As In A Mirror

Chapters

Lonely
Surprised

Lonely

Long odds only matter if everything is happening by accident.
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76th Day of Fall - 7th Year of New Harmony

The smell of smoke was never this strong in any of the clairvoyant spells.

I can’t help but wonder whether I’ve done something to make the timeline deviate from what I saw.

I keep my eyes down. It would be best to protect my psyche for as long as possible. Instead, I focus on my attention on my other senses.

My rapid footsteps on the broken marble make for an interesting rhythm. Each step of my hoof makes the crumbled rock crack and snap under my weight. Every step from my lizard claw is a softer sound, like a single rough shake of a poorly made maraca.

Dust clouds roll low across the ground in thick, grey swirls. Despite the gravitas of the situation, I can’t help but appreciate how dust filled air reveals the hidden chaos in the air. Every motion spins unpredictable cyclones in the gray miasma. Fire sucks in air and pushes out smoke. A roof caving in stirs up a great wall of rough ash. Ponies run in the opposite direction, their pounding legs and swift wings churn the dusty air.

I try not to think about how futile it is to flee from a threat like this. Any enemy that is literally in all places at once, unconfined to the dimensions these ponies live in. Of course, I'm not quite as confined as these equines are but that doesn’t make me any safer.

I keep my eyes down.

The collapse of a tower nearby sends a gust sprays soot my way. The gritty particulate clumps in my fur and builds in aggravating lumps between my scales. I squint but a bit of the grime found its way into my eyes. I blink and rub to try lessen the irritation but to no avail. I keep running. On any other day I’d use a bit of magic to remedy the situation in some novel, wacky way. I might even manage to get a few of my friends to laugh at my antics.

But, they aren't here right now. They wouldn’t laugh if they were. I didn’t need any reminder not to use my magic either. I'd been saving every ounce of chaos energy i could for the last five years. I couldn’t waste any magic now. That wasn’t even the biggest reason to avoid casting frivolous spells. If I was going to catch it by surprise...if I was actually going to it to hurt it before it noticed me, I knew I’d need to be completely magically inert until the last possible moment.

So I content myself with letting tears and my natural biology deal with the irritant. And most importantly, I keep my eyes down.

I never stopped paying attention to the screams or shouts. It is quite fascinating how much information you can gleen if you really pay attention to everything that is communicated by a shout.

A commanding tone calls out, likely a stallion that thinks he found a good place for his group to hide. I can’t help but feel sorry for him, trying so hard to protect others. It’s pointless though. A psychotic yell rings out from some distant rooftop. Somepony must have looked for a bit too long. A series of harsh cries break out in unison, not cries of fear but of fury. I can hear them as they move quickly across the broken city. A remnant of Canterlot’s Royal Guard or maybe just a group of very brave citizens. I can tell that they are charging the enemy. Pointless, in the end. But rather than mourn their loss, I chose to admire them for their bravery.

Ponies are surprising like that. So soft and predictable at face value, but at times like these they become something entirely different. Under pressure they seem to tap into to something more. Something surprising. Something special.

Something worth sacrificing for.

Something worth dying for.

I pick up the pace, but I keep my eyes down.

I’ve walked through this place so many times that I can now manage a near-sprint without raising my eyes of the rubble-strewn ground beneath my pounding feet. I don’t just mean that I’ve walked through Canterlot hundreds of times, which I have. I’ve walked through this Canterlot hundreds of times as well.

Years ago, when I was fresh out of my stone prison and only a few hours into a surprising new friendship, I was pulled aside by a certain pair of up-tight rulers. They asked me to cast a simple clairvoyance spell. I looked forward half a decade at the cost of all the chaos magic I’d earned in the hours since my return.

What I saw scared me. And it should be known, I don’t scare easily.

Since then, once a week I used the same spell to look into the future. I pulled together a radical plan. I analysed the enemy. I memorized the battlefield. I wrote scripts for everything I needed to say to anypony I encountered for the whole month before the event occurred. It cost me a good bit of energy to make all of the preparations. Being predictable cost me even more. Preparation is the antithesis of chaos after all.

I clench my eyes shut as I run through the ruins of Canterlot. I leap over a fallen pillar, its carved flutings and crenelations vivid in my mind. A sharp turn to the left. Duck under a fallen support beam, the flame that burns it casts a dry hotness that only adds to my perspiration.

Eyes still closed, I duck through a hole in a wall and book it down a hall. My speed is just enough that I can leap from a fourth floor window to a third floor balcony across the street. I sprint, three more turns. Two flights of stairs. Another turn. I jump from a ledge The ground three stories below rushes up to meet me. I force down the flight magic that is nearly reflexive. I know that the slightest levitation spell will give me away. I plummet, hard air presses with my heart in my stomach. Instead of colliding with a splat however, I execute a kicking roll that converts my downward speed into forward momentum. I practiced that one for weeks.

All this effort and I hardly had a sliver of a chance to win this fight. I never told the princesses that part, but I suppose they knew anyway. Luna knew tactics and warfare well enough to know my odds going into this battle. Meanwhile, Celestia has seen through every lie I’ve tried on her since my return. Still, they never said anything about the way I pretended to have a plan to win this fight. They never mentioned my lies or my feigned bravado. Maybe because they knew I was doing all I could. Or maybe they just trusted me.

Well, I hope I don’t let them down. Everypony has an idea of how they would act if the world was ending, but I gave up that life because there is a chance we might make it through. I hope it all pays off.

I told them that I would give everything to beat this thing. I’ve saved every spare bit of chaos magic, telling them that I might just win a stand-up fight.

What a bunch of baloney.

No, my only chance is to extend the fight. I’m going to give us another chance to win. The next time we fight, it will be on a battlefield of my choosing. And next time we meet this abomination, we are going to have allies.

...Hopefully.

My steps slow as I reach my destination. I still haven’t open my eyes, but I can tell from memory that the cracked and crooked spires of the Canterlot Palace loom above me.

I know from memory that a series of long fractures are beginning to form down its center. In thirty minutes, those fractures will form a wide fissure and the resulting structural instability combined with a failing foundation will bring the entire palace to the ground. The tremendous crash will deal a serious blow to the city’s mountain anchors. The city will fall from the mountain less than fifteen minutes later.

I can tell that I have arrived from smell of the place. It’s not at all like the smell of smoke and dust and fear that swirls in the air of city I just ran through. Oddly, the place smells sterile, like almost nothing at all. Just the slightest scent of something strange wafts through the air. A smell that simply doesn’t match with anything I’ve previously experienced. Hard to describe a smell like this, like something that simply shouldn’t be.

No, I’ve encountered it before. That was a very long time ago.

I can tell where I am because of the things I can hear. More specifically, it’s very, very quiet. The yelling is gone. The crumbling stone is silent. I know there is usually a strong wind at this altitude, but I hear none. No birds, no ponies, no echo to my footsteps. There is only a whisper, a hushing, breezeless rasp somewhere between the rustling of leaves and the sound of pouring sand.

In ancient memory recognizes that noise as well.

I can tell where I am by the feeling of a deep cold that crawls under my skin. The sort of cold that you might find deep in a cave beneath the earth. A penetrating chill. It seems as if this space hasn’t felt heat for millennia. Space itself seems to suck at the energy of my being.

That is exactly what is happening, actually.

Most of all, I can tell where I am by what I feel in my chest. Emotion is the interface through which one might detect and manipulate chaos magic. I feel wrong. I sense a violation that makes my clawed fingers twitch. A deep throbbing pulls at the of my fingers and horns. I grit my teeth as a vibrating low hum of wrongness gnaws at me.

Maybe a part of that is just fear. I am once again afraid, I realize, and that itself scares me. I can barely remember the last time that I was actually afraid.

This is it. I open my eyes and I look up.

A vast anomaly fills that space above Canterlot. Miles wide and tall, but only if it decided to abide by euclidean geometry long enough to be measured. It’s a broken shape bereft of any curves. The black jagged mass looks like a terrible crack in the glass pane of reality.

It bulges and bends in shapes that don’t conform to natural geometry. Thick tendrils with sharp, angular bends spider out from the black mass, their ends terminating in fractals and other nameless abominations to realities laws. In the space around the tendrils, light bends, refracts and reflects in impossible ways. At certain spots, the space between tendrils seems to be occupied by angular, two dimensional holes cut into space. Looking down one of the holes is like looking at a recursive mirror.

I can already feel my mind beginning to fray. I’m not too shabby at confronting the incomprehensible, but this live of dissonance will break my mind in a number of minutes.

I suck in a breath and hold it tight in my chest. My eyes trace the main trunk of the anomaly. It spears down from the sky, its mile long column piercing the roof of the palace. I can’t see the palace interior and I don’t dare get close enough to look. I know from what I’ve already seen that the halls and rooms are flooded by a trillion of those dark, jagged vines. Immovable vines that are all sharp angles and hard, straight lines.

They wrap around any source of of latent power. Matter is decomposed, broken down into the most basic sub-atomic units and consumed. Heat, light, vibration, radiation, and every other form of energy, the tendrils pull all of it in.

Worst of all are the bizarre prismatic abortion that seem to attach to the tendrils like large buds. The bulbous masses have a surface like a chandelier's crystal. Thousands of dark lines pierce and encapsulate the crystallized formations, wrapping them in masses of thread thin veins.

A memory from long ago stirs, it’s a bitter one. I don’t what to dwell on it.

Deep in the center of that tangle, somewhere in the center of the Palace, the Princesses are trapped. Maybe they are still fighting for their lives in there. More than likely, it already has them. Either way, it’s all down to me now.

Chaos magic is emotion manifest.

I tap into my anger. I think about the ages of needless misery and the infinite selfishness of a single individual. I boil at the thought of this thing so willfully destroying everything this is interesting and of value in the universe. I dive into the seething hatred and find that the well is surprisingly deep.

Chaos crackles along my claws. The beast sees me now. It’s curious feelers begin snaking their way towards me. For a moment, it looks like a dark fissure in warped mirror expanding towards me.

I let loose a blast of pure energy. It is a blinding ray of chromatic light. Every second, a month's worth of saved energy passes through my fingers. Months of acting and living in tune with the whims of chaos. Years of transcending patterns, rules and predictability. Years of straining friendships and being barely unmanagable for everyone that cares about me. All for this expressed as pure rage. The beam slams into the heart of the black, fragmented forest.

