Date: Hmm...
Dear Diary,
I has been a year since I said goodbye to 8066 for the last time. A year as it used to be measured, since the planet hasn’t completed a rotation in ages.
It’s been...3000 or so years since I spoke to the last pony.
And it’s another 200 or so years before the Visitors finally arrive, and I can show them what’s left of Equestrian civilization.
Timing has never really been my strong suit, or the universe’s, it appears.
I should have left so very long ago. After the Last War. After the Perfect Peace. After the ponies had given up on ever making contact with an alien species and allowed themselves to fade away.
But somebody has always needed me. The Princesses, the Planners, and then the Planning Computers that replaced them. Even now, with 8066’s inert husk slowly disintegrating in the building behind me, I am still here, because it needed me to wait for the Visitors to finally arrive.
I’m bored. I’m bored and I’m lonely. Memories, regardless of how good they are, can only carry me for so long.
Let’s see if I can remember something truly obscure...from the good old days...
—Discord
(As if it could be anybody else)
Discord turned to the next page of the diary and drew a circle inside which were placed the continents of Equestria. He drew a little “X” and an arrow, with the note. “Still here.”
That wasn’t where the continents were now, but rather as they were 5000 years ago.
(Magic makes geological timescales all screwy.)
He looked up and squinted at the white dwarf star that Equestria’s sun had become. As he watched, it flashed in a rhythm, the rhythm of his own personal song. It had been doing this for 118 years. Not perfectly in rhythm, of course. That wouldn’t be him. No, it was improvising and playing with tempo, a jazz solo version of the song that just would not end. Until the aliens that had to be out there noticed, noticed and realized that no natural phenomenon could flash a star like that.
So it had to flash. But that didn’t make it any less annoying. He walked into one of the more stable “buildings” to get something resembling a steady light source. “Buildings”, in quotes—although the stone structures had been erected five thousand years ago and were meant to last forever, nothing other than Discord could last forever, and so the elements had gradually eroded them into ruins, only vaguely shaped as they once were.
He thought back to that ancient era. There was a time, a mere 750 years after he had embraced friendship, when Discord had been truly popular. It was the Great Expansion, the time when all races had united under Princess Sunny with the goal of exploring the solar system, and setting up a vast array of transmitters, with the goal of finally reaching out and making contact with the alien species that everybody was sure must be out there. (Too bad that the signals faded with distance and could not be comprehended more than 20 light years away. And the next nearest civilization was far further away than that.) Discord and Discord alone knew space like nobody’s business, and hence was indispensable to the ponies’ doomed effort. And then there was that time when he jumped all the way out to the Moon to save Eagle Jumper—Equestria sure was his oyster then.
The moment when the draconequus knew that he had truly arrived was when the advertising deals started flooding in. He had developed this new form of rubber and set up a factory to make balls out of it. It was impossible to predict how high the ball would bounce each time it hit the ground. The advertising was of this cute little dog watching the ball bounce, over and over. It looked so happy...
And Discord certainly needed something to make him happy, something without the sadness that would come from remembering any of his friends over the eons.
As well as the sadness of this place. The process of disintegration had been accelerated since the sun had gone into its red giant phase and the planet had stopped rotating. (The flashing trick that 8066 had thought up and Discord had implemented had sped that sun along into the white dwarf stage.) The wind now howled constantly, stirring the immense amount of dust into the air at all times. The sky outside was more gray then blue or even red, making a world of plain monotony.
Discord walked further into the building, away from both gray light and gray dust. He sat before a block of gray stone that acted as a good desk. Discord carefully tore a page from his diary and rested it on the cover after closing it. From the ether Discord pulled his drawing pen set and stoppered ink bottle, given to him by Princess Twilight on his mumbly-mumble birthday so he could write to the recently retired Princesses Celestia and Luna. His magic had passively preserved them both for all this time, and kept the ink everlasting. He picked out an appropriate nib, and attached it to the handle.
