Michael Collins shook off his surprise after a handful of seconds. “Anyway, ma’am, welcome aboard the Columbia, the command module for Apollo 11.” He floated back and allowed Luna to see the cramped interior. “As you can see, it’s going to be a bit tight with an extra body aboard, but we’ll make it work.”
As the three exited the LM and entered the CM, Luna gazed at the strange controls and fascinating equipment contained within.
Michael cleared his throat. “After you get situated, Mission Control has sent me a list of some questions they’d like you to answer. Is that fine?”
Luna nodded. “Of course! ‘Tis the least they could ask for allowing me aboard.” Carefully, she attempted to sit. While there was no gravity, her magically-imbued shoes allowed her to stick to the floor if she wished.
The astronauts watched her walk around with a little envy, she could tell; it didn’t seem like they had any such devices, so they simply floated around in the microgravity environment.
Once she had settled down on one of the few empty floor spaces, she looked up at the three floating humans and nodded, “You may ask any questions you wish, Mr. Collins, on one condition; I get to ask a question for every question you do.”
“That’s fine.” He cleared his throat, before referring to a small piece of paper with hasty scribbles scrawled on it. “One: What is your full name?”
Luna had to think for a moment—it had been so long since she had been referred to as anything but Luna or Princess Luna—she was either family or royalty to those she knew, neither of which lent itself to bandying last names around. It had been decades since her full name had been spoken.
“Luna Nightbringer,” she said after a second.
Michael scribbled something down, ostensibly her name. “Got it.”
“You call yourselves humans, but also homo sapiens. Why is that?” Luna asked.
Michael seemed surprised, but Neil squinted at her for a moment then said, “Mike, it’s just some mind trick she did—I’m fairly certain she knows everything I know about English, but not necessarily the context or reasoning behind it.”
Mike just sighed. “Mind trick. Why am I not surprised?” Returning to her question, he responded, “Human is the name we call ourselves, but in the classification of animals on our planet, we are genus Homo species sapiens. It’s a scientific name based off of similatities between organisms.” He paused. “Or at least, that’s what I got from high school science. For all I know, I’m totally wrong.”
Luna said thoughtfully, “A classification system like you said would be most helpful, I can see that.”
Mike smiled. “I never saw the logic behind it, but I’m not a biologist, so I’ll take your word for it. Right, next question...” he consulted the sheet again. “Do you know where your world is located from here?”
“No,” Luna sighed mournfully. “I’m afraid my being here was completely by accident. I was supposed to go to our own moon, but something interrupted the process and I ended up here. I have no inkling as to where my own planet may be.”
“Interrupted? How can that be—“
Luna tsked. “My turn!” she chided playfully. She thought for a moment, thinking of pertinent questions her newfound knowledge couldn’t answer. “Who is in charge of your planet’s weather?” she asked. “I know of many leaders of nations, but not of officials tasked with global concerns.”
“Weather?” Buzz said in surprise. “Nobody is in charge of weather. It just happens. We can predict it some of the time, but we couldn’t even start to control it.”
“Really?” Luna was surprised. To think they had made it to their moon... without first controlling their own world.
“Yep,” he affirmed.
Collins made a noise to get Buzz’s attention. “Roughly how long have you been on our moon?” he asked.
Luna had to think for a moment. She had spent the first few years figuring out times—years and days and other pertinent measurements of time. Now that she had a frame of reference to compare them... “Almost exactly twenty-four years, give or take a few days,” she said.
Mike nodded, but stopped dead. “Almost exactly—hm. Neil? What happened nearly exactly twenty-four years ago?”
“Well, there was the Japanese surrender,” Neil said.
“And before that?” Mike pressed.
“The bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—oh.” He, too, halted, deep in thought.
Hiroshima... Luna riffled back through her new information. Japanese city, destroyed just before the end of WWII by—that was bad. Very, very bad. Luna couldn’t even begin to describe how bad that was.
