Where Black Seas Lap the Shores of Dead Stars

by The Hat Man

3. In the Eyes of a Child, Part 1

“Rosie!”

RO-513 turned at the sound of her nickname, though she had already heard the hoofsteps of the earth pony colt bounding up to her. Still, she pantomimed surprise as he skidded to a halt in front of her.

“Hello, Star Seedling,” she said, her synthetic, feminine voice jovial as she greeted him. “How may I assist you today?”

She was tending to a water pipe in one of the greenhouse domes. The colony pumped water from an underground source discovered by the early scouting teams from AguaVita on one of the early missions to Medea. Though water seemed plentiful, they still had to recycle every drop of moisture possible, and leaky pipes were treated as a potentially deadly threat.

“I wanted to ask you about this!” Star Seedling exclaimed, holding up a tin can.

She gave it a glance before returning to her work. “That is a can of applesauce,” she said. “And unless the rules have changed, you are forbidden from taking rations outside of the dining area or supply room without permission.”

“I’m not gonna eat it,” he scoffed. “I wanted to ask about the thing on the label!”

RO-513 took hold of a wrench and applied it to a nut where one pipe met another in the line above the tiny saplings poking from the alien soil.

“It is an apple,” she replied. “What else would it be?”

“Well, it’s just that I’ve never seen one,” he said with a shrug. “Mom says lots of ponies on the old worlds grew them in outdoor farms. They looked like this, then?”

She nodded. “More or less. Though that illustration is simplified. They were not always red, for instance. Yellow or green apples existed. Some were mottled or speckled. It is my understanding that they each had different variations of flavor and texture.”

“So, what kind of apples did they use for our rations?” he asked.

RO-513 watched the pipe and gave a satisfactory nod when she confirmed that it no longer leaked. “The cheap kind,” she replied.

He laughed at that and began to follow her as she moved on to her next task.

Star Seedling was the first foal born in the Medea-3 colony. It had been the intention of all the colonists not to begin raising families until they’d made more progress with terraforming the planet. But his parents, Seed Sower and Fertile Field, apparently couldn’t help themselves (and thus earned a lifetime of jokes to be made about both their names) and Fertile Field announced her pregnancy.

Without schools or daycares or peers, many wondered if they should be sent home on the next supply ship or outright asked to terminate the pregnancy, but ultimately the romantics among them won out, feeling that a new youngster among them would give them more hope and motivation to accomplish their mission.

RO-513 thought they were selfish to bring a foal into a world that had no place for him, but she had been assigned to the project by AguaVita, and it wasn’t her place to speak out, at least while she was still in her service period.

“Have you ever seen an apple farm, Rosie?” Star Seedling asked.

“I have not,” she replied, her voice muffled by the air jets as she stepped through the airlock and into the corridor leading back to the main facility. “I was only active for a few months on Antigone before being assigned to this mission, so I never personally visited them. And they were called ‘orchards.’”

“Wasn’t one of the Elements of Harmony an apple farmer?”

“That is correct. Applejack was her name, and she served as one of the most trusted guardians of Ancient Equestria.”

“Back on Equus?”

“Yes. The original homeworld of ponies, griffons, and other creatures.”

He pursed his lips, thinking over that with sudden reverence. “And it’s a real place?”

“It is. Again, I have never seen it, but I know its location in our galaxy.”

“How far away is it?”

“Approximately 448 light years away.”

He seemed to mull that over, his brow furrowing as he tried to imagine the distance.

“The most advanced ships in our local region can achieve Hyperspace X5. If you traveled from here to Equus starting today, you would be an old stallion by the time you arrived.”

His eyes widened for a moment, but then he bowed his head, apparently soaking in the implication: he would most likely never see the pony homeworld in his lifetime.

“However,” she added quickly, “technology is always advancing. Sapient robots like myself were rare a century ago, for instance. And Hyperspace engines could only go twice the speed of light until 73 years ago. Far faster means of travel may well be developed while you are still a young pony.”

That seemed to satisfy him. He gave her a warm smile as he trotted next to her through the narrow tunnels of the main facility.

“Star… Star, where are you?” a mare’s voice called.

“I’m here, Mom!” Star Seedling called.

Fertile Field rounded a corner and spotted them both. She gave a sigh of relief (and exasperation) as she came and took him by the foreleg.

“Come on, Star, you still need to finish your mathematics studies.”

“I was bored!” he whined. “And I wanted to ask Rosie something!”

She looked at RO-513 and bowed in apology. “I’m sorry, Rosie,” she said, using the same nickname as her son. “I hope he didn’t distract you.”

“It is not possible to distract me,” she replied truthfully. “But I appreciate your concern. I was glad to help satisfy his curiosity.”

Fertile smiled back at her and the pair gave a little wave as they went on their way.

RO-513 truly didn’t mind Star Seedling’s constant barrage of questions. She was more confused by the colonists’ annoyance at them. After all, with no other foals and little else to occupy his time, what else was he supposed to do?

She supposed that was partly why they got along. That, plus the fact that they were the only two beings there that weren’t there of their own volition. Nopony could choose the circumstances of their birth, after all, whether one were a colt born on a desolate alien world or a corporate droid with a few decades left of service.

There was a loud beep that echoed throughout the tunnels of the main facility as Jason, the central computer for the colony, made an announcement over the intercom:

“Attention: Forecast predicts a light meteor shower this evening. Colonists not currently occupied are encouraged to view the event on the observation deck. The probability of interstellar debris is low, but basic precautions are being taken.”

It had been the second night in a row of meteor showers, she noted. Unusual, but not that unlikely. Medea-3 was in the outer stretch of the habitable zone of its star and in the neighborhood of its asteroid field, astronomically speaking. A few meteor showers were nothing to be concerned about.

Space was full of strange and unusual things, ponies said. Rare and unlikely things, too, but not impossible. But so remote that they might as well be impossible.

That was the same thing the colonists continued to say even as a few more meteorites struck the surface around the facility, one even damaging a solar mirror.

And they continued to say it right until they spotted a faint new star in the early morning sky.

And the next morning, it was bright enough to be seen in the light of day.

The odds of an object a few kilometers in diameter actually striking a planet like Medea were remote; only 1 impact in approximately 20 million years.

“Virtually impossible,” they said again and again. And they kept saying it right up until the sky caught fire and the north horizon heaved upward in a black cascade that swiftly swept over them and engulfed the world.

Comments

[Ri2]

Oh, not Turing.