Chapters Where no mare has gone before.
BOOM!
That was the first Sonic Rainboom. Now the real test starts...
Rainbow Dash was already known as the undisputed fastest flier in all of Equestria, but she had long since stopped comparing herself to other ponies. All that remained was beating her own records. She sped past the rainbow precipitation speed as she had hundreds of times before - it had been years since that mattered to her.
The resistance she felt as she accelerated, intensified.
BOOM!
Second Rainboom. A quick glance behind her confirmed the second rainbow was enveloping the first.
BOOM!
This would be a droll day if she didn't at least manage to blast through Boom 4.
BOOM!
She felt like she was flying into a brick wall, but kept on pushing herself. Soon, the brick wall was actively trying to break her neck, and it didn't last long before she had to grind to a halt. Luckily, deceleration was a lot faster than acceleration, and she stopped almost instantly.
With a hasty descent, she landed in the meadow beneath her, almost too tired to take another flap of her wings. Tomorrow, she would try again, flying back to Ponyville the same way. A look back whence she had come presented beautiful quadruple rainbows. To Rainbow Dash it was a melancholic sight.
It would be twenty-five percent cooler if I just managed to break Boom 5...
Rainbow Dash sat on the library floor, too tired to hover as she usually did.
"Come on, Twilight! You gotta know a way to reduce that drag!"
She stooped her head in defeat. If she wanted to go faster, it was evident she needed help from someone. Who better to turn to than the Element of Magic herself?
"I've reached my limit here, and it's really frustrating. There's nothing new left for me to do if I can't do it..."
Twilight gave her a concerned look.
"You know, Rainbow Dash, you shouldn't push yourself too hard. Based on what you've told me, the resistance scales cubically with your speed. Flying any faster could be dangerous, so you should at least wait until we manage to send probes that fast."
Bah! The egghead was way too cautious. It was no fun just waiting around so Twilight could put numbers on how much she was being slowed. What mattered was that she was being slowed by that drag, and she needed it to not slow her.
"Come ooooon, Twi! You're the Element of Magic and there's nothing you can do?"
Twilight let out a sigh, an indicator of the number of times she had heard that exact phrase.
"As I told you, it's not safe. You told me yourself you felt like you were being crushed, and I don't want that to happen to you, Dash. If you collapse injured during one of your trips, I don't think anypony will find you in time to help... That's why I don't want you to try going any faster."
Now it was Rainbow Dash's turn to sigh. Twilight could be as stubborn as Applejack sometimes.
"Then can't you just cast something on me that stops it from crushing me, at least?"
Perhaps if she could get rid of that part of the drag, she could manage to go faster through sheer willpower. Surprisingly, her suggestion wasn't rejected.
"You know... Maybe I can. I found an old tome on spatial alteration in the Canterlot archives, and there's one that might help. I'm not completely certain, though."
Her wings rose in painful excitement as she saw the dusty book float across the room. If it worked, she might finally make it!
"It wraps you in a field of magic that sets up a personal inertial frame. The force you experience should be at least partially absorbed or deflected by..."
Rainbow Dash wasn't paying attention, despite her hardest attempts. All she could think of was going faster than ever before.
"... but since this hasn't been tried out before, please don't..."
"Sounds good, so when do we start?" Rainbow interrupted.
The lecture stopped, if only for a second.
"Rainbow! You have to promise me! You can go as fast as you have before, but promise me you won't try going faster until the probes are finished checking that it's safe!"
Twilight's stare was intimidating. Rainbow Dash idly wondered how fast her magic could travel.
"Yeah, sure, I promise! You can count on me, I'm the Element of Loyalty after all!"
After receiving the wrap field or whatever Twilight had called it, Rainbow Dash set off to Cloudsdale. She'd take a night's rest before she-
Boom!
The Sonic Rainboom actually surprised her for once, and she stopped. Surely she hadn't been going that fast? She was far too tired to attempt it, anyway. She looked around, but couldn't see anyone else practicing. Strange. She'd better go home before she started having delusions from being exhausted.
The next day was a calm, sunny day. Despite her exhaustion, Rainbow Dash had hardly slept. Her excitement kept waking her, so for once she had seen the sunrise.
I wonder if Princess Celestia ever oversleeps , she asked herself. For that matter, I wonder how fast she can fly. Does she push the sun or does she use magic?
As she ascended to the height she had gotten reserved after she was shown to be almost twice as fast as anypony else, she decided to focus on the task at hand: Breaking Boom 5. She felt a tinge of guilt at breaking her promise to Twilight.
Hey, I'm the element of Loyalty, not Honesty! I'm not betraying anypony! she thought to herself. Time to fly.
As she blasted off, she reached Boom 1 faster than ever before. Boom 2. She barely even felt resistance as she passed Boom 3. Still no resistance worth mentioning. Boom 4.
Boom 5.
She had done it. She was faster than anypony ever before, including herself!
Awesome! Twilight's spell is even better than I thought!
The landscape rolled beneath her faster than she could remember. Meadows became sea, sea became forest and forest became mountains so quickly she could hardly follow the ground with her eyes. She kept accelerating. Boom 6. Boom 7. Boom 8. Boom 9! Now, looking anywhere but straight forward was dizzying. The resistance was far more noticeable now, but it felt like it was pressing on something other than her body. Probably that wrap of Twilight's.
She wasn't even tired, so she decided to give one try at breaking Boom 10, then she would stop for the day and tell Twilight that her spell worked. Forging ahead, the resistance more than doubled without another boom arriving. She felt the onset of the brick wall effect again.
When it feels like yesterday, I'll stop.
Giving one final push, she barely had time to hear the tenth boom before the brick wall gave way in a searing explosion of colors. Everything faded to black silence.
She was no longer moving.
Where no mare has gone before.
Something very bad had happened near the detector. The experiment had to be stopped immediately.
Fauna Sutler, PhD of experimental particle physics at CERN, had had to let the entire Large Hadron Collider be shut down in an emergency procedure twice before. Once when one of the engineers had spilled yoghurt on one of the superconducting magnets, and once when some birds had dropped bread crumbs into an outdoor cooling unit.
That had set back their attempt to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang by almost three months in total, while they awaited replacement parts. It was a good thing that the beams hadn't been on those times. It was a bad thing that they had been on this time.
Silently, she hoped this time wasn't another food incident - if she went down there and found some of the oompa-loompas had left cupcakes inside the accelerator, she would be furious.
Perhaps there is some credit to the mad ramblers saying interdimensional aliens are actively sabotaging the experiment.
She half-heartedly chuckled to herself, trying to make the best of the situation. According to the automated damage reports, it looked like replacing the shielding around the ALICE detector would take 3-4 weeks alone. They wouldn't know how bad the damage actually was until the magnets had been turned completely off so the engineers could get in without being fried by the radiation.
Sigh. And here I thought I had accounted for everything.
She had personally worked on the security systems, despite officially being in the administration department, and she took pride in it. Granted, she had let someone else actually implement it – perhaps they had screwed up her specifications? She should get an engineering degree herself so she could see to that it was done right the next time.
Honestly, how hard can isolating a few kilometers of superconducting magnets really be?
Daniel Arming had just received the green light to enter the accelerator chamber, and was making his descent into the 27 kilometer long tube.
His position as "damage surveyor" was one of profound pessimism, and this event didn't exactly brighten his day. That the job even existed was a confession that things would go wrong, sooner or later, and when it did, there would be damage. His role was to find out roughly how bad that damage was, and tell the engineering teams which ones would be working overtime for the next weeks.
As he got out of the lift, he was greeted by darkness. Far left and right he could gleam that some of the lights in the tunnel had come on, but it seemed that the lights closest to ALICE were knocked out by whatever had happened.
Strange. The failsafes on the tertiary electric systems were disjoint from the main experiment, so a meltdown in the magnets shouldn't affect them.
As he turned on the flashlight on his protection suit and walked towards the green walkways that would lead to the heart of the detector, he felt chills crawl up his boots. It seemed some of the liquid helium was leaking.
Well, he was sure the administration could find money somewhere. His position would most likely be cut, but the view the flashlight showed once he had climbed the staircase told him he wouldn't be needed any time soon after this.
The detector had a large hole in it.
The entire Time Projection Chamber was gone, along with the internal tracking systems and forward multiplicity detectors.
No wonder the automated damage reports were worthless – there wasn't enough left of the machine to say anything more specific than that the machine wasn't working! Some of the absorber walls still stood, luckily, which meant that the experiment was salvageable with a few months of work.
As he walked into the detector's new maw, he considered if it perhaps was fortunate that the helium had leaked. The surrounding walls were singed black, implying that there had been immense temperatures at work, but the helium's job was normally to keep the niobium-tungsten alloy of the magnets at a temperature a modest 2 degrees above absolute zero, so it would limit the damage.
Delving deeper yet into the ruins of what should have been the heart of scientific discovery, a small object, hardly more than a foot tall, blocked his path. As he lowered his body to inspect, he noticed it was moving. Barely, but it was moving. Lighting it up, what met his eye looked like frozen, seared flesh.
"Please state the nature of the medical emergency."
Tarry answered the intercom with the professional calm expected of the Medical Service at the world's finest research station, and the wit expected of any geek worth his salt in his position. The man on the other side, however, was in panic.
"Sir, please calm down. Are you able to get out of the tunnel on your own?"
There hadn't been many hours since the news of the experiment's failure had been revealed, so a call from inside the tunnel wasn't exactly expected.
"No, you don't get it, there's someone else down here, inside the ALICE detector, with severe radiation burns, and there's liquid helium leaking, and... and... They need help!" the voice squeaked. Oh dear.
"Okay, we're on our way. Try to talk to them, tell them it's going to be all right, and that we'll be there soon."
Tarry got out of his chair, leaving his excerpt for a paper on muon medical scanners on his desk, and hastily rounded up the rest of the medical team.
"You two set up the lab for receiving frost and radiation burns, you three get to the ALICE to give first aid to the victim. I'll talk to the reporting witness."
He really wished that they had more people in the medical staff – six were not enough to treat a real emergency properly. What if they hadn't all been at work? What if it had been the middle of the night, when there is only one person on duty at once?
Perhaps he should ditch the work on muon scanning and instead focus on making an artificial, holographic doctor who could be active at all times. Turning to his secretary, he quickly told her to call the local hospital for an ambulance, before diving back into his office to guide to the panicing surveyor.
Where no mare has gone before.
Daniel had spent his time inspecting the body, which was now covered by an environmental hazard suit. He had just taken his off and put it over the... whatever it was. He didn't think it was human, as he had first assumed. Too small. Too many appendages. Perhaps it was alien?
No, that's just silly. It had too many other similarities to terrestrial life - two eyes, two ears, a mouth and a nose, to name the obvious.
And it breathed. Slowly, but it breathed.
"O-Over here!" he squeakingly shouted when he heard the lift doors open, dropping his cellphone.
Get it together, man. You're a scientist. Be rational about this.
He could try to convince himself he was rational as much as he'd like, but he knew he was in panic.
