The Singleshipby DriverlessChaptersChapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3Chapter 4Chapter 1It was mid-spring, the time of year where the biting cold of winter and long since faded but the heat of the summer months had yet to begin. Twilight sat on the balcony of the library, the feint breeze felt cool against her fur and did wonders to relax her as she settled into an arm chair. Twilight eased back into it as she prepared to read Starswirl the Bearded’s thesis on the existence of multiple frontal planes for the 15th and a half time, the sun was just starting to set bathing Ponyville in magnificent golds and reds. The leaves of the tree she occupied rustled above her as the sky darkened, the pale light of Luna’s moon rising was the only thing keeping her book illuminated. As the night wore on with Twilight’s head never even looked up from what she was reading, at around 1:30 Twilight noticed that it was getting progressively easier to see the words; perplexed she turn her head upwards just in time to hear an ear-shattering boom, a ball of fire lit up the sky as it sailed straight over Ponyville towards the surrounding countryside. Twilight had half a mind to put up a quick shield spell as the shock wave from the sound barrier being broken hit Ponyville. If her ears weren’t ringing Twilight would have heard the sound of every window in town shattering and loose objects thrown to the ground. “Sweet Celestia!” Twilight exclaimed before turning to where the object had headed just in time to see it impact the ground with an roar as several thousand tons of dirt and rock were thrown into the air. “SPIIIIIKE!” she screamed as she ran back inside just in time to see the dragon come out rubbing his eyes. “Twilight, what was that?” he asked before looking at the scene in the library seeing the shattered windows and books that had been thrown to the floor. Sighing to himself knowing that he’ll be the one to clean it up. “Spike, I need you to send at letter to the Princess right now!” Twilight manged to sputter as she caught her breath, Just as Spike was getting a quill and parchment together he felt his throat tighten as he ejected a letter from his mouth. Twilight snatched the scroll and read it fervently on it was a single sentence. I’ll be right there. Having done her due diligence Twilight magicked Spike up onto her back she ran out of the library, outside lights were already coming on and ponies started coming out of their houses to see what all the commotion was about. “Twilight, what’s going on?” Spike asked as he bounces on her back as she zig-zagged through the street. “Something big is happening Spike, something fell from the sky.” “What? Like a meteor?” “I don’t think so, it came in too fast to be a meteor, it should have bled most of it’s speed when it entered the atmosphere.” Several minutes later they had reached the outskirts of town and saw a pillar of smoke rising from where the object had impacted no doubt starting a number of small fires. As the duo reached the impact site Luna was already there looking at the rather sizable crater. “Ah, Twilight Sparkle how good of you to join us, tis a rather impressive sight is it not?” Still trying to catch her breath she breathlessly answered an affirmative and stared into the crater. It was easily several hundred meters both wide and deep. At the center of it was what looked to be a near perfect cylinder or it would be if it wasn’t in several pieces. It looked to have been around 200 meters long and had two long coils of what looked to be wire sticking out of both endcaps that connected to two very large cones. The cables were both thicker then Twlight’s barrel and was unlike any metal that she had ever seen. As Twilight was gawking Luna continued. “As you can see what ever this object is it is most definitely artificial in nature and could possibly be dangerous, I suggest we wait for sister to get here with a guard regiment before we continue any further.” This snapped Twilight back to reality. “The guard isn’t really necessary is it?” Twilight asked while looking at the object “Unfortunately yes, until it’s determined what this is and why it’s here we should treat it cautiously, it could be a weapon for all we know,” said Luna hesitantly while glancing at the growing crowd of ponies that came to see what had happened. She turned to face the crowd and in the royal Canterlot voice said. “Everypony, please return to your homes, it is not safe here. You will be informed once we have assessed the situation!” The arrival of Celestia and a backing of guards reaffirmed this statement and the crowd began to disperse. “Princess I hardly think this thing could be a weapon, I know for almost absolute certainty Equestria’s enemies don’t have anywhere near the sophistication to build something like this let alone launch it at such speeds." "We couldn’t even do something like this,” Twilight stated while examining a bit of the cabling that had draped over the crater edge. “Be that as it may Twilight, my sister is correct,” Celestia said as she strolled up to the two of them. “Until we know what this is I think it’s best if we exercise extreme caution.” The guards went to work establishing a parameter and putting out the nearby fires, as they were doing so the Princesses and Twilight started down the embankment towards the structure. As they got closer it became apparent just how big it was. They carefully approached the largest and most intact section and peered inside. After conjuring a few spheres of light they were able to see inside. It most definitely was a place inhabited or at least once inhabited by somepony. Everywhere they turned there was some console or device of unknown origin or purpose as well as the remains of objects that weren’t bolted down and were vaporized at impact. Lights and some kind of glowing panels were all over the structure still being powered by some yet undetected source of energy. Twilight knew it wasn’t magic or at least, any magic that she knew of. The impact would have set off a massive discharge of magic and the area would be absolutely saturated in it. Here there was nothing, after a few minutes of looking around they came across something different, it was a pod situated upright against one of the walls. Judging by the red smear on the glass front and the sludge collecting at the bottom there definitely was someone in here, liquefied upon impact. Twilight turned a rather embarrassing shade of green and backed off to go catch some air. “I think this may have been a ship,” Celestia offered. “That would be our conclusion as well sister,” Luna said while doing a walk around of the pod. It was roughly six and a half feet tall about the height of your average Minotaur but much much thinner. Off the top of her head Luna couldn’t think of any intelligent species that would fit in this thing. “There isn’t any visible source of lift though, or any control surfaces, I have no idea how it would fly,” Celestia mumbled to no one in particular. “We might have the answer to that sister,” Celestia turned to her sister as she continued inspecting the wayward visitor. “We were aware of the object well before it was visible with the eye,” Celestia’s eyes widened “You don’t mean-” “Yes I’m afraid, I first sensed it when it first came past our moon, it was traveling at a speed I didn’t even know was possible. Within minutes it entered the atmosphere,” Luna went silent for a moment. “We might be dealing with something far beyond our comprehension,” she finally said. “Who ever this individuals people are why would they build this ship to withstand such enormous stress but not protect the passenger?” Celestia asked. “Perhaps the ship was more valuable then the pony,” Luna mused while Celestia weakly chuckled. “We should go see if Twilight is okay.” “Yes, it’s probably best before she wanders off.” The two walked out of the structure and went off looking for Twilight. Finding her off to the side she was leaning against a piece of debris catching her breath, as Celestia reassured Twilight Luna caught her up to date with what she knew about the object. Upon hearing that the object was not of this world her eyes lit up, starting to prance around she blurted out theories about what the purpose of the craft was, where it came from and what it’s builders were like. “Twilight, settle down,” Celestia softly offered putting her foreleg on Twilights withers. “There will be plenty of time for theory crafting later,” She offered “You’re right Princess, now we need a science team down here right away.” “Oh, I’m so excited!” Twilight squeed Celestia nodded and cocked her head to her sister. Seeing her meaning Luna flew off back over to the camp the guards were now putting up. Twilight was already busily racing around taking notes from a notebook she had conjured. “Princess look at this!” Twilight called Celestia over while looking at a hunk of the wreckage. Twilight’s horn lights up and she directs it at the wreck. “Princess, this cone that’s attached to the cable is made of pure Tungsten, it’s the purest Tungsten I ever come across.” Celestia check the cone as well and sure enough it is what the unicorn says it is. Exacerbated Twilight continues. “Given how expensive Tungsten is I have no idea why they would use it making a giant cone. The cables themselves are made up of some super rigid kind of Carbon and I no idea where to start with whatever the main structure is made of.” While Twilight rambled Celestia wandered around to the front side of the cone where the cable continued. Looking at the end she saw it was uneven with stray fibers poking out. “Twilight, come here.” The purple unicorn stopped her speech when she saw that the Princess was absent from her side and looked up. Heading over to where Celestia was standing she took a look at the end of the cable. “It looks as if it’s been cut.” Twilight said.” “My thoughts exactly.” Replied Celestia. Peering at it more closely Twilight then turned her head toward her mentor. “That means there was something else attached to this end." Nodding in agreement Celestia turned her head to the lip of the crater where the other end of the cable lay. Sensing her teachers thoughts Twilight lit her horn and teleported up to the other end before coming back. “It’s separated at that end too,” Her eyes shining in excitement again she exclaimed “That means there was more to the ship!” Twilight suddenly trialed off before her eyes widened, she dashed back over to the lip and towards the site camp. She burst through into the main tent where Luna and a few guard commanders were coordinating the wreck site. Spike was also there sitting on a stool looking bored. “Princess!” Twilight breathlessly exclaimed. “Have there been any other impacts since we got here?” Luna turned to the guards currently present and they all shook their heads. Turning back to Twilight she responded “Nae miss Sparkle, we have had no other reports of any similar events. Have you found something?” Deflating Twilight took a seat at the planning table as Celestia finally caught up and stepped into the tent. “Not really, I just saw that there was probably extra parts to the ship attached to where the two cables terminate and thought that they may have broken apart while it was in the air.” The word ship caught the guards and Spike’s attention. “Ah, well you’ll be happy to hear we have put together a team and they’re coming in from Canterlot. We can expect them within the next two hours.” After filling in Spike and the guards on what they found Twilight and the Princesses started coordinating with the guard to get a chain of command and a set of procedures when working on the