//------------------------------//
// First Contact 
// Story: The Sun Rises, The Sun Never Sets 
// by BRBrony9 
//------------------------------//

"The Sun Rises!"

Half a dozen voices in unison chanted the return.

"The Sun Never Sets!"

"Rooftop. 200th Floor. Transit pad and viewing platform."

With a characteristic sigh of compressed air, the turbovator came to a halt on the two-hundredth floor, doors sliding open. Half a dozen ponies stepped out, among them a young, purple unicorn mare. Twilight Sparkle, clad in a coquettish blouse, skirt and vest, was finally free from work. The evening beckoned to her like the come-hither look of a prospective lover, and she was ready to embrace it wholeheartedly. 

The two-hundredth floor served the rooftop transport system, small individual VTOL taxi-pods that could be summoned at the push of a button. Automated, they followed the guidelines, invisible tracks of never-ending light projected by a grid-system across the city of Canterlot, and every other civilized city, for each metropolis had their own. The pods would never deviate from the tracks, lasers and radars guiding them safely, maintaining separation from each other and from the vast buildings of ferrocrete and glass that dominated the skyline of the capital city. The Old City, so-called, was still up on the hillside, all marble and gilded spires, but now it was off-limits to the public, for that was where the Sun herself lived in solitary splendor. No mere mortals were permitted to attend to her. Only those specially bred for the purpose, unicorns all, of course, could set foot inside the walls of the vast palace complex. The new Canterlot had been built in the valley below, rapidly swallowing up small towns like Ponyville and Cloudsdale that lay nearby, now mere neighbourhoods of the megalopolis that housed one hundred million souls. They had no individuality anymore, not like the towns of old, Ponyville with its charming timber-frames and Cloudsdale with its soaring, curvaceous Pegasi architecture. They were just neighbourhoods now, like all the rest.

As, of course, it must be.

Summoning a pod with a magic, haptic press of a button, Twilight went soaring into the air, the glass windows and floor of the pod giving her a fine view of the city as its thrust-vectoring engines carried her up from the roof of her megabuilding, a towering concrete and steel edifice that housed ten thousand ponies. She traced the old familiar route with her eyes. Over there on the plains south of the city she could see the distant, twinkling panels of the Solar Array, the vast microwave grid that captured the energy from orbiting stellar-conversion satellites, using the Sun to power the Sun-City. As a student of astrophysics and applied cosmology at Canterlot Royal University, Twilight could appreciate the technological impressiveness of the microwave-transmission grid, for unlike traditional photovoltaic solar panels, the power could continue to flow all day and all Even-Day, too.

There, she could see the Orbiport, the launch point for the trans-continental spaceplanes which could carry a thousand ponies ten thousand miles in fifty minutes. There's one now! She checked the chronometer in the pod. It could only be the 8pm flight to distant Baltimare. The sleek spaceplane leapt from the mag-channel, hurled like a stone from a slingshot, its ramjets blazing in the fading light. Were she not inside the pod with its soothing music and sound-cushioning, she would have heard the rumble and roar as the delta-winged craft rose rapidly into the darkening sky, up beyond the scattered clouds. At sixty-thousand feet in altitude, high above the vast starscape of a billion electric lights, the spaceplane's suborbital injection engine roared into life, a brilliant speck in the heavens, pushing the craft to its top speed and carrying it high, high, high into the sky, beyond the clouds, beyond the air, to the very edge of space. Over the horizon it would go, arriving at Baltimare within the hour. What a marvel! What a wonder!

Down below, as the city settled into the darkness, a hundred million ponies went about their lives. Unicorns, naturally, but also the sub-classes, too. Pegasi and Earth Ponies, even a few of the Degenerate Species which had been retained for the most menial tasks. Griffons, Zebras, Diamond Dogs for sewer maintenance, mining, all the undesirable but necessary tasks which could not- simply could not- be delegated to ponies, no matter how low their social class might be. Unicorns like Twilight, of course, were those who gave the orders. The former failed experiment, mostly glossed over by the history books, of having all three races live together as equals had been swept away by the Sun herself, for seeing the tension and distrust this provoked, Celestia had known there was only one solution- to have each race live in their rightful place in the hierarchy once more, but this time under the banner of the Glorious Sun, not under their own tribal flags.