"Th-the victim is breathing. W-we need to ge-get it out of the tunnel to somewhere warm.." he stammered.
First now, he noticed how cold he really was without the suit - it felt like the skin on his hands was crystallizing! As he tried to stand up, his fall was cushioned by the arrival of the medical team. Before his eyes darkened, he saw the other two humans converge on the creature.
Tarry was utterly perplexed by what was going on in his lab. It had some of the most advanced medical equipment on earth, yet none were able to get a clean scan of the animal sleeping in his bay. They had only the apparent lack of open wounds to imply that it didn't have splintered machinery inside it.
With some effort, he had managed to collect both a skin and a blood sample, despite the fact that it seemed to be excreting a layer of non-newtonian gas, of all things. He sampled that as well.
They were able to wash the cold body, hook up an IV and keep it in a temperate cover soaked in antibiotics, but their limited resources were obviously better spent helping the man they knew how to treat than trying to figure out how this thing worked. He had suffered frost burns across his entire body, and he was coughing up blood, telling a story of frosted lungs. Even hooking up a respirator would be dangerous.
In comparison, the small bundled animal appeared to be doing fine. It was even breathing on its own, despite evidently lying in the helium-filled tunnel longer than its human counterpart, and having most of its skin seared with second-degree burns. Only second degree, after lying at the center of a fireball that had melted metallic alloys...
Outside, he could hear the tell-tale sound of an ambulance arriving.
Seeing the man safely off to the hospital, he wondered to himself if keeping the animal here was truly what was best for it. The plaque on the wall recited the hippocratic oath he had taken when he started studying medicine, and he had to suppress a tinge of guilt. Their lab might be cutting-edge, but it didn't have the capacity for large operations nor did anyone have a clue what the thing they had in custody was. He turned to his assistant, and decided to swallow his pride.
"Christina, could you try finding a... highly educated vet to take a look at this thing?"
They all knew as well as he that the heart of the ALICE detector, a hundred meters underground, wasn't exactly a natural habitat for animals, so the odds that even a vet would know anything about this were extremely slim. Yet they might be more qualified to acquire the knowledge needed to treat it and less likely to panic at the sight of an unknown creature.
Tarry assured himself that if he had sent it off to the hospital, someone would have gotten scared and caused a riot, risking the poor thing's life. He decided that they could at least try to find out more about what they had here, and then fill in the vet on their findings later on.
"We still have a patient, people. I suggest we get to work on analyzing the samples I took earlier, and I'll try to classify animal traits for when the vet gets here. If anybody has a good idea for treatment, don't hesitate to present it."
Everyone silently turned to their tasks. They were no doubt as clueless as he was.
Tarry activated his recorder and put it on the desk next to the patient.
"The animal, bar its blistered skin, seems to be in one piece. There are no open wounds, but it bears mentioning that we were unable to take an X-ray image of its bone structure, so it might have internal injuries. Breath is surprisingly steady, at least, so it has obviously not inhaled any of the liquid helium we were told had leaked.
It is unconscious, but all signs point to it being out of any immediate danger. We'll know more once it wakes up and tries to move.
As for body features, it has a rather large head for its size, with a slightly snout-like nose. The eyes are closed behind singed eyelids, and set relatively straight-forward, yet not quite as much as for a primate."
Ears pointing almost straight up on the sides caused Tarry to consider the possibility that it was a canine. Inspecting the mouth falsified that hypothesis, though, as it lacked the canine teeth that signified the species.
Going further down the body, the first thing to note was that it had six primary appendages. A giant insect, then? Closer examination revealed that four of the appendages had hardened ends, like hooves, while the two on the middle were very soft, and hung loosely along the middle. They were sort of reminiscent of cooked chicken wings. The thought made Tarry's stomach growl.
There was also a hairless tail at the end of the it, the inspection of which also revealed that the animal was in fact a mammal, and a female one at that.
"The entire creature is roughly 1.03 meters long from snout to tail-end." he reported.
"It weighs incredibly little for its size – only 4.36 kilograms. That's roughly the mass of a small dog, spread out over a much larger animal."
After describing a few more features, he decided to let the animal rest while he analyzed the data. He smeared some more moisturizing cream on the burnt skin while checking if there were any obvious fractures in its bone structure, and pulled up the wet covers again.
One of the nurses soon visited his office to inform him of the progress of the hematological tests. So far they had only confirmed that the blood contained hemoglobin, the oxygen bearer found red blood cells, which implied that it was a vertebrae. That was consistent with his earlier observation that this was a mammal of some sort.
Hooves placed the specimen in the equidae genome family, so he asked for a specific test comparing it to the genetic records of a horse. Not standard information in this lab, but easily accessible.
He also decided to request a comparison to large bird DNA, primate DNA, and dog DNA. The equine hypothesis currently had the most credibility, but a good scientist investigates multiple venues of possibility.
With that in mind, the creature did look similar to the ancient greek mythological creature, the pegasus...
Fauna Sutler hadn't gotten a word from the damage surveyor yet, but she had gotten her hands on some data from the machine that was registered before it was shut down. The muon count from the outer detectors were off the charts for a fraction of a second before the overload. It was probably just an indication of there being a power surge, considering that the blasted thing didn't even work anymore.
She picked up the phone to call the ALICE access point for an update, just to be told that there had been an accident and the damage surveyor had been sent to the medical bay along with someone else who was found down in the tunnel. They were waiting for the ventilation system to drain the leaked liquid helium before venturing in with a second team of people.
The helium is leaking? Damn.
Helium was starting to become expensive nowadays. Perhaps they should turn off the ventilation system until they could modify it to be a helium collector? No, that'd be even more expensive, and take longer. They had to know what they had to work with before they could work with it.
Oh well. No sense crying over spilled helium.
She decided that she would go visit the damaged damage surveyor in the medical bay, and hear his preliminary report in person. She had the time, nothing interesting was happening at the CERN Control Center anyway.
Where no mare has gone before.
Fauna Sutler briskly entered the medical facility, passing straight through the reception hall and past the employees' offices. This time, she wasn't there to talk to any of them. She was there to talk to the walking damage report that should have been on her desk half an hour ago.
Last time she visited, it had been for her mandatory mental health check. There, she had been told by the annoying resident psychologist to "either make some friends or risk mental health problems". What a ridiculous notion. She mentally dominated everyone! The future of scientific discovery did not depend on her making friends, it depended on her being able to keep a cool head and fix the mess everyone else made of things.
She broke her silence once she entered the lab and saw that one of the treatment beds were occupied.
"Mister Arming, I'd like to know exactly what-"
Something wasn't right. As she walked closer, what greeted her wasn't the bearded man she expected, but a small, hairless animal snoring with its head on a pillow and its body covered by a wet, smelly blanket.
Fauna covered her face in disappointment. What had become of the medical frontier? Was there so little for these doctors to do that they had time to treat animals? She made a mental note to double-check the medical budget when she got back to the control center.
She walked out of the lab and back to the reception hall, where she rung a small bell. Soon a lab-coated lady appeared in the window.
"How may I help you?" the attendant gently asked.
"What happened to Daniel Arming?" Fauna interrogated. "I was told he was moved here, but I can't find him anywhere."
Slightly taken aback at Fauna's direct personality, the woman hesitated before replying.
"I'm afraid the medical service is sworn to professional secrecy, meaning I can't answer you."
Sigh. Some days it seemed like the universe itself didn't like that she was snooping about its secrets, and it was placing social norms designed to hinder her at every opportunity.
"No, you misunderstand - I don't need to know what happened to him, I need to know where he is, so I can talk to him."
She decided to accept that her wording had been ambiguous, and she had probably been misinterpreted, implying that she cared about the health of this person she had never met before.
"Oh, right. He was picked up by an ambulance not too long ago. I don't think he is able to receive visitors at the moment, so I suggest you wait until tomorrow before trying to contact him."
Mental note: Triple-check the budget.
Annoyed at her utter lack of progress, she headed back to the control center. There were medical budgets to review.
Tarry, distracted by his brilliant idea, was furiously reading the wikipedia articles on "Pegasus". According to the greek myths, it was a white, winged horse, placed by Zeus as a constellation across the night sky. Most of the information was, unfortunately, irrelevant.
The most shocking discovery he made was when he found out that the plural of the word was given to be "pegasuses". Confused, he decided to look up the word "pegasi", which apparently was a special form only used in astronomy.
Huh. Further research was required!
Other sites were in uproar over the matter, with long discussions ending without any conclusions being drawn. The lack of reliable sources led him to perform a drastic action.
"Hey, Christina," he adressed his assistant. "What is the plural of pegasus? Pegasuses, pegasus' or pegasi?"
What an awesome pick-up line.
"Ehm... I don't think it matters what you use," she replied after a moment of deep thought. "Even the myth states that there was only ever one Pegasus, who now is a bunch of stars... somehow. So it's sort of like asking how you prefer your name pluralized: Tarrys with a y or Tarries with an i and an e?"
She went back to work with the genetic tests. Tarry could see over her shoulder that the insect match was terrible.
"Well, why don't we ask the thing in our sickbay when it wakes up? You see, I think we have ourselves a pegasus here."
He laughed at what he was saying. Soon he'd start thinking unicorns were real too.
Christina didn't laugh. She turned her chair towards him and gave a cold stare. After a good ten seconds of silence, she opened her mouth.
"How? How is that possible? Even if some biology lab had managed to graft horse- and bird-DNA, how did it end up a hundred meters underground? Furthermore, it appeared when the beams were brought together - what does the ALICE have to do with anything ? This doesn't make any sense!"
The explosion of frustration surprised Tarry. She was usually a calm, silent girl. A brilliant calm, silent girl, but still calm and silent.
"I'm sure it'll make sense eventually," he assured her. "Obviously , the greek gods are real and this is the actual Pegasus. The greek pantheon is famous for being full of assholes who like to play with and confuse mortals."
"Ha. Funny." Her words were sarcastic, but she bore a warm smile. "You know, I have the perfect experiment to falsify that hypothesis. The sky is clear tonight, so let's look for the Pegasus constellation together."
Flawless pick-up line, in fact.
Something smelled bad. Really, really bad.
Rainbow Dash, barely awake, tried turning her head away from the smell, but instead ended up becoming terribly aware of the pain she felt. Whatever covered her not only smelled bad, it made her skin burn! An attempt to remove it quickly informed her that she could barely move a muscle without amplifying the agony tenfold.
It felt like every tendon in her body had decided to rip at once, leaving her helpless and terrified. Even her eyes seemed to be glued together.
By Celestia, what happened to me?! Why does it hurt so much?
The only sounds that answered were her heart - beating faster and faster - and her own panicked breaths.
I'm sorry I lied to you, Twi... I shouldn't have broken my promise... I didn't know I'd mess up this bad... I'm sorry...
Alone in the dark silence, she cried.
Where no mare has gone before.
Despite the community it hosted, the stargazing opportunities at the CERN complex itself were terrible - there was far too much light pollution. Luckily, if you ever tried to look up, the solution would present itself.
