Engines of a revolution

It had been a week since Twilight was last over to teach me, but I hadn’t seen her since a certain incident. In her absence I’d found out  few things, first of all, the days were longer than ours, I counted 15 hours of daylight, meaning a full rotation way closer to 30 hours. Second of all, I had internet, but it was weird, I couldn’t contact my family, but friends I could still get in contact with my friends. I was just in the kitchen cooking some pasta, which I’d managed to stock up on before my house was transported to this place, all the same, I was starting to run low. I heard a knock at the door, walking into the hallway I opened the door to find Twilight standing there with an almost panicked expression on her face.

“Wha…?” I went to ask, only for her to try to pull me outside “Hey, stop it!” She released my from…what even it was she was pulling me with, I held my hand up before running back into the kitchen and turning the heat off, I then called for Sam and grabbed my keys. Twilight eyed the dog wearily as he plodded outside. “Mind telling me what this is about?” I asked as best I could in what little Equestrian I had learnt in her absence.

“Something” she said, pointing into the forest that we were walking towards “in there, like yours”

“Like my home?” I asked, she shook her head.

“It has your [spriche]” she said.

“[Spriche]” I repeated “what does that mean?”

“Our way of speaking” she explained, I filed that word as “Language” until I knew more about their language. After walking for some time we came to a canyon of some kind. I paused when I noticed that the blue pony from before was there. Said pony turned and froze when she saw Sam and me. Sam growled softly as we walked past her, before stopping at the edge of the canyon and letting out a light gasp, sitting there, in the bottom of th canyon, was a massive container ship.

“Holy shit!” I swore in my own language, drawing the attention of the ponies.

“What did he say?” the blue pony asked Twilight, she simply shrugged in response.

“Like yours?” she asked, I gave a dumb nod in reply.

“It has…stuff, much different stuff, from my….area?” I said. “We need to…” I gestured down at the ship, Twilight nodded before her horn sparkled, next thing I knew I heard a pop and myself, Sam and Twilight were on the deck of the container ship, this thing was massive, even by my world’s standards, then again, I wasn’t familiar with container ships. I walked up to a container and tried to open it, but to no avail. I glanced to Twilight before giving her a pleading look. She rolled her eyes before lighting her horn, the lock broke, and the door opened to reveal…

“You are kidding me” I breathed, inside this particular container was someone’s brand new Pagani, one of the R models by he looks of it “Holy shit” I said, standing there in shock. I heard Twilight walking over.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Moving…thing?” I said, before giving a sigh of frustration when she gave me a deadpan look “I’ll tell when I can say more in your language. Crew? Find crew?” Twilight nodded. Understanding what I meant. If there were still humans alive, then that meant I wouldn’t be totally alone here, I’d at least have someone to talk to in my own language on a day to day basis. I showed Twilight to the general area of the bridge. I climbed up the stairs into the bridge and froze.

“Where’s the crew?” she asked from the bottom of the stair. I began to feel ill.

“All over the place” I said, I’ll spare you the details, let’s just say there was blood and parts everywhere. I dashed back down the stairs before emptying my stomach over the side of the ship. Something must have gotten in and massacred the crew, I’d heard the predators at night whilst trying to get to sleep. So I knew this wasn’t your run of the mill forest. I heard hoofstep going up the stairs, before the rapid scrabbling and subsequent dashing down the stairs to empty her stomach down the side. She said something I couldn’t understand, before pulling a scroll and quill out of thin air and writing something on it, she then sit fir to it, the flames seemed to get caught in the wind before being carried away.

“I could have gone my whole life without seeing that” I said in English, resting my back against the railing and sliding down until I was sitting on the floor. Twilight, despite being unable to understand me, nodded, understanding the sentiment. After sometime, I could hear wingbeats and looked to the sky to see the Princess flying toward us, flanked by pegasi clad in armour. The princess landed gracefully and looked around in wonder.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Boat” I replied sluggishly, before pointing up to the bridge “Crew, there”

“[Mertich]” Twilight said, looking rather pale. The princess raised an eyebrow before walking up the stairs, only to gasp when she reached the top. She hastily retreated before walking over to a rather high ranking guard and giving him orders. The guard nodded before going to pass on the orders to the rest of the guards, Celestia walked over to Twilight and pulled her into a hug with her wing. After a moment she pulled away and turned to me

“Will you be [alresch]?” she asked

“might, later” I said, standing up before pointing to my forehead and then pointing to hers. Her horn glowed and I felt a presence in my mind “thank you, I need to be able to explain the things you’ll see properly. I won’t lie to you, they’ll seem alien to you, my planet is at least 150 years ahead of yours, and that’s only judging my your railways”

“You make a valid point” Celestia said as we began walking “what is this place?”

