Story Ideas #4: Rainbow Bridge · 3:54am May 14th, 2020
Alright, this is an actual re-write of somebody else’s story, but in this case I think I’m justified, as the fic in question was abandoned in 2012.
That story is Where no mare has gone before. [sic], by Tobbzn. In this story, Rainbow Dash goes too far with a stunt, and is catapulted into the middle of the Large Hadron Collider. Outside of the prologue, Rainbow Dash spends most of the story in an unconscious state. In fact, in her first appearance on Earth she has had her feathers and fur burnt off, making her look more alien than she actually is. The story seems to care very little about First Contact, and instead delves deep into the daily life and politics of the collider, and how physicists might view the impossibilities of pegasi. The author left no notes, so I can only conclude that he stopped writing because he wasn’t interested in what would happen when Rainbow Dash started talking to the humans.
For my version of this story, I want to lean into the high-energy portal aspect.
I invented a race of villains. In my notes, I go on forever about them, but here’s the short version: In the multitude of universes out there, there is one that has far exceeded its expected lifespan. This is because of the Eternals, a short-lived race obsessed with immortality—even their corpses have been engineered to never decay, leading the living Eternals to make their planets out of dead bodies and to use the recently dead as their main day-to-day power source. The Eternals have developed technology to steal energy from neighboring universes to keep their universe alive. So far, they have only killed universes that were small and new, before life had yet developed in them. But those universes are now all gone, and so the Eternals turn their greedy eyes to living universes, normally impossible to steal from. One of their scientists has picked out two of these universes. With a small nudge, he can line up events in the two universes to create a portal between them, a very leaky portal that can be used to drain both universes. Earth’s universe will shrivel and freeze, Equus’ universe will explode, and Eternia’s universe will get another thousand years of unnatural existence.
In Equestria, Princess Twilight has been studying the Sonic Rainboom, and she has come to believe that there is a second speed barrier beyond the first. Breaking it will release immense amounts of magical energy, and if that barrier break can be studied, Twilight believes she can reproduce it to find a way to give all creatures the powers of unicorns. Rainbow Dash is of course completely on board, but air friction makes it impossible for her to reach the speeds necessary, so Twilight devises a permanent shield spell to eliminate friction. When even that is not enough, the pair abandon the experiment.
A few months later, Twilight discovers a spot beneath the surface of the local lake where the laws of magic are subtly different than in the rest of Equestria. The effect of this spot is felt for hundreds of feet in every direction, and experiments suggest that this spot might be the only place where the Second Barrier can be broken. Rainbow Dash conducts the test, with Twilight and Fluttershy watching. Rainbow finds after the Sonic Rainboom that she is propelled uncontrollably towards the Spot at an ever-accelerating rate, and Twilight is unable to react fact enough before Rainbow hits the spot and atomizes the lake.
The Spot has been converted into a visible distortion of reality, one that is rapidly sucking all of the magic out of Equestria. Twilight is left with no choice but to close the portal that Rainbow has obviously disappeared through, but she vows to re-open it as soon as she can safely do so.
On Earth, there are widespread protests against the opening of the Large Hadron Collider, most of them cranks proclaiming that the device will destroy the universe.
The Collider is started, and it nearly destroys the universe.
A super particle is summoned into being, several meters across. It glows with a blinding light, yet the room around the circle of white can be clearly seen. Electronic instruments go haywire.
The particle contracts, and begins sucking in surrounding matter, which it transmutes into organic material. The scientists throw sand at it to prevent the destruction of the rest of the complex, and it eventually becomes a blue pegasus with rainbow-colored hair. She’s unconscious.
The world goes nuts.
Eventually she wakes up, and we go through the language issue. I’m thinking she speaks Mycenaean Greek.
Sometime after that, Twilight shows up, and that’s when things get really weird.
You see, Rainbow Dash—and Twilight when she arrives—is found to have a microscopic portal in her cerebral cortex connected to the mostly-closed portal in the acceleration chamber, and whenever either of them do something impossible by this universe’s physics, the invisible sphere where the two universe’s laws are mixing expands just a little more.
The result of this process is the warping of reality. In the vicinity of the two ponies, My Little Pony is now a toy and cartoon series dating back to the Eighties, while the rest of the planet has never heard of the concept. In the camp of the crazy protesters, the Illuminati spring into existence, complete with brainwashing powers. James Bond is now real…and an immortal. The Doctor is a poorly-kept government secret. Archaeologists uncover proof of the historical existence of Asterix. And so on, including the creation of any number of fictional nightmares. Meanwhile, magic is draining out of Equestria.
Eventually, the newly-empowered humans unite with the ponies to try and stabilize the drain, and that’s when the Eternals step in to try and accelerate the disintegration.
The Eternals are clearly more powerful than any other force on either world, and all seems lost until the main human character tries to infiltrate Eternia to sabotage their efforts, probably helped by some ponies.
In the end, the good guy force is defeated and the hero is on the verge of death before he unleashes his secret weapon: the concept of the Zombie Apocalypse. The entire planet of Eternia converts into living dead, and the Eternals stop being a plague upon the multiverse.
I have two problems with this idea. First, the Eternals plot is too ugly for what is otherwise a fairly light-hearted POE story. And second, I don’t know if I’m imaginative enough to write a world where reality is changing around characters who barely recognize what is happening, because they are changing along with the world.
I really like this idea, mainly because it's basically 3 story concepts (Super Ultimate Evil civilizations attempting to extend their own lives though genocide, Pony/Human First Contact, and a Mega Crossover), all of which I like, smashed together. Sounds like it would lead to many zany antics with a side of epic battles and all that.
Inherently flawed concept, dead on arrival.
To save it, clip out everything about the "Eternals" because nothing about it is salvageable.
It would be amusing if the ponies spoke Cypro-Minoan ("Linear A", the oldest untranslated written script)
The ponies existing on Earth destroying reality feels gross.
Oh, I remember that story! Darn it, that was a very interesting one.
I mean, oh no.
An interesting concept, but why? Why would Dash sound even remotely like anything the locals ever spoke?
(Because the story needs to happen and having one character speak in some unfathomable linguistic offshoot or modulated horse noises ruins any hopes of timely communication.)
Fair enough.
Also, there's the question whether or if anyone connects magic use on Earth correlating with things getting weird. Yes, there's the classic "But had it been there for years yesterday?" retcon effect, but can Equestria communicate across the barrier to report about the magic loss? Do people inside and outside the sphere compare notes on the Internet? (Heck, how do servers across the world react to the shifts?)
Also, if you're making the fictional real, you'll definitely want to pick a new name for the antagonists' world, unless you want them to be defeated by feedback turning them into He-Man and company. (Though then there's still the matter of Skeletor...)
Hey, you nailed it in The Best of All Possible Worlds, especially in the blogs you posted at the time.
The concept is definitely interesting, but some of the details may need further ironing out.