Tarry parked his car half-way up the slope of the mountain. That the swiss alps were so close was a blessing, not only for recreational activities such as skiing and messing with the laws of nature, but also his current endeavor.
He had never been much of an astronomer, but Christina had quite an interest, so he ended up chivalrously carrying her telescope. It wasn't strictly speaking necessary - the Pegasus constellation would be quite visible with the naked eye - but she had insisted that going stargazing without a telescope was a waste.
He didn't mind though - he supposed that meant they'd spent more time here than was needed for her proposed experiment.
"This looks like a good spot. Let's set up base here."
Christina had found a small ledge suitable for sitting on while gazing, so they set up the telescope next to it. It didn't take long before Christina had focused it, and got Tarry to take a look and "tell her what he saw." Since he barely knew anything about stars and constellations, he decided to poke fun at his own ignorance.
"Based on my expert knowledge of astrophysics, those are stars."
After a short laugh, somewhat stymied by her palm covering her face, she explained that she meant to ask which stars they were.
"Well, stand back! I think I got this. Betazed, Gallifrey and Betelgeuse?"
If not, he'd have to start using the names of famous musicians, since he had now run out of "real" star names.
"Of those, only Betelgeuse is an existing star, you know." She sighed.
Great! Now I can make a Ringo Starr pun!
"It's actually what we came here to see - the Pegasus constellation," she continued before he could figure out how to tell his brilliant joke.
Oh. Does she want to leave already, then?
"We shouldn't base our conclusion upon just one observation though." She smiled slyly. "That's not scientific. We should keep watching to make sure. That is, if you have the time?"
What a wonderfully literalist, intentional misinterpretation of the scientific method.
"I have more than enough; according to relativity, time slows down in an attractor field." He winked.
Daniel opened his aching eyes to a dark room. He assumed he was at the hospital by now, though his vision was too clouded to verify it.
"He...o?" he whispered with a wheeze. Talking was difficult, as he couldn't feel his tongue, and he had a respirator mask covering his mouth.
No response. Fumbling for his phone, he discovered not only his lack thereof, but also how weak the incident had left him. He also had some problems breathing, which was no surprise considering the time he had spent near a liquid helium leak.
He wasn't afraid, though - he wouldn't have woken up like this unless he was out of danger. Had there been complications, there would have been someone taking care of him. He trusted the doctors to have made the right call.
A few days of relaxation - a week, tops - and he'd be able to function again.
As the hours slowly passed, he pondered what he had found, and whether or not it was still alive. He hoped it was, and that he would be able to see it again soon.
While the events of today hadn't exactly been inherently positive, it was a significant change from his otherwise dreary existence. For the first time in what seemed like forever, he felt like he had been important. He had been the centerpiece of something great. He had made a great discovery. He was sure of it.
Eventually, he fell asleep with a grin on his face. And when he did, he dreamt of what he had seen.
This time, it was noise that woke her.
Her skin still burned, but her nerves had been deadened by the intensity of it, so she wasn't very aware of it unless she tried moving, and her nose had long since become accustomed to the smell. She could now open her eyes, but only by truly straining the muscles behind them could she see anything. Her attention were not on her eyes, though.
It sounded like voices were talking. Had somepony found her? The thought made her wings pulse with joy.
"Help..."
She could barely manage a whisper. It hurt to breathe, let alone talk, yet she had to call out whoever it was, so they would notice that she needed assistance.
"Help... Me..."
The voices kept talking, but she couldn't make out what they were saying. Gathering up her will, she defied her body's refusal and moved her head as much as she could. She barely moved an inch, but she was positive it had made more noise than her futile cry.
The voices stopped talking, and soon she felt something soft push against her neck. Finally, somepony had found her. She would be safe.
She wasn't sure if her tears were caused by pain or joy.
From the pegasus' pulse, it seemed to either be having a seizure or a nightmare - it was obviously very stressed. Somewhat ruining the good mood they had, he barked an order at Christina to prepare some lorazepam, which normally was used to treat epileptic fits in humans, but it was the treatment most likely to work off the top of his head.
As she ran off, he went around to take a look at its eyes. The first thing he noticed was that there was a stream of water trickling to a small pond at the foot of the pillow. He was about to lift its eyelids when they opened on their own.
For a moment, they froze and stared at each other. Gradually, the creature's facial expression turned to shock and fear.
Where no mare has gone before.
Dropping off the biologist at her destination, Fauna drove on towards the control center. She didn't have time to reprimand the secretive doctors yet - the engineers had finally come to their senses and entered the accelerator tunnel after a slow night of ventilation, so there should finally be a damage report in the works.
That should be quickly handled, though, so she'd be back soon enough. Most likely, the helium leak was the reason for the experiment's failure, so she'd just have to order some more and get someone to plug the hole and fix the damaged electronics.
Flora found her way to the lab, and rung the small bell at the reception. Despite waiting a few minutes, there was no response, so she decided to walk in and have a look around. She soon found a man lying in bed, sleeping, but no doctors or animal. She didn't want to wake the man, but she seemed to be a little lost.
"Uhm, excuse me, but-"
"Can I help you?" a voice interrupted her.
Turning around, she found an elderly woman looking at her, suspicious. She still wore outdoor clothing, so she had probably just come in.
"Oh, yes, do you work here?"
"I do, and I don't think you do, so what are you doing in here? Got a medical problem?"
Sure enough, she was changing to a lab coat. Flora was a little fluttered, since the nurse had obviously misunderstood her reason for being there.
"Oh, no, I don't. I was called yesterday to help classify an animal you found here? I think the one I spoke to was called Christine or something."
"Christina, actually, and she should be at work, so if you go wait in the lobby, I'll tell her you're here."
Flora did as she was told, and after about fifteen minutes, two people came through the entrance. They were talking to each other, but as soon as they noticed her, they went silent. Eventually, as they closed in, the female one broke the silence.
"Hello, can we help you with something?"
Flora got up from her seat before replying.
"Yes, I'm looking for someone called Christina?" she explained. "I'm Flora Randell, veterinary and evolutionary biologist, and I was contacted about an interesting animal."
"Ah. Yes, that's me. I mean, I'm Christina , not the animal."
With a short laugh and a couple of handshakes, she was also introduced to her companion, Tarry, who then invited her to join him in taking a look at the animal. As they left Christina at the facility, he explained that they had moved it from the medical bay to his personal lodging in order not to spread the knowledge of it until it was healthy. Flora could understand why they wouldn't present it to the general public, but surely there wouldn't be a problem if some engineers or physicists knew?
She hoped it was just an example of nerds being eccentric, so she wouldn't have to keep everything hushed down.
Tarry turned out to live quite close to the medical station, and though the apartment wasn't very roomy, it was as clean and sanitary as his workplace. She didn't feel comfortable entering his bedroom immediately - especially since it smelled terribly of antibiotics - so she stood outside, observing. There was a small bundle in the bed, covered by a blanket which Tarry soon removed, revealing the animal underneath.
Flora couldn't help herself. In one fell swoop, she stormed in to take a closer look.
Once more, Rainbow Dash's sleep was taken from her, this time by someone pulling on her wings. She felt stronger after eating, but she barely managed to turn her head enough to have a look at what was happening.
What was happening was shocking.
One of those creatures was stroking Rainbow's pin feathers. Pin feathers? Taking another look, she noticed how her wings were featherless, her tail and coat were hairless, and her naked skin was covered in blisters.
Maybe I crashed into a really high volcano or something...
She was pretty sure the one who was pulling on her small patches of tiny, growing feathers wasn't one of the two she had met earlier, but it looked really fascinated by her. It was idly talking to the one behind it, who looked sort of familiar.
Rainbow wished they could understand each other, if only so she could tell it to let go of her bucking wing, since it hurt. Failing that, and being too weak to kick it away, she had to accept her fate as unwilling playdoll.
The veterinary had already made many discoveries about the creature that had slipped Tarry completely by.
He hadn't noticed the tiny blue pin feathers growing in patches on what had now been verified as wings, nor the fact that the skull was remarkably large for such a small animal, nor that the bones were all intact. Tarry felt a little disappointed in himself for not being able to conclude the last one by himself. He supposed he had been a little thrown off by it not being a human, and, as he recalled, the x-ray scanner in the lab had, as well.
She had been even faster than him to conclude the species of the animal, but she rejected the latin classification name Equus Pegasus , which he had suggested, saying that this animal set a precedent for a new Equidaean genus. Her reasoning was that this animal was about as similar to a horse as a rhino would be - other than the hooves and tail, it was far less related to horses than, say, donkeys were.
Clearly , it was a prime example of a Pegasus pegasus .
She also concluded that the reason the animal was so light was that it had hollow bones, like a bird. She surmised that in its natural habitat, it would just use the wings to jump like a grasshopper and escape predators, not fly - otherwise, it wouldn't have needed four legs to stand on.
At least he had gotten the part about it being a herbivore right, so the bowl of apples and water he had set forth wasn't completely wasted effort. Flora did, of course, have a better solution. She was steadfast in that the animal would need proteins to rejuvenate, just like a human would have needed after injuries such as these. With that in mind, she prepared all the beans - one of the vegetables with highest protein content - she could get her hands on, and replaced the apples with them.
The pegasus didn't seem too joyous about the substitution, but it ate nontheless.
"We found it in the remains of the ALICE detector after an explosion happened there," Tarry informed her. "We have no idea where it came from or how it got there, though. How do you think it got there?"
The biologist bore a content smirk. After a dramatic pause, she revealed her grand hypothesis.
"Magic."
Unfortunately, the moment was ruined by the pegasus farting.
Where no mare has gone before.
Waking to the combined efforts of daylight and noise, Daniel reestablished that he was in the hospital.
First things first, he thought. I need to get to know exactly how injured I am, and how long they intend to keep me here.
He quickly realized that attempting to locate someone who might know those things would be slightly more difficult than first anticipated. Luckily, he wasn't blind, but even when squinting, opening his eyes was a painful endeavor. His injury might initially have been an exciting and welcome change of pace, but it was already getting old. Fast.
"Hey, amyome bhere?" he called out.
Great. Useless tongue, too...
Fortunately, the sound of footsteps announced the arrival of a someome . A female voice, who he assumed to belong to a nurse, gently asked how he felt. With some effort, he managed to convey his feeling of burning eyeballs and numb tongue.
"Well, it says here that you've suffered frost burns on all protruding limbs."
Lacking proper eyesight, he could only assume that she was reading that information off a status protocol.
"That could be the reason, but I can fetch the doctor if you'd like a more thorough explanation."
He opened his mouth to respond, made a quick decision against it, and chose to nod instead. A few minutes later, his eyesight had improved enough for him to see the doctor as he entered the room.
"Hola! My name's Niels Olafsson, and I received you yesterday. How do you feel? Can you talk?"
With a cough, Daniel mumbled an answer.
"Befime 'pawk'."
"Eh, good enough." He chuckled to himself while he pulled up a chair, before he tossed his legs onto the bed.
"I guess you want me to tell you how you're holding up. When you arrived, we thought you were pretty bad off, since it seemed like ice crystals had formed in your lungs, but luckily the bleeding was just from your mouth. You might want to see a dentist after the painkiller wears off though."