Laws of reality flex and break within the blast of chaos. Elementary particles shear. Time expands, shreds and collapses. Definitions of space, matter and energy become much more fluid. Entropy increases by many orders of magnitude. Order becomes impossible by definition.

As the light fades, a third of my reserves have evaporated. The beast barely falters. I can hardly see a mark where the attack struck.

It seems destroying it on my own was an impossible affair. I had expect this much.

I feel the throbbing wrongness in my heart putrefy into a living malignant force. I grips at my hear like a claw and I fall to my knees in choking agony. The organism shimmers and phases in and out, as if trying to decide what dimension to reside in. It is negating damage, I realize, cycling through realities until it finds the one where the chaotic energies did the least amount of harm.

I couldn’t explain exactly how it was doing it. The feeling of not knowing, of being confused, it was foreign to me. It has been so long since I’ve seen something that I didn’t understand and couldn’t explain. There was a time when I would be excited by the prospect of something new. For the moment, I was too busy feeling terrified.

I pushed the fear aside. I was like a child before a demi-god, but I could recognize enough of what was happening to find the weakness I was searching for. The being arrogantly shuffled through all probability without haste or worry. In so doing, it relinquished its hold on time. Before, the monster’s grip was firmly preventing me from changing reality. Now I was as free as it was to twist at the past, present and future.

I couldn’t possibly match the abomination in raw power, but perhaps I could out smart it.

I tapped another emotion, a profound sorrow I barely ever reflected on. So much lost to this thing. Unrequitable loss. Impossibly, hopelessly gone. Devoured by an unfeeling force of nature. Like a town lost to a flood but infinitely more vast and completely irretrievable.

It was a clairvoyant spell, but for once, it wasn’t one that granted precongicience. Instead, I looked into the past and the millenia unfolded before me. The moments calamity is nothing but a blip, a tiny object viewed from a great distance.

Being pulled through time like this was disorienting, but I quickly centered myself. I haven’t practiced this part of my plan, but it was perhaps the most difficult part.

I saw the planet revolve in reverse, spinning back through the years. The Earth blurs around the burning sun.

Populations bloom and dwindle. Milestones in the history of sentient life are witnessed in quicktime. A clever deer develops the foundational theory of electricity. A griffon perfects the method for forging steel. A a scheming goat founds the first bank and reaps a fortune. A minotaur deep in the mountains learns that burning a certain red rock creates a dark hard material, iron. A group of donkeys band together in the southern plains, the first instance of community and irrigated agriculture.

Ice ages pass. Three mass extinction, two from volcanic activity , one from a singular massive impact.

Magic is first utilized by an organism for the first time in this planet’s history. It uses a persistent spell to help it pass through air with less resistance and flee predators with ease. They are a precursor to the Pegasus species.

Life evolves to walk on land.

The heat from a lightning strike, a bit of luck, and a hundred million years turn a muddy soup of protein into a the cradle for the most precious thing in the known universe.

The planet transforms. Continents shift. Oceans disappear. Tributary of magma trace every surface. The formation of land unwinds with landmasses melting into great seas of molten rock.

For an incredible length of time, the whole planet is a ball of angry red heat.

And then, in a flash an impact. The Collision of two enormous bodies.

The event is only a brief instant. The superheated fragments disentangle. The two gigantic spheres pull apart. A sea of fragments rearrange and slide into place like three dimensional puzzle pieces. They pull together from clouds of dust and bits of broken rock like a pile of shattered glass coming together to form two Hearths Warming bulbs.

The two participants of the catastrophe distance themselves as they retrace their trajectories.

One is a icy sphere, a rogue planet of strange origin. Once the home of an advanced race, it has long since lost its star and recklessly roamed the galaxy until it met its end here.

The surface of the rogue planet contains a strange story. A bizarre material covers the planet. It is a substance that does not occurred naturally within the universe. It originates from a special nanotechnology that can rearrange quarks. Even a few particles of this material, when under resonance, can manipulate the fundamental laws of reality. This is the origin of our magic.

It just so happens that the nano-machines that created this material exterminated their creators and all other life when they exceeded their parameters. The devices converted an entire 27% of the planet’s matter before it became too cold for them to function. Life's end brought about by rogue creation is a story more common in the galaxy than one might guess.

The other planet, the one native to the solar system, was even more interesting.

On it was life, a previous iteration of sentient life completely obliterated by the collision. During Equestria's time, the only trace of this species was a number of probes scattered about the system, lying dormant on planets or orbiting distant moons.

Before the collision, they were a wild, vibrant, passionate and violent species. They lived in blocky structure of synthetic material and dabbled on the edges of some very potent sciences. I learned much of what I know from them.

I miss those idiots.

Millions of years now pass in a blink as I trace the rogue planet back across the eons. Far away, I can feel my body draining. I’m nearly at the end of my reserves.

I dig deeper, gripping my emotions and pushing with all I have. A deep ache permeates my being. The sight of that lost civilization gives me the longing and nostalgia I need to push a little farther.

Finally, billions of years in the past, I reach my destination. Here I have endless potential. A single Newton of force will change the trajectory by thousands of miles in any direction.

This next part I dread even more than the last. My mind and body both already on the fringes, I clamp down and call upon one final mental spell. The pain nearly buries the information I seek. I am aware that my body anchored in the present is seizing, speckles of foam spray from my mouth. I’ve disregarded so many of my body’s warnings. I am long past magical fatigue. Just need to ignore it for a moment longer.

I cling to my emotion. Everything rests on this. Slip. Faulter. Lose my grip and I’ll fall unconscious. Even without what is going on outside, I would probably die from the following coma. Everything would be for naught.

Despite it all, in spite of it all, I do my best to think of hope. It powers a third spell. It is a spell lets me see a path to victory.

Cause and effect chain together in an unbroken line. Forces push and pull, field repel and attract. Probability measured and eliminated. Not destiny. Predetermination. Our determination. This dark future must be made unreal. A second chance to come out on top. Perhaps the odds will stacked slightly less against us.

Like looking at a maze from above. It seems all too simple when it’s laid out like this. I can see the perfect path, one that will accomplish every goal this little party trick was made to meet. The path is clear, I know exactly what I need to do to accomplish what I am planning.

I’ll leave it to the theorists and philosophers to explain how all this actually works.

I’m empty. This next spell will kill me. It doesn’t matter of course, I’m a dead draconiques walking anyway.

The bitterness of the thought lingers. But I’m glad for the bitterness.

I channel that last bit of bitterness and spite into a tiny spell. With all my will, I push.

My consciousness begins disintegrate as its final drops are drawn out. A tiny telekinetic shove presses on a rogue planet six billion years in the past.

Let’s go another round, big guy.

I can feel the coldness creeping in. Death sure took its dandy time to catch me. I feel pride that I made it all the way even though I know I didn’t make it because of anything I am.

No, it’s impossible to ignore. I did it for them. Because of them. All of them.

Play nice you guys.

7 Billions Years After Big Bang

A frozen planet drifts through an empty void. Drifts being a relative term. Compared to any particular object, this derelict husk of a once thriving population might be moving hundreds of thousands of miles per hour. Its an old, weathered planet. First its core cooled, then its magnetic field dissipated. Its atmosphere was stripped away soon after. Now it has nothing to protect it from meteors of all sizes. As a result, its face is pock-marked with a million dents and craters.

It passes through nebula, grazes the outer rims of solar systems, and dips in and out of the gravity wells of black holes. Nearly invisible to any conceivable sensor, it floats through space for an indeterminate amount of time. All the while it pulls in material as it races between the edges of the galaxy.

Somewhere along its journey a minuscule amount of force from an unknown source impacts the surface of the planet. Because of this intervention, the planet intercepts different asteroids, punches through different clouds of gas and tugs on the gravitation field of an entirely different series of planets, stars and comets. The ultimate result is that the celestial body arrives at its original destination roughly 3 billion years earlier.

The icy rock nears the third planet of the sun. The newly born planet is still a molten ball of magma. The two objects coincidentally share very similar velocities.

The two balls of rock are drawn into one another by a the pull of gravity. Their edges clip with such force that the spheres of dense stone ripple like water droplets. They bump again twenty thousand years later. Both collisions result in the exchange of matter and energy.

The previously cold and starless planet is once again molten and basking in the heat of a young star. In addition, the ancient planet was fortunate enough to recover some more nuclear isotopes to reignite its core. With its inner furnes reinvigorated, the planet can once more produce and magnet field to cover its surface.

The original resident of this system has lost a bit of its heat to the visitor as well as a sizable portion of its radioactive center. In return however, it did receive a small portion of the exotic matter that made up so much of the newcomer.

The collision bled off too much momentum for either planet to ever escape the gravitational pull of the other, yet not enough to cause them to crash into one another. Instead off either extreme, the two planets fall into a steady orbit. They share a single moon and exist as a stable binary system for billions of years to come. An arrangement like this is rare and often quickly ends in calamity.
The two are now members of a very exclusive group .

Overtime the rocks cool and comfortably share the Goldilocks Zone. Magma forms plates. Tectonic plates form mountains and basins. Basins fill with water and that water becomes a soup of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous and a dozen other critical components. Eventually, with a bit of heat and time, these two separate planets join another very exclusive list.

On both of these sister planets, life begins.

57th Day of Summer- 179th Year of Harmonic Era

On a peak deep in the north, a shivering party of a few dozen ponies haul a train of carts towards the summit. In the carts are the standard provisions for a frigid expedition. Tents for blocking the cold, rations for two months already half eaten through, and tools for repairing everything that will inevitably break. Additionally, given that the route of the journey deep into the unsettled Gryphonian lands, a number of crude swords and spears are stowed in the back of one wagon for easy access. Luckily, we haven’t needed to use them yet.

There is something else as well. Packet into large boxes full of padding are a complicated set of copper components. We are here for a singular task, one which requires that I supervise personally. Before I could even begin my work, however, we needed to move these pieces a great distance. We had to move them carefully and we needed to move them up high.

The wagons clunked and crushed their way up the mountain. We followed no trail, only an experienced pathfinder that had spent many years living in mountains like this one. We climbed past the treeline, higher than any group this large had ever managed in recorded history. It was the hottest part of the year, yet we now trudged through fields of white snow and rocks slick with ice.

So many hoofs above sea level, the air feels thin and volumeless. That, however, was the entire point of the journey.

