I'm surprised that I still dream. Even now, with so much darkness, the visions come to me, floating on angelic intercept courses through the ether. They strike my head occasionally, forming brief splashes in the shapes of colors, under the sound of laughter, with the warmth of smiles, and then—like comets, like everything else—they are gone.
No matter how much I sleep, they will not go away. I will never know pure silence.
Especially not now, not with the siren blaring into my ears.
My eyes flash open. An infinite expanse of stars.
I turn my head to the right, squinting. Across the circular console, a series of yellow crystals are flashing. A metal orb spins with several ball bearings rattling noisily within.
Have I made contact? Has the manaship autopilot discovered something? Or could this be a false alarm?
It matters little. I am awake; I am alive.
I stretch my forelimbs and reach towards the harness of my seat. My hooves brush against the glossy surface of my jumpsuit until they numbly unlatch one belt after another. Unfettered, I kick off the chair lightly. The spherical cockpit twirls around me, for I am twirling within it. I drift weightlessly towards the flashing yellow crystals. Gripping the console, I tilt my head towards it and channel a burst of mana through my horn. It's a rusty exercise, like blowing dust and sediment out of a bronze tube. I'm in desperate need of a magical recharge, especially if this situation warrants broadcasting the signal.
With a simple spell, the crytals turn dull and the rattling alarm spins to a stop. I tilt up and reach towards the opposite end of the circular console. Pulling several levers, I hear the manaship around me humming to life. Lights flicker on, forming an effluent purple glow beneath the porous metal bulkheads of the cockpit around me.
Gripping the console with both hooves, I climb my way around the circumference until I reach the engine stabilizers. I aim my horn towards the centermost crystal and charge it, sending a pulse of mana into the heart of the ship. I hear a muffled roar, bursting and silencing in gentle waves. Beyond the round glass full of stars, I see a foggy eruption of gas as the thrusters slow the forward inertia of the vessel.
I try peering out into the depths of space for a visual confirmation for why the alarm had went off. I see nothing, save for a bright speck of light: a star. I must have entered a solar system of sorts. Is there an object nearby?
I climb around the console, returning to my seat. I pause briefly upon reaching the rectangular timer positioned to the left of my chair. I squint at the meter, curious as to how long I had been adrift this time. The answer I see is a figure in the triple digits. With a sigh, I reset the timer, and reach past it for a glass panel extended on the end of a brass, multi-jointed limb. Pulling the panel towards me, I charge it with magic so that a series of animated engravings come to life. After spreading rivulets across the panel, the engravings form a rough map of the neighboring cosmic bodies, with my vessel in the center.
I'm startled to not only see a large and noticeably young star in close proximity, but several planets and planetoids—both big and small—in dedicated orbit. Aside from three dense rings of cosmic debris, I count over thirteen bodies, several of them with moons. According to the glass panel, there's supposed to be an object directly in front of me. It's significantly smaller than the other bodies within the system, but for some reason the ship decided to set off the alarm upon crossing the path of this one.
Curious, I squint beyond the glass bubble that separates my cockpit from the infinite vacuum. Telekinetically, I pull a lever to the left of my chair. I know that I should be preserving my mana, but my hoof isn't capable of doing this next task delicately. As the lever moves, a dark aperture of tinted glass expands like a catseye, gradually revealing a naked and unguarded glimpse at the swirling stardust beyond. The compartment warms up as the nearby star's naked rays invade the ship. I'm careful not to open the aperture too wide, or else the very interior might melt.
With the view to the cosmos unobscured, I look for any hint of the planetoid. I become quietly aware of a looming black shape towards the starboard edge of the craft. Staring at it, I climb my way around the circular console until I once more grip the controls to the thrusters. With surgical precision, I rotate the craft at an appropriate angle and aim myself towards the edge of the planet that's facing the star.
Before me, a slitted crescent waxes over the spherical surface. Breathlessly, I witness a cosmic sunrise and pilot the vessel towards it on thunderous propulsion. The surface of the planet comes into view, smooth and glossy like a gigantic, crimson pearl. It is so red, a forbidden fruit deposited into cold constellations. I'm surprised to find no hint of craters, not even a simple impact site. The sphere is perfectly untouched.