He picked up a small cylindrical container from the bedside table.
"Until then, I recommend eating soup, and taking one of these if it gets too painful. At this point, you're pretty much exactly as healthy as you feel, so you can even go home whenever you want."
Daniel still didn't want to talk, so he gave the doctor a thumbs-up to signify that he felt fine, considering the circumstances. After establishing that his assistance was no longer needed, Niels got up and turned to leave.
"Oh, I just remembered; we got a pretty demanding phone-call from a woman called Fauna," said Niels before reaching the door. "Seems she really wanted to talk to you. Your girlfriend?"
Daniel burst into laughter.
The situation at the CERN Control Center was dire. With so much damage to the ALICE detector, even the other experiments would have to be put on hold for at least a month. The amount of things that had to have gone wrong for this to be the result was absurd!
From what she was told, the most delicate detectors were broken beyond repair, and the collider tube itself was punctured. Liquid helium leaked out into the tunnel, and the nigh-perfect vacuum where the actual collisions took place was contaminated.
Someone had messed up majorly, and Fauna intended to find out who. It was time for an extraordinary council meeting.
Slowly, responsible people gathered. Werner and Catherine, the two coordinators for the ALICE experiment, arrived in a timely manner, but as soon as they sat down, an awkward silence fell over the room. Everyone else seemed to wait until the last possible moment to arrive, as if intentionally trying to annoy those concerned with efficiency.
Finally, the meeting could begin in earnest.
"Alright." Fauna stood up since nobody else seemed eager to start the conversation. "I hope you all know why we're here. If you don't, here's the deal: Yesterday, there was an explosion in the ALICE detector when we brought the beams together, and now the machine is broken. Werner, please fill us in on the details."
Catherine let out a sigh of relief as Werner pulled up his laptop and connected it to the projector. Fauna was slightly irritated that they hadn't set up their stuff before the meeting began, but considering what they had accomplished with ALICE, what could you expect? She was relieved that at least something was being done.
Soon, Werner managed to fumble his way into an image folder. With a nervous swallow, he revealed what the survey team had discovered. Fauna's jaw was not the only one to drop.
The machine wasn't merely broken - it had disintegrated.
Forget the one-month repair estimate - getting the experiment back up and running will take years!
Werner slowly explained the details. Just like the rumors had stated, the primary detectors were gone without a trace.
"What's curious is that the collisions alone shouldn't have had enough energy to generate this level of damage," he noted. "Most likely, the explosion originated from the machine itself."
In other words, it was probably the result of human error. As expected.
"Can you identify what went wrong?" Fauna inquired.
"We just don't know." Werner shrugged. "As it stands, though, the system containing the most energy was by far the security system you designed, making it... statistically likely that it originated there."
Fauna's eyes widened. Did he just try to push the blame on her ? The other physicists sitting around the table all looked surprised, but not one dared meet her gaze.
Before she could muster a reply, Werner defended himself.
"Of course, we don't know for certain. It could also be that there's new physics at work, which we couldn't have anticipated..."
He realized he was on thin ice with that hypothesis, and decided to try changing the subject.
"In any case, we need to get repairs going-"
"You all evaluated and approved my security system!" Fauna exploded. "You all agreed it was by far the optimal solution! If it was the source of the explosion, then the fault must lie with the engineers who installed it!"
The following silence pointed out what the people would not. She had personally overseen the installation, making sure it fit her high standards. No matter how she reasoned, the conclusion was clear: She was the weak link. Somehow, she had made a mistake, and now it had cost the world years of scientific progress.
The frustration overwhelmed her, and with a "pop", she blacked out.
Where no mare has gone before.
Rainbow Dash didn't really like beans. Perhaps she had been spoiled by Applejack and Pinkie Pie, but her favorite foods were still apples and pastry. Not only could you make any number of delicious dishes with them, but they didn't make you fart all the time, like beans did. She had hoped the creatures taking care of her either wouldn't notice or wouldn't care, but she was embarrassed when they seemed to react to the first fart and promptly left.
I guess I should consider myself lucky I get any food at all. Had they been dragons, they would probably have left me to die.
She thought of how weak she had felt when she first awoke, and gleefully realized she had grown a lot stronger since then. It was doubtful she could fly until at least some feathers had grown to regular size, but with some effort, she could probably walk short distances if she had to. Taking a look at her flank, she sadly had to conclude that her cutie-mark was gone together with her tail-hairs. Oh well. It would grow back, eventually.
As she decided to inspect her surroundings more carefully, her gaze briefly landed on a bookshelf on the wall. The letters adorning the books seemed somehow familiar, but she couldn't understand any of the titles, so she decided to not bother trying to fetch any reading material. She wished she had access to Twilight's bookshelves instead. She might only be able to understand half of their contents, but at least she could have read some novels about Daring Do or have looked up these creatures in a bestiary.
No chance of that, though. Boredom ensued.
They could at least have opened a window before leaving...
Another negative result... What on Earth is going on?
No matter what tests Christina ran, the non-Newtonian gas sample acquired from the pegasus was so far chemically indistinguishable from air.
I guess I should go gather some more, in case the gas is simply too diluted to react,
After quickly making sure with the nurse that she wasn't needed for anything, she trotted off to the pegasus' residence with some of her equipment. It wasn't a long walk, so she soon arrived to find Tarry in heated debate with Flora.
"It's not a pony, it's a pegasus!" Flora insisted.
"Come now," Tarry said, still keeping that charming, nonchalant cool he never seemed to lose. "It's a fitting nickname for a small equine - just look at how cuddly it is!"
"You can't just conclude just from that! A primary characteristic of a pony is a heavy bone structure, and for this specimen, it's completely opposite! It doesn't even look like a pony, so please , call it a pegasus, as that's its proper name."
Christina's entrance saved Tarry from his imminent resignation, and he immediately caught on to the opportunity to change the subject.
"Ah, Christina! What brings you to my humble abode, my dear?"
"Please, don't mind me." Christina thought it would be interesting to see him joke his way out of this situation. "Do continue your discussion while I take some more samples of the dilatant gas."
"Oh, that's right." Flora didn't react quite as hoped. "Tarry, your recording spoke of 'a layer of non-Newtonian gas'... What does that mean? I didn't notice any gas. I mean, apart from the..."
Quick glances were exchanged between the two as she let out a sigh.
"I can show you if you want," Christina interjected without bothering with further inquiry. Tarry wore his 'fart joke'-expression, explaining more than she needed to know. "It should be fairly easy to observe."
She led the expedition into the bedroom, where the antibiotic's smell had been overwhelmed by the expected one. Before taking a second breath, she had opened a window, providing some much-needed relief for everyone in the room. She then started unpacking and talking to Flora.
"I think a demonstration is the best way to explain what we mean, so try petting her. First slowly, then gradually more vigorously."
Though obviously sceptical, Flora did as asked. The pegasus looked more than a little uncomfortable, but kept calm as she focused on the hand moving up and down her flank. Surprise streaked over both faces as they saw the hand slow down when it should have sped up.
"What the hell!? " Flora yelped in confusion, as she discovered she was unable to pull loose her hand from what was, or at least appeared to be, nothing but air. Applying more and more force, she even got up on the bed to pull.
She knew she would have to explain, but Christina couldn't resist laughing a bit. To someone not familiar with the phenomenon, it could easily look like witchcraft. Idly, she noticed Tarry going silent.
"Relax, Flora, just hold your hand still for a second, then move slowly afterward."
Taking a moment to calm down and gather her wits, Flora complied, which promptly released her hand.
"A dilatant is a non-Newtonian fluid that seems to solidify when applied pressure, you see, so once you're inside, it's almost like a Chinese finger-trap," Christina told her. "And this one's special, because it's a gas. You see, almost all non-Newtonian fluids we've encountered before have been liquids."
Flora still breathed heavily, inspecting her red hand closely, as Tarry sat down to repeat the experiment.
"Tha... that was a little scary," Flora stammered. "I've never seen anything like that before."
Tarry had gotten his hand stuck in the gas, and was straining to pull it towards him.
"Don't worry, we'll find out exactly what it is and how it works, even if we have to get the physicists involved."
Christina finished unpacking her equipment, and prepared to take another gas sample. There was something strange, though. Despite being a guy who would normally have childish fun with a non-Newtonian fluid, Tarry bore a serious expression, as if he was deep in thought.
"What's wrong, Tarry?" she asked. "You've been silent, despite a pretty funny prank being pulled."
He turned toward her, still pulling his arm straight up from the pegasus' bare flank.
"It weighs only about four kilograms," he said. "So why am I not able to lift it?"
Where no mare has gone before.
Fauna blinked as she opened her eyes. Her head throbbed, shaking the roof so hard it was a wonder it didn't shatter with every heartbeat.
Rising in an attempt to pinpoint her location, she discovered that whenever the world did not vibrate too much to see, she was in the same treatment bed as that animal she saw yesterday. Or was it even yesterday? How long had she slept?
"Ah, Doctor Sutler, you're awake?" a voice she barely recognized called to her. It belonged to the same person that had received her during her last visit.
"Whuh-" Fauna began before she realized that speaking clearly was more difficult than anticipated. With a cough, she tried again. "What happened?"
"You fainted, and you've been out for about an hour," another voice responded. "How do you feel?"
"I may have felt better... but I feel fine." The world still shook around her, but she was sure it'd pass after a night of sleep. And a painkiller.
"Based on witness accounts, and your blood pressure, your blackout seems to have been induced by a high amount of stress." Tarry, the highest-ranking medical doctor at CERN, was easily recognizable by his permanently smug attitude. "I'm prescribing you three months of vacation, starting today."
How he had managed to reach his current position with that carefree personality, Fauna couldn't understand. He...
"... Excuse me, could you repeat that last part?"
"Vacation. Three months of it," he repeated. "You haven't had one in ages - we checked - so this is for your own health and safety."
Fauna had hoped her hearing had been as shaky as her vision the first time around.
"I don't think you quite understand the gravity of what's happening or who I am , doctor," she accused him. "I need to coordinate the repairs for the collider, or we'll..."
Guilt caused her to lose her train of thought.
Or maybe the experiment wouldn't have gone awry in the first place...
Tarry sat down on the bed next to her.
"Remember, the LHC project is a collaboration - sixty nations contribute." He smiled. "You don't have to do everything alone. I'm sure someone else can do your duties while you take some well-earned rest."
Fauna's paranoid side insisted that the secretive doctors knew, and hid, the reason for the ALICE explosion. Now, they were trying to get rid of her for some insidious reason. However, her more reasonable side convinced her that the notion was ridiculous - how could it be their fault if it was hers?
Her head throbbed painfully, but she refused to cry. She wasn't that weak.
"Cheer up," he said. "The search for massless particles isn't all that important anyway, since they don't matter. Get it? Because gluons are massless, and... No?"
She wondered if she could somehow get away with beating him up for being so unsympathetic. Before she could strike, he continued.
