Ladies And Gentlecolts, We Are Floating In Space

Chapters

Act 1, Chapter 1: Brave New World
Act 1, Chapter 2: Do Service Robots Dream Of Lost Passengers?
Act 1, Chapter 3: Downfall
Act 2, Chapter 1: Haze/The Meeting of the Minds
Act 2, Chapter 2: How Little We Know
Act 2, Chapter 3: Feathers Ablaze

Act 1, Chapter 1: Brave New World

Liquid. It surrounded her, cradled her, nurtured her.

It kept her alive.

Boom, boom, boom

The journey was almost complete and reality started fading in again.

Her eyes opened slowly, as if she had just woken up for the first time. Light, blinding light. A flash. It burnt her eyes.

Boom, boom, boom

It was her. That was the sound of her. The pounding seemed to slow down and speed up randomly, filling her ears with a deep echo. Covered faces appeared above the surface, looking from side to side.

Boom, boom, boom

Like a vein, throbbing, alive, breathing as one within the mass of the void. Far away the liquid faces moved, looking around. Something was approaching her, something white and vaguely plastic.

With a splash the calm broke. Bubbles floated up all around her, moving her forward. She braced for her first breath of air in…

Odd.

She could not recall how much time had passed.

Her mind was wiped clean by the sudden surge of blinding whiteness, turning her vision red for a few seconds. She held onto her eyes with her hoof, her head spinning. In front of her stood a small robot, his ever vigilant electronic eye looking up and down her wet body. It seemed confused, troubled even. She just glared back at him, rubbing her head gently. The cryogenic fluid began evaporating rapidly, leaving a few white patches here and there.

The room she had woken up in was long, not unlike a shopping mall aisle, cryogenic tubes lining the walls and the ceilings, all of them containing grey and motionless shapes chained in the eternal synthetic ice. Overhead a million lamps poured their merciless derision upon the hallway, keeping it lit for a hundred years now.

One hundred years. Now she remembered. Her throat tightened, her muscles contracted and she began hyperventilating. They prepared her for this in basic training, this realization of how long she had actually spent…

Dead.

There was no better way to put it.

She had been clinically dead for one hundred years, the ice keeping her motionless body from decomposing. When the time came, an electric impulse was sent trough the crystal, turning it into gel that repaired the broken and damaged cells. Almost instantly a corpse would walk once again, as if nothing happened.
Slowly, her stiff body rolled off the capsule’s edge, her face abruptly colliding with the cold metal of reality, pulling her out of the throes of shock.

She was awake. Alive. Her eyes closed slowly, her mind flickering back to life. Like a snowed-in television set suddenly that suddenly started receiving a faint signal, she jumped. Her eyes were glowing with life once again, her mouth turned into a faint smile. After one hundred years she could walk, she could see, she could feel! The resulting euphoria took her by surprise.

For some reason she started laughing uncontrollably, rolling around the floor, her eyes full of tears. The feeling of blood surging trough her cold and stiff body was indescribable, every single iota of her mind singing with a forgotten sort of joy, the simple joy of being alive.

Then she remembered something.

Name. Name. She needed a name.

She sat up, leaning onto the side of her pod. Her face contorted with thought as she tried to reach her memories, those that were not erased by the stasis. For a while she just sat there, listening to what remained of her past. Images flew past in her head, unconnected events and blurred faces coupled with a flurry of incomprehensible words. It all became faster and more confusing as her concentration deepened. Some of the memories disappeared into a set of abstract mathematical equations and formulas. With a flash, her eyes opened wide and she mouthed something.
Aeris.

Her name was Aeris Skye.

She was a scientist, aged 22

Theoretical physicist department of New Rome University of Science.

According to her newly awakened memory they were en route to an ELP, just about one hundred and five light years away from The Solar System. The ship she was on was called the N.L.R.S.S. Eternity; her mission was to populate said planet and establish a colony under the flag of the Alliance. Onboard, twenty thousand ponies, all of them cryogenically frozen for the one hundred year journey, all kept alive by the onboard nuclear reactor and it’s assortment of sub-systems. As a matter of fact, they were already supposed to be awake for the descent onto the alien world in question.

They were not. None of them. She was entirely alone; her only company the silent humming of the ship’s electrical systems and the occasional robot drone that whizzed past her pod. Usually, entire wings of the craft are woken at once to avoid having to deal with the separate confused groups. That was strange, very strange.