And then I see something, a single imperfection, and I come to realize why the ship's alarm went off. There is something in orbit of the planet, something as tiny and insignificant as my vessel, but possessing a very significant shape. It stands out above the crimson ball like a fleck of white ash: a geometrically intelligent artifice of reflective alabaster metal.
My heart skips a beat. This is certainly better than dreaming.
I pilot the vessel into a stationary orbit just four hundred meters from the large, rectangular monolith. As it looms beyond the cockpit, I give my morphing glass panel a second glance, this time magically analyzing the nature of the structure before me. The monolothic object floats alone, built out of airtight materials. I attempt a scan of the interior, but detect no pressurized gas. I can only imagine that microscopic debris had pierced the hull and exposed the insides of the structure to the vacuum of space at some point in the past. But when? And how often did it take to evacuate the craft? Just how long has this object been in orbit of the planetoid?
I float for several minutes here, scratching my chin in thought, staring as the white rectangular solid glints in golden starlight. With a muffled exhale, I glance to my right.
Lying in a glass case, where it has always been, is a brass pistol with a black metal stock.
Chewing on my lower lip, I looked directly to the left.
A sheet of white padding stretches across the opposite end of the cockpit. There is no machinery, no switches or magical conduits there, just a sea of red-stained holes laced with crystalline dust. There are over a dozen of them: dark splotches that linger forever in silence, frozen in time.
My nostrils flare as I stare determinedly at the metal object ahead of my vessel. I've come too far to pass up this opportunity, no matter how bleak.
One last time, I reset the controls, stabilizing the engines and assuring that the ship remains in a steady orbit while matching the object in front of it. That accomplished, I kick off the circular console until I am floating in the middle of the cockpit. With a magical burst from my horn, crystalline dust lights up inside round panels built into my jumpsuit. Mana burns at key positions behind my rear hooves and fetlocks, and I am propelled forward by the energy. With the grace of an ice skater, I drift softly out of the cockpit and towards the corridor beyond the neck of my ship.
Glancing over my shoulder, I give the glass-encased pistol one final look. I think about what I am about to do, about the walk I am about to perform. I decide that it's best not to recharge my leylines until I know for sure that there is something worth making a broadcast for. In the meantime, I should have enough energy to do this operation and come back.
The cockpit fades out of view, and I face forward as I drift down the length of my vessel. Multicolored crystals line the circular corridor around me. Along my way to the hangar, I pass by a slowly rotating centrifuge full of tiny green gardens exposed to golden manalight. I climb my way past another compartment, this time a tight chamber packed with rows upon rows of canvas bound documents.
At last, I reach the final junction of the ship's interior, the processing room. It is an enormous, rectangular chamber brimming with magical energy. A low-pitched hum makes my ears twitch as I ignite the thrusters in my suit and push myself towards a brass ladder that leads to the hangar. As I do so, I pass by the reflection of a violet eye.
I immediately fire the thrusters in my jumpsuit's forelimbs. Braking weightlessly in the middle of the room, I look to my right. A shard of glass is floating by me, showing a piece of my smooth face, my tightly braided mane, before rotating back towards the dim lengths of the compartment.
With a muffled groan, I reach through my leylines and telekinetically grip the shard. Rotating it around with a glowing horn, I ultimately face an elaborate array of hundreds upon hundreds of identical glass shards. A thousand points of purple light reflect back at me as I float towards the twenty-foot by twenty-foot paneling. With studious eyes, I look for a spot where a glass shard is missing. I find it, elated to see it's the only hole needing to be fixed. With tactile telekinesis, I slide the piece into place, welding it to the rest with a magical bond.
I'm having to patch the array more frequently these years; it's starting to alarm me. I know that I should have found a solution to its fragility by now, but I simply keep putting off the act of rebuilding it. It can't be helped, really. I just can't stop placing so much time into the search, even if it's something that requires more sleep than diligence. I have to keep up with this pursuit; it's the only reason why I'm here, after all.