Now what did that mascot look like...? Oh yes.
He then drew the ball in the air where the dog was looking—it was identical to the dog’s nose.
He looked fondly at the scene for a few minutes. And then the drawn ball dropped. It hit the implied ground level, and it bounced.
And the eye of the dog followed it.
(Since we're in a silent carton now, we need a soundtrack. How about this one? It's the "Oceana Roll" from 1911, the same year that theatrical animation really got going. If you want a period recording including the lyrics, try over here.)
Discord scratched his chin in puzzlement. Then he looked at the ink bottle.
“Oh of course!” he exclaimed. “It must have absorbed my magic.”
Discord couldn’t remember the last time he had used his magic. It wasn’t good for the machine intelligences who were his only friends for the past couple of millennia. This despite the fact that their self-awareness was entirely due to his chaos.
It had been hard living without magic. Once it had even been nearly deadly. But he had found a way through. He always found a way through for his friends.
By this time the drawn dog had grabbed the ball in its paws, and then ate it like an apple, rubbing its tummy in happiness. It stood up on its hind legs and looked right at him:
“Well hello there!” Discord exclaimed, quite happy to have someone to talk to again. “My name is Discord.”
The dog tilted its head in mild confusion.
“Discord!” the draconoquus repeated. “Here.” And he wrote “DISCORD” on one side of the dog.
The dog walked under the letters and looked up at them, pointing at the letters one at a time with a paw. As he did so, each letter briefly got a little glow effect, with tiny lines radiating away from the letter. The dog then looked back up at his creator and nodded. He then pointed at himself and mimed writing a large question mark next to himself with a claw.
“Let’s see, what was your name again...?” Discord asked himself.
He wrote “FRITZ” in large letters on a free section of the paper.
The dog walked over to look up at this new name. He thought for a moment, shook his head in dissatisfaction, and then kicked the “R”, causing it to fly into a corner of the page. He then shoved the “F” over to close the gap.
“Fitz?” Discord asked. “Your name is Fitz?”
Fitz nodded eagerly.
“What should we do, Fitz? Do you want to talk?” He noticed that Fitz had no mouth, so he drew one on.
Fitz wiped it off.
“Don’t feel like talking, huh? Well, what you like to do?”
Fitz opened his mouth and pointed repeatedly at it, then rubbed his tummy.
(Yeah, I know. He rubbed off his talking mouth, not his eating mouth. It's a toon thing.)
“You’re hungry?” Discord asked.
Fitz nodded eagerly.
“Alright.” Discord drew a bone. “How about that?”
Fitz angrily kicked the bone into the corner with the “R”.
Discord drew a T-bone steak.
Fitz kicked it.
A bowl of dogfood? Kicked. A whole fish with x’s for eyes? Kicked. A turkey leg? Kicked.
That corner was getting crowded. Discord drew a garbage can, and all of the rejected items fell inside it.
“Well, what do you want?”
Fitz removed his nose and held it up.
Discord drew a rubber ball.
Fitz grabbed it and took a bite out of it. He was confused for a moment by its lack of taste, then remembered to put his nose back on and tried again. Much better.
Fitz took off his nose again and waved it.
Discord drew another ball.
Fitz ate it, and asked for another.
Discord drew another ball.
Another.
Discord drew another ball.
Another.
“I think that’s enough for now,” Discord chided.
Fitz shook his head in violent disagreement.
“All of that cartoon rubber can’t possibly be good for you.”
Fitz disagreed.
“Well it’s probably making you fat.”
Fitz turned sideways and showed off his model physique.
“Look, why don’t we play some basketball?” Discord asked. He drew a line representing the court in profile, and a basket on a pole at either end. He drew the ball in the air over the middle of the field. “Play ball!” he cried.
He neither knew nor cared if that was the proper cry for this game.
Fitz intercepted the ball when it went down, dribbling it up and down the court like he was circling an army of invisible opposing players.
