Twilight positioned several large and empty glass jars, each covered by a metal lid, on a table. “I think we’re ready to put on an excellent demonstration,” she said. Moondancer left the side tunnel, carrying a spent fuel rod in her magical grasp. She closed and locked the door behind her.
The unicorn leaned the rod against the wall, by the table. “So what do we do until Sunset returns?”
“Hard to say, since we don’t know when that’ll be.” Twilight walked over to one of several whiteboards, this one covered in magical spells and equations. “Got any working prototypes of the electric generators yet?”
“Barely. We’re having difficulty matching output to load.” She gave the whiteboard a frown. “Do we want them to see this?”
Did they? On the one hoof, there were precious few humans who’d be able to make any sense out of that, and those humans already had access. On the other hoof, that would not remain true indefinitely; eventually numerous humans would understand it. But did that really matter? The point was to be open, transparent.
Twilight scanned the room. The computer monitors were all dark, so that wasn’t a concern. There was the mixture of human and pony technology; that wasn’t anything to hide. It was similar to what was in the testing vault back in the human realm anyway.
One unicorn and five humans appeared in the middle of the cavern.
That took less time than expected. Too late now to do anything about the whiteboards. “I think we’re okay,” she half-whispered to Moondancer.
Getting his bearings, the Energy Secretary looked around and spotted Twilight. “Ah!” he said, also spotting the glass jars. “All set to make your demonstration?”
“Indeed I am, Secretary Whitcomb. Whenever these fine gentleman are ready to record it.” She gave herself a mental hoof-bump for using the human vernacular.
Both cameramen were watching something through the eyepiece of their cameras, though neither were pointed in any particular direction.
“Capture anything interesting during our transit?” Anderson Cooper asked.
One looked up and shook his head. “The camera’s fine, but it simply happened too fast. We’d need one of those absurdly high frames-per-second jobs—if even that’d be fast enough.”
“Same here,” said the other one.
“Well, it was worth a shot.” Cooper walked around the cavern, one camera tracking him. “Doesn’t look all that different, really, apart from the cave-motif. Mostly just larger.”
The other camera was pointed at Twilight. “Much of the same equipment is available,” she said. “What distinguishes this location from the testing vault back in your realm is that it is in this realm, where there is a proper magical field. We’re very interested in discovering what can be learned by apply human technology to magic.”
“And by ‘we’ she means both humans and ponies.” Whitcomb pointed at a workstation, grandstanding for the camera. “Note the human-style chairs. This is a joint effort.”
“But why a cavern?” Cooper asked. “How deep are we?”
“Deep enough that nopony is going to accidentally stumble upon it. We’re inside the mountain that Canterlot is built upon. This used to be a mine. As for why: primarily for safety. We’re storing substantial amounts of your nuclear waste in the side tunnels.”
Cooper was speechless for a few seconds. “Really? When did that happen?”
Whitcomb took over. “We’ve successfully kept it under wraps until now, but I’m pleased to announce that we have transported the accumulated waste from a single nuclear power plant. I won’t say which one right now, but I suspect your people will figure it out soon enough. But I will say that it won’t be the last one to be freed of this storage nightmare.” He nodded to Twilight. “Could you open that door?”
From where she stood, she unlocked and opened the door to a side tunnel. Light spilled into the unlit tunnel, illuminating spent fuel rods lining the walls into the darkness. “Decades worth of accumulated waste,” she said. “Took quite a few hours to transport it all.”
The 60 Minutes crew all took a few steps back. “Shouldn’t we, uh, be wearing radiation suits, or something...” the soundman asked.
“That’s the beauty of a magical field,” Twilight said. “It passively suppresses radioactivity, even in the absence of any spells.” She lifted a Geiger counter in her magic and floated it over to Cooper. “See for yourself. It’ll barely click.”
He cautiously took the instrument, slightly glowing from the alicorn’s magic. Signaling the others to follow him, he entered the side tunnel. He turned the device on and waved the probe about. It clicked once after five seconds. “As you can hear, it’s not reacting to any radiation. I think there’s actually less radiation here, standing next to this nuclear waste, than the background radiation back on Earth.”
“It’s still quite dangerous.” Twilight’s voice drifted from the main cavern. “You wouldn’t want to lick it, for example.”
Cooper chuckled. “No, I’m sure this stuff is still chemically nasty.”
He switched off the Geiger counter and exited the side tunnel. Twilight closed the door and locked it.