“There’s the understatement of the year” Aeris said to herself. She just couldn’t shake the feeling that something had happened during the journey. Nobody was awake. Nobody except her that is. She needed answers and there was one place that could give her what she sought.

The bridge. Aeris needed to reach the bridge, and quickly too. Inside were the computers that controlled all of the on-board systems, including life support and oxygen recycling. She gave her pod one last look, nonchalantly waved it goodbye and walked off towards the brain of the ship.

A lone blue dot moved through the empty hallways, its hooves echoing off the massive walls that separated 20000 beings from certain death. She walked past row upon row of identical pods, all containing her friends, her colleagues and her superiors. The whole craft had been a monumental effort, the life support alone took about five years to install. These halls were not foreign to Aeris. She had been through a large part of the ship already, particularly during its construction phase. Her father was an electrician and sometimes she would accompany him on board for the sole purpose of watching him work.

Initially, she just used to hold things for him and hand him his tools. As she grew older, her interest in numbers and mathematical equations became more prominent. Soon, she handled most of the wire checking and number crunching, under her father’s supervision, of course. With chart in hand she became a mandatory companion to him during weekends, always keeping a calculator close to hoof and her mind sharp.

That all ended when she went to college. There, she studied for three years, working hard and eventually earning her degree in theoretical physics a year early. In the meantime the spacecraft was completed and ready to set out on its journey. She signed up and got accepted relatively quickly, mostly on account of her intelligence and her credentials.

Aeris could still remember launch day. All of her friends were there. Her parents waved her goodbye as she climbed the stairs to the airlock. After that, everything disappeared into a void of sorts. She was put inside a pod, she had a few needles put in and soon she fell asleep. Or at least that’s what she knew of the standard cryo procedure. The last hour before she was put into stasis was missing from her mind.

Finally, she reached the elevator that led to the top of the vessel. It took a while for it to get there and she spent that time thinking about her past a little more. Her cutie mark was a simple white x squared with nothing else around. She always thought it was boring. It also reflected her personality very well. Her mind was flexible and practical
and her ability to solve an assortment of already memorized mathematical equations in an instant was legendary.

She was pulled out of her thoughts by the beep on the metallic console to her left as the floor number turned to B3WA

The silver doors slid open without a sound. Inside laid a corpse.

Aeris screamed.

Act 1, Chapter 2: Do Service Robots Dream Of Lost Passengers?

The N.L.R.S.S. Eternity was completely silent

It had been like that for over a century

With two exceptions

Two soldiers entered the airlock one after the other, weapons at the ready. They stood on either side of the doorway and saluted. A pony in a suit passed by them, not giving either of them as much as a glance. He walked through another airlock with the soldiers following closely behind. The room they had entered looked as if someone furnished an ordinary office and then abandoned it for a few decades. Everything was covered in a thick film of dust and dirt. The shelves on the wall were loose and contained a few rotted books and some figurines.

The chair was turned away from the desk. One of the soldiers pushed it lightly and found himself face to face with the remains of the captain. The one in the suit walked up to the corpse and pushed it off nonchalantly. He sat down and rubbed his hooves together. A keyboard emerged from the centre of the hardwood surface. He pushed a button and the shelves opposite the desk moved aside to reveal a screen that covered the entire wall. It flickered for a few seconds before displaying the generic operating system logo. The title flew in from the right side.

“Well, they made these things to last” said the one in the suit “I’ll give ‘em that much”

He clicked the item that read “cctv.exe”. The shelves to the left of the desk moved apart, revealing a console equipped with a multitude of screens. They shot into life from top to bottom, the lowest one broken in. Different sections of the ship appeared on the screens. The suit kept pressing a button that cycled the cameras until he found the one he was looking for. It was the camera on the third floor, B section of A wing, positioned right next to the elevators.

The screen displayed a red and white haired pony sitting opposite of the elevator doors. The suit gestured to one of the soldiers. He clacked his rear hooves together and saluted once again.

“Look here” said the suit, pointing at the display “Her. She’s the problem. Find her and kill her”

“Yes sir” replied the soldier. He motioned over to his buddy and they walked out of the office. The suit took a cigar out of his breast pocket and lit it. He fixed his eyes onto the display once again.

“Your time is running out, miss Skye.”

***

Aeris had been sitting in front of the elevators for the last two hours now, not moving, just silently staring into the black abyss of death. Occasionally she would move, wiping the tears from her eyes. The corpse had been observing her all this time. She wanted to help everyone. She wanted to save everyone but she was too late. Exactly a century too late. Aeris turned her back to the elevator, her head resting against the cold metal wall. The hallways felt even larger than usual in the darkness. Another tear fell from her eyes. She felt hopeless, adrift, alone.

