Mare Cognitum

So, this is my first story. Hope you enjoy it!

I do not own My Little Pony.

This story's beginning was partially inspired by Douglas Adam's The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. His humor style is attempted to be recreated in this story. But, there practically are no jokes in the first two chapters, as I want the backstory to be more serious.

Story: Mare Cognitum

Chapter one, prologue

By GlidingZephyr

Princess Celestia calmly walked up, and sat down at the table near the podium. A large grin was plastered on her face. Today was going to be a great day. She would get to witness not just the first rocket launch in Equestrian history, but also get to spread her empire into the reaches of space. Millions of ponies had gathered to watch the event.

An MC stepped up to the podium, looking out above the large crowd of ponies. "Ponies of Equestria! Today we have gathered to witness a momentous occasion!" He paused. "The first ever pioneering of pony space technology!"

A cheer came up from the crowd as a banner with the Equestrian Space Assosiation's logo unrolled.

"Now, as you can see here we have five rockets. Each of them has their own task. The first will simply send up a satellite, dubbed Pioneer-1. It will record statistics and stuff, and broadcast the data back here, at ESA. The second rocket will set up a space station for further launches, if need arises for its use. The third rocket will send another satellite, Diana, to the moon. The fourth rocket will accompany the fifth, just a supply rocket. And the last one, the one you are all probably here for, will establish a colony on a planet we have found. Because the planet we've found is so fertile and similar to Equestria, we've named it Earth, and..."

"RACIST!" Somepony in the back yelled.

"...without further ado, let's begin the launches! All the rockets should finish their tasks but a month from now. Now, may we start warming up the rockets?"

A pony in a white lab coat hit a button with his hooves, and the five cylinders began to pulse with a blue aura around them.

"Don't get close to them as they launch, the residual teleportation magics may pull you into space."

Of course, if anypony asks for something to happen at an important announcement, the exact opposite shall always and inevitably happen. A small unicorn foal, whose parents were seen busy walking over to the beer stand, waddled up to the side of a rocket and got shipped to the moon.

"Everypony stay calm! Don't panic..."

That would have been a splendid idea, and it would have worked if the MC wasn't the one saying it, and the launch was  something less imperative, say, the re-election of a new mayor. As all hell broke loose, Celestia just sat back, bashing her face into her hooves.

"That was a complete disaster! Its a good thing that nopony got their hands on the actual rockets..."

"Uh, actually P-princess, a status report just came in from ESA. And it's bad..."

"Out with it, messanger!"

He cleared his throat. "Four of the five rockets were destroyed. The survivor, the colonization rocket, crash landed, due to communications which have been broken. All papers pertaining to the event have been destroyed in the explosion. All that we have salvaged is nothing helpful, just the blueprints for one-way escape pods."

"..."

"Princess?"

"Gggghh..."

"A-are you alright?"

"Our scientists invest BILLIONS of bits worth of technology into research to establish an intergalactic expansion, and it just explodes in my face?! This is unacceptable! You!" Celestia pointed a shaky hoof at another young colt waiting obediently aside the door."

"Yes, m'lady?"

"Take all evidence of this act, and store it in the Royal Archives. Do not let word of this leak out to the press. Erase all memories of the recent events from bystanders. And save the remaining data from the labs."

"Affirmative." On that last word, accompanied by an awkward salute, the small messanger rushed out the door.

"This failiure shall never surface again, hopefully..."

Five-hundred years later...

"...and then she just took the tree, and cut it down! Can you believe this mare?!"

"Hey, look, it was on my side of the fence, and it is therefore my orange tree."

"Yes, but I planted it before I sold that land!"

"On my property now, however!"

The argument continued on. Princess Celestia could not believe what kinds of stupid arguments ponies brought to her. Yeah, sure it was a free court, but that didn't mean that everypony in Equestria had to settle their cases there.

Wanting to end the pointless debate, she spoke up. "Look, would you two please stop arguing. Yes, it is her orange tree."

"Ha!"

"...however, you could pay for another orange tree to be planted on his side. You did cut down a tree that was his."