“So what will you do with all this waste? To put not too fine a point on it, what’s in it for you?”
Twilight smiled. “It’s not so hard to understand. This is something we can do for you; in return, you can do something for us. It’s called trade.”
“And what would you want from us in trade?”
“You have advanced non-magical science and engineering to heights unimaginable in our world. We have nothing like the computers you see around us, or the camera that’s now recording me.” She gave said camera her best smile. “That’s just the beginning, naturally. I’m sure we’ll find many other mutually-beneficial trades.”
“But what could you do with this waste? There has been no lack of trying on our part—with limited success, to put it generously.”
Twilight walked over to the table with the glass jars. “I’ll be happy to show you.” The spent fuel rod leaning against the wall levitated up into the air by her side.
“Before you start that… would it be possible for us to visit one of the atomic clocks you have on loan from MIT? It’s in an observatory, if I remember correctly?”
Twilight turned her head towards Cooper, the rod still suspended in mid-air. “You mean, like right now? I suppose we could; it’d only take a few minutes.” That particular request had been anticipated.
He looked almost apologetic. “I didn’t mean right this instant, but I suppose if it wasn’t inconvenient, it wouldn’t hurt to get it out of the way now.”
Twilight shrugged. “It’s as easy to do it now as later.” She walked over to the humans. “It’s a quick teleport away.”
The five humans gathered in front of the alicorn. “Ready?” she asked. They nodded. She grabbed them in her magic and teleported.
They appeared in Luna’s observatory, near the atomic clock. Nopony else was around, and that was no accident. Luna had wished to greet them, but both Twilight and Celestia took pains to convince her otherwise. The risks of an impromptu interview were too high.
Twilight pointed a hoof at the clock. “There it is, ticking away.”
“I’ll be happy to tell MIT there isn’t a scratch on it,” Whitcomb said.
A cameraman grabbed some footage of the clock, then refocused on Cooper.
“How much time has it gained over its counterpart in Ponyville?”
The other camera was on Twilight. “We won’t know that until we bring them back together again. It’ll be on the order of billionths of a second—assuming General Relativity applies here.”
“And when will that be?”
“We’re giving it a few more days. The longer we give it, the more precise the answer.”
Cooper looked up at the telescope, the Q&A portion of this side-trip apparently concluded. “Would you mind if we got some footage of this place?”
“Go right ahead. There’s also a balcony that goes around the dome. You can take pictures of Canterlot.”
His eyes spotted the closed door. “We’d like that very much.”
A cameraman took some shots of the interior, but Cooper’s eyes returned to the clock. He looked behind it, spotted the power cord, and followed it to an outlet beneath the table. “Electricity’s the same here?” He inspected an unused outlet. “Same plugs? Did you install this just to power the clock?”
“That wasn’t necessary. We use the same voltage, same alternating current frequency, even the same plug. Don’t bother asking how that’s possible. I haven’t a clue.”
He stood up. “You have to admit that strains credulity.”
We’re speaking the same language, and that’s what strains credulity? But nothing would be served by pointing that out.
“In fact…” He looked at the door, still closed. “To be honest, it makes me wonder if we’re in Equestria at all. I can’t deny we teleported, which is impressive enough, but maybe we teleported to somewhere else on Earth.”
The door unlocked and opened with a lavender glow, revealing just below them the summit of the mountain upon which Canterlot was built. “Be my guest.”
With a deep breath, Anderson Cooper walked to the open door. Twilight teleported ahead of him to the balcony. There wasn’t much to see here; beyond the summit was a forested valley bordering the Everfree. Earth had mountains and valleys too. As he came through the door, she said, “Follow me.”
They went clockwise, to the south. Before long, Ponyville and the Everfree Forest came into view. It would have been perfect if pegasi were out setting up rain clouds, but alas that wasn’t the case. Maybe she should have arranged for that. The few pegasi flying about were too far away to be distinguishable from birds. But the tour had just begun.
“Not quite convincing yet,” Cooper said as he looked over the too-low-for-a-human railing, straight down to the lower reaches of the castle, “but it’s getting there.” He eyes scanned the forest. “That’s one nasty looking forest.”
“You got that right,” Twilight singsonged.
