AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 315
ARES III SOL 311
TRANSCRIPT – RADIO TELEGRAM FROM ESA AMICITAS TO NASA JOHNSON SPACE CENTER VIA DEEP SPACE ARRAY
AMICITAS: Friendship calling Earth, Friendship calling Earth, Friendship calling Earth. Operator Starlight Glimmer. We are exploring an alternative boost system which would not repeat not require Friendship main engines or batteries on MAV. Request calculation for three engines thrust for three minutes plus normal MAV liftoff. Also ask Rich Purnell if his theories cover Mars atmospheric decay of magic over distance. Will discuss in greater detail after comms blackout ends. Will repeat this message every two hours if no acknowledgement is received. Over.
NASA: Message received. Thanks. Good luck. Out.
The film flickered.
Angel Eleven had been the first of the Angel series to include a movie camera that would run for the minute or so of a full-length dimension-hop survey. Five of these films had been collected from the probe, returned to Equus, developed, and spliced together into this one silent reel. Now Twilight Sparkle and the available senior staff of the world’s united space programs watched the film, noting the magic numbers on the top of the screen that showed the level of magic drain from the batteries and the time elapsed since the probe arrived in that universe.
Chrysalis, of course, wasn’t there. She was still on Concordia, tending to the little probe between its jaunts. Thus far Angel Eleven had made twelve trips, three of which were aborts. In none of the nine non-abort worlds so far had the agreed-upon beacon signal been detected, so the probe kept going back out, and likely would until it met the same fate as its ten less-advanced predecessors.
Whatever else the effort to rescue the Amicitas crew was or wasn’t accomplishing, it was teaching the space programs how to build a better space probe.
On the projection screen, in a field of black, a glowing disc came into view. After a moment it resolved into familiar features- the continents and oceans of Equus. The camera continued to pan across the planet, making a full rotation of three hundred sixty degrees, then stabilizing itself for the trip back to its home universe. Obviously an uneventful, uninteresting world.
The film flickered, and the cycle repeated. This time, however, the continents were different. The oceans were larger, the coastlines completely different. Not Equus, but a world in the exact same time and space as Equus in this world. Thousands of detected radio transmissions scrolled across the bottom of the screen, faster than the enchantment that burned them into the film had been able to keep up with. But aside from this, nothing happened.
Flicker. The blue-green planet was visible in the initial frame this time, but distant, much farther than the first two, so much so that it looked more like a flaw on the screen than a picture. No one could make out the continents. And then, as it rotated, the camera caught first the rounded edge, then the whole of a giant glowing pockmarked sphere- the moon, far too close for comfort. It looked like the back of Equus’s moon- it was obviously between the probe and the planet, so it must be the back- and it had begun to noticeably get larger in the picture when the film flickered again.
This time the planet was closer than the third time, but farther than the first two. The continents could be identified, at least in part, as matching the second one. Another vast flood of radio signals flooded the crawl on the bottom of the screen. And then, as the camera began to turn away from the planet, for just a couple of seconds, the viewers saw what looked like an alien spaceship- angular, streamlined in places, armor-clad in others, oozing steel-gray menace- fly past the probe.
Then the probe’s lens turned away, facing out into space, making its fifty-second-long rotation. The screen filled with blackness… and then, suddenly, it filled with gray, not in the shape of a spaceship, but in the shape of some kind of metal biped…
… with, Twilight Sparkle recognized in shock, a vaguely human-like face. It had a chin, a nose, and two glowing reddish-purple eyes. The face was framed in a sort of bucket helmet, the sort of thing that gladiators wore back in the days before the founding of Equestria. So far as she knew, she was the only one in the room who’d actually seen humans, and she certainly hadn’t expected to see anything like them while on this side of the mirror…
The probe continued to turn. The camera passed over the metal figure, which seemed to study the probe with interest… and, after a moment, with a most unpleasant smile. (What, Twilight thought idly, did a metal creature need with teeth?) The planet drew back into view as the timer ran out for the scan…
… and then, as the probe was charging up the Drive for the hop back, the camera saw a truly immense hand, gleaming black metal against dull black nothing, reaching for the interloper. It became obvious, in the last second, that the hand was large enough to enclose the entire probe… and that it would have done so had the probe remained in that universe half a second longer.
The new scene was no improvement. What appeared to be magic bolts lit up the depths of space. Radio signal detection again flooded the data crawl, but at a slower pace than before. The slow rotation of the camera brought into view a world more or less like the second and fourth, but one that seemed the worse for wear.
