I was not looking forward to the prospect of handing our only way home over to anypony else, even if it was only for a short time. I was, however, unwilling to try to call the bluff of Jonathan Smith. If there were more of them, and it sounded like there were, I would have basically declared war on all of them. They would then have called upon the other species of the planet to aid them against the invading alien threat, and I most certainly did not want to have to do anything drastic. Like taking control of their sun and crashing it into the planet. Admittedly it had been quite some time since I had not been in the seat of power during negotiations. Though I still believed I had handled the situation tactfully enough.
Jonathan Smith had made his way back over the hill, giving us the privacy to talk without it hearing.
“Do not explain to these creatures any of how our technologies work,” I ordered the others, “And do not agree to anything without consulting me. That Jonathan Smith is crafty and it is obviously hiding something.”
“Don’t worry. I know when to keep my mouth shut,” Quick Wit assured me, “And I don’t think you have to worry about the other two.”
“Hey! I helped build this thing you know,” Double Take yelled at Quick Wit.
“That is enough! The both of you be silent!” I only realized that I had slipped into The Royal Canterlot Voice by the fact that I had literally shouted the two off their hooves. I waited for the two to get back up before continuing, “The less information we give them the better. So far Jonathan Smith has been kind to us, but I expect that kindness has a price.”
“Not to doubt your judgement princess, but that sounds really cynical,” Hard Stuff noted.
I nodded and gave a sigh, “Yes, and it is unfortunate that I must reinstate that old habit of mine. The fact stands that one of Jonathan Smith’s first reactions was not to ensure we not hurt anypony, but to threaten us to make sure we did not. That means that it is no stranger to fighting, and quite possibly, war.”
The others remained quiet, no doubt processing what I had just said. I noted the planet’s native birds chirping somewhere in the distance, as well as some other strange rumbling noise, comparable only to the sound of a distant waterfall, that would grow before fading out almost entirely, only to start again. In fact, after a moment’s observation it was clear that there was no real pattern to the frequency of the noise. Sometimes it would fade completely, other times it would remain almost constant. I supposed that I would figure out what made it in due time.
“Hello again!” I turned to see Jonathan Smith cresting the hill, one of his arms waving back and forth, with another three of his kind following him, “I return with friends!”
“And how wonderful it is to be in the presence of friends!” I called back, walking to the edge of the platform.
“Quite so,” Jonathan Smith gave a knowing smile as his group strode back to his previously occupied spot, “Allow me to introduce you all. The man to my immediate left is Thomas Franklin.” Thomas Franklin stood slightly taller than Jonathan Smith. Besides that and Thomas Franklin having a yellow mane the two appeared identical.
“To his left is Jessica Miller.” This one was shorter than all the others and had a much longer mane done up in a ponytail. Jessica Miller also had two strange lumps on its chest.
“And to my right is Rusty Bell.” Finally a name that sounded normal. Rusty Bell had a reddish brown mane that curved around its face. It took me a moment to realize that this was because it had a beard.
“Uh, call me Russ please,” Rusty Bell requested.
“Tom, Jessica, Russ, meet Princess Luna,” Jonathan Smith gestured to me with a open hand. The three accompanying him bowed their heads.
“We suppose We should introduce our crew as well,” I turned to each of my companions in turn as I introduced them, “The unicorn is Quick Wit, the Pegasus is Double Take, and the Earth Pony is Hard Stuff.” As I said it, I realized how odd it was that they had named their planet a synonym for dirt.
“Hear that Rusty, you fit right in,” Thomas Franklin joked, elbowing Rusty Bell.
“Eh, it probably has to do with the translator,” Rusty Bell shrugged, at least I assumed the action of lifting its shoulders was still called shrugging, “You know how some foreign languages use everyday words as names, it’s probably like that.”
“That reminds me!” Thomas Franklin lit up, moving its fingers in such a manner as to cause them to make a snapping noise, “Your female right? I mean, princess is still a female title where you’re from isn't it?”
At first I thought the question very strange. Then I remembered that I had no clue what gender these creatures were, or indeed if they had genders at all. Despite their posture I could see no sign of reproductive organs on them. It did not seem too far fetched for them to be unable to tell our genders.
“Yes, We are female, as is Quick Wit,” I nodded, watching Thomas Franklin smirk at Jessica Miller, “What of you all? We see no gender markings on any of you.”
