Luna seems to sense your feelings, because again she avoids looking at you. Can she read your thoughts? You choose to proceed on the assumption that she can’t, lest you be paralyzed and unable to act. Only a flame of white-hot anger for your vanished brothers and sisters enables you the courage to speak with such confidence to a being obviously vastly beyond your power and intelligence. If Luna wanted, you know the magic she wields could sweep you away like dew before the sun. You don’t care. If you were silent now, you could never face your fellow man. You could never face yourself again.
“You had no right!” Your mother and sister’s faces seem to shine in your memory. “You told us first, and your first choice wasn’t to interfere with us. I appreciate that… ‘Saving’ us with this spell was a noble thing to do, but you had no right to make the decision to use it for us!”
You don’t know their reasoning for not contacting humanity again with their intentions. Fear for what might happen to society? Obedience to the requests of Earth governments? Sloth? Frankly, you don’t care. “That was wrong.” It’s not what bothers you most, though. “Why couldn’t you just change us so we could survive around magic? If your race is powerful enough to change a whole planet at once, making such a minor change to an existing species should be easy!”
Luna meets your eyes, and you see her pain burning there. “I’m sorry, Lonely Day. What you suggest was our first hope. It would have required hundreds, perhaps thousands of willing human volunteers. It might not have ever been possible; we still don’t understand how your kind created magic, while we and all other forms of life depend on it. Yet the bodies of ponies and other Equestrian creatures we knew well. Perhaps with a hundred or a thousand years of study we might have made such a spell; we only had a few.”
You stew on this for some time, thinking. You know nothing about how such a powerful spell is made, or anything about spells at all besides Joseph’s levitation. Luna’s words ring honest to you; you do not believe she is the sort of pony to lie. After all the damning things she’s told you, you have good reason to think so. She could have easily sterilized pony influence from her story if she wanted, and she hasn’t. That trust does not extend to telling her about the HPI, however. Somehow, you still think doing that would be a betrayal. Let their existence remain a secret.
You sit down on your haunches, staring down at the floor. You find your anger rapidly waning away, replaced with a gnawing pit of hopelessness. The usual self-loathing is there stronger than ever. Luna’s explanation about matching souls to bodies cuts almost deeper than humanity’s “inevitable” extinction. Why were you, of all things, a young earth pony mare? Of all the bodies you could’ve had, that probably would’ve been your last choice.
“Whatever the reason… what you’ve done amounts to exterminating our civilization. Even if the people ultimately survive, the society we built will die. All we accomplished will fade into distant history. Even if the other survivors and I succeed, even if we manage not to starve, humanity as we knew it is gone. Fifty thousand years of crawling down from the trees and out of the dust, and you erased us without even asking!”
All your screaming will be for nothing though, unless: “Can you reverse it? This spell you’ve made… can you stop it?”
Luna shakes her head. “The spell already ran its course, Day. In the instant magic reached your world at last, it ran to completion and faded away. There is nothing to stop. Your people have, by great majority, been sent into the future, and not even Celestia or I could predict when any individual will arrive. A spell to bring them all back would be impossible. Likewise, the transformation was universal. As any human left behind would’ve been slain, we could not leave any out.”
You don’t correct her. It’s easy to cover up that lie of omission with plenty of anger. “What about as individuals? Could you change us back? Could you make me human again? All of us?”
She seems reluctant to answer, turning her eyes away again, and up at the stars. “Yes,” she eventually admits. “Easily.” You open your mouth to speak, but she preempts you. “However, the spell would mean certain death for anyone subjected to it. Transformation is a difficult, intensive process. It saturates the entire body with powerful magic, and strains each and every tissue. You would return to your human form only to suffer the same death every human exposed to magic has suffered before you.”
