Onto the Pony Planet

by Admiral Biscuit


Chapter 34: New Discoveries, part I

Onto the Pony Planet
Chapter 34: New Discoveries, part I
Admiral Biscuit

For much of the morning, things at the embassy had been calm. Lyra had left after breakfast, taking Starlight with her. Diamond had gone into town, for what purpose he didn't know, but she'd been wearing saddlebags.

There wasn't any sign of impending doom from upstairs, not yet anyway. Once again, he thought that he really ought to get to the hospital and find out where Kate's gun and ammunition went, although he wasn't entirely sure that he was supposed to leave the embassy without an escort.

Surely one of the Guards would follow him, whether he wanted the company or not.

He paced around the living room, pausing to look at the bust of Elmo—perhaps the Muppet would have some guidance.

I ought to tell them that American embassies also have a Magic Eight-Ball for really important decisions.

Dale turned his head as the front door opened, and a familiar pony stepped in, although unlike all the previous times he'd seen her, she was wearing a harness. “Ambrosia?”

“Hello, Dale.” That was most of her conversational English, so she motioned with a hoof for him to follow her.

She had a wagon parked in front of the house, a four-wheeled flatbed with short sides. He'd seen the type before in old pictures, and the only real difference between hers and one on Earth was the lack of a driver's seat—obviously, a feature ponies wouldn't have needed. It wasn’t the first time he’d noticed that; Starlight’s market cart also didn’t have a driver’s seat, but the omission was more obvious on a larger wagon.

Along the sideboard, in ornate silver paint, was a business name and—logo wasn't the right word, it was a cutie mark, one he knew.

“Silver Spanner?” That was the plumber. “Is her wagon?”

Ambrosia nodded. “I borrow.” She flicked her ears, then pointed towards the rear of the wagon. “Dale help.”

He followed her around to the back. He let her drop the tailboard, even though the latches didn’t look complicated, just a chain with a peg on each side. There was a stack of lumber inside, a rough-finished door, along with her toolbox.

Dale pointed to the door, and she nodded.

He slid it out of the back of the wagon, while she reached up inside and took her toolbox in her mouth. It was heavier than he’d expected; most interior doors on Earth were hollow core, two thin sheets of luan with just enough wood sandwiched between them to be vaguely solid. This was built from individual boards; even the panels were thin boards rather than plywood.

It was hard to imagine how she would have been able to maneuver such a thing—maybe one of the other construction ponies had helped her get it in the wagon. Or Silver Spanner could have helped her load the wagon; with her horn’s levitation power, she could have gotten it in easily enough.

Then again, mundane ponies, especially Starlight, kept surprising him with all the work they could do with her hooves, things he didn't think should have been possible. He'd balanced things on his back a time or two; maybe that had been her plan if he hadn't been willing to help. Like the nurse changing the bed in the hospital, she could have slid it partway out, scootched it along with her head, and then balanced it on her back and walked it inside.

Maybe she intended to have one of the unicorn Guards to help her, which might have been an easier and more obvious solution.

When he got inside, she pointed to the top of the stairs, so he dutifully carried it up and leaned it against the wall where it would be out of the way of the upcoming construction project.

She set her tools down in the hallway, and the two of them went back out to the wagon to get the lumber.


Dr. Clay made his decision before even reading the letter. One glance, and he was certain it was a hoax. “What else could it be?”

“I'm leaning towards Carter's side, here,” Dr. Yin admitted. “I mean, a note in plain English.” 

“Well, if they expect us to read it. . . .”

Sophie reached for the paper, but Dr. Cressada stopped her. “Don't touch anything. Pictures first. Everybody stand back.”

For a minute, all was silent except for the clicking of the shutter as Dr. Cressada moved around the box, snapping pictures from every angle. “Dr. Forsyth, you and Dr. Clay run back to camp, get the sample bags and an extra box of gloves. We should—no, disregard. We need to think here for a moment.

“Now that we’ve got a glimpse, the smart thing to do would be close the lid back up, wrap this thing up—seal it off completely. Call Captain Jim, get a ride back to Charlevoix. Take the box back to the university, and go over it with every instrument we've got. That'll give us the best clues about what we have here, what we're looking at. God, we shouldn't have even opened it here; that might have been a mistake.”

“I hear a 'but' there.”

Dr. Cressada nodded. “But, by the time we get back to the lab, get all the results, re-check and re-verify them, and then get back here again to follow up . . . whatever's in the box might give us more clues as to what we might find here. Let's suppose that whoever was here just before us were the ones who left it. We were close enough that we found their campfire and their footprints.”

“Hoofprints.”

“Yes, thank you, Dr. Forsyth. There might be something else in here that gives us more hints about what we're looking for, don't you think? We'll want to be careful with it, not let it get contaminated as much as we can.”

“We might have already missed a clue,” Dr. Dillamond said. “If the box was airtight, or nearly so, we could have analyzed the air inside.”

“What if there are germs? Bacteria?”

“We haven't really got enough of the right equipment to measure that,” Dr. Forsyth said. “We could leave some of our food right by where the box was, see if anything happens to it.”

“That's a problem on some archaeological digs, too. Plagues usually don’t spread fast, and we're well-isolated by a big body of water, so I think as long as we're cautious about the possibility, we won't have to worry about a big infestation. But you raise a good point, and we'll want to be sure that everything's sealed before we get back on the boat. I'm actually glad Captain Jim can't come all the way ashore—that will help reduce the risk of contamination.”

“Unless whatever bacteria's in the box thrives in freshwater.”

“Let's hope it doesn't.” 

“If it does, we’re already doomed.”

Dr. Cressada nodded. “But—that's another reason that we should look through the box here. We can get more clues and at least some idea of what we're facing, and make more informed decisions.”

“If we're right that whoever is doing this keeps coming back, well, there's things to infer from that,” Dr. Forsyth added. “If they come frequently enough, we might meet them next time around. But before we start jumping to conclusions, let's look at all the evidence we have. First, I think that's more likely the box is new than making the assumption that this box has been here all along and just somehow got missed when the police were combing over the island, and second, it can’t have been left by accident. We were meant to find it and open it.”