So, with a loathsome breath, I thrust away from the array and climb down the ladder and into the hangar. It's a tiny compartment, just large enough for me to slide into. With a hoof, I slide a locker open and expose several tools. I gather an airtight saddlebag, a belt full of metal contraptions, and—most importantly of all—a large purple crystal which I have to slide carefully from a glass cylinder. For the final step, I reach into a brass box and pull out a faceless helmet. It pops into place over the neckpiece of my jumpsuit, the joints glowing with purple resolve.
My eyes peer through the hollow mask as I twirl towards a large circular panel. Tilting forward, I slide my horn into a dark impression. The metal infrastructure lights up from my magical contact, and the circular panel slides open to expose an airlock. Floating in, I listen as the panel slides shut behind me. The lights dim, and it is absolutely quiet in here: dead quiet, dead as the universe.
My horn lights up, casting a dim halo of purple over a series of levers before me. I take several breaths, concentrating, then pulse a steady beam of light into the helmet. Starting at my horn, a bubble of translucent energy cascades over my headpiece, filling the hollow of the helmet with an impermeable shield of magic. I breathe softly now, relaxing, because I have to be relaxed for what happens next.
Gripping the large purple crystal with one forelimb, I reach my other hoof out and pull one lever. A loud hiss strikes my ears as the air outside of my suit and helmet exits out into the vacuum. Once it becomes silent again, I pull the next lever. A bright slit opens, bathing the tiny chamber in burning white light. I concentrate through my horn, and the shield covering the face of my helmet turns dark, tinting by several hundred percent. Just in time, I protect myself from the searing rays of the nearby star. My eyes focus, and I see the bright red planet floating like an ocean of blood below me.
Then, there, above my position like a white kite set loose in a sky of spectral dust, the metal object hovers. Its so shiny, so immaculate, that I wonder if it's even older than I am.
Coiling my muscles, I kick off the metal beneath me and soar out of the hangar. The copper-brown body of my ship flies away from me. I glance down at it, at its slender shape, at its bulbous cockpit and slender brown neck. I see the solar foils on all four sides, spread like dragonfly wings, faithful sails that have carried it across the thick of nothingness. I always feel lonesome when I leave it, and even more lonesome when I sleep inside.
Turning back towards my target, I send random bursts of magic through my horn, firing the thrusters in my jumpsuit so that I make a rapid but cautious approach to the shimmering object in my sights. All I hear is my breathing; all I ever hear are my lungs, expanding and contracting within my suit like a cocoon of echoes in the heart of infinity. I must stay calm, in spite of what I anticipate or don't anticipate. It's not that I fear suffocation; there are fates worse than death.
It isn't until I am less than a hundred meters from the craft that I realize how insanely large it is, at least in comparison to my tiny vessel. Whoever built this must have had the lives of an entire community in mind: that is, of course, assuming that whatever intelligence conjured it possessed a similar body mass to myself.
I'm nearing the surface of the object. It's facing away from the sun, so the metal is dull, gray, and cool here. I slow myself down so as not to collide with it like a moth impacting a boulder. After several thrusts of the magical dust on my forelimbs, I come to a smooth glide. I twirl about, and my hooves make contact like feathers gracing a stone plateau.
What I do next is anything but soft. Gripping the purple crystal in two front hooves, I channel a magical burst of strength into my limbs and thrust the thing hard into the object's perfect hull. My helmet fills with noise and grunting. Then, there is a victorious flash of lavender light. I look down to see that the sharp edge of the crystal had successfully pierced the outer layer of metal.
With the stars of the galaxy as my only spotlight, I lean my head towards the embedded crystal. My horn shoots a beam of bright energy that pierces the force field of my helmet and lights the crystal up before me. Brimming, the shard then projects a purple bubble of mana that covers ten square meters of the vessel's metal surface around where I am. With this new shield of protection, I crawl along the reflective skin, feeling along its invisible seams and joints. I close my eyes and let the leylines do the work, telling me where the hull is thinnest, and where there is a navigable corridor beneath the opaque barrier.