They had gone most of the way around when Twilight stopped. The bulk of Canterlot was now visible, the streets full of colorful ponies, mostly unicorns. But that wasn’t what Twilight was pointing at, above them in the distance. “That’s Cloudsdale over there.” The others had caught up to them, and the camera was taking in the cloud city. Though far away, it was obvious that natural clouds would not take on such clearly sculptured shapes.
“What’s that down there?” Whitcomb asked.
Twilight took a look for herself. Two were in the palace gardens, slowly walking this way. If she didn’t know better… I didn’t think she was serious.
A cameraman made an adjustment of some sort. “One of them’s Celestia. Not sure who—or what?—she’s with… I guess it’s a griffon?”
The Ambassador. Twilight wanted to face-hoof, but she didn’t dare in the presence of these particular humans. She could take a good guess where this was going.
The cameras remained pointed down below. Would that footage be included? Should she ask that it wasn’t? Would they even care? Did it really even matter? Twilight’s head drooped. It all depended on whether Gosswell…
“I, uh, I think they noticed us,” a cameraman said, eyes glued to the eyepiece.
…looked up. He realized immediately what he was seeing, the distance no match for his eagle eyes. The princess and ambassador exchanged a few inaudible words, and the griffon launched into the air. Only then, finally, did Celestia look up, right at her, a knowing smile gracing her muzzle. Twilight would have to handle this on her own.
The ambassador circled, gaining altitude.
Cooper couldn’t tear his eyes from the approaching griffon, who was doing an impressive impression of a preditor in pursuit of his prey. “There’s nothing to worry about, right?”
Did he have to wear that ceremonial sword? Ceremonial or not, it was still quite functional. “I should hope not,” she sighed. Twilight debated whether to intercept him, to find out his intentions—as if she couldn’t make a good guess—but she had run out of time.
Ambassador Gosswell came to a hover in front of Twilight. He nodded his head, and peered into her eyes. He wasn’t going to take “no” for an answer. “Princess Twilight Sparkle, may I be introduced to your guests?”
That camera was on them, as was the microphone. The ambassador wasn’t permitting himself to be distracted by them, focusing solely on the forthcoming answer to his request.
A quick glance revealed that her mentor was no longer in sight.
Bowing to the inevitable, she turned to the camera. “This is Ambassador Gosswell, the griffon ambassador to Equestria.” She turned to Gosswell, pointing a hoof at the silver-haired human. “This is Anderson Cooper, a prominent journalist for a major news organization.” Her hoof shifted to the half-bald man. “And this is Secretary Whitcomb, a high-ranking government official.”
The ambassador’s eyes lit up on the latter introduction, but first he finally turned his attention to the camera. He was actually posing for a photograph. “Rather unwieldy for a camera, is it not? I was under the impression your technology was vastly superior.”
“It takes moving pictures,” Cooper politely informed him.
“Oh?” He moved to the left, to get a better look at the camera’s side. “No reels of film? No mechanical racket as the film moves from one reel to the other?” He glanced at the microphone suspended above them, but gave it no further thought. Its purpose wasn’t hard to figure out, once the “moving pictures” part was known.
“It’s all digital these days.”
“Digital?” He tilted his eagle head. “I must confess I don’t know what that means. But that matters not.”
He touched down on the balcony next to Whitcomb, apparently not bothered in the slightest that this was all being recorded. Twilight suspected it suited his purposes.
“Am I to understand that you have the ear of your leader?” He looked up, struggling to recall something. “Your ‘President,’ is it not?”
“‘President’ is the correct title,” the Secretary said. “I can pass on a message to him, if you wish.”
Or Serrell could simply watch this 60 Minutes report. It was all being recorded.
“Please inform him of my desire to meet with him or a representative of his choice to begin the process of establishing relations between our great nations.”
And that’s why Celestia surreptitiously permitted this to happen, Twilight realized. It was the only way to convince the Ambassador that, no, the princesses weren’t trying to keep the humans all to themselves.
Whitcomb carefully chose his words. “I apologize if you feel that we have been ignoring you, but you must understand that there are… challenges that must be overcome before we can properly establish relations with Equestria, never mind the other nations of this world.”
Gosswell cocked his head. “Challenges?”
Whitcomb was at a loss for words. He looked towards Twilight for a hint.
Twilight wasn’t sure what to say either, certainly not in the presence of those cameras. “This… isn’t the venue for addressing that, but I promise to do my best to arrange something.” After that exchange gets broadcast, Serrell would have both reason and cause to make something happen.