“this is what we call a container ship” I responded “it’s what we use to transport new things to a given country, already I‘ve found an incredibly fast vehicle designed for racing”

“and what are we to do with all of this?” she asked.

“Use it” I replied as we came to the first container “use it to your requirements so as to advance your own species, but don’t go using it for war” Celestia opened the container to reveal stacks of cardboard boxes filling the container. Curiosity piqued I walked inside before pulling a box off the top of one of the smaller stacks and placing it in the floor. On the top of the box the words “Ship to Hornby Hobbies LTD Margate, Kent” were printed.

“What is it?” Celestia asked.

“Something I’d never have expected to turn up here” I responded, opening the lid I was greeted with a familiar cardboard packaging, on the side was a printed photograph of a large green steam locomotive “I definitely didn’t expect to see these here, tell me, what do you know of scale miniature as a hobby?”

“That there are groups for it,” she answered “why?” I held up the box “ah…”

“Let’s just say I now have an excessive surplus of model locomotives” I said “And I say that as someone who’s planning a model railway, of course I’ll be claiming some of everything like this, but what use do I have for 20 of the exact same model.” I put the packaging back in the box and placed said box back on the stack. We continued around going through each deck level container, explaining to Celestia what each thing was as best I could, there were an unbelievable variety of different items, too many for me to recall off the top of my head, what really stuck out was when we came to a large well in the hold.

“what are those!?” Celestia asked.

“No…fucking…way!” I managed to say “what the hell are two entire locomotive doing here?” In the hold were the latest Spanish built locomotives bound for the UK, a class 68 Diesel locomotive, they were still in the white pre-delivery paint job with the word “Vossloh” painted on the side.

“Those things are steam locomotives?” Celestia asked, I laughed.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, walking down the steps “we got rid of steam well over 40 years ago, these are the latest diesel-electric locomotives. they might look fancy, but I still prefer steam to this thing, a steam loco will keep going, whereas with this loco as soon as there’s a problem it’ll probably die on you” I ran a hand along the side of the loco

“So what going to happen to this?” she asked.

“Stick them in a railway museum for all I care” I responded “I don’t think you even have diesel fuel here, so it’s useless anyway, sure it looks nice, but good looks aren’t much use if it doesn’t go, besides, I have other ideas to help your world out” Celestia looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

“Such as”

“Later” I said “first, we have to get all of this out, the ship will need transporting to a dry-dock. We also have to consider the…mess…in the bridge”

“I’m sorry about them” she started

Why?” I asked “I didn’t know them, besides, I’m used to having my hopes raised, only to have them dashed at the last moment. I’ll deal with it”

“You don’t have to deal with it on your own” she offered. “Canterlot is only a train ride away should you need to console with me” I didn’t answer for a while, contemplating her offer eventually I gave a response

“I’ll consider it” For the rest of the day we explored on the ship, we also discussed what would happen to all the stuff. I began to get ideas of what to do with all this stuff, nothing major yet, but I had plans al the same. By the time we’d finished exploring it was dark. We went to the deck to see a fleet of massive airships hovering above the container ship.

“Alright” I said in my own language to no one in particular “the steam engines were a let-down, these are somewhat impressive” I then turned to Celestia and tapped her on the shoulder, she quickly cast the spell and gave me a questioning look.

“Whilst those are all very impressive, how exactly are you going to transport an entire container ship weighing hundreds of thousands of tons through the air?” Celestia laughed.

“You think we’re going to carry this ship?” she asked “it’s simpler to teleport this ship into a hidden dock, they aren’t floating cranes, they’re portal ships”

“What the hell are portal ships?”

“You don’t have portal ships?” she asked.

“We don’t even have whatever it is you are using to talk to me” I replied, her eyebrows rose and she looked at me like I’d grown a second head.

“If you don’t have magic then how does your leader move the sun and moon?”