As night grew near, the convoy found an open space to set up tents and build a fire. The cook began gathering his implements and a small group of burly Earth ponies were sent to set up a perimeter. Same as every other night we set up camp. Amidst the bustle, I watched a lanky brown stallion with a cutie mark of silvery liquid approached a cart still being unpacked and hauled a solid looking wooden chest up out of the cart’s bed. Barely having the strength to bring the chest safely to the ground, the stallion opted to drag the chest into one of the largests tents.

I pulled a ream of weathered paper from a box and followed behind him. This was my checklist and it would occupy the next few hours of my evening.

When I brushed past the tent’s cloth entrance, I was greeted by a scene that was more or less ritual by now.

To the rear of the tent, a gruff looking Pegasus was hauling boxes of components into place and carefully preparing their contents for inspection. The pony only went by the name Crate. A few towns back, a minor flu outbreak forced us to leave a few good sets of hooves at the local clinic. We were forced to simply pick up the slack by ourselves. It would have been harder but we might have managed. However, when word got out that our groundbreaking expedition had been commissioned by the fabled Two Sisters themselves, that pony and his friend gallivanted right up and offered to join our ranks. They didn’t even ask for pay, just adventure seekers looking for a meal, a job, and a shot at making history.

I don’t buy all the nonsense about those Two Sisters actually being able to control the heavens. I definitely don't believe the backwater rumors that seem so rampant in all the little settlements this far away from civilization. It’s idiotic to believe that those two are Goddesses of some kind. Still, I’d be ungrateful if I didn’t admit that those two coming from out of the blue saved our hides.

Near the side of the tent, on a blanket that had clearly been unrolled on the dirt a hundred times before, was the same brown pony. He sat quietly, fiddling with the latches on his box. He was a funny pony, always uptight and rigidly professional. His brown muzzle was always wrinkled with the same look of focus, even when he is eating.

“Ay, Mud!” Crate calls out, “Chief says that we’re close. -Ee told me he can feel it in the air!”

The brown pony gives him a deadpan glance. Shaking his head, he returns his focus to the chest.

“Please,” he responded in his perpetually annoyed tone, “I told you to stop calling me Mud. My name is Academic Pressure. I’ve written five theses on atmospheric phenomenon and can name three different scientific devices that depend on the apparatus that I developed.”

With a shimmer around his horn, he began to unbind the ropes that sealed that box.

“Aaw, all sound like mud to me, Mud.”

Pressure rolls his eyes. “And what does a quartermaster know about precise measurements of altitude anyway?” Once finished, he carefully slides the lid aside to reveal a set of finely crafted glass and copper. The mechanisms were tightly nested in dry hay, the strands littering the ground and he levitated the pieces one at a time.

“Me and that gnat have spent a lot ah years flyin’ together. The colt’s got a knack for knowin’ exactly where he is.” With a heavy-sounding plunk, Crate pries the tight fitting lid from one of the larger boxes.

I step up and peer inside. Every night I check for damage. If something is bent even slightly out of place then we need to know if we can fix it. If we can’t fix it then...well, then we might as well turn around and go home.

“Well pardon me if I don’t take his word for it,” I pipe in. “After all, I seem to recall that Chief has lost fifteen bits and two half-rations in just these last two weeks of cards alone. I’d say that bets placed by that dolt are a good indicator of the unlikely.” I shoot the two ponies with a grin. Crate laughs it off as is natural, while Pressure continues to pretend like he only cares about his tools. “Honestly though,” I add, “I’d reckon we are still two days away from minimum altitude.”

“We’ll, I still cannot figure out why you both keep guessing instead of asking the one pony that could actually tell you,” said Pressure, sounding no less annoyed than before. With gentle telekinesis, the bookish Unicorn pulls a convoluted contraption of glass tubes and liquid metal from the box. A Barometer, he calls it. It was his famous work with that devices that caught the eye of my recruiting agent.

A clatter of wood marks another lid pried from its box. I move to it, locating its contents on my list, and begin checking to make sure every surface and angle matches its description.

“Hah,” Crate says, “maybe I’d ask ya Mud...if you could actually tell me right now. But I ain’t gonna wait for you to fiddle with you trinkets for three hours before I wonder ‘bout what tomorrow might have for us.”

“What are you in such a hurry for, are you going somewhere? Have you a banquet to attend? Are you worried my work will overlap with your bedtime?” I’d swear I say the edge of a smirk on the gloomy one. “Maybe you’ve got a date with that fine madame back at the Inn, hmm?”

I can’t help but chuckle. I don’t know which one of these ponies actually enjoys this mindless banter more, but I’ll admit that it does help pass the banality of the constant checking and prep-ing.

I zone out the conversation as I pull up to the box with the main lenses. This was the one that scared me. Most things we had we could replace. Forge new supports, carve new gears, we could smelt more copper if we needed to. But these shells of glass were carved by the only optical specialist on the continent. A pony now two month travel from here. One chip and this would all be over.

A tap on my shoulder pulls me out of the glass and into the tent again. It feels like only moments have passed, but I realize i am now examining the third of four secondary lenses. I guess sometimes i can’t help but lose myself in this project.

“Umm...Star?” Pressure is standing a few feet away. There is a tension visible on his neck. “This is the spot. We are here.” He speaks like he is pronouncing a pony dead and to anypony but me it would seem overly dramatic. But as it was, with this dream so nearly arrived, it truly felt like something irreversible was about to occur.

“We are here? Fifteen thousand hooves? I thought…”

“Well, no, I don’t think so. I believe my previous estimate still stands, one long day’s travel before we reach optimal altitude you set for us.” He said with a subtle sigh. “But, we’ve got a cold front moving in. Atmospheric pressure is down. The air is thinner that it normally would be…”

“But we arn’t there...what are you saying?”

“The weather should last us for a solid three days according to my data. A polling of our hoof-full of resident pegasi tells me that we might get closer to five days with this pressure.”

I felt my breath hitch. How many years leading to this moment? “So we should set it up? Is that what you are saying? Even if we need to take it down again?”

“Well…” It seemed like he really didn’t want to tell me something. “I checked you maths. I figured atmospheric calculations weren’t your specialty, so I wanted to see how well you calculated the minimum altitude. I promised myself that I wouldn’t bother you about it unless it might really make a difference…” He paused as if afraid to offend me. “You were off by over a thousand hooves.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?!” I shouted and grabbed his shoulders. “We were skirting the minimum as it was, but with your calculations an-and your weather report....this could actually be the spot!”

“Might, Star. It mig-”

“I don’t care!...I trust you. And if it doesn’t work out, we’ll pack it up.” I turn to the open boxes around me and breath deep, imagining what is about to happen.

“I’m tired of waiting...we set up tonight.”

For the entirety of the trip I had only used that singular checklist. Exchanging the worn and weathered pages of the Maintenance and Repair packet for the pristine and untouched Assembly packet was a surreal experience.

The assembly phase slid by in a blink. We called in all hooves, laid down tarps and a rudimentary scaffolding. The ground was smoothed and leveled with close precision. Strong backs moved the heavy metal legs of the large tripod base into position. A flighty Pegasus with a surprising knack for mechanics made sure every bolt was fitted just right. Piece after piece was added with hoof-biting care.

By the time we finished, the sun had long since settled behind the mountains to the west. The white field of snow now glows under the three-quarter moon. The reflectiveness of the snow casts a soft white light upwards in a way the makes our shadows seem strange. Standing back, we admired what we made.

There is so little life this high up, so little more than the brisk mountain wind can be heard as we overlooked the seen. The copper tripod catches in the eeri directionless glow. The thing I so unlike anything I have ever seen a pony make. Seeing it standing alone in the wide empty field with its blood-orange gleam makes it seem unearthly.

It is a telescope. Third largest in the world. Designed by expert crafts ponies to be just portable enough to reach place as high as this. Atmosphere, as far as I understand it, has been the greatest obstacle in understanding the stars. It blurs and distorts until it is almost impossible to gather even the most basic details of a heavenly object.

But up here, where the air is thin and cold, the sky should be like glass. Time to find out.

I rally the small staff of scholars that made the journey with me. Academic Pressure’s job was technically complete but he had confided in me that he was curious about what lay past his atmosphere. Along with him was a philequipist who had actually paid us to be here and a odd pony named Iambic that Celestia had specifically instructed we bring along. I wasn’t happy about that, but we were here on her bit, so I did have much say in the matter.

I look down the sight aperture. The image I see is a field of blurry blacks and blues. I twist the larger knob until the fuzz condenses into fine pinpricks. Already, the image is comparable to the quality one might find at sea level. I slid my hoof to the two smaller knobs and rotate them slowly.

I stop.

The image is beautiful. Every star visible for the naked eye seems to be surrounded by millions of infinitesimally small pricks of light. A lever lets me rotate the mirror that allows me to move my field of vision. With the careful motion of my hoof, I glide the scope’s eye onto the surface of the Moon.

“Pressure, can you get me the Princess’s documents regarding lunar geography?” I see him nod and head off out of the corner of my eye. This was why I was here, in the end. A glorified wager. A scientific attempt to the ludicrous claims made by these two admittedly incredible ponies.

The Two Sisters had said they could control the sun, so naturally I challenged them to predict the exact path of the sun for the the next solar year. They said they were intimately familiar with the alabaster surface of the moon, so I asked them to precisely chart its geological features. They said they knew the nature of the stars by heart, and when I questioned, they provided a series of coordinates and a timetable predicting when they will disappear.

Disproving their supernatural claim will take time of course, but I am certain that they only provided this information because they didn’t think that I would actually do all this work. They tried to call my bluff, give me an impossible task. Now I will call their bluff through objective measurement.

I can't help but admire the beauty of the Moon. Through the scope, I can see vast plains of white. The fine detail granted by this telescope let me see how the snow covering the moon formed a myriad of peaks and valleys. A large number of peculiar circular indents speckled the sphere’s icy surface. I could hardly guess what those were. Contrasting the white snow are the vast grey blotches that were the moon’s frozen seas.

I pull away from the aperture. It’s difficult to cope with the feelings of majesty, tension, relief, and excitement that are battling in my chest. No living being has ever seen the Moon like I am seeing it now.

The soft crunch of snow marks Pressure’s return. With a crunch, he heaves a smallish wooden box from his back. This one hadn’t been opened since they departed from the capital city. Just the idea of actually needing to open it filled me with glee. Seems that he decided to bring all of the Princess’s document.

I almost felt annoyed, but an old question of mine lept to my mind. “Pressure, can you look and see if the Princesses gave us any paperwork regarding Oceanna?”