"So, a tachyon exits a bar, and the bartender says-"
In desperation, she turned to the only person who had not annoyed her so far. At least, so far today .
"Please, Christina, make him shut up before I kill myself."
As two had left and the remaining one had sat down by the desk with a notebook, the doctor-creatures were obviously done with their checkups on her for now. Left to her own devices, Rainbow Dash's curiosity was sparked.
Using her left front hoof, she stroked her side. Nothing special, other than a some sore skin. Even as she used more and more force, all she really noticed was how little endurance she had left. Turning around, she decided to try another approach. With her right hoof, she began lightly impacting her hip. It hurt a little, but once again she found no reason for why the creatures' hands had stopped.
The remaining creature stared quizzically, still writing in its book.
Maybe they were the reason, not her. Had she been an egghead, like Twilight, she could probably have figured out how it worked, but without an immediate answer, Rainbow Dash quickly grew bored again. There wasn't even anypony around to talk to. Was there?
"You can't understand me either, can you?" she asked the creature.
Some animals, like Fluttershy's squirrels and bunnies, seemed to understand what ponies said, even if only a few ponies could return the favor. It was worth a try. The creature flinched and looked at her with a surprised stare, but didn't respond.
"That's what I thought."
She was a little disappointed. It'd take months for her feathers to grow back enough for her to be able to fly home, and without anypony to talk to while waiting, it was a dreary thought.
At least the trip back is gonna be fast, she thought, allowing herself a little grin. I'm the fastest flier in all of Equestria! By how much, I'll have to ask Twilight when I get back, but it's gonna be a lot.
The creature rose from its chair and walked a little closer, then it uttered something incomprehensible.
"No, I can't understand you either." She shook her head with a sigh.
Flora sat down on the edge of the bed. The sounds coming from the pegasus were entirely unexpected - she had assumed it only would neigh, but these sounds were far more complex. Almost like a language.
Almost. It still had parts that were somewhat reminiscent of neighing.
In an attempt to verify whether or not it really was a language, she tried repeating what the pegasus had said. It was difficult, and failing to get more of a response than a strange stare with one eyebrow higher than the other, she gestured towards herself to see if she could get it to speak again.
"Flora." No reaction. "Flora. "
It seemed to realize what she wanted.
"Phu-... Floora," it said.
It talked. Whether it only could parrot her, she didn't know, but she decided for now to believe that it had the capability to communicate. She then made the same gestures toward the pegasus itself, hoping it would understand and tell her its own name.
It looked confused at her. "Floora?"
Disappointed, she stooped her head. At least there were other, more traditional and scientific ways of testing for animal intelligence. Counting, for instance. She pulled up her notebook, wrote two straight lines on a page, and pointed towards them.
"A, a."
After repeating the process with the numbers three and four, she proceeded to let the pegasus have a go with five.
" 'Eigh, 'eigh 'eigh 'eigh 'eigh," it neighed.
That proved it. Chimps had to go through this process thousands of times before learning to count, so either someone had beaten her to it, or it was more intelligent than any of the other primates on earth.
Someone should be told. Maybe Tarry and Christina were right, it shouldn't be just anyone , but she needed to show this animal to someone trustworthy. She needed to work with real biologists, not just medical doctors.
Going out to the living room, she picked up her cellphone, and dialed her old research group.
That was weird. I wonder why it made me count, of all things, Rainbow Dash thought. Oh, maybe it checked if I'd hurt my head... Yeah, that's probably it.
She also considered that it had made Equestrian sounds, but what it had said made no sense. Good thing that it could make the sounds, though. Maybe some of them could talk to ponies. That was an encouraging thought.
Once more left alone, her mind started wandering.
I hope nopony is worrying too much about me. Can I contact them somehow? I don't think I could get any of these creatures to send Celestia a letter. At least not unless I meet one that speaks Equestrian, she thought. Hm, maybe Twilight can contact me, even if she doesn't know where I am? She's really good with magic, after all.
Thinking about Twilight made her think back to the last time she saw her.
Come to think of it, it could be her wrap spell at work, she thought. Maybe it's the same thing that stopped me from being crushed as I flew?
It obviously had its limits, considering her current situation, but it made her feel a little safer.
If it could save me from that, it can probably save me from other things too...
Where no mare has gone before.
With his laptop hanging in a strap from his shoulders, Daniel typed in a quick test-phrase.
"Hello, my name is Stephen Hawking."
What an ingenious idea. Nobody would suspect that it was really he, Daniel Arming, and not the wheelchair-bound physicist. Without straining his voice, he allowed himself the tiniest chuckle. Like this, he should be able to communicate nearly as effectively as he had before the accident.
He had gotten the idea when he told his parents about what had happened, and found that text messages were superior to voice calls. After the awkward conversation was finished, he went on the internet to see if there had been any news from the CERN Control Center. Since the last uploaded article was about how the LHC was "ready to run at maximum capacity tomorrow", he assumed the incident was still under investigation.
For a moment he felt a tinge of guilt about not having been able to do his job, but he quickly beat it down. He'd already been given more karmic punishment than warranted, and there were more important things to think about than his salary.
He didn't have a car of his own, so he'd be going out to CERN by bus, like usual. He could hardly care less if people stared at his laptop solution - he likely wouldn't ever talk to most of them anyway. Besides, he was an engineer, not a fashionista. In his eyes, if it was practical, it was pretty.
As he walked to the nearest bus stop, he went through the different hypotheses he could think of for what had happened to ALICE.
Null hypothesis: I was hallucinating. There was no alien.
That was the most likely one, but also by far the least satisfying.
Hypothesis A: What I saw was an alien. If true, they probably looked for the most advanced piece of machinery on the planet, and teleported directly to it.
Much more fun, but sadly less likely. If they did have the technology to find ALICE, almost two-hundred meters below the earth, they would likely also not make the mistake of teleporting straight into it. That would also not explain the exceptionally specific timing.
Hypothesis B: It was a direct result of the experiment. It would explain the timing. Subject to the scientific method, it should also happen again if the experiment was repeated, so testing this hypothesis would be relatively straight-forward.
However, not only did that spit in the face of known science, they had no device with which to test it with anymore. Impractical, but he still mentally archived it, just in case.
If A is true, maybe they actually stole the ALICE detector, intentionally leaving behind what I saw? That makes a scary amount of sense...
He finally reached the bus stop, and decided to postpone his conspiracy theories until he could verify that the alien even existed. He would begin his search at the medical station, since the nurses there handled it.
Fauna left the resident psychologist's office feeling angrier than when she had been made to enter. The psychologist had reduced her complex personality to a bundle of observable psychological properties just to prove a point, and Fauna loathed her for it.
"Classic case of an externalizing workaholic with absurd standards, " it had been called. Perhaps that was true, but the psychologist obviously didn't understand that sometimes a situation warranted being just that. Not only was it entirely rational for someone to want to give the project their best, but Fauna really wished everyone else would realize that as well. If she could have trusted people to be competent enough to work without supervision, perhaps she wouldn't have been so opposed to the forced vacation.
Unfortunately, she couldn't.
Gnashing her teeth, she started searching for anyone who might be able to give her a quick painkiller. The throbs had intensified proportionally to her heart-rate, which only resulted in yet more frustration. She soon found a trio consisting of Flora, the biologist she met earlier, Christina, who she didn't really mind, but also Tarry, casting doubt over whether or not making the request was really worth it. She had painkillers at home, if she could just get there.
A particularly iffy throb almost threw her off balance, and she decided that ignoring him would be easier than ignoring the world shaking. Walking closer, she picked up parts of what the imported biologist was saying to the doctors.
"... next few weeks, so I'll need you two to assist by supplying equipment, and..."
"I'd like a painkiller before I'm off," Fauna interrupted. "Could I have one?"
As their attention turned towards her, Tarry looked eager to comment Flora's unusual name. Luckily, before he could say anything, Christina acted like a proper doctor.
"Sure, but why? Do you have a headache?"
"Yes, slightly," Fauna responded. She silently admitted to herself that it was an understatement.
"Then, I think we should run a few tests," Christina said. "It could point towards you having a burst blood vessel. With your blood pressure, it wouldn't be surprising."
There's no end to what's wrong with me today, is there?
"No, there's no need for that." Fauna sighed. "I've been meaning to get new glasses, but never had the time."
Not strictly speaking a lie, that last part. Now that she'd been forced out of her office, she would have that time. Quietly, she realized that all the opticians she knew were the kind that worked on quantum optics, not the kind that sold glasses, and she had to allow herself a small smile. Once the headache had subsided, she would find a glasses shop, and... A voice intruded on her train of thought.
"You wouldn't happen to know a lot about animals, would you, doctor Sutler?"
Luckily, it was Christina who talked. Had it been Tarry, the question would have contained at least one bad name joke. Perhaps it even warranted a response.
"No, I'm afraid I don't work well with animals." she said. According to that annoying psychologist, that includes humans...
"Ah, too bad. We were just wondering if you'd be a good partner for Flora here." The lack of name jokes was an unexpected joy to Fauna, and, by the look of things, frustrating for Tarry. "We've been stumped by a certain equine, and...
"Equine is wrong. If you want a similar term, use equid," Flora corrected. "Equine defines a member of the Equus genus, and... Never mind, go on."
"In any case, we need help with some physics," Christina continued. "Now that you've got some spare time on your hands... Want to try helping out with some biology?"
Her instinct told her that this was her cue to berate the wasteful doctors.
"Allow me to remind you what your job is," Fauna lectured with a fake self-righteous expression. "It isn't animal treatment, it's keeping the employees healthy."
"Well... It's also 'our job' to evaluate the medical implications of the discoveries you particle physicists do," Tarry pointed out. "So now we're just doing our part of the research."
Another error she had made was brought to light - the possibility of animal testing had completely slipped her mind. Surely they could have used rats, though. Rats were less costly to maintain than creatures of that size, and using the same money on rats would have provided both faster genetic data and a bigger sample size.
"While I admire your will to further the collective knowledge of humanity, I-... uh, the administration department does not appreciate its money being spent inefficiently."
She felt a little stupid for having been so paranoid. She felt stupid for a lot of reasons. Thinking back to her meeting with the psychologist, she hesitantly decided to try giving some helpful advice instead of just dealing out blame.
"You should use rats instead, you know."
The doctors looked stupefied, as if they couldn't make sense of what she was saying. Flora, on the other hand, got defensive.
"Actually, we have reason to believe that this particular animal could be intelligent. If you'll just-"
"Please. Most humans aren't intelligent." Fauna was mildly amused. "Until that..."
'Horse' wasn't quite right. It had looked far too small.
"Until that pony of yours is able to build a particle accelerator, color me unimpressed."
"It's not a pony!" Flora yelled. "I mean, its bone joints are practically human in flexibility! What more do you want? "
Fauna sighed. She regretted getting involved in an exhausting discussion that didn't really concern her anymore.
"Irrelevant. Look, it's fine if you need a test animal and help from a real biologist, but be economic about it. ALICE isn't going to rebuild itself. In any case, I'm not interested."
