So Long, and Thanks for All the Ponies

by Sir Ginger

Part 16- Heading Home

Understanding the scale of the universe is quite frankly not something one can do and still be a semi-functioning being. It is one subject upon which The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a correct policy; it must be trivialised for the sake of sanity. Even from a planet with a relatively clear atmosphere, thousands of galaxies fill the black spaces in the sky, invisible to all but the most advanced and patient telescopes. Every single pixel of even the most advanced picture of the sky at night actually shows an area of sky containing many hundreds of galaxies, so distant, and so mind-bogglingly old that trying to understand it is akin to attempting to turn one’s own brain inside out with psychic powers one does not possess.

The galaxy is generally considered the be-all and end-all of space, given that it takes an unreasonable number of lifetimes for even light (a rather speedy thing) to get anywhere. Knowing that it is but one of trillions in a galaxy cluster, itself only one of trillions of other clusters... It is for the best that most beings in the galaxy only understand, in a vague way, that the universe is a rather roomy place to be living in, and it certainly doesn’t need an extension any time soon.

On the Heart of Gold there are precisely two beings intelligent enough to have actually fully grasped the sheer size of the universe, and even then only as a mathematical concept. One of these is Marvin, who has taken to absolute self pity as a sort of defence mechanism against the world, rather like an old man scowling and hunching against the rain, whether it gets him less wet or not. The other is Discord, and he has reacted in a different way. He is, for all intents and purposes, utterly insane. He has decided (correctly enough, but we don’t think about that do we?), that a single life, or even a whole galaxy, simply doesn’t have any impact on a cosmic scale, and therefore doesn’t, technically speaking, matter in the slightest. Therefore, he reasons, why not make it into a game? If it is nothing, it might as well be a fun and unpredictable sort of nothing.

Discord is a being with a strange history, manifesting differently in each galaxy in whatever manner will seem strangest to the locals. He is born from the sea of absolute entropy in which the universe, with all its boring physical laws, floats like a soap bubble. As such, properly defeating Discord would be impossible. All that can be done is preventing his influence on a certain area, by in some manner imprisoning him magically. Equestria, that little island on which some beings look with jealousy, is one such world.

*

Discord had been standing there, tapping one foot for some minutes now. He looked up, startled.
“Ah, sounds like the opening narration’s over.” He winked at Pinkie Pie, who only harumphed loudly through her gag.
“But this leaves me with the question of what to do with you, I’m wasting time here, and quite frankly I’m bored of you lot. Oh, except for you Zaphod, you’ve been doing a wonderful of job of bickering with these ponies on occasion, it’s quite livened this whole thing up for me. As a reward...” He hummed to himself, and began snapping his fingers as he paced. With each snap, an image formed. “Gold?” Snap. “Alcohol?” Snap. “A planet or two?” Snap. He paused “Orrr... perhaps friendship?” He tittered to himself. “Yes, my reward to you is that I will allow you to stay with your new little friends! They are all so cute aren’t they?”

He tickled a furious looking Applejack under the chin, and neatly dodged the answering kick by separating himself into two pieces at the middle with a pop. He pulled his lower half back up to meet his upper half with the air of a man straightening his belt, and continued.
“As for the rest of you, why, I’m going to send you back home! Isn’t that just lovely of me?”
The expressions of the assembled ponies, which had previously ranged from hatred to annoyance to outright terror became ones of confusion.
Discord laughed again. “You don’t think I’m actually evil or anything do you?” He stared around.
He took on an offended expression. “Oh dear, I hope you never read malice into my actions?”
Twilight finally loosened her gag enough to speak.
“You’re saying you aren’t evil?”
“Oh heavens no. Of course I am. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be offended by you all thinking that.” He pouted, which his face was actually rather well built for. “But frankly, my little ponies, I’ve wasted too much time here. So long, sayanora, and fare-thee-well!” He winked out of existence. So too did the bindings around everypony present’s mouth.

It was Applejack who broke the silence with an extremely pertinent question.
“What did he mean? He said he was goin’ to send us home!”