“So, it's agreed. Dr. Clay, I think we ought to film our exploration into the box, don't you think?”

He snorted. “When this turns out to be a hoax, I'll be making a best-of compilation of this video and show it at every department meeting for the rest of your career.”

She clapped him on the shoulder. “I appreciate the confidence, Carter.”

The other scientists moved back, in order to give Dr. Cressada and Dr. Forsyth the opportunity to slip the letter into a clear plastic bag—just a large Ziploc bag, one of many they'd brought. Only when the bag was sealed did Dr. Forsyth lift it out of the box, and promptly slid it into another Ziploc for extra insurance.

Dr. Cressada closed the lid of the box and stepped away, moving back towards the beach. “We'll read the letter first, before we investigate the contents further.”

“There were photographs in there, too,” Dr. Clay said. “You saw them, I know you did.”

“Yes. We all did. The letter, first.”


When she’d been offered the chance to work at the embassy, she’d jumped at it. Such opportunities were vanishingly rare, mostly going to ponies who knew the system, who knew other ponies that might put in a good word or two. Not only had she been offered what she thought was a prime post, she wouldn’t be starting at the bottom. Fate had smiled on her, and she was the right pony at the right time.

Reality had quickly reared its ugly head, and she’d been tossed into a work in progress with vague instructions and no organization. On the immediate level, she still wasn’t sure who was actually in charge. She wasn’t sure that anypony actually knew.

Nevertheless, Diamond Mint wasn’t a quitter. Lesser unicorns might have turned tail and galloped off, but she was willing to face the challenge horn first, even if it meant dealing with meals often consisting of meat and adapting to a structure which would have collapsed upon itself in days, if not hours, in any Canterlot manor house.

That it hadn’t was due in part to her efforts, and in part Starlight’s. The earth pony’s cutie mark really was a lucky star; as routines became established, as often as not, she was the quicker one to adapt. She was the one to put her hooves to the ground and get things done, while Diamond struggled with the new breach in etiquette.

Refusing to become a common hoofmare had been at the tip of her tongue when letters and drawings and a telegram from the train station had been slid her way. That wasn’t her job, that wasn’t what she’d signed up for; she was supposed to be at the beck and call of the Ambassadors and how could she fulfill that duty when she was galavanting around Ponyville, picking up this and delivering that?

Now, if the order had come specifically from Dale or even from Kate, she would have done it with no hesitation. But it hadn’t; Starlight had asked.

The only thing that Starlight was officially in charge of was the kitchen, and if all the proper rules were in place and followed, Starlight would have done her cooking and cleaning and nothing else, but that wasn’t how things were working here. Sometimes, Diamond wondered if that was because the whole embassy was new and nopony knew how things ought to go, and sometimes she wondered if she should put her hoof down and get everything into a proper order, thoughts which had become more frequent since the disastrous—to her mind—meeting with Princess Celestia. That had been the only time in her life where she’d fully expected to be exiled or struck down at any moment; the fact that it didn’t happen was clearly pure benevolence on Princess Celestia’s part.

Upon reflection and a sleepless night, she’d come to the conclusion that the rules were flexible as the situation demanded, and as frustrating and stressful as it was, expecting things to work like they ought to in a proper manor house was foalish. Dale wasn’t a pony, and he would do things the way he felt was right, and it was her duty to serve with that in mind.

Thus, for now she had been relegated to serving as a hoofmare, which actually wasn’t a bad gig. Once she put aside her worry about who was left in the house to serve Dale’s needs, she could focus on the pleasure of being outside. Of being offered a cup of tea at Rarity’s Carousel Boutique and having a brief chat before presenting a sketch and an official telegram requesting a flag as soon as possible and more clothes after that.

Her saddlebags slightly lighter, she trotted to the train station and waited in the short line at the freight window before receiving a package from Canterlot. She signed the delivery receipt and tucked the package in her saddlebags, then went back out to the street to continue her morning’s errands.


It had been a long time since Dale had seen anybody actually build a door frame. Back on Earth, nearly everything was dimensionally standardized, and all the big-box stores sold pre-hung doors. Installation was as easy as making sure it was level, and that was it.

He had seen doors hung the old-fashioned way; when he was younger, his father had remodeled part of their house and built his own doors and frames—which admittedly weren't quite as good as the ones that could be purchased these days—so as Ambrosia got out her tools and set to work, the process wasn't totally unfamiliar to him.

Dale was only too happy to help her. Doing something with his hands was a nice change of pace from lessons or meeting important ponies, and got his mind off the upcoming meeting with minotaurs, where he'd be offering them counterfeit Oreos in order to get a peace treaty, at least as long as Starlight and company could figure out how to make them. In the back of his mind, it bothered him that he couldn’t help, but when it came to cooking he was very much a rank amateur and he’d just be in the way.

Here, he could help. His dad had been no expert carpenter, although he'd been good enough for the necessary home improvements. He was patient and knew to measure multiple times before committing, which was what really counted for home projects. At best, though, he’d been a skilled hobbyist, and Dale wasn't much better.

Ambrosia obviously was a professional. With his assistance, she made a couple measurements of the opening, then wrote them on the edge of the door with a mouth-held pencil.

Satisfied she knew the task ahead of her, she started to select boards that were the closest fit for their eventual location, using a carpenter's square and marking the cut with a pencil, then re-checking her measurements before trimming the boards to length with a saw that clipped over her foreleg.

Once she had the first part of the framing in place, she got a set of hinges out of her tool box. They were clearly used, much to Dale's surprise. It had been years since he’d bought door hinges, but he didn’t remember them being terribly expensive.

Dale helped her hold the measuring tape as she marked where the hinges would go, then got out a hammer and chisel for the mortises. Even working with hooves, she was better at it than Dale's father had been, neatly chipping out the correct depth of wood.