site. Eventually their diligence was interrupted by the sounds by the sounds of chariots landing. The team of scientists had arrived. Chapter 2Twilight and the princesses stepped out into the now rising sun to greet the delegation. Upon seeing the group of royals the scientists bowed before presumably their leader stepped up to introduce himself. "Your majesty, my name is Studious Script, these are my associates from the Canterlot Institute for Magitechnical Studies." He gestured back to the group of ponies. "If you don't mind explaining to us just what exactly we're dealing with here we'd like to get started as soon as possible." "That's certainly no problem, right this way." Said Celestia leading the party into the main tent. "Twilight, if you don't mind." She said. "Of course Princess." Twilight lit her horn, activating the set of runes carved into the center table as the group of scientists squeezed around a semi-transparent model of the wreck site appeared. "Approximately three and a half hours ago this object entered the airspace around Ponyville and impacted the ground at around three times the speed of sound." Twilight began, just then a hoof shot up. "Question?" Twlight asked. "Yes, do we know where it came from." One of the scientists asked. "As of right now we're almost certain it's extraterrestrial in nature." Twilight replied. This sent murmurs throughout the tent. "As I was saying," She continued. "Based on our preliminary examination and Princess Luna's explanation it seems to be a craft of some kind, designed to carry a single passenger, a passenger who was deceased when we found them, most likely killed on impact." Looking around Twilight saw the grim faces of everypony present, clearing her throat trying to clear the air she continued. "As far as the Princesses and I can tell most of the ship is made out of materials both unidentifiable and of quality and strength that we as a civilization are just unable to match. And the materials that we can identify are of a purity unmatched by what even the griffons can create." Zooming the model in on the two dark cones on each side of the ship Twilight went on. "These two cones are made of absolutely pure Tungsten, even when I dialed my examination spell up to the maximum I couldn't tell of any impurities in the metal, it also seems much heavier then Tungsten has any right to be even, even with the metals incredible density this is just off the charts, it also has a much higher tensile strength then normal Tungsten." Another scientist from the group raised his hoof and spoke up. "Is there any sign of it being magically compressed past it's normal properties?" "That's the thing." Twilight replied as she began pacing. "Even if it was compressed magically there's no way any amount of magic could compress it as much as it is, it defies everything we know about what's possible," Her pacing became faster. "That's the other thing, there is no magic of any kind coming from the ship!" "I can't find any source to the power it seems to be drawing from, it's possible we're dealing with a completely new kind of magic, or maybe something that isn't magic at all!" At this point Twilight has hyperventilating, Celestia came over to try and calm her down. While she was doing that Luna came over to take over discussion. "Regardless, you are all here because you represent the best in your respective fields, fields that we think will greatly help the investigation. Before you is a report penned by miss Sparkle going into more detail about what you can expect from the wreck site based on her own findings as well as testimony from myself, my sister, and various personnel around the site." The Princess continued on but I was far more interested in the stack of papers in front of me, I was a bit skeptical that the princess' personal student was made head of this project and dismissed as classic nepotism but skimming through the document she really does know her stuff. Still, I was a bit miffed I was selected to be the project head but seem to have been unknowingly demoted to a middle pony. Looking over to where she was still hyperventilating like a foal made me also aware of the fact that while she may be proficient with the material she still is probably not the best option for leading a team. By this time Luna had finished and was asking for final questions, everything seemed to be pretty clear but I just know that's not going to be the case once we all get down there, this was something no pony had ever dealt with before, and if what Twilight Sparkle says is correct this may be way out of our league here. "Alright, if there are no further questions we'll let you go and get to work" Luna said. I gathered up the report and set inside my saddlebag, I got the gist of it and could read the rest in greater detail later. Getting up a stepped out of the tent into the morning sun, trotting to catch up I settled in next to Aster Baneberry the resident biologist and a good friend. "Morning Aster, big day ahead of us" I greeted. "Maybe for the rest of you." She grumbled. "But I have almost nothing to go off of here, I mean have you seen the section on the remains?" To illustrate her point Aster magicked her copy of the report and shoved the relevant page in my muzzle, sure enough there was maybe a three paragraph write up and an illustration of the aforementioned pod. "It's quite literally a pool of goo and bits of bone. How am I supposed to study how this thing lived and worked? At best I can try determine characteristics from it's environment but that's it!" She continued her rant as we descended down into the crater, the guard having since erected a barrier around the rim and beyond to keep the public out. "Well I'm sure the Princesses asked you here for a reason, they must think you have something of value to bring to the table." I replied trying to reassure her. "I guess, but I'm probably going to be out there for like three days tops, when I was called down here I thought I was going to get a chance to study an entirely new form of life." I turned to her. "I mean you do, it's just a bit more compact then you were expecting." She gave me the most deadpan glare she could muster before smacking me upon the back of my head with a burst of magic. As we reached the craft I realized just how massive this thing is, the main body when in one piece could easily be close to 300 meters long. My heart quickened as is started to sink in, if what Twilight Sparkle and Princess Luna said was true and this really did come from beyond the moon this could be the single most significant discovery for of life on the planet, and I got to be a part of it. Inside the middle section ponies were already setting up mobile lab equipment and everything we needed to take apart this thing one explainable piece at a time. I walked with Aster until we got to the pod that held the pilot and sure enough there were red smear all over it. Aster sighs, I patted her withers reassuringly. After bidding her goodbye for now I went to go find my group of researchers. Finding them next to some sort of glowing console. "Hey guys, you find anything out about how this thing is powered?" I ask. They have all sorts of runes setup on and around the consoles most likely running tests and subroutines. One of my graduate students looks up. "No professor, but we have ruled out any kind of known magic storage and generation, there's no gems, no runes, no arrays, we can't even detect any kind of magic running through the ship. Sir either we're dealing with a completely foreign form of magic or something that isn't magic at all." "Either of which makes our job exponentially more difficult." I sigh. "Okay, show me what you guys have collected so far and we can start trying to figure this out." The hours ticked by and we learned little in the way of how the power generation operates, we are however ruling out it being magical in nature for know, after endless tests we concluded that whatever energy powers the ship did not originate on any of the leylines that puncture reality, we can't rule out magic being a factor, especially if it's some new form as we just don't know what to look for but this way we have some ground to work with. We can't get the panel we're working at to do anything either, it definitely is used for something but we can't get it to respond, we tried touching it, using magic, voice activation, everything, but it won't budge. We were about to break for lunch when Stellar Bright a lab assistant managed to pry the wall plating under the panel off, inside were tubes, wires, and instruments of unknown design and function. The entire group cheered. "Hey now, settle down everypony, I'd like to think that this is progress and I'm as excited as you are but before you all work yourselves into a coma I'm calling a mandatory lunch break, now get out there before I kick you all out." There was much grumbling among the group but one by one they filed out. I collapsed onto my haunches, the last few hours had been nothing but dead ends and frayed nerves and I was loathed for a break. Looking over at the hatch that had been opened I got the feeling we may be in over our heads, this seems to be a rabbit hole that keeps unraveling itself the farther down we go. Celestia knows the kind of frustrations the others are going through now. As if reading my mind Aster approached our corner and sat down next to me. "Having fun?" She asked. "Oh yeah." I replied. "Real fun, in six hours we've found that it's not powered by magic and got this hatch open. Other then that, nothing. How about you? How goes your quest to extrapolate the lifestyle of a pile of goo?" Aster laughed. "You have no idea, by the size of the pod and volume of liquid it was tall, really tall, it probably would stand eye level with Princess Celestia. What we can't figure out is why there seems to be equipment and stations on the roof and ceiling as well. At first we assumed that the ship was just rolled but it's all over the in interior surface so we think this may have been a creature that could stick to surfaces." She looked at me wearily. "In all honesty there's probably not a whole lot more we can gleam from this about what it was, if it was a he or a she, or if it's species even had sexes, not unless something big is uncovered. Just them there was a scream, we looked at each other and scrambled up and ran over to see what the problem was. A lab tech was on the ground, terror was in her eyes. She looked to be one of Aster's assistants, Aster ran over to her. "Glow! What's the matter, is everything alright?" The tech, Glow it looks like her name was shakily raised a hoof, pointing at the pod. In the pod was something that shouldn't have been, no was impossible. Sticking out of the goo, the volume of which was noticeably lower then what it had been earlier that morning was what looked to be a pair of legs, the both of which were slowly stitching themselves back together, the smears of blood and viscera on the walls of the pod also seemed to be running down to join the pool. I turned to Aster and said "Well I guess you'll get the info you wanted after all." Chapter 3"Personality and memory download in progress. Please hold all current thoughts until exocortex overwrite is complete or personality drift may occur." Where am I? Who am I? "That information is not available at this time, all neural pathways and substrate bottlenecks are currently occupied by exoself download and personality recovery, please stand by." That voice, it keeps pounding in my head, what the hell is wrong with my head? "This system has been designed for the resuscitation and recovery of the subject only, any and all questions