Personal Notes of Gertrude Bell: Day 20 After Landing
I continue to marvel at the whims of chance that brought me here. Mercury’s Twilight Zone, the only livable section of the entire planet, is a 300-mile-across band wrapping more than 9,500 miles across the planet, and when I lost control of my craft upon disengaging the ether propeller, I found myself landed mere miles from the most extraordinary lady I have ever met. Sunset Shimmer, a unicorn out of myth and legend in self-imposed exile from her homeland due to her arrogance, rushed to aid me when she saw my ship crash, and without asking for anything in return she assisted me with repairs and offered to show me her homeland once she can return. In the twenty days since then, we have become fast friends despite the mere hour per day we can understand each other's words, a fact that has caused her no end of discomfort, as she seemed shocked at the idea that anyone would be willing to be friends with her. When I inquired as to why, she simply informed me that in her homeland she was known as a, and I quote: “snobbish, arrogant little brat who thought that learning magic from Celestia made her better than everypony else.”
Her admission was quite amusing, she blushed a brilliant shade of red-orange through her coat, which I did not even know was possible. However, the content of that statement simply illustrated again the difference between our worlds. The idea that someone who has become the personal student of the ruler of her nation is not better than the rest of society… such talk would see its speaker condemned as an anarchist in London [1]. It is fascinating to hear about her homeland, and from her reaction she has the same thoughts about London!
To hear her tell me, while their land might be superior in the thaumaturgical sciences (I informed her of the negative connotations of “magical arts” and she provided that phrase as an alternative), they are behind us by decades in many other fields, mainly industrial production and electricity. For example, according to her steam engines are a relatively new invention, post-dating the creation of their rail network by nearly a century! When I asked her for clarification, she informed me that many rail cars were, and in some cases still are, pulled by members of her species with a talent for using thaumaturgical energy to strengthen their own bodies far beyond what their muscles could accomplish unaided.
After that, she gave me a more in-depth explanation of her species. Apparently, not all of her kind are unicorns, some are Pegasi, ponies who channel thaumaturgical energy through wings to fly through the air, control wind patterns, and even lay atop clouds as though they were solid. Many of these flyers live in cities built into clouds, controlling the weather according to a strict schedule with an accuracy that any earthly power would pay a king's ransom for. However, the majority of the population are a third type whose name translates to Earth Pony. These individuals have less visually impressive abilities than their counterparts, with some using the aforementioned techniques to strengthen their own bodies, while others are able to encourage incredible growth from plants around them, creating vast fields full of crops that can be harvested multiple times a year, an ability that more than makes up for the lack of visually interesting abilities in my personal opinion, although Sunset, as a Unicorn, disagrees with me. The unification of these three races is far beyond anything seen on Earth, with miscegenation accepted as a fact of life and society integrated to the point that setting aside districts entirely for one race would be completely unthinkable. This unity is exemplified by Princess Celestia, who according to Sunset has the powers of all three races in addition to her nigh-immortal lifespan. Based on Sunset's experience with Celestia, I learned that the Princess is the reason for the unification of the races of her kind, being the only being in the realm who remembers a time where there was division between the races, she does her utmost to prevent a reversion to those older, more "savage" times. [2]
After her explanation, she inquired as to the races of the solar system, and appeared surprised that only one species of intelligent life had been found per planet, with Mercury and Luna having no intelligent life at all. Once that was complete, we spoke on minor topics for a while as we reviewed maps of Mercury and dreamed of future adventures, with Sunset revealing a near compulsive desire to investigate the mysteries of The World River, which brought us into conflict. I argued that The World River was the best mapped portion of Mercury, and if we wanted to discover something truly new we would need to leave the Twilight Zone and enter either the land of eternal night or eternal day. Sunset in turn argued that none of the previous expeditions along the World River had an expert at thaumaturgy with them, and as such we had the best chance of uncovering the mysteries of the river.
In the end, we admitted that the discussion was mostly theoretical. After all, until the hull of my ship is repaired we cannot survive either the hot or cold sides of Mercury and a journey along the World River is the only safe course of action. While this was disappointing for me, I still hold out hope for a new expedition into the frozen lands away from the sun.
