Nuclear Tears

Twilight Sparkle had finally gotten to that time of the week again.

Her incredibly rigid schedule allowed for little leisure, but every Monday night she had allotted herself a small amount of time to do one of her favorite things- stargaze. She pulled out a new eyepiece from a in her bedroom drawer- the one in the telescope had been getting cloudy of late- and was about to walk onto her balcony that she multi-purposed as a jury-rigged observatory when Spike, her number-one assistant, came careening up the stairs, clutching his stomach. He panted for breath, holding up a claw, and said, "Twi... here- one second!" and gasped "hurp- BURP!" A gout of emerald fire emanated from his mouth, materializing into a scroll that landed gently in Twilight's outstretched hoof.

She used her horn to cut open the wax seal but frowned slightly before she did so. The seal was not Celestia's personal crest- A blazing sun rising over a blue field- but the special Shining Shield emblem reserved for the resident Canterlot Captain of the Guard- and the current owner of that title was her brother, Shining Armor. She already had a shrewd idea about the contents of the letter. Sure enough, when she unfurled the small scroll, she found a short letter written in her brother's familiar scrawl.

Dear Twily,

I'm just writing to say hello. We've still been having trouble with Changelings cropping up here and there, and the guard keeps being sent away from the palace to follow leads we keep getting. Often it's just a confused old stallion wandering around and asking everypony what their name was again, but because of the changeling scare, everyone's been a bit tense in these parts this winter. I understand them.

But I digress. I was just writing to let you know that everything's fine over here, and to ask you to write me back quickly to let me know you're doing fine. Be careful. Not everything is as it seems these days.

Best of wishes forever,

Your big bro, Shining Armor.

Twilight's frown deepened, her purple face creasing into lines. Huh. Well, that was just like all the other letters he sent, but what's this about 'Not everything is what it seems'? Normally her brother sent her a letter a month, but ever since their encounter with King Sombra in the north, he had been writing at least weekly. She had attributed this to Shining Armor regret for not keeping very good contact with her for the past two years since she had left Canterlot, but now she was not sure the motive was so innocent. 'Not everything is as it seems', huh? Not anymore, it seems. Not even you, she mused. She quickly scribbled down a response and gave the new scroll to Spike, who, with another belch of viridian dragonfire sent the letter on its way.

Alright, she thought. No more interruptions. She checked her clock. "Oh no!" she cried aloud, "It's almost 18:00! The Mourning Mare constellation is supposed to be really bright tonight, and I don't want to miss it!" She cantered up the steps to her telescope, and as she passed Spike, who was about to fall asleep in his bed, she almost shouted "No more interruptions!", instantly jolting him out of his reverie. No more interruptions? I can live with that, Spike grumbled to himself, and promptly rolled over and attempted to go to sleep again.

Twilight used another three minutes fitting the new eyepiece on and focusing it correctly; in her haste she attempted to focus it too quickly and threw the whole thing off. She paused only to utter a few of her choicest swear words, and got back to work, more carefully this time. Finally, she sat down, and with a contented sigh, began to examine the constellation Mourning Mare.

If she had not looked at just that instant she would have never have seen it.

A glowing blue insignia, so small that only another pony looking from her direction at the same star would could have possibly seen it as well, blocked out the star Berylsage. And yet, slowly it moved- or perhaps very quickly, and just slowly relative to her, she thought- and the star was visible again. Adjusting the focus slightly on her telescope for a closer object, she began to track the anomaly across the night sky.

It was quite unlike anything Twilight had ever seen before, and she was certain it was not Equestrian in origin. It somewhat resembled a three-segmented flying brick, but that would not be a good way to describe it. At what appeared to be four glowing- ports, or apertures, she could not find the correct word for them. They were long and cylindrical, and the end furthest from the rest of the of the ship was glowing. However, they seemed to be the force- magical or mundane- that drove the entity through the night. They were a soft, radiant blue, but very bright. Some ways further along the- thing, there was the insignia she had seen earlier: it looked like a pair of interlocking concentric circles. Even further up the object than that was what looked like a large slot of unknown purpose, also glowing blue, and above that what appeared to be windows. Windows! I'll go look at those again once i've seen the whole thing!