must wait until personality download is complete and the subjects exoself is connected to the ship brain." "Booting exoself now, please wait" Awareness gripped me, everything rushed into my head, I remembered everything, who I was, my journey, an escape from the carnage of my home system, and my last conscious memory, the sight of my home habitat cluster atomized, dyson trees burning and the flashes of amat detonations from Version Tree forces all around me as I fled my dying home. I shook myself out of it just as my exoself fully booted up, instantly I called up the ship brain, tiring of the blackness of unconsciousness I called up a generic baby blue plain, apparently my physical body is out of commission at the moment as cascading errors about it's status blared in my head and periphery. I shut them off and directed my attention to my ship. "[ship] what's your status? Why was I recovered from backup?" [ship], who manifested itself with an avatar with standard NoCoZo iconography and which pulsed as it spoke turned to face me. "Greetings master, I regret to inform you of the disaster that has befallen us, the info streamed directly into my thought stream as [ship] explained it all the same out of politeness "Exactly 10 years and 9 months ago a previously undetected virus came out of it's dormant state and catching me by surprise managed to wrestle control of my maneuvering thrusters from me for roughly 3.6 seconds, it looks like it intended to take advantage of our relativistic speeds and have stray particles tear us apart. Luckily I managed to defeat it and regain control, not before the rear engine block was sheered from my body. Seeing as we were only 700 million kilometers from the edge of the nearest solar system I use the last of my propellant to put us on a collision course with a planet I had detected held a breathable atmosphere." I quickly pulled up external views of the ship and saw the sorry state it was in, as well as the alien life that now occupied the various segments of the ship. The majority of which seemed to be crowded around my body's stasis tank. I quickly queried the info dump that [ship] had provided and had my exoself process all the video, implanting the desired knowledge directly into my short term memory. They were intelligent, organized, had an established hierarchy and according to the recordings seemed to be a survey party of sorts. They appeared to be making an effort to dismantle and study the ship. However looking at the tools they were using it appeared they were at the very beginning of their first industrial revolution. However without having a better understanding of their culture and society I couldn't say for sure. What was extremely odd though was they looked strikingly similar to the horses of Old Earth, making the possibility of them being a naturally developed life form statistically improbable, which is probably the understatement of the century. An abandoned or unknown project of a Transapient or Archailect perhaps? I wasn't sure, going back through the telemetry [ship] collected as they entered the system didn't pick up any of the usual signs of Archailect activity, but then again, if one didn't want to be found then there's no way me or [ship] would be able to find them. Going back to the natives the majority were still gathered in front of the stasis tank, it looked like the auto doc systems were still functional and were reconstructing my body. Receding back into my exoself I turned to [ship]. "Well, looks like investing in that low latency noumenal recorder paid off." "Indeed" [ship] replied "Unfortunately the impact was so sudden that even it was damaged upon impact, it's density means it was ripped from your brain several microseconds before everything else, I anticipated this and had to offload large portions of your mind into one of my hind-brains in the instants before it was damaged, I was starved for time however and unfortunately had to prioritize what I saved." "How much was lost?" I asked "Almost the entirety of the 800 years you spent inside the ships Virch as well a few dozen childhood memories of inconsequential importance." Thinking about it for a moment I saw he was telling the truth, there were obvious gaps in my mind, a rather alien feeling for someone who was born into a society where perfect memory recall is as basic as food and water. Is this what hider and ludd cultures experience as they age? I wasn't sure, nor did I think I wanted to know. "Well it could be worse I suppose, I can't thank you enough of going through the effort of doing that." "That's what I'm here for sire." [ship] said. Smiling at him I turned back to the viewing windows. "What about them? Have you been able to gleam anything about them, maybe a language? [ship]'s avatar turned to face the windows as well. "Well that what's so interesting, they're very communicative, they have a vocal range and ability almost identical to a baseline human, which was my tip off that this planet was seeded." "That was my guess as well." I said. [ship] continued. "I spent the hours while I was preparing to rebuild your consciousness analysing their language and it was remarkably similar to Proto-Anglish and it's derived languages so I was able to create a basic map of the language. Let me upload it to your exoself along with all the info I've gleamed about their civilization." In an instant I was made aware of a massive amount of information. Looks like my guess about their technology was correct, they looked to be some form of monarchy however it looked like the throne was shared equally by a pair of sisters. What was most strange was the concept they referred to as 'Magic', I quickly scanned through all the references to it I had. It looks like whatever power seeded this planet also designed most forms of sentient life to interact with a massive planet wide utility fog network. By tapping into this network they can manifest their will in any number of ways. I'll have to study it at a later date. Turning back to the feeds from the still functioning sections of the ship I turned the view towards the crowd gathered around my pod, it looks like my body was almost done. The two 'ponies' I recognized as the monarchs of this nation were also present. I realized I'd have to face the crowd and soon find a way to coexist seeing as there was no way I'd be getting off their world anytime soon. Turning back inwards I turned to [ship]. "What do our resources look like?" [ship] brought up several graphs and data sheets. "At present with the damaged suffered from the crash, our main means of producing power is gone seeing as we don't have the engine blocks. However I was able to change the radiator cells spread out on the exterior into solar cells so power isn't an issue at the moment." He continued, "Due to the ship breaking up and the need to get you a new body the mattercaches for the autofabs have been depleted to only a few dozen cubic meters, and our recyclers are offline completely." Well shit, that's nowhere near enough to get ourselves set up to get off world. That's barely enough for a dwelling. Let alone for the mining a processing equipment needed to refine further materials. While I was brooding [ship] spoke up. "You will be happy to know that our copy of the Encyclopedia Everythingiana did indeed survive. "Now that is good news! You probably should have led with that." I exclaimed. That meant we wouldn't be totally helpless and at the mercy of the local inhabitants. Even though by all accounts they seemed to be nonviolent they also seemed to be an isolationist nation. I didn't want to take any chances. Here I was, stranded on an unknown planet, designed by an unknown party, one who may or may not like visitors, with nothing but a half destroyed ship, a sub-sentient ship brain and a few meters of feedstock for the fabs. All in all I've read about Terragens in worse situations. Things were looking up now that I know I had the Encyclopedia. It's famous throughout known space. It was put together by the Institute of survival some Millennia ago for the sole purpose of helping those stranded in the depths of space. Providing detailed instructions on how to build something from nothing. From the stone age to the nanotech age. There's been a few success stories that the institute used to make the guide standard on most Interstellar vessels, I guess now I'll find out how well it actually works. Seeing that I get out of my current predicament of course. Well, there's no time like the present I suppose. With that said, I sent a mental command and began the process of downloading into my new body and waking it up from stasis. Chapter 4Over the course of the last four hours the Traveler as it's became known as had regrown right in the pod that it had presumably been killed in. Aster and the rest of the biology team were at a loss, according to her there was no conceivable way either magical or otherwise that this could or should be happening, yet here it was happening right in front of us. Even Twilight Sparkle and the Princesses were at a loss, it seems that in the millennia that they had been around they had never seen anything quite like this either. The Traveler, whatever it was, was indeed quite tall, a bit taller then Princess Celestia minus her horn. It seemed to be similar to some ape descendants however as its body took form it took on more a more alien features, bits of metal and augments of unknown material started replacing body parts you would assume would be there, as it came together it definitely started to look more and more masculine but Aster said they couldn't make any assumptions, they still don't know if sexual dimorphism is even a thing for its species. Aster and the rest of her group worked tirelessly, they now had probably the most important job in the entire team, if this thing really came back to life that means whatever questions we had could be asked directly, assuming we found a way to communicate with it, or if it even held the same views as Ponies or indeed anything else on Equus. Lots of ponies were just kinda sitting around watching the pod as the Traveler grew, (was assembled?) myself included, Twilight and the Princesses didn't really care I don't think, I think they were still trying to figure out what to do about the situation. I was sitting with Aster in front of the pod eating lunch, just watching it. "I wonder if it hurts." I said. "Hmm?" Aster replied through a mouthful of sandwich. "I mean, it's body is going through massive and rapid cellular growth, that's got to hurt right?" "Not necessarily." Aster said. "It's probably unconscious, and probably incredibly sedated, also it's head still isn't entirely formed yet, it probably doesn't have the capacity to perceive pain yet, if at all." "Still." I mumbled "I wonder if it would have been better off dead, I mean if this thing is alive can it actually be considered the same individual? Would it even hold the same memories or attitudes as it did when it was first killed?" Aster looked over at me with a look of mild concern. "Well we're not sure, that's a question that's been debated for centuries, though the general consensus seems to be that the mind is a magical construct that is stored and maintained by the brain, as such it may be possible to transfer it to some other kind of magic based storage but as for how you would do that no one knows." She gestured over at the pod. "Maybe its people figured it out." The hours ticked by as the Traveler became more and more complete. After awhile any obvious external changes seemed to have ceased, what was left was a roughly six and a half foot tall biped with tanned skin that looked like it