Esablishing uplink to ... [Success]
Requesting (access) to Empire Archives... ... ... ... ... [Success]
Blackbox Log ID:
NASA Lunar Colony Prometheus
General Stellar Communications Relay Station
August 4th, 2098
2:07 AM, GMT
Decrypting... [Success]
Initiating playback...
The holographic screen flickered to display a rather small control room with motivational posters and glass doors with access to servers formed the walls of the room, the camera recording this obviously placed in a corner in order to gain the best vantage point. The continuous desk that lined the perimeter was, for the most part, organized. Traditional computer monitors sat upon it behind scattered papers, most visibly showing various graphs and charts but the resolution was not high enough to discern exactly what they were displaying. The sound of footsteps against the titanium alloy floor could be heard down the walkway leading out of frame. Suddenly, two men walked into the room; one seemed to be a data analyst, being casually dressed in a white, hexagonally-patterned shirt. The other seemed to be more of a street rat, appearing in nothing more than a cotton t-shirt and a pair of khaki pants that bore the NASA emblem. They each pulled out a roller chair and slumped down in them, audibly sighing. They simply sat there for a good ten seconds before the analyst spoke up.
"W-what the hell was that?" he breathily muttered under his breath, ending it in a slight chuckle as he stared off into space. It was obvious that there was tension in the room as the other began to slowly shake his head before he suddenly shot up from his chair.
"I don't have the slightest fuckin' clue, Harry!" he shot back as he began pacing the small room in front of Harry. "I-I mean, what do they think they're doing?! They're... they're leading themselves right into a bloody extinction event!" he accentuated the end of his sentence by throwing his hands up. Harry turned his gaze to his friend, only now his face was filled with anger.
"Perhaps the reason our proposal was rejected was you," he said quietly. His friend was quick to react as he quickly walked up to Harry, his index finger extended and fist clenched.
"Oh, no! Don't you try to pin this on me. I was only trying to speed the process along. These NASA pricks don't even have the slightest clue of what they are doing."
"And you do?!" Harry rebutted. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. "We had one shot at getting that grant and you just had to go in there with a hot head because you thought they weren't listening."
"They weren't! You saw how they looked at us. Like... like we were out of our minds." Harry was about to speak up before his friend continued. "But, we aren't! Th-these probes! They could be the answer to saving mankind, for fuck's sake!"
"And you heard what they said back to us. It is simply too risky." Harry walked over to one of the computers and plugged in a holographic projector to one of its USB slots. After a few key presses on the keyboard and clicks of the mouse, the projector exploded the room into an all-encompassing map of the solar system. Harry turned back around to consult his friend. "This is our solar system." he patronizingly stated. His friend rolled his eyes. "And this," he zoomed out the map by bringing his hands close together and circled a star system in the corner of the room, "is where you want our probes to go. The course of the probe you want to send into this system alsojust so happens to cross through millions of miles of Galactic Council territory, Will."
William, dumbfounded, exclaimed, "Wha-... You were on board with this from the beginning," Will accentuated his statement by jabbing Harry in the chest with his index finger, "why are you only now siding with them?" His voice's anger was replaced by sorrow towards the end of his rebuttal. "This-... we have spent the last 3 years perfecting this plan. You and I both know that humanity is being threatened by possibly the most powerful force-"
"I know!" Harry cut in, causing Will's expression to soften. "I also know that they are the only ones that can get those probes," he pointed into a wall out of frame, "into orbit around that garden world." Harry slumps back down in his chair. "You think we're the only ones who have seen the activity on the surface of that planet? You think nobody's sensors have been fried by the gamma radiation coming from that quadrant, let alone? We're lucky we were even given this storage room, with it century-old tech!"
Will sat down in a roller chair next to Harry. He knew Harry was right; the United Nations and their bureaucracy wouldn't let any idea as outlandish as the Galactic Council having hidden motives. Even though the signs have been obvious that something is hiding in that corner of the galaxy, nobody has been brave enough to violate the treaty for some... gamble. The next few minutes were spent staring at the ground. It felt like their lives had been wasted for some fluke as the sound of fans and hard drive magnetization filled the room. All of a sudden, Harry got up and walked over to one of the server doors. Opening it up, he began typing on the terminal computer, seeming to bypass some sort of firewall in 30 seconds.
"Harry, w-what are you doing?" Will asked, gloom still evident in his voice. Harry paused his typing and turned to face Will with a smirk on his face.
"Let's just say you'll be happy you have such a conscientious partner." On the screen in front of Harry, Will's probe's schematics were displayed. Below them, what seemed to be... engines?!
"Harry? Are those what I think those are?" Will said cautiously, a bit of excitement slipping through his voice. Harry turned around and sat back down next to Will, propping his legs up on the chair in front of him and reclining. "I know a collector, a really... rich collector. He has a few antiques from the 2020s. Some of the test engines used in the Mars colonization dril-" Harry was cut short by a rather gleeful Will hugging his torso with the force of a bear. Harry began to laugh as he embraced the hug.
Eventually, Will broke the hug and turned to face his friend with a huge grin on his face. "This is great!" Will got back up out of his chair and began reaching for the refreshments in the fridge when a moment of realization hit him. "Harry?" he slowly turned to Harry, a more inquisitive look on his face. "Why didn't we just launch them without the grant?" Harry's face, however, remained just as ecstatic as it was five seconds prior. Grabbing the bottle of champagne out of the half-open fridge behind Will, he got ready to uncork it.