Discord started placing the pen on the page, handle downward, to act as additional blockers, picking it up and putting it down in a new position every time Fitz dodged around it.
Finally, Fitz reached the basket. He leapt up, lobbed the ball up in the air, and came down to wait. Then at the last second, he positioned himself under the basket and ate the ball before it could reach the ground. It bounced once inside his tummy before all trace of it was gone.
“Alright, let’s make this a little more creative,” Discord said. He summoned a roll of scotch tape and a pair of safety scissors from nowhere. Tearing the page with the globe of Equestria out of the diary, he drew a top-down view of a trap door in the corner, then cut it out. On the sheet of paper containing Fitz, he drew a pyramid of ten rubber balls, and then immediately put the trap door drawing on top of the pile and taped it in place.
“That there is your prize,” he told Fitz. He then drew an oval track around the edge of page, with a start/finish line on the left side. “Let’s see how fast you can run.”
Fitz walked over to the starting line, but his attention the whole time was on that trapdoor, and the prize behind it.
Discord drew a little starter’s pistol raised in the air. “On your mark, get set...go!” He drew a puff of smoke emerging from the pistol and then looked to see how fast Fitz was running.
But Fitz was nowhere to be found.
“Fitz? Fitz, where are you?” he asked. He nudged the garbage can with the tip of his pen, which caused it to tip over and spill out everything that was inside. But no Fitz. He lifted up the corner of the trap door and peeked underneath but not only was there no Fitz, but all ten balls were still there, although with a few cobwebs around them.
Discord scratched his head in puzzlement. Then he saw the corner of the page closest to the trap door start bending over, closer and closer to the door. And drawn on the back of the page was Fitz, reaching out his hand towards the door.
“Oh no you don’t!” Discord exclaimed.
He flipped the page over, and was stunned to see that an entire Manehattan city street was depicted in black and white, from the days before the First Fall of Magic. As he watched, a figure inside one of the buildings walked up to a window with a rolled-up black window shade and opened it. It was a beautiful pony mare, white furred with a black mane. She looked up at him, smiled and waved.
“Hello there!” Discord exclaimed. “Have you seen a little white dog with a black spot on his back?”
The mare shook her head. She then beckoned him to come closer.
With a shrug, Discord brought the page closer to his face.
She kept beckoning, more and more.
Finally, when the page was right up against his face, Discord felt a miniscule kiss on his chin.
He quickly pulled away the page to look down at the blushing pony.
“My, aren’t you forward!” he exclaimed.
The mare laughed silently, then turned her head and tapped her cheek.
Discord looked around himself. “Who, me?”
The mare nodded her head.
“Well...alright. But just once, OK?”
The mare mimed another laugh.
Discord brought the page back up to his face to put a delicate kiss on the mare’s cheek, but then felt a tiny bite instead.
“Hey!” he exclaimed. He examined the sheet again, to see that the window and its inhabitant was gone.
“Was...was that you, Fitz?” he asked.
A part of the complex scene shook with laugher.
Discord summoned a magnifying glass to examine the scene. He finally noticed that the doorknob to the building that had had the window looked suspiciously ball-like.
“Ah-ha!” he exclaimed in triumph, reaching forward to try and grab what he knew to be Fitz’ nose.
It disappeared.
Discord examined the page some more and saw that there was a tear right through the door and its missing knob.
Discord flipped the sheet over. The trap door opened, and a satisfied Fitz walked away, leaving little outlines for where the pyramid of rubber balls used to be.
Discord frowned. “I said I want a race, and I’m going to see a race!” He summoned up a corkboard and pinned the page with the globe of Equestria to the board by its center. He then positioned his first sheet of paper over the pinned one and shook it until Fitz landed on top of the globe. And then he started spinning the globe.
Fitz ran to stay on top of the globe and not fall off. Discord spun the globe faster and faster.
Suddenly Fitz was gone.