After gobbling down a painkiller with a sip of water, she left the medical bay. Even though the throbs had subsided slightly, she didn't feel well enough to drive, so she quickly walked towards the bus stop instead.
Where no mare has gone before.
Her boredom had gotten out of hand, and Rainbow Dash felt an immense need to do something. There was really nothing for her to do alone in the bedroom, so she decided to try her hooves on a small walk around the house. Scouting the area , Daring Do would have called it. That certainly sounded a lot better than walking around, hoping for something to happen.
With a rested body, a refilled stomach and a tiny bit of willpower, the simple act of walking was surprisingly easy, though her skin was still sore and itched whenever her movement wrinkled it up. She opened the door and left the bedroom, entering a much larger room which didn't look like a hospital at all. If anything, it looked like a kitchen. From there she discovered a bathroom, a door leading to a hallway, and some sort of hybrid between living room and library. Judging by the amount of books, whoever lived here could challenge Twilight in eggheadedness. None of the books had readable titles.
Deciding that she wasn't particularly interested in unreadable books, she headed out into the hallway, which seemed to be shared with at least one other household. After descending a flight of stairs, she finally exited the building and walked out into the sunshine.
The scenery was only slightly reminiscent of Ponyville, and the color scheme was a little grimmer. The houses she could see were mostly identical to the one she was currently standing outside: They all seemed to have three floors, were all painted white, and were all made of smooth stone or some such. At least, she couldn't make out any wooden ones, even across the wide, dark road.
How dull.
As soon as she thought that, something that looked like a locomotive-less train carriage zoomed past her. Through its large windows, she noticed more creatures akin to the doctors, and from what she could make out, they looked just as bored as she. A brilliant idea entered her mind, and she smiled slyly.
They can keep their tests - I know the best one!
In a rush of adrenaline, she had caught up with the vehicle in eight seconds flat and passed it shortly after. Ha! Even without her wings, she was an excellent racer! Well, an excellent sprinter in any case. Her sudden burst of exertion left her very disoriented, causing her to trip and tumble straight into a bush by the wayside, where she lay still for a minute, resisting the urge to throw up and gathering the strength to move again. The fall itself didn't hurt at all, but the twigs left her bare skin both scratched and sore, doubly so after she had crawled out.
By the time she began to regain her bearings, her opponent had already disappeared from view. Further exploration revealed that only the door she had left open distinguished the house whence she came from its neighbors, and since she wasn't keen to get more lost than she already was, she decided to slowly make her way back inside.
The apartment was exactly as boring as she had left it, and her itchy skin and upset stomach did nothing to spruce it up. At least the knowledge that there were things here that could move decently fast cheered her up somewhat. Hopefully, there were even faster things around, ones she could race against while she recovered. It was too bad that the creatures neither seemed to have wings nor access to magic, so any meaningful race would be likely to happen on the ground. Still, once her feathers were grown, she could just fly back to Equestria anyway.
Maybe if Twilight dispels the wrap thingy on me, and casts it on one of the Wonderbolts instead, they'll actually be a challenge, she thought with a confident smile.
Continuing her scouting mission inside the house, she chose to start by taking a closer look at the library room. There, pedestal in the corner held up a green and blue sphere, on which there seemed to be engraved a map. She remembered someone saying something about the world really being a ball, but had never really given it much thought. Maybe, someday, she would fly all the way around it, and see for herself. After giving it a few spins and giving up on finding Equestria, she left it alone in favor of a large, curious picture frame that seemed to depict nothing but blackness. Closer inspection revealed a myriad of tiny buttons on its side, far too small for her large, clumsy hooves to press precisely, and an intricate network of cables that ran throughout the house.
As she followed the cables, she noticed that some of them were connected to the lights in the ceiling. Those, she had seen more and more often over the last couple of years, and they worked due to something called... electric? She didn't understand exactly how it worked, but she knew Ponyville had built a giant dam in order to get access to it. Maybe these creatures did have some sort of magic after all.
Deeming herself finished with the library, she rummaged through the kitchen in search of something edible that wasn't beans. Her dizziness was constantly threatening to make her vomit, and the last thing she needed was a more upset stomach. After a few minutes, she found some bread, but what she really wanted was some good old hay.
Eventually, she noticed that the large, white machine letting out a silent hum had a door handle. Cautiously opening it, she was greeted by a light switching on, a cold front of air, and a plethora of different foods. Instantly recognizable were bottles of milk, and a transparent bag containing fresh fruits and vegetables. After helping herself to a few tasty tomatoes, she continued investigating the ingenious food-contraption's contents.
Her heart skipped a beat.
The object resting squarely in the middle of all the food caused her intestines to twist painfully. She had never seen anything more disgusting. It was unquestionably meat - some poor animal had been ground up and was being stored in a small pool of its own blood! She barely made it over to the kitchen sink before the vomit started gushing out of her mouth. A minute later, she had regurgitated what she could, and washed the mess down the drain. When the realization finally dawned, her eyes silently widened.
They are predators...
Where no mare has gone before.
With Christina left behind to continue inspecting the gas sample, Tarry joined Flora on a quiet walk along the road back to his apartment. If the pegasus was intelligent, then it was too important to keep hidden from the world, much less the administration department. If they weren't alone in the universe, it would be the most important discovery since... ever.
If, Tarry thought to himself.
“What's fascinating,” Flora said, breaking the silence with a hopeful expression, “is that a creature much like this one was described thousands of years ago by the ancient greeks. You don't think it could be the same one?”
Tarry's almost judged her to be unscientific, but then he remembered that he had come up with the exact same hypothesis. After careful consideration, however, he decided that Flora probably wasn't flirting.
“Doubtful. That one ended up among the stars, and if the Pegasus constellation disappeared we would have heard about it by now. Besides, Pegasus was white and large enough to ride, wasn't it?"
Flora looked slightly disappointed. “A distant relative, then?”
“Eh." Tarry shrugged. "Maybe. In any case, this one somehow came from an LHC experiment, and I highly doubt they had particle colliders in ancient Greece. I suppose it shouldn't even have appeared then, though.”
"Oh," Flora said, eyes again aglow with excitement. "maybe pegasi were around back then, and your experiment caused one to time-travel to the present!"
Tarry lifted an eyebrow. That hypothesis was more contrived than anything Tarry had thought of before. Not only did it assume the existence of an ancient pegasus species that mankind just happened to never have discovered fossils of, but also that time-travel was actually possible and that the LHC had somehow targeted the general location of a pegasus out of all the possibilities throughout the four dimensions.
He let out a small sigh. No wonder so many conspiracy theories about the LHC had sprung up - not that many truly understood what the bloody machine was actually capable of. People would hear something about light-speed, black holes and anti-matter, then promptly assume it's related to time-travel and CERN either taking over or destroying the Earth. He supposed those ideas would make for fairly decent science fiction stories, but this was reality. Though he enjoyed immersing himself in fantasy, he had long since forced himself to learn the difference.
He had more than his share of doubts about the whole thing. Flora's report reeked of wishful thinking – if the pegasus was intelligent, it should have tried communicating with him long ago, and as far as he could remember, it had shown no signs of such. Had it?
As he mentally backtracked through all his encounters with the pegasus, a familiar-looking man hurried past. Tarry quickly noticed a striking similarity between that man and the damage surveyor who had gotten shipped off with an ambulance. Something-or-other Arming, his name had been - Tarry remembered by thinking of a pun involving his arms, as he had suffered mild frost burns on them. The hospital had kept Tarry informed on that man's state, specifically noting that Tarry's initial 'Frosted lungs' diagnosis had been incorrect, much to his irritation. If it truly was the same man, his current jogging was just rubbing it in!
Tarry considered stopping the damage surveyor to give him an update, but he seemed to be in a hurry. The man panted heavily as he put distance behind him, but even from behind Tarry could see the contagious grin on his face. Until then, Tarry hadn't realized just how much his encounter with Fauna had affected him - he usually wasn't this much of a stick in the mud!
Indulge yourself, Tarry! he thought as he forced himself to smile. You love this kind of speculation!
Her idea might be overly complicated, but perhaps not that far from the truth - any process that suddenly created a living thing on this scale must be complicated indeed. The LHC did, after all, mimic phenomena in nature, and if an experiment there produced pegasi, it should happen in nature as well. The ancients may not have had access to particle accelerators, but that didn't mean the conditions of the experiment couldn't have been met elsewhere. He imagined pegasi suddenly popping out of nowhere in outer space, and had to chuckle. One-up, Russel's Teapot.
Deciding to start on a rational middle-ground, he turned the conversation to the prospective intelligence tests they were going to go through.
"So, you claim it's intelligent," he started. "How, exactly, do you plan on proving that to me?"
"Well, I suggest we start with the tests we usually run on chimpanzees," she responded with glee. "I have faith it'll do very well!"
How quaint, Tarry thought. He knew of a test which was mandatory in dealing with possible extraterrestrial intelligence. He knew that both real human space probes and science fiction usually used it in event of First Contact, as passing it was considered a proof of higher intelligence.
"If you don't mind, I want to run a test of my own," he said. "I'd like to see whether or not it recognizes the prime numbers."
Having let his inhibitions go, he noticed he finally started to feel excited.
Nearly exhausted, Daniel finally reached the smashed bush. The trail of foliage clearly led back onto the sidewalk for a few meters, but his ability to follow the tracks beyond that was highly limited. Judging from the looks of things led him to believe it could have gone anywhere, so he decided to take a moment to judge by the memory of things instead.
The alien had moved quite fast alongside the bus before crashing. Why? It seemed like a very peculiar thing to be doing, and added to the fact that he was the only person on the bus who seemed to notice, the null hypothesis seemed, sadly, reinforced. He could feel the broken bush, however, and it definitely looked like something had landed in it. Temporarily disregarding the possibility of him still hallucinating, he considered the remaining options. Either it just happened to be going the same way as the bus, or it was actively trying to be seen by the people inside. Both had apparently failed.
Where had it been going, in any case? The CERN complex was the obvious answer, perhaps Daniel had just missed it? The distance was short, but there were undoubtedly more ways to get there than the one he had taken, and it had moved quickly. After casting another glance at the immediate neighborhood, he turned around and made the decision to return to his original plan - starting at the medical facility.
"Well, well, I see you've gotten all better, mister Arming."
That caught him off guard. He vaguely recalled walking past the couple closing in on him, but other than that, they seemed to be complete strangers.
"I suppose you don't recognize my voice," the man said with a smile, holding out a hand in greeting. "I'm the doctor you called about the creature you found in the ALICE wreckage."
Lucky! Daniel thought. Not only was it terribly practical to meet the man here, but his mention of the creature implied Daniel wasn't schizophrenic - unless he was still hallucinating, of course. He put up a finger, motioning to wait as he placed his laptop properly in its harness and opened it. The screen showed a pitch-black background, contrasted by his favorite white text prompt.
'What do you want to do today?'
Today he wanted to find that alien, and the synthetic voice program was going to help him do it.
Where no mare has gone before.