She used a brace and bit to drill pilot holes for the screws, and once that was finished, she waxed the screws and mounted the hinges on the door. Her weapon of choice was a good old-fashioned Yankee screwdriver, something Dale hadn’t seen used since power drills rendered them obsolete. As a kid, he’d used his father’s a few times on his own projects, and he felt like a kid again as she offered it to him, trusting him to drive in the remaining screws.

Their next task was to erect the rest of the frame. Dale held the boards in place for her to drive in a nail to hold it roughly in position, then she used a spirit level to check plumbness, driving in wedges to make up for irregularities in the opening.

The offered Yankee screwdriver might have been an outlier, but the fact she'd brought two hammers clearly indicated she’d anticipated he’d want to help, and Dale took the one she offered.

The hammer felt strange in his grasp; it was made for a pony, not a person, and wasn't balanced or weighted like he was used to, so he worked slowly, not wanting to mar the wood with a missed hit or bend a nail.

Ambrosia wanted to fit the casing boards next, before installing the door. After inspecting the side of the frame he'd nailed in and finding it worthy, she trimmed the casing boards and then gave them to him to install.

•••

Dale helped her shimmy the door into position, and then she marked the jamb and chiseled out recesses. Once that was done, he held up the door again so she could screw the two lower hinges into place. He would have put the wall side of the hinges in first and dropped the pins in as the door was aligned, but that wasn't the pony way to do it, and he didn't want to criticize her technique. She'd stuck a couple wedges under the door to hold it level, and all he had to do was keep it from toppling over as she started the screws into the holes she'd drilled.

She let him install the uppermost hinge—owing to the height of the door, she would have had to stand on some kind of scaffolding to get at it.

He hadn’t noticed at first, but the handle of her screwdriver was pitted with tooth-marks. Back on Earth, screwdrivers had evolved over his lifetime from wooden handles to plastic, and then to improved plastics that wouldn't be slippery when they were greasy, and they sometimes had rubber or plastic flocking overlaid on the handles to assist. Her tools were clearly designed to be comfortable in the mouth, soft enough to be gripped with teeth and strong enough to put up with it for years.

The door already had a hole drilled for the knob and latch, and she made pencil marks on the casing boards to drill the striker hole. Ambrosia made the first hole with a spade bit, then let Dale drill the second.

Like the hammer, the brace and bit was unfamiliar in his hand, and he worked slowly to avoid damaging the casing board.

Once he’d finished, she squared the hole with a chisel and pushed the door shut to make sure that everything lined up like it should before fitting the latch hardware.


To Whomever May Find This

My name is Dale Paard. I lived on 649 Hodenpyl Rd. in East Grand Rapids until this summer.

I’d taken a canoe to North Fox Island and camped overnight, and when I woke up the next morning and went down to the beach, there were horse-like aliens on the beach. A pure white winged unicorn who I have learned is their Queen, named Princess Celestia, along with a dozen armed and armored soldiers or guards who were nearly identical to her in color. They were quite surprised by my appearance, but made no threatening gestures towards me.

There was also a thirteenth pony there, a unicorn named Lyra, who was as curious about me as I was about her, and after hesitation on both sides she approached me and we were able to communicate that we should meet on the island again, and then they returned to their spacecraft by means of teleportation.

Even with the evidence of my own eyes, I could not truly believe their alien origin until I found a single hair from Queen Princess Celestia which had been shed on the beach and which had properties I could not otherwise rationally explain. It constantly shifted in color, almost like a sunrise, and it was also able to block radio signals.

As I believed—and still do—that this was a mission of exploration, a mission of peace, I gathered together as many primers and picture-books about the Earth that I could reasonably fit into my canoe, and returned to the island at the appointed time.

Lyra and I began the long process of learning each other's languages and cultures, a process which is still continuing and will likely continue for the remainder of my life.

During our second meeting, we were confronted on the beach by members of the Coast Guard. I panicked, believing that they would capture my friend Lyra and told her to make her escape. They have some sort of force-bubble that protects and transports them and I hoped that she could make it safely back.

In the confusion of that moment, Katherine Dybek tased Lyra before I could stop her, and in a process I do not understand, caused the three of us to be returned to the spacecraft together. My next clear memory is waking up in a hospital.

Katherine received the worst injuries, however she has been well cared for by the ponies. Their medical skills appear to surpass our own, as they have been able to mend her badly burned hand.

I understand that I am now on one of their planets—if there was no confusion of language, Lyra pointed out our Sun in the night sky. I can give you no further clue than in the early evening it was midway above their horizon, in what I believe to be a northeasterly direction, and that we are far enough away from our Solar System that I have not been able to identify any familiar constellations in their night sky.

Their Queen requested that I write this letter to assure any family of Katherine that she is safe and well, and that they have every intention of returning her to Earth once they determine how to do so without risking injury to her. For my part, I apologize for my actions against the Coast Guard in the heat of the moment—I had no intention that things should turn out the way that they have. Perhaps if we had had more time together to better understand the risks we each faced, things would have turned out differently.

I have been informed that this letter, photographs, and further proofs of their peaceful intent will be included to serve not only as a message of our health, but also to perhaps serve the soldiers who will carry the box back to Earth. I am told that they are sending one of their best English-speakers; should his skill be poor, that is my fault and mine alone.

If you have been handed this letter by a pony soldier, there is no need for me to prove his alien origin. If, however, you come across it some time in the future, you will likely find this letter impossible to believe, and I can't blame you. I have placed Princess Celestia's hair in my safe-deposit box, and the key is in my office desk. That, and a scientific analysis of this box and the contents therein should be proof positive.

The ponies eat a largely vegetarian diet, and I am currently in a small town which brings to mind a medieval village. There are at least five kinds of ponies that I have interacted with, the normal ponies, zebras, those with wings (pegasi), those with a horn (unicorns), and those with both wings and horns, such as their Queen: Princess Celestia and another who if I understand correctly serves as Queen at night, Princess Luna. All of the adult ponies I have seen thus far have a mark on their flanks which appears to be unique and symbolic: Lyra has a lyre as her mark; those marks are apparently granted when a pony reaches maturity.