While he shuffled through the papers I glanced up to the other, dimmer disk in the sky. It was a deep blue and seemed only a little bit bigger than the moon. From what we could tell, the object was a warmer sibling of the frozen Moon. It was apparently so warm that instead of snow and ice, a blue ocean of liquid water covered its entire surface.

The quiet shuffling of papers stopped.

“Umm...I am afraid I can’t find any documentation regarding Oceanna...”

“None?” I frowned. It had bothered me that the two sisters had told us so little about the second moon. “I...I supposed that might be the case. But...Why?” Why had the sisters been so explicit in with nearly everything above us, yet so quiet about this one thing? Why does it feel so fabricated? So clearly false? It was a blaring tare in otherwise meticulously crafted tapestry of lies.

Well, there is any easy way to find out. “Let’s just take a look,” I said in a low voice, mostly to myself. “See if there’s anything strange going on up there…”

I once again pulled carefully on the lever, and with the quiet squeal of metal sliding on metal, the mirror slowly rotated into place.

...What?

What!?

This is not what I expected, but….

A part of me wonders if this is somehow the result of a fault in my equipment. Perhaps a mirror is smudged? Dirt on a lens? A greater part of me knew that this isn’t true.

I stare for minutes more, trying to take it all in. There so much more here than I expected. The details seem smaller than they were on the moon for some reason, less pronounced, less dramatic. It’s almost as it were...farther away.

We were so completely wrong…

And then I noticed something more, almost imperceptible. A line, hair thin, but it was so clearly and disconcertingly wrong. That had to be a defect. A scratch in the lens. A singular stray hair. So many things could have gone wrong to lead to me seeing something like this. It should be so easy to dismiss what I was so certain defied all understanding of reality. I had never been religious, but at this moment I felt my faith threatened.

No...That can’t be...

I step back from the scope, but I can’t take my eyes off of the little glass eye piece.

“Pressure,” I said curtly, still not looking away. “Look into the aperture.” The stallion acquiesced to my request. “Tell me what you see.”

He seemed to hesitate, probably something in my body language was tipping him off. The other two scholars remain quiet, but they seem on edge as well. Even still, he stepped forward and put his towards the lens.

“Ther-there’s landmass...and its green! Green and brown and white depending…” He turns away from the scope to throw me an incredulous look, but quickly returns to the scope. “I-I haven’t followed the theory much, uhh, you know that much Star Glint...But-but this?! It’s like nothing I’ve ever been told of. Nothing I’ve ever considered. Its-”

“Northern Hemisphere, a bit off the eastern edge,” I interrupt, “What do you see there.”

He is quiet as he looks at the moon, his look of focus as intense as ever. My tapping hoof makes a quiet padding sound in the snow. I flinch as he draws back with a long ‘hmm’. I can only grit my teeth as he goes back to quietly looking without a word of explanation. It could have been seconds, minutes or hours before he finally said anything, I honestly couldn’t tell.

“Multiple right angles...straight edges...a color that seems to differ from the surrounding environment…” He paused as if he was only now realizing what he was saying. Was it healthy to question your sanity like this? “The feature is far too small. Hardly visible at all so...I mean, it really is quite unacademic to say-”

“Pressure,” I can barely contain the impatience. I keep my voice as calm as possible. “What do you see?”

He turns and meets my eyes. “That...is not a natural formation.”

“I know...”

2nd Day of Fall - 989 Year of Post Harmonic Era

“What do you think they are like?” I whisper.

To my left is the large frame of my big brother and best friend in the whole world. We lay side by side on a thick blanket laid atop prickly grass.

Above us is the deep blackness of the night. Uncountable numbers of lights float above me. They seem so close that if I just reach my hoof out, I might pluck one and take it home with me. They swirl as if in motion but never moved. Magical sparks locked in time.

Despite the late hour, the wind blows warmly across the prairie. Orange-tinted leaves rattle softly and the waving grass hiss and sway in a way that reminds me of the ocean. A chorus of frogs in the pond nearby seem to be in competition with the symphony of crickets hidden in the grass. The night feels alive. I am awake later than I’ve ever been allowed to be before, so I feel positively alive as well.

“Well,” I hear the low voice of my brother start, “I really have no idea…” He lets out thoughtful sounding sigh. “But I bet that there’s somepony up there looking down at us and wondering the exact same thing.”

Could that be true? I glance over at my brother, to read his face, to try to understand what he means. I can see is wild blue hair through the blades of long grass that separate us. He see his light blue eyes that always seem so certain and protective. They never waver from that circle in the sky. For a moment I think I see the corner of his brow flex with concern. I can't be certain though.

“But…” I start, but I don’t know what I’m trying to say. My chest feels funny. “What if they…” I try again, my words chasing a feeling rather than an articulate idea. The feeling escapes me, slips between my hooves. I feel it leave like one of those airships leaving the docks back in the city.

I turn my head towards the stars again. My purple muzzle and the very tip of my horn are framed against the starry canopy.

“What if what, sis?” I hear him ask.

“I don’t know. I was going to ask something, but I don’t know what…” I look up at the subject of our conversation. A sliver of blue. Oceana, only lit a quarter way by Celestia's sun. A bright blue beacon in the pitch black sky. The shadowed side of the planet is even more brilliant, speckled with lights that make it seem the the little circle is covered in flame.

A question comes from the back of my mind, maybe the question from earlier. I ask it right away.

“Do you think they are lonely?”

“Lonely? Naw,” he said with a scoff. “You can see the lights up there can’t you. You’re the one that told me what those were...”

“Right...I remember,” I say absentmindedly. Cities. I read it in a book once. Years back, there were lots of ponies watching that planet with telescopes. Not as many as we have now, but everypony was paying attention. Then one day a newspaper said that Oceania was catching on fire. Sure enough, all over the planet, little orange dots were starting to appear. You could only really see them with a telescope at night, but eventually they grew until you could see them with just your eyes.

Somepony eventually got enough money to build an even bigger telescope. They said it was big enough to see a pony wave from the other planet. The first night since they finished building it, they aimed it at one of the biggest fires. It turned out that they weren’t fires at all, just houses two thousand feet tall that glowed like lighthouses. They were cities, sort of like Manehattan, but much bigger.

“I don’t know Shining, I just feel like they might be lonely…” The grass ruffled as he turns his body to me. He definitely seems concerned now. I have a theory about why, but I’m not sure.

I ignore him and look back up at the little crescent air, no bigger than a coin. I knew it wasn’t small. I’ve learned enough about Oceana at school to know that it was actually really big. It was a planet just like ours. I've learned lots of other thing too. I know that they like to build things. I know that they live all over the whole planet. One teacher said that there's at least be over a billion of them, but my parents said that was silly. There are barely over ten thousand ponies in all of Canterlot. Canterlot is big, too. I know a planet is bigger, of course, but where does one even begin to put a billion ponies.

I read in another book that they built roads across the whole world. And they all connect to each other. You could gallop around the whole world without ever stepping off a road. They build funny looking houses. I’ve seen pictures of the houses taken at the famous Glint observatory near the Gryphon kingdom. All of the houses are boxy with black or brown roofs. They sit in rows of hundreds, all perfectly aligned like a tessellating pattern.

I stare at the orb hanging in space and I can feel an ache in my heart. I want to go up there and learn everything there is to learn.

Are they friendly?

Are they smart?

Can they talk?

What do they want more than anything else?

Do they get bored?

Do they actually want to meet us?

I suddenly wonder if Shining would be unhappy if he knew I had all these questions.

I notice he is breathing deeply. He probably fell asleep already. I reach my hoof over from where I lay. The dry grass tickles at my fur as I move. I press on his shoulder, but he doesn’t react. Well, I would just have to wake him up. I needed to find out why it seemed like literally everypony I knew was hiding something whenever I talked about Oceana. My parents would always try to change the subject and my brother seemed to not know what to say at all. The teachers at school as ways seemed focus on the real simple basics, never really saying anything new. Now days if I ever wanted to learn something about the other planet I would go to the library. And even though the books do have a lot of neat information, I feel like they are hiding things from me too. After all, I haven’t read a single thing that would explain why everypony else was acting so strangely.

Even that one filly that sits next to me in class acts weird. She’s the only pony my age I actually talk to and every time I bring up the subject she says it’s boring and nerdy. There might be something else going on there though.

If I was ever going to get some honesty, on a camping trip away from any of the adults I know was the best chance I’d have.

I push his shoulder again and again until he’s looking at me with bleary eyes.

“Big brother? Do the ponies up there scare you?”

It’s quiet for a while. The stars glitter patiently.

“Only a little…” That was the only answer I needed. “Now...” he said with a laugh and yawn, “go to sleep Twilight.”

“What? I’m not even tired. I’m five years younger than you too.” I smile and he grins back. “We can’t go to bed yet you big filly!”

He rolls over and stuff his face into the blanket on the ground. I can barely make his muffled words of indifference.

I pull my hoof back to myself and stare up at the stars again. I note all of the major constellations and even narrow down Mars to one of three bright pinpoints, but I’m still not tired.

I close my eye but my mind is filled with thoughts of the world above. When I open my eyes again, the Moon has moved a whole hoof across the sky. Sleep doesn’t feel any closer than before.

I roll to my hooves as quietly as possible. I take my flashlight softly in my mouth. Careful steps take me away from the blankets and saddlebags of our campsite. Little flowers of blue, white and yellow sway lazily. The field smells fresh and sweet. Green grass tips tickle my stomach, and I have to suppress a giggle as I move forward. I head out into the center of the meadow. After a distance, there is no chance for my brother to ear me now, but I stay quiet. There's a kind of reverence in the air. Even the crickets and frogs are quite.

In the center of the meadow, a dead tree stands. It seems entirely out of place is the pristine field. When I reach it, sit myself, placing my back against the rough, dry bark. I look up and between the craggly dark branches is a world burning like an ember.

A part of me believes that I should be afraid too. Nothing ever scares Shining Armor. He’s joining the Royal Guard soon. He’s tough and strong and I’ve never seen something he can’t do. But for whatever reason the ponies up there scare him. I bet they scare everypony else too.

“I’m not afraid of you,” I say to no one.

My eyes don’t stray from the orb. I don’t dare even blink. The feeling returns, lodging itself in my throat like a lump.

“I know you have cities and roads and who knows what else, but I still think you are lonely.”

I realize that maybe I think they’re lonely because I’m a bit lonely too.

