Twilight Sparkle and the Stupid Original Pony

When I woke late the next morning I found myself in Isha’s arms. We had innocently shared our combined sleeping bags.

I kissed her cheek without waking her and whispered a prayer to the holy one of the ponies. I didn’t know how much Isha had seen last night, but I needed her to forget certain details if my oath were to remain intact. Still, tampering with her memory felt like a betrayal; if my prayer were answered the loss would be minimal.

After that, I slipped out of her embrace and went to look around. The circular area of my campsite was empty, but through the ring of trees I could see the Longshot 7, about a kilometer away where I had set her down. Spanning two small hillocks, the ship had sagged between them, its back broken. The Seven would never fly again.

Surrounding the hulk was a bustle of activity.

Revived colonists were everywhere, there must have been hundreds more than were expected to’ve survived the crash as their ship left Sol. It was gratifying to see the depressing estimates proven wrong.

There was field kitchen set up a ways from the ship and I acquired a cup of tart orange coloured beverage and watched the many tasks unfolding around me.

Some were unloading gear, organizing it into collections that clearly had some meaning to them. Several utility vehicles had been dragged out through holes cut through the hull; some were being loaded. Further towards the bow a cutting torch flickered where further access holes were being carved out.

“Why’re you cutting holes?” I asked.

“The freight tunnel is impassible, or else we’d unload through the cargo bay.”

I didn’t pose any further questions and the woman with the torch went back to work.

As I wandered, I got the occasional questioning look. The colonists had prepared for many possible landing scenarios but new faces in their midst was not something they expected to see. Some rumor of my identity must have spread though their number; though I attracted attention nobody stopped to ask me who I was. My questions were answered readily enough but nobody took the time make their own inquiries.

Closer examination reveled that the piles of gear were pop up shelters and basic supplies for each family unit.

From overhearing a side conversation I deduced that the Seven would be emptied of almost all cargo and used as workshops.

Even the kids were keeping busy. Teens and pre-teens were helping sort supplies. Younger children were watched over by three adults as they worked their way through a landing day science lesson, observing what they could of a new world without straying from the centre of activity. I couldn't even feign surprise that Gloam appeared to have finessed herself into the primacy of the teaching, showing the other children what she had already learned about their new home.

The dude swearing as he stomped around was apparently the security guy and he was trying to figure out how my security nodes had all synced up to his monitoring system. He apparently hadn’t placed more than a few of his own nodes around the ship before found himself with a full tactical overlay of the entire region around my camp. An alert informing him that the nodes I had brought from Terra were operating in backwards compatibility mode (and advising him to upgrade his security console, a challenge this far from the nearest electronics store) seemed to convince him that the unexpected additional data sources were benign. That would be Bear’s doing, but I wasn’t sure what attitudes towards AI might have been in the century that he had departed. I discretely said nothing about the equipment.

—

Activity was everywhere; the colonists all seemed to know exactly what they were doing and while I didn’t want to disrupt them, I thought that I should talk to them and I went looking for a stage.

A pile of crates looked promising and I climbed up, quickly gaining the attention of the colonists. People stopped their tasks to gather. I couldn’t count them but I was more positive than ever that the crowd gathering around me numbered far more than historical analyses had taught me to expect to see.

“Thank you, thank you, everybody.”

I paused to look at the crowd – the entire population of a planet was gathered around the crate I stood upon and they easily would have fit into a modest auditorium. But I rejoiced that there were this many. Belatedly I remembered that public nudity was probably less common in their time.

“I’d like to welcome you all to the planet Gallop, orbiting the star called Hoof. We have intentionally declined to name the twin planet which you will see in the sky tonight because it is inhabited and we deem polite to learn their endonymn. That's right, you have neighbors. Judging from their radio signals humans have a good chance of being able to pronounce their language, but we know nothing about them.

“My name is Tanna Sparkle, I helped Mr. and Mrs. Landers land your ship – how appropriate is that?” My weak jest received only polite laughter. I looked around for Gloam. She had lead the bulk of the colony’s children to the front of the audience; she herself stood at my feet, arms crossed, facing the colonists.

“My daughter Gloam and I have been visiting Gallop for about three months of Terran time and we’ll tell you everything we know.”

“First, let me give you a little history update. The year is twenty six twenty, more than two centuries since you left. You are more than twice as far from Terra as you were meant to go, and in the wrong direction. There was a collision on your way out and everyone thought that half of you were dead and the rest of you doomed. I can’t tell you how happy we all are to see so many of you alive here today.”

“Now some bad news. Due to complications in real life, I will not be telling the folks back home that you made it, at least not right away. I am living on borrowed time and need to keep a low profile. But I will get you some history books so you can read about what’s been going wrong the last couple centuries, and I’ll try to bring some of our newer technologies to help you. But for the most part you are going to be on your own, just like you trained for. I know you can handle this.”

“The good news is that as Queen of Gallop I will dissolve the monarchy,” I could hear Gloam’s angry gasp, “and gift you the planet. You need it more than we do.”

I noted a face, familiar from the history books, smiling in the front row of colonists gathered around me. In addition to being the elected president of the colony Dr. Howe was the oldest colonist and matriarch of one of the largest family units that had shipped out on the Seven. Much had been made of her four children, their spouses, and thirteen grandchildren. More importantly, she had become a surrogate grandmother to the entire mission while they were still in preflight training. Iron willed, but unshakable in her warm desire for the best for everybody. It was probable that so long as her health held out she would run unopposed for many terms as president.