lacked hair or fur entirely, bits of metal and other augments of unknown material covered various parts of its body particularly its head which had several short metal rods sticking out over then entire top of the head. It was also extremely thin, it looked way too thin to actually stand up, let alone move upright, Minotaur's had extremely muscular legs in order to hold themselves up properly. Speaking of, it's top limbs seem to have graspers similar to a Minotaur's hands at the end. Aster called it grotesque. Looking around I could everyone was a bit on edge, even the Princesses looked a little unnerved, they never looked phased by anything. They both kept whispering amongst themselves and Twilight Sparkle, they kept leaving the ship and heading off to somewhere else and then coming back. It wasn't inspiring confidence. This time though they came back with the Elements of Harmony in tow. Celestia spoke up. "Attention my little ponies, if I can please have everyone step back from the pod, we have reason to believe that it could open at anytime." The team of researchers did as they were told and the girls and I set up in a semi circle around the pod. Each of them was looking around the superstructure of the ship and to the pod in the middle. Rarity was the to speak up. "My word! That thing is hideous." She said looking at what the researchers have taken to calling the Traveler. "His fashion sense is also just awful." "Uh, Rarity, that critter isn't wearing clothes, ah think." Applejack retorted. "What I don't get is why you bothered calling us all the way out here." Rainbow mumbled "All I know is that thing is frozen in there and that we're out here." "And I'm the sheriff!" Pinkie squealed while jumping in place. We all looked at her. "Anyway." I said, getting the conversation back on track. "To answer your question Rainbow, we have no idea what that thing is capable of, it fell from the sky and regrew itself from a pile of goo! Princess Celestia feels that we should be prepared for it to be a danger to Equestria." I looked over at Fluttershy. "Fluttershy, you the animal expert what do you make of it?" Fluttershy looked around nervously before stepping forward. "W-well, I don't know girls." She said softly. "I think this is outside my field of expertise, I don't know how it even can live going off how it looks. It is alive isn't it?" "That's the working theory, yes." I replied, it looked like that just made her more concerned. "What do you mean it looks like it can't be alive?" I asked. "Well, with it's muscle definition it's too tall to actually stand, it would probably have a hard time breathing, let alone functioning. But judging by the placement of its eyes it is, or at least was some type of predator." This immediately set everyone on edge. This caused Fluttershy to flinch and back away. "T-though I'm sure in it's current state it wouldn't put up much of a fight, uh what did you say it was called?" "Ah, well we don't have a name, though the team that's been working here has taken to calling it the Traveler." "Why call it that?" Rainbow asked. "Were you guys not briefed on your way here?" I said, a bit astonished. The girls all looked at me and shook their heads. I sighed. "Horsefeathers." I groaned. "Well all of this." I said, swooping a foreleg around me. "Didn't just fall from the sky, it came from beyond the Moon." They all looked at me for a second, before Rainbow Dash burst out laughing. "Ah come on Twi!" She said in between fits of laughter. "Do you honestly expect us to buy that? Even foals know there can't be anything beyond the moon, it's a part of the sky." The other girls nodded in agreement. I looked at them for a bit kinda stunned. "Have you girls not been paying attention to the updated curriculum that's been coming out of Canterlot?" They all shook their heads and gave various negatives. I groaned. "So you're telling me that the stuff we're teaching foals now is completely different to what was taught to the last generation and we're not actually getting the general public up to date? They all stared before Pinkie spoke up. "Yeppers! That's what it looks like!" I put my face in my hooves, great, another thing to worry about once this is all done. "Alight, well since Luna has come back she has updated us on things they we've been getting wrong all these years." I started. "Firstly the moon is not part of the sky." I said, my sight directed at Rainbow. "It's a large object that hangs above the planet and spins around it, and secondly there is a massive void surrounding Equus, the Moon and the Sun. It's so large that not even Luna knows how big it is, it may very well go on forever. And this thing." I said pointing at the pod. "Came from beyond there, so we have no idea what it is, where it came from or what its intentions are.So we're going to stay here, we're going to watch over it, and we're going to keep Equestria safe! Sound good?" I got affirmatives all around. I took a deep breath and calmed myself. We all sat down in the dirt and just watched the pod. After about five minutes Rainbow piped up. "I'm bored Twilight." Right when I was about to strangle her and hide the body there was a hissing noise, we all looked over to the pod, there was a cloud of vapor escaping from the sides, we all sat there wide eyed as the front of the lid came off and was raised upwards. At that point we managed to regain our wits and stood at the ready. The Traveler lay there in the pod for a few seconds before its eyesopened, it looked over us and took a shaky step forward, we all took one step back as it did so, it then took another step forward, and promptly fell flat on its face. We all stared at it, blinking for a few seconds. It could be heard groaning on the ground. Fluttershy was the first to approach it, kneeling down next to it she said. "U-um, a-are you okay there?" It pushed itself off the ground and looked up at her. Then in perfect if a bit raspy High Equestrian it spoke. "Uhhhh, take me to your leader? I was currently sitting cross legged on a cushion sitting across from the princess known as Celestia, judging how all the other ponies defer to her as the de facto ruler there may be some power dynamics with her sister I'm not aware of, I'll have to thread carefully. It was very clear however that my appearance unnerved them, the various heat pipes and transmitters sticking out of my skull especially all of the eyes in the room constantly glanced at them, I tried to tell [ship] to keep that in mind but with all the genemods and augment grafts I would need to bleed waste heat pretty bad. Not my fault, I need every advantage I can get at this point. I wasn't used to this body design and the artificial muscles it uses will take some getting used to, I made a fool of myself in front of what I guess was meant to be a failsafe in case they decided I wasn't friendly. I guess now would be the time I get interrogated, I'm sure they have a million questions for me. How much to tell them though? I don't want to terrify them, I had read that first contact with species that are made aware of the full scope of Terragen civilization are usually weary of actually accepting contact. It was then that Celestia, who had since been just staring at me, probably sizing me up or as an intimidation tactic started talking. "Greetings Traveller, I am Princess Celestia, Herald of the Sun and monarch of Equestria." I responded "Greetings Princess, I am Vissar 3, citizen of the New Fuchsia orbital, though you can call me Vis if you'd like. I decided to be as truthful as possible without outright terrifying them. Celestia continued. "Well then, Vis it is then, as you can probably guess, we have some questions for you regarding your intentions here in Equestria. "Yeah, I'm sure you probably do." I chuckled. "The first and foremost is how you actually possess knowledge of High Equestrian seeing as you don't come from anywhere near here I presume?" "Hmmm, is that what you call it?" I replied, I decided to side step the whole your world was seeded by an unbelievably vast entity from my civilization part and just explain how I learned it. "Well you see I kinda learned it while you were investigating my craft." It seemed that stunned her a bit. "You... learned it? While you were dead? In only a few days?" She replied. "Correct." I said. "You see I wasn't really dead, sure my body had been destroyed upon impact but the ship is basically an extension of my mind, the moments before impact it pulled my mind from my body and stored it within itself in a sense. The entire time your researchers I assume that's what they were were working on my ship I was watching and listening and learning." "But still, you learned fluency in only a few days?" She repeated. "A few hours actually, as you can probably tell my kind found ways to augment and improve ourselves using technology." I said glancing down at my body. "This includes the mind, I had the ships mind, which can process vast quantities information that yours or even mine can't take the vast majority of the data collected on your speech and do all the heavy lifting to brute force your language and then implant the desired knowledge directly into my brain." Celestia stared at me for a few moments, the rest of the tent was also stunned, finally she spoke up. "I don't believe that, I can't believe that." "And yet here we are, having a conversation." I said. "But how is that even possible? I mean, to pull a mind from a body and directly implant knowledge, that sounds too good to be true." She said "Well the actual specifics would probably take me several hours to explain, as well as the fact, and I mean no disrespect when I say this, the technology and societal level your nation is currently at is primitive at best, I'm not so sure you would even understand what I was telling you." She looked pretty irritated at that, and the wording wasn't the best but I wasn't sure how best to explain the problem of understanding they actually face. Celestia looked at me for a few more seconds and the other researchers and guards were giving me death glares. Looks like they have a strong national identity. She looked at me for a few second, I assume deliberating before she spoke again. "Elaborate." I obliged. "Well the basic mechanics rely on technologies and ideas that you as a species haven't actually discovered I don't think. Incredibly basic stuff like computing and genetics. You like to be at the beginning of what we would call in industrial revolution. A period of time where the mass production of goods and services starts leading to a higher quality of life for the average citizen and more job specialization, sound familiar? Celestia began nodding slightly. "Yes, that has been the trend we've started noticing the past few years. Are you saying that this development would lead to the ability of achieve these basic ideas that you speak of?" "You are correct, but the actual implementation to allow the kinds of things that I was talking about will not happen anytime soon, even if you were to possess said basics. What I was talking about is the result of literally thousands of years of incremental improvements and discoveries on the part of my civilization." "And what of your civilization?" Celestia said. "What are they like? Where do you come from?" Oh boy, this was the big one, I had to be careful about how I approach this, reveal too much and I don't think they would be able to trust me, too little and they would know I was hiding something. Still, even just knowing there's something else out there that was a five housand year head start might cause them to distrust me. And I would need their help in the coming years if I'm to get of world. Here goes nothing. "Well you see..."