Once I have found such a magical spot, I pull a sharply clawed tool from my belt. Aiming my horn at it, I energize it just as I have the crystal. The tip of the blade burns as bright as starlight, and I run it like a scalpel along the metal face of the vessel beneath my hooves. After I have made a thin, circular incision, I sheathe the tool back into my belt and aim my horn at the fresh groove. The round slice lights up from within, pulsating with a purple glow. Then, with a simple tug of my telekinesis, a cylindrical chunk of the hull effortlessly comes loose.
I feel a rush of thunder through the force field of my helmet. I look down, watching as ice particles and tiny flecks of debris jet out of the fresh hole I have just made in the derelict craft. However, the small shield that has formed around the energized crystal neutralizes the grand vacuum of space, and the eruption from the vessel's interior is drastically minimized.
With the glow of my helmet's force field as my only light source, I abandon the crystal, the stars, and the red face of the planet. I enter the derelict craft.
The first thing I notice is how wide the walkway is. I soon realize that it isn't wide so much as it is tall. Whatever once occupied this craft, it had to have been much larger than myself.
It is also no longer alive. I figured this out by the scan I had made from the cockpit minutes ago, but now that I am actually navigating the dim interiors of the vessel, I can't imagine anything having lived here for months, years, perhaps even centuries.
The hallways are scattered with debris. Flecks of dust, random metal objects, and scraps of insulation float past me. I see nothing of magical quality: no crystals, no arcane metal, no enchanted substance of any sort. Judging from the mechanical tools clinging in abundance to the walls and floors, I imagine this vessel was run by creatures who had to compensate for a lack of magical utility, a sort of thing that I take for granted.
What's surprising about this vessel already is the complexity of it. Whoever built it must have been as ambitious as they were intelligent. I pause by what appears to be a console of sorts, and I aim my horn at it. Through the leylines, I perform a scan of the structure's composition, and I notice many finely crafted fibers of silicon and veins of electrical conductivity. It's a shame that everything is inert; I would greatly have liked to witness this spacecraft when it was still functional.
Applying the thrusters gently, I glide around a corner and along what appears to be a central corridor. I spot a sheen of dim light at the end. Curious, I soar weightlessly towards it, spiraling past drifting lengths of hose and exposed wires. I come around a metal bend and glance through a half-opened door. Telekinetically, I force the sliding panels open and have to squint from the solid sunlight pouring from the chamber beyond.
I have found the cockpit. A glass sheet covers a concave stretch of metal looking out onto the stars, including the one golden speck within proximity. Below, the scarlet surfaces of the planet looms, forever gazing up at the lifeless derelict as it continues its faithful and unsung orbit.
I find seats here, each triple the size of the one I use for my own vessel. Everything about this interior—from the side panels to the utility lockers to the operational consoles—suggest a very linear way of thinking. Nothing is circular like in my manaship; there is a definable "floor" and "ceiling" to this cockpit. It occurs to me that those who piloted this vessel either possessed artificial gravity or else imposed their own sense of reality upon the subspace artifice they had so capably piloted.
If this was the central hub for the ship's control, then it's quite possible that I might find something here to bring back to the array, something that will give me the incentive I need for either igniting or canceling the signal. Creatures intelligent enough to have brought something like this into orbit of the planet must have had a means of storing memory, even if it was an artificial memory.
I look all over the sunlit consoles. The immaculate simplicity that marks the outside of the vessel is nowhere to be found inside. Here, in the cockpit, everything is convoluted, haphazardly symmetrical, and messy, even. I see metal knobs, switches, and buttons far too small for my hooves to manipulate without some cumbersome effort. I also see characters: engravings, letterings, symbols upon symbols—all arranged in neat and linear fashion. It's a strange relief to me that an intelligence capable of such randomness would thread a solid string of logic throughout the whole mess.
I can't even pretend to read the legend that's provided to me, that must have been innate knowledge to the ones who operated this vehicle. However, from having scoured countless vessels before this one, I have come to expect a certain repetitious pattern in the way spacefarers construct their crafts. Planting my hooves into the centermost seat, I grip the rests on either side and focus on the structure around me. I feel through the bulkheads, through the glossy consoles covered with petrified ice, through the wires and the insulation and the rows upon rows of silicon sheets within.