Another giant metal biped appeared, soaring out of the darkness on jets, then coming to rest next to the probe. This wasn’t quite as large as the one from the prior universe, but it was immense; a gray, squat-looking thing carrying some kind of firearm in its hands, a single glowing eye sweeping back and forth in its otherwise expressionless face as it scanned the area. Then the eye focused on the probe, and again a giant metal hand reached for it…
… only to be stopped as bolts slammed into the thing, sending up an explosion in its jets and blasting holes through its armor. The blasts and shrapnel barely missed the probe, which continued turning, unconcerned for its fate.
And to her horror, just before the colossus was lost to view, Twilight saw a limp human figure floating half-extended through one of the holes caused by the blasts. The robot- for obviously that’s what it was- had had a pilot. The others in the room saw, and almost to a one they gasped in shock at the sight.
And then the camera saw another robot flying into view, this one white and gold and black, bearing a gigantic shield on one arm. Its face had two tiny eyes rather than the first robot’s one giant glowing one, but that was the only way it resembled a human face at all. It too braked to a relative stop to the probe, firing one-handed with a huge blaster rifle at something the probe couldn’t see. Its blaster went dead, and in a flash of motion it dropped the giant gun, reached behind its back, and drew out what appeared to be a sword made entirely of lightning, lightning caught and forced to hold a saber-like curve.
And then the sword whipped up just in time to parry an axe made from red energy coming down-
- and the film ended.
Someone switched the lights back on in the Cape Friendship conference room.
Occupant, the changeling who ran the Changeling Space Program these days, hissed, “Is that what our probes have been going through all this time?”
“For all we know,” Moondancer said, “it could be.”
The buck-toothed changeling in the white vest shivered. “Dimensional travel is scary,” he said.
Twilight Sparkle certainly couldn’t argue with that. What if any of those robots had been touching the probe when it made its hop home? Would the Drive have failed to function? Or would they have come to Equus along with the probe? If they were hostile, what could Equestria possibly do to stop them? The astromares currently on orbit would be sitting ducks for certain…
I will be so glad when we rescue our friends, she thought. Then we can be done with universe-hopping once and for all. One universe is more than enough to explore. The danger involved with these other worlds just doesn’t bear thinking about…
...You cheeky fuck, I'm pretty sure that was Banana and the Unicorn Gundam. Yes, that's a thing.
Unicorn Mode:
vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/gundam/images/f/f0/Rx0uc-ova.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/275?cb=20160225044429
Gundam Mode:
vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/gundam/images/0/03/Rxuc-ova-ntd.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/310?cb=20160225044457
But, in any case, obligatory IT'S A GUNDAM!
9010196
I believe it was the original Gundam because of the shield and rifle he mentioned
proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmoarpowah.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F04%2Foriginal-gundam.jpg&f=1
9010209 9010196 I hate to disappoint, but I didn't have a clear vision in mind, just generic Gundam-ness. Though my mind defaults, at least for the actual Gundam unit, to Gundam Wing, since that's the Gundam I've watched the most of. I'm not that huge a fan of the series in general, but it's kind of ubiquitous to anime fandom.
9010219
fair enough it was just the mention of the shield that stuck out to me cause that was one of the OG gundam's defining traits
9010219
Nicely done, think we can have more descriptions of these dimensional hops?
Holy fighting robots, Batmare! Dimensional travel is scaaary!
9010219
Fair enough. Wing is up there as one of my favorite Gundam series.
9010230 Instantaneous. As in, literally nothing to describe.
"when it made its hope home"
"when it made its hop home"?
How long was the probe in each world? I'm surprised so much had time to happen during the visits. Though I suppose that it might just have been a quirk of probability across the vast number of worlds.
9010240
Oh, okay. Damn, was hoping for one such hop to deposit the unlucky probe into the middle of a space battle. The reactions from Twilight would be interesting.
9010246 A little more than a minute. The Angel Eleven probe cycle is: check battery levels against need for immediate abort; if all is well, then begin a one-minute scan of the area, focusing on locating the specific beacon signal requested from Mark's NASA. A-11 is the first of its series to include a film camera with short spools of film which run for the whole sixty seconds. At the end of sixty seconds, the probe hops back to Equestria, sends the data it collected, and then waits for Concordia to rendezvous, swap the film in the camera, and send the probe on its way again.
I so wish an omake of the future, when relations are established, of humans seeing that footage and going totally nuts with transformers and Gundams. Worse, the discussion on which timeline are thirst from
Now all you need to do is have that probe puck up reruns of I Love Lucy or Bewitched. For humors sake
Countless worlds, countless possibilities, many of them terrifying.
And that's not counting what I'm sure are the countless 'dead worlds' where live never formed to begin with.
The multiverse is a big scary place.