Chapter 1It was mid-spring, the time of year where the biting cold of winter and long since faded but the heat of the summer months had yet to begin. Twilight sat on the balcony of the library, the feint breeze felt cool against her fur and did wonders to relax her as she settled into an arm chair. Twilight eased back into it as she prepared to read Starswirl the Bearded’s thesis on the existence of multiple frontal planes for the 15th and a half time, the sun was just starting to set bathing Ponyville in magnificent golds and reds. The leaves of the tree she occupied rustled above her as the sky darkened, the pale light of Luna’s moon rising was the only thing keeping her book illuminated. As the night wore on with Twilight’s head never even looked up from what she was reading, at around 1:30 Twilight noticed that it was getting progressively easier to see the words; perplexed she turn her head upwards just in time to hear an ear-shattering boom, a ball of fire lit up the sky as it sailed straight over Ponyville towards the surrounding countryside. Twilight had half a mind to put up a quick shield spell as the shock wave from the sound barrier being broken hit Ponyville. If her ears weren’t ringing Twilight would have heard the sound of every window in town shattering and loose objects thrown to the ground. “Sweet Celestia!” Twilight exclaimed before turning to where the object had headed just in time to see it impact the ground with an roar as several thousand tons of dirt and rock were thrown into the air. “SPIIIIIKE!” she screamed as she ran back inside just in time to see the dragon come out rubbing his eyes. “Twilight, what was that?” he asked before looking at the scene in the library seeing the shattered windows and books that had been thrown to the floor. Sighing to himself knowing that he’ll be the one to clean it up. “Spike, I need you to send at letter to the Princess right now!” Twilight manged to sputter as she caught her breath, Just as Spike was getting a quill and parchment together he felt his throat tighten as he ejected a letter from his mouth. Twilight snatched the scroll and read it fervently on it was a single sentence. I’ll be right there. Having done her due diligence Twilight magicked Spike up onto her back she ran out of the library, outside lights were already coming on and ponies started coming out of their houses to see what all the commotion was about. “Twilight, what’s going on?” Spike asked as he bounces on her back as she zig-zagged through the street. “Something big is happening Spike, something fell from the sky.” “What? Like a meteor?” “I don’t think so, it came in too fast to be a meteor, it should have bled most of it’s speed when it entered the atmosphere.” Several minutes later they had reached the outskirts of town and saw a pillar of smoke rising from where the object had impacted no doubt starting a number of small fires. As the duo reached the impact site Luna was already there looking at the rather sizable crater. “Ah, Twilight Sparkle how good of you to join us, tis a rather impressive sight is it not?” Still trying to catch her breath she breathlessly answered an affirmative and stared into the crater. It was easily several hundred meters both wide and deep. At the center of it was what looked to be a near perfect cylinder or it would be if it wasn’t in several pieces. It looked to have been around 200 meters long and had two long coils of what looked to be wire sticking out of both endcaps that connected to two very large cones. The cables were both thicker then Twlight’s barrel and was unlike any metal that she had ever seen. As Twilight was gawking Luna continued. “As you can see what ever this object is it is most definitely artificial in nature and could possibly be dangerous, I suggest we wait for sister to get here with a guard regiment before we continue any further.” This snapped Twilight back to reality. “The guard isn’t really necessary is it?” Twilight asked while looking at the object “Unfortunately yes, until it’s determined what this is and why it’s here we should treat it cautiously, it could be a weapon for all we know,” said Luna hesitantly while glancing at the growing crowd of ponies that came to see what had happened. She turned to face the crowd and in the royal Canterlot voice said. “Everypony, please return to your homes, it is not safe here. You will be informed once we have assessed the situation!” The arrival of Celestia and a backing of guards reaffirmed this statement and the crowd began to disperse. “Princess I hardly think this thing could be a weapon, I know for almost absolute certainty Equestria’s enemies don’t have anywhere near the sophistication to build something like this let alone launch it at such speeds." "We couldn’t even do something like this,” Twilight stated while examining a bit of the cabling that had draped over the crater edge. “Be that as it may Twilight, my sister is correct,” Celestia said as she strolled up to the two of them. “Until we know what this is I think it’s best if we exercise extreme caution.” The guards went to work establishing a parameter and putting out the nearby fires, as they were doing so the Princesses and Twilight started down the embankment towards the structure. As they got closer it became apparent just how big it was. They carefully approached the largest and most intact section and peered inside. After conjuring a few spheres of light they were able to see inside. It most definitely was a place inhabited or at least once inhabited by somepony. Everywhere they turned there was some console or device of unknown origin or purpose as well as the remains of objects that weren’t bolted down and were vaporized at impact. Lights and some kind of glowing panels were all over the structure still being powered by some yet undetected source of energy. Twilight knew it wasn’t magic or at least, any magic that she knew of. The impact would have set off a massive discharge of magic and the area would be absolutely saturated in it. Here there was nothing, after a few minutes of looking around they came across something different, it was a pod situated upright against one of the walls. Judging by the red smear on the glass front and the sludge collecting at the bottom there definitely was someone in here, liquefied upon impact. Twilight turned a rather embarrassing shade of green and backed off to go catch some air. “I think this may have been a ship,” Celestia offered. “That would be our conclusion as well sister,” Luna said while doing a walk around of the pod. It was roughly six and a half feet tall about the height of your average Minotaur but much much thinner. Off the top of her head Luna couldn’t think of any intelligent species that would fit in this thing. “There isn’t any visible source of lift though, or any control surfaces, I have no idea how it would fly,” Celestia mumbled to no one in particular. “We might have the answer to that sister,” Celestia turned to her sister as she continued inspecting the wayward visitor. “We were aware of the object well before it was visible with the eye,” Celestia’s eyes widened “You don’t mean-” “Yes I’m afraid, I first sensed it when it first came past our moon, it was traveling at a speed I didn’t even know was possible. Within minutes it entered the atmosphere,” Luna went silent for a moment. “We might be dealing with something far beyond our comprehension,” she finally said. “Who ever this individuals people are why would they build this ship to withstand such enormous stress but not protect the passenger?” Celestia asked. “Perhaps the ship was more valuable then the pony,” Luna mused while Celestia weakly chuckled. “We should go see if Twilight is okay.” “Yes, it’s probably best before she wanders off.” The two walked out of the structure and went off looking for Twilight. Finding her off to the side she was leaning against a piece of debris catching her breath, as Celestia reassured Twilight Luna caught her up to date with what she knew about the object. Upon hearing that the object was not of this world her eyes lit up, starting to prance around she blurted out theories about what the purpose of the craft was, where it came from and what it’s builders were like. “Twilight, settle down,” Celestia softly offered putting her foreleg on Twilights withers. “There will be plenty of time for theory crafting later,” She offered “You’re right Princess, now we need a science team down here right away.” “Oh, I’m so excited!” Twilight squeed Celestia nodded and cocked her head to her sister. Seeing her meaning Luna flew off back over to the camp the guards were now putting up. Twilight was already busily racing around taking notes from a notebook she had conjured. “Princess look at this!” Twilight called Celestia over while looking at a hunk of the wreckage. Twilight’s horn lights up and she directs it at the wreck. “Princess, this cone that’s attached to the cable is made of pure Tungsten, it’s the purest Tungsten I ever come across.” Celestia check the cone as well and sure enough it is what the unicorn says it is. Exacerbated Twilight continues. “Given how expensive Tungsten is I have no idea why they would use it making a giant cone. The cables themselves are made up of some super rigid kind of Carbon and I no idea where to start with whatever the main structure is made of.” While Twilight rambled Celestia wandered around to the front side of the cone where the cable continued. Looking at the end she saw it was uneven with stray fibers poking out. “Twilight, come here.” The purple unicorn stopped her speech when she saw that the Princess was absent from her side and looked up. Heading over to where Celestia was standing she took a look at the end of the cable. “It looks as if it’s been cut.” Twilight said.” “My thoughts exactly.” Replied Celestia. Peering at it more closely Twilight then turned her head toward her mentor. “That means there was something else attached to this end." Nodding in agreement Celestia turned her head to the lip of the crater where the other end of the cable lay. Sensing her teachers thoughts Twilight lit her horn and teleported up to the other end before coming back. “It’s separated at that end too,” Her eyes shining in excitement again she exclaimed “That means there was more to the ship!” Twilight suddenly trialed off before her eyes widened, she dashed back over to the lip and towards the site camp. She burst through into the main tent where Luna and a few guard commanders were coordinating the wreck site. Spike was also there sitting on a stool looking bored. “Princess!” Twilight breathlessly exclaimed. “Have there been any other impacts since we got here?” Luna turned to the guards currently present and they all shook their heads. Turning back to Twilight she responded “Nae miss Sparkle, we have had no other reports of any similar events. Have you found something?” Deflating Twilight took a seat at the planning table as Celestia finally caught up and stepped into the tent. “Not really, I just saw that there was probably extra parts to the ship attached to where the two cables terminate and thought that they may have broken apart while it was in the air.” The word ship caught the guards and Spike’s attention. “Ah, well you’ll be happy to hear we have put together a team and they’re coming in from Canterlot. We can expect them within the next two hours.” After filling in Spike and the guards on what they found Twilight and the Princesses started coordinating with the guard to get a chain of command and a set of procedures when working on the site. Eventually their diligence was interrupted by the sounds by the sounds of chariots landing. The team of scientists had arrived.