That was easier said that done. As the history classes taught, the Great Unification War was the beginning of a process, not the end of one. The other races may have been defeated in battle, but they had not yet learned to accept their rightful places. That took time. Time, and helpful guidance, the benevolent hand of the Sun and her followers, working to explain and demonstrate why things had to be the way they had to be. Each following generation understood a little more, and a little more, until finally there was a limit to what magic could achieve. Where magic ended, so technology took up the strain, for by this time science had advanced greatly, becoming virtually indistinguishable from magic in many ways. Yes, technology was a miracle, just like the gift of life itself, the gift of magic, the gift of Light.

The VTOL pod carried Twilight down past the megabuildings of midtown, past the Cultural Ministry, past the glistening jewel that was the Solar Dome Arena, then swooping low over the covered walkways where Earth Ponies and Pegasi could be seen mingling and walking, over the automats and the cafeterias, over the ground-taxis and maglev lines that carried them to and from work, home and leisure. Then the pod rose again, sweeping into a carefully controlled turn before dropping out of the skylanes and onto the landing pad of the Galleria Frontera, one of the most trendy cabaret restaurants in the city.

Twilight disembarked once the door slid open, and made her way inside. Unicorns were all around, enjoying themselves, the clinking of glasses and polite laughter echoing in her ears. These were her kin, after all, her ponies. She should have felt completely at home here. Yet, she did not.




"Darling, how wonderful to see you this Even-Day! And looking quite ravishing if I do say so." Rarity chuckled, throwing an elegant arm around Twilight and giving her a kiss on the lips, not exactly an uncommon gesture among two friends and only enough to draw a few leering glances from others, no matter how much either of them might have wished to attract more attention. Making things, actively producing them with one's own time and labour, was mostly something done by the lower classes, but Rarity was one of the exceptions, for she was a dressmaker, a seamstress for the high and the mighty, and that was one area where expertise and skill were both needed. Rarity had both in abundance, because of course she did. As it must be.

"Hello Rarity!" Twilight smiled at her friend, admiring her sparkly silver gown. "My Sun, you are dressed to the nines this Even-Day, aren't you? Going somewhere special after this?"

"Not really, no," she lamented in reply. "But one must make an effort, hm? I must say I do approve of your getup too, darling! How bold, to go for the harassed schoolmare look! I know you will turn heads. Plenty of ponies are rather fond of that sort of thing," she giggled lightly, her perfectly-coiffured mane swaying slightly as she turned. "Come along, we must take our seats!"

Twilight followed her to their booth, for the cabaret show was soon to begin. Canapes and champagne were served to them by Pegasi in elegantly-pressed suits, a necessary evil for no unicorn could possibly be expected to perform such a menial task. The show began at eight-thirty on the dot, as it did every evening. Twilight and Rarity watched on from their seats as, down on the enormous stage, Pegasi and Earth Ponies performed their tricks, dances and follies, carousing and japing about, eliciting laughter from their audience as they ate. The food was good, swiftly served, some really excellent wines and fish being the highlights. 

Twilight enjoyed herself, as she always did with Rarity, but something was nagging at her, just at the corners of her mind, quietly teasing her with thoughts she knew- knew- she should not be having. Not about Rarity, nor the two tuxedoed stallions who joined them halfway through the performance, or about the acrobats and burlesque entertainers on the stage. No, something else, something she could not quite explain to herself how to even formulate into a cohesive idea. 

After the two stallions had taken their leave from Rarity's apartment and left the two mares alone in bed, Twilight found herself quietly pondering while Rarity snoozed beside her. This was fine, she thought. This was all fine. IS all fine. No, it was something else, playing on her mind for days now. Something she couldn't talk about.




A week earlier, Twilight had done something wrong. She knew she shouldn't have, and immediately felt guilty afterwards, but she felt compelled to do it by some invisible force, as though a guiding hand were pushing her inexorably from behind. You must. I cannot! You must.