At this point, Twilight decided that the whole affair seemed rather reminiscent of a boat, so she felt that whatever other sentient race had created the object had probably designed it with that thought in mind. Until she was told otherwise, she decided she would call the object- ship- just that.

Inside the Nuclear Tears, Aldrich, remembering in the blueprints he had briefly seen in the GCN Headquarters, left the congregation in the central room. He entered a lift, waited for a few moments, and stepped out into a new hallway with a slight incline. On the hallway there was a series of windows, and as he passed them by he felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He knew it was a silly idea- stupid, really- but some sixth sense told him that he was being scrutinized by something other than human. However, he never knew till later his suspicions were correct. Some fifty thousand leagues away, one purple unicorn mare was peering up at him through her telescope, intrigued and excited by this creature of which she had no knowledge.

She followed him until the line of windows ended: but at this time she noticed something she had not seen before. There was a large ebony telescope just above where the windows ended- for telescope she was sure it was, despite the obvious technology gap between them, she would recognize the shape anywhere- and Twilight swung her own telescope towards it. Up in the Nuclear Tears, Aldrich was choosing a random location on the planet below to look at. And then, in that moment, the two astronomers peered through their telescopes- one powered by advanced technology, the other mainly by magic and prayer-

And through one hundred-thousand miles of space, their eyes met. What powered this nigh-on-impossible convocation- fate, or luck, chance, or mischance- will remain a mystery. Aldrich saw Twilight's eyes- Deep magenta, mysterious, and magical. Twilight saw Aldrich's- She saw an almond-shaped eye, much the same color as the soft blue glow emitted by the ship.

Both yelped in surprise and leapt backwards, and both went back to their telescopes for another look. But to no avail- the ship had shifted and the perfect alignment required for such a feat was no longer there. Aldrich tried and tried again- but he could only see the telescope on the world below and a purple figure leaning into it, and he suspected; no, knew that she-for he was sure it was a she- was trying just as desperately as he to get another look. Eventually she stood up and ran or trotted out of sight into what appeared to be a house grown into the shape of a tree and he got some notion of her nature. She appeared to be quadrupedal, purple, and had had something resembling a mane or hair on her head. Also, just as he lost sight of her, he saw some protrusion poking out from her head- like a horn, or something similar. He kept watching for a moment, and saw what appeared to be a book- A book!- fly out into the outdoor space. He looked another minute, then walked away from the telescope.

Almost without realizing it he broke into a run, a mad dash that had him speeding past the windows down the shallowly declining hallway, down a service ladder to the elevator-he did not want to wait- and barely hung on to the ladder, sliding down the rail supporting the grips instead of holding on. By the time he arrived at the central control console, he was gasping for air.

"Computer!" He shouted into the voice receiver. "Show me our course since we left Mars!"

~LOADING- the metallic voice responded, and a swirling circle appeared on the mainframe screen. A moment later, a dotted arrow passing by charts of stars and uninhabitable, unnamed planets; through nebulae and near black holes and supernovas. Aldrich examined it for a moment, then said more quietly, "Why did you choose that route? Was it random, or was there some lo-"

~I plotted my course, as best I could, along the conjectured path of the Voyager spacecraft, containing within it the Voyager Golden Records. I ran simulations and found that this world, scientifically designated as SDSSp X1574939.81-0039712.2 B.~

"The Voyager..." he breathed.

"What's the Voyager?"

Aldrich spent the next hour being lectured by the A.I. and learning everything- and more- he ever could have possibly wanted to know about the Voyager and its message for extraterrestrial life sent by a young civilization attempting to establish itself in the widening cosmos. Eventually, there was the clanging of the boots of his brethren rising from the depths of the ship. Amelie pushed open the door to the room, and it rapidly swung away from her, hitting the wall and creating a nick in the black wall.

"We didn't know where you were! We were just having dinner and figured you'd eventually turn up, but it was hours... She trailed off as she noticed a strange look in Aldrich's eyes.

"I was at the telescope," he said, strangely evenly. "There's sentient life on the planet below. I saw them. It saw me."

Amelie gasped. "But... that's amazing! How do you know it saw you back?"

"It had its own telescope. I guess it was an astronomer, like me, and was looking at our ship. But anyway, it looked directly at the lens of our telescope just as I was looking down, and somehow our eyes met. I don't even want to think about how low the odds of that happening are..."