“H-hold on. That didn’t make any sense,” Jessica Miller put a hand to its head and held another out before it. It also had a higher pitched voice than the others. “We are female? Then you singled out Quick as also being female? Is she, like, twice as female as the rest of you?”
“I think she’s using the royal we,” Jonathan Smith stated. The aliens all looked to me, seemingly for confirmation. I simply nodded.
“And to answer your question, Jess is the only one of us that’s female. The rest of us are male,” Thomas Franklin jabbed a hand at Jessica Miller leaving only his outermost finger extended off to the side, “As for the reason you can’t tell our genders, we’re all wearing something called clothes.”
“No clop Clover,” Quick Wit rolled her eyes, “Seriously, we have clothes too, we just don’t wear them all the time.”
“To be fair, I didn’t know they were wearing clothes. I honestly thought their species just had a weird coat pattern,” Hard Stuff offered.
“Yeah, come on. Admit it Wit, you didn’t know they were wearing clothes either,” Double Take used his wing to nudge the target of his teasings. Quick Wit returned the gesture with a glare.
“You mentioned a translator?” I asked.
“Yeah, I was wondering how that was still working if you all didn’t have a power supply,” Thomas Franklin put forth.
I gave him a curious look and asked, “How does our power supply have anything to do with your translator?”
“We don’t have a translator, we assumed you were translating everything,” Jonathan Smith stated, trepidation leaking through his stoic facade.
A moment of silence passed between us. Each group eyeing the other, everypony thinking the same thing, but no one breaking the silence.
“Holy shit…” Rusty Bell muttered, “I mean, damn. Are we seriously speaking the same language? That… That’s ridiculous! Do you know how often words from languages that don't share a heritage lineup? I’ll tell you how often, virtually never. This is stupid! I mean it’s seriously stupid! It shouldn't be happening. It can’t happen, and yet it is! I never would have thought! Just… Damn.”
Rusty Bell put a hand to his forehead and another to his lower back before proceeding to march back up the hill.
“So… what does this mean exactly?” Hard Stuff spoke up.
“That we can talk to each other, duh,” Double Take helpfully supplied with a smirk plastered across his face.
“Right, well… While our linguist ponders the mysteries of speech, would you all mind passing this to the other end of your ship so we can measure it?” Jessica Miller asked, holding out measuring tape.
“Certainly,” I nodded, picking the object up in my telekinesis. Hooking one end onto the platform, I quickly slid it just above the floor, bringing it to rest on the other side. I brought my eyes away from my task and back to Jessica Miller, only to see her mouth hanging open.
“Is something wrong?” I asked, trying to figure out what had elicited such a reaction from her.
Jessica Miller blinked a few times and shook her head slightly before answering, “Ah, no. I, I just wasn't expecting that.”
Jessica eagerly went to grab the other end of the measuring tape. As I watched her, I internally grinned. They did not know that our horns were used to focus our magic. Of course, I still had no hints as to how they focused theirs either. That’s when Jessica Miller called out what I assumed was a measurement that I was unable to make heads or tails of.
“Ten meters!” Jessica called to Jonathan, who noted the measurement in a pocket notebook.
“I’m sorry, what was that?” the amber winged horse, Jonathan thought its name was Double something-starting-with-a-T, asked.
“Meters is one of our units of distance,” Jonathan stated as Jessica asked if Princess Luna could read out the measurement for the center pillar.
“No, I mean the bit before that,” Double T clarified. Didn't it have something to do with a turn of phrase?
“Ten?” Jonathan asked.
“Yeah that word,” Double Tap, no that wasn't it, nodded, “What’s ten mean?”
“It’s a number. You know, after nine but before eleven,” Jonathan answered.
Double Trouble, not that either, tilted his head to the side, “Okay, nine I know, but what's eleven?”
“Ok… So you guys only have nine numbers?" Jonathan asked.
“No, we have one-zero numbers,” Double Take, that’s it, explained with a raised eyebrow.
“One-zero? How do you count to one-zero?” Jonathan asked, wondering if he should call Russ back over.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, inta, neeb, one-zero, one-one, one-two and so on,” the unicorn rattled off.
“Oh! You guys use base twelve!” exclaimed Tom, after seeing that everyone else was lost, Tom sighed and began to explain, “Ok, so you know how binary, just one and zero, is base two? Apparently not. It is though. Anyway, base twelve, or one-zero for you guys, uses twelve numbers: zero through nine, plus two more.”