The ambassador glanced at the camera and nodded in understanding. “For now, that will suffice.” He gave the Secretary a nod, and he launched into the air and flew away.
“So…” Twilight tried her best to sound chipper. “Let’s get back on track and return to the lab. I still have a demonstration to give.” This side-excursion had gone on far longer than she’d anticipated. Moondancer and Sunset must be beginning to wonder. She powered up her horn…
“Before we do, could you offer some background on what just happened?”
A camera was on her once more.
She quickly thought it over. On one level, the relationship between ponies and griffons was none of their business. But on a deeper level, the cause underlying the fissures in that relationship was also the cause behind many of humanities problems with ponies. What had Serrell said to her? Never let a crisis go to waste?
Twilight peered into the camera, as if seeing the millions of humans who would watch this. “It’s that cartoon. Its existence has created numerous issues for us. How do you think the ambassador would react to that Griffonstone episode? The minotaurs to Iron Will being the sole representative of their kind? The dragons to the various episodes that featured them? The residents of Ponyville to learning that you have been watching them live their lives. And let’s not even talk about Chrysalis. Many here could interpret that cartoon as proof you were spying on us, possibly still are.
“I know many of you believe that we’re behind that cartoon, that it plays a role in some evil plan of ours.” She rolled her eyes. “If we were, you’d think we’d come up with something that wouldn’t upset those we could do without upsetting.”
She let that hang for a second.
“The ambassador is currently unaware of all this, and that is the background.”
“You haven’t made the cartoon’s existence public knowledge here.”
“We’re still trying to figure out how best to do that.”
“You didn’t mention Tirek. Does he know?”
“No, he does not. But should humanity accept him back, it’s inevitable he’ll learn. I won’t speculate on how he’d react.”
“What about Discord?”
Twilight exhaled, and she looked up into the sky. “Care to answer that for yourself?” Quite frankly, she was half-surprised he hadn’t already crashed the party.
The humans were nervously looking about, perhaps regretting that question.
She returned to the camera. “I guess not. As I already said on the Colbert show, he has seen the cartoon. He has no objections he has cared to share, for what that’s worth.” She again powered up her horn. “We really should return to the lab. The others are waiting for us.”
There were no further questions. Twilight teleported them all back to the lab, where Sunset and Moondancer were discussing something in front of a computer. “Sorry that took longer than expected,” Twilight said to them.
“No problem,” Sunset said. She quickly blanked the screen. “We’ve been keeping ourselves occupied.”
Twilight noticed all the whiteboards had been erased—no, it was an illusion spell. Regardless, the humans had lost their opportunity to get it on camera. “Shall we get started on the demonstration?”
“We’re ready when you are.”
Twilight walked over to the empty glass jars sitting on a table. She waited for a signal from a cameraman before starting. Cooper went over and stood next to her. The microphone was moved into position, close to them but out of view of the camera.
“You can start.”
She lifted the nearby fuel rod and held it above the jars. “This is a spent nuclear fuel rod.” The casing slid off in her magic, leaving just the fuel. “And this is the uranium fuel. In your realm, it would be deadly radioactive due to the waste products of nuclear fission. Here, in our magical field, that radioactivity is suppressed.
“Perhaps surprisingly, it’s still mostly uranium. Only a tiny fraction has been consumed. We have been working on spells to extract that unspent fuel, separating it from the waste products, so that it may be used to fuel your nuclear power plants. I will now demonstrate.”
Her horn powered up, and the glow intensified around the spent fuel. It seemingly liquified. A silvery substance separated out and flowed into a jar, mostly filling it. The spell ended. The contents of the jar had turned to a silvery metal and the rod had shrunk to a small fraction of its original size.
“All the uranium-238 has been extracted and placed into this jar. This spell, for now, can only extract by atomic weight, so the various isotopes must be individually extracted. Next, I’ll extract the uranium-235, which is the isotope that actually fuels your power plants.”
She cast the spell again, and once it finished the second jar contained a much smaller amount of an identically-looking silvery metal. The rod had shrunk much more.
Anderson Cooper asked a question: “Should we be worried about that pure U-235 having a spontaneous chain reaction that triggers an explosion?”
Twilight gave a reassuring smile. “It’s perfectly safe. A chain reaction requires radioactivity to start it going. No radioactivity, no chain reaction. Obviously, it’ll be necessary to remix the isotopes before returning it to your realm.”