There are also other creatures I have met who appear similar to those from Greek myth—I have met Griffins and Minotaurs. Lyra gave me a book with woodcuts of different creatures and pages of text in what I can only assume are their languages, other species that the ponies know of. I also believe that the cows who live in town are sapient, although I have not spoken to one.

It seems likely from my observations thus far that they are a very advanced civilization which has explored far in our galaxy, meeting with other alien races and making peace with them. None of the ponies or other creatures I have met were terribly alarmed at my presence, despite my alien appearance.

To my knowledge, I have not been placed in any sort of isolation chamber, nor have I been given food which is substantially different from what the ponies themselves eat (they have provided pork and fish for us, which the cook does not mind, but the unicorn assistant finds distasteful). Thus far, I have not experienced any illnesses which I could attribute to an alien pathogen or a vitamin deficiency, suggesting that they seek out planets which are biologically similar to their own, and that they have a method of purifying or sterilizing harmful germs. As I mentioned previously, their medical technology appears to be far more advanced than our own.

Dale Paard


Dale helped Ambrosia carry her tools and the scraps of lumber back to her wagon, then turned to head back into the embassy before an idea struck him. Neither Lyra, Diamond Mint, nor Starlight were back yet, and he hadn't been given any instructions for the day.

He hadn't had any trouble yet with ponies who knew him, plus there had been lots who had seen him on stage and during his walk through town, so why not try it again? Ambrosia wasn’t Lyra, and had no obligation, but at the same time they were—well, friends might be a bit grandiose, but fellow workers certainly fit, and at least back on Earth there was a certain comraderie between blue-collar workers.

“I go with you?”

She paused, midway through hitching herself to her wagon. “With me?”

“To . . . “ He hadn't learned the word, so he improvised. “To wood thing making place.”

“Wood shop?”

“Wood shop.” He repeated the word slowly, hoping he was getting it right. “Where Ambrosia make door.”

She grinned. “Yes, Dale follow me.”

So he did.


In the years since he’d seen her last, Gold Lily had changed. It wasn’t the extra grey in her coat or mane, although that was an obvious difference. Unlike some retirees, she hadn’t gone sedentary and put on weight, nor had she gone the opposite route and gotten in the exercise she never would have while working. She was just a little less put together than he remembered. Her mane was messy, and there were splotches of paint in her coat; upon consideration, it wasn’t that she’d let herself go, but now that she’d retired, she was willing to show a side of herself that he’d never before seen. He didn’t know what to make of it.

Not that long ago, the parlor maid would have had him wait until Gold Lily was good and ready; today, she’d simply led him into the conservatory, where the retired ambassador was rendering a tableau onto canvas.

“I just want you to know that I am completely opposed to this.” Hickory Hocks shifted around on his hooves, finally setting the official letter on her side table. “In fact, the whole diplomatic council was.”

Gold Lily raised an eyebrow. “The whole council?”

“Well, most of the council. You know how it is.”

“Do I ever.” Gold Lily set down her paintbrush and levitated the official letter to her. She skimmed over it quickly, then folded it back up and set it on the table next to her paintbrush. “This is surprisingly vague for Blueblood.”

“He doesn’t exactly know how to approach it, but he doesn't want there to be any mistakes.”

“He doesn’t want a post at the embassy.” Gold Lily grinned as Old Hickory’s eyebrows twitched, and picked the paintbrush up again. “Oh, I still keep my ears moving, I still hear the gossip. Blueblood worries that if Lyra steps in manure, that’ll give Graphite, and Sky Dream enough of a coalition to force him to Ponyville instead of Prance. If he wants me to go to Ponyville as a ‘favor’ before the minotaurs arrive, he must really be worried.”

“Blue Moon’s in on it, too. He’s just been better at keeping his muzzle shut.” He tilted his head towards the letter. “Fancy Pants and Fleur are trying to rein Blueblood in. Make a better noble out of him.”

“Is it working?”

Hickory Hocks shrugged. “He isn’t sending himself to Ponyville to assist.”

“Fair point.” Gold Lily sighed. “He just doesn’t—remember when you were young and ambitious?”

“Not at all. That was so many moons ago.”

“Well, if you did remember, you’d remember being bothered anytime some old greymane stepped on your tail and tried to tell you how to do things, especially if that old greymane got thrown into the mix at the last second by executive fiat and didn’t know a thing about the situation at hoof.”

“I’m sure when I was a newly-minted ambassador, those thoughts might have run through my mind. I might even have brushed through a few cobwebs in my head and thought to bring that up at the meeting.”

“And I bet it was Corduroy who wanted to make sure that there was an official ambassador.”

“You know we never comment on council meetings.”

Gold Lily waved a hoof dismissively. “Oh, please, you’re in my house. If I’m going to get back in harness and take a trip to Ponyville where I won’t be treading on any tails, you have to give me more than Blueblood did in his letter. And sit down, there’s no need to be all formal.” 

“Thank you.” Hickory Hocks settled into a couch. “It’s—well, Princess Celestia is keeping some details under her wing, but from what I understand, the embassy’s underprepared. Still trying to figure out some of the day-to-day functioning, still working on language but we can’t keep them hidden away forever. Nobody but the griffons have raised a stink about it yet—they’ve sent at least one ‘head on a pike’ letter—but some of our closer allies are strongly hinting that they’d like an early meeting, just to get the first matters settled. And I don’t blame them. But, at the embassy there’s no routine, from what I hear. Admittedly, many of those reports are coming from biased sources. 

“Despite what Blueblood might have said in his letter, I think it would be best if you went in an entirely unofficial capacity. Get a quick feel for the flow, and if there are resources they need, arrange for them, and just stay in the background as much as you can. The first meeting’s going to be with the minotaurs, and that ought to be easy enough. Assuming, um—”

“Nopony steps in manure?” Gold Lily suggested.

“Assuming the meeting goes well, the council has, and you didn’t hear this from me, decided to extend an invitation to the griffons next to keep them off-balance. It’s not official yet, and if we don’t think they’re ready, we can pick a different, easier nation.”

“Of course. Who might I have to work with?”