A few drones flew overhead, examining the hull for signs of damage. One of them perched itself on a ledge above Aeris’s head and started welding something. She let out a small sigh, startling the robot. Its sensors hastily scanned her blue body. Something not unlike a clipboard popped out of the drone, sets of small electronic eyes reading the data on it. There was an anomaly in the strings of code that went up and down the screen. One of the sensors had picked up a heartbeat, something that hasn’t happened in over thirty years. The drone decided to investigate.

The whirr of its tiny gravitational engines alarmed Aeris, making her jump slightly. The robot beeped excitedly at the sudden outburst of activity. It flew to the left and beeped pleasantly after it found out that Aeris followed it with her eyes. The same thing occurred when it made a small loop. Soon, the silver robot was darting around and beeping ecstatically. It was happy. It felt happy.

She extended her hoof towards the blubbering machine and gave it a soft stroke. The sliver ailerons that kept it airborne moved up and down as it produced a mechanical purr. Aeris smiled. She really needed a friend and this robot was the next best thing.

“Hey little guy, wanna help me?” the little metallic shape bobbed its optics, nodding in agreement “Can you get rid of that corpse over there?”

Aeris pointed at the pile of bones in the elevator cabin. It was horrible. The robot hovered over to the corpse, its sensors examining it for a few seconds. A green light emerged from its body, engulfing the pile of bones. Slowly, they began falling apart and disappearing into a fine dust. Finally, it faded completely. Aeris got up and walked over to the elevator doors. She ran a hoof over the robot’s body as a reward. The little machine buzzed and moved aside as she pushed the button marked “Bridge”. She waved the robot goodbye and it waved back.

The little drone went back to work, all the while happily beeping to itself.

***

Aeris was now alone in the elevator cabin, silently watching the numbers fly by on the display above the door. She resigned herself to a quiet journey, her mind idly calculating something. Her fillyhood came to mind once again.

She remembered what her father told her when she had come back from her first day at school. It was a sunny day in early June. Aeris was sitting on the patio; the afternoons were spent sipping lemonade and watching the Eternity come together over the shipyards in the far west. The ship was so large that they literally built it in the sky. It overshadowed the industrial zones of New Rome.

Her father sat down next to her and took a sip of his beer. He stretched and turned to Aeris, giving her a little kiss on the forehead.

“Your first day in school. I can’t believe it, honey” His voice was filled with love and affection “Soon, you’ll go to college and have kids of your own”

He turned and looked deep into her magenta eyes. She felt love like never before. It surrounded her, it cradled her, it took her to a place only they knew of. The words he spoke next she would remember for as long as she lived.

“You are destined for great things, Aeris”

“Great things”

Act 1, Chapter 3: Downfall

The elevator in wing A slowly crept up the starboard side of the ship

Inside, a pony dreamt of days long gone

Above, evil was about to interfere

Two figures were walking side by side, both armed and both wearing military-grade green armour. They walked quickly and in perfect synchronization, the sound of hooves filling the empty corridors. Airlock after airlock went by and they still kept perfect pace, weapons forward and ready to unleash a deadly barrage of fire at the tiniest hint of trouble. Then, they stopped abruptly in front of a faceless iron door that was marked with “do not enter”. One quick swing with the rifle butt was all it took to break the aged electronic keypad.

The two soldiers entered the elevator’s machine room. They didn’t say anything, occasionally nodding to one another. Each of them wore a satchel that contained something heavy. The taller one reached into his and removed a metal box with a keypad on the top, the red lettering on the side reading “C4”. He placed it just above the cable winch. The second box was placed onto the generator module.

The keypad beeped as they punched some numbers in. The displays powered up, showing zero and twenty. They did some final checks and walked out. One of them turned to the other and spoke

“That’ll kill the bitch for sure” he said

***

Aeris had been day-dreaming for a while now, her eyes shut, her mouth gently whispering numbers and mathematical formulas. In a way, she was content. The bridge was within her grasp and then she could wake all of the ponies in cryo. Soon, she would be a hero who saved thousands from certain death. Then the N.L.R.S.S. Eternity could finally complete its mission.

Nothing could stop her. Or so she thought.

Number after number exchanged itself on the elevator’s screen.

Above her, one of the metal boxes counted down as well.

Five seconds.

Aeris twitched, still submerged in her thoughts

Four.