Discord looked around, suddenly abashed. “I’m sorry, tiny friend! I guess I went back to my old ways—I won’t do it again, I promise!” He looked around to see if the cartoon dog had been flung off of the page onto some other sheet of paper. And then he saw that there was a little door drawn up near the north pole that he hadn’t put there. The door was ajar, and above it was the sign “Equestria Control Room”.
This corresponded to an actual building that was in that approximate spot on the real Equestria. Or at least it used to be. During the Great Colonial Revolt it was the primary defensive base for the whole planet.
Discord pulled out the pin and flipped the page over, and saw a cartoon depiction of the interior of that control room. The actual controls were much simpler than the ones he had remembered. One of them said “Day/Night”.
Putting the circular paper on top of the diary, a curious Discord used his pen to push the lever from “Day” to “Night”. A literal curtain of night descended outside the room’s window.
Fitz was at the other side of the room, struggling to pull down another lever.
Discord smiled, and reached over to help him. Until he saw the label: “Planetary Self-Destruct”.
That control had been real, the result of an intense bout of species-wide madness that saw the Equestria forces literally willing to destroy their planet and everypony on it rather than surrender to the more populous Colonial Coalition.
This was only a cartoon self-destruct, but Discord certainly didn’t want to see what it might do to poor Fitz.
“No, Fitz!” Discord commanded, blocking Fitz from the big lever with the body of his pen.
Fitz hopped up and down giddily, stretching his hands towards the lever.
“Typical of a son of mine: wants to destroy everything he touches,” Discord said wryly. “No,” he commanded, shaking his finger in disapproval. “No pulling that lever. Understand?”
Fitz shrugged, put his paws into imaginary pockets, and strolled over to the other side of the page. And then wrapped around and pulled the lever anyway.
“No!” Discord exclaimed, as the page began to shake. “What have you done!”
The scene on the page panned upward, to show a happy moon in the night’s sky with Luna’s face on it. She was dismayed to see a proud sun wander into the sky with Celestia’s face on it giving her the raspberry. The cartoon moon melted, then fell out of the sky. Celestia laughed cruelly in triumph.
A rocket with Sombra sitting astride it flew right into Celestia’s eye, and now the sun fell out of the sky.
Below, the streets of Manehattan were on fire, until everything was flooded. Fitz swam around desperately.
There was a rumble under Discord’s feet. He raced outside, to see the buildings around him finally give up the ghost and completely collapse.
“What have you done! What have you done!” Discord exclaimed, running back in to retrieve the page before it could be crushed by a falling ceiling.
The page showed a poker table with pony devils and angels peacefully having a game together. Fitz was nowhere to be seen. In a corner was a quivering puddle of ink.
The rumbling in the real world stopped. Equestria was well and truly destroyed.
“It’s all right, Fitz. It’s all right.”
The poker game faded from sight. The puddle formed a pair of eyes.
Discord looked around him and sighed.
“I’ve been going about this all wrong, haven’t I?” he asked Fitz as well as himself. “I’ve been playing by the rules for so long that I forgot that I didn’t have to. I have one more mission, but I don’t have to wait for it to happen.
With a wave of his fingers, Discord summoned one of his business cards into existence. “Discord: Anything and Everything,” it read. He flipped it over to the blank side, and scraped the ink blob onto it. “There,” he told Fitz. “This is your house now.” He drew a little door. “Your dream house is just on the other side. And you can come out any time you’d like to play. ...Or eat another rubber ball.”
The blob formed back into Fitz the dog. He walked over to the door and opened it, revealing a three-dimensional but still monochrome room on the other side, the perspective changing as Discord tilted the card back and forth. Fitz looked back at Discord, saluted him in farewell, then walked though and closed the door behind it.
After pocketing the card, Discord looked around him one last time. After collecting the pen set and the magic bottle of ink, he reached into the air and snapped his fingers...