“Besides having the full weight and confidence of the council behind you?”

Gold Lily rolled her eyes. “Come on, you know better.”

“The local embassy staff consists of Dale, the primary human ambassador, who barely speaks Ponish and struggles with focus when it comes to formal lessons; however, he’s friendly and likes to help out. Lyra, the pony representative, is a grandmaster duellist and a musician, and she has hosted a minotaur before. Diamond Mint is formally trained in butling and etiquette; she moved to the embassy upon request. Starlight is a Ponyville native, is reserved and likely unflappable, has family going back all the way to the founding of Ponyville, and is probably tangentially related to half the earth ponies there. Ka-th-rin or Kate is another human, not currently mentally competent to make any binding contracts due to her medical recovery. She likes petting ponies. She also may be from a different tribe than Dale, and their tribes may be warring. A number of nurses and doctors tend to Kate around the clock, all of whom are more focused on her well-being than any political considerations. In addition, there are Royal Guards, possibly Night Guards, and at the rate ponies come and go, there could well be a troop of Wonderbolts by the time you arrive.”

Gold Lily put her paintbrush back down and studied her still-life. “Huh. Well, I do always enjoy a challenge.”

“I thought you’d say that, so I took the liberty of reserving you a compartment on the next train to Ponyville.” Hickory Hocks got back to his hooves and reached into his satchel.

“I haven’t actually agreed yet.”

Hickory Hocks shrugged. “I knew you would.”


Dale and Ambrosia didn't make smalltalk on their way to her shop, even though it would have been polite to do so. Dale wasn't confident enough in their language to carry out an idle conversation, although in the back of his mind he knew that he should be trying whenever the opportunity presented itself. He was content to walk alongside, occasionally thinking about how similar this was to Mackinac Island, where cars were banned and things were still moved by horses. In some ways, the town did remind him of touristy destinations, of places captured in the past. Most such places had normal operating hours—extended on the weekend—and the people there didn't live there, but Mackinac Island was one exception and there were probably others. Perhaps the town was full of traditionalists; perhaps in whatever research they'd done on Earth they'd decided to house him and Kate in the closest thing they had to avoid more severe culture shock. If he'd woken up in a spaceship or a city packed with flying cars, he might have had a more difficult time coping with his new reality.

Dale watched the pedestrians around them for any signs of panic. For the most part, while they kept their eyes on him and a few crossed over the street to be further away, none of them were overly alarmed. Whether that was passing familiarity with him, his company with Ambrosia, or the Guard trailing along behind, he couldn't say.

He spotted a couple familiar ponies in the streets. The white unicorn doctor who’d worked on Kate was talking to a pony busker—at least, that was his assumption. The pony had a musical instrument that looked like a bulky violin, and its case was open on the sidewalk; even from the other side of the street, he could see the glint of coins in it. 

He also saw Twilight Sparkle hurrying through town, her little purple lizard trailing along behind. Did I ever learn his name? Dale couldn’t remember. He thought they’d been introduced, but his memory wasn’t entirely clear on that.

Hopefully, Twilight wasn’t intending to head over to the embassy to give him some more last-minute language instruction. Lyra surely would have told him if that was planned, would have included it in her brief synopsis of the minotaurs.


“Well,” Dr. Forsyth said. “That's quite the letter.”

“The man's mad.”

“Maybe he is, Carter. But he said it himself, the proof's in the box.”

“The thing with most nutters is that they can't back up what they say. They come up with the wackiest theories, either based on misunderstanding or pure willful ignorance,” Dr. Dillamond added. “You can say whatever you want in a letter, but let's be honest, his statements are backing up some of what we know or think.”

“Confirmation bias.”

“Is it? He says they’re equines, and we’ve got hoofprints on the beach. We’ve got unknown writing which looks to be a primer, just the thing they might bring if you were trying to communicate with us—the same idea he says he had in the letter. I bet if the police were to look into his recent purchases, there’d be a lot of elementary-level books.”

“Would you bring the alien equivalent of Dick and Jane to learn a language?”

“I'm not an expert at learning a new language from scratch, so yes, I probably would. If you can teach a kid a language with that, why not?”

“That's not how it's done.”

Jaylen crossed her arms. “How is it done? How do we communicate with aliens? Go ahead and tell me, Carter. What would you do? Imagine you're in his situation—imagine, just for a moment, that everything he said in the letter is factual. Imagine that you were on this island, and imagine that you got pressed, unexpectedly, into establishing communications with a bonafide alien? What would you bring to the table? Especially given the remoteness of your site? What better way than a kid's picture-book? Simple, easy illustrations, simple words, you can go over it again and again and build on it from there. I think that's the most believable part of this whole letter, especially since it ties in to the photocopies Dr. Dillamond has already seen. If he were faking it, he'd come up with something that seems technical, something that seems advanced, like that Biblical spaceships thing. Not a kid's book.”

“What does it matter what he came up with?” Dr. Yin asked. “He could fake a book—he could even find some vanity press that could print it, make it look more credible. I’ve got a friend that prints Fallout fanfictions on Lulu and sells them at conventions. They look as good as any real book.”

“There's going to be some things the police have already done the legwork on,” Dr. Forsyth said. “I'm sure they'd have checked if any of those books came from a vanity press. If they'd found one—“

“They'd tell us?” Dr. Clay said.

“Maybe not, but I think they're at wit’s end, and that's why they've been leaking evidence. I think that Detective Moller's more interested in finding Kate than a trial at this point.”

“We don't know,” Dr. Cressada said. “We don't know if they found the hair that he says is in his safe-deposit box, but that doesn't matter. Imagine we hadn't opened the box, imagine that we hadn't read the letter. Imagine that we'd bundled the whole thing up and taken it back to the lab, after an initial examination of the outside what might we have done next?”

“Taken a wood sample and identified it.”

“Exactly. And if we can't? If it doesn't match any known species of wood? That tells us something. So, let's go back to the letter. Does it sound like something a person would write, in his situation?”