I stare at those lights. I know in my head that those pinpricks aren’t the flames of burning countrysides. I try to imagine them for what they are candles lighting bedrooms and kitchens. Gas lamps lighting quiet street-corners . One of those lights is a party full of ponies that have gotten together to feel less lonely. Maybe one of those lights is a campfire. Maybe however many hundreds of thousands of miles away there is a filly sitting next to her sleeping brother. And maybe they also spent the night staring up at me and wondering what I'm like.

I know it’s foalish, but I have to admit there's still a bit of a foal in me. I hope against the long odds as I take my flashlight in my hooves and aim it right at the center of the planet. I flick the light on and off, spacing the flickers equally and trying make the timing perfect. After a minute, i place gently place the light to the ground without breaking eye contact. I watch the distance sea of flames and the dark spaces in between.

-

AS IN A MIRROR

ᗄƧ IN ᗄ WIᖉᖉOᖉ

-

==============End Credits==============

Author - Eucatastrophe
Editor - [nobody yet]
Cover Artist- [nobody yet]
Music - Sigur Ros

Author's Note

Thank You All For Reading. Tell Me Everything You Think.

There's More To Come...

Surprised

Sometimes we just need to talk to somebody.
______________________________________________________________________________

34th Day of Summer - 992 Year of Post Harmonic Era

My hooves hit the city’s cobbled path with a clatter. I gallop as fast as I can without endangering the contents of my saddlebags. I hardly notice the protests of the pedestrians I bump and startle as I charge down the sidewalk. My heart beats fast, in-part due to the exertion, but even more because of the excitement. The afternoon sun shines in my eyes and I barely manage to keep down the giddy squeal of excitement.

I grip my saddlebag in my mouth, using the finely tuned muscles in my neck to stabilize the cutie-mark emblazoned pouches. Dry purple cloth feels weird on my tongue and it feels strange to gallop with so much weight dangling from my muzzle. It probably would have been best to take out those textbooks before running to and from the hardware store. The thought hadn't crossed my mind, too overwhelmed by the long list of things I needed to do before the clock struck 2:40.

I had spent the day with Princess Celestia. While I normally love our lessons, I had been too distracted by today’s plans to really enjoy my time with her. Then there was the agonizingly slow cart ride from the palace. Were this any other day, the beautiful view of the equestrian countryside, with the shadows of clouds dancing across green slopes, would have been lovely to stare it. I had passed the time by reviewing my schematics and skimming my books for any part of Electro-Thuamatic theory that I was still uncertain about. Then there were the minutes I wasted convincing my parents to lend me ten bits. The three months of allowance I had saved wouldn’t be enough and there was no way I was waiting another eight days for the next window. I had explained everything to the clerk at Nuts n’ Bolts yesterday, so buying the parts was the quickest part of the whole day.

All that left was the hard sprint back to the loft. Pouring myself into my pounding hooves, I can almost see the sun actually moving towards the westward horizon. The clock was ticking. Still, the feeling of the sun on my back and the sight of that little blue half-circle in the clear blue sky spurred me on. Warm wind through my mane and the smell of the summer heat. I grinned around the cloth strap as my heart gorged itself on the feeling of endless glee.

I was through threshold of my house a heart-beat later.

“Hrrreey Murrm! Darrd! I’m herm!” I shout with my teeth still clenched around the saddlebag strap.

“Hey sweety,” my dad calls from the kitchen, “How was you-”

But I’m already up the stairs, climbing with just enough care to avoid damaging my precious cargo. The ladder to the loft has already been pulled down from the ceiling, and in a flash I’m in the attic. Chest heaving, I go right to pulling out my loot. Out first is a large capacitor and a large resistor, both with variable knobs to allow for critical fine tuning came. Following them came the two textbooks, entry level electrical engineering and electrical physics respectively. I set them aside begrudgingly. At least now they might help me rather than hinder me. Finally, with overly ginger hooves, I draw out a set of small boxes one at a time. Three are a set of vacuum tubes, replacements to ones that had melted last time I put everything together. I had cried bitterly the night that had happened. My eyes linger on a shelf next to the attic window where the three little ash-filled glass bulbs sit to reminding always to take precaution. The last one is a box of fuses, my single safeguard for preventing the same catastrophe from happening again.

I pick up the boxes with my magic, the weak levitation barely managing to handle all four objects. The Princess has been trying hard to help me get better with my magic, but it was slow progress. With a spark or two coming off my horn, I connect the vacuum tubes to the circuit sprawled out across the floor.

This was my crown jewel. My magnum opus. Bare wires sit in what would seem like a tangle to any other pony. The charged metal on wood was likely a major fire hazard but insulated wire was far too expensive. Too heavy to be lifted my magic, I use two hooves to link the resistor, capacitor and homemade inductor into the circuit at their respective places. I screw the vacuum tubes in one at a time and then pull a single fuse from the cardboard container. It slips into its slot with a satisfying click.

I had spent the better half of a year hoof-drawing schematics using only textbooks as guides. I had nagged a professor at Canterlot University to look at my design, returning on twelve separate occasions until I got it right. The tangle performs a relatively simple logical function. It had taken everything short of a piece of my soul to make it work. And it had worked. For the few beautiful minutes before the circuits overloaded, I had been serenaded by the sounds and melodies of a land totally disconnected from Equestria.

I had built a radio. If the average pony looked at all of my effort I am investing just to build a radio, they would probably laugh themselves silly.

A century ago, a physicist drew a connection between electricity running through a wire and a strange magical sensation that anypony could feel. They named this strange influence electro-thuamatic radiation. Two decades ago, a pony named Good Macaroni was inspired by the same anomaly that I am now dabbling with. He used that little inspiration to contrive a way for radiation to transmit messages over great distances. Today, every other home has a radio set. Regularly scheduled shows and news broadcasts have quickly become a regular part of a pony’s day.

But the circuit I'm made is more than just a standard Equestrian radio.

A tingle in my horn brings my focus back to the present. The anomaly is about to begin.

The tingle builds in my horn as I hurry to fetch the battery I built myself. It was a crude thing, tabs metal that I have salvaged, placed in an ionizing agent made from a mix of household cleaning chemicals. It was another stupidly dangerous thing that I had no choice in using. I hook it up to the radio’s terminal and a pink crystal glows as it converts the power into an alternating current. The circuit is alive. The vacuum tubes glow with a white hot light and an electric hum rises to match the hum in my head. The room is livid with energies.

I slide into the radio’s ‘operating seat’, a patch of bare floor between the circuit and the window. I can feel the hum in my horn transform into a steady throb. It’s a difficult sensation to parse, like a slow massage on my brain. I can’t help but remember that this is the same feeling that led Macaroni to understand the utility of radio-waves. I look up through the window to the orbs in the sky and imagine that the Sun and Oceana are arranged exactly like they were when Macaroni drew that critical connection between the strange blue planet and this pulsing phenomenon.

With a hoof, I turn the resistor’s variable knob. With a coughing crackle, my scavenged speakers begin to sing an orchestral tune, a recording common to the Equestrian airwaves. But that’s not the frequency I want. I move my hoof to the capacitor. Twisting the knob to increase capacitance, I begin scanning upwards through the spectrum. The the quick and happy symphony is slowly buried in a rush of static.

The thrum in my horn reaches a crescendo. The resonance is so strong that I can feel it in my magically insensitive hooves. I think to myself that Macaroni, after years of experiencing this phenomenon alongside the rest of ponykind, realized that the event only occurred when the Sun and Oceana aligned in a very specific way.

For an instant, a sound breaks through the static. Its harmonious and orderly but sounds as if from a deep well of sloshing water. There isa melody buried in the static. Behind it is the shadow of an echo of a rhythm. I keep tuning the frequency of my circuit upward. My heart beats harder as if trying to match the throbbing in my horn.

Results like this was still nothing too special. During an anomaly, every radio in Equestria would be momentarily overcome by similar ghostly notes hidden in static. Macaroni was the first to realize that the position of Sun compared to Oceana was allowing a their waves to reach us. He built a device that could receive those waves. When he used it for the first time, what he heard then was probably similar to what I was hearing now. A phantom of order from an origin unknown. Voices hidden in the static, speaking in un-equine tongues. He destroyed his devices immediately. Luckily, radio-waves of that frequency didn't travel well in our atmosphere. That portion of the spectrum would never be accessed by an equestrian radio. It was a convenient excuse to never build a machine like his ever again.

Until now, that is. That was the difference between the radio downstairs and the components buzzing around me. This machine received frequencies that no ordinary radio was made to receive.

I rotate the capacitor’s dial with delicate slowness now. The static bleeds away like a suddenly clearing migraine.

“Psssshhhzzzaa-although I wasn’t th-sshpphhffzzzssshhhiizzziiphhhfff said I was a friend.” I stop. My hooves freeze in their place. The hair on the back of my neck prickles as I listen to the sound pour from the speakers. Instruments I couldn’t name - couldn’t imagine - played with eerie clarity. The melody was unlike anything conceived by pony minds. The notes ring out, strange in their purity and pattern. “Which came as a surprise, I spoke into his eyes. I thought you died alone, a long long tim-ssshhaazzziiivvvzzzffffsssss”

I am motionless for a moment longer, entranced by the alien voice still echoing in my head. It is only when the static returns in its full cacophony that I realize that I have lost the sound to the fuzz.

For whatever reason, the Sun interfered with the signal from Oceana in a way that allowed me to hear it. But since the planet and the Sun never stopped moving, the signals from the planet were constantly migrating across the spectrum. That was my running theory anyway, no pony actually knew. A standard radio could only ever pick up an Oceanan signal on accident and only for a brief moment as the signal slid through the radio’s narrow band of reception. This was the second aspect of my device that made it unique to Equestria. With capacitor in hoof, I could chase the frequency.

My hoof goes to the capacitor again and I spin the dial deftly.

“Ttthhhss-ace to fac-sshhhzzz-”

“zzz-looks like it’s going to be sunny with a thirty percen-ttssssshhh”

“Sshh- let us dispel the notion that the president has no idea wha-zzziiipphh”

I roll through the spectrum. Babbling voices and strange tunes pass one by one like carriages passing me in the street. They start as whispers from a great distance and then grow in clarity and detail as they near. Then, just as quickly, the disappear into the distance again. I narrow my eyes, focusing on trying to keep pace with a single frequency.

