Origin

My dearest sister, Tia;

I still cannot believe it has been four years that we have been on this flying piece of metal. This “Star Swirl”, or at least that is what you and your protégé, Ms. Twilight Sparkle, have decided to call this ‘Space Ship’, which we fly on.

The others are lucky; they have been fast asleep in cryo stasis for these four long years, the only exceptions being when Spike and Vinyl have to be awakened every six months so that Spike can send you my reports, and so Vinyl can do perform maintenance tests. Confound these machines; all I do is keep away from the magic powered engines and let ponies that understand them, like Vinyl, operate on them. I hate that I have to go in there to refill them with my energy every few weeks just so we can travel at constant this constant light-speed towards this “Keplar 22-B”.

It has also been four years since Twilight Sparkle has discovered this planet during the Gala with our telescope, while using her magic to improve it. She saw the planet, I have seen it many times, and didn’t think much of it. But you know her; she began to read every single book that she could about the planet, called Keplar 22-B. She and our head astronomer, Star Gazer, discovered how habitable it truly is. (I have also noticed how close those two have grown since then) and how the Great Star Swirl the Bearded discovered it and had the theory that it housed alien life. Twilight told you about this planet, and you took this as an opportunity to test this hunk of metal.

I am still shocked that the head miner Steve (What an strange name.) found so much iron so quickly. I still don’t know why we couldn’t teleport to this planet. I guess four light years is a long way to teleport, and that would require a great deal of energy, but even then it would still have taken us years to get to this planet.

For four years I have been virtually alone, something that I hoped I had gotten used to with me being on the moon for a thousand years. Alone. That is why I volunteered to stay awake with the ship. At first all I did was look out the windows in the control room, to the unbounded space ahead, but now I manage to keep myself busy.

I digress, for my solitude is almost over. We are but three days away from this “Keplar 22-B”. It truly is a beautiful planet, and unlike our own, it has a light cyan color in its atmosphere. But… I do not know dear sister - I don’t have good feeling about this place. I do not think we should be here, however, on the other hoof, my curiosity tells me we must find out if this planet has any secrets to unlock. Perhaps we can even discover how our kind came to be. Overall, I am anxious to see what this planet holds. Now I go to wake up the rest - to finally end my loneliness once more.

Your sister -

Luna

I sighed when I read through the letter. My sister and I have never been close. Even though we’ve been closer since my nightmare moon incident ended, we were not as close as most of the siblings in Equestria. I snap back to reality when I hear the small plop of my tear hitting the scroll. I roll the scroll up and put in my saddlebag to give to the baby dragon, Spike.

As I walk through the ship, I pass the control room, the mini hospital, and potions room, which was for Zecora. I pass my quarters, which also doubled as a housing for the escape pods. I hope we never have to use those. I thought to myself as I walk down the hallways. I hear my hooves clop against the thick metal floors for four solid minutes before I reach the cryo bay. I put my hoof up to the scanner on the door and a tri-tone beep alerts me that the door is about to open. There were twelve cryo beds in the room: six on one side, six on the other. Only eleven of them were closed and in use. I walked over to the cryo beds, noticing that they were each filled with the yellow gas that keeps the ponies’ bodies frozen in time, keeping it exactly the same as when they laid down inside.

I trotted over to Twilight’s cryo bed. I was about to deactivate it when I decided to read her dreams. I had gained the ability to read ponies dreams many years ago while I was Nightmare Moon, luckily I could still do it after Twilight and her friends returned my troubled mind to normalcy. I have always felt bad about doing this, but my curiosity was, once again, far too great to ignore. I placed my hoof on the pod and close my eyes in focus as my vision shifts into focus on her dreams.

I see Twilight, Shining Armor, and Cadenza in the Canterlot castle gardens right next to the roses and my bed of night lock flowers. I only ever went in that garden to care for my night lock.

“Twily! Why does the princess want you to go to that place!?” Her brother, Shining Armor, says.