“There are people at the university who can go through it, see if there are any hidden messages, or signs of it being written under duress. If Dale's right that they don't speak English well—and if he's the one who actually wrote this—he could have easily slipped in a message just with misspellings. I didn't see any that jumped out at me. As to whether it's something somebody in that situation would have written?”

“No data,” Dr. Yin said. “Nothing to compare to. It’s plausible on its face, and it’s—oh, what’s the word? Understated enough; he’s not dragging us on to the big reveal like a lot of hoaxers might; he just gives a reasonably simple synopsis of what he claims to have seen and experienced.”

“So we'll take things at face value, at least for now. Until we've got reason to think that we shouldn't.” Dr. Forsyth nodded his head towards the box. “Shall we see what else is in there?”


Ambrosia’s house and shop were located across a stream on the outskirts of town. There was a cluster of buildings; a half-timbered thatch-roofed house that looked much like all the rest in town. It was surrounded by several sheds and barns, none quite matching in style. It reminded him of his machine shop where things had been added on as needed over the years, with no real thought given as to how they'd appear—the function and cost outweighed any style concerns.

Ambrosia had him unload the wagon's cargo into one of the larger structures, clearly a workshop. Then she pulled the wagon forward and backed it into a lean-to structure on the side of a second building. He didn’t follow her in—he hadn't been invited—but got a glimpse through the passageway of a rack of pipes, which implied that it was Silver Spanner’s shop.

When she’d gotten herself unhitched from the wagon, Ambrosia came back outside and pulled the lean-to’s door shut behind her, then went back to the building where he'd unloaded the supplies.

There was a large front door hung from a track, and she slid it aside to fully reveal the interior.

While his professional experience was almost exclusively in machine shops and foundries, he'd visited Greenfield Village and watched This Old House on TV, and recognized a proper wood shop when he saw it. Moreover, he understood the philosophy of a workshop, and from just a glance recognized how the most-used machines had their own dedicated space, while the lesser-used equipment was pushed off into corners to make room.

Organizationally, there were cubbies for wood or scraps, bins for screws and fasteners, cabinets for paints and stains, pegboards for tools, half-finished projects here and there, and even a pinup calendar hung on a nail with the head clipped off.

He'd been out of his league in the horseshoe store, but this was something he understood. The machines were different, but they were familiar. With most of them, he could understand their function simply by looking.

Ambrosia watched him as he looked over her shop. In her shoes, he would have done the same; on the rare occasions when an important potential customer had wanted a tour of the machine shop, he'd always been watching for their reaction and hoping that none of his employees had done something stupid—or were about to. At least on that front she had no fear; there were no employees in the shop.

It was big enough that there could have been, and maybe sometimes there were. For a little project like framing in a door, she’d hardly need help, although one of the other construction ponies might have been with her when she built it. It could have been a down time for her—Dale had managed to get enough production contracts that he could coast over a few slow days with cleaning and machine maintenance, but maybe that wasn’t the case for her. Or, maybe it was a weekend. He didn’t know how pony jobs worked; it could have been that the door hadn’t gotten fitted before today because she was busy with other work and could only get to it on her day off.

If that was the case, he shouldn’t have been imposing . . . but he could see just by the way she was standing, by the way she was looking where he was looking, she was proud of her shop and was genuinely curious about what he thought about it. She probably wanted to give him a tour of it, even though they lacked the mutual language to discuss it. He could tell fellow machinists that he had a Haas SL-40, and they’d appreciate how much better it was than the clapped-out Bridgeport mill that still got pressed into service occasionally, but that meant nothing to anybody outside the industry.

Seeing a thing in action—that was something that he could wrap his head around. But he knew that he’d have to earn it. That was one thing that people in suits never understood, but which he knew full well. Working men earned respect by doing, so he leaned down and picked up a handful of scrap lumber and turned to Ambrosia. “Where?”

It took her a second to transition back to worker mode, and then she pointed a hoof over to a cubby.


Kate was not so unaware of her surroundings to have let the new ponies go unremarked. Unlike most of the ponies, their coats were dusky-colored, and unlike most of the ponies, their manes were dark.

More significantly, instead of feathered wings, they had batwings, and their eyes were slitted like those of a cat.

Had she seen them for the first time in the middle of the night, she undoubtedly would have panicked, but during the light of the day they were different, a diversion from her normal routine of laying about in the bed feeling miserable and confused and undergoing poking and prodding from the nurses. They were a change in the dreamlike routine she currently knew, a welcome diversion.

She couldn't quite make sense of them, of where they fit into the larger picture, but to be fair, there were many things that she hadn't been able to wrap her head around, especially now that the drugs were fading from her system.

One of them was currently sitting on her chair, curled up with his head tucked against a foreleg, sound asleep. The other was awake, watching her intently, although one ear remained focused on her companion.

They occasionally talked to the nurse, and they sometimes talked to each other in a series of chirps, not bird-like, exactly, but more like Morse Code. 

She'd tested out boundaries with them. The nurses were obliging, willing to be petted as long as she complied with their instructions, but these new ponies were sometimes defiant, chittering at her angrily and revealing their fangs as she reached inside their personal space. That was new, that was something she hadn't expected, and she'd jerked her hand back. The two of them had a brief conversation, and then a head was lowered and she got a chance to pet it and scratch behind the ears but it didn't feel quite the same. It felt like submission under duress, and she quickly gave up and returned to her contemplation of the ceiling.

At night, though, the male was insistent on sharing her bed, and snuggled right up against her, a comforting presence. Then, he didn’t mind being petted, didn’t mind being scratched behind the ears or along his back; he even let her explore his leathery wings. Kate didn’t spend too much time with those; they were kind of creepy; she preferred the feel of soft fur under her fingers.

Thoughts were coming back, although it was still difficult to focus, to think things all the way through. She knew she'd been injured; her hand felt wrong in a way she couldn't quite describe. It was like it was new, like it didn't know what it should feel, so every sensation was magnified. That could have been a side effect of the drugs.

Laying in bed all day was no good. She had to do something, even if she didn't know what that something was, so she got up and went over to the dresser and picked out her clothes. That was a simple enough task: she hardly had any, and they were all variants on the same theme.