Expedition Log: Cycle 335
This is my first entry in a notebook Gertrude gave me! With everything I was discovering, my last one got full, and the only thing keeping me from filling this one the same way is the hour limit per day. Now that she’s settled in and we’re looking at the long term, we’ve been spending more time just sitting around and talking about ourselves, and we’re getting closer and closer the more we talk. She called us friends one time, which was nice. And confusing. I’ve never really had friends before, and I don’t really know how to be a good friend to her, but she hasn’t complained about me so far, and she likes talking about adventures and discovering things, so I guess we’re doing alright?
Friendship is hard.
Anyways, I’ve been trying to explain magical theory to her, except I’m calling it thaumaturgy because she doesn’t like the word magic. Apparently her people think magic is something some demon uses to corrupt their eternal souls and send them to a fiery afterlife for all eternity, and I don't know enough about this world to argue with that. With everything I've seen and read so far, it might even be true!
So like I was saying, we were reviewing magic and how it interacts with the world around us, and if I’m being completely honest her education is… less than stellar. She says she had a tutor, but they only taught her the basics in math and writing before moving onto things like sewing and how to manage a house, and that just made no sense. I mean, sure managing a budget is important, but if her people need to spend so much time fixing their clothes that they can’t do other things, why do they even wear them?
Fortunately, she seems very eager to learn, and listened to everything I said like I was Princess Celestia herself! Of course, after a while the discussion reached cutie marks and special talents, and to make a long story short apparently the idea of a mark on your body symbolizing your special talent is “completely unprecedented and without any point of comparison” in human society. I’m pretty sure she was exaggerating, they have to have some way of knowing what other humans are good at.
Well, since then I’ve been working on an idea. I know from Gertrude's books that the World River is magic at some points, I mean come on, water flowing uphill? That’s magic. Anyway, after my last boat got attacked by a monster while I was going across the river, I’ve been cautious about going near the water, but what if the magic isn’t in the river itself? The Needles are apparently right on the center-line of the planet, and if my hunches are correct, then there is a concentration of magical energy flowing between The Needles keeping the magic stuff on this planet fed despite the low energy levels, and if I’m wrong then I’m back to where I started, trying to figure out how to measure magic in a giant river full of predators.
I can see Gertrude coming down the hill from her ship, I guess I stayed up working through the night. I’ve been doing that more and more lately, something about all these maps and diagrams just gets me excited about all the adventures I could be having, even if I can only barely remember what the words on them mean when the translation spell isn’t running, and I just can’t sit still and do nothing the way I did before she got here. She’s nearly to the entrance to Camp Sunset, so it’s time for me to wrap this up and get a move on. We’ve got an expedition to prepare for.
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(Sunset’s POV) [3]
We’ve been working off-and-on on repairing the engines on Gertrude's ship for more than a month now. The worst part is, if we’d worked faster and focused on it 100% we could have had it done by now… but we have no chance of getting replacement parts, and neither of us have ever fixed an airship engine before, so we decided to take things slow, and there’s just so much we had to teach each other about our homes, rushing and pouring everything into one thing seemed like such a waste.
Plus, it rains about once every 5-10 days, sometimes for days at a time, and a lot of the work requires us to be outside to do it, and buck that.
Which is why we were clustered in my cabin, my tarp still covering the hole where I wanted to put a fireplace, and talking about magical theory as I tried to get oil and dirt out of my coat (all of my cleaning spells needed so much energy that it was a choice between talking and cleaning with magic, and there’s just so much more interesting things to talk about with Gertrude).
“So, to summarize, thaumaturgical energy both comes from the world around us and is created passively by living things that have spent a long time dipped in an environment with a high enough level of background magic… sorry, thaumaturgical energy.” I corrected myself, I might not agree with her views on magic but it doesn’t hurt to respect them.
“That process creates a self-sustaining loop that drives up the background energy levels, meaning that once a certain level of energy is ‘naturally’ created by the sun, or the planet, or some other factor, the creation of more energy by living beings pushes the level of energy in the system up even higher. At a certain point the planet itself falls far enough below the surface energy levels that it begins to absorb the energy back, acting as a constant drain in the background that pulls in more power the higher the background levels are. This causes gemstones and other magically attuned materials such as gold to come closer to the surface, pulled towards the surplus of energy, and creating equilibrium.