“sshhhhshh- ere, up there in the vastness of space, in the void in the sky, up there is an-zzzzzzzz-s isolation. It sits there is the stars, waiting, wa-ashshhhzzzzfff.” I grin in triumph as I manage to track the frequency even as it moves. I can’t tell what the pony is saying, but somehow I can hear the drama that is thick in their voice. I know that I am listening to a single pony as they speak to an audience. It's meaningless garble, but I feel myself hanging on every intonation. “zzzsshh-patience of eons, forever waiting-sshhhttss-in the Twilight Zone.“ Is it a political speech, I wonder? Perhaps it is a pony recounting a traumatic event from history. Maybe it is a eulogy for a fallen king. It could be the retelling war story written by a legendary warrior.

I could be eavesdropping on anything, I realize. The entire unknown culture of this foreign world unfolds in my imagination. Every meaningless babble from the radio becomes a love song, a word of great wisdom, and a spiteful declaration of war all at once. I wish so badly to know what they are saying.

The dial stops rotating. I realize with dismay that I can’t turn the knob any further. It has reached its limit. Reluctantly, I withdraw my hoof from the dial and listen as the different signals rolled past me. There is nothing I could do besides sit and listen as they pass.

“Ttthhhss-It’s a disgrace, Tom. He’s making a mockery of our count-sshhhzzz-”

“zzz-I’m seeing traffic jams all along I-15, in and out of th-thhhsshh”

Eventually, the first frequency I stubbled upon began rising out of the static. The same haunting melody ringing out boldly. The voice drones on in melancholy.

“Who knows? Not me. We never lost control. Your face, to face, with the man who so-zzziiipphhhhssssshhhhhzzzzz.”

The voice fades away. I glanced out the window once more. The Sun seems imperceptibly closer to the blue planet. Its powerful energies shout over the delicate radio signal. It’s gone now, completely out of reach until the next alignment.

“zzzzzziiisshhhZZZZFFFFFFSSSSHH-”

Feedback builds with stuttering violence. Radiation from the Sun floods the antenna with power. A crackling sizzle emanates from my circuit. With a pop, the fuse burns out and the speakers go quiet. The faint scent of smoke fills my nostrils but I barely notice. In my head I am already scheming. I will find a way to understand those words.

71st Day of Winter - 993 Year of Post Harmonic Era

Warm air rushes through my long brown hair as I speed across the gently sloped prairie. My bike's two stroke engine whines hard as I twist the throttle. Ahead of me, a fathomless expanse of golden wild grass stretches across the dusty land until it meets a rocky mountain range far in the distance. The thin dry stalks whip at my legs as I zip through the field. Every breath pulls in air filled with the hardy smell of sun-baked grasslands. My motorbike’s spinning wheels kick out a thick contrail of dust behind me.

With a bump and a little airtime, I break clear of the endless grass and land on a dirt road. The single lane path seemed to share the field's lack of concern regarding distance and time, meandered without end around the shallow hills. I put my throttle to full. Near the base of the mountain range, a single row of stark white structures stand like giant cereal bowls on pedestals. The distance disguises their massive size. When I finally reach them, the wire frame bowls and the complex steel scaffolding loom hundreds of feet above me.

I head to the end of the row of great ivory dishes. Clean and blocky, three stories tall and painted to match the dishes was a mundane looking office building. I pull into the tiny gravel parking lot, flick out the kickstand, and cut the engine. My white and pink sneakers squeak as I shove through the front door. “Hey dad, I’m here!” I yell to the whole building. Most of the lights are off and the AC is clearly running on full. It’s a stark and revealing contrast to the summer afternoon outside. I run past the empty lobby and up a flight of stairs before arriving at a set of offices. Through the narrow windows on the doors I can see that most of the offices are dark. One at the end of the, my dad’s, still glows with fluorescent light.

As I approach, I can see my dad obliviously hammering away at a keyboard in front of a fat computer screen. He wears a plaid shirt and green slacks with a pen tucked behind his ear. Even when he sits, it is clear he is tall with a gangly frame.

Ha, dad, you're such a nerd. Looks like I got all of my ‘cool genes’ from mom’s side.

I barge in and wrap him with a hug.

“Hey kiddo, happy birthday!” he says warmly. “You having fun riding around out there?”

“Heck yeah I am. I went down to check out the reservoir down in the valley and then I found these neat little woods. I walked around for a while but I ran when I heard a grizzly bear!”

“A grizzly bear?” He asked skeptically, “in the desert?Hmm...it must be one of those rare sand bears.”

“U’huh! It was super dangerous!” I exclaim with an exaggerated arm gesture. “I think I want to go check it out some more tomorrow.”

He smiles and musses up my windblown hair. “Alright Jess, but only if you promise me you’ll be careful. School starts back up in two weeks and we can’t have you getting mauled before we have a chance to meet your teachers.” The reminder of the quickly closing summer brings my high-flying mood down a notch. I can’t help but grimace at the thought of spending the next nine months in a crowded room being lectured by teachers that wanted to be there less than I did. I make no effort to hide my disappointment.

Dad puts a hand on my shoulder and pulls me close. “Pumpkin, I know that you're not a fan of school. Your mother told me about Cindy and the other girls...” I feel his hand squeeze my shoulder a bit as he says it. “I just think, well, middle school is a brand new place. Maybe you’ll find some new friends there. It could be a chance to start again...”

“I guess so...” I try, but I’m not so optimistic.

“Eh,” he says, sliding out of the serious tone, “well enough of that. I’ve got a birthday surprise for you!”

That's right! The surprise!

It is surprising me how easily the melancholy melts away. Maybe it shouldn’t be though, guesses and idle wonderings about the mysterious surprise have been playing through my head ever since I overheard dad talking about last Sunday. “A surprise?” I do my best to feign ignorance. “What is it, what did you get me! Did you buy me a new tape-player?! Oh-Oh, maybe you finally got a VCR for the television. Or maybe a-”

“Easy there champ. And no to all of that. Well, Your mother has a few presents at home, but that's not what this is. This will be something completely different.” I wasn’t sure, but I could almost hear a touch of boyish excitement. “Here, come with me, I’m gunna show you.” He grabs my hand and leads me out of the room and down the hall. We pass dark meeting rooms and break rooms. The only sound is the soft hiss of the vents channeling cool air.

“Where is everybody, Dad?”

“Well, lets see...Bill and Kerry are off today. I told Kate and the intern that they could leave early since all the reports are done and we haven’t picked up a new assignment in two days. That just leaves my Boss who only ever comes in if something goes wrong or if he’s trying to impress somebody. Your mom got the day of so she could go shopping and set up a little something for you at home. I wasn’t supposed to tell you that, by the way, so make sure you act like it’s a surprise when we get home.”

I nod. “They let you take off time to go to birthdays?”

“Well...no,” he admitted with a chuckle, “she called in sick.” He shoots me a goofy grin and I can’t keep from giggling. We pass through a set of heavy metal double doors and into a room that contains panel after panel of buttons, screens and switches. Directly ahead, set into the far wall, is a massive window that grants a perfect view of the giant white dishes. He doesn’t flip on the lights as we enter, but the bright light of the shining panorama behind the glass is enough to let us see.

“Welcome to the control room. I know you’ve seen it once or twice, but I’ve never really had a chance to show you what I do here.”

Aww, he wants to tell me all about his wacky electronics. He really is just a big nerd.

I don't know where this is going, but I can tell he want so badly for me to love it. I try to play along. “Umm...I guess I’ve always wanted to know what all this stuff does. Are you going to show me what those big building do?”

I can see a real grin starting from the corner of his mouth. “Here sweety,” he points to a swivel chair position at the center of the room. “Take a seat and look out that window.” I hop up into the cushiony chair. This high off the ground I barely manage to use my toes to stop me from spinning. I can hear Dad working away at the controls, the clicks of switches and buttons loud in the otherwise silent room.

All of a sudden, I see movement. The third dish in the line of eight begins rotating slowly while the dish itself starts to tilt upward. I can’t believe something so big can move so fluidly.

“Umm, Dad...won’t you get in trouble for messing with their stuff?”

“What’s that? Oh, naw. Dish Three doesn’t have a set task right now and I’m the only one in this office that actually checks the activity logs. Can't get in trouble if they don't try to catch me.”

What could he be planning.

I feel something bulky slip over my head to cover my ears. I reach up to feel what I could only guess was the largest pair of headphones I’d ever seen. My fingers trace a thick curly wire to a port in the large electronic panel before me. A hand slips one of the ear covers off so I can hear what he is saying.

“Okay, so let me explain. I’ve been working for some time on a large government project. They have us investigating Terra. It’s why your mom and I haven’t been able to tell you much about what we do at work. I’ve always wanted show you what we do here, but I’m sure you understand why we couldn’t. It’s just how the government operates when it comes to things as important as this. We could get in a lot of trouble if anyone finds out exactly what we use these telescopes for.”

I stay quiet, absorbing everything he says.

“We use these radio telescopes to look at Terra. They work by picking up these invisible light waves and drawing very detailed pictures. Almost everything that happens up there, from a pool party to a campfire, we can see. For most part, me and your mother watch the people up there and try our best to understand them.”

“Dad, you shouldn’t be telling me this. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

“Jess,” he says with a soft smile, “I trust you more than anybody I know. I know you won’t tell anyone. I guess we’re doing this because everything about Terra is very important to us. I think someday soon the things on that planet will be even more important to you as well. We want you to know everything about that world, even if we’re not actually supposed to be telling you.”

I suddenly felt very nervous. What could be this important? My Dad almost never acts this serious. Could what he is saying really be true? Will the things he wants to show me actually change my life that much? “Okay Dad...but...I don’t think I get it. What could be up there that is this important.”

“I’m going to show you.” I feel a hand slip the headphones back over my ears. My dad moves to the front of the room and begins working a computer stationed there. I can see the screen display a set of graphs. Another screen depicts a set of overlapping wavey charts with lines in constant motion.

I am startled by a crackle of sound in my ears. Its static, like from an untuned radio. But as the seconds pass the static dies down and I hear a sound I’ve never heard before. Its an instrument, I think. It pulls and calls with long notes that seem off-key. Yet, somehow the melody seems natural. The pacing and order is seems so perfect. It seems more likely that this song was plucked from a tree in an untamed grove than assembled in the mind of a person. It’s joined by other sounds. Hums like heart of the earth and a gently rising and falling tone that reminds me of the Aurora Borealis.