She reaches out, trying to rest a wing protectively on your shoulder again. This time you pull away in revulsion, glaring at her with all the impotent rage in your soul. She touched you. “I am sorry, Alex. I am sorry if you hate Equestria for what we have done to you. I accept that hatred freely, as this conversation would not have changed our actions. We could not stand by and allow a life like yours to be extinguished. Even if you find the necessary transformation detestable, even if you loathe Equestria for all eternity, we would still have chosen to save you. We could not have lived with ourselves otherwise. It is against our nature to witness the suffering of others and do nothing. This is the Equestrian way. Had we not acted, your species would've died a painful, universal death.”
“If it is any consolation, you will not have to loathe us much longer. It may be eons before our worlds touch again. In all likelihood, it won’t be in your lifetime, or your foals, or theirs, many times over.” She pauses, sitting down on her haunches where you were moments ago. The gesture is far more elegant from her, like a great ancient Sphinx more than a baby horse, which is how you look whenever you try anything.
“I hope, at least, that your hatred will be forgotten by then.” She sighs, and you hear the weariness in it. It’s the sound of mountains wearing away to dust, of stars growing cold in their orbits. The entropy of the universe itself. “So many ponies, when they learned about you, were thrilled by the prospect of friendship with your world. Perhaps their distant grandfoals might realize that promise still.”
Your anger has entirely drained away by then, and only hopelessness is left in its place. You collapse to the ground again, not far away from Luna. “I guess… I guess there really isn’t a way.”
Not for Equestrians, anyway. There is still hope. You’ll be traveling back with a vast library of magical knowledge. Maybe, in time, transformed human unicorns will grow skilled enough to work magic as Equestrians do. Perhaps they might learn to create a human body that can survive in magic, in close cooperation with the HPI and their settlers. Humans arriving from the past as ponies might be restored to their proper bodies then, and Earth’s forests might again see the unprotected feet of their first steward that had ever dared to dream.
But that dream was not one you wanted to share with Princess Luna. Either she could see your thoughts or she couldn’t, but you didn’t trust her completely. You had no doubt that, with the limits of magic now removed, she could easily track down and exterminate the few beleaguered humans if she wanted to. Even if you never imagined she really would, you would not risk their safety. They were your brothers and sisters, not her. No transformation would tell you different.
Even if that one day happened, it was true that human civilization as you had always known it would still be gone. Luna and the Equestrians had sacrificed it to preserve the lives of humans themselves. No amount of rage could reverse the spell. “What… The worst part of all of this is what’s going to be lost. The more time passes, the fewer resources will be available for a new pony just arriving from the past. My little community had basically unlimited food. A thousand years from now, there won’t be anything edible left made by human hands. It’ll all be dust.”
“Sure, ponies can eat grass. Maybe less of them would starve than would have… but lots of us will still die. And even if we don’t, our culture will. Nobody’s going to be thinking about art or the moon landing when they’re freezing to death and eating weeds and running from wolves. You’ve erased us, Princess Luna. The human legacy is gone, and nobody will survive to remember it.” Again, you don't mention the HPI, though you don't really count them either. With most people living as ponies on the outside, their lives are more like the last echos of a dream.
Luna is quiet for a long time. “We have considered the first problem. When this conversation is over, I’ll explain some of the solutions we had discussed. But before that…” She rises to her hooves, fixing you with those intense eyes. You’re grateful she’s not asking about humans, because you could never lie while under pressure like this. “Why do you let this burden trouble you, Lonely Day? You’re young, at the very beginning of life, and the weight of preserving the human legacy is not yours alone. Can’t you be content with all the other ponies in the world, and know that some of them will share your desire? I fear for your future if you allow it to consume your thoughts this way.”
It takes you several seconds to get the confidence to speak, and to put together words that are both correct and entirely honest. You can’t force anything else out between your lips when under such intense scrutiny from such a powerful pony. “I’m sure if those others were here, they’d say so too. But you wanted to talk to a pony from Earth. You wanted to know what we would think. This is it; we always counted on being remembered. Now it seems we’ve been damned, erased, and will soon be forgotten. Worse, there’s nothing we can do.”