The space exploration freighter looked like an egg married to a bullet. The “egg” was 48 by 32 meters, with two long narrow struts connected to long atomic engines. The “bullet” was 40 by 24 meters, with two fat wings attached to another pair of atomic engines. The bottom of the egg portion was connected to the top of the bullet portion by a 20-meter-long elevator shaft, 5 meters wide. The egg was meant for charting new routes between star systems, while the bullet was meant for planetary landing and exploration. This was the PSA Eleanor Moraes, the pride and joy of the UPF’s Planetary Survey Administration.
The Eleanor Moraes was currently orbiting OPS 18, a bloated blue supergiant star located deep in the Vast Expanse beyond the Frontier. All non-essential crew were located on the bridge deck of the starship, surrounding a spindly ladder that led to the astrogator’s dome and looking up. The human astrogator, Leonid Molokov, whistled the tune of his favorite adventure video series as he took observations with a variety of instruments and crunched the numbers in his computer. He was olive skinned with black hair and wore an orange flight suit, chosen a size too big on purpose for reasons only he understood. His sleeves were rolled up, to emphasize to the universe that he absolutely did not possess the massive biceps of the heroes he idolized and would not shut up about.
The whistling stopped, and Leonid descended the ladder, a broad smile on his face. On reaching the deck of the bridge he turned to the sandy-brown peeloven engineer. “It worked, Pholus,” Leonid exclaimed, putting his two hands on the peeloven’s two heads. “I still don’t understand your fix, but it worked!” (The peeloven managed to move a meter away the moment Leonid was no longer looking.) Turning to the others, he explained. “We just completed a thirty-light-year jump, the longest successful jump in Frontier history! We are exactly where we want to be. It will take another two days to put together the next navigation program, and then we can finally reach our mission objective.”
(Peelovens have a torso like an extra-furry tailless camel, the back one meter off the ground, with two hooved legs in front and only one in back. Two extendable necks that can stretch up to another meter end in small flat heads with one eye apiece. The heads can not only speak and sense, they can also manipulate objects like a pair of hands. A peeloven’s brain is actually located in the hump.)
Pholus’ two heads looked at each other for a moment, a peeloven gesture of confusion. “Well of course my modification was successful, Human Molokov,” it said from its right head. “Who in their right mind would subject themselves to a thirty-light-year jump without perfect confidence in the safety of the trip?” It paused for a moment to take in Leonid’s insane grin. “Oh. Humans. Right. Why did I sign up for this crazy voyage again?”
“To solve the mystery of the Singing Star of course,” answered the captain, the yazirian Gratchu Hakes. He had pale yellow hair and reddish fur mostly covered by his orange tunic.
“It was a rhetorical question,” Pholus replied stiffly.
(Yazirians are tall thin humanoids with manes and collars of hair around a monkey-like face and pointed ears. They have extra-long fingers, opposable toes on their feet, and two large flaps of skin attached along their arms, torso and legs that allow them to glide down from the tops of tall trees. Due to eyes that are night-adapted, yazirians wear orange-tinted goggles in brightly lit surroundings like the bridge.)
After a moment of thought, Pholus switched his speaking head to say, “Actually, I am curious why you are all here on this voyage. I believe it would do much to confirm or deny my private opinions of all of you.”
Captain Gratchu smiled tightly, holding back his opinion on Pholus’ attitude. He was generally easy-going around his crew, but Pholus was a guest from a race outside the United Planetary Federation, the race that laid claim to the part of the Expanse the Eleanor Moraes was currently traversing.
“Why don’t you say what you really think of us, Pholus?” joked Lappsod Dog, the dralasite robot handler. His rubbery skin was near-black in color, with blue-gray eyespots, although there were splotches of green and blue painted on his hide spelling out a lame pun in the form of a rebus. He was 1.3 meters tall and 1 meter wide. His clothing was a long strip of orange cloth wrapped around his form like a toga. “To be perfectly boring, I go where the Moraes goes. Don’t really care much about some funny star in the middle of nowhere. As a matter of fact, I might have been better off if I had stayed with the mhemne on Snowball. We were heroes there, by Mol, and those mhemne knew how to party!”