*

Outside the ship, Discord fastened the boots onto his mismatched feet. He began doing stretches, shaking himself out. He backed up several paces in deep space and regarded the ship with a professional eye. He clenched his hands together and half squatted as he eyed some distant point. Any watcher might have observed his size in relation to the ship increasing rapidly. They might also have noticed, had they been in possession of sufficiently accurate star charts, that he was staring directly at where the world of Equestria would be. He backed up a few more paces, spat, and began the charge. As he came up to the ship, he swung his foot with perfect precision. It collided with the ship without a sound, the emptiness of space killing the potential drama of noise. For reader satisfaction reasons, an audio transcription of the sound it really ought to have made is included below.

KRAAAANNGGGGWHooooooiiiiiiiish!

Discord shielded his eyes and stared after the white dot that diminished to a point and then vanished into the void.

He had been telling the truth, he was just sending them home. Whether they survived the impact or not was none of his concern. He had some chaos to spread.

*

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz is fairly typical of his species. He liked nothing so much as bureaucracy, except possibly for getting angry and killing things. This is not to say he was actually evil per se, he would not for example kill for no reason at all. What he would do was be very happy when a good excuse to kill arose. He fingered the pistol in his hand, and stared at the report he held in the other hand. It said something about a job he had done, a job he had been fairly sure of doing. The report said he hadn’t done it, and the smoking hole in the messenger vogon was his rebuttal to the accusation. But looking closer at the report, he found himself unable to deny the evidence.

It was a small video sheet, depicting a portion of space. He hit play again, and watched as a planet disappeared in a cloud of burning rubble, and the fleet of ships, six hundred or so of them, peeled away from the formation they had held.

Then came the interesting bit. He watched as two lights delicately traced the outlines of a world, which grew in detail and size second by second. He glared moodily as small celestial bodies formed in the planet’s sky, and the image settled, displaying more or less the same scene as had been at the start. He grumpily dropped the report, which fell and broke in a satisfying manner.
“Computer?”
“Yes Captain?” A nervous trilling voice answered.
“Show me demolition order 10102010.”
“At once Captain!”
“DON’T ANSWER BACK!”
“Sorry Captain!”
A representation of the order flashed on screen. It was several million pages long, red tape being a highly valued commodity to vogons.
“Scroll through to the actual mission statement.”
A few lines appeared on the screen. Jeltz read them aloud.
“Clearance of all significant planetary bodies on the planned route for Hyperspace express-route 4573-B in galactic sector ZZ9 Plural Z alpha(cancelled)” He mused. “Computer?”
“Yes captain?”
“Plot a course for that planet, we’ll see if we can’t do it properly this time!”
“At once captain!”

It is worth noting that the mere fact of the route being cancelled was not sufficient reason to cancel the job without a few more months of bureaucratic wrangling. If a summary were ever required for a vogon’s basic thought process, this would be an excellent start.

Jeltz sat back in his chair. He was beginning to regret having all of his crew shot in the past hour or so since receiving the message. He vaguely wondered if there wasn’t a cleaner or somebody left alive that he could yell at for a while. It was then that something happened. He felt a tickling sensation on the top of his nose. He raised his eyes to see what was causing the disturbance. There was nothing there. Then he felt a tickle on his right arm, and he slapped the place. His only reward was the very definite sensation of having his nose tweaked by some unseen hand. He gave a bellow of fury and stood up, only to feel the gentlest shove in his back, causing him to pitch forward and collide heavily with the floor. Jeltz was surprised. He wasn’t used to being made angry by something that wasn’t doing its very best to not make him angry. This thing, whatever it was, was being actually antagonistic. He stood up, and turned around. There was nothing there. He pulled out his gun and began shooting things anyway, reasoning that he might as well. It was then that a voice spoke in his ear.
“Why hello there Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, lovely day isn’t it?”
Jeltz whipped around. Well, perhaps whipped is the wrong word. He did his best to whip but vogons are built more for shuffling than anything. A few seconds later he came face to face with a figure very slightly taller than himself. A gaunt long face, with eyes glittering with the light of true insanity staring right into his own. He began pulling the trigger on basic principle, to no apparent effect. Discord wafted back, a grin stretching his face.
“How marvelous, a true vogon, predictable as ever. Right on the shooting. I can respect that.” He dropped to stand on the ground. Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz saw that the gun was having no effect, but continued firing out of spiteful stubbornness. Discord yawned, and began strolling about the room. He picked with obvious distaste at the remains of a large gem-encrusted crab on the floor, his body still being strobed by blasts of energy. Then he turned and look at Jeltz, just as the vogon stopped to reload.