She yawned, stretching her stiff back

Three.

Floor 89 appeared on the display

Two.

The elevator’s motor slowed down, preparing to stop at floor 92

One.

The doors began opening.

Beep

She moved one of her ears slightly. She heard it.

The box located on the cable winch exploded first, the blast wave moving the elevator cabin down by about a floor.

Sparks flew from above and the cabin lights exploded, covering the faceless metal floor with countless shards. Aeris threw herself onto her belly, screaming. Buttons popped out of the control panel as the automatic emergency brakes started giving way. Something glowed from behind the control panel. Something red.

Manual emergency brakes.

It was too little, too late.

The second charge went off, sending a pile of debris down the shaft. One of the beams broke through the cabin’s ceiling, landing just inches away from Aeris’s face, making her roll away in horror. Another metal girder hit the cab, sending it spiraling down the shaft. The blue earth pony was now a toy of the ship’s artificial gravity motors.

The fall seemed to take forever, Aeris’s mind getting more and more desperate, her body perpetually prepared for death. Her red and white hair floated above her head as the speed of the elevator’s descent increased. The endless metal-on-metal grinding noise became unbearable. Aeris closed her eyes and placed her hooves over her ears but to no avail. The inside of her head was on fire, a searing pain spreading trough every inch of her body. Her scream intensified, adding to the horror.

Then, it happened.

With a deafening explosion, the show ended

A pile of scrap, once the elevator caboose, lay on the bottom of the shaft.

***
“Terminated” The soldier spoke without any remorse, calmly presenting his mission to his commander

“Terminated?” Inquired the suit from behind the desk, taking a prolonged drag on his third cigar of the day “Are you sure?”

“Terminated” Echoed the second soldier “There’s no way she could have survived that fall, sir”

The suit nodded stoically and sent them back to the door. With the straggler out of the way, he could set his plan in motion. Calmly, he reached into his right breast pocket and retrieved a small piece of plastic with an antenna on top.

It was a detonator.

***

In the darkness a blue figure drew a series of short breaths. Aeris was alive. Bruised and injured, but alive. She opened her eyes, slowly at first. Fires burned all around and the air was heavy with dust. The elevator landed in some form of pit, the only way out a small vent just located just above a pile of loose concrete.

She needed help. She needed medical assistance or she would die. Her eyes closed. She took a few more deep breaths before drifting out of consciousness. Her breathing became labored, each movement of the diaphragm taxing her system more and more. Soon, she would no longer be able to breathe and she was pretty sure that one of her ribs was broken.

One of her hooves reached out feebly towards the darkness before her whole body went limp

***

Aeris kept drifting in and out of consciousness, occasionally returning to some distant place in her memories. This time, she was in a park with her sister standing on the opposite side of the meadow. They had been playing Frisbee and it was getting too hot to keep playing. Eventually, they decided to just sit in the shade and drink lemonade. It was a happier time, a simpler time when all you needed to be happy was a cold drink and a Frisbee.

Her sister was a happy person but she only remembered her faintly. Ambrosia had left for military school at the tender age of 16 and Aeris was only 8 at the time. The sunny day came back and Aeris was now eagerly throwing the yellow disc to her sister. She caught it and raised it above her head.

“Catch me if you can!” She shouted, laughing heartily. Together, they ran across the field, jumped over each other and rolled around in the warm, straw-like meadow. They ended up beneath a shady tree, embraced and enjoying each other's presence.

And then, the dream ended. The warm, inviting meadow was swapped for a burning wreck and her sister’s shape turned into the silhouette of a stranger. She reached out and whispered for help.

Then she felt it

A gun, pointed right at her head

“Oh, crap”

Act 2, Chapter 1: Haze/The Meeting of the Minds

Boom boom boom

…do you think she’s able to…?

Boom boom boom

...I don’t think we should trust her…

Boom boom boom

Aeris woke, a sharp pain in her right forehoof startling her. Instinctively, her right forehoof attempted to reach the limb in question, causing Aeris even more pain. Everything seemed to hurt, every movement she made, every breath she took. She resigned herself to simply staring at the ceiling with her foggy, barely open eyes, taking the surroundings in using her other senses.

The taste of rust floated around her mouth mixed with a faint hint of blood. Her tongue found a hole where one of her teeth used to be, the pain making it withdraw rapidly. Where was she? Even though she could not see yet, she could smell. The air smelled of motor oil and grease, metallic clangs audible in the distance.

