//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1: Alpha 
// Story: Fuse 
// by Yalamix 
//------------------------------//


ALPHA


1207 YEARS AFTER PRINCESS LUNA RETURNED, 5:23 a.m.
EVERFREE FOREST, 6KM FROM PONYVILLE

“Sir! We found it, sir!” said a brown stallion covered in dirt.
“Where is it?”
“Down here sir, right under the place where the Tree used to be.”
“Oh yes…”
“What is it, sir?”
“I have no idea, but I’ll make sure you get paid in triple.” said Tin Can, walking away from the device. “The Professor will have a stroke when he sees this!”


__*__


4 HOURS LATER
PRINCESS CELESTIA’S SCHOOL FOR GIFTED UNICORNS

“So class,” said an old-looking gray stallion while writing on the white board, “can anyone tell me what is the formula used to calculate the area of a sphere?”
The only thing that could be heard was the snoring of a sleeping student.
“Anyone?”

Before Professor Steel Hooves could start scolding the class, a breathless Tin Can came bursting through the door of the classroom.	

“Professor!”
“What the-“
“We found it, Professor! You were right!”
“Where is it?!” exclaimed the Professor.
“It’s upstairs at the lab,” said Tin Can.
“And how does it-“ the Professor suddenly remembered that the students were still there. “Class dismissed.”

All of the students swiftly got up from their chairs and raced for the door, without looking back.

“Children these days, have zero appreciation for learning. All they think about are video games and social networks,” said the gray stallion.
“Well, video games are fun-“ 
“Don’t start. Now, let’s see that thing you carried here.”

After a few minutes of walking, they found themselves at the lab. The smell of chemicals and plants invaded their nostrils and brought back old memories. The Professor had spent virtually his entire career working at the lab, making experiments and creating new technologies for ponykind. He had worked for the Princesses themselves on two occasions and had won many scientific prizes in many different areas. And while Tin Can was relatively young, he also had his fair share of years spent working in the lab as Steel Hooves’ assistant and protégé. 

At the center of the lab stood a tall iron table, and on top of it, an enigmatic black and metallic device rested. On its’ sides, mysterious symbols belonging to an unknown language were written. The device emitted a low hum and an incredibly powerful and dense magic field could be felt and seen by magical beings.

“By Starswirls’ beard…” said the dumbfounded professor.
“You won’t believe where I found this thing,” said Tin Can.
“I can’t believe what I’m seeing right now! Right in front of my eyes! This impossible, something this powerful could blow up the planet to shreds, rip a hole in space-time, but it is right here, INTACT! How are we still alive?!”
“Well, I took the liberty to run some tests on this thing, and I can say that you are absolutely right. It is, in fact, opening a hole in space-time that is the size of an atom. But the other end must be insanely distant, maybe even outside of the Universe itself, for it to be using so much energy.”
“Fascinating! Where did you say you found it?” asked the Professor.
“Right under the place where the Tree of Harmony used to be,” answered Tin Can.
“Of course! Only something this potent could power up the Tree of Harmony,”
“But the way it works it’s still a mystery…”
“A mystery that you and I will find out, my friend. Mark my words, this will be the golden age of our careers. An alien object that could energize the entire global population five hundred million times? The only thing that could beat that would be finding the aliens themselves…” conjectured the Professor.
“Yeah…”
“Wait! That’s it! You analyzed this, and confirmed that it is indeed a hole in the fabric of space, correct?”
“And time, yes,”
“All we have to do is to discover where is the other end of the tunnel, and then we will find the aliens! The only problem is the size of the hole… I think it was bigger, but then decayed over time, this thing must have been buried there for ages!”
“Definitely, it was inside a diamond shell so thick that it took three days to penetrate it. The magical pressure is so enormous that it must-“
“-have turned all of the carbon around it into diamond,” completed the Professor.

Master and pupil, stunned. The object in front of them was so advanced that anyone who claimed it wasn’t alien would be considered an idiot. The device could bring a new age of prosperity to Equestria, boosting their technology millions of year into the future, transforming the nation into a superpower. It could even unite the world into a single government, all populations under the rule of the Princesses. 