Chapter 2Twilight and the princesses stepped out into the now rising sun to greet the delegation. Upon seeing the group of royals the scientists bowed before presumably their leader stepped up to introduce himself. "Your majesty, my name is Studious Script, these are my associates from the Canterlot Institute for Magitechnical Studies." He gestured back to the group of ponies. "If you don't mind explaining to us just what exactly we're dealing with here we'd like to get started as soon as possible." "That's certainly no problem, right this way." Said Celestia leading the party into the main tent. "Twilight, if you don't mind." She said. "Of course Princess." Twilight lit her horn, activating the set of runes carved into the center table as the group of scientists squeezed around a semi-transparent model of the wreck site appeared. "Approximately three and a half hours ago this object entered the airspace around Ponyville and impacted the ground at around three times the speed of sound." Twilight began, just then a hoof shot up. "Question?" Twlight asked. "Yes, do we know where it came from." One of the scientists asked. "As of right now we're almost certain it's extraterrestrial in nature." Twilight replied. This sent murmurs throughout the tent. "As I was saying," She continued. "Based on our preliminary examination and Princess Luna's explanation it seems to be a craft of some kind, designed to carry a single passenger, a passenger who was deceased when we found them, most likely killed on impact." Looking around Twilight saw the grim faces of everypony present, clearing her throat trying to clear the air she continued. "As far as the Princesses and I can tell most of the ship is made out of materials both unidentifiable and of quality and strength that we as a civilization are just unable to match. And the materials that we can identify are of a purity unmatched by what even the griffons can create." Zooming the model in on the two dark cones on each side of the ship Twilight went on. "These two cones are made of absolutely pure Tungsten, even when I dialed my examination spell up to the maximum I couldn't tell of any impurities in the metal, it also seems much heavier then Tungsten has any right to be even, even with the metals incredible density this is just off the charts, it also has a much higher tensile strength then normal Tungsten." Another scientist from the group raised his hoof and spoke up. "Is there any sign of it being magically compressed past it's normal properties?" "That's the thing." Twilight replied as she began pacing. "Even if it was compressed magically there's no way any amount of magic could compress it as much as it is, it defies everything we know about what's possible," Her pacing became faster. "That's the other thing, there is no magic of any kind coming from the ship!" "I can't find any source to the power it seems to be drawing from, it's possible we're dealing with a completely new kind of magic, or maybe something that isn't magic at all!" At this point Twilight has hyperventilating, Celestia came over to try and calm her down. While she was doing that Luna came over to take over discussion. "Regardless, you are all here because you represent the best in your respective fields, fields that we think will greatly help the investigation. Before you is a report penned by miss Sparkle going into more detail about what you can expect from the wreck site based on her own findings as well as testimony from myself, my sister, and various personnel around the site." The Princess continued on but I was far more interested in the stack of papers in front of me, I was a bit skeptical that the princess' personal student was made head of this project and dismissed as classic nepotism but skimming through the document she really does know her stuff. Still, I was a bit miffed I was selected to be the project head but seem to have been unknowingly demoted to a middle pony. Looking over to where she was still hyperventilating like a foal made me also aware of the fact that while she may be proficient with the material she still is probably not the best option for leading a team. By this time Luna had finished and was asking for final questions, everything seemed to be pretty clear but I just know that's not going to be the case once we all get down there, this was something no pony had ever dealt with before, and if what Twilight Sparkle says is correct this may be way out of our league here. "Alright, if there are no further questions we'll let you go and get to work" Luna said. I gathered up the report and set inside my saddlebag, I got the gist of it and could read the rest in greater detail later. Getting up a stepped out of the tent into the morning sun, trotting to catch up I settled in next to Aster Baneberry the resident biologist and a good friend. "Morning Aster, big day ahead of us" I greeted. "Maybe for the rest of you." She grumbled. "But I have almost nothing to go off of here, I mean have you seen the section on the remains?" To illustrate her point Aster magicked her copy of the report and shoved the relevant page in my muzzle, sure enough there was maybe a three paragraph write up and an illustration of the aforementioned pod. "It's quite literally a pool of goo and bits of bone. How am I supposed to study how this thing lived and worked? At best I can try determine characteristics from it's environment but that's it!" She continued her rant as we descended down into the crater, the guard having since erected a barrier around the rim and beyond to keep the public out. "Well I'm sure the Princesses asked you here for a reason, they must think you have something of value to bring to the table." I replied trying to reassure her. "I guess, but I'm probably going to be out there for like three days tops, when I was called down here I thought I was going to get a chance to study an entirely new form of life." I turned to her. "I mean you do, it's just a bit more compact then you were expecting." She gave me the most deadpan glare she could muster before smacking me upon the back of my head with a burst of magic. As we reached the craft I realized just how massive this thing is, the main body when in one piece could easily be close to 300 meters long. My heart quickened as is started to sink in, if what Twilight Sparkle and Princess Luna said was true and this really did come from beyond the moon this could be the single most significant discovery for of life on the planet, and I got to be a part of it. Inside the middle section ponies were already setting up mobile lab equipment and everything we needed to take apart this thing one explainable piece at a time. I walked with Aster until we got to the pod that held the pilot and sure enough there were red smear all over it. Aster sighs, I patted her withers reassuringly. After bidding her goodbye for now I went to go find my group of researchers. Finding them next to some sort of glowing console. "Hey guys, you find anything out about how this thing is powered?" I ask. They have all sorts of runes setup on and around the consoles most likely running tests and subroutines. One of my graduate students looks up. "No professor, but we have ruled out any kind of known magic storage and generation, there's no gems, no runes, no arrays, we can't even detect any kind of magic running through the ship. Sir either we're dealing with a completely foreign form of magic or something that isn't magic at all." "Either of which makes our job exponentially more difficult." I sigh. "Okay, show me what you guys have collected so far and we can start trying to figure this out." The hours ticked by and we learned little in the way of how the power generation operates, we are however ruling out it being magical in nature for know, after endless tests we concluded that whatever energy powers the ship did not originate on any of the leylines that puncture reality, we can't rule out magic being a factor, especially if it's some new form as we just don't know what to look for but this way we have some ground to work with. We can't get the panel we're working at to do anything either, it definitely is used for something but we can't get it to respond, we tried touching it, using magic, voice activation, everything, but it won't budge. We were about to break for lunch when Stellar Bright a lab assistant managed to pry the wall plating under the panel off, inside were tubes, wires, and instruments of unknown design and function. The entire group cheered. "Hey now, settle down everypony, I'd like to think that this is progress and I'm as excited as you are but before you all work yourselves into a coma I'm calling a mandatory lunch break, now get out there before I kick you all out." There was much grumbling among the group but one by one they filed out. I collapsed onto my haunches, the last few hours had been nothing but dead ends and frayed nerves and I was loathed for a break. Looking over at the hatch that had been opened I got the feeling we may be in over our heads, this seems to be a rabbit hole that keeps unraveling itself the farther down we go. Celestia knows the kind of frustrations the others are going through now. As if reading my mind Aster approached our corner and sat down next to me. "Having fun?" She asked. "Oh yeah." I replied. "Real fun, in six hours we've found that it's not powered by magic and got this hatch open. Other then that, nothing. How about you? How goes your quest to extrapolate the lifestyle of a pile of goo?" Aster laughed. "You have no idea, by the size of the pod and volume of liquid it was tall, really tall, it probably would stand eye level with Princess Celestia. What we can't figure out is why there seems to be equipment and stations on the roof and ceiling as well. At first we assumed that the ship was just rolled but it's all over the in interior surface so we think this may have been a creature that could stick to surfaces." She looked at me wearily. "In all honesty there's probably not a whole lot more we can gleam from this about what it was, if it was a he or a she, or if it's species even had sexes, not unless something big is uncovered. Just them there was a scream, we looked at each other and scrambled up and ran over to see what the problem was. A lab tech was on the ground, terror was in her eyes. She looked to be one of Aster's assistants, Aster ran over to her. "Glow! What's the matter, is everything alright?" The tech, Glow it looks like her name was shakily raised a hoof, pointing at the pod. In the pod was something that shouldn't have been, no was impossible. Sticking out of the goo, the volume of which was noticeably lower then what it had been earlier that morning was what looked to be a pair of legs, the both of which were slowly stitching themselves back together, the smears of blood and viscera on the walls of the pod also seemed to be running down to join the pool. I turned to Aster and said "Well I guess you'll get the info you wanted after all."