Aeris tried to open her eyes a bit more, if only slightly, and was instantly met by a blinding whiteness, followed by a burning red sensation. After a few minutes of waiting, her eyesight returned, faint as it may be. The only things she was able to make out were sets of pipes, bound by wire and illuminated by the red lighting the emergency service lamps. She was definitely in the underground part of the ship, the place where the service crews used to make sure that the Eternity kept moving.

Foggy memories started coming back. She remembered an elevator of sorts, an explosion and tons of sparks. After that, only blackness and loss seemed to remain, her floating in the dark waters of the unconscious mind. She could not remember how long it was since the sparks and the explosions but in her honest opinion it didn’t matter. The NLRSS Eternity had been afloat in space for nigh on a century, a few more days or weeks made no difference.

Then, to her surprise, voices came from the distance, her left ear perking up and moving around, as if to collect the sensation of someone else’s presence after this period of seemingly never-ending solitude. One of the two voices seemed deeper, more masculine, while the other was distinctly female.

Two heads floated inside her field of vision, blurring in and out periodically, followed by a few jabs of pain here and there. Finally, they stood above her for a few seconds longer, her mind able to create a full face from the blurry mess. One of the voices, the female one, belonged to a griffin, her beak almost touching Aeris’s snout. A pair of maintenance goggles rested on her forehead, covered in layers of mechanical oil and dirt. She was a working gal for sure, probably one of the last members of the skeleton crew that was left behind in order to keep the ship alive.

The second voice was the male one, definitely belonging to a pony, a unicorn no less, with a messy grey coat and black mane. He was bent over her, a few medical tools floating around his head. Aeris could feel him probing her foreleg, gently touching it and wrapping bandages around it. Suddenly, he turned around, his face only a few inches from Aeris’s, his mouth moving. She was transfixed by the unicorn’s deep eyes, the left one brown, the right one green, both radiating such incredible warmth.

“Get ready…” he said softly, almost whispering “This is going to hurt”

In an instant, the whole of Aeris’s body seemed to explode with the worst pain she had ever felt. It was as if someone had dropped her into the path of a giant steamroller. She wanted to scream but her mouth refused to, only labored breathing escaping her clenched jaw. Then the whole ordeal stopped, the pain leaving her body as quickly as it had arrived.
Once again, the unicorn’s face floated inside her field of vision, her gaze meeting his.

“Don’t worry.” Aeris noticed a tiny drop of blood on his grey face “Everything’s fine now, you can rest. We’ll be back soon to check up on you”

And with that, the caretakers left, Aeris alone once again. She needed to collect herself; she needed to find a way out of here and onto the bridge, the lives of twenty thousand innocents at stake. Her head throbbed, a dull ache passing through her entire body. She sought rest but her mind gave her none, repeatedly prompting her to get up and get moving.

Every movement that she attempted was met with a series of sharp pains, albeit not as bad as before. With a grunt, she swung her broken leg over the side of the cot, the rest of her body following suit. A bout of dizziness hit her; the sudden motions made her head spin. Her vision started to sharpen and soon she could tell where she was.

Just as she had suspected, she was in the service tunnels beneath the ship, rusty walls spanning the entire length of Aeris’s vision. A table stood in the corner, host to an assortment of medical tools and a chessboard, some of the wood pieces stained with blood. He dull rusty brown of the walls was occasionally broken by the odd picture. Every now and then, a dull thud could be heard, echoing through the empty room. It seemed to stay the same, almost resembling a heartbeat, slow and warm.

Mirror. Aeris needed a mirror.

Thankfully, the doctor left one on the end table beside her. Slowly, she picked it up and with a shaky hoof, she brought it towards her face. Initially, nothing was out of the ordinary, her face the same as usual, strands of messy orange-white mane covering parts of her eyes. She had a few cuts near her snout but that’s pretty much it.

She put the mirror down, releasing a silent gasp of relief. Everything was alright, she was still herself. A sharp pain shot through her hoof, reminding her that she was none the less badly injured. The curious eyes inspected her injured limb, now covered in a thick bandage, spots of blood dotting the white surface. Whenever she bent it upwards, it hurt. She could walk, just not very well.

After a few more minutes of inspecting herself, she was ready to move. Easy now, she said to herself as her hooves descended onto the metal floor. Her left hind leg made first contact, the warmth of the metal coming as a surprise. Slowly she lowered the right leg. And then, she fell flat on her face, knocking the end table over.

Then, hoofsteps, approaching fast. The airlock opened, a lone griffon standing behind it, rifle at the ready, barrel pointed straight at Aeris’s skull. One movement and she was as good as dead, her body freezing as a result.