Though a student, Twilight had been assigned a job. Nothing too taxing, of course, for her studies must take priority, or else how would the next generation reach even greater heights than those who preceded them? The State Hatchery where she had been given her assignment was a relatively new construction, where pets would be bred for ponies to have, loyal companions, loyal to the end. As it must be.

Ponies kept dogs, cats, sometimes birds, but now a new category of pet had been authorized- dragons. Only small ones, of course. The conditioning programme would see to that. They would not grow beyond a certain size, usually no bigger than an average terrier, for they must be manageable. Nor would they be permitted wings, or to breathe fire, or to have any other potentially subversive or dangerous features. Twilight had loved the idea when she heard about it; to have one of these formerly noble creatures as a pet? How delightfully perfect! After all, unification was not just for ponies, but for all creatures too, made as one under the banner of the Sun. As a sector sub-supervisor in the Hatchery, Twilight had been responsible for overseeing the robotic constructs that performed the menial work in the facility, namely those robotic arms that were injecting the embryonic dragons inside their eggs with stimulants, vaccines and artificial hormones. She was also given the task of using her magic for a vital function- flash-blasting each batch of eggs with a stupidity spell, for unlike dogs and cats, dragons had once been intelligent beings, able to speak, think, and form their own nation, long since subsumed into greater Equestria, but still mentioned in passing in some of the old history books. It was a way of ensuring they would be good pets, not sapient beings. Only the same emotional level as a dog, nothing more, for otherwise how could they be a pet? A smart creature could never be subjected to such a thing.

Twilight wanted a dragon of her own, for it sounded like the most wonderful thing, like the three-dimensional virtual reality trips she had been on as a foal. Only the best for her, for she was a unicorn, like her parents (well, like her mother and most of her rotating parade of male admirers, for fathers were anonymised in Equestria to avoid the issue of placing too much emphasis on family lines and blood relations) and her brother Shining Armor, an officer in the military's intelligence corps. Her mother and surrogate-fathers of the day had made sure she got the best toys, the most advanced augmented-reality gear. Well, in truth, they had little to do with it, for the state provided it all. After all, she was a unicorn foal, so why would the state and the Sun want anything less than the best for her? So a real dragon it would be, then. So whimsical!

As she stood over the tray of bright dragon eggs, ready to apply the spell, that nagging thought had hit her for the first time. Why not try something a little different? Just a little. A tiny bit. Be a bit...rebellious.

Rebellion of course was a dirty word, but it did not have to be a rebellion. Just a little...unorthodoxy? Yes, that was better. There were unorthodox ponies. They were treated with some disdain, perhaps, but they were still accepted in society. They were not outcasts just for one little choice, one little action, that differed from the norm. She had been normal her whole life, all twenty years of it, so maybe it was time to change? Just for a moment, a single moment in time. That was all.

So she had.

She could be a surrogate mother of sorts, yes! The egg would have no known father, but then neither did ponies. Mares were impregnated artificially with sperm from anonymous donors when they wanted to have a foal. This was rather important- nopony had a father because it was an extension of the old Equestrian problem. There had always been more mares than stallions in Equestria, due to a quirk of the birth rate from an unknown cause- some had speculated latent effects from magic, environmental conditions, genetic disease- but modern science was more than capable of compensating for that through gene editing, and ensuring an even distribution of males and females among newborns. To maintain some of that old tradition- where one stallion could sometimes, in the past, impregnate dozens of mares- all stallions were now required to donate to the Fertility Service at one of their clinics several times a year. Mares could do the same with their eggs, for use by those unable to conceive due to medical problems. This process also meant that there could be no squabbles over hereditary bloodlines when it came to inheriting property or business interests, for only the mother's line was known and thus continued to take precedence, as it always had in the past, as Equestria had always been a matriarchal society ever since the defeat of Discord (though some enterprising ponies could, and had, attempt to sequence their own DNA in order to identify their true father, which was why the equipment needed to do so was strictly controlled and limited to approved Fertility Service staff). 