Even so, putting it on felt right, felt like another piece of her was complete, although she couldn't articulate why. The familiar motion of buttoning up the shirt, of smoothing out the wrinkles; the patches which had faithfully remembered who she was even when she hadn't. 

The hallway had a new door. She'd heard voices and noises in the hallway, and she should have investigated instead of staying in bed and feeling sorry for herself. They’d been putting in a new door to keep her out of the downstairs. She should have gotten up sooner, should have gone into the hallway sooner. Should have gotten out which she still could.

Kate almost hadn’t gone to it; she’d expected it to be locked, but it wasn't, and she proceeded downstairs, the pink nurse following.

Downstairs was deserted; she could tell that without looking. There wasn't any noise—the clopping of hooves on wood was almost constant, enough so that she hardly noticed it any more. 

Except when it was gone.

A peek into the dining room confirmed her suspicions. The pink pony with the white star who normally made food wasn't there, nor was the blueish purple unicorn that usually carried around the food.

At the other end of the house, the office door was open, but the office was empty. No Rorschach, no seafoam unicorn.

She returned to the center of the living room and looked around. Memories were still fuzzy and strange, and the things she did remember were like disordered photographs strewn across the floor: she couldn't put them in any kind of sensible order.

Her eye was drawn to the bust of Elmo. She knew he was from television, but couldn't remember why he was important. In any other context she would have been certain that he was not real, but given that she had a pony nurse behind her right now, Elmo wasn't that far-fetched. Plus, they'd named a type of electrical discharge after him.

She'd seen it before when she was stationed on a cutter out of Boston. The Escanaba, which was also a place in the Upper Peninsula. St. Elmo's Fire, dancing through the rigging on the radar mast, ghostly blue spheres. Had Elmo been the one who'd discovered it? Was that why it was named after him? That didn't seem right; it had been around for a long time and he hadn’t.

Is electrical discharge related to how the unicorn horns glow? That was a possibility that had just occurred to her. She vaguely recalled that she’d gotten a shock when she’d touched the glow.

Kate was tired of being inside, tired of being cooped up in a room that smelled like sweat and sickness and since there wasn't anybody in the house, there wasn't anybody to stop her from at least visiting the backyard.

The Guards would be at the front door, but she knew that there was a side door, although she couldn’t remember which one. She found the bathroom first, before finding the door that led to the backyard.

The feel of sun on her face and grass on her bare feet was invigorating, something she'd been missing for far too long.

She was halfway to the bench when she remembered that there were dozens of ponies around, and she was barefoot, so she kept a wary eye on the ground in front of her, lest she accidentally step in a pile of road apples.

There weren't any near the path, and it honestly didn't smell all that horsey outside.

She sat on the bench, expecting Pink to lay down beside her, but the nurse didn't. Instead, she wandered over to the gardens around the border, sniffing at the flowers until she found one she liked, and nibbled the head off it.

“No, don't do that,” Kate said. “That's not nice.”

The nurse's ears turned at the sound of her voice, and her head went down one more time, nipping off another flower. Then she came trotting back to the bench and dropped the flower on Kate's lap.

Kate picked it up and examined it, twisting it around in her fingers before leaning down to smell it. She wasn't that great with flowers, but it looked like some kind of a lily.

The nurse sat on her haunches and motioned to her mouth with a hoof.

“Fetch?” Kate pantomimed throwing the flower into the yard, and the nurse shook her head. She pointed back to her mouth, then made exaggerated chewing motions.

“Eat?” Kate pointed to her own mouth, repeating the motions. “Flowers aren't for eating.” But that wasn't exactly true; there was rosehip tea.

She traced her fingers across a small leaf on the stem, tore it off, then brought it up close to study. A moment later, her attention wandered, over to the strangely-colored skin on her right hand and the weird smoothness of the joints, compared to the left. She was sure they were supposed to match, but couldn't figure out why they didn't. Had she had a hand transplant? Was that why she'd been in the hospital?

That didn't make any sense. If she had had a hand transplant, there would have been some kind of scar where it had joined to the rest of her arm, and there wasn't. Not a proper scar, anyway; just a sort of ragged boundary where her skin changed color and texture.

Maybe it was some kind of robotic hand. Maybe that was why it felt weird. What if they'd put a prosthetic on and then grown skin over the robotic hand?

She pinched the back of her hand, and felt pain, which suggested that it was real.

In the movies, the Terminator had cut into his flesh to show he was a machine underneath, but she wasn't willing to try that.

For just a moment, another memory returned to her, a memory of an alien claw at the end of her arm, something she'd seen out of the corner of her eye one time that the doctors were using glowing lights to do—to do something to her. When had that been? Sometimes burns didn't heal quite right, but she didn't remember there being a fire.

Kate finally popped the flower petal in her mouth. It was sweet and perfumey with a slight grassy hint, and a texture not unlike lettuce.


By the time he'd gotten all Ambrosia’s supplies put away, she'd switched back into worker mode. After he'd put the boards and hardware away, she'd set her toolbox on a mostly-clear workbench, trusting that he'd figure out where they belonged. It was reasonably simple; there were empty spaces on the pegboard where tools should be, and those tools were in her toolbox. Like went with like, so he put her screwdriver with its companions, and her chisel next to the other chisels. He turned, her measuring tape in hand; there weren’t any other measuring tapes hung from the pegboard.

He just as quickly turned away—she was undressing, unfastening her harness and it seemed rude to stare, so he focused his attention on her lathe, a cast iron monster. Nowhere near as advanced as the industrial units he’d had at the machine shop, but it looked well-built and well-used. Small bits of sawdust were lodged in the seams of the machine, the arbors and feed screws glistened with a light coating of oil, and the drive-pulley had a mirror-shine on it.

He couldn’t help himself; he walked over to the lathe and while he wouldn’t touch unless he got permission, it was okay to look. The control wheels had a different orientation, clearly intended for hoof operation. Most of the paint had chipped off the dials, but the markings were clearly embossed on the metal; if he had to guess, she never needed to refer to the marks except perhaps for initial setup.