“There is something we are forgetting. Oh, wait. Everyone in the city can feel the magical aura of this thing, and we must keep it secret. Quickly, fetch me the platinum shielding!” said the worried Professor.
“We only have the gold shielding…”
“What? Why?”
“I lent the platinum shielding to Dr. Moon,” answered Tin Can.
“YOU WHAT?! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU: DR. MOON IS MY ARCHNEMESIS!”
“I had no choice, he had Princess Celestia’s authorization!”

Professor Hooves started muttering obscenities under his breath. Dr. Moon was constantly one step ahead, and somehow always obtained the Princesses’ permission to do his experiments, which were mostly the Professor’s own experiments. Dr. Moon stole many of the Professor’s ideas and built his career on top of it.

“Celestia! If only Princess Twilight Sparkle was still alive… Celestia never lets me do my experiments! Always complaining they are ‘too dangerous’ and that they could ‘damage Equestria’. That’s why this country was technologically stagnated for a thousand years! I guess that’s why my ancestor Doctor Hooves disappeared. He must have left after seeing so much ignorance!”
“Professor, stop ranting! The Princesses’ could be watching!”
“I DON’T CARE! I could spend two thousand years petrificated and when I left my stone imprisonment everything would still be the same!”

A silence befell the room. The disapproval of the Professor’s inventions by Princess Celestia frustrated him to no end. He had no idea why she refused to give him permission. He started thinking of himself as Neighkola Tesla, and wondered if when he died his belongings would be seized by the government as well.

“Anyway, cover this up with the gold shielding. I’m going out for a walk.” said the Professor, all the anger in his voice gone. Now he only sounded… tired.
“OK Professor, I will.” responded Tin Can.

The Professor went out for a stroll around the Royal Gardens. Everything was quiet and the sun was descending on the horizon. The sky was a mixture of red and orange, as if someone had set the atmosphere on fire. He could see the expanse of Equestria from there, and down below, in the distance, his place of birth: Ponyville.

“Why did you come here in the first place?” he asked to no one in particular.


__*__


ONE MONTH LATER

“Well, it took a month, but we finally traced the location of the other end of the portal,” said the Professor with a sigh.
“And?”
“It’s way outside the observable universe, more precisely, beyond the edge of understanding,”
“I see,” said Princess Celestia. “And you want to expand it to try to reach the beings that created that device, correct?”
“Yes, Princess, that is exactly it.”
“As much as I’d love to meet them, I’m afraid I can’t allow that experiment to happen,”
“B-But Princess! The device is decaying faster and faster, in about three months it won’t have enough energy to keep the portal open! We’ll be unable to find them after it closes!” exclaimed the Professor.
“And it pains me to do so, Professor Steel Hooves. Do you know why I constantly stop you from doing your experiments? It is not because they’re dangerous, I know that you can keep them under control, it’s because they can be weaponized. Most of your experiments revolve around nuclear physics, and I know the consequences that would fall upon us if we used those weapons of mass destruction. The tensions are brewing between Equestria and the Gryphon Kingdom, and you know that they are a violent race. If this fell on their claws, it could be the end of Equestria. And we’d have to fight back using the same weapons, which is something no living being, no matter how evil it is, should have to go through.”
“I didn’t know that was possible…” the Professor said to himself.
“How come? Princess Luna visited your dreams,” said Celestia.
“I don’t recall having those dreams at all,”
“Perhaps you have forgotten,” answered Celestia, walking towards one of the doors. “Now, if you’ll excuse me Professor, there are urgent matters I must attend to. Have a good afternoon.”
“Yes, yes… Good afternoon to you as well.” said the Professor, pensive.