Princess Luna looks away then, pacing around you in a wide circle. You’re not sure what she’s looking for, but you try to stand tall. Your anger is spent, and your determination is vastly running out. You’ve said your piece. Now you’ll face the consequences. Like Luna, you would not have done this any other way. You feel something in that moment, though you couldn't say what. A brief surge of understanding, of contentment, of the sense that your place in the cosmic scheme is finally clear. They will not be forgotten.
“Perhaps. There are no others here, no others to serve. There is no time. Since your arrival here, other servants of mine on your planet have brought other ponies here. None met my requirements to be Equestria's envoy. Some have even elected to stay.” She sighs, but it’s more amused than sad this time. “Our engineers could not be more thrilled. Still, of all those who will return, I would trust this burden to no other pony.” Her eyes narrow. “Lonely Day, are you willing to sacrifice your life to see that your people are remembered?”
You nod, without hesitation. You don’t even blink against the force of those eyes.
“Then perhaps, something can be done.” She gestures with one wing, striding briskly towards the door. “Come with me, my little pony. We must speak with my elder sister. There is much we must accomplish before you must return, and very little time to see it done.”
Well, I had fun making the images for today. I'll just say that.
((There's only one of those, it's just a different color each chapter.))
Glorious!
*Cue Alex's Alicorn transformation*
Outstanding. SUDDENLY ANSWERS, HUNDREDS OF THEM. And not a one that was expected (well, maybe one, but it pales in comparison to all the bombshells dropped by moonbutt).
Bravo!
Welp...
After reading this far.... All I got to say to the ponies...
*Ahem*
F*** You...
Years of blood, sweat, tears for human achievements... Went flushed down the drain...
Getting the feeling like one of those T.C.B. moments.... Even if you guys said is not.
...Holly hell, that is the dumbest plan I've ever heard.
It's not like a whole society could have worked together to retool things, or anything! Like Alex did on his lone-some while being a freaking earth pony!
If it makes it any better, I have no trouble at all excepting that ponies are less clever and cunning than humans in this universe after hearing this. I mean, just... ugh.
At least Alex got as pissed as I felt on hearing that explanation. Small favors.
The name says man, but the subtext screams mare. More fuel then for Oliver Day ship. though of course my Daylestia theory is dead, earth could still be the distant pay off Equestria.
6163932
This is actually pretty tame. I think like Starscribe I've read almost all the comments on here, and there have been far worse things said about things in ways that just sound jerkish beyond all measure when it came to disagreeing with what's happening. Yours isn't like that. So I don't think it deserves downvotes as much as you think.
6163982
Same crystal, different color.
Well damn, talk about exposition bomb...
Also I guess Alex was a dude then... huh...
Also fucking calling it now. Alicorn. Alicorn, make it happen, Star. Make it happen.
6163935 Alex's anger is understandable, given the circumstances. But at the same time, I'm not sure if there was much else that the ponies could've done.
If I didn't misunderstand anything Luna said, it looks like it became a toss-up between humanity's total annihilation via cosmic magic or humanity's erasure via ponification. Ponies chose to give them a hard life over certain death, and I don't think we can really blame them for that. Given that humanity had cut off ties, the ponies had no idea that humans had already developed a form of shielding, so that's probably why it never factored into their decision.
...Well, now I have no idea what to expect.
Lack of magic is as lethal to ponies as magic is lethal to humans... (what about Sunset then?)
The HPI...
The HPI... humanity have four years left.
Saved the world or destroyed it? Best effort or destruction of a civilization?
Luna, I don't think Alex knows about Discord.
Congratularions Starscribe. I like how the whole scenario is setup as I can truly believe the Princesses/Equestria/Luna is honestly doing the best they can.
Lonely Day "sacrifying her life" yet "returning"? I wonder what does that mean...
6163945 Sadly, and it really is one. Given time, the energy available, and heck, even curiously. None though to check again on a world so close, that no other world was an option? Really?
Im going to say this, these ponies are complete idiots. So used to being and thinking with the blinders on that anything else, is but a passing dream.
This just... Gah! Okay, muse time, because darnit, this needs a shaming song for the level of awful.
Why keep only 1/1,000,000 of the humans to start? Why not 1/1,000?
Lonely Day is being kind of stupid.