And then voices break through. They sound like nothing I could have ever imagined. It's a quartet, i think, and it swells and sways in a harmonic dance that is so unlike anything that could possible exist on Earth. I can’t even imagine what they look like, and there’s no doubt they're ignorant pt my eavesdropping, yet I feel like they are singing just for me. A part of me feels as though I am violating something sacred with my trespass. A greater part of me feels a calling, a sense of great need and unsatisfied belonging. It was as if I just realized I was starving.

The song ends to soon and is replaced by a voice talking in the same alien tongue. I listen to them speak about nameless things for an unmeasured time. I imagine that the speaker is discussing any number of subjects. It is startlingly easy to imagine that the speaker is talking to me. I can’t summarize the feelings of comfort, intimacy and thorough confusion that slosh around inside me.

The conversation is slowly drowned in rising static. The feed eventually cuts off, leaving me to marinate in the silence of these sudden feelings. I take a few minutes to collect myself. I can see that my dad is waiting patiently by the console. Slowly, I remove the headphones and set them on the desk.

“D-dad, that was.....”

“That was a signal received from Terra. The guys and I have heard that song before. It’s...something else isn’t it…”

I feel awkwardly exposed after the experience. “Ye..yeah, it is…” I giggle, there was something funny about the casualness of how he said that. An impulse of something that I deeply want to do rises to my mind. “H-hey Dad?”

“Yeah sweety?”

“I want to talk to them.”

“...You want to what?”

“I want to send them a message, I’m sure we can.”

“Lots of people have tried that Jess. Decades and millions of dollars. As far as anyone can tell, they can’t hear us. If they can hear us, then they haven’t done anything to talk back.”

“I still want to send something. I’ve got to try!”

He paused to think for a while. “Well, if we do this then we’ve got to make sure our message is absolutely perfect." He sighs and scratches his head. With a chuckle, he says "I should have known you'd say that. You know, we will have to be very smart about this message if we want them to understand us. We'll have to work hard on making the perfect message to send them. Well, If you really want to do this, well...I think I might just know some people that can help....”

92nd Day of Fall - 994 Year of Post Harmonic Era

The path to my house has recently been shoveled clear of snow. Instead of taking the sidewalk, I opt to trot through the untarnished icy fluff that covers the front yard. I kick through the knee high layers of powder, feeling the crystals soak my fur as they melt. I push the front door open with a hoof and step inside. A petite white unicorn with a purple-streaked mane is standing in the living room, watering a set of small potted plants with a drinking cup.

“Hi Mom!”

“Good afternoon dear,” she says with a wave, “how were today’s lessons.”

“Oh, they were amazing. Princess Celestia taught me all about the major philosophies of the first harmonic era. Then, after we had tea, she showed me some examples of how our alliance with Griffonia affected equestrian paint and sculpture!”

“That sounds lovely dear.”

“It definitely wa-” I stop as I realize the time. I turn to hurry up the stairs, calling back as I step into a canter. “I’ll tell you about it later, I’ve got to use my radio!”

“Alright Twilight, just be careful okay? Your dad still thinks that playing with all those wires is too dangerous.”

I was already up the stairs and making my way into the loft. I’ve had a few serious talks with my parents about my hobby. They weren’t happy when they saw the mess of un-insulated wiring strung about the attic. They were even less happy when I told them that I was using it to listen to aliens. In the end, they relented, but only if I promised to make my set-up a little safer. They also made me promise to report anything strange I heard to Princess Celestia. I still haven’t told the Princess about my experiments. I just didn’t want to bring it up until I had something concrete to report. I really wanted my research to impress her.

I plop down beside my equipment and begin what has by now become something of a ritual. I check every components for fatigue. I pull slightly on each wire, making sure their connections are sound. A few things have changed since I first got the radio to work a little more than a year ago. I’ve got a real battery now, a heavy block with a metal case. The wires are insulated now, as per my parents insistence. In addition, two more antenna of precise shapes and lengths join the original hanging from my window. They allow me to chase the signal for longer and with greater clarity.

I'm here earlier than usual. I still have twenty minutes until the alignment starts, but I flip the switch anyway. Just as always, I plop myself down at the control station, now complete with a comfy pillow to sit on. The grating buzz of static starts up from the speakers. It’s a familiar sound.

I play with the dials. An interface lets me switch between antenna with practiced ease. Suddenly, I feel a vibration deep in my horn. The speakers sputter to life.

“ssshhzzzzppppzzzz-Cee. Cuh Chuh Se. Dee. Duh. Eee. Eee Eah Eeh Eer. Eff. Fuh. Gee. Guh. Haych. Huh Thh Thuh Chuh. Iyee. Eye Ieh Ier. Jay. Juh. Kay. Kuh. Ell. Luh. Em-zzzchhttsss”

I freeze.

Impossible. The anomaly never arrives more than thirty seconds early or late. These frequencies shouldn’t have anything besides dead air.

I wasn’t expecting to find anything at this frequency. Maybe an equestrian stations was experimenting but...no, there was really no chance that was the case. In addition, a few of those hard sounds are nearly impossible to replicate with a pony’s mouth structure. And there was that curious inflection that had no place in a language from my planet. I’ve studied these errant signals enough to know that this was a signal from Oceana. The throbbing in my head can’t be argued with either. Despite my confusion, I proceed to tune my instrument to the frequency until the message becomes perfectly clear. I pull out my note pad and ready a my quill.

“Exs. Exss. Why. Yuh Eye. Zed. Zuh” The signal is quiet, a very deliberate pause. A part of me worries that I just missed the message. I transcribe everything that I can remember. I returns with the same suddenness that it left with.

“One. *beep* Two. *beep* *beep* Three. *beep* *beep* *beep* Four. *beep* *beep* *beep* *beep* Five. *beep* *beep* *beep* …”

I’m baffled by the the pure tones that ring out in repetition. I've never heard that sound before. It’s clear that the sound isn’t made by a pony’s voice, but what is the significance of that? And why are they so perfectly spaced and uniform?

Another long pause follows the beeps

“One and One is Two. Two not One is One. Two and One is Three. Three not One is Two. Three and Two is Five. Three and Three not One is Five. Two of Two is Four. Two in Four is Two. Two of Three is…”

This section seems to stretch on and on. There is very little inflection in the speaker’s voice, as if they are trying their very best to avoid relaying emotion. Even though I can’t identify any of the words, I am sure I’ve heard most of them before. Moreover, I am certain that the speaker is repeating the same words over and over. Its as if they are just rearranging the order of the words. What would cause a pony to speak like this?

The section once again concludes with a pause.

“This is the sound of long water, fast and then slow.” The voice is followed by a strange gurgling sound that slowing transitions into a loud rushing sound. It doesn’t sound like any instrument I’ve heard them use before. “Long water has the name river. This is the sound of high water, little and then much.” The narrator was again interrupted by a trickling sound that again evolved into a rushing sound, except this noise was somehow different from the last noise I had heard. “High water has the name Rain. This is the sound of big water, clean and dirty...."

This section seems to be the longest by a good margin. It trails on and on, but never gets boring. It introduces endless samples of the strangest sounds between brief lengths of unintelligible gibberish. I did my best to transcribe everything I heard, converting the alien words into a phonetic language I invented a year ago. The rushing, the hissing, the snapping and the crunching. Those odd sounds could only be preserved with short descriptions that I was sure did a poor job of representing what I was hearing.

Strenuous minutes of focus passed before the next pause came. I breathed a sigh of relief as I prepared for the next round.

“Message from big, high, far rock to you rock. Us name Human. I name Jess. This is the sound of you.” A song plays. I recognize it immediately as a popular song that plays over the radio, our radio. “I love you rock. I want to make you rock close. I want to know the sound of you. I want to make you fire and I fire close, you wind and I wind close. You river and I river is one river. I want to make big high air little. I wait long. Wait for sound of you. Us love. Warm rock, wind, and water is you.”

I realize that I have stopped writing. Everything that came before was repetitive and monotone like a pony reading an instruction manual. But every word I had heard just now gushed with a yearning. Emotion flowed so strong and pure and had rung with the deepest sincerity. I can't fathom what it all could have meant.

Somehow I’ve got to respond. How do you reply to a letter that you can’t read. I need them to know that I hear them. I need them to know that I am trying to understand. But how can I be sure they will hear me? How can I even begin to interpret what they have given me.

“Aey. Ahh Aey Aww. Bee. Beh. Cee. Cuh Chuh Ce….”

Oh dear Celestia, it Repeats!

I drop my pen and charge down the stairs with all speed. I’ll need to get some money before I go. This will be the third time I have to beg my mom to give me extra allowance. Just the thought of wasting all that time trying to convince her makes me anxious. Well, it’s better to ask for forgiveness anyway. I gallop into my parent’s room and snatch up the big jar of spare change. The front door flies open and I’m moving down the street in a blur.

If I am going do this, I will need Princess Celestia’s help.

I pace in front of four chalk boards. At the top of each board, a title is written and underlined: 'Sounds', 'Beeps', 'Phases', and 'Letter'. I stare at the ornate patterns of the finely carpeted floor as if the complex swirls and shapes might reveal a secret. It was a singular, massive riddle. Every note, every pause, every syllable means something. The absence of that syllable or sound at any other point could mean just as much. Clues and hints hid in plain sight, and like some great mystery novel, only by finding and connecting those clues with unerring logic can the ultimate conclusion be discovered.

“This is the sound of high fire.” The statement is followed by a period of complete silence.

The sound is playing from a cheap tape recorder that I had bought after I first heard the recording five days ago. The message was actually still repeating over the alien frequencies, but we used the tape recorder because there was absolutely no way we could set up the radio inside the Royal Library. I step over to the table and rewind the tape again. The play button clicks solidly.

“-his is the sound of high fire.” Again it is followed by that short period of nothingness. I look over to Princess Celestia who sits by between the boards with a short piece of chalk floating in her golden magic. She offers nothing but a trusting smile.

She believes in me. I know I can do this.

I try to piece together some of the clues. I just need to walk through everything I already know.

“Okay…so the strange thing here is that nothing comes after the phrase. Why is that? If the pattern remains true, Thh-Ieh-Suh is a referential word that links Suh-Ow-Enn-Duh and the noise that follows the phrase. So...why is this the only time the phrase is followed by silence. It’s...” My pacing pauses for a moment. “Unless, they...urm...” Princess Celestial nods encouragingly. “Silence. That’s the whole point. They establish a precedent that the subject is followed by a descriptive noise. The patter of Ra-Aey-Enn, the crackle of Fuh-Iey-Er . Then they break the pattern to describe something that has no noise.” I brush a strand of hair behind my ears. “If Huh-Iey Wah-Tuh-Er is rain, Huh-Iey Fuh-Iey-Er must be...A fire’s equivalent of rain? What could that be? ...There is always a chance that this thing only exists on their planet…”

I sit down where I stopped.