I do wish we had a scene where Sunset asks Twilight about the probes.
9010262 As well you should.
9010275 It might already have done. The probe isn't equipped to translate an Earth-style broadcast TV signal into images and/or sound.
They really should call this off, it's only a matter of time before one of these probes gets caught by something that can back-trace it. Heck, if Megatron had been able to catch it you know Soundwave and shockwave would have been able to figure it out.
Bad ending.
Even if you can be sure that whichever lucky recipient can't trace it back, how about the moral implications of rolling dice to determine which civilization potentially gets ahold of interdimensional travel? What if it fell into the hands of the Reapers? Or the Borg? Or any other number of potential threats? This seems like an excellent way to trigger a multi-dimensional war.
Have they enlightened the humans as to just what they're doing to try to find them? Because any sci-fi buff would warn against this kind of action.
It'll be interesting when that little probe hops into the Warhammer 40K universe....
9010292
Be interesting if they could translate it. I remember watching reruns back in the '80s.
Mega XLR. Right ?
9010336
Gundam
9010344
I have no idea what that is so ...oops.
9010319 Such a hop would probably be instant death for the probe, since it'd probably pop up in the Void...
... if the ponies are lucky. If not, well, that's a universe that it would be a bad thing for the ponies if ANY faction back-tracked the origin of the probe...
9010268
Ah, thanks. So indeed just random chance, it seems. Unlikely, but, well, the most likely result by far is just nothing, over and over again, which would be much less interesting to look at. :)
gundam sweet, but it would be funny to see something like ducktales or deep space 69
I think they exist along a branch of the multiverse tree that holds our fiction... not just what-ifs, but what-ifs that have been written about.
Hmmmm...this reminds me of my most favorite of books, "The Long Earth", and its subsequent series. Just....ok. I want to know if this is where you got some of the inspiration for this scene from. Anyway, for those of you who don't know, "The Long Earth" is about a society, much like our own, whose only difference was that one man had made a breakthrough in teleportation technology in 2010, when the first book actually came out. It was just in the wrong direction. Instead of up, down, left or right, it went sideways into another earth. This cascade brings about a certain kind of short-term economic ruin for the main universe, as now that all earths are reachable, there's quite a lot less value applied to anything, if you can just go to another earth to get it, what's the point of buying it in another universe, like infinite gold. The only things that actually have meaning left are hard labor, and quality products. In the book, they just go as long, and as far as WEST takes them, since American's literally want ALL the Manifest Destiny. (The remote had two functions, WEST and EAST) They come across all types of different worlds that are fun to think about and incredible to even read, along with their own universe travelling lifeforms and different ecological situations, until they get to one where there is no more earth, and they stop. In that entire are, they never find another earth with any humans on it at all, and if they ever existed, they were driven to extinction around a couple hundred thousand years ago, before anybody even dreamt of building civilization. The EAST direction also ends up with a 'void', having China claim most of the land through there. Cut back about 10-15 years later. Human society finally gets out of its economic downturn, now that there IS a supposed limit to things, and basically they're wanting to find out what's beyond the 'void' universes. It also helps that there are void universes in general, as it gets easy to put things into orbit around every single planet that they could reach. They find a way to cross over, and encounter....the strangest of beings. Imagine....a sentient ocean spanning the entire planet, with only one little patch of land. Now imagine its gelatin and it wants to absorb lifeforms to further grow its self, already filled with other lifeforms that accidentally crossed over through the void panicking. Yeah... I forget how that one ends, as well as what was further EAST, but the final book in the series was just released two years ago and I haven't even gotten into the third book at all. It's called the "Long Mars", which is just explorations of how mars could be in other worlds, with is its own lifeforms, sentient or not, which is intriguing in and of itself. I wish that I could get into these book series better, as I absolutely LOVE them, but....I just don't have the time to get into them. It's also saddening that one of the co-authors, Terry Pratchett, died inbetween the finishing of the book series. "The Long Mars" was the last one he had a part in writing, and I don't want to read the other two, in fear it's going to become something of a...waste of time I guess. I want to save "The Long Mars" for sometime special. I mean... the series's definitely great, story and connectivity wise, as it follows just one main character through 50 years of all this going on, and it's great. I don't mean to undersell it. I...I guess I've been rambling too much, sorry guys. Just really excited seeing this stuff in another author, that actually looks at least as good as the few books of the series I've read.
9010363
only the Powers would do so however, Ponies have such a powerful presence in the Warp...HAIL CHAOS!
Maybe the ponies and changelings learn not to rush head first, blind, deaf and full-on retardedly to things now. If that probe had been a second too late in it's jump, Megatron could have probably reverse-engineered the thing and brought an extinction-level event on countless universes.
