Prologue: Discovery
"Rainbow Dash, calm down. You're bouncing around as much as Pinkie Pie does." Twilight's words fell on deaf ears as said chromatic pegasus flitted about the train car they and their friends were in. It was fine since the car was private, and her friends were giggling at the sight.
"This is too exciting not to be moving so much!" Rainbow said before pausing in the air. "This isn't something that happens every day, you know!"
"I still can't believe Daring Do is your mother," Fluttershy said.
"And that's awesome!" Dash said as she kept flying about the car.
"So what exactly did she find at her dig site?" Rarity asked, curiosity filling her blue eyes.
"She said it's something Twilight should like, being an egghead and all," Dash said, finally landing as the train came to a stop at the station.
As the six friends stepped off the train, the adventuring archeologist in question was waiting for them. "Glad you could make it," she got out before she was hugged by her daughter.
"Hey, Mom," Dash said as she released her with a smile.
"So what's this thing you found?" Applejack asked.
"Come on! Tell us!" Pinkie exclaimed as she bounced around.
Daring laughed. "Come on. I'll show you. The team's still fully digging it up."
The girls were in awe of the monolith that Daring's team was working around. It was eliptical in shape and had green, glowing lines running across it.
"Yup. Impressive, I know. It was doing that when we first unearthed it," Daring said. "Don't know what it is, or who made it. So I figured Princess Twilight might enjoy a look at it."
"I would," Twilight said, hovering near it as her horn lit up. "Let's do a little scan..." she muttered as she placed her horn against it. Which she instantly regretted as she was grabbed in a green energy field as her eyes shot open. The worried shouts of the ponies around her were unheard as information flowed into her head, flashes of creatures she'd never seen, technology she'd never have thought of. After about a minute, she was dropped, and shakily landed on her hooves, panting.
"What happened?!" Rarity asked, a worried look on her face.
"You okay, sugercube?" Applejack asked.
"This thing..." Twilight said as she rubbed her head. "It's... some kind of data cache. I saw... I'm not sure what I saw. I'm still sorting it out."
"Was it flashes of technology that bug aliens used to explore the galaxy but then mysteriously vanished, leaving only their super-advanced technology?" Pinkie asked, getting stared at by everypony around her. "What?"
"Actually... I'm starting to sort the information out," Twilight said, getting everyone looking at her. "We need to tell Princess Celestia about this artifact right away. I can already tell that it's going to change everything for us."
Celestia looked at her former pupil from her throne as the younger alicorn and her friends stood before her. "So what did you discover about this artifact that Ms. Do discovered, Twilight?"
"My initial interaction with it was rather discomforting, but I did find out a number of things about it," Twilight said. "First and foremost, it's a data cache. The information is from an ancient spacefaring species that called themselves protheans."
"Impossible!" a voice called out from the assembled nobles. Everyone looked to see that it came from the insufferable mouth of Prince Blueblood. "No one but Princess Luna can travel the stars!"
Twilight silenced him with a glare that made the nobles in his immediate vicinity step away from him in fear, and Blueblood start sweating rather profusely. Once she was sure he wouldn't speak again, she turned back to Celestia. "As I was saying. The protheans made use of ships that could fly through space, and travel faster than light using the properties of something called Element Zero. I believe there's a rather large store of the stuff located beneath the cache. I only got a cursory look before I had to break my connection to the artifact, lest I go insane from the information overload."
"Can the information be safely accessed?" Celestia asked.
"Yes. Now that I have a feel for the device, I believe I can create a means of safely accessing the data in its entirety," Twilight said. "This is without doubt the greatest discovery in all our history. I've only seen some of the data, and already I can tell that the possibilities are near endless."
"What sort of possibilities?" Celestia asked, equally as curious as everyone else in the throne room.
"For one thing, we can advance medical care to the point of eliminating disease and aging," Twilight said rather excitedly. "We could make our species functionally immortal."
"If I may, Princess Twilight?" a more respectful voice sounded from the nobles.
Twilight turned to find that Fancy Pants was the one with a question. "Yes, Mr. Fancy Pants?"
"If our species overcomes age and disease, what's to stop us from overpopulating Ungula?" Fancy Pants asked, murmurs from the crowd reflecting his quite legitimate concern.
Twilight smiled. "Simple. We take to the stars and colonize other planets. And according to what I saw of the data, the protheans left behind their method of faster than light travel." As she said this, her horn lit up, creating an image of an object that was two arms held together by what looked like a gyroscope. Within the spinning rings was a blue mass of energy. "This, according to the archive, is called a mass relay. I'm not yet sure how it works, but I do know that they have the ability to propel a ship thousands of light years in a rather short amount of time. The mass relay network will be our gateway to the galaxy outside our solar system."
She dispelled the image as she looked around the room. "I won't lie. This is a massive undertaking. The biggest in our history. But I know that working together, we can achieve space flight and more! And with the medical advances we'll be making, I promise you all, we'll all live to see it happen!" She smiled as the nobles, even Blueblood, threw decorum to the wind in order to give her an enormous round of applause. Twilight looked behind her at her friends, seeing their radiant and supportive smiles. We can do this, she thought to herself.