__*__


“Professor, how are we going to keep the portal open? We would need the power of an entire star!” asked Tin Can.
“My old colleague Freemane Dyson 	theorized a way to obtain that amount of energy with a sphere or something… but we don’t have the ten years needed to build it, or the resources necessary. We have to try sending a message through the portal as it is,”
“But the thing is the size of an atom! There is nothing that small to traverse it! Is there?”
“Think, young stallion, think! What makes you see the world around you?” said the Professor, quickly connecting wires on a machine.
“What makes me see the world… Light!”
“Yes! More precisely, electromagnetic radiation. An atom, however, is much smaller than the visible spectrum… I hope our alien friend does not mind receiving our message in hard X-Rays.”
“I’m sure it’ll have no problem!” exclaimed an excited Tin Can. “X-Rays, coming out of nowhere? Obviously it will know the source is artificial,”
“Sending message… now!” yelled the Professor, smashing a big red button.

The machine emitted a loud roar, and a typical laser sound could be heard for a few seconds. Then, everything powered down, the lights on the machine slowly fading. Everything went silent. After a few minutes, Tin Can spoke:

“That’s it? No repl-“

BZZZZZZZSSHH

The ground started to shake violently, and the magical field around the alien device started to grow in size, energizing all the other machines in the lab. Suddenly, the device cracked open, emitting a light so strong it was like a glare of an angry god. Space distorted around the device, bending light as if it was spaghetti. Out of the opening, came out floating, a perfectly round, metallic sphere that would make any bald person feel like Samson. And just as suddenly, everything went back to normal, except for the floating metal ball in the middle of the lab.

“What is that?” asked Tin Can.
“I have absolutely no idea.” said the stunned Professor.

The metal ball wasn’t simply floating, it looked as if it was frozen in place, and in time. A two-dimensional hologram sprouted out of it, surprising both of them. It showed a right triangle with different symbols on each side.

“I think… I think it is trying to communicate with us! Using math! Genius!” said an eager Professor. “But it’s obvious! They should have sent us something a bit harder don’t you think?”
“Yeah…” said Tin Can, completely mesmerized and with a stupid grin on his face.
“Uh… How are we going to answer this? Just… talk?” asked Professor Hooves.
“Yeah, yeah, maybe we should try that,” said Tin Can, still hypnotized. 
“Okay, then. Um… Hello there. The answer is a² + b² = c².”

At first, nothing happened. Unexpectedly, the two-dimensional hologram turned into a three-dimensional one of the Milky Way galaxy, with all its two hundred billion stars. The location of the solar system where Equestria resided was marked with a blinking red dot, and on one of the arms of the large galaxy was a blue one.

“That must be their solar system! The blinking blue dot,” said Tin Can.
“I see it. It is so far away from us… We will have to travel for thousands of years to reach it.” said the thoughtful Professor. “I’m an old stallion with nothing to lose. I would gladly go on an expedition to this solar system, but we don’t have any resources. It’s worse than that! We don’t even have technology to leave a pony in suspended animation for hundreds of thousands of years!”
“But what if we created a portal?” 
“Even if we could somehow obtain the astronomical amount of energy needed to create something like that, we would have to drag the other end of the portal to the place we wanted it to be. And if we just created a portal using that energy, we could end up anywhere, like outside of our galaxy or even inside a star.”
“That sucks. It’s not like we can travel faster than light anyway, so I don’t see any option unless sitting here and waiting for the alien to come visit us.”
“I think the alien is too far away to visit us in our lifeti- Wait a second! What did you just say?”
“Sit here and wait for the alien?” said a confused Tin Can.
“No, no, before that!”
“It’s not like we can travel faster than-“
“-light! Yes, that’s it! Of course we can do that!”
“We… can?” asked Tin Can, more confused than ever.
“Yes, yes! A few years ago I did a theory about Faster-Than-Light travel, and I built a prototype. It’s right there sitting at Station Five! I lost the rights over it… but that doesn’t matter! What matter is that we have a chance of meeting our aliens!” exclaimed the happy Professor.
“Station Five? Do you mean-“ Tin Can was cut short by the Professor.
“Yes, young stallion. And we are going to need a ship, because we are going to Alpha!”


__*__