What does she MEAN, "human civilization is dead?" Former humans--- ponies with all the memories of human civilization, living time capsules--- will be spontaneously appearing on Earth on a regular basis over the next THOUSAND YEARS. It would be like getting scholars from the Library of Alexandria showing up every few years in the local college. Anything lost to time will be brought back--- culture, and knowledge--- WITH them. And constantly updated, to boot.
Come ON already, kid, THINK!
6164046 To be fair, the memory crystals show Lonely Day caught up in a pretty emotional moment on top of having to absorb a truckload of information, so I think she can be forgiven for not thinking things through immediately. The next journal entry would probably show her coming round to the idea that it's not the complete end of humanity.
6164046
The vast, vast, vast majority of knowledge, culture, and art... is external. People have not memorized books, plays, any electronic entertainment. Artwork? Historical records? There are many, many things that took a group effort to create, that are beyond the limitations of a single person to reproduce, like any advanced piece of code.
Will anything digitized remain? If all the humans were transformed at once, and not spread out through time, there would be deaths, yes, but there would be those left behind to make copies of data, and have the means to do so. Cities would have survived. Things would have survived, been maintained and then replaced in time.
What this is, ultimately, is the modern equivalent to burning the Library of Alexandria, but hey, the people survived so that's all that matters according to the Princesses. They have placed no value on the culture, instead treating the saving of lives as more important than the saving of knowledge.
Which is the complete opposite of what we value. People praise all the works that were copies and recopied for centuries in monasteries from the age of antiquity, to survive the Dark Ages. Now literally the only chance of that is the HPI, which the Equestrians don't even know about.
6164046 Lonely Day's emotions are running high. It makes sense she may not think of everything at the moment.
6164012 I'm willing to believe Luna looked for more worlds where to relocate humanity but didn't find anything useful, after all Earth is the single case detected of a world where lifeforms didn't need magic to survive. However, what would have served for even if they had foind one? Any manner of communication or transport via magic would have been lethal to humans.
6164012 It... wouldn't work. Why?
Seven billion ponies, stampeding in panic and terror.
Alone, individually, people in a crisis are forced to think, get a grip on themselves.
In crowds of hundreds and thousands, mass hysteria sets in. Millions would have died worldwide in the panicked riots that ensued. Millions more would have died of disease, starvation, and injury afterword--- not to mention panicked unicorns firing off random spells, pegasi accidentally inducing storms and tornadoes, earth ponies forgetting their strength at a critical moment.... and just countless ponies blundering blindly down stairs or the like.
6164082
Happens all the time with immigrants on Earth. That it happens to aliens is an amusing twist.
6164006
By "Saving" them is to turn humans into ponies and have to wait until they come back to earth when they are ready?
...
I still smell something fishy.
Oh course, I can understand that the ponies want to help the humans... But removing their identity and replacing it with a pony mask...
Almost seem to me as a way for Equestria to gain a new planet and new subjects as well.
Cause when the Human-turn-ponies come back to earth, Human culture will be replaced by pony culture and only the ponies. That's it.
This is pretty much a more... "Humane" version of the T.C.B. ... And Humanity didn't even throw a punch back...
Also to note: Equs. Ponies don't know the hardship humans have to go through when ponies got everything they want on a golden platter.
First, I spotted a couple of spelling mistakes. In the last chapter (part 2) there was a 'from' spelt 'bfrom' - a typo, obviously, but I can't get the exact part. Do a ctrl+f. In this chapter, there was:
Shouldn't that be 'piece'?
Well, anyway, your answers were just as good as I thought they'd be. You're a pretty good writer, certainly one of the best I've seen on FimFiction (not that I read loads here, that is). I can't wait to read on!
Bomb. Shell. Has dropped.
6163885 I jumped a little when I saw it glow.
The path ahead is not an easy one but, then again, when is a worthwhile path easy? Alex needs to forget his/her anger and resentment and realise that the Equestrians have done what little they were able to do to minimise the harm of what happened here. Is it ideal? No. Is it perfect? Certainly not. What it is, despite that, is a chance to survive, prosper and, ultimately rebuild.