Just now, I sense something: a disc of some sort, with concentric magnetic strips. It could possibly be a means of retaining artificial memory. I must salvage it and bring it to the array.
Very carefully, making sure not to lose the shield around my helmet from the magical effort, I disassemble the nearest panel to me. It's a simple process, involving the removal of rivets and metallic reinforcement beams and steel chassis. Like melting ice, the inside of the console dissolves under my touch, and the magnetic disc floats out to me within a box of translucent telekinesis. I slide this into an airtight compartment inside my saddlebag, closing it shut with an enchanted seal.
I feel as though I got what I have come for, but this is the first artificial structure I have stumbled upon in years. There truly is no shame in exploring more.
So I do so, with gentle kicks against the bulkheads, gliding my way out of the cockpit so that I am once again flying gracefully down hallways and corridors and winding chambers. I see compartments on either side of me; everything is perfectly preserved, frozen in time from exposure to the frigid vacuum of space. I wonder if perhaps someday, sometime, my vessel will too experience such a fate, with all of its rooms lifeless and abandoned.
And then, I realize, and sigh; I know better.
That's when something moves out the corner of my eyesight.
My body freezes in mid thrust, and I come to a slow hover. Pivoting around via the burning mana panels of my jumpsuit, I gaze once more into the chamber that I have just passed.
Something moves again, slowly rotating, as if with cyclical undulations.
I quietly thrust towards the doorway. It's one of many chambers, all small and tiny compartments. I imagine that this must be the vessel's habitat ring. Once I enter the claustrophobic space and take a full look inside, I understand that I am right.
It is an organic body, long and slender, clothed in a jumpsuit, and at least five times the mass of myself. I see four limbs—matching pairs—and quite disproportionate from one another. The curvature of the spine and the small size of the pelvis suggests that its weight was meant to be distributed towards one pair of limbs. Whatever it is, it was once bipedal.
The body rotates around, floating aimlessly in the middle of the cramped room as it must have done so for countless years. As its upper torso spins towards the manalight, my eyes travel up to its cranium. I see white, flaky skin, a flat face with a small nose, and an open jaw bearing omnivorous teeth. A pair of glossy white eyes reflect my light, and above it the creature's skull is capped with a threadbare mane of gray stalks. From the cranial structure, I can only imagine this thing had the brain power to match that of ponies', or maybe even surpass them.
From there, I crawl over to the next adjacent room. I find another body, identical in shape and arrangement to the first, only the pigment of the skin and mane is different. Not only were these intelligent beings, but they were diverse. In the next compartment, I find three bodies. Two of them are clinging to each other—a remarkable gesture frozen in time—as if they had died in each other's limbs. The rate of decay in their flesh is minimal, allowing me to see their features in amazing detail.
I know that I have what I came for. I know that I should be leaving this craft. Something holds me in place; something makes me want to float alongside these bodies, to join them in their eternal, weightless dance. I've come so far, if only just to bathe in the ashes of such amazing creatures I never knew, and might never again. I already see my hooves reaching out, and I stop myself before I can so much as touch their skin. It would be a shame to desecrate their memories; I only wish I could share mine.
Alas, they are not the ones to hear the signal. My work here is done.
With quick precision, I exit down the corridors through which I came. I leave the craft, taking the purple crystal with me. Once I've returned to my vessel and gone through the pressurization procedures, I trot through the airlock and remove my helmet. Carrying the saddlebag over my jumpsuit, I kick off the lockers and glide into the processing room.
The array of glass shards stretches before me in a jointed curve. I fire my thrusters so that I am hovering directly in front of them. Opening my saddlebag, I take out the magnetic disc and hold it before me in the crook of my hoof. After giving the object a lethargic stare, I gently let it go so that it floats to a stand-still within the focus of the concave mirror of shards.
Next, I tilt my horn towards a crystal lodged into the metal bulkhead behind the shards. With a zap of purple energy, I light the crystal up, and glowing lines of mana filter through the metal wall behind the array. Six cylinders slide out: one on the bottom of the array, two on the left of the panels, one to the right, and one above the glass shards. After extending all the way, the cylinders open up. Five of them expose multi-colored pendants: red, green, blue, pink, and gold. The the one at the top is shaped like a crown, and it shimmers with the same purple glow that powers the rest of the ship. Soon, the mana flows through all five pendants, and they strobe just as brightly as the one at the top.
