Twilight sighed as she sat and stared at the massive statue. The huge pony-shape on the ground in front of her was in a sphinxlike pose. The detail in it was exquisite, right down to the individual hairs layered on the body and eyelashes above its eyes! If she didn't know it was stone, she would have thought it alive.
No, it wasn’t huge, it was gigantic! The statue was bigger than Canterlot. Heck, the thing was almost bigger than Canterlot Mountain! It was what had attracted the Equestrians’ attention to this remote island in the first place.
A merchant ship had been blown far, far off course by a storm and seen the shape from afar. After a day’s sailing, they had arrived. They had repaired their ship’s storm-damage and headed back home to tell the Princesses of their find.
When the archeology team, and the Mane Six, had first arrived, they had at thought it merely a mountain carved into the shape of a pony. A natural thought considering the statue was so far from the large harbor they found on the Equestrian-side of the island. A stone-carved pony settled on its stomach, in a very sphinx-like pose.
They had been wrong.
They had been here for month, and it was getting time to return home to Equestria, and Ponyville. And Twilight didn’t like admitting that she knew just as little about the purpose of this statue as the day they had arrived.
“Still hoping?” asked Rarity as she strolled up to the platform nestled between the two front hooves of the monstrous stone pony.
“Yeah.”
“Still no inspiration?”
“No.” Twilight sighed and looked out over the ruins and parched scrub-brush that stretched as far as she could see from this hilltop, the highest point of the entire island. The island was actually quite large, over a fifty miles long and nearly as many wide. A testament to the size of the statue, and the flatness of the island, that you could see it from the sea without a problem. And vice versa.
“I had such hopes when we first heard of this island. I imagined there would be books, equipment, tools, and spell-craft which we had never seen before.” She sighed. “And what we found was . . . this.” She waved a hoof at the giant statue and the ruins around them.
Rarity sighed in turn. “Well, we did find some interesting fashions on the temple walls. We’re lucky the sand covered them so quickly once the roof collapsed and the walls fell in, or the weather would have eroded them beyond recognition.”
Twilight tapped a hoof on the ground dispiritedly. “Yeah. Just tantalizing clues about the ponies that lived here in this highly advanced civilization while we were still in Paradise Valley, with the tribes arguing with each other in an uneasy peace.”
“Well, we know they had advanced plumbing, heating, and cooling systems that used the environment around them to keep their homes comfortable, just as we do in Ponyville,” Rarity said consolingly.
Twilight snorted. “Yeah. And we know that only because there are a few building with their foundations and a couple of walls still intact!” She hoofed the platform again and looked back at the statue.
Applejack had climbed the stairs to join them.
“All their books are gone, turned to dust by insects and mold,” Twilight said. “All their tools and equipment have rusted or rotted away, leaving only the barest of outlines on the ground where they fell when the buildings collapsed. And the temple murals, the ones that haven’t been destroyed, barely show us a glimpse of what these ponies were like, and what they had accomplished. We know practically nothing about these ponies and their society, or why they built this huge statue.”
Rainbow Dash swooped down and hovered beside them. “Well, that was a waste of time,” she said. “Nothing’s changed at all since that rainstorm last night. And I covered the entire perimeter of the island and then the city.” She blew her breath out roughly. “Still just as desolate and empty as it was the day we arrived.” She looked over at her friend. “Sorry Twi, but the only things that are different are where the archeology teams did their digging, which are now giant mud-holes.”
“Well, the Night Ponies have finished mapping the sewers with their sonar, there’s nothing there except sand and mud filling them nearly completely full. No hidden basements or underground shelters that might have survived.” Applejack looked around, “I reckon we’ve learnt just about all there is to learn in this place.”
“One of the archeologists has suggested that the islanders abandoned the island when the weather suddenly changed,” said Fluttershy, who had managed to stay unnoticed until she spoke up. “She said that there is a distinct change in sediments in the harbor bay floor about five thousand years ago, a sudden decrease in the amount of silt deposited. She thinks that a drought hit the island, and it still hasn’t recovered. Based on what they’ve found in the core-sampling, this was once a lush, fertile land that rarely saw cold weather, meaning they had many crops a year. Easily capable of supporting a large industrious population.”
“Yeah, I listened in this afternoon at lunch,” Applejack said, “They were nearly as advanced as we are, if the eggheads’ interpretations of the murals are accurate — they are rather worn and damaged.”
Twilight looked up at the pony’s head, a thousand feet above her. “And nothing to tell us why they built this. Or what it does.”
Rainbow Dash darted over to one of the statue’s hooves and gave it a tentative kick. “And your magic can’t help?”
Twilight sighed. “I can tell there are gears and things inside, packed close together, and protected by layer after layer of spells. This thing was built to last forever, and it just might do it. But there isn’t any way to get inside it, there isn’t anything that appears to come out of it. It ignores all my magical probes, I can’t get a reaction from it, it’s as if it’s just a solid piece of rock but I know it isn’t! It is clearly designed to do something! But what? And why?” Several hairs suddenly popped out from her mane and her eyes looked a bit wild.
“The legs are obviously jointed. And attached to the body in a way that just as clearly shows it can move. Yet there is nothing to show how to make it move, nor how to guide it once it is in motion." A few more hairs popped out of Twilight's mane. Fluttershy moved to hide behind Applejack.
“And its spells interfere with my magic, deflecting everything I throw at it. Not that the things spells are defending it,” she said angrily. “They are just so dense I can’t penetrate much deeper than a few hooves before my probe simply dissipates. Anything strong enough to get farther inside would start destroying things. And there’s no point in destroying it just to find out how it it used to work!”
Pinkie Pie popped out from behind a rock that was too small to hide her. “Silly,” she said, “You’re over-thinking it again! I mean, what is it you really want to know?”
Twilight looked at her, frowning. “What do I want to know?” Her expression darkened and her voice rose, “What do I want to know?” she almost shouted. She stood up and glared at Pinkie.
She reared and stomped her front hooves hard on the platform. “Tell me! Would an advanced civilization build such a complicated mechanism as this is, put forth the tremendous effort it would take to create something this size that can move, if it doesn’t actually move or do anything!” She glared at them all.
There was a moment’s pause after she said that. Something had changed. They could all feel it in the very air around them. They looked around apprehensively. They automatically moved closer together.
Suddenly, with no warning, the massive statue began to move. Its rear legs flexed and pushed. The front legs flexed and moved. With an enormous rush of air, the statue stood up.
The air swirled around them. Dust falling from the moving colossus momentarily blinded them. The winds generated by its movement rapidly blew the dust away. They stared up at the statue. Its head was almost in the clouds. Time, itself, seemed to stand still. It was as if something momentous was about to occur. The magic was thick enough to almost taste. They heard a hurricane-like intake of air above them. Then a tremendous voice declared,
“NO! THEY WOULD NOT!”
And then the statue immediately returned to its previous position. If not for the dust still swirling around them, they could almost believe nothing had happened.
They stared at one another in stunned silence, then Twilight sat down. “Of course!” she said, “How could I be so stupid?” She clopped her hoof against her head.
“It stands to reason!”
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Author's Note
A.N. Based on a science-fiction short story I read back in the 1960’s by Isaac Asimov. Another version was written by Spider Robinson. I remembered this plot recently and couldn’t resist inflicting it upon you all. I can’t locate the name of the original story. My apologies to the author.