The explanation about the supermassive black holes releasing massive magical outbursts like thaumic quasars was interesting and one wonders if, far, far in the past, something similar happened in the Equestrians' own universe.
What I find interesting here is that this is a less morally repugnant version of The Conversion Bureau. Instead of a chauvinistic, psychotic racist genocide, it is a desperate and somewhat-rushed attempt to somehow avert just that outcome.
6164080 One can only hope. I do, if it was, "Here's how you are going to die with proof." with the after of "And we cant do anything that wont end up killing you. Good luck..." thats just, yeah, an immortal going to shrug and watch another civilization bite the bullet because they could.
Still, thank you for the comment and to hope there is some more clarification here.
6164109
Not all TCB stories are the same. There are a few universes that have a similar "magic is coming and nothing can stop it, Equestrians only want to help in the very limited time remaining" scenarios. The cloudyverse TCB is one such example with minimal misanthropy. No death from magical advancing barriers, the entire universe itself will eject the planet into another universe because magic is considered a disease, and the entire planet has to go to protect the universe even though it was only a tiny part that got magic from First Contact.
Did... did a certain somepony just earn their cutie mark?
6164084 But in the end more would have survived. Sure the would be a hell of a population drop but after the panic had settled people would have mobilized. LA wouldn't have burned...
6164079 And this is the big crux of everything, humanity is gone. The history, the legends, everything, most likely in places and means that none can truly get to in culture, history, knowledge, what matters to us as a society more than anything. We fought, from the earliest days, in a world that could easily be to ponies a death world. Day in and out, and made it work.
The greatest among us, now, is but a cosmic speck of dust because the universe decided to break wind. History in a way, is our immortality, our best, and our worst of immortality. But it something we all intrinsically value at our core. To hear, that nothing was really done from their side, but to accept it passively. that kinda thing would bring untold rage in so many folks. That alex keeps such from blasting out, is a testament to the character 'he' has.
Time may mend all wounds for an immortal, and the deepest ones never truly heal. But such casualness just rankles all the same. It's expected, that not connection, so that passing doesn't sting, doesn't wound. But Even luna whom you see here to valuing her own history is very willing not to seem to pass that understanding of what it would mean to another culture in its loss. Not at least in how it comes across.
Still. You nailed the real argument here, and hope more can see that.
6164046
Have you seen how all the ponified humans act? Cloudy Sky especially, but the other ones too. Remember when they made their long-term plans, which included becoming human again? Noone really seemed to care all that much about that point apart from Day. See, I don't think this transformation is just a change of body, it affects the mind as well for most of them. They all, not just Cloudy Sky, adjusted unbelievably fast to their change; they're all somewhat spacey (remember Sky's diary entry?) and detached from reality - innocent in a way like ponies in Equestria are. Even the ones we haven't actually seen, those who were brought before Luna before chose to live in Equestria over Earth. When they saw humans, they fled or even attacked. Alex seems to be the exception to the rule, she wasn't changed that much or perhaps more likely, she actively fought against it. She's the only one apart from the HPI who ever showed any vested interest in bringing humanity back as it was in this story.
If those who come back from the past will be like that - and most of them will be - humanity will be forgotten, even by those who were human themselves. They'll adjust so quickly they won't even get into researching a spell to create some sort of magical human being that doesn't die horribly from being human or find some other solution to bring humanity back. Earth is a pony planet now.
Forget the HPI and ponies like Alex, they don't have the numbers to bring humanity back.
On another note, I'm disappointed that Alex didn't bring Moriah's accident up with Luna. Moriah was flying an airplane as a human, when whoosh, she's whisked away into some nirvana out of time and brought back as a pony with next to no means to control her plane. She nearly died because of Luna's spell. She's not going to be the only one who will be brought back in such a critical situation, there will be casualties because that spell is just plain unsafe.