"Fine."

The two ponies left, still glaring at each other.

"Bring in the next party!"

A brownish stallionentered, along with a pink mare, a blue mare, and Prince Blueblood. The three of them, excluding the Prince, all shared what appeared to be an hourglass cutie mark. Seeing Blueblood, Celestia knew that this was going to be a long day.

"CELESTIA!"

"...Princess..." She muttered under her breath.

"These three ponies were found trespassing on my property!"

"Calm down, Blueblood. First we need names, and an explanation of the situation."

The brown stallion spoke up. "I am Doctor Whooves. This is Colgate," he said, pointing to the blue mare, "and this is Romana," he finished, gesturing to the pink mare.

"And what were you accused of?"

"These three absolutely foul peasants were trampling my flower garden! I can only eat the finest of roses, yet they had simply ruined them all!"

"How did they get into your garden?"

"My servant was sick for the day, and I simply cannot touch the dirty key, so I was forced to leave the door open! Either way, how would one be able to do such a menial task?"

Everypony present, including the supposedly unfazable guards, promptly facehoofed.

"So, why were you three entering his garden?"

Colgate spoke up. "Princess Celestia, you may not believe us when we say this, but will you at least try to listen?"

"Yes, sure. Everypony is entitled to speak and be heard."

"Erm, well, you see..." Romana started.

"We kind of umm..." The Doctor continued.

"Own a time-traveling interdimentional phone box that is sentient..." Colgate finished.

In all her years of being a ruler, Celestia had heard of much more ridiculous things, including a story about a rogue cuisinart that killed fifty-seven ponies, collected their blood, and held a seance for his dead relative, the carrot juicer.

"...Uhh... so how does this relate to you entering the garden?"

"Well," Colgate started, putting her left forehoof behind her head and sheepishly brushing her mane, "while we were using it, it bugged out and teleported to his garden."

"How did you know it was there?"

"We also have these small screwdrivers that are multifunctional and can practically do anything," Romana stated.

"...Oh. So, lemme get this straight. You three own a telephone booth that not only can think, but can teleport all across Equestria and travel through time?"

"Mhmm. After all, it is what our cutie marks are for." Colgate filled in.

If this mare was capable of having a mane of toothpaste, she was probably just as capable of traveling through time.

"...Seems legit enough for me."

"WHAT? You believe these classless fools!?"

"Umm, well, I've heard more unlikely stories," And, you disagree with them. Therefore I, and probably all of Equestria agree. "how about they give us a test run of their phone booth?"

"Thank you, Princess!" The three all said at once.

The ponies walked (except for Blueblood, he had a servant carry him) to the rosegarden. Along with them came a few guards, and Luna. Soon enough, they spotted indeed, what was a large telephone booth.

"I presume this is it?" Celestia inquired.

"Yes. Want to take a look inside, take it for a spin, do whatever?"

"Sure."

Celestia stepped inside the booth, which was well large enough to even let the large alicorn in. The others soon followed, to find her spinning around in circles, looking up around the room.

"Sweet mother Luna! It's even bigger on the inside!"

Though it was strange to say such a thing in front of Luna, especially coming from the mouth of her sister, the situation was about to get stranger.

"W-wait! You knew about my foal?"

"What foal?" Colgate said.

"Oh, n-nothing..."

Quickly wanting a change in topic, Luna tapped her hooves on the ground. "S-so uhh... how exactly does this um, work?"

"Oh, we have a spacial relocation hole in the door. While it looks like you're just stepping inside of the phone booth, you're really stepping through a portal. The portal is just grafted to the door, so you can't see the edges. The other side of the portal is a lot bigger, as big as the side of the wall. You are actually in a big silo, somewhere on the moon, in space."

That memory hit Luna like a bucket of rogue cuisinarts. "S-s-space... space... space... SPAAAAAACEEE!!!"

The dark alicorn quickly hit the floor. The guards rushed over to help her, but then saw the bucket of spilled cuisinarts on the floor and got scared away.

"She'll be fine," Romana quickly said. "Anyways, Your Highness, where would you like to go?"