In a brilliant flash, the six jewels fire prismatic beams of light onto the magnetic disc salvaged from the derelict vessel. An ethereal glow covers the disc, then shoots back—landing in the array of glass shards.
I watch as a snowy, static field of broken images come to life before me, accompanied by a resonating hum of discordant noises all vying for dominance. The processing chamber echoes with confusion as I float before the glowing array, telekinetically flexing the glass shards to and fro.
In rivulating fashion, images start to coalesce across the panels. I see starlight, then sheets of metal, then images of consoles and switches and electrical conduits. Finally, I see a patch of flesh flicker across the glass shards. With adept telekinesis, I adjust the enchanted panels to match the frequency. The skin comes into focus, followed by a mane, followed by a face. I see one of the creatures from the vessel occupying the top left portion of the array, but there's something different about it this time. This is a memory: the creature is alive.
My brow furrows as I concentrate harder, twisting the mirrors and rotating the shards just right. I successfully manage to stretch the image across the entire length of the array, chasing away the mindless static and clutter. The broadcast flickers as it interfaces with the manafields of my ship, giving me a glimpse into the recorded lives of the creatures who had died in orbit of that red planetoid. The sound echoing from the glass shards is coming together, forming sentences and patterns. I see the face looking at me; it is haggard and weary and full of purpose. It's relaying a message, and all I hear is jibberish.
This is always the hardest part. I close my eyes and meditate on the cacophony of sound. Somewhere in the depths of its crackling clicks and sporadic vowels, there is universal meaning. I cycle the message along the leylines, filtering them straight into my horn, straight into my soul. My head aches and my heart races, but everything collapses and unifies at once, like the ripples of a pond settling after a heavy stone has been tossed in. What comes out the other side is ripe with heavenly clarity, and it never ceases to send shivers down my spine.
"...for two months now," the broadcast crackles. "And still no sign of reinforcements. As commander of this expedition, I have no choice but to fear the worst."
My eyes open, and her eyes stare back. I know it's a she, I can feel her soul. She speaks to my mind, weeping honestly and sincerely through the leylines. She's far from home, and she's trying her best to keep up her courage. Hard green irises hold back a dam of tears as she leans towards the optical recording device of her cockpit and speaks to the future, to me.
"The Second and Third Convoys of the Sedna Exploration team have not arrived," she says, her face placid in spite of the grim tone to her voice. "I'm willing to bet that they never launched. The W.S.E.C. should have created a safety protocol to wake us from sleeping stasis in the event of a drastic change to mission plans. Now we are alone out here, and we don't have enough provisions to last five years, much less the projected twenty. The Third Convoy was supposed to bring the fuel for the return trip, but with them unheard of, we have no choice but to stay in orbit over Sedna as it begins its long and frozen orbit back past Neptunian space."
I watch, my eyes darting left and right across the array, my vision locked onto her courageous face as the broadcast flickers across the room.
"Sergeant Reyes has a possible plan for survival," she continues. "We can land the expedition on the planet's surface anyways, then dig deep beneath the crust. From our readings, there appear to be thermal sources beneath the layers of frozen hydrocarbon. With that energy, we just might be able to extend our stay for another ten years. But... even that prospect is not solacing. Just fourteen hours ago, we finally got a signal from home. It was a snippet of a global emergency signal. From the looks of it, the entire western hemisphere is in lockdown."
Her nostrils flare. She sighs and speaks again, this time in a somber voice.
"It would seem that the Eurasian Conglomerate have finally made their move. They've been making threats for decades; it's amazing how much we underestimated them. I can't imagine what's left at home, if anything, but I know what it means for us. There's no point in anticipating the other two convoys if there was no W.S.E.C. Mission Control left standing after we launched. We are alone out here; we may very well be alone everywhere."
She blanched momentarily, a sudden show of emotion, and then her features hardened once more. With a serious glint to her eyes, she continued.