The truly liberating aspect of this system, however, was that it meant mares who wished to have a foal could do so at a time of their choosing, when their life was in the right place and the proper conditions had been met, rather than risk conceiving at a time when bearing a child would have been troublesome, difficult or even dangerous- say, a soldier out on deployment in the Desolate Zones beyond the border. A pleasing side effect of this was that it all fed into the current state of Equestrian society nicely, freeing both mares and stallions to enjoy the company of as many other ponies as they wished in the bedroom (or back alley, or in the passenger compartment of a VTOL cab). That was one of the many pleasures afforded to every citizen of Equestria- sexual freedom and gratification was considered as important as any other form of entertainment, if not more so. That was why ponies were all rendered selectively sterile by low-grade magic, similar to that which Twilight was applying to the dragon eggs. When visiting a Fertility Service clinic to either donate or conceive, a stallion or mare would be bathed in temporary counter-magic by one of the highly-trained nurses or doctors on duty, so that the sperm they donated would be virile, and the prospective mother would be receptive and able to conceive after being injected. That magic would wear off after a brief time- and then they could go right back to fornicating freedom.

Just like ponies, this egg would have no known father, but it would have a mother, of sorts.

The tray of eggs had been moved down the line, all suitably irradiated with Twilight's stupidity-spell magic. All except one solitary egg, right at the corner of the sterile metal tray. She had chosen the egg at random, perhaps because it was the farthest from where she stood. Nopony would know. Nopony would know, because Twilight Sparkle's next act was to fill out the pet-adoption form for Batch 2554/1, Sub-Batch 4, Tray 15, Egg #1069972. Signed, dated, submitted. Two days later, a fully processed egg, about to hatch, had been delivered by drone to her apartment's mail-airlock. The next day, one hundred and twenty floors above the ground, a dragon was born.




Spike, she named him, after the pointed protuberances on his back, a small drake, knee-high to her, and she was not that tall to begin with. Purple and green were the colours of his scales, with bright, inquisitive emerald eyes, like those of a foal, except for the slitted pupils. She knew how Rarity would react once she saw him. What a darling creature! 

And he was, right up until he spoke for the first time. It had worked! Her spell, or rather her lack of it, had resulted in the desired effect, for Spike was an intelligent dragon. Over the next few days, she had been able to teach him the rudiments of Equestrian with surprising ease. Oh, what it would feel like to be a mother! Twilight already knew some of that joy, for this was her dragon. She was raising him, not to be a pet, but to be a kind of surrogate-son, at least within the walls of her apartment. The first thing she taught Spike was to never, EVER speak if anypony else was present besides her, for that would land them both in deep trouble. It was at the moment she told him that fact that Twilight realised she had probably made a big mistake.

A pet was one thing, but an intelligent dragon? That was anathema, probably breaking several dozen laws she had no knowledge of, and a few she certainly did know about. That sudden but rapidly growing sense of dread that filled her was what had made her so twitchy during her evening with Rarity and the two stallions- nondescript bureaucrats, but perfectly adequate in bed- and ever since. Mistake, mistake mistake.

Spike was a mistake, an aberration, something to be kept silent. She should not have done what she did, misused her spell on purpose. That was the kind of thing the baddies did in the virtual-reality movies. Not her. Not good girl Twilight Sparkle who wouldn't hurt a fly. But she kind of liked it, too. Just a little act of defiance- defiance against what, she couldn't quite say- made her feel a rush of adrenaline that no joy-pill or spaceplane launch could ever accomplish. After all, she eventually convinced herself, what was the true harm in it? Spike was still just a pet, albeit one who could talk, one who obeyed her every word. He never spoke when guests were present in her home, or when the maintenance Earth Pony came by to fix something, or even when she was present, unless she gave him permission. Nopony would ever know. Nopony would ever know.




The double-boom awoke her with an annoyed start. It always did. The seven-o'clock spaceplane to New Zebrica always seemed to go supersonic directly overhead, right above her building, though she knew the craft was likely already at twenty thousand feet or so. Twilight idly wondered who was aboard as she pulled on her underwear, slowly getting on with her morning routine. Spike was out in the lounge in his little basket, like a dog, like any good pet, right where she had left him.