"Well," Amelie quietly said. The food's still warm, and I'm sure the others want to hear what you just said.

Twilight Sparkle was making a mess of her library.

Come on! she mentally berated herself. How can I not have a single book on living things from beyond Equestria? There has to be one, at least! She levitated books over to her, looked at the title, and so far, without exception, discarded it. There were now several growing piles of books, as well as a few instances where her control over the levitation had failed and the book she had been holding at the time went rocketing around the library, bouncing off the walls. She emptied the walls of books completely in about ten minutes, but still she could find nothing, no tiniest trace of knowledge from any quaint or curious volume of forgotten lore. She sighed, and sorted the books back into their proper places on the wall of shelves and went to retrieve the thrown books from the rest of the library.

As she was cleaning up the books that had somehow found their way upstairs, one of them caught her eye. The title read

A Conspiracy? Ancient Evidence of Alien Life!
Written by Over the Hill, published year 5899 A.U.

Twilight scoffed at first- she didn't even need to read the book to know it was a conspiracy theorist's ramblings- she had already lived through six doomsday predictions made by some nutter the media gave undue attention to, and this had been published more than one-hundred years ago! But she was nearly done cleaning up anyway, and her contact with the alien being had left her blood burning with excitement and some other emotion she could not give a name to, and she was certain she would not be able to sleep. With nothing better to do, she sat down, flipped to a random page, and began reading.

...without being present it is impossible to have known. However, it is confirmed that from this smoldering crater the Princess and her guards removed a capsule of some manner, deformed as if by a great heat. Any knowledge of the contents of this capsule from Beyond have been withheld from the public at large! If the anomaly was truly "Of no harm to anyone", as the Princess reportedly stated, then why have they been hidden from us? The public deserves to know! Enclosed was a charcoal-sketched picture of a smoldering crater with a shockingly familiar white alicorn heaving what appeared to be a mangled white dish and a golden... something, out of it. Twilight, of course, knew of her leader and mentor's longevity, but to have it shoved so plainly in her face... it made her feel very small. She continued reading.

However, I have obtained some insight into the nature of this mysterious anomaly, through a source whose name, at their request, I will not disclose. It appears to be some manner of disc, with a cover marked with indecipherable symbols inscribed there. The source made a rough sketch, and I shall enclose the unedited version for you, exalted readers, to examine and draw your own opinions.

Twilight looked over the picture and saw nothing of interest, besides the fact that whoever made it would have put a lot of money into making a golden disc. If nothing else, this Over the Hill was right about indecipherable, she thought. She was getting bored of this book; it had already exceeded her expectations but it still was offering no useful information. If I don't find anything in the next paragraph, she decided, I'll just drop it.

Here are the conclusions I have drawn, however. I consulted experts in my field of study, and they showed me a form of new technology that gives some insight into the nature of this alien relic. I attained an EXCLUSIVE writ of permission from the Princess herself to briefly withdraw the object for study. It appears that when rotated at the correct speed under an implement commonly used for recording and replaying music, strange sounds are replayed that cannot be replicated by equine mouths. This further supports the notion of alien life elsewhere.

Comprehension was dawning slowly on Twilight as she read the paragraph. It's... it's a record, she thought, the idea slowly coming to her as if she were struck dumb. And I would bet a thousand bits that it's one of Them who sent it! Oh, this is amazing! If they're anything like me, they're going to be getting ready to come down to Equestria right now!

Wait.

But how will I talk to them?

Twilight pondered this dilemma for many hours- she did not notice her exhaustion due to adrenaline, but the moon was already low in the sky and the first kind rays of Celestia's sun were poking their way through the treetops. Record... how can I learn their language... who do I know that could play a record back?

All of a sudden it hit her. That pony who DJ'd the wedding! Vinyl Scratch! Twilight almost teleported herself to Canterlot right then and there, but she caught a glance of the first rays of dawn from out the window and reflecting off of the light layer of snow and stopped herself.

Right, she thought, and looked at her clock. It's five in the morning.

There's the start to this story. Next chapter SHOULD be up inside of a week, but not gonna make any promises.

*Equestria uses a 20 hour clock as opposed to our 24, and does not reset at noon.