"Our task now is to survive at all costs. If we are the only ones left, then let it be said that we died as humans were truly meant to be: friends, countrymen, and kindred spirits. I shall go to speak with the crew, for what happens next must be decided through democracy. It is, after all, our one finest achievement. How very fitting that we managed to bring it this far, to the very edge of our home, where the sun still blesses us with her warmth. This is Captain Marisa of the Sedna Expedition, signing off. May God help us all."
The signal flickers once again and turns to white static. I remain here, hovering, basking in the echoes of the final words made clear to my mind. With a heavy heart, I close my eyes, drinking in the speech until it fades away with all the invisible glitter of my leylines.
Did they all die? Did they—like so many other civilizations—vanish before I could even reach them? Or are there still bits and pieces of them populating the surface of this planet, like Marisa had suggested there'd potentially be?
The array has done its work. The magnetic disc has inevitably been fried in the process; I know this without having to look at it. I have acquired the knowledge that I needed from Marisa's ship in the first place, now I have to choose to do with what little I know, and if there's anything I've learned from life, it's to anticipate the best, even amidst an endless field of desolation.
So, opening my eyes, I fling a burst of magic at the array. The shards of glass grow dim and rotate back into a concave shape. As the cylinders with the gemstones slide back into the metal wall, I twirl from the mirror and fire my mana thrusters. Gliding back up the slender neck of the vessel, I pass the archives and the botanical centrifuge. As I thread my way down the tunnel of crystals, I pause.
I know what comes next, and it always makes my blood freeze. I reach out to my left and pluck one of the crystals loose. I look at it in my hooves. The shard is small, slender, and dense; it will do the job.
With a shuddering breath, I float up to the cockpit. The vessel of the Sedna exploration team lingers like a white box outside the glass bubble. I wish I could look at it, but instead I am staring at the pistol inside the glass case.
There is only one way to broadcast the signal. My leylines need to be recharged, refreshed, re-energized.
As I glide up to my seat, I pass the sheet of pockmarked white padding to my left. I fly away from it and clasp the glass case in one hoof. With a pulse of magic, I undo the lock and pull the pistol free. It's solid black stock is icy to the touch. I fumble slightly with opening the chamber. Once its hollow center is exposed to me, I slide the crystal shard in place and snap it shut.
I've learned long ago that it helps little to delay or prolong this procedure. So, without hesitation, I tilt my horn down and fire a pulse of purple light at the center of my jumpsuit. My body tingles all over, and the glossy fabric loosens in an instant. I peel out of my suit, one limb at a time, until I am naked. Finally, the material rolls off my back, and with one swift jerk of my muscles, I spread my wings free. The feathered appendages stretched across the cockpit, breaking the golden light peering in through the tinted aperture.
I float down into my seat, coiling the wings back to my sides. I take several deep breaths, my eyes absorbing themselves in the smooth, pearlescent surface of the red planet below. Such a perfect sphere: it would make for a wonderful gravestone.
With that thought nestled deeply in my mind, I float the pistol up against my right temple, cock the weapon, and fire.
The crystal flies straight into my skull and the confetti flew and they laughed and they celebrated with sweet music and lights and song as she ascended and the sun with her glowed over the emerald green plains sparkling with dew and ponies and colors and eyes that looked at me and curved as they laughed and held me gently as I chuckled and sobbed through the flickering hemispheres of light and dark beneath a rotating array of stars brimming with every shade of the rainbow like a morning glint of light through the window of my room as the knowledge of all our yesterdays brought sighs to my lungs in the presence of my friends' warmth as we danced as we sang as we lit fires and ate sweets under the chorus of song bells and whistling winds and snowy gales and sweltering afternoons by the lake and river and stream and plain and beds of flowers that smelled of fragrance and giggles and promises of love and levity and lust with eyes darting towards the night's sky as we numbered the constellations and gave them names that reminded us of one another so that in the great dark of eternity to follow there would be titles to give it purpose as their eyes faded and their faces dissolved with the spark from the crystal exiting the left side of my skull.