With her telekinesis, she squeezed the remains of the fuel rod into a ball and placed it into the final glass jar. “What remains are the waste products. Extremely radioactive in your realm and quite dangerous. This we can use to manufacture magic generators, converting the energy of that radioactivity into a source of magic for your realm, and in the process rendering it quite safe to handle.”
Twilight turned around to face the camera. “That’s not the only thing we’re working on. We’re also working on a means, via magic, of turning radioactivity directly into electricity. We’re also researching magically induced nuclear fission, so that numerous small, safe, and compact generators can replace your currently giant and problematic reactors.”
“Would you use these generators here in Equestria?”
“Perhaps. We already have spells to create electricity, but they violate the energy conservation laws of your realm. While that isn’t a problem here, they nonetheless require a unicorn to cast them for as long as power is needed. We still rely heavily on non-magical sources of electricity. Ponyville has a hydroelectric dam, for example.”
“Do you have your own sources of uranium, or would you need to import it from us?”
“I don’t know yet. We never knew that metal existed until we met you. It’s probably not plentiful, otherwise we’d have known about it. Maybe it doesn’t exist at all, considering that, in your realm, it takes the explosion resulting from the collision of two neutron stars to make the stuff. I’m not sure how it’d be made here.”
“There are no stars in your sky?”
“There are stars, and to the eye they look the same as your stars, but they’re not the same thing at all. Don’t forget that Princess Celestia raises and lowers our sun. It’s not a giant ball of hydrogen gas producing energy from nuclear fusion.”
“Honestly, I cannot tell the difference. It looks and feels the same as our sun. What powers it, if not fusion?”
Twilight simply said one word. “Magic.”
Cooper turned to his crew. “I think this is a good place to end the segment.” He turned back to the alicorn. “What about the other side tunnels? Anything of interest there?”
“Not really. We might use them to expand this facility, but right now they’re just leftovers from when this was an active mine.” She pointed a hoof at one of them. “Restrooms are down that one.”
He mulled it over. “Pony or human?”
“Both.”
He exchanged glances with his team; the soundman shrugged.
“I think we’ll pass on that. If there’s nothing else to see here…”
“That’s all there is to see. Sunset Shimmer will take you back.”
The mare discreetly popped a plaid pill into her mouth and walked over to the humans. They knew the drill by now and gathered together.
They vanished.
A knock on the door to her office interrupted Meg’s web surfing. She got up and opened it.
Sunset Shimmer looked up at her. “Do you have that sampler box here? They’d like to look at it and—uh—sample it. I’ll keep them away from the ones unsuitable for humans.”
“Sure.” It was on top of a pile of stuff on her desk, still unopened. “So long as I don’t have to be there.”
“No problem. I’ll handle it.”
Meg handed the box to Sunset. The unicorn took it in her magic and departed.
Her gaze returned to the monitor. To be honest, the browsing had gone long past the point of diminishing returns. Views and opinions on the Tirek question were all over the map, as would be expected. Let him rot in Tartarus forever! How many centuries of imprisonment was enough? Yeah, he went on a rampage, but only to repay the injustice of the princesses. He’d try to conquer us! He’d be a powerless human! He can shed a light on ancient history! Only idiots and fools would believe that crap about him being the son of King Minos.
Most disturbingly, there seemed to be a pattern: the ones most willing to accept him were often also the ones who harbored the most distrust of the ponies. A “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” sentiment. Didn’t they hear the part where Tirek offered to collaborate with Twilight?
Maybe they’re hoping he’s just saying that to get his freedom.
And maybe he was. No one and nopony knew what was going on inside Tirek’s head.
There would be no official, national vote on the question of whether to accept Tirek; there was no system in place for such ad hoc matters. It all boiled down to opinion polls. The usual suspects had been polling non-stop, and the news channels had been airing the results.
It wasn’t clear how much longer that would continue before Serrell made it a done deal. Perhaps it depended on how long he wanted to milk it. It wasn’t a landslide by any means, but the numbers changed little from day to day. The outcome was inevitable.
Andrew had already asked her to be the official contact between Tirek and the convention. The President had communicated his hopes that she’d do what she could to help the once and future human to adapt to the modern world. The princesses hoped she could find out from him how he broke out of Tartarus—find out what she’ll have no choice but to do in her personal future.
Meg plopped into her chair and closed the web browser. She was beginning to understand Discord’s aversion to future knowledge.
What the hell am I going to do?