The Strange and Secret Life of Lumen Sky

-Night-

Finally, Monday evening was here. After two day of waiting I felt like I was going to explode with the anticipation. It was all ready eleven, so I got really nervous. At eleven twenty-one Fluttershy walked in the door.

"A-am I late?" Said she.

"Nope, go find a spot in my living room to sit."

"Okay. Um, where is that?"

"Oh, that is in the back room, through the door, right down the hall. You can't miss it."

"Okay, thank you." She walked into the back and I heard the door close. I continued to wait and almost twenty minutes passed before the rest of my guests arrived. Most of that time I waited just pacing around my store and seeing if Fluttershy was okay in the back by herself. After they were all assembled in my living room I started my safety orientation.

"All right. I know you are excited and I am too, but I have to tell you about the dangers and procedures of this machine you will witness on its maiden voyage. Yes, it will be boring but it may keep you alive in the case of a system failure." Rainbow Dash groaned and several others just looked at me like I was completely insane.

Nearly an hour later the ten of us were assembled in the control room of the particle accelerator dressed in yellow radiation suits looking over it through the large window filled with an ionized form of cadmium for some protection from any potential radiation.

"Okay, you know the drill. Keys ready!" We all lifted a hoof off the ground where our keys were to turn the electronics on and activate the accelerator.

"Keys set!" We put the keys into their slots.

"I am so excited!" Pinkie Pie looked like she was about to go nuts if something interesting didn't happen.

"Turn!" We turned our keys and the dashboard lit up and we started the preheat and vacuum sequence. The vacuum pumps started whirring and the gauge for chamber pressure started dropping.

"Vacuum pressure reached Lumen." Twilight reported from the other side of the room.

"Start preheat sequence." Applejack started pushing buttons and the large power supply in the far corner of the accelerator room started putting out over three thousand volts at nearly ten thousand amps. A very thin white line appeared in the video feed on the TV screen over the window.

"Is that all we're here for?" Rarity was looking at me from her station.

"Yes, that thin line is a solid stream of electrons flowing around in the chamber."

"In English please." Appplejack said.

"That is in English, but if you want me to sum it up. That is a stream of electricity, or the particles that make it, streaming around the chamber. The whole point of this is to prove many theories made by the Board of Equestrian Scientists, that I am not a part of, most of which involve the speed of light in a vacuum and the various things that make up the particles."

"That makes sense surprisingly." Octavia said over the growing hum of the accelerator passing Mach one. There was a brilliant flash of light that had no distinct color and a huge surge of feed back on the camera.

"Ooooo. Nice light show, when do we get to the good stuff?" Pinkie was starting to lean over the dashboard and press the visor against the window.

"Soon, soon. We still have about three hours until the accelerator is a maximum power. I know everypony in here won't be able to stand for that long so, let's go do something else." Twilight looked like she was having the time of her life and everypony else looked like they were ready to drop to the floor and sleep.

"Do we have to keep these suits on or can we take them off? They are making my wings cramp." Dash was starting to unzip the back of her suit.

"You can, but you have to be ready at a moment's notice to put it back on." She just took it off and took it with her as did most everypony else. We got through the air lock and I ended up putting on a lab coat out of peer pressure. We went into the main landing where the halls to the various labs were.

"Now, we can do one of few things. We can go play games or, we can go and be bored because there is not much to do down here." They were looking at each other.

"Well, I don't know about you guys but I am going to go play some video games." Dash was starting to step forwards.

"It might not hurt just to try." Fluttershy had remained almost invisible to me for almost an entire hour.

"Well then, let's go. I have some computer games for creative minds." I wandered down the hall to the electronics lab and opened a door on the side of the hall and turned on the lights in a small computer lab. Most of them just sat at their computer and watched what I was doing. I got all the computers turned on and started my own.

"Where do you get all this stuff Lumen?" Twilight was sitting at her computer watching me over her monitor.

"Oh, most of it I can get for factory defect or just broken. I take it and fix it and here it is."

"So you can just get a broken particle accelerator and fix it just like that?" Applejack was watching me from the back of the room.

"That I made, the parts were broken and the plans were...borrowed."

"Really?" She was going all the way to find the truth.

"More like I looked at the design and made several parts they couldn't make." I started warming up my projector.

"Who did this come from exactly?" She raised an eyebrow.

"The Board of Equestrian Scientists of course."

"You really do need some help."

"Just a little." The projector turned on and I pulled up ImagineCraft.

"How did you afford all those parts?" Twilight looked like she was going to pull a calculator out on me as she stood up.

"I used a small supply store and got most of the components for really cheap."

"Oh." She sat back down.

"Hey, where's the good games?" Dash stood up and glared at me.

"Oh, heh, I don't play those kinds of games. Instead I play ImagineCraft, I has action aspects of it."

"It sounds super lame." My eye twitched.

"Oh, just wait. ImagineCraft is actually fun. You ponies in the back looking like you just got though an entire lecture on the Higgs-Boson, you can join in at any time you like." They just looked at each other. I started talking about ImagineCraft and explained how to play and that kind of thing for about an hour.

By the time I was done Rainbow Dash was still skeptical but she decided to give it a try. Fluttershy looked like she was going to march into the middle of a food fight but just played. By the end of their first day Dash had a decent shelter and Fluttershy had just wandered around despite my warnings. As the sun set on their first day in game Fluttershy called me over.

"H-hey. Can you help me?" Her face said everything I needed to know.

"Sure. What do you need help with?"

"Everything." She looked away a little.

"Here, how about I show you how and you can use that as a reference." The color was starting to return to her face.