In a flash, Discord was locked face to face with the vogon. “Isn’t it sad in its own way Jeltz? Isn’t it sad to keep on destroying, never actually getting anything done? Isn’t that whole attitude a bit BORING? All you vogons do, it’s so efficient, so ordered, so dull and miserable. Let’s put a smile on that face!” His eyes seemed to turn themselves inside out, and spirals emerged from within them, to be overturned by other spirals. Jeltz glared into them with stubborn dislike for several seconds. Then he felt a twinge of something. He felt his own eyes doing strange things, and all that was left was a voice. “Throw it all away Jeltzey. Throw it all away.” It was barely a whisper, but it filled his whole mind. “Make your own way Jeltzey, all this obeying orders isn’t for you is it? Throw it all away.”

Yes.
That did seem to make sense. It was funny he had never noticed it before.
Throw it all away.

Discord looked with satisfaction as the vogon, eyes still doing those odd spirals, sat down in the chair. It was going to be fun seeing what happened with a fleet of vogons going around the galaxy at the whims of a vogon with most of his major personality traits thoroughly messed with. It would be very interesting to see precisely what the good captain would do.

He supposed he would go and mess with the rest of the fleet for a while, then maybe go and do something with the Imperial Galactic Senate. They could always do with a shaking up.

*

Aboard the starship Heart of Gold, nothing was working.
“Nothing’s working!” said Zaphod.
The engines wouldn’t respond, and the drive was as dead as humans seemed to think the dodo was.
“The engines won’t respond, and the drive is dead!”
It was increasingly clear that our heroes were utterly doomed.
“I suppose we are utterly doomed are we?” Marvin had joined them on the bridge, sensing the opportunity for a good bit of doom and gloom.
Zaphod threw up his hooves in frustration and abandoned the console.
“Zark! I can’t believe it! Eddie?”
“Yeah buddy?”
“What’s going on?”
“Well, we are currently travelling at approximately 198R towards the planet Earth, to be precise, the land of Equestria. And to be even more precise, the town of Ponyville!”

R is a velocity measure, with 1R representing about the right speed to be going to get to a destination safely, but roughly on time. Its invention and subsequent use on all vehicles has become very convenient for the consumer, if inconvenient for anyone wishing to know how fast one is actually going. As such 198R is not a specific velocity; it is, however, clearly far too fast.

“Why won’t anything work Eddie?”
“That friend of yours from before went through and broke all the fuel lines!”
“Belgium!”
Twilight rounded on Zaphod. “We can’t do anything?”
“I can't think of anything to do! I usually have ponies to do that for me!”
Twilight turned to her friend. “Pinkie? What can we do?”

Pinkie Pie was sitting in a relaxed manner on one of the sofas.
“Oh, nothing really. So you should calm down.”
“Calm down? When there’s nothing we can do?”
“Sounds like a good reason to calm down to me. You’re so silly, you should only be stressed when you can actually DO something.” She hummed to herself in the face of several aghast ponies.
“Look, either we get saved somehow, or we don’t. Simple as that. Want a cupcake?”
“There must be something I can do!”
“Nope, nothing, I already thought of everything.”
“AHA!” Twilight sat up, a small illusory light bulb appearing for a moment above her horn from triumph. “I’ve got it! I just have to wait until we are really close to Equestria, then begin teleporting you all down in little groups! It’s easy!”
“Twilight?”
“Yes? Isn’t it brilliant?”
“What happens when you teleport? Does your momentum change?”
“Well no, but I don’t see.... oh.” The image appeared in Twilight’s mind. Of course momentum was conserved. That was why you didn’t suddenly get left behind as the planet beneath you continued moving. Whatever direction, whatever speed you were travelling, it stayed exactly the same. And if you were travelling fast enough...
“OH.”
“Yeah.” Pinkie said, wincing. “Not pretty. This isn’t my first time. Just sit back, relax, and hope really hard if you think it will help!”

Comments

[Bloodpool]

"Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz saw that the gun was having no effect, but continued firing out of spiteful stubbornness."
You really have got the vogons dialed in, haven't you author?