"Because these are hydrogen-powered, baby! They can only get up to 40,000 miles an hour!" Harry exclaimed with a smile while he uncorked the bottle.
"What?! It's gonna be well over 500 years before they can rea-"
A cork could be seen flying towards the camera before everything went black.
File terminated
Chapter 1: First Arrivals
Ponyville, Equestria
7:45 PM, August 5th, 2589 CE
Twilight's library was quiet. The occasional creaking of a window cover amidst the calmly oscillating whistle of the breeze was all that could be heard. Although the sky outside was still light, tinted a dozen hues of orange and purple, the hollow tree was littered with burning candles which blanketed the entire library in a warm light. Inside, a purple unicorn and a similarly colored dragon were sitting next to each other in front of a long, wooden table. Between them and the oil lamp at the table's center was a hefty tome, one that seemed to be flipped halfway through. This, of course, could be confirmed by looking at the dragon's drowsy expression which denoted the apparent hours he had spent in that stool. "Spike? Aren't you going to read the next paragraph?" Twilight asked as she turned towards Spike.
Upon doing so, however, she saw his eyelids well on their way to shutting. Giving him a light nudge with her forehoof did the trick, however, as Spike fell back out of his seat. "Gah!" he shouted as his small frame clattered down onto the ground. He looked up at a slightly giggling Twilight, with her forehoof over her mouth in an effort to conceal the laughter. "Haha, very funny, Twilight..." he groaned as he got up off of the ground and back into his seat.
"Hey, don't blame me, Spike. You're the one who wanted me to teach you how to impress a mare," she stated with a teasing grin. Spike blushed and crossed his arms.
"Yeah, but I didn't think it would involve..." Spike took a second to heave and strain in an effort to lift up the cover of the book, taking a second to read the title, "The Wondrous History and Applications of Equestrian Optical Mathematics." he finished with a grimace.
Twilight looked taken aback. "Well, excuuuse me but when you asked me for help with relationships, I don't know what you want. I do, however, know that this is exactly the kind of knowledge and skillset I would be looking for in my mate." Twilight defended. Glancing over to the balcony entrance on the second floor, she gets a great idea. Spike, still wallowing in the futility of asking his roommate for help, doesn't notice what twilight is planning at all. "Hey, Spike?" He looks up. "What do you say I show you exactly what I'm talking about?" Twilight ends with a plastered grin on her face, seeming more like Billy Mays than a unicorn. With that, twilight took off up the stair and out onto the balcony, her frantic hoofsteps against the wood filling the previously quiet home. Spike rolled his eyes. Being her number 1 assistant, he knew Twilight and she was not going to be dissuaded from doing whatever she wanted to do on the balcony.
On the second floor, Spike peeked around the balcony doorframe to see Twilight quickly setting up her telescope that she kept collapsed in the corner under her bed. Screwing in the final bolt, she turned around with a huff to face Spike. "Now, come on out here and take a look through here," she said, still giddy with excitement. Spike slowly, but surely, walked out onto the porch and stuck his eye up to the viewport of the telescope. What he saw, however, changed his expression in an instant.
His entire field of vision was filled with a crater of Luna's moon. A single crater, but a detailed one nonetheless. he could see all of the crevices along the rim, smaller indentation within the dish, and even the dust particles that comprised its entirety. With a growing smile on his face, Spike turned to Twilight. "Wha-... how?" Twilight stared back with a triumphant grin on her face.
"Well, read that book and you'll know." she teased. Spike humphed, but got over it pretty quickly and went back to looking through the telescope. He started moving it, changing its focus by twisting the lens casing on its front and panning from light to light in the night sky. He arrived at one and pointed out at it with his finger. "Woah! What's that?"
Twilight traced his finger's trajectory and, since the night sky was so lightly populated, was able to arrive at the conclusion that, "Oh, that would be Fauntus, 4th planet from Celestia's sun."
Spike was quick to change the subject, having already re-aimed the telescope towards another attraction in the sky. "Oh, and that looks like its moon, right?" he exclaimed. Twilight was surprised and placed her forehoof over her chest in sarcastic surprise.
"Spike! You actually learned something from the hours of reading you and I spent together?" she jabbed. They both shared a chuckle. Spike went back to looking through the telescope and Twilight decided to go back inside, feeling that her job of getting her assistant interested in some form of science completed. She went inside and flumped down on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. It wasn't like those hours of reading hadn't taken their toll on her either. As a matter of-
"Hey, Twilight?" Spike called out for the balcony. With her train of thought broken, Twilight perked up.
"Yes?" she asked, trotting over to the balcony doors. She saw spike looking through the telescope and walked up beside him.
"I-is that a comet?" he asked, a bit of nervousness peeking through his voice. She looked up and saw a streak of light dashing through the sky, small pieces breaking off of it and plummeting to Equis. Twilight didn't know whether to be mesmerized or terrified. Quite honestly, it was a little bit of both. Whatever that thing was, it was headed for somewhere in the north pole. "No, Spike..." was all Twilight could mutter as she attempted to comprehend what was happening.
"Spike? Take a letter." Twilight stated as she stared at the fragments that fell just beyond the Everfree. Spike, during this whole endeavor, was speechless. He didn't know what was happening but Twilight's judgment was usually correct. So, in an instant, he burped up a piece of parchment and a quill. Receiving a nod of approval form Twilight, he touched the quill to the parchment.
"Dear Princess," Twilight began, "I believe it would do us both a very good service if you looked out your window." she continued, her and PSike still staring blankly at the fiery trail the object left behind. Whatever that thing was, it certainly wasn't a comet.