His eye went up, along the duckcloth drive belt to the line shaft running along the ceiling. That was an obsolete drive system, at least on Earth; at the same time, he’d always wondered if there was an advantage to it that had been forgotten. Instead of each machine having its own drive motor, one single larger motor could be used for everything. The dust collection system in his machine shop was a common system, running to all machines and powered by one motor, so why had people gone away from that? Besides the obvious danger of getting caught in a rotating shaft; but then practically everything in the machine shop involved rotating shafts, and all the machines had ample safeties to mitigate carelessness or stupidity.

Ambrosia bumped her nose against his hip, drawing him out of his reverie. She pointed to the tape measure and then pulled a drawer open. Dale obligingly dropped the tape in its place, the last of her tools, then took a step back to let her have a chance to approve of his handiwork.

The chisels were in the wrong order, but other than that, he'd done a proper job. For just a moment, he thought back to the days as an apprentice struggling with getting fractional drill bits in the right place, wondering if he'd ever be able to remember whether 29/32 or 15/16 was bigger, and then she gave him a nod of approval.

Dale reached over and tapped her lathe. “Lathe,” he said, in English.

“Lath?”

“Lathe,” he corrected, and she tried the word a few times until it was close enough, then said it in her language.


The proliferation of cell phones had promptly led to the proliferation of selfies. Historically, selfies dated back to the days of paint and mirrors, although technology had lowered the bar significantly when it came to talent.

Nevertheless, that was the photograph they focused on the most. To be sure, there was information to be gleaned from all the photos, but the others were posed, awkward, a kid on Santa's lap, a boy unsure if he should still believe in Santa or not. 

In a slideshow of vacation pictures, it could have slid by unremarked. The poses were nothing special, nor was the background at first blush.

It was the subjects—or more significantly, one particular subject—that changed everything.

Dale and Kate were easy enough to identify in the photograph. The third subject was what garnered their full attention, a blue unicorn with blue eyes, grinning at the camera.

They could tell it was the instigator of the photograph, the one who'd taken a selfie with reluctant or unaware subjects. Dale looked confused, and Kate wasn't really focused on the camera—in fact, none of the photographs of her that had been provided showed a full awareness. She was not entirely there, something Dr. Yin had immediately spotted, and it tallied with the information in the letter stating that she’d been badly injured.

Dale had tried to be presentable, but had the look of a man who'd been stuffed into an ill-fitting suit against his wishes and instructed to pose for photographs that were clearly an imposition on his normal routine.

The unicorn had been the one with the camera, that was clear. Or if not the unicorn, a close friend of it.

Light blue fur, a color that no Earthly mammal possessed. Big blue eyes, a white mane and blue coat, a stubby horn with a faint glow around it, one hoof visible in frame, polished and chipped. An enormous grin; the unicorn, at least, was enjoying this particular moment.

Even through the protective plastic bags, the image seared into their minds, a very human moment. The picture spoke volumes, and of all the things they'd found thus far, felt the most genuine.

There were other pictures; there was the obligatory posing-in-front-of-flags picture, another one which would merit hours of study, but it was not what they kept coming back to.

Digital storage was cheap, and Dr. Cressada used that to her advantage, taking pictures of anything and everything that they'd discovered. This was the one they kept coming back to as she scrolled through the gallery on her camera, this was the one that they enlarged on the laptop and discussed through dinner and retiring to their tents. A picture of a picture, but not the least diminished for that; while the original remained safely sealed in a plastic bag, they studied the digital copy, poring over it for details, for things captured in a moment of spontaneity.


Rotating metal and rotating wood weren't that dissimilar.

The world had moved on, and the skilled craftsman of the past had been supplanted by the programmer, at least to an extent. As a businessman, Dale had had no choice but to modernize over time. As a successful businessman, Dale had also recognized that the principles remained the same despite the advances in technology, and while he'd never reached the level of familiarity with CNC machines as some of his employees had, he fully understood the principles in the process. He hadn't exactly kept his skills sharp as he'd moved from an apprentice to a master to an owner—which took its own set of skills—but he could still use any machine in his shop. He might hunt and peck at the controls on the CNC machine, but he knew what he wanted it to do.

He wasn't an expert on an old-school lathe, not anymore, but he knew what he wanted to accomplish and he knew what shape of blade would get the job done.

For a brief instant, his mind shifted to the oddness of the scene. He and Ambrosia were crowded shoulder-to-shoulder, the two of them working in a space meant for one. And then he focused back on the wood, calculating the cut, his hand making gentle adjustments on the tool rest to get the proper profile. A stack of template boards were on the workbench, lovingly shaped out of hardwood, and he picked one of them up and held it to the still spinning workpiece then shaved just a little bit more wood off.

Deep in his heart he knew that this piece would never make it to its final installation; it wasn't right. He'd already cut too deep in one spot, not checking the template as often as he should have. And he knew that she could freehand it better than he was doing; she had the advantage of years or decades of practice under her belt. He could have called the whole thing off when he'd made a mistake, and maybe he should have. At this point, they were just wasting wood and time.

And yet, that wasn't what this was about. He knew it and so did she. Had their positions been reversed, had she been operating an unfamiliar metal lathe, he wouldn't have called it until there was a finished product, and he would have expected her to learn from her imperfections, to not make the same mistakes a second time.

There was more to it than the workpiece. There was an understanding, a demonstration of skill, something which could not be faked, which could not be covered by weasel words, something that he could hold in his hands or she could hold in her hooves and examine. He pulled the chisel back knowing it did not entirely fit the profile but also knowing that the further down the piece, the better it got. She disengaged the drive and the lathe spun down and then stopped, and she worked the chuck at one end while he did the other.

It was a tangible thing he'd made, a baluster which might never be used but that wasn't the important part at all.

He was the one to hold it against her template one more time, revealing where it was lacking. He wasn't ashamed with what he didn't know, and she nodded at his work and could have instructed him to put it in the scrap bin but she didn't. She pointed to the cubby which held her collection of balusters.