Also, how did the spell manage to bring her airplane into the future along with her? Does the plane have a soul, too? Why wasn't it transformed into a being in line with its soul, like a pegasus or some magical kinda airplane or something? I mean, I get that it would've been bad for the story if she just reappeared without her plane and just fell to her death, but this is a plot hole.
6163945
I don't fault the transformations. I fault the time-spread of the vast, vast, majority of humans. Even leaving behind 50 million people out of seven billion would have been preferable. Not there is... probably less than 28000 in the entire world. And some of them will die to things that could have been prevented. And many others when brought to Equestria would choose to remain rather than suffer in isolation that the current Earth represents.
And 10,000 years?! They think it will take 10,000 years to recover?! That's some serious bullshit assumptions, they really don't think much of humans, or even their own ponies.
And the ones who remains are those who are most likely to deal with the situation? Considering WHO remains so far, and Moriah's attitude (and breaking of her horn) when she appeared a month later, that doesn't bode well for the future entries at all!
(It does allow for survivalists to be the ones who appear early on though, merely because they had the correct attitude. )
"Now Alex"
begins Luna
"To save all human civilization we have to scoop out your brains and smear them on these magic pages and post them on the internet in a daily format. We'll call it the Last Pony On Earth. It's the only way to truly make a record and save what you where."
6164084
Billions, more likely. It would have been a global catastrophe, but probably human society would have survived. The cities wouldn't have burned, the servers would have been maintained, at least some of them. Which I'm guessing is the issue; the choice was between turning all the humans into ponies at once, which would have meant billions of deaths but a continuation of something like human society, vs spacing them out over ten thousand years, saving most of them but replacing human society with something like Equestria. Alex apparently disagrees with the choice, or at least that the choice was made for them instead of by them.
6164084 That is indeed correct. Also did Alex/Day forget about our monuments? The Pyramids, great wall, mount rushmore and so forth that have and can stand the test of time for a long while unless something actually erodes or destroys it. And i don't think they would actually lose all of human culture.
6164082
Yeah, ignoring that request can be seen as pretty arrogant. But I'm not sure if we can attach any other moral reprehensibility beyond that. Given how easy ponies have it in Equestria compared to humans on earth, it's likely that they'll value survival far above pride in that situation, and so acted according to their beliefs.
Unfortunately, this is pretty much what happens when a nation with greater means encounters another one in dire straits. Effort means nothing when one is objectively superior, which was the case with this story when it came to the magical armageddon.
6164095
Luna mentioned that the planets are drifting apart soon. I don't think they stand to gain much until the next time the planets align. Even then, hundreds or thousands of years plus the reappearance of displaced human-turned-ponies seems like a reasonable combination for cultural deviation. Unless ponies are willing to forcibly subjugate them, the next meeting could very well be a stand-off if Earthlings still harboured resentment.
At the very least, this one's set in motion due to an amoral cosmic event instead of ponies judging humans as too evil for continued existence. Humanity didn't throw a punch back because... well, they didn't see it coming and had little time to prepare. And even if the survivors do want to throw punches, they'd have a choice between punching the ones who tried to save them, or the universe itself, which would be pointless.
Sadly, the universe and natural selection don't care how much hardship humans have endured compared to ponies. Humans were unfit for surviving magic whilst the ponies thrived on it, and so ponies got the upper hoof.
Hmmmm.. Interesting explanation, and interesting, if terrible solution. Perhaps necessary, but still terrible.
I sorta suspected something like this when Moira showed up so abruptly, but I thought maybe it was a delayed arrival due to altitude or distance or something.
If humanity is going to return.. ponified.. slowly over thousands of years... It's gonna be a BIG old mess. I don't think the death toll would be as bad as converting everyone all at once... But still pretyt bad.
How many millions of people were driving when they the event happened? Flying in airplanes? Living on the upper stories of buildings?? What happens when they return in 200 years? 500? 1000? The buildings will be gone. The roads will be gone. The landscape itself may be changed.
And imagine you're a pony in the future. you JUUUUST finished your lovely new house... when a car apepars and plows into it. Or a 747 full of screaming ponies falls from the sky onto it. Talk about random disasters!