"Hmm..." she thought, tapping her chin with a hoof. "Where can we go?"

"Practically anywhere. Any city, any country, any time period, any planet, any..."

Wooah, wait! Celestia's train of thought ground to a halt. 'Any planet?' Could that even be... the one?

"W-we could go to a planet?"

"Yeah, I guess. Anywhere in time, or space."

The memory hit Celestia like a substantially larger bucket of the rogue cuisinarts' seanced relatives. She too fell.

"Ugh, how could those two make contact with the floor? It's so... dirty..."

"What do you think has gotten into those two?"

"I'm not sure..."

"What's wrong with saying spa-" *thunk*

Celestia woke up on the floor to the sound of a robotic yet seemingly masculine voice announcing their arrival.

"BZZZRT! WE HAVE ARRIVED HERE ON THE PLANET FIRUNDRA! BZZZRT!"

Doctor Whooves turned around and flashed Princess Celestia a cocky grin. "Well? What do you think? Still have doubts we can travel anywhere?"

She murmured a kind of assent, then looked around. Blueblood was rambling on to his servant about how hideous the planet outside looked. Luna was talking with Colgate and Romana about if they wanted to join her gaming group. The guards, as usual, weren't doing anything. And Doctor Whooves was still waiting for an answer.

"Um, where is here exactly?"

"...I honestly don't know. Luna woke up and got bored, so we showed her the main computer we had. She asked us what games we liked, Colgate said she thought World of Warcraft was the best, and then Luna started banging her head against the keyboard and the control panel."

Princess Celestia looked outside one of the windows. The outside planet was blood-red, and mottled with craters. The air was filled with a green mist. From the ground came purple trees, yellow shrubs, blue grass, and bluegrass.

"STOP THE MUSIC! I absolutely abhor Applelachian music. It is so unbefitting of me to hear anything to do with simple hicks!"

"Come on, Blueblood. Enjoy yourself! This is one of the few planets out there that has a changing theme song naturally!"

"Luna, what do you mean 'one of the few'," Colgate asked. "Are there more?"

"Oh, yes, many more."

"How do you know so much about space?"

Luna facehoofed and made big circular gestures to her flank.

The Doctor was still confused. "I don't get it."

"Cutie mark. Job. Raising astral bodies? Designing the layout of the stars and space?"

"Oh! Oh... oh. I get it now. So, convinced enough, Princess? Your own sister confirms we're actually here."

"I'm convinced. In fact, I think technology like this could help benefit Equestria. Can you build things in the royal laboratories? I would certainly pay you."

"Of course! Gladly! We'll let you use it as a government-like thing, but could you not share it with the general public? This stuff is very, very powerful, and regular ponies would probably abuse it."

"Sure. Its settled. I'm only using this for one thing however..."

Later, at the Royal Test Facilities...

"Just put on the final rivet and... there! Its finished." Doctor Whooves proudly stood up and showed off his contraption. It was a small metal box with screws on each side, and a small dome in the center. At first glance you'd probably pass it off as a regular container, but on closer inspection, its sides had small, thin trenches that glowed with a soft blue light.

"Well? Do you like it?"

"Are you sure this will work? I mean, for a radio signal to travel that far through space-"

"Don't worry, Princess. It will positively intercept the signal. Like the technology in my phone booth, the antenna dome will look for that specific frequency and location of sending from everywhere, yet nowhere."

"I don't understand..."

"The antenna is basically modded so that it is receiving signals from every point in space in the universe. But it will only accept a signal coming from Earth."

"Are you absolutely positive that this will guarantee-"

The Princess was quickly cut off, as right at that moment the box started to hum. The vibrations somehow resonated in a way to imitate a living voice. The voice came out feminine and very realistic, with just one enigmatic sentence.

"Please help us."

Of all ponies who Celestia wished to talk to, this mare was both first and last on her list. It was a voice Celestia had never thought of being able to hear again. The voice she both yearned to and feared to hear. The voice which brought her both great joy and sleepless nights.

It was her.