"Sure." I went over my computer and started showing her what to do. I went over the basic shelter design and how to gather resources. She was getting along nicely until Twilight started playing. Twilight had apparently soaked up a ton of information in the short time we had and was starting to freak her out by talking to me about concepts that were way out of Fluttershy's grasp. Soon I got Fluttershy to the point where she could go to the Nether and said that she can handle herself from there.

"W-wait, come back. I still don't know what to do!" She started to move her player away from the portal.

"Yes you do. I did it without any help."

"Yes but you're you. I'm just me."

"I know but you got this far. You were the one playing, not me. I just told you what to do and how to get there. You did the rest. Now, go to the Nether and show the game that you are in control."

"Okay. I can do this. I am in control of you game." With that she stepped through the portal and ended up in the hellish realm that is the Nether. Applejack came over and started watching her play and Twilight came over to my desk where I was making course corrections in Equs Space Program.

"What are you doing?" She leaned over my shoulder and watched as I manipulated the maneuver node for the correct burn to get an orbit around Mün.

"I am going to put a Equine on the moon." I started my burn.

"Is that Luna's moon?"

"What, no, this is a simulation for aerospace flight." She glanced over at me and then back at the computer.

"Then who's is it?"

"Nopony's. This is a fictional solar system. It is really quite cool, plus, there are a lot of cool things to do." I finished the burn and turned to face her.

"What is the point? To do space stuff or actually do research?" Luna was watching to screen as the small vessel started to separate from the lander.

"Both. You have a budget and have to do all kinds of things to get funding for building. It is actually really complicated."

"Really. Let me land you Kerbin on the moon."

"Sure and it is an Equine, Equs is that planet over there." I wheeled the camera so she could see the small planet and got up so she could sit at my desk.

"So, how do I do this." I explained the mechanics and controls to her.

"And remember, don't land too hard or you risk an explosion." She nodded and started to lower the small lander to the moon.

"Slow down Twilight."

"Yeah I'm on it." She fired the thrusters and the craft started slowing down.

"Extend the landing legs."

"I know!" She mashed the key and the legs came down. The craft was about thirty meters above the surface and she cut the engines. She watched the craft slowly sink to the surface and the legs fell off and the lander fell over.

"Well, that could have gone better." She turned and glared at me.

"Like you could have done any better."

"You wanna go?"

"Yeah. Let's see this amazing landing." I opened a sandbox file and made small space plane.

"Is that what you are going to use." Twilight pulled a chair up to my desk and watched what I was doing on the projector screen.

"You better believe it." I got the plane off the runway and pulled it into the air and made a wide circle around the space center.

"Why is that white darling. Couldn't you have made it another color?" Rarity had apparently been paying attention this whole time and finally decided to say something.

"Because that is all I have. The white keeps the plane from overheating." I started to fly straight for the tallest building in the center.

"Oh. Couldn't your little green beans just wear something better like..."

"I am sorry to cut you off but I have to concentrate here." I cut power to the plane's engines and pulled it into an upright position and fired them and started to adjust my angle as the plane sunk closer to the building's roof. I cut the engines and the plane landed vertically on the roof.

"Bu...what...how!?" Twilight's jaw dropped.

"Who says I can't fly." I looked over at her with a small smirk.

"I wanna try!" Pinkie ran around the corner and jumped into a chair and started to pull up the game.

"Looks like fun." Applejack sat down next to Dash.

"Is there any colorful aspects of this game?" Rarity looked at my work and looked over at me.

"I think there is here let me see." I pulled up a page on it from the internet and showed her.

"Ooo. I think I know what I can make now!" She raced over to the computer and sat bouncing a little in her chair. I showed them how to save file edit all the tech into the game and showed them how to build. From there they went nuts. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy joined in and we had a decent multiplayer server up and running with almost everypony doing something. Twilight was still irritated at me and Luna was still watching from the back.

"Hey," I nudged Twilight, "watch this." I had made a small craft that would spin and launch an Equine out at several times the speed of sound. I flew it to another rocket I had made and started spinning it.

"What now, are you going to one-up me again?"

"Nope, watch." I got an Equine out and it was flung out into the side of the ship, launching it out into the water where it started flailing very violently. She just looked down at me. I could hear Luna and Octavia snickering from the back of the room. Then Twilight's face got stern again.

"Wait, who's watching the accelerator?" Her eyes started getting big.

"I am. I have the stuff pulled up here. See." I opened the tab on my computer's desktop and showed her.

"Cool. Wait, why is it reading in kilometers per hour instead of miles per hour."

"In the big world of science we use the same easy system of measurement."

"Oh, I forgot. Well then, is the accelerator ready for the tests yet?" We looked over to where Dash had shouted about crashing her ship and was watching the explosion. I looked back and saw the speed of the particles.

"It should be ready now." I turned to face everypony. "Okay, I know you are having fun but now it is time to run the tests that will answer many things about our world. Please save your progress and put your radiation suits back on so we can get this over with." Dash groaned and I went to the back to check on Vinyl and Octavia. Vinyl was leaning against Octavia who was just staring into space.

"Are you two okay?" I sat down next to Octavia.

"Yes, we are fine. I don't think that Vinyl will be very happy with being woken." She looked over at her.

"Yeah probably not. Well let's go then." Everypony was leaving the room and the only ones left were the three of us.

"When are you going to tell them."

"Soon. Just a bit longer Octavia."

"You have had enough time, either you will tell them, or I will."

"Fine I will tell them."

"Today."

"Fine." She nudged Vinyl and she opened her eyes and sat up and just looked around for a few seconds and then put her glasses on. After Vinyl stood up we left the room and I closed the door and turned the light off.