“Hold it right there” said the griffon “Nobody said you could go.”

Aeris did not know how to respond, her mouth idly opening and closing. This was not happening. No, this was not real, for sure. The griffon took a step forward and Aeris threw herself backwards a bit, a decision she immediately regretted. She fell onto her back, a spike of pain piercing her arm. Then, a second pair of hooves echoed from the hallway followed by rapid yelling.

The grey unicorn doctor ran inside, throwing himself in front of the rifle. He stood on his hind legs, both of his arms outstretched towards the gun’s menacing metal barrel.

“Phaedra! What in the hell do you think you’re doing?!” he yelled, eyes aflame, slowly approaching the gun “She’s a guest! Don’t matter if she’s an enemy or a friend, she’s too badly injured to do anything!”

Slowly, he put his hoof on top of the rifle, lowering it towards the floor, his warm eyes pointed directly at the overly paranoid griffon. He then backed away, slowly approaching the middle of the room before finally sitting down. Aeris was utterly confused. Everything happened so fast, her sharp mind now surprisingly dulled by the injuries.

“Sorry about that, she can be a downright idiot sometimes” he glared briefly at the griffon “We never meant to scare you. We’re in a lot of danger here and sometimes we get ahead of ourselves a bit.”

He reached out towards the shivering brown pony, offering her a hoof shake, a gesture which she sheepishly accepted.

“I don’t think that we have been introduced”

He spoke in a distinctive Russian accent, most of his words sounding like something that you would hear in a bar in the middle of the Volga-Moscow conurbation.

“My name is Isaac” he pushed his glasses back and added “Doctor Isaac Asimov”

Act 2, Chapter 2: How Little We Know

Seven and a half hooves

Two claws

One destination

Asimov walked quickly, the clatter of his rapid steps making the hallway seem like a busy train station. Aeris limped behind him, her front hoof dragging about, any attempt to stand on it resulting in a shotgun blast of pain. They turned a series of corners rapidly, the metal floor beneath them shaking as they did. Phaedra went first, rifle loaded and ready to fire on a moment's notice.

The doctor stopped abruptly, his muzzle facing a small pair of holes in an otherwise indistinguishable wall. Something beeped and a green light illuminated the stoic, gray face. Another beep sounded, followed by a mechanical hissing, akin to a sudden release of air. The wall split open in the middle, revealing a passageway barely a meter and a half in height. Asimov stepped inside, his scientific demeanor perfectly unchanged.

They wound another series of corners, albeit slower this time, Phaedra straggling on the rear f the group, making sure that nobody followed them. They came to another doorway, this one not concealed, a console sitting to its right. Asimov typed quickly and the machine scanned his face once again. The wall to the left of the group suddenly disintegrated, fading into nothingness, behind it a huge laboratory filled with all manner of instrumentation and tubing, some of it hanging off the walls and ceiling.

Aeris's mouth opened and closed, yet produced no sound. She was left speechless once again. This was the first laboratory since she entered stasis, and that was over a century ago. Her mind ached for scientific release. Asimov entered trough the newly formed hole and turned around to face his guest. Phaedra remained in the hallway, the wall fading back into existence, leaving the two scientists alone in a nirvana of discovery.

He turned away, his attention slipping to a rusty table situated in the middle of the room, it's work surface littered with mechanical parts.

“Make yourself at home, miss” said the scientist “I do not know if you are a scientific mind or not but for the time being I shall presume that you are utterly confused by the recent string of events.”

Aeris just rolled her eyes and silently pointed at her cutie mark, a single mathematical X with a square sign above it, both colored white. Asimov's eyes lit up at the sight of a fellow scientist.

He just nodded, giving her a friendly look over his shoulder “I'm terribly sorry, but a gentlecolt does not look where his gaze is not desired”

Aeris's face turned a bright red. That was the nicest thing anyone had said to her ever since she awakened from her induced slumber, the very statement surprising to her. After a moment of startled silence, she turned back to the doctor, who was now welding something using a small multitool, the likes of which she had never seen before. She stood behind him, silently watching him work.

“So, what's your name again..?” He put a hoof onto his forehead, trying to remember something he never knew, mainly because he forgot to ask about it.