“Perhaps, Twilight…” I look the Princess who has begun walking towards the ‘Phrases’ board. “Perhaps we don’t fully understand the meaning of Huh-Iey.” She points to a list of possible interpretation. It is a descriptive word and could possibly be denoting anything from ‘large area of coverage’ to ‘something with lots of empty space inside’. The most favorable translation so far ‘something spread out over a vast space’ but none of those translations fit this new context. "Twilight, I believe we may be overthinking this definition.”

“But Princess...” I try, but I can’t bear to object. If she trusts in me then there must be a solution. I can feel her leading me, guiding me gently towards the answer. I ache to make her proud. Scrunching my nose and putting on my best thinking face, I ponder. “Maybe I have the wrong angle. If I were describing the rain, what is the single most unique thing that I would focus on. Rain can be warm, but so is a pond or a lake in the summer. Rain is wide, but so is an ocean. Rain is fast but so is a river. No...the one thing that only rain will ever be…”

It all clicks together at once. “The Sun!” I burst, leaping into the air. A smile touches the corners of Princess Celestia’s eyes. “Its a silent Fuh-Iey-Er, and just like rain, is Huh-Iey!”

“Very impressive, my most studious little pony.” She pulls me close, tucking me under the soft white feathers of her wing. “I have a feeling you will be very good at making riddles of your own come the day we finish.”

Snuggling in close, warm against her side, I am distracted by how totally secure I feel. But the funny, niggling little thought won’t go away. I pull away a little and throw the Princess an accusation grin. “You knew the whole time!” I muster as much faux-drama as I can, pointing and holding myself woundedly. “All this time, I’ve been slaving away and you’ve been hoarding all the answers! And it was so simple. Gawh! I’m such a silly pony-.” Part of that wasn’t just me being dramatic. I really was feeling a bit foalish for not guessing it sooner.

“Oh Twilight,” My heart dances in my chest as I catch my mentor giggling at my antics. “I may have had a slight advantage with that particular phrase.” A golden shod hoof tosses my mane lightly. “And...I don’t know if I’ve told you this...” She whispers conspiratorially, “sunny things happen to be a specialty of mine.” I giggle and she laughs with me. For a moment, all of the seriousness of my self-chosen quest evaporate away. The stress of the task falls away and my time with my dear teacher feels soft and nonintoxicating beautiful.

“You have worked so hard Twilight.” She pulls me close to her once more. She smells like tea - cinnamon and honey. Her tone is serious yet tender as to speaks. “You have learned so many incredible things, Twilight. You care so much, with devotion so pure. It is truly a joy to watch you grow. But, you must remember,” Our eyes meet and I try to hold her gaze. “You are still so young. I’ve not even had three full years as your mentor, and you are already throwing yourself at projects that would make a professor hesitate. Promise me that you will keep things in perspective.”

“I’ll try,” I manage meekly. “It just feels like we are taking too long. It’s been five weeks and we barely understand one of the four sections. They sent us a message. They’re waiting for us to respond. If we don’t respond, or if we don’t finish in time and they think we didn’t hear them or that we don’t care or maybe even that we’re to-” My hyperventilating rant is cut short by the my mentor nuzzling me quiet. I try to breath slowly, but I can’t take my eyes off of the chalkboards with far too much empty space.

“You have a good heart Twilight Sparkle," she says in an almost mournful tone.

I feel so split between wanting to believe Celestia and wanting to know those ponies in the sky. “Can we send them a letter?” I ask suddenly. “...After we figure out how they talk, I mean?”

“It may take us a month...It may take us a year... but Twilight, we will find a way.”

94th Day of Spring - 995 Year of Post Harmonic Era

The classroom, with its idiotic lack of air conditioning, does a better job as a crock pot than a learning environment. Students around me slouch about and lay on their desks. It seems generally encouraged to moan about the boring, pressing heat until the room sounds like it’s full of wartime casualties. The pages of my textbook stick together thanks to the muggy air. Everytime I turn a page, my fingers leave little sweaty marks. The dry, rolling plains that make my weekend refuge seem twice as appealing as I marinate in this swampy

The clicking of the wall clock tells me that we are fifteen minutes into the class period, but our teacher still hasn’t shown up. That isn’t much of a surprise, our teacher has been a slacker and a flake since the start of Eighth Grade. While the teens around me are probably relieved that they don’t have to contend with the heat as well as an apathetic general science teacher, I have long since stopped caring about this class at all.

My hand traces the bindings of a well-used notepad in my backpack. Thirty degrees from the eastern horizon I imagine a blue disk floats through the sky. I look at the bare, tan painted wall that hides the planet and imagine its cloud-covered surface. A familiar desire fills me with determination. It’s the same force that has driven me to study for long hours while the neighbor's kids shout and play outside. It’s the motivation that keeps me reading this physics textbook that I stole from the town’s high school rather than dumbly putting my head on my desk like the jock sitting to my left.

I read for the next twenty-five minutes. It’s a watered down version of gravitational theory. Equations etch out the exact nature of the fundamental force and diagrams of warped grids and looping orbital paths make the theory easy to conceptualize. A special box marked with an exclamation mark contains a short list of things that defy our running gravitational model. The Earth, the Moon, and Terra all fail to fit any gravitational equation scientists can offer.

The subject is a famous arena of contention for academics. Every few years, some team somewhere will release a report that claims to describe the rules by which our two plans travel. Inevitably, the reports will contain conclusive evidence that Earth and Terra will either spiral into the sun, collide with each other, or spin off into deep space within the millenia. Just as inevitably, the planets seem to correct themselves and avoid whatever dark fate that had been predicted.

I rub my eyes as a wave of fatigue hits me. The textbook flips closed with a clap and I put it aside. I look to each of my neighboring classmates. To my left, the student is engrossed in a conversation about some T.V. show. The guy to my right is napping soundly. The seat behind me is empty, having ducked out of class five minutes after the bell rang. In nearly two years, I hadn’t once broken my promise to my dad. I wasn’t going to ruin that now by letting a wandering pair of eyes see something they shouldn’t.

With as much nonchalance as I can muster, I pull the thick spiral notepad from my backpack. I flip through the pages like a monk my handle an ancient holy book. There is nothing new to anything to add at the moment, so I settle into my chair. I’m content to spend the rest of the period looking over all of the incredible records and strange proposals that already cover the pages.

Paragraphs of transcribed lyrics and speeches cover the many of the pages. Detailed charts and tables predict the position of the planet on any given day. Here and there are calculations for the the planet's circumference, its equatorial bulge and axial tilt. Others pages contain map after hand drawn map of topographical features. Every major city on Terra was marked and numbered on the college-ruled graph paper.

I stare at the world splayed out in graphite scribbles. A large continent dominates one half of the planet. They way cities spatter the landmass in tight clusters makes me imagine vast empires with grand, stretching borders. The other side of the globe is a giant archipelago, thousands of islands clustered together. It is no doubt the home of a mighty and proud seafaring nation. My mind spins dreams of coast populated by bustling ports and quiet grass-roofed villages.

Every city and town in my book has been given a name. I draw the boundaries of nations as best I can imagine them. Pretend cultures morph and grow. Two nation’s dignitaries meet at townhouse in a small rural village, a heated exchange in some grand and fantastical conflict.

I’ve seen pictures of the creatures that live there, taken from massive telescopes. Their photos are grainy at best, with the figures appearing as colorful, fuzzy blobs. Every low-orbiting satellite we have tried to place in Terra’s orbit has mysteriously crashed. Few of the surviving deep orbit vehicles have the equipment needed to capture a better image. Those that do have the proper tools only launched recently. The pods of camera film that they will eventually launch won’t return to earth for another five years.

Lack of detail, however, is no barrier for my imagination. Neither is the fact that the pictures are technically classified. Nothing about the list of things I’m not allowed to know is enough to stop me from sketching the creatures out in my book. Beings with any number of limbs, claws, fangs, and horns. Every possibility explored with fictitious, anatomic diagrams. There were no law I know of that might limit the possibilities of what life in their world might look like. Scientific as my methods might be, I sometimes couldn’t help the but fell like this notebook was closer to resembling a fantasy novel than a research based hypothesis.

*pop*

The sound pulls me from my reverie. In the air above me, green fire whirls and boils. Flailing, I fall out of my chair. No smell or heat accompanies the churning flame. Just as suddenly as the mirage appeared, it seems to pull together at a single point in space.

*pop*

A scroll of yellow parchment bounces on my desk. A long red ribbon is tied around it, and a regal looking seal of wax glints in the classrooms fluorescent light.

The whole class is silent, I realise to my dismay. Looking around from where I sit on the dirty checker-tiled floor, I can see that I have the attention of every conscious classmate. After gathering my things with all due haste, I pick up the neat roll of paper. I’m very aware of the eyes picking apart my every move, but I can’t help but notice the light softness of this off-white paper. I try not to think to hard about what must be running through the heads of the teenagers around me. Instead, I slip the scroll deep into my bag, toss the pack over my shoulder, and hurry out of the classroom door before the questions start.

It’s a wednesday, but I don’t stop traveling until I arrive at the house on the rolling prairie. I guess I’ll just skip school for the rest. I couldn’t open the letter anywhere else.

Somehow, I simply knew it was from them.

-

AS IN A MIRROR

ᗄƧ IN ᗄ WIᖉᖉOᖉ

-

==============End Credits==============

Author - Eucatastrophe
Editor - [nobody yet]
Cover Artist- [nobody yet]
Music - Sigur Ro - Svefn g englar

Author's Note

A little historical context if you though Good Macaroni was a silly name for a radio pony.

Well, things are moving quickly now. Who knows where this development will lead. One thing is for certain, nothing is simple and no path is cut and dry.

I know that music paired with writing can be hit or miss, but if you're feelin' wild, don't miss the End Credits song. There is a different one for each chapter.

Editing was a bit rushed. I leave for a out of state trip like Now. I hope you enjoy the chapter regardless of typos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtemrZ7-pj0Thank you all for the comments. I still strive to improve my work.