“YOU FOOLS!” she thundered. “DOST THOU KNOW WHAT THOU HAST DONE?”
The three humans flinched away. “Does this have to do with the bombs?” Neil asked.
“YES! THE SHEER FOALISHNESS OF PLAYING WITH SUCH FORCES—“ She took a deep breath and lowered her tone. “You humans are extremely lucky,” she said, “To still be alive. If that bomb had interacted with nearby magical fields in any way but the right one, you could have destroyed your entire planet!”
“Hold up, wait, stop,” Mike said, holding up a hand. “Magical fields? You’re joking, right?”
“JOKING? I AM NOT JESTING WITH THEE—No!” Luna replied angrily. “You must be jesting with me—there is no way thine species has made it to thine moon without a detailed knowledge of magic!”
“Ma’am, magic doesn’t exist,” Buzz said flatly. “I can only assume you’re talking about something we just don’t have a word for yet and that’s the nearest word we have. But ‘abracadabra,’ pull-a-rabbit-out-of-a-hat, saw-someone-in-half magic is just illusions and tricks. Magic doesn’t exist. It’s been proven. And as for ‘a detailed knowledge of magic,’ this is all 100% technology and American know-how. Not a single bit of magic involved.” He rapped the side of the ship.
“Wh—wh—wh—“ Luna stammered. No magic? No magic at all? How had they gotten this far, then? How? It was impossible...
“Luna?” Neil asked in concern. “Luna?” He waved a hand in front of her face as she continued sputtering and staring off into the middle distance.
Huh. Apparently nuclear weapons plus magic equals eradicated planet. I wondered why Equestria never experimented with nuclear power.
And Luna just learned that Earth has no magic. Boy is that going to be a long list of questions and explanations.
4063821 hey it worked in adventure time
Noice.
Not enough events happening in this chapter though. Would've prefered at elast 2000 words per chapter...
...but since there were votes in the comments for shorter chapters, then... oh well.
U would think she could sense magic but guess not
Wonderful! I would expect that kind of humor from Luna. I can't wait for more
Yes you can
Yeah, I guess you're right...
I can't remember where they sat on the scale from Cave Johnson to "OMG! Teh LHC iz goings to create black hole wich destroy erth" but I seem to remember there being concerns that detonating an atomic bomb would set off a chain reaction in the atmosphere, burning the entire planet to death.
Inspiration for Luna's perspective, perhaps?
Woo Hoo! As always, update when you can!
fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2014/069/1/b/seattleite_x1_by_sailormephitis-d79pshr.jpg
Man, this is good. My only criticism is that your chapters are incredibly short; most stories of this quality average from 6,000 to 10,000 word chapters.
Heh, they got the full RCV eh? Wonder if they lost any hearing?
maybe she can use magic to make the VCR stop blinking 12:00
that should prove that magic exists
4064019 Yeah, there were people who thought a nuclear detonation would ignite all the oxygen in the atmosphere. There were people who thought they were right when the Trinity test was visible from hundreds of miles away. People on the ground in the middle of Texas saw it, and people in planes saw it from much farther away than that. The amount of light emitted by such a thing did make it seem like the atmosphere was on fire.
I don't know if I have mentioned this already, but I am very interested to see how Luna reacts to the antiwar movement and the hippies. Hell, it would be totally awesome if she endorses the movement. Nixon wouldn't like that one bit.
Strictly speaking, Buzz Aldrin is incorrect. Nobody's "proven" magic doesn't exist, you just prove that all known claims of magic are false and make the reasonable conclusion that after all those failed claims and not a single successful one, there's nothing there.
But I'm not saying you as the author need to change it: characters are not infallible.
4064837
I am more intersted to see when Luna is brought back to Equestria after spending years with the humans and maybe even bring a few with them. Celestia would not be sure if she should welcome her sister back or send her to a ward, especially spending a milinue with a species that wrote the book on inguinity, heroism, curoisty, parnoia/caution, war and stupidity.