Rainbow Dash sat on the kitchen floor next to the sink, confused. Were they really planning to eat her? Mental images of herself being ground up felt too real to ignore. But... they had been so kind thus far. They had fed her and kept her warm when they could have chosen not to. She felt like the uncertainty weakened her more than the fact that she had just thrown up. Where would she go if she ran? Unable to fly, she wouldn't be able to get that far away from these creatures anyway. She cast her gaze through the nearest window, seeing a few scattered clouds over the mountains on the horizon. She stared at them with longing. Up there, she would've been safe no matter what happened on the ground. Up there was where she belonged - where she was in control. Stuck on the ground, she wasn't. Here, she was subject to the whims of the doctors. Subject to the whims of predators.
Even so, she didn't want to flee. They didn't really look that scary, and if Fluttershy could handle carnivores on a regular basis, then Rainbow Dash wasn't about to be one-upped in bravery - she, too, had stood up to far more dangerous creatures than these! Had she just been in proper health, she would easily have taken any of them on! She ground her teeth.
If they try to mess with me, I'll show them who the best pony is!
With that, she pushed herself to stand up again. She doubted she would ever not find meat-eating disgusting, but she could try to ignore it as long as it was kept out of sight. To make sure of that, she slammed the white metal door shut before proceeding to fetch herself a cup of water to cleanse the taste of vomit from her mouth.
Daniel had to pace himself to keep a good grip on his laptop, as the harness wasn't exactly designed for sprinting, not even for short distances. Tarry had run off as soon as Daniel informed him about seeing it outside, saying to follow suit to see to the "pegasus". Assuming he hadn't somehow stolen one of NASA's Pegasus rockets, that would imply they had decided to classify the alien that way. Not exactly what Daniel had thought of when he saw it, but he was far too excited to relax and think deeply about it - he was about to see an actual alien close-up!
Since he had lost track of Tarry's movement once he disappeared through the entrance of a nearby building, he followed the slightly slower woman to whom he had been briefly introduced. She seemed to know the way as well, and they caught up after ascending to the second floor. There, Tarry stood in the doorway, silent and staring. Not one to ask before entering, Daniel rushed past him and was greeted by a clearly suspicious scowl. Not from Tarry, but from the alien sitting on the floor.
Apart from the initial surprise, he didn't think much of it - after all, it'd be arrogant to assume human facial expressions were universal, so it could mean anything from despair to arousal. Just in case, though, he quickly knelt and bowed his head. Hopefully, putting himself in a vulnerable position by focusing his eyesight on the floor and making himself seem smaller would convey that he didn't intend harm, as it would be very practical if they were able to trust one-another.
Tarry and Flora stood back and quietly talked among themselves, but Daniel was far more interested in getting a reaction out of the alien. He could obviously use mathematics, but that wouldn't answer anything without a mutually agreed-upon contextualization. He unpacked his laptop once more.
"Have you established a means of communication yet?"
It took a moment for anyone to speak. Finally Tarry, looking uncomfortable and perhaps a little embarrassed, took it upon himself to respond.
"No, we actually didn't think it was intelligent until earlier today. In fact, I didn't really believe it until I saw it drinking directly from that cup just now." He took a deep breath. "Tool use... actually raises more questions than it answers."
Somehow, Daniel was sure it wasn't limited to simple tool use. After all, if it had come to the Earth, it must have both means and reasons for being there, and considering the problems humankind faced just jumping to the next planet in the solar system, he had no reason to believe the trip was anything short of daunting.
Turning back around with the intent of conducting his own investigation, he calmed himself and started observing. He took note of the cup that stood next to the 'pegasus', as well as the fact that it did not have any fingers at the end of its limbs. If it was a pegasus, he supposed he should call them hooves, but the tips of its legs didn't look that much like hooves at all, at least not from a distance. The rest fit, though - it did seem to be a winged quadruped. He figured he should leave biological nomenclature to the biologists - to him, the important part was that it lacked a practical way to grip objects and didn't wield any technological accessories, not even ones that would assist in such a simple task, yet somehow it had managed. He thought of his own deferring position, and came to a natural realization.
Perhaps it intentionally beamed down defenseless and without any technology in order to not intimidate us primitive humans, he thought. Then... maybe it's also intentional that it interrupted a great scientific experiment, making sure that it was noticed, allowing the pegasi to observe how we treat it...
That seemed like a rather cruel and potentially dangerous thing to do, especially for a highly-advanced civilization capable of exploring space. Then again, interstellar travel would likely require generational ships, meaning it might not even be visiting of its own volition - it just happened to be born on a spaceship which was on route to Earth. That could mean there were more pegasi beamed down other places on Earth as well. He should probably pay closer attention to international news from now on - there might be more than war for once.
Staring intensely, he tried to catch on to any piece of information the pegasus' visuals might offer, eventually concluding that it wasn't at all what he had expected to make first contact with. Granted, cheap science fiction had colored his expectations somewhat, but a small, winged horse without feathers or hair was rather far down on his list. Not only was it bared of technology, it was completely naked, though it didn't appear ashamed about it since it didn't try to cover itself. Even at a distance he could see the mammalian traits on her - assuming sexual reproduction, he was now relatively sure it was a 'her' - which also was somewhat unexpected, though it did raise the hope that some aspects of their society were structured similarly to humankind's. He was sure there was more information to be harvested, but he was unable to induce anything more specific than he already had, so he finally blinked, breaking his stare. For some reason, the pegasus seemed to smile at his doing so. It was a little strange, but not very pressing, so he thought nothing more of it and instead continued along his old train of thought.
No doubt the pegasi already gathered information on humans before making contact, he thought. He wondered how long they had been watching for - if the Greeks were right, they could have been investigating Earth for thousands of years. The thought induced a little shame on humanity's behalf - the pegasi would have observed millenia of meaningless bloodshed. Only during the last couple of centuries had any progress truly been made, and humans were still murdering one-another. He wondered if the history of the pegasi was equally violent, and why they finally had decided to make contact now.
"I would like access to all the information you've gathered about her so far," the synthetic voice demanded, perhaps a bit more bluntly than intended.
Where no mare has gone before.
The newcomer was a strange one. He didn't talk, but he stared intensely and unblinking into Rainbow Dash's eyes, and he would sometimes bang his fingers on a small book-like thingamajig he had brought, which then seemed to talk to the others for him. A strange one indeed. His gaze would flicker when she adjusted her position, but Rainbow Dash felt sure that he registered every detail. She felt scrutinized, but more importantly she felt challenged. Defiantly, she flinched and stared straight back at him. Two could play at that game, and she wasn't about to lose. Eventually, he broke off his stare by blinking. Rainbow could have gone on for a while longer, but she let herself relax, satisfied with her victory.
Aw yeah. I still got it.
She didn't quite know why, but she liked this new guy. Sure, the other two had been kind to her as they pandered to her every need, but she liked challenges, and even something as small as a staring contest was refreshing – by far preferable to staying in bed all day with nothing to do just because her hide hurt a little. Besides, it just hurt more when the bedsheets came into contact with her skin, so she'd rather be up and about anyway.
The newcomer turned away and listened to the doctors talk for a while – for some reason, he didn't give off an aura of being a doctor himself. Perhaps it was because he looked too disheveled in comparison? Whereas the doctors seemed quite well-groomed and clean, the new guy had small, disorganized tufts of hair sticking out of his face – not unlike how Rainbow herself currently looked. Alternatively, perhaps it was because there had been something in his eyes that told her he was thinking of more important things than Rainbow Dash's health. There, she had seen the spark of a burning determination, as if he was boldly standing against impossible odds. A spark that made him seem far braver than his crouched posture implied.
Wait. Is he acting brave because he thinks I'm dangerous?
As Daniel reached over to feel the effect of this 'non-Newtonian gas cloud' surrounding the pegasus, it seemed to him that she was returning a favor by making herself seem small and harmless. She had lowered her head to the floor and bent her front legs – almost as if imitating a kneel. This close, he could see more details – including several scratches on her slightly singed skin, owing to her trip into the bush. Sure enough, once he had gathered enough momentum petting her side, his hand slowed and stopped – he couldn't even pull it away. He pulled harder, and the only reaction was the sound of the wooden floor creaking.
Was that sound made by me pulling myself down, or by me pulling her up? he asked himself. Newton's laws of motion would imply that as long as he was applying a force to the gas, the gas should accelerate out of the way unless something applied an equal force in the opposite direction. And yet... he wasn't lifting her. She didn't even seem to budge, as if the now-solidified gas wasn't really connected to her body at all. That meant it was connected to something else. He moved his free hand closer, intending to find out where, exactly, the gas had solidified.
The pegasus had turned her head and watched closely. Unexpectedly, she bent her hind legs, lowering herself to the floor and away from the hands, resulting in Daniel instantly loosening from the gas' grip and therefore launching himself backwards, landing clumsily on his shoulder. Luckily his laptop had been taken out of its harness, otherwise it likely would've hit him straight in the throat.
WHAT?! his internal monologue screamed at him. Even if the gas had somehow redistributed his applied force to the floor or something instead of lifting the pegasus, it should at least have constrained it, not just followed suit when it moved! This is not how the world works!
Flora didn't appear shocked – she simply laughed lightly and stretched out a hand to help him up, which he gladly accepted. Tarry, however, seemed to have realized the physical inconsistency of what he had just seen. He looked stunned, eyes glazed and mouth wide-open as his brain obviously reached for an explanation just beyond its grasp. The pegasus, on the other hand, looked insecure, face showing her evident concern that she had hurt him by accident. Daniel caught himself assuming universal facial expressions again, but for some reason, the notion didn't seem quite that far-fetched anymore. He picked up his laptop and gestured towards Tarry.
“You said you had someone else investigating the gas?”
Tarry jerked back to the real world, blinking and looking around, confused. After taking a deep breath, he nodded.
“Yes, Christina is currently doing tests with the lab equipment at the station.” He shook his head. “I don't think she'll find anything though; she tried once before, but concluded that her samples were simply too diluted to react. I think she'll find that the gas loses its properties once it gets too far away from the animal. It makes some sense – it doesn't smell, doesn't seem to pose a problem if you inhale it, and...” He moved closer to the pegasus and excitedly waved his hands around on half a meter range. “And it doesn't seem to spread! Perhaps it's an alien, like you said – some futuristic technology, like a shielding device or something, must be protecting it.” His eyes opened wide in realization and he started laughing. “That must be why we can't x-ray it!”
They couldn't scan it? Even more curious. That would imply that however the shield worked, it had the ability to either disperse or absorb the x-ray's photons. Considering the fact that could still see the creature, that meant that the shield had a frequency – or frequencies – associated with it, determining that photons from the visible light spectrum could get through, but not necessarily more energetic beams – like x-rays. Perhaps, if those frequencies were variable, it could even turn invisible.
Not so defenseless after all, I see.
Daniel's knee-jerk hypothesis was that his hand had been caught by some sort of tractor beam, but as he considered it, the way its effects were activated was inconsistent with such a device – then it should have deflected the hand from the beginning. No, the most likely hypothesis was probably that the others had been close to the truth all along – a dilatant non-Newtonian gas simply kept close by a containment field of some sort. Essentially, the pegasus was wearing a bullet-proof, radiation-proof balloon to protect herself. He theorized that most modern human weaponry would be useless against it, which was probably why it was equipped in the first place.