Not to mention how this will split families apart. "I'm sorry ma'am, but your child may not appear for thousands of years." Or worse "Sorry ma'am, but your child appeared 100 years ago and is long dead." What a mess!
6164204
Knowledge survived the burning of the Library of Alexandria. But untold amount of information was also lost. We have lists, which are works that great minds of antiquity reference as the best things they have ever read or built on, that no copy of the works themselves exist. We know just enough to know how much we have lost.
And that will be true here, as well. The humans who appear near the 10,000 year mark in the future, even if they have encyclopedic knowledge, will be flawed and incomplete in major ways. The people of the future will be aware of the scope of the vast amount of information lost, and treat it as the tragedy it is.
This doesn't even get into the fact that, you know, families have been broken apart. That everyone from here into the far future will appear as orphans. Who will learn that their relatives appeared in different eras, and they maybe they'll be able to find their however many times great descendants exist. Knowing that they lived their entire lives wishing to see the now appearing ponies again, but never having the chance to say goodbye.
STARSCRIBE, if you do a Q&A session, what's the gender ratio for ponies? I have doubts it's 1:1.
So yeah, the great reveal. I wouldn't worry too much about it if I were you though. While we all have some headcanon and will disagree with things (I did at times at least), I would say it was a very nicely constructed and written chain of events. I really liked your portrayal of humanity, underlining the importance of our ingenuity and will of survival. I also love the way people in governments responded to all of this - they basically said that if humanity was to go, we will take it like a man. And even then they managed to defy all odds and find a way around this.
You also get absolutely mad props from me for Alex's character. More like a standing ovation even. The way that guy responded to everything around him warmed my heart. I love how his first and foremost priority has always been humanity. Also yeah, he said "fuck you!" to Luna, if in more polite words. And she deserved all of it. It was glorious. Him raising the point about human culture being basically dead all thanks to the princess was fantastic, if a little too short.
The only thing I really disliked, on a more personal level I guess, was the ever present, cliched fanon all-powerful Alicorn princesses. I am kind of tired of this portrayal, especially considering what canon showed us, but that is just me I guess. I am just glad Luna was told off for her arrogance. I would probably add a couple other things, like them sending us THEIR knowledge of world so we could build a society similar to THEIRS instead of our own. It's like they haven't even given a single thought for anything regarding our nature, our morality, the laws of our world... More could be piled, like the fact that they basically destroyed any diversity Earth had through countries that existed, each having their very own unique soul and culture, like they completely neglected to even think about the fate of our inventions, many probably quickly fading out of existence, like through time their transformation seemed to destroy the personalities of those affected, making them all into ponies instead of keeping their mind as human... All of this and more, just so that they could feel good about themselves. And all that after they basically pillaged some of our inventions for themselves.
I guess Alex was far too stressed or didn't think about some of these, but I seriously want him to go: "Our worlds will drift away? Well GOOD, we never want to see you again.". I just hope he is not becoming some sort of an Alicorn at this point. Go back and help the HPI Alex, you are my hero through and through.
6164238 I think it is or at least close to that. It is a matriarchy so most of the leading positions are taken by mares but if you look at the royal guard and most other law inforcement officers, all of them are male. Also most of the farmers are male too.
Good story... but honestly. I wanna slap Alex so hard right now...
Luna? Just turn the whole planet to stone. There... humanity is preserved but your all dead. Have a nice day.
Probably too late,but
What about name "Alexsander?"
Well,there is similar name,but not for males - "Alexsandra"
In russian language (and probably not only in there) they have identical short version - "Sasha"
This was genius.
I'm guessing that she'll become an alicorn. She will "sacrifice her life" but Luna also says she will return. What better way not to forget human history when you have someone who experienced it and is immortal/very long lived?
Huh... I think that this spell could have left a lot more people behind to help further the goal of rebuilding and maintaining society. True, there is likely a critical point were everything tips into the bad kind of chaos due to the volume of panicking people, and one member can ruin the efforts of a team, but this small number is going to lose a lot before they can stabilize things. The way society is set up... a lot, a ton really, of culture is going to be lost since a large portion is based on non-written traditions, cues and behaviours and are passed on based on interactions and just seeing people do it.
