skimming the topmost layer of sweet icing on the multi-tiered cake!" She turned to look out at the city skyline as my mouth starting watering in spite of myself. "We have much, much to do!"
With that, the vision ended, and I was catapulted to the present with an empty potion flask in my grip. Astonished at everything around me with my newfound knowledge, I stood there in my chambers for a whole five minutes, just contemplating the gold filigree on the walls when Luna suddenly stormed in through my door.
"Luna, you'll never believe it!" I exclaimed, approaching her. "I think I may have just stumbled upon the origins of our entire world!"
Luna just raised an eyebrow. "That's wonderful, Celie. Now, why don't you go outside the castle and replace the juice that you stole!"
"But I've…"
"Bananas, now! Fresh ones, and a new blender, too! You know I sleep far better after a glass!"
I sighed and set the empty potion down. "Very well."