Good update and can't wait to some more shock and awe on both sides.
Oh Luna... Have I told you lately that I love you? Luna... not you the writer... I was just quoting a song... Anyway, I love this chapter and I love Luna's outburst over the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thank you for brightening my mood this evening with the power of a good story.
THE PLOT IS REACHING CRITICAL MASS!
Poor Luna! That's something similar to telling a modern human that the most fundamental and automatically-perceptible force of nature - gravity - is an illusion (something that some modern theories suggest).
So, one very interesting thing has come to light. Luna being brought to our system appears to have been caused by an interaction of the quantum effects of one of the atomic bomb detonations in 1945 and some magical field that diverted her to the Moon. That means that magic is certainly some manner of quantum effect. This massively increases the chance that the scientists of Earth can ultimately duplicate these energies and, with Luna's tutelage, learn to control them. Not only does this promise a new technological epoch for Earth (with the attendant risk of super-weapons) but it it will also mean Luna can hypothetically get home if a Stargate-like application can be developed.
Now, I'm suddenly thinking that "The Stars Will Aid Her Escape" might, in this universe, refer to the stars on the NASA 'meatball' emblem. It would be slightly funny to see the expression on Celestia's face if Luna returns on a human magitech-powered starship.
4064465
I'm pretty sure that the first reaction of the more hawkish generals on both sides will be to try to build a magic/nuclear interaction bomb as an 'ultimate weapon of deterrence', which the same generals will then agitate continually to be allowed to use in some small-scale brushfire war like Vietnam or the Russia/China border squabbles of this era.
"Miss Nightbringer, the United States of America is not afraid to use all means at its disposal in order to protect its' freedoms from any threat!"
"What thou doest propose wouldst make thee the greatest threat thy people have ever known, thou great ninny!"
:)
This story is great! I wish it was longer. :)
So we accidentally nuked Luna's banishment? That could be really good, or really bad for Equestria and/or Earth, depending on what happened to the Nightmare en-route.
I'm hoping it got ditched deep in the void between worlds.
4066572
Luna said she could feel it inside her. Why have I got the feeling that it might jump ship after she gets to Earth and try to find a suitably psychotic and highly-placed human to use to further its ends? Earth has so many psychopaths in positions of political and military authority that it's really going to be spoilt for choice!
Hah! Science, bitch!
They've blinded me, WITH SCIENCE! Poor Luna, her whole understanding of the universe has been turned on its head, decapitated, turned into a smoothie, and is now being force-fed to her.
I enjoy the interludes more than the actual story
4066747
And there's one in particular that, at that moment in history, could be considered one of, if not the most powerful individual on the planet.
And no, he's not American.
This is assuming it comes up, of course. For all we know Luna has enough power to keep the thing locked up for the duration of her stay.
And Luna gets the mother of all shocks. No magic on Earth. And we have harnessed the Atom, to boot. Jaw hits ground, continues several hundred miles.
4068191
I do like that suggestion... but the time for that is far in the future. I'll keep it in mind, but it'll be a long while before we get to that point.
4068191 Aaand upvote this....
4066747 Suprise, suprise. Nightmare is actually Venom from the Marvel-verse
hummmm
How many nukes have we set off at that point? None of them interacted the wrong way?
And that's just the nukes. Meteors of that magnitude strike every ten years or so.
4095424 And there is only one other Marvel character willing to chase after it. One so brave, so powerful, so fearsome, that his name and presence makes people cry tears of slightly salty water for various reasons.
images.moviepilot-cdn.com/deadpool_icon___png_by_axeswy-d6alhm4-agents-of-s-h-i-e-l-d-ward-could-be-deadpool.png?width=1070&height=738
Are you calling Luna fat?!
Completely irrelevant, but I just saw a "Brony Mate"'thing with Luna on it. Weird.
Anyhoo, no magic?! DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUUUN THE SEQUEL!
(I just read what I wrote. I am really frickin' weird. But it's not like I didn't know that already )