(Dralasites are short squat rubbery beings with no bones or other hard body parts. They generally shape themselves bipedally for convenience when dealing with the “shaped” races of the Frontier.)
“Such a lack of imagination,” commented Gligits Psshest, the light green vrusk xenoarchaeologist. He wore an dark blue flight suit with a flared collar. “The star is obviously the product of a civilization far in advance of our own. Making contact with such a civilization could permanently change the course of Frontier history.”
(Vrusk are insectoids, with a 1.5 meter-long horizontal abdomen supported by eight jointed legs, joined to a 1.5 meter-tall vertical torso with two arms. Their flat triangular heads have two forward-pointing antenna, dark-red eyes permanently covered by a hard clear shell, and four mandibles surrounding the mouth. They have skeletons in addition to their exoskeletons.)
“Assuming the Tetrarchs are still alive,” said Marnie Symnes, the red-haired, pale-skinned human medic. Like Leonid, she wore an orange flight suit but unlike the astrogator, hers was properly fitted.
“Assuming that they are the Tetrarchs,” countered Gligits with a trace of discomfort. “Which I do not believe that they are.”
“Of course you would say that,” said Terrence Fitzpatrick, the human ecologist. He wore an orange flight suit like the other humans and was of above-average height, with coal-black skin and short black hair. “The vrusk are believed to the descendants of the long-gone Tetrarchs, while the rest of us were either bio-engineered into existence by them, or transplanted here from other parts of the galaxy.” He gestured with a hand as he was speaking, including the yazirian, drusk and s’sessu in the former category, and the humans and the peeloven in the second. “The last thing you’d want is the difficult task of justifying your race’s current normalcy in comparison to your ancestors’ greatness. As for your survey, Pholus, I firmly believe that the star is the original home of the Tetrarchs and as soon as we are able to establish contact with them, I intend to find the location of Earth, and see if it’s possible for us to visit it, and re-establish contact with the human homeworld.”
“I’m surprised you actually believe in Earth,” Captain Gratchu said with a smile.
“You believe in Yazira,” Terrence countered.
“Yazira is real,” Gratchu said with a severe expression. “And someday an expedition like ours is going to find it.” Turning to Pholus he said, “Regardless of how advanced the civilization of the singing star is, or even regardless of if they are still alive or not, the point is that it will be different from ours. Those differences will mean that the ‘singers’ will have something of value to offer the Frontier.” After a moment of thought he remembered to include the members of the two outside races. “And the Peeloven Republic and the S’sessu Oligarchy.”
“Ah, the profit motive,” said Ash’Yorl, the s’sessu observer. “How vrussk.” Ash’Yorl had a bright green back, head and tentacles and a purplish front, its yellow eyes surrounded by black rings. A colony of elposha phorad grew on its back and shoulders, but that was mostly covered by the thick black sock that covered most of the s’sessu and acted to keep its mucus from getting on everything.
(S’sessu are wormlike creatures, 3.5 meters long. They have two pairs of tentacles sprouting out of their sides; the lower pair end in thick pads can be used as legs, although a s’sessu can stand upright without them; and the upper pair end in delicate fingers. Their heads are conical, ending in a circular mouth ringed with tiny teeth. Each of their two eyes have two pupils. Also, s’sessu speak with a lisp, but I don’t like spelling that sort of thing out, so just imagine everything a s’sessu says with extra-long S’s. Elposha phorad is a bluish-green parasitic plant that confers sharpened senses to its host.)
The captain shrugged. “I was largely raised by my vrusk clan father.”
“Oh I do not mean to disparage you,” Ash’Yorl replied. “Profit is a very valuable goal to serve. The Oligarchy wishes to establish trade with these ‘singers’ as well. Especially since the corporations will not only have to travel through both s’sessu and peeloven space to reach them, but will certainly have to refuel at our homeworld first.”