Which leads us to Mercury: by all accounts, the energy in this world is on borrowed time. Right now, the background energy levels are too low to start the upward spiral into a level on par with Equestria, but based on what I can remember from my studies, at a level this low the energy should simply fade out into nothingness, leaving a world empty of thaumaturgical energy. As we can see, this hasn’t happened, which means there are reserves of power somewhere that are keeping the planet supplied. Once those run out, Mercury loses its magic.”
“I see” Gertrude nodded, scribbling my words in her notebook as I clumsily ran the brush through my tail, pulling dirt and pebbles out of it. “And you believe The Needles and the World River are somehow connected to this reserve?”
I nodded. “Exactly! Once we actually get a chance to examine one of The Needles closely, I’ll be able to say for certain, but it makes sense if you think about it. The World River has things like waterfalls that go up hills, and mostly follows the middle of the Twilight Zone, and The Needles are on the same middle line. There has to be a connection there, right?” I asked before turning back to a particularly stubborn clump in my tail.
She looked up from her journal with a frown. “Sunset, I understand that you do not wish for someone without any experience to handle grooming you, but if I must be completely honest it seems as though you could use some assistance.”
Translation: Sunset you’re embarrassing yourself, let the nice woman who has experience cleaning hair and fur without magic give it a shot.
“Fine, fine.” I shrugged, moving over to lay beside her. I knew friends back in Equestria did stuff like this together, and she had mentioned that she had helped her sisters with their hair back on Earth, but this was the first time since I was a little foal that I was letting someone else brush me, and it felt like I was giving up. I’d been independent for so long, and now after only a few weeks here I was incapable of brushing my own coat?
I clamped down on those feelings as she ran the brush over me, pulling out dirt and undoing clumps of hair across my back and flanks. After a while, I had to admit that she was doing a much better job than I had, even if my pride still rankled a bit at the thought that I was being brushed like some filly who couldn’t be trusted to clean herself.
We laid like that for a while, talking about our plans for our expedition to the nearest Needle, how to finally finish my fireplace (I will be able to cook food indoors like a civilized pony before I leave here, that’s a promise) and some minor chit-chat. When I ran out of power for the translation spell, we stayed like that, since my coat was still a mess, and I just reviewed the notes I had made to see if there was anything I was missing when planning for our trip.
I was so engrossed in my plans and dreams of finally going on another adventure beyond this camp that I didn’t even notice as she put the brush down and laid down next to me with a book of her own, and in the dim light of a single low-power light spell we read our books together, taking comfort in the fact that, even if the nearest other members of our species were far away, we were not alone.
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[SS Good Fortune, 43 days out of Princess Christiana Station]
During their voyage down the World River, the crew of the Good Fortune had encountered a camp of approximately a dozen prospectors sitting atop a load of gold, and they had halted for three days to trade supplies for raw gold and other precious goods. Given their complete failure to find any trace of Gertrude Bell, it looked increasingly likely that the gold in the lock-box was going to be their only compensation for this voyage. Fortunately for the captain, David Williamson, the gold nuggets were enough to keep his crew calm, and as the continued their search of the planet the mumbling of the men was easily calmed with the knowledge that, even if they never received their reward from Ms. Bell’s father, heading back to Earth and spreading the news of gold and other minerals found on Mercury could let them make a killing off of transporting supplies and prospectors.
However, even with that knowledge, captain Williamson was not sleeping easily anymore. Even if he could make his money back with future voyages, earning the ire of one of Britain's top industrialists was not something any sane man did lightly, and failing to return with either Gertrude or her ship after negotiating for a truly substantial reward was sure to earn the displeasure of Mister Bell and his allies in high society. Which brings us to tonight.
After more than a month, their airship had reached the World Spine, a mountain range halfway across the world from the station [4] that cut across the entire 300-mile wide Twilight zone, and they were prepared to spend days looking through the various peaks for signs of Gertrude’s crashed ship, and if they did not find her there, there was always the next stop on their list of sites a young woman with dreams of adventure might have gone to. With a sigh, Williamson poured himself a cup of tea, made from the few remaining leaves in the hold. It will all be worth it if we bring her home. He thought, determination filling him as he looked out over the vast peaks ahead of the ship. That reward will make this all worth it.