Chapter 3"Personality and memory download in progress. Please hold all current thoughts until exocortex overwrite is complete or personality drift may occur." Where am I? Who am I? "That information is not available at this time, all neural pathways and substrate bottlenecks are currently occupied by exoself download and personality recovery, please stand by." That voice, it keeps pounding in my head, what the hell is wrong with my head? "This system has been designed for the resuscitation and recovery of the subject only, any and all questions must wait until personality download is complete and the subjects exoself is connected to the ship brain." "Booting exoself now, please wait" Awareness gripped me, everything rushed into my head, I remembered everything, who I was, my journey, an escape from the carnage of my home system, and my last conscious memory, the sight of my home habitat cluster atomized, dyson trees burning and the flashes of amat detonations from Version Tree forces all around me as I fled my dying home. I shook myself out of it just as my exoself fully booted up, instantly I called up the ship brain, tiring of the blackness of unconsciousness I called up a generic baby blue plain, apparently my physical body is out of commission at the moment as cascading errors about it's status blared in my head and periphery. I shut them off and directed my attention to my ship. "[ship] what's your status? Why was I recovered from backup?" [ship], who manifested itself with an avatar with standard NoCoZo iconography and which pulsed as it spoke turned to face me. "Greetings master, I regret to inform you of the disaster that has befallen us, the info streamed directly into my thought stream as [ship] explained it all the same out of politeness "Exactly 10 years and 9 months ago a previously undetected virus came out of it's dormant state and catching me by surprise managed to wrestle control of my maneuvering thrusters from me for roughly 3.6 seconds, it looks like it intended to take advantage of our relativistic speeds and have stray particles tear us apart. Luckily I managed to defeat it and regain control, not before the rear engine block was sheered from my body. Seeing as we were only 700 million kilometers from the edge of the nearest solar system I use the last of my propellant to put us on a collision course with a planet I had detected held a breathable atmosphere." I quickly pulled up external views of the ship and saw the sorry state it was in, as well as the alien life that now occupied the various segments of the ship. The majority of which seemed to be crowded around my body's stasis tank. I quickly queried the info dump that [ship] had provided and had my exoself process all the video, implanting the desired knowledge directly into my short term memory. They were intelligent, organized, had an established hierarchy and according to the recordings seemed to be a survey party of sorts. They appeared to be making an effort to dismantle and study the ship. However looking at the tools they were using it appeared they were at the very beginning of their first industrial revolution. However without having a better understanding of their culture and society I couldn't say for sure. What was extremely odd though was they looked strikingly similar to the horses of Old Earth, making the possibility of them being a naturally developed life form statistically improbable, which is probably the understatement of the century. An abandoned or unknown project of a Transapient or Archailect perhaps? I wasn't sure, going back through the telemetry [ship] collected as they entered the system didn't pick up any of the usual signs of Archailect activity, but then again, if one didn't want to be found then there's no way me or [ship] would be able to find them. Going back to the natives the majority were still gathered in front of the stasis tank, it looked like the auto doc systems were still functional and were reconstructing my body. Receding back into my exoself I turned to [ship]. "Well, looks like investing in that low latency noumenal recorder paid off." "Indeed" [ship] replied "Unfortunately the impact was so sudden that even it was damaged upon impact, it's density means it was ripped from your brain several microseconds before everything else, I anticipated this and had to offload large portions of your mind into one of my hind-brains in the instants before it was damaged, I was starved for time however and unfortunately had to prioritize what I saved." "How much was lost?" I asked "Almost the entirety of the 800 years you spent inside the ships Virch as well a few dozen childhood memories of inconsequential importance." Thinking about it for a moment I saw he was telling the truth, there were obvious gaps in my mind, a rather alien feeling for someone who was born into a society where perfect memory recall is as basic as food and water. Is this what hider and ludd cultures experience as they age? I wasn't sure, nor did I think I wanted to know. "Well it could be worse I suppose, I can't thank you enough of going through the effort of doing that." "That's what I'm here for sire." [ship] said. Smiling at him I turned back to the viewing windows. "What about them? Have you been able to gleam anything about them, maybe a language? [ship]'s avatar turned to face the windows as well. "Well that what's so interesting, they're very communicative, they have a vocal range and ability almost identical to a baseline human, which was my tip off that this planet was seeded." "That was my guess as well." I said. [ship] continued. "I spent the hours while I was preparing to rebuild your consciousness analysing their language and it was remarkably similar to Proto-Anglish and it's derived languages so I was able to create a basic map of the language. Let me upload it to your exoself along with all the info I've gleamed about their civilization." In an instant I was made aware of a massive amount of information. Looks like my guess about their technology was correct, they looked to be some form of monarchy however it looked like the throne was shared equally by a pair of sisters. What was most strange was the concept they referred to as 'Magic', I quickly scanned through all the references to it I had. It looks like whatever power seeded this planet also designed most forms of sentient life to interact with a massive planet wide utility fog network. By tapping into this network they can manifest their will in any number of ways. I'll have to study it at a later date. Turning back to the feeds from the still functioning sections of the ship I turned the view towards the crowd gathered around my pod, it looks like my body was almost done. The two 'ponies' I recognized as the monarchs of this nation were also present. I realized I'd have to face the crowd and soon find a way to coexist seeing as there was no way I'd be getting off their world anytime soon. Turning back inwards I turned to [ship]. "What do our resources look like?" [ship] brought up several graphs and data sheets. "At present with the damaged suffered from the crash, our main means of producing power is gone seeing as we don't have the engine blocks. However I was able to change the radiator cells spread out on the exterior into solar cells so power isn't an issue at the moment." He continued, "Due to the ship breaking up and the need to get you a new body the mattercaches for the autofabs have been depleted to only a few dozen cubic meters, and our recyclers are offline completely." Well shit, that's nowhere near enough to get ourselves set up to get off world. That's barely enough for a dwelling. Let alone for the mining a processing equipment needed to refine further materials. While I was brooding [ship] spoke up. "You will be happy to know that our copy of the Encyclopedia Everythingiana did indeed survive. "Now that is good news! You probably should have led with that." I exclaimed. That meant we wouldn't be totally helpless and at the mercy of the local inhabitants. Even though by all accounts they seemed to be nonviolent they also seemed to be an isolationist nation. I didn't want to take any chances. Here I was, stranded on an unknown planet, designed by an unknown party, one who may or may not like visitors, with nothing but a half destroyed ship, a sub-sentient ship brain and a few meters of feedstock for the fabs. All in all I've read about Terragens in worse situations. Things were looking up now that I know I had the Encyclopedia. It's famous throughout known space. It was put together by the Institute of survival some Millennia ago for the sole purpose of helping those stranded in the depths of space. Providing detailed instructions on how to build something from nothing. From the stone age to the nanotech age. There's been a few success stories that the institute used to make the guide standard on most Interstellar vessels, I guess now I'll find out how well it actually works. Seeing that I get out of my current predicament of course. Well, there's no time like the present I suppose. With that said, I sent a mental command and began the process of downloading into my new body and waking it up from stasis.
Chapter 4Over the course of the last four hours the Traveler as it's became known as had regrown right in the pod that it had presumably been killed in. Aster and the rest of the biology team were at a loss, according to her there was no conceivable way either magical or otherwise that this could or should be happening, yet here it was happening right in front of us. Even Twilight Sparkle and the Princesses were at a loss, it seems that in the millennia that they had been around they had never seen anything quite like this either. The Traveler, whatever it was, was indeed quite tall, a bit taller then Princess Celestia minus her horn. It seemed to be similar to some ape descendants however as its body took form it took on more a more alien features, bits of metal and augments of unknown material started replacing body parts you would assume would be there, as it came together it definitely started to look more and more masculine but Aster said they couldn't make any assumptions, they still don't know if sexual dimorphism is even a thing for its species. Aster and the rest of her group worked tirelessly, they now had probably the most important job in the entire team, if this thing really came back to life that means whatever questions we had could be asked directly, assuming we found a way to communicate with it, or if it even held the same views as Ponies or indeed anything else on Equus. Lots of ponies were just kinda sitting around watching the pod as the Traveler grew, (was assembled?) myself included, Twilight and the Princesses didn't really care I don't think, I think they were still trying to figure out what to do about the situation. I was sitting with Aster in front of the pod eating lunch, just watching it. "I wonder if it hurts." I said. "Hmm?" Aster replied through a mouthful of sandwich. "I mean, it's body is going through massive and rapid cellular growth, that's got to hurt right?" "Not necessarily." Aster said. "It's probably unconscious, and probably incredibly sedated, also it's head still isn't entirely formed yet, it probably doesn't have the capacity to perceive pain yet, if at all." "Still." I mumbled "I wonder if it would have been better off dead, I mean if this thing is alive can it actually be considered the same individual? Would it even hold the same memories or attitudes as it did when it was first killed?" Aster looked over at me with a look of mild concern. "Well we're not sure, that's a question that's been debated for centuries, though the general consensus seems to be that the mind is a magical construct that is stored and maintained by the brain, as such it may be possible to transfer it to some other kind of magic based storage but as for how you would do that no one knows." She gestured over at the pod. "Maybe its people figured it out." The hours ticked by as the Traveler became more and more complete. After awhile any obvious external changes seemed to have ceased, what was left was a roughly six and a half foot tall biped with tanned skin that looked like it lacked hair or fur entirely, bits of metal and other