“Aeris” said the red-haired pony, finishing his sentence before adding “Aeris Skye, theoretical physicist”

“It's a pleasure” He replied, the warmth of his voice almost palpable

Suddenly, he turned and walked over to another table, this one located in the far corner, an old worklamp illuminating the surface below. On it, a blueprint of something that Aeris could not make out from afar. She followed the now rambling doctor, who was apparently locked into a mental debate with himself. Aeris knew the feeling well, sometimes getting absorbed into her work even when she was not working.

The two scientists stood over the blueprint, curious eyes going over what was on the paper, silence covering the whole room. Asimov sat down facing the table, and took out a notebook riddled with all manner of book markings and other written notes. He flipped trough it vigorously, occasionally smiling at his own genius.

“What's this then?” asked Aeris, not lifting her gaze from the blue paper in front of her, carefully analyzing some of the writing on it “It looks like some form of quantum portal. But-”

“Where does it lead?” said Asimov calmly, finishing her sentence “Interesting question, not a surprising one either. I have been asking myself the same question and after quite some research, I believe that I have reached some form of coherent explanation. If I may demonstrate”

In the blink of an eye he got up and walked across the room. A metallic clang sounded as Asimov flipped one of the switches located on the wall, causing something else to buzz. Aeris's eyes shot upwards, looking for the source. It was the projector that hung from the ceiling, connected to the other instruments by a set of wires. The wall opposite the desk lit up before blackening again. A picture of a circular, hole like apparatus appeared, followed by a series of mathematical equations.

Asimov sat down and cleared his throat “This is a so called quantum looper, the portal depicted on the blueprint. It's the product of nigh on twenty years of engineering, the first one manufactured over one hundred and thirty years ago on Earth. With the activation of the portal came the discovery of something called “the webway”. It was the greatest scientific breakthrough since the wheel, the portal allowing us to access a series of astral networks. Energy strings, if you will, all of them forming the vast expanse of the webway, the information superhighway of the universe. Soon, scientists discovered the possibility of moving larger objects across the webway through the medium of light.”

The doctor paused for a second, shifting a bit on his chair. There was an air of anticipation in the room. The slide changed, showing a photo of the vessel they were in.

“This ship, the N.L.R.S.S. Eternity, is equipped with one of these portals. It contains a non-standard version of the portal that was assembled on the journey by the skeleton crew and the attached service bots. Its construction marked the begging of the Eternity’s official mission.”

“Official mission? I’ve been informed that we were being sent to the TXS 33 cluster.” Aeris said remembered her orders, signed and sealed, that she had received in a folder on launch day “There’s a ‘Earth like planet’ in the system, one that we were supposed to colonize”

“You have been lied to, I’m afraid. There is no planet. You were sent out here to mobilize the portal in order to access the pre-programmed destination. But something doesn’t add up”

The doctor moved once again, this time towards a dusty console in the corner. A hatch opened, revealing a tiny keyboard that Asimov utilized with startling ease. The floor beneath them lit up. A star map appeared with a single glowing red dot. The doctor pointed towards it.

“This is the N.L.R.S.S. Eternity, alone in the middle of the great cosmic dark. And here…” Asimov pushed some more buttons “Is the portal’s destination.”

It took some time before Aeris realized what she was looking at. The probes of the Alliance mapped a large part of the galaxy using a number of massive telescopes and electromagnetic satellites.

Including the centre of the galaxy.

That little green dot, now glowing on the map beneath Aeris’s hooves.

“I…I don’t know what to make of this” she said, her head spinning at the implications “The centre of the galaxy is a gas cloud with a black hole in the middle! There’s nothing there!”

“No, newer investigations, most of them performed just before the launch revealed that there’s something in there” Asimov coughed before continuing “Something that no visible or invisible wavelength of light can penetrate”

“We have been sent to colonize and exploit...” the scientists spoke in unison, slowly, taking in every letter and every word

“The very basis of all creation”

Act 2, Chapter 3: Feathers Ablaze

The duo sat in silence, their eyes fixed on the massive projector screen in front of them. The very meaning of all of it, the very basis of everything in existence was laid out on the white canvas, blinking at them invitingly. Or rather, the access to it. As scientists, this was perhaps the greatest feeling in the world and at the same time, the most terrifying. They were a single portal away from the foundation of the universe, free of any intruders since time itself became a relevant concept.

To make matters worse, the true purpose of Aeris and her fellow crewmen had been revealed. The dark, hidden goal of the mission, something none of them were supposed to know. And yet, it all seemed meaningless in comparison to the actual scientific implications. The Webway offered the two minds an unparalleled view into the workings of space and time, an intimate gaze into the cogs of the world, hidden from plain sight. What wonders would they discover? What would they find in the very center of well, everything?