But then, how had she received those burns and scratches?
Flora didn't quite get why the mood had serious'd up so much when Daniel fell to the floor. In most research groups she had been in, that would have been considered something funny – something to laugh off, but both her companions had instead gotten silent and shocked. Well, she wasn't about to let their lack of humor rub off on her – she still thought it looked pretty funny, so she had let herself laugh as she helped Daniel to his feet. It was particularly surprising that Tarry didn't laugh – whenever he wasn't talking about the pegasus, there seemed to be no end to his terrible jokes.
I guess the poor sod has horse issues. Perhaps it's a male jealousy thing.
She shrugged off her thoughts as the men seemed to finally have found their way back to reality. Tarry had started to parrot Daniel in his rant on about aliens being at work, though she couldn't understand why that kind of hypothesis should be taken more seriously than her 'magic!'-instinct. She couldn't see any technology on the pegasus. Presumably, neither could anyone else. Besides, she considered it a common saying that any sufficiently advanced science would be indistinguishable from magic, so she didn't see the big difference. Might as well entertain oneself with the more fun view.
She kept a sigh suppressed during the silence that followed Tarry's grand revelation. Sure, the gas cloud around the pegasus was weird, but it's not like that was something new – they'd known that for a day already. There was no need to act more surprised than he did yesterday, at least.
Oh well, Flora thought. It wasn't her job to handle the physics aspect of it, so she didn't mind leaving the apparent gas excitement to the guys. She was more excited over it being able to use its relatively flexible bone structure to pick up a cup and drink from it – without spilling, even. That made it at least as capable of tool use as chimps, even though it lacked fingers. The question was; was it a coincidence, or was it taught to do that? If the latter, then by whom? Not by Tarry – he had seemed as surprised as she when he saw.
She had begun to see how the others might have been led to believe it was an alien, though she still found the idea silly. An unknown Earth species wasn't unheard of, but an unknown Earth species evolved enough to use tools – that was unheard of. Even though it could have used its wings to cover larger distances than normal mammals, Flora couldn't think of an area near the Swiss-French border which could be considered “unexplored”, so wherever the pegasus' home territory was, it had to be far away...
If it's able to learn English, then it can answer so many questions...
Nothing.
Christina let herself lean back in her chair and let out a massive sigh. Being used to handling medicine and doing blood tests, it felt weird for her to be disappointed in negative results, but the whole day had been spent testing, and the whole day had been wasted. This time she was fairly confident she hadn't accidentally diluted the gas, but it the results still indicated it was nothing but your average mix of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and a few other gases which together were commonly referred to as “air”. Investigating pegasus gas leakage wasn't even part of her job description – she was now slightly behind on her normal duties, and would likely have to spend the evening working to catch up. Normally, she didn't mind her slightly bureaucratic job – keeping journals was an integral part of minimizing risk when dealing with medicine – but right now she envied Tarry for getting the position where he could delegate to her and instead play with the pegasus.
She moved into her own office, ready to begin the document that would chronicle their encounter with the pegasus. Other than keeping it fed and clean, it hadn't required any real treatment, so they hadn't really thought of it as a proper patient requiring its own journal – after all, it didn't exactly have ID documents to refer to – but she had received a text from Tarry telling her he had decided it should have one. “Doctor's orders,” he had called it.
After booting up her computer, she started to work.
Journal 1286: Entry 00001
Patient ID:Pegasus Pegasus
Description:
Attempted x-ray was inconclusive. See attached images. Patient does not show sign of damaged bone structure.
Additional physical parameters of patient detailed by doctor in attached audio file.
Speculation: Despite DNA test result, patient is probably related to horses in some way. The patient may be intelligent. Further testing required, and to be carried out by biologist Flora Randell.
Treatment:
Short and concise, and apparently covering everything relevant. There was, of course, more to say, but things like 'it looks cute' simply didn't fit a scientific journal. With her pegasus duties done so quickly, she could catch up with the rest of her job before she called it a night. First order of business was to check if she had any appointments tomorrow that needed to be prepared. After verifying on her schedule that she didn't, she checked her emails.
There was one internal CERN newsletter detailing what workforces would be required to work on reparations, which didn't concern her. One request for a hematological test – which was what the lab was designed to do, so no surprise there – and three emails entitled 'UPDATE: Pegasus gas properties.' The sender was no great mystery – apparently, the owner of Daniel@arming.com had acquired his own email server.
As Christina read the emails, her smile gradually widened. While she had been busy not getting anywhere in the lab, the others had acquired yet another team member and were hard at work getting experimental data from the gas cloud. They had been industrious; Daniel had already run some regression analysis on the fluid mechanical properties of the gas, though it was still incomplete.
'Sorry for making you do the boring bit,' the email read, 'but would you mind consolidating the attached data in the journal entry? We're a little busy trying to convince the pegasus to run into heavy things right now.'
Boring bit? Writing the journal itself might not be all that interesting, but the data she handled was . As an academic, she could hardly have hoped for more. She looked at her computer clock – 19:30. She could procrastinate lunch for a few more hours.
Where no mare has gone before.
Rainbow Dash felt her world crumble around her. Whoever - or rather, whatever - had found her was unlike anything she had ever seen, and was certainly no pony.
Though blurry, she could see a long, beige claw-like thing stretched toward her face. She tried pulling away from it, but she was still too weak to move any significant distance. The claw slowly retracted, perhaps startled by her attempted gesture. The creature to whom it belonged loudly shouted something incoherent, as if calling to something else like it.
Soon, that something appeared.
There's more of them. I'm doomed.
Stooping her head, she let her tears run.
They'll rip me open and eat me, and there's nothing I can do... This is where I die. Nopony will even know...
She felt two sets of claws burn the skin across her face and eyes. Any second now, her life would be...
Why am I not dead?
Finally, she dared open her eyes again. Now closer, the creature didn't look all that scary anymore - it even reminded her a little of a pony. It had blue eyes, a long, smooth mane, and a friendly smile on its face. In its own way, it was pretty.
Rainbow, confused, allowed herself to get her hopes up a little and relaxed her tension. As soon as she had done so, though, her stomach started roaring in starvation, and she tensed back up. No wonder she felt so weak. How long had it been since she last ate anything?
The two creatures quietly laughed as they heard. The one that kept caressing Rainbow's face said something unintelligible to the other, who then promptly darted off. The remaining then turned back to her, softly speaking a language that might as well have been song. She couldn't understand the words, but just hearing them filled her with calm.
It didn't last long until the one that had run off came back with a couple of large red apples, which were sliced into small cubes and given to her. She still had no idea what happened, but it seemed she might have been wrong about them.
As she gobbled down the delicious food, she felt strengthened and renewed. For the first time, she could see that she actually was in a hospital bed - whatever these things were, they had been taking care of her all along.
"Thank... You..." she whispered, and drifted back to sleep, no longer fearing for her life.
Christina thought the little thing was cute, especially that sound it had made when it closed its eyes.
"Aww, don't you just want to wub-wub-wub the cute widdle thing?"
She tossed her arms around herself in a hugging motion, substituting the blistered animal with her own body. Her playful gesture was cut short, however, when the visitor bell rung. She left immediately, but two men had already appeared in the doorway, one holding a bloodied handkerchief to his head.
"Oh, dear."
She tossed her eyes towards Tarry, who already had covered up the animal. Turning back to the new patient, she offered some respite.
"Would you like to lie down before you tell us what happened?"
"Yeah, thanks."
The bloodied man dropped like a sack of potatoes into the empty treatment bed. Obviously trying to hide the pegasus, Tarry moved between the beds and started talking to their newfound patient. Christina decided to instead focus on the other man.
"I was told to drive this guy here when I was going past the ALICE entry point. Apparently he was down in the collider, and he slipped. He told me he'd fallen down the stairs." He shifted uncomfortably. "Can I leave now? My department head will be furious if I arrive late..."
Second accident in the collider in two days. Usually, the medical station was a quiet place, but lately there had been little time for research or routine health inspections.
"Alright, you can go."
She fetched a glass of water before returning to Tarry and the patient.
"He had a mild concussion," Terry explained to her. "I told him he can stay here and rest until he feels well enough to go home."
Christina offered her glass of water to the patient, and, as usual for someone with a headwound, he gulped it down with glee.
"You'll need to keep hydrated to speed up your recovery, but you'll be just fine," she told him with a smile. "You know, you're our second - no, third , actually - patient we've treated from the ALICE tunnel since yesterday. What's going on down there?"
The man took a deep breath before answering.
"The experiment blew up. Don't know why, yet. We finally managed to pump out the leaked helium earlier today, but when my team entered entered the tunnel, the water vapor from the air had condensed and frozen, so I slipped in the stairs and hit my head."
He closed his eyes and moaned.
"Wait, third ?"
Flora was picked up at the Geneve airport after a daunting six-hour airplane ride. She had been on holiday when she got summoned to Switzerland, supposedly to assist in the treatment of a strange animal discovered at CERN.
She had originally been sceptical to whether or not it was really worth her time, but after she was presented with a recording that detailed the apparent physical aspects of the creature, as reported by a reputable medical scientist, she was intrigued. A hooved, six-limbed mammal with a mass density at bird-level wasn't something you saw every day, and it should be far more interesting than treating the same old dogs and cats all day.
Once she had packed her stuff into the trunk of the car, she fastened herself in the back seat, since it was held open for her.
The woman she had spoken to on the phone had told her they had no theories on what the animal was, where it came from, or how it got there. Flora hoped they hadn't solved that riddle yet - when there were no explanations, she could pretend there was magic at work, and it would be her job to figure out how exactly how that magic worked. Once that had been figured out, it wouldn't be magic anymore, but at least the mystery would have been magical until then.
Her driver had to repeat herself to get her attention, since she was lost in her own thoughts.
"Oh, my apologies... Did you say something?"
"Yes, I did. I asked what brought you here to CERN. It's a place for particle physics research, not animal treatment."
Her driver was very matter-of-factly about it. Flora supposed she shouldn't be surprised, since she was at the heart of nerd territory.
"So you weren't told? There's a wonderful, unidentified animal here who's badly hurt, and I'm here to take a look at it."
"Unidentified animal? At CERN? Why wouldn't they just send it off to the hospital, then? Why would they pay for a plane ticket from across the globe just to get you here?"
The driver sounded surprised.
"Well... I don't like to brag, but I'm pretty good at handling new species. I've classified over twenty myself, and I guess they're afraid a new species would cause panic if too many people knew."
Realizing what she just told a complete stranger, she added:
"Oh, please promise me you won't tell anyone about it!"
"Don't worry, I have no wish to see harm come to the animal," the driver responded.
It was still before dawn, but Flora hoped she could be let in as soon as she arrived. She didn't want to have to wait to meet a member of this new species.
I do have a wish to limit the expenses those secretive doctors cause, though.
Fauna kept that last part to herself.