“Without further delay, I will relinquish the floor to your very own Dr. Howe!”

I reached down to help her up; several of the colonists helped lift her up and she stepped onto the crate with me.

I offered her a hand to shake – she threw her arms around my neck and kissed me on each cheek.

She kept her arm around me, preventing me from climbing down and keeping me at her side as she address the crowd around us.

“Colonists!” she shouted, her free hand raised in a fist, “We are here!” The colonists cheered.

“We don’t yet know where here is, as you heard it’s not where we expected, and apparently we had a rough ride. According my count,eighty percent of us are alive, that’s four hundred and forty eight! Tanna tells us that they thought half of us were dead, so we beat the odds!”

Looking around I noticed that injuries were mercifully few: in space accidents you’re pretty much either dead or unharmed with not much in between. Inside the protective cocoon of a cryopod, anything that might hurt you is probably going to have to kill you just to get to you.

“Furthermore,” she continued, “most of our supplies are intact, and we have the hull of our ship for scrap. Even more importantly we have water and oxygen!” She paused for another round of clapping.

“Let’s take a moment to thank the gracious Queen of Gallop for welcoming us and for saving our lives.”

This round of applause drowned the previous and instead of blushing under the attention, all I could do is rejoice for them all.

The President waited for the crowd to quiet down.

“You’ve all the old cliché that today is the first day of the rest of your life. Well, today literally is our Day One of the rest of our lives. It’s going to be busy, everyone make sure to check in with your team leads and…”

—

While the strange magical girl addressed the colony Eric the security guy took a moment to quiz her partner about the landing.

“Excuse me, Ma’am can you–”

“It’s ‘Miss’” Isha said quietly. “Your people showed up before I could pop the question.”

“I understand,” he said.

The priestess of Aphrodite knew a thing or two about sorrow of the heart and recognized a fellow sufferer.

“You had to leave someone behind two hundred years ago?”

“For me it’s only been a few weeks, and she’s probably been dead for a century.”

“I am sorry for your loss. Do you want us to find out what happened to her after you left?”

“I’m not brave enough for that yet. But I have a question for you. Can you describe the landing last night as you saw it from the ground?”

“What’s your name?”

“Eric Choi. Or you can just call me the security guy.”

“Okay, Eric the security guy, truth, as they say, is stranger than fiction. The woman I love is really some kind of magic pony. When they lost control of the ship, she took her true form but gigantic and made of golden light. She landed your spaceship with magic.”

“Thank you, that’s what I saw too. I was standing between her hooves on the upper hull. It’s nice to have the experience validated by another witness. You and I are the only ones who saw it all.”

“And Gloam and the Landers’ kids. I wonder if they’ll remember this when they grow up.”

“Would anyone believe them?”

“Would anyone believe us?” she asked. “It all seems like a dream, and I was there. I can barely believe it, and I’m a magic user, too.”

“I don’t plan to talk much about it. I touched her hoof. I’m perfectly aware that my story sounds crazy. But I don’t want to hear anyone tell me so. I touched her.”

—

When Dr. Howe finally let me climb down, I slipped to the edge of the crowd and half-listened as she continued her pep-talk for the colonists. I scanned the crowd for Isha; there was no sign of her, but I could hear Gloam declaring the virtues of nudism to a group of children. They all listened intently; some were already putting her words into action.

While I was distracted, the speech came to and end. As colonists dispersed to their tasks, Dr. Howe approached me.

“Thank you for speaking to us, and for the introduction.”

“Certainly, it’s an honor to meet you, doctor. I’ve read about you in the histories of the lost Longshot mission.

“And we are presumed lost in space, half of us dead? I can’t wait to read my own eulogy.”

“I’m sure there will be several in the books I’ll bring next time I visit.”

“You said something about things going wrong on Terra?”

“The world has fallen into totalitarianism. A clique of oligarchs run the planet for their own pleasure and the little people keep their heads down and try not to make waves.”

“What happened to the so-called Guardians of Freedom?”

“Oh, they still call themselves that. But everypony, eh, everybody else calls them oligarchs, and we walk in fear.”

“Many of us chose to leave because of worry over the erosion of civil liberties under the guardians. It sounds like we were right on target.”

“Yes, ma’am. A lot of people envy those who escaped on the colonization flights.”

“We’re going to have lots of questions for you, but is there anything we need to know right away?”

“Uh, no monsters, at least none that I know of. Oh, it gets misty after sunset, everyone is going to need cover tonight or they’ll get soaked.”

“Is that the worst you’ve got for us?”

“We’ve only spent some weekends here over the last few months. But that’s the worst we’ve seen.”

“I think we’re gonna like it here.”

With no chance of aid from Terra, the colony missions were all planned with the intent of surviving anything that they could imagine going wrong. I doubt that even their wildest dreams contained a planet as perfect as this one.

“Hey, there’s a lot going on. What can I do to help?”

I spent the rest of the day delivering, and occasionally constructing, housing kits. It was more than enough labor to keep me busy until I was ready to drop with exhaustion, but everybody had shelter before sunset. After supper Isha and I walked back to the camp site with Gloam trailing behind us.

“We have a lot to talk about—” Isha was laying out sleeping bags while I lit the campfire “—as soon Gloam’s asleep and we can get some privacy.”

I nodded eager agreement, but I was out cold before my daughter had even lain down.