“Because Star Gazer and I have discovered what it could hold and we would be the best ponies to understand such secrets. I don’t want to leave you, Cadence, or Ponyville, but what we may discover could benefit all of pony kind!” Twilight says with tears dripping down her face.

Shining Armor looks down at the grass to try to hide his face. “How long will you be gone?”

Now Twilight looks down, saying softly, “Nine years.” Her brother is starting to get teary eyed. Cadence, who was watching silently with tears in her eyes, says, “I’ll miss you, Twilight.”

“I’ll miss you too. Both of you” I see them all embrace each other in a group hug before my magic wears off and my sight goes blurry.

I pull my hoof away and blink away the tears in the corners of my eyes. I never like to watch their dreams, I always feel guilty afterwards. My curiosity always gets the best of me. I walk over to the orange one, Applejack’s, cryo bed. I place my hoof against the thick glass of the cryo bed and I think twice whether or not I should watch her dreams.

I see Applejack on her farm with what I assumed to be her family. I had never met her family except for the little one, Apple Bloom, I think. There was a big red stallion, which I assumed was her brother, and a little old mare, obviously her grandmother.

“Applejack, d’ya really have to go?” Sobs Apple Bloom.

“I’m afraid so, lil’ sis. The princess thinks that if every bearer of the Elements of Harmony contributes their efforts, it’ll be lots better. Goodbye, Apple Bloom.” She turns to the big red one, “Goodbye, Big Mac.” Big Mac is openly crying, he hugs her and sobs into her shoulder.

“Nope. You ain’t goin’.”

Applejack is crying, through her tears she says, “Yes, Big Mac. I’m sorry, but I can’t just ignore the princess‘s request.” Applejack turns to the old gray one with the walker. “Goodbye Granny.” She looks confused about what was happening, but still hugs the orange mare. “I’ll miss all of you.”

I pulled my hoof away when I feel tears streaming down my face. I rarely cried. I wanted to stop watching these ponies’ dreams, it just didn’t feel right, but I couldn’t help myself. I went over to Rarity’s cryo bed, and once again, I put my hoof on the cryo bed and close my eyes.

I see the inside of her shop, which doubled as a house; I don’t remember what it was she called it. Rarity was in the kitchen making breakfast, when her sister, Sweetie Belle walks in with mail poking out of her saddlebag. “RARITY, MAIL!” She yells.

Rarity responds, saying, “Bring them over here, darling.” Sweetie Belle walks into the kitchen and set the mail down on the table. Rarity sat down on one of the chairs. Among the mail she sees a scroll with the infamous crimson colored Canterlot stamp on it.

“Well, this is probably another order from Fancy Pants.” She opens it up and reads it to herself. I already know what it said: I was the one who wrote it, after all. It was a notification for this Keplar 22-B mission. When she’s done, she drops the scroll on the floor; she looks to be on the verge of tears when she cries, “Of all the things in the world this is. The. Worst. Possible. THING!”

She uses her magic to conjure up a red sofa over to her and she lays down on it, sobbing. Sweetie Belle runs into the room, “What’s wrong Rarity?” she asks.

Rarity looked up at her and asked. “Are mother and father back to town?”

Sweetie Belle responds, confused, “Yeah. Why? What’s wrong?” The alabaster filly looks terrified by now.

Rarity gets up and says, “Come on Sweetie Belle, we must leave to go talk with them.”

I pulled my hoof away from the next pod, which housed the cyan speedster, Rainbow Dash. ”I must stop; I’m getting far too distracted from what I must do - to awake them from their long slumber.” I walked away and proceeded to the monitor at the center of the room. I put my hoof up to the scanner. Beep… Beep… BEEP. I pulled down the lever to the off position and hear the pods hiss as the gas is filtered out. The computer says in a strange voice devoid of emotion:

                                                         “Cryo pods deactivated.”