I hear, with a thud, the bullet slamming into the white padding to the left of me. I can smell the blood spreading through the air, saturating the spot where the crystal had embedded. My teeth grit tightly, not from the pain of the hole in my skull rapidly closing up an inch per second, but from the searing hot pulse of mana coursing through me. The leylines had severed, and in their reconnection there is now an unbridled surge of magic. I have to take advantage of this brief burst in power while it's still mine to control.
Feeling the wound in my head completely healed, I kick off the seat, float into the center of the circular console, and charge a beam of light from my horn with enough luminous intensity to rival the star beyond the glass. Bolts of sparkling energy dance from my skull and flow into every conduit of my ship. The crystals lining the console fluctuate in alternating patterns, and I witness as a loud hum echoes from beyond the bookhead.
Ahead of me, outside the ship, a tall stalk of metal extends. Its tip fans out to form a crystalline dish fluctuating with bright purple magic. It glows, pulsing in time with my heartbeats, as I channel energy directly from my leylines and into its structure. With my mind as the key, I produce a signal. When I speak, it shall broadcast on all frequencies. The words I have to share will reach to all ends of the red planetoid below. The signal will even stretched towards the nearby stars, assuming there is anyone there to listen.
I don't think twice. Proudly, with dignity, I assume. And I speak.
"Hello, Sedna," I say. "My name is Twilight Sparkle. I come from a world called Equestria. There were once many ponies there, happy and lively creatures who knew nothing but peace and joy. They were beautiful, intelligent, and graceful equines, and I'm proud to have called several generations of them my friends."
I take a deep breath, closing my eyes as I felt my wings twitching at my side.
"Years went by, and now all of them are gone. I am all that's left of Equestria, for while I was their friend, I was nothing like them. Over time, as the centuries rolled by, it became clear to me that my destiny was not to stay in that world, remaining the lonely guardian of a legacy that only I could answer to. There is more to life than being a gravekeeper; of this I am certain."
With a brave smile, I open my eyes and stare out the cockpit, past the planet, past the derelict vessel, past even the stars and the cosmic dust that they bathe in.
"I bring you Equestria's love. I bring you Equestria's spirit. Most of all, I bring you friendship, for it is the one thing that is eternal—not these stars, not these floating masses and lengths of space that seek to spread us apart. Somewhere out here, there is a soul that can be reached, and—what's more—it is a soul that wishes to reach back, for I believe it is in our nature to be at peace, and not be in pieces."
The metal stalk outside the manaship is already dimming. I can feel the magic fading from my body. These messages are always too short. I channel as much as I can through my leyline to maintain the signal.
"If you are out there, Sedna, if you can hear me, please speak to me. Even if it's just one word, even if it's just one phrase, even if it's just a question that reflects my own." I sniffle and gulp a lump down my throat. "I will accept anything you have to tell me, for I accept you. I accept you with all of your flaws, with all of your fears, and with all of your joys. Know that I am looking for you, Sedna, and that I wish nothing but goodness and tranquility for you. For though I may be immortal, I know of one thing that's even more of an absolute fact: we are all born as friends, each and every one us. It is the single constant of this universe, something older than time, and truer than light."
Just now, the stalk stops glowing. Everything is silent, including myself. I am left adrift in the glow of the crystals lining the console.
I float here for minutes. For hours. For years.
I sigh. I know that there is no return signal, and yet I listen. And yet I hope. And yet I live.
Tiredly, I gaze once more at the glass panel at the end of the metal arm. I drag a hoof across the morphing lines, zeroing in on the star in the center of this system. Meditating on Marisa's words, I make a scan of the innermost spheres in orbit of the bright center. The third planet from the sun is the most curious, a lukewarm sphere full of oxygen and brimming with deadly radiation.
The airwaves are still silent. There is no alarm, no feed, no signal. Sedna remains forever dead.
Gently, I climb my way back into the jumpsuit. Kicking off the console, I float back towards my seat and pull at a pair of levels. Adjusting its thrusters, my manaship pivots away from the derelict craft and sets course speedily for the center of the solar system, straight towards the third planet.
It's quite unlikely that I'll find life surviving on such a polluted, hazardous place, but stranger things have happened, and those are the strange things that I believe in.
Or so I tell myself in my dreams.