augments of unknown material covered various parts of its body particularly its head which had several short metal rods sticking out over then entire top of the head. It was also extremely thin, it looked way too thin to actually stand up, let alone move upright, Minotaur's had extremely muscular legs in order to hold themselves up properly. Speaking of, it's top limbs seem to have graspers similar to a Minotaur's hands at the end. Aster called it grotesque. Looking around I could everyone was a bit on edge, even the Princesses looked a little unnerved, they never looked phased by anything. They both kept whispering amongst themselves and Twilight Sparkle, they kept leaving the ship and heading off to somewhere else and then coming back. It wasn't inspiring confidence. This time though they came back with the Elements of Harmony in tow. Celestia spoke up. "Attention my little ponies, if I can please have everyone step back from the pod, we have reason to believe that it could open at anytime." The team of researchers did as they were told and the girls and I set up in a semi circle around the pod. Each of them was looking around the superstructure of the ship and to the pod in the middle. Rarity was the to speak up. "My word! That thing is hideous." She said looking at what the researchers have taken to calling the Traveler. "His fashion sense is also just awful." "Uh, Rarity, that critter isn't wearing clothes, ah think." Applejack retorted. "What I don't get is why you bothered calling us all the way out here." Rainbow mumbled "All I know is that thing is frozen in there and that we're out here." "And I'm the sheriff!" Pinkie squealed while jumping in place. We all looked at her. "Anyway." I said, getting the conversation back on track. "To answer your question Rainbow, we have no idea what that thing is capable of, it fell from the sky and regrew itself from a pile of goo! Princess Celestia feels that we should be prepared for it to be a danger to Equestria." I looked over at Fluttershy. "Fluttershy, you the animal expert what do you make of it?" Fluttershy looked around nervously before stepping forward. "W-well, I don't know girls." She said softly. "I think this is outside my field of expertise, I don't know how it even can live going off how it looks. It is alive isn't it?" "That's the working theory, yes." I replied, it looked like that just made her more concerned. "What do you mean it looks like it can't be alive?" I asked. "Well, with it's muscle definition it's too tall to actually stand, it would probably have a hard time breathing, let alone functioning. But judging by the placement of its eyes it is, or at least was some type of predator." This immediately set everyone on edge. This caused Fluttershy to flinch and back away. "T-though I'm sure in it's current state it wouldn't put up much of a fight, uh what did you say it was called?" "Ah, well we don't have a name, though the team that's been working here has taken to calling it the Traveler." "Why call it that?" Rainbow asked. "Were you guys not briefed on your way here?" I said, a bit astonished. The girls all looked at me and shook their heads. I sighed. "Horsefeathers." I groaned. "Well all of this." I said, swooping a foreleg around me. "Didn't just fall from the sky, it came from beyond the Moon." They all looked at me for a second, before Rainbow Dash burst out laughing. "Ah come on Twi!" She said in between fits of laughter. "Do you honestly expect us to buy that? Even foals know there can't be anything beyond the moon, it's a part of the sky." The other girls nodded in agreement. I looked at them for a bit kinda stunned. "Have you girls not been paying attention to the updated curriculum that's been coming out of Canterlot?" They all shook their heads and gave various negatives. I groaned. "So you're telling me that the stuff we're teaching foals now is completely different to what was taught to the last generation and we're not actually getting the general public up to date? They all stared before Pinkie spoke up. "Yeppers! That's what it looks like!" I put my face in my hooves, great, another thing to worry about once this is all done. "Alight, well since Luna has come back she has updated us on things they we've been getting wrong all these years." I started. "Firstly the moon is not part of the sky." I said, my sight directed at Rainbow. "It's a large object that hangs above the planet and spins around it, and secondly there is a massive void surrounding Equus, the Moon and the Sun. It's so large that not even Luna knows how big it is, it may very well go on forever. And this thing." I said pointing at the pod. "Came from beyond there, so we have no idea what it is, where it came from or what its intentions are.So we're going to stay here, we're going to watch over it, and we're going to keep Equestria safe! Sound good?" I got affirmatives all around. I took a deep breath and calmed myself. We all sat down in the dirt and just watched the pod. After about five minutes Rainbow piped up. "I'm bored Twilight." Right when I was about to strangle her and hide the body there was a hissing noise, we all looked over to the pod, there was a cloud of vapor escaping from the sides, we all sat there wide eyed as the front of the lid came off and was raised upwards. At that point we managed to regain our wits and stood at the ready. The Traveler lay there in the pod for a few seconds before its eyesopened, it looked over us and took a shaky step forward, we all took one step back as it did so, it then took another step forward, and promptly fell flat on its face. We all stared at it, blinking for a few seconds. It could be heard groaning on the ground. Fluttershy was the first to approach it, kneeling down next to it she said. "U-um, a-are you okay there?" It pushed itself off the ground and looked up at her. Then in perfect if a bit raspy High Equestrian it spoke. "Uhhhh, take me to your leader? I was currently sitting cross legged on a cushion sitting across from the princess known as Celestia, judging how all the other ponies defer to her as the de facto ruler there may be some power dynamics with her sister I'm not aware of, I'll have to thread carefully. It was very clear however that my appearance unnerved them, the various heat pipes and transmitters sticking out of my skull especially all of the eyes in the room constantly glanced at them, I tried to tell [ship] to keep that in mind but with all the genemods and augment grafts I would need to bleed waste heat pretty bad. Not my fault, I need every advantage I can get at this point. I wasn't used to this body design and the artificial muscles it uses will take some getting used to, I made a fool of myself in front of what I guess was meant to be a failsafe in case they decided I wasn't friendly. I guess now would be the time I get interrogated, I'm sure they have a million questions for me. How much to tell them though? I don't want to terrify them, I had read that first contact with species that are made aware of the full scope of Terragen civilization are usually weary of actually accepting contact. It was then that Celestia, who had since been just staring at me, probably sizing me up or as an intimidation tactic started talking. "Greetings Traveller, I am Princess Celestia, Herald of the Sun and monarch of Equestria." I responded "Greetings Princess, I am Vissar 3, citizen of the New Fuchsia orbital, though you can call me Vis if you'd like. I decided to be as truthful as possible without outright terrifying them. Celestia continued. "Well then, Vis it is then, as you can probably guess, we have some questions for you regarding your intentions here in Equestria. "Yeah, I'm sure you probably do." I chuckled. "The first and foremost is how you actually possess knowledge of High Equestrian seeing as you don't come from anywhere near here I presume?" "Hmmm, is that what you call it?" I replied, I decided to side step the whole your world was seeded by an unbelievably vast entity from my civilization part and just explain how I learned it. "Well you see I kinda learned it while you were investigating my craft." It seemed that stunned her a bit. "You... learned it? While you were dead? In only a few days?" She replied. "Correct." I said. "You see I wasn't really dead, sure my body had been destroyed upon impact but the ship is basically an extension of my mind, the moments before impact it pulled my mind from my body and stored it within itself in a sense. The entire time your researchers I assume that's what they were were working on my ship I was watching and listening and learning." "But still, you learned fluency in only a few days?" She repeated. "A few hours actually, as you can probably tell my kind found ways to augment and improve ourselves using technology." I said glancing down at my body. "This includes the mind, I had the ships mind, which can process vast quantities information that yours or even mine can't take the vast majority of the data collected on your speech and do all the heavy lifting to brute force your language and then implant the desired knowledge directly into my brain." Celestia stared at me for a few moments, the rest of the tent was also stunned, finally she spoke up. "I don't believe that, I can't believe that." "And yet here we are, having a conversation." I said. "But how is that even possible? I mean, to pull a mind from a body and directly implant knowledge, that sounds too good to be true." She said "Well the actual specifics would probably take me several hours to explain, as well as the fact, and I mean no disrespect when I say this, the technology and societal level your nation is currently at is primitive at best, I'm not so sure you would even understand what I was telling you." She looked pretty irritated at that, and the wording wasn't the best but I wasn't sure how best to explain the problem of understanding they actually face. Celestia looked at me for a few more seconds and the other researchers and guards were giving me death glares. Looks like they have a strong national identity. She looked at me for a few second, I assume deliberating before she spoke again. "Elaborate." I obliged. "Well the basic mechanics rely on technologies and ideas that you as a species haven't actually discovered I don't think. Incredibly basic stuff like computing and genetics. You like to be at the beginning of what we would call in industrial revolution. A period of time where the mass production of goods and services starts leading to a higher quality of life for the average citizen and more job specialization, sound familiar? Celestia began nodding slightly. "Yes, that has been the trend we've started noticing the past few years. Are you saying that this development would lead to the ability of achieve these basic ideas that you speak of?" "You are correct, but the actual implementation to allow the kinds of things that I was talking about will not happen anytime soon, even if you were to possess said basics. What I was talking about is the result of literally thousands of years of incremental improvements and discoveries on the part of my civilization." "And what of your civilization?" Celestia said. "What are they like? Where do you come from?" Oh boy, this was the big one, I had to be careful about how I approach this, reveal too much and I don't think they would be able to trust me, too little and they would know I was hiding something. Still, even just knowing there's something else out there that was a five housand year head start might cause them to distrust me. And I would need their help in the coming years if I'm to get of world. Here goes nothing. "Well you see..."