Not the mention the physical things that might have survived. Look how much was lost when LA burned. Think of the libraries and text books and vidoes and more. True, in our age we have a lot stored both on a physical medium as well as digital ones, but how long will it be before someone who knows how to maintain servers and such comes back? I'll chalk that one up to Equestrians not knowing enough about how human society, technology and infrastructure and leaning a bit too heavily on the side of caution.
6164228 I'll admit, I did not even consider the broken families at first... That's one doozy of a downer right there. The 10k years is a massive gap of time for bringing people back... The world is a vast place...
Still having goosebumps, by the way. Your description of magic is pretty awesome (Zutcha, your crystals are beautiful). The altruism of the Equestrian leadership was pretty interesting as well. It's a bit... comforting to know that our (formerly) magic void universe was just as deadly to them as the magic rich one was to us (in setting.) I'm actually interested in the Soul/Spirit/Body balance in your setting. The soul seems to handle the magic intake, and it also seems to be where the Individual is, but the Spirit seems to have some of that as well. The Spirit seems to be what actually manipulates the magic though (we need Kamina to teach us more...) Luna did say (and specify) 'Life with Souls', and mentioned Souls being drawn to the Source and Spirits being removed from the body... So a soul and spirit make a person, the Soul holding the 'substance' of and individual an the spirit holding who that individual is?
Okay, now I feel like I'm just tossing words around...
So Hawking Radiation is actually magic.
I like it!
Apart from that... the gates to Tartarus are opened with the incantations of good intentions.
I can live with that, very well actually.
Celestia from MLP always meddles, it's just that her meddling always turns out well in the end in Equestria. Luna wants to prove herself to her sister and one-ups the meddling - and regrets it, like she pretty much regrets all her life choices. It was a massive fuck-up. No Elements, no last minute Princesses Hallelujah, lots of miscalculations and also hubris. To me it fits the totally out of their depth characters perfectly.
The spell didn't even work correctly since it left much, much less people than it was supposed to. Remember that Sunset Shimmer expected to find cities still populated by thousands of ponies and had to constantly downscale her expectations until she was happy to find just anyone, anyone at all? The spell was supposed to leave enough people to save civilization.
In the end, the possible erasure of human history may have come down to a wrongly placed decimal in the spell matrix.
That's my kind of story!
6164295 If you are looking at a pony perspective, the numbers might be right for a pony group to rebuild, but not considering the whole how many humans it would take. Given what applejack can do, or carrot top, two earth pony farmers, and they likely contribute 40-50% of a towns basic food needs year round? The numbers might very well be right. By that same token, you need a good 50-100+ people in the adult age range to really have all the needs done for generalists and specialists for a basic town with long term survival.
Boom, Princess Lonely Day.
Giving up ones life to preserve knowledge and culture... To be the only repository that time flows around, instead of taking to the grave.
But LD wouldn't actually be dead?... He has no family and is torn between identities. As he is he could embrace an identity and build a new family and truly live out his life, or he can live forever but have no family. Separate from all others and continuing to simply persist in an effort to preserve humanity through its transition.
...Princess Alexander... the Great... and Lonely. Them prophetic names, eh?
And that's my theory.
6164187
I think that you're being over-optimistic about the resilience of the Internet infrastructure.
6164306 Perhaps the criteria for those left behind was a bit too strict. Ponies of Equestria have a much stronger sense of social cohesion and unity than the average human does. Lots of people only begrudgingly work with others. If the spell was keyed to pony levels of 'suitable to rebuild', then it would have very skewed results.
6164323 Another point to consider... Even if you expect someone to have to learn something you already know how to do, your estimates on how long it would take them to reach a decent level is likely to be off. Unless you're the condescending arrogant type, which the ponies aren't as likely to be. Not to mention they only have a couple years to observe humans, so wouldn't be the best judge of what we, as individuals, can and cannot do.