“And use our proprietary jump technology to get there safely,” Pholus said with a smile.
“What a fascinating variety of motivations,” commented a voice from the astrogator’s dome. Discord poked his head down to peer at the surprised crew of the Moraes. “And some interesting guesses as to what you might find at your destination. All totally wrong, unfortunately.” Pointing at Terrence he added, “You in particular are in for a treat, though.”
“Who are you?” Captain Gratchu demanded. “What are you doing on this ship without my permission?”
Discord smiled mischievously. “Oh, I do beg your pardon. I suppose I’ll go look for some other ship heading for my star, and knock politely on the hull for permission to come aboard.”
The captain looked abashed. “You...have permission to come aboard, Mister...?”
“Discord. Of the universe in general, although the only world I’ve ever really known is Equestria.” He floated down to stand under the ladder, the others backing away to give him some space. “It’s a good thing I found you when I did—8066’s timeline was completely off.”
Gligits lifted a brick-shaped device hanging from his belt and waved it at the visitor. “How is it that you’re speaking Pan-Gal?” he asked. “Have you been spying on us for the last few hundred years?”
“No, Rainbow Dash, I have not,” Discord said mockingly. “I’ve only been spying on you for the past twenty minutes, and pulling the bare minimum information I needed from your brains in order to converse with you.”
At the suggestion of mind-reading, the peeloven tucked its heads over its brain-hump in a vain attempt to block any further telepathic attempts.
Discord shook his head in disgust. “I didn’t take anything from you, puppet-heads. The wall of fear you exude was more than enough to block any attempt to read your thoughts. Speaking of which, do any of you know what this one was planning to get out of reaching my system? He never gave a definitive answer, and I don’t think his kind has a profit motive.”
“Pholus probably wanted to make sure that your kind hadn’t figured out any peeloven secrets,” said Lappsod. “That tends to be the only reason why they do anything.”
Pholus lifted his two heads slightly and looked away, not bothering to dignify the insult with a response. Besides, it was completely true.
“How did you get out here, Mr. Discord?” asked Lappsod, examining the ship’s radar for any sign of another starship. “You didn’t appear to use a ship.”
“Don’t need them,” Discord said simply.
“That makes you quite powerful,” said Terrence. “Are all of your kind like you?”
“Oh, I am quite unique,” Discord replied. “Utterly unlike the other equestrians.”
“Where did your powers come from?” Terrence asked.
“No idea,” Discord replied, with the casual air of one who has thought and discussed this subject to death. “I just came into being fully formed one day. Discovered Equestria right next to me, and decided to make a pest of myself there. I’ve since reformed.”
“And the other equestrians?” asked Gligits.
“Well sadly they are no more,” said Discord. “They had a very long and very good run, but all things come to an end, as they say. All things except for me. I am now the Voice of Equestria. Self-appointed. I’ll give you a personalized tour of the planet when we get there. Tell you all about some of the great Equestrians I knew: Izzy, Starswirl, Capper, Eagle Jumper, Puddinghead, Twilight Sparkle, Fitz, Luster Dawn, Celestia. Fluttershy.... And afterwards I will do what I can to spread the ideals of my adopted race to all of your species. We are going to have such fun!”
Author's Note
Let's conclude with a very 1920's song, "Sunday", in a 1926 recording by Jean Goldkette & His Orchestra, vocals by the Keller Sisters & Al Lynch.
1927 was the year when the first cartoon inspiration for this story, “Ko-Ko the Kop”, was made and 1928 was the year that “Ko-Ko’s Earth Control” was made. 1928 was also the year when “Steamboat Willie” came out, the cartoon that ended the Silent Era of animation. Ko-Ko the Clown managed to survive the painful transition to sound as an eventual side-kick of Betty Boop, but Fitz the Dog was killed dead. He certainly wasn’t the same as Betty’s other sidekick and occasional love interest, Bimbo the Dog, not in appearance and certainly not in personality.
Oh, and here are the notes to this crazy story.