“So which of these bases do you use?” Princess Luna asked.
“Base ten. So for the most part we'll understand each other's number system,” Tom continued, “Well, we have special cases like the first two numbers that have two digits and stuff, but that’s not important right now.”
“So, care to try to read those numbers to me Princess?” Jessica asked.
Princess Luna nodded and stretched out the measuring tape. Jonathan couldn't help but join Jessica and Tom in marveling at the fact that these creatures had developed mentally controllable mag-lev technology. Luna took a moment to look over the tape, searching for numbers she recognized before turning back to us.
“We are unable to recognize any of these strange symbols.”
Project Gardener- Field report
Location: *REDACTED* Date:*REDACTED*
Report Number: *REDACTED*
Declassified
At approximately 1:50 AM a farmer made a call to a local police station alerting them of a group of adolescents creating crop circles in their fields. This report quickly spiraled out of proportion, enough so that at 2:24 the NSA picked up on the inordinate amount of emergency calls from the one farm. A call to a State Trooper on the scene revealed that the situation was, despite the crowed gathered, nowhere near under control. He then requested back up in the form of, “whatever secret alien police thing ya got.”
Project Gardener agents *REDACTED* were dispatched to the scene. After taking control and dismissing the other emergency response teams, a monitoring station was set up and reconnaissance began. A ship that appeared to be open-air was found resting peacefully on a slight slope. The ground and crops showed no signs of disturbance save where the ship had touched down.
The ship was five meters in diameter and had a central pillar, made of a material later identified as quartz, was roughly four meters high. There were four “stations” on the ship, each facing outwards across from each other around the central pillar. Each station was equipped with a chair that was roughly fifteen cm off the floor and a “computer”. The computers appeared to be the stations themselves. Each computer was roughly a meter high, a meter wide, and 50 cm deep. A roughly 40 cm by 40 cm square hole was centered in each, appearing to be where a “screen” was displayed into the air. Between each station was another set of boxes. The functions of these boxes was not determined as of the writing of this report.
The ship had eight “landing pads” of 25 cm radius spaced out evenly around its edges. It was assumed that these landing pads were also used as steps onto and off of the ship as the base was suspended thirty cm above the ground. The material used for the hull of the ship appeared to be, and was later confirmed as, wood. Specifically Oak wood. The materials for the rest of the ship were stone or metal, the exact composition of which is unknown as of the writing of this report.
Four quadrupedal extraterrestrials were found on board the ship. Three of them rose roughly to the hip, the last to the chest. One of these appeared to be a white miniature horse save for the depiction of a barrel present upon its rear. Another of these E.T.s looked like the mythical unicorn, save much smaller. It was fern green with a darker green mane and tail. Again a strange image was found on its rear, this time of a gridded map. A Pegasus, for all intents and purposes, was the third occupant of the craft. It was amber with a dark blue mane and tail. An image of a soldering iron was present on this one.
The last being on the craft was a midnight blue winged unicorn. It’s mane and tail appeared to be filled with stars and constantly waved in the absence of, and sometimes against, any breeze. This one wore an onyx crown upon her head and a chest piece with the marking of a crescent moon on it. Silver colored boots were also worn upon its person.
All of the occupants of the craft were alive and well at the time of the agents arrival. It was observed that the subjects were speaking English, it was later learned that no translator was being used. Listening in to their conversation alerted us that their craft was broken, though the exact nature of the damage was not discussed. It is worth noting that during one of the subjects discussions they mentioned *REDACTED*. This sounds extremely unlikely, but they did demonstrate mentally controlled mag-lev abilities on a small scale. Caution is advised during further interactions. Agent *REDACTED* initiated first contact shortly after sunrise. They were non-hostile and reluctantly accepted help to fix their broken craft.
While taking measurements of the ship it was discovered that the creatures used base twelve, and that they did not recognize our numbers. It was then quickly determined that their writing system differed from ours, both in letters and numbers. Further examination into the phenomenon is recommended.It is recommended that we move them to *REDACTED*. Two *REDACTED* helicopters will work, though three are preferable. The team of agents can bring the specimens to the base in their van. Moving them under the cover of night and as soon as possible is highly preferable. Tomorrow at 2:30 AM would be preferable.