[Alphaetus_Prime]

I swear, it feels like you are channeling Douglas Adams himself. This is what H2G2 would be if a pony version of Douglas Adams wrote it in Equestria.

[bookplayer]

I only begged for more two days ago, and then this shows up! If my special talent is getting awesome fanfic to update, I'm really okay with that. Not sure what the cutie mark would look like, though.

Amazing once again. Thank you for writing such a fantastic story.

[Steel Resolve]

Thank you so much for bringing this awesome to fimfiction!

[Masterofgames]

I predict the invention of many, many new forms to be filled out in increasingly unlikely situations coming from that vogon. He will also get a promotion out of it, because really, what if something the new forms were for DID happen? They wouldn't have any paperwork or propper procedure for it! Of course, first he would have to invent, and fill out, the form authorizing a vogon to do whatever the heck he wants in the event that a cosmic entity brainwashes him after said cosmic being has been shot with a full ammo clip from a standard issue personal sidearm. Said cosmic entity will also be billed for the cost of said ammo clip.

[paul]

482555
+100500

[Azure Beat]

You get 6/5 Twilights

[nemryn]

482555
I know, right? He's doing a really good job of keeping the feel of the Guide, without just repeating all the jokes.

[Twifight Sparkill]

Hooray? Yes, very much so! Hooray is correct!

After loathing Google docs and now enjoying the more palatable FiMFiction, i'm very happy that EqD noted an alternative posting of this wonderful series AND it's being located here!

I am also equally annoyed at myself for never looking to see if this story was ever here to begin with.

Guess I'll give myself a break, relax, and just enjoy the read. Mm?

[dragozon]

Interesting. If teleportation conserves only momentum, you'd still get left behind, as the planet keeps moving during the teleport (it does not appear to be instantaneous). As a consequence, teleportation spells would require one to keep moving during the teleport itself. Furthermore, they'd also have to account for gravity and other forces, for without them the teleportee would continue in a straight line, shooting off into space (or the center of the planet) due to the curved path a planet follows.
Which begs the question: When and how does the actual translocation occur?

Sorry, I couldn't help it

[James Washburn]

Unrelated point, but possibly symbolic. The theme tune for the TV show of Hitchhiker's Guide dubs perfectly over the intro to MLP. Sorry it's not related to the fic, but it's a fact that brings me joy.

[Sir Ginger]

482699

Wow, I am not going in this direction, but I almost wish I was... I admit that would be hilarious.

498674
Teleportartion is also instantaneous, it takes an infinitely small amount of time. This means the planet is still, for your purposes, in the same place.

That's the hand wave I literally just thought up.

499069
Mashup vid please? Or Am I going to have to attempt to do business with youtube doubler?

[Sir Ginger]

485410
MWAHAHAHAHAHA

[Sir Ginger]

499069
I did the deed... and holy crap it fitted well.

[James Washburn]

528594
That's none too remarkable, it turns out. I've got a vast list of songs you can put over the intro that work perfectly.

[Silver Streak1]

482576 The cutie mark would be you on your knees begging some random author

[GordonFreebrony]

Slight nitpick here:
Discord isn't evil. He can't be evil. Neither can he be good. He can act evil, sure. And act good. His actions could be construed as good or evil, but, being the embodiment of chaos, he cannot be evil because that means when presented with two options, he would always choose the evil one.

He's like Q. (Well, he IS Q, but that's another story) Q is not evil, not good, he just has an unimaginable amount of power and uses it like a child, for his own amusement. Which is precisely what Discord does. Unless he doesn't. Because he is chaos, therefore the most likely thing for him to do would be to do the thing least likely for him to do.

There is a reason you made him the Infinite Improbability Drive im assuming.

Now I won't say this is a story breaking point for me because it is not. You still characterized discord well, despite my gripes. And the rest of the story is very froody, so you've done a great job. I just don't like the 'Evil Discord' approach so many authors take.

Discord is Chaotic Nuetral. Like Celestial is lawful good, and Tirek is chaotic evil.
Somber would be evil, chrysalis lawful evil, twilight good, pinkie pie chaotic good, etc.

[Draco Dei]

482576
942809
I was thinking of a buggy whip above a writing quill, but this works too.

500057
I don't get it... θηΓ ? Huh?