"Good morning mommy Twilight," he greeted her. "Is it time for eggs?"

"Yes, Spike. Time for eggs," she chuckled, ordering some from the automat in the wall of her kitchen. Served piping hot, she gave one plate to Spike and kept one for herself, along with some toast. Though he came from an egg himself- so did she technically, thinking about it- Spike had taken a liking to the foodstuff, though they were produced en masse by artificial chicken-wombs in the victualing plants out west, not exactly fresh-laid.

"Mommy? Why do we say good morning?" Spike asked suddenly. "Isn't it always the day? The sun always rises, but the sun never sets."

"Oh, well...that's just a slogan," she replied, munching on her toast. "I mean, it's more than that. Far more than that...but it's still just a slogan. The sun goes...well, it goes away during the Even-Day, and comes back in the morning," she explained. As an astrophysicist, she could have gone into a far more complex explanation of orbits, inclination, rotation, solar mass and output, luminosity, albedo and a dozen other things, but Spike would have only understood about every twentieth word. He was making a lot of progress, though, for a dragon just three months old. Pony foals would still just be making gurgling noises at this stage, but dragons, it seemed, were fast learners and fast to mature, though Spike's growth and puberty would be stifled by the many hormones and chemicals he had been exposed to in his egg.

"So is the Even-Day a different thing to the day?" Spike questioned curiously. "It's dark outside when it's Even-Day." His tail twitched and wiggled like that of a dog, eager to go out and play, or in this case, eager to learn new tricks.

"The Even-Day is when the sun has gone away," Twilight explained, stepping carefully. "While the sun is away it's dark here because the light from it doesn't reach us. Just like if I turn off the light in the kitchen..." She did so with her magic. "This is like Even-Day. But then the light comes back..." she turned it on again, "and we have day once more!"

"It's confusing," Spike frowned. "Why can't they have another name for it that doesn't have day in it?"

"You'll get the hang of it, Spike," Twilight smiled. "You could call it darktime if you like, or blackout, or nigh...uh...or s-something else. You decide."

"Or nigh?" Spike blinked, cocking his head. "What's nigh?"

"Nothing! Nothing at all...eat your eggs, Spike," Twilight ordered. "Just call it darktime if it confuses you, alright? Now, I have to get dressed for work. The maintenance pony is coming to work on the robo-vac, so remember to keep out of his way and stay quiet."

"Yes, mommy..." Spike nodded, looking a bit downcast. Twilight went to take a shower, the cool water washing over her bare body. That was close, she sighed. I almost used a banned word in front of my pet. That would NOT have been a good precedent to set!

Once she was done, she waved goodbye to Spike and headed for her six-hour shift at the Hatchery. No more undosed eggs from her, oh no. One was enough. Her studies took up the rest of the afternoon, and that evening she went with Rarity to a dancehall. Just a normal day, like any other. But now, new thoughts were swirling in her head. That word she had almost said in front of Spike- it was banned, she knew that much. But why? Though she was a unicorn, nopony had ever thought to entrust her with that information. Had she missed something? Was there a gap in her knowledge, or was there a gap in the history books? It was, she knew, an old name for the Even-Day, but a name that was not to be used, not to be spoken, unless one wanted to truly shock, the kind of shock that would make ponies drop their wine glasses and make a room go silent with disgust and dismay. It was hardly a profane word in the sense of some of the common, crude swears that were freely bandied about by even the most elegant and noble unicorns, but it was obscene, one of a few words that were not to be uttered unless you fancied the ire of everypony around you at best, and a possible visit from the police at worst. The other forbidden word that she knew did not even have a meaning. It was an empty phrase, but it was the worst thing anypony could possibly say out loud.

Best not to be too concerned about it, she was sure. Just go about your life. Forget it. The why does not matter, only the reality. Nopony needs to know why something happens in order to abide by it, do they?

Spike knew he had to be quiet, but he didn't know why. Twilight had never told him that he was a genetic freak, caused by her deliberate dalliances at her job, her desire to do something a little different, just for once. She could never tell him that. It would be like disowning a child. Her child. Her little, scaly, talking child, the thing that should not be.