Suddenly and without warning, Asimov got up, walked over to the wall and made it disappear, revealing a rather bored Phaedra behind it. Without a word, he grabbed one of her claws and dragged her into the room. For a few seconds, everything was silent. Asimov sighed. Phaedra was confused by what had just transpired, her eyes darting around the lab. Still, she said nothing.

The doctor walked over to the far wall and opened a flap, revealing a button. He pushed it. Silence. With a hydraulic hiss, the metal barrier moved aside, revealing yet another hidden corridor. Phaedra shrugged and followed the pony. She too disappeared into the opening, leaving Aeris alone in her confusion. Slowly, she made her way over to the hole, a small bug of mistrust implanting itself into her mind, telling her to turn around and run. Aeris did not listen, instead choosing to follow her own instincts.

She stepped into the metal opening and, in that very instant, and doubts she may have had fell away, leaving only pure bliss behind.

What stood in front of her could only be described as a window to outer space, a room that stood on the outermost edge of the craft, the whole front wall made out of transparent material. She stepped inside, her mouth wide open, her eyes locked onto the sight that stood in front of her. A star, about sixty times as massive as ours, dominated the scene. In front of it, a tiny black dot, seemingly getting smaller with each passing second. All around the star hung hundreds of thousands of little asteroids and bits of rock, some of them slowly vanishing into the pulsing yellow mass.

"The NLR were fools, utter and absolute fools if they believed that they could brave the universe, that they could control all that ever was, is and will be. They firmly believed that they could master a science of their own device, the science of control. Fools, nothing but fools. None can control the power that we are about to witness." said Asimov "No deity, no supreme being and most certanly no army. But they did not realize or did not care. We are the product of Daedalus's arrogance, the lonely Icarus, about to fly too close to the sun and burn his wings."

She shifted her gaze to the right. Asimov and Phaedra stood together, closely embraced, both of them with their eyes closed, breathing softly. She did not want to disturb them, instead resigning herself to a quiet scientific stupor, her tired eyes locked onto the tiny planetoid hovering in front of the massive star. She had never seen space like this before. It was never this close. Aeris put a hoof onto the window in front of her, the heat seeping into the glass and trough her body. It wasn't so hot that she couldn't keep her hoof on the glass. It was pleasantly warm, almost startlingly so, the warmth reminding her of home.

Pulse after pulse of heat hit her fur, radiating trough her skin, softly exploding as the star swallowed each of the rocks. The pulses became more and more intense as the star swallowed larger rocks. The tiny planetoid was now dangerously close to the burning orb, flames almost licking the surface. Aeris brought her eyes closer to the glass. It was about to go, any moment now the tiny world would disappear in the sea of flame. Maybe it was a planet that someone, or something, once called home. Maybe it was just like the Earth, the only home someone had, a place where everyone it knew had been born and a place where everyone it had died, a place of laughter and a place of tears, a place of hope and a place of sadness. And here it was, slowly descending towards the swirling mass of superheated plasma, the rocks that once formed it's surface breaking away from the gravity, falling, falling down into the flame below.

And then, without any fuss, the world ended.

It came with very little warning, without as much as a sign of what was about to happen. Instead, it simply...went. The dot was no more. The hopes, sadness, laughter, tears, happiness, fears, friends, relatives, societies, worlds and dreams vanished, consumed by the everlasting flame of the star. There was no massive explosion, no violent combustion, no superheated shock-wave. Only a whimper and a silent farewell.

A few minutes passed before Aeris realized that she had tears streaming down her face. She never felt anything like this. Another world, a world she never knew, went. Just like that. Poof. No more. Just dust and echoes. There was no mention of this little planetoid before, no mention of a tiny rock that stood in front of a star, defying it's massive gravitational field to the last second. Instead, it was forgotten. It all just...went away.

Asimov and Phaedra were still holding each other, curious eyes still transfixed by waht had just transpired. The griffon quietly buried her head in the scientist's chest, no sound coming from either of them. In that moment, in that precise second, all of them had realized how small and fragile they were, the ship beneath them about sixty times smaller then the world that just disappeared into the flame. No words were spoken, no sounds were heard, not even the soft breathing.

Asimov turned his head towards Aeris, his eyes aflame with passion, his mind at peace.

“At the end of time, a moment will come when just one pony remains.” His voice blended into the deafening silence “Then the moment will pass. We will be gone. There will be nothing to show that we were ever here... but stardust.“