Hell, it could have been infected or warped by tons of shit. Brainiac could have gotten it, it might have been warp-fucked over by Tzeench, a microscopic amount of Blacklight might have been carried back to Equus by the probe, The Ori might have found it, or countless other examples of worst case scenario, even if we disregard the possibility of an evil version of Equestria recovering the probe and literally just peering inside and finding the secret to interdimensional travel.
It's an idiotic endeavour on astronomically stupid scale.
would be funny to see a power ranger thing!
9010336
dude if it was that then it will see this
img.tviso.com/ES/poster/w430/ed/ce/edcea8f3acfeae064381e650055f7def.jpg
9010404 I haven't touched the series as yet, partly because it began considerably after Pratchett's decline was showing in his work. I may try the series at some point in the future, but I'm not ready yet.
9010219
If Wing is what you've seen the most of, no wonder you're not a big fan.
There was this movie in 2000 called "Mission to Mars". Didn't get great reviews, but had some of the usual staples of Mars exploration stories; habitats on Mars, and a big spacecraft to get them there. Also some really weird stuff involving Martians colonizing Earth in the distant past or something. Maybe one of the probes could land somewhere like that briefly, and cause some confusion at the similarities. And just being puzzled at the weirdness.
hmm "universe" maybe? You have used world just before to indicate a planet
Jeeze, this feels like eventually the probe will hit a universe that is advanced enough to find a way to track it back to Equestria, even after it teleports away, and quite possibly hostile.
Am I the only one who thinks that might be too big a risk to rescue the astronauts?
Something I've been mulling over... Infinite universes means it's likely that there are many other Equestrias searching for their own lost astromares (or astrostallions in any Rule 63 universes). How likely is it that the cross paths?
In related news, I'm also curious if Sunset returns the probe that came down in (EqG!)Fluttershy's place. I would be surprised if she didn't recognize pony tech or lables written in Equestrian.
Everyone in here wigging out over Gundams, and I'm just thinking "MEGATRON!"
I wonder if inter dimensional travel will stay connected with the Humans and the Ponies.
I can say, almost for certain, that there will be a ban on traveling to unestablished dimensions.
At 1st, I wasn't sure what was going on but I eventually figured it out. I was worried for a moment that one of the figures might be Galactus...
At first I thought the first robot was an old school cylon, then there was teeth and I was thoroughly disappointed.
9010404
I thought The Long Earth was a great setting that was completely wasted by the plot, basically. Also it badly suffers from writers who I STRONGLY disagree with on what super-intelligence looks like.
Aww, now Prime Megs is sad because he didn't get to meet ponies.
9010504
Thought that second mech was a Robotech Valkyrie myself, at first.
[You, your mother, and your little dog too has been sued by Harmony Gold for breathing near their copy-right.]
Yeah~. probably not, alas. For some odd reason people seem to be slowly forgetting that show ever even existed.
I wonder how many of the missing Angel probes to date wound up in antimatter universes, and were annihilated by a speck of dust? We still don’t know why our universe is so lacking in antimatter, so it’s no stretch to imagine universes where the reverse is true.
9010160
Yes, Dr. Zimbardo's methodology has been criticised in recent years, and the experiment's findings are no longer given quite as much weight as they once were, at least not when considered on their own. However, many other sociological experiments also back up the near-instant formation of in-group/out-group hostility, pretty much the instant two groups are defined, so it is questionable whether the "guards" ever really needed any encouragement by the experimenters to act like they did.
Nice fim reel. I would expect Angel not to drop into Alt Equus universes because thtyre very close to the origional equus, probability wise and all the Maretian universes are clustered elsewhere.
Its a pity towards the end of the Long series that Pratchett died, because its extremely likely that he would have reailised that adding an extra set of directional contols doesnt give you just infinity squared, in hard cartesian coordinates, or even infinity to the power of infinity, in polar coordinates, but every possible binary representation including Tree 3 etc.
Lets see what Starlights come up with and how far she can push it.
9010671
For a second, I thought you meant Starlights, plural, as in multiple Starlight Glimmers in multiple universes.
Meh... I'll always be a sucker for Megatron's original design (you know... this one. I definitely grew up on the previous generation's entertainment for the most part), with the Armada design being a close second. After Armada, though, the franchise started to lose its luster. Definitely paved the way for the Michael Bay films to ever remotely have a path to enter the universe,
filledoverstuffed as they are with explosions, patriotism and product placement... no, seriously. Try and count the number of American flags and Budweiser bottles in each movie from the 3rd one onwards; it's a stupidly large number (heh... the ABC of Michael Bay films: America, Budweiser and C-4)