I liked him well enough, but I didn’t trust our new friend one bit. I was only paying attention to the loosest details of his story. Unfortunately, those rough details didn’t add up to a situation that made sense. Something called The Conglomerate was attacking us of their own volition. Their actions were seemingly against the will of the aristocracy in charge. It wasn’t completely impossible, none of it was. However, not having an understanding of radio waves was a detail that felt spurious. After all, it was a radio signal that had lured us to Tethys in the first place.
Odyssey walked quietly beside me as the stallion led us directly into a cave. We stopped at a wall of ice and he turned to explain himself with a smile. “Generations of daring adventurers, shrewd business mares, and bold space pirates have used tunnels just like this to escape to the stars.” I looked to Odyssey, who was utterly impossible to read behind her sun visor. “I suppose this will be a fine way to sneak us inside.” He spun around and started looking up and down the wall. “Assuming the switch is easily found.” I could hazard a guess at the potential scope of his civilization from the fact that he hadn’t inquired about any specific landing zones. The only questions on my mind were how advanced they really were, and what they were going to do with us when we got down there.
“Fascinating.” We both looked at Odyssey as she suddenly spoke up. “Uh, I mean, the implication about generations. I know the math says that space travel would be significantly easier to achieve in lower gravity environments, but to see the implications of that is interesting. To think, generations of space pirates operating on little more than steam-power.” The inference of steam power was nothing short of brilliant, but it’s what came next that left me speechless.
“Oh, I know this must all look simple to ponies like yourselves. Especially if you have the means to come all this way.” The Princess wordlessly stepped forward and pressed her forehoof on part of the rock face. The hidden control gently gave way. A sliding door fell from the wall to reveal a circular brass elevator with clear glass walls. It was surrounded by perfectly carved ice and rock. “Oh! You found it! Excellent!” He skipped ahead of us to board the contraption. Odyssey followed swiftly behind as I stood rooted in place and stared on in dumb shock. I had known that my alicorn companion was smart, but her skill in speechcraft left me breathless. In an instant we went from completely blind to knowing exactly what we were dealing with. His entire civilization relied on steam energy! Considering what we went through on Tethys, it made sense. Locals would, doubtlessly, witness similar flash-boiling events. They’d inevitably take a practical interest in the properties of water under various temperatures and pressures.
“Jupe? Are you coming?”
“Oh, right!”
We passed through ice, nearly a kilometer of it. After that, our small car plunged deep into a dark and murky ocean. I wasn’t entirely sure at this point whether this thing was a true elevator or a tracked submarine. Given the circumstances, I was much more willing to believe one of those options over the other.
“Jupiter, are you on this channel?”
“Yes, Odyssey. I’m on the secondary channel. I swapped over.” I sounded out of breath. The girl clearly noticed that from the sudden change in her tone.
“Are you okay?” I answered her with some fear in my voice.
“I didn’t know you could manipulate a pony like that, Odd.”
Her words practically shrugged it off. “I grew up in The Court of Canterlot. Manipulation and intrigue are a part of who I am. If I didn’t have the skill for it, I wouldn’t have made it this far.”
“Is there anything else I don’t know about you?”
“What do you mean?”
“That pause, back on the ship. The gender thing.”
“Oh. Yeah, the gender thing.”
“Interesting to spend months really close to somepony and not hear a peep about that.” I sounded more offended than I had intended. Then again, I wasn’t entirely sure that feeling that way was wrong. It had helped to keep things simple between us during the long journey to Saturn. It made living life easy, but I hadn’t wanted that simplicity at the expense of honesty.
“It’s not like that.” I didn’t want to accuse her of lying, I just wanted to understand.
“What’s it like, then?”
She sighed and took a moment to collect her thoughts before trying to explain. “You asked me why I went on adventures like this before, back on The Hope. Do you remember that?”
“I remember not getting a real answer.”
“I did it to run away.” My eyes slowly shifted to the sight of the mare’s helmet. “The High Courts make demands of you. It’s not enough just to keep up appearances. You have to invent a perfect image of yourself and wear it on a moment’s notice. It’s like a mask.”
“Do I know the real Odyssey or the mask?”
“You know me, the real me. I’m the mare you spent months talking to and confiding in.”
“Then why the pause?”
“Because… all of the pomp and the circumstance, the labels, the expectations, none of it means anything to me. I don’t care, not about any of it. All that matters to me is helping people to learn and explore, and I couldn’t do that sitting in a castle back home. I couldn’t do that agonizing over what the colors of my party dress might imply. I couldn’t do that fearing the complex social implications of the angles I levitate my silverware at. I was paralized by the toxic rumor mill of the rich and the well off. Everything I tell anyone back home is a well constructed front, even if it’s true. It's all because those rumors make it back to the creatures that invest in my business, fund my experiments, and excuse my accidents. I tell them the story that’s palatable, the one they want to hear.” I wasn’t sure I could endure much more of this. It was insane!
“Odyssey, you’re already perfect. You’re a Princess!”
“That’s why I’m out here, Jupe. Out here I can be a Princess around a pony that honestly believes that title means something special. I’m not just a social tool to be manipulated and used. Out here I’m free to be whoever I want and need to be.”
“...and you don’t trust that stallion to know the real you, do you?”
“I told him the story he wanted to hear, even if it was true. I was just rusty at telling it.”
“So the truth is, what? That you aren’t interested in the truth?”
“Is that so hard to believe? I’m complicated. Figuring me out is a stressful chore. If I have to choose between doing that and running off to Saturn with my friend Jupiter, I’ll do the running every time. Living in space is all trigonometry, geometry, and other pleasant mathematical problems. It’s all logical and straight-forward. I don’t have to answer for why I’m not married yet, or why I get caught kissing mares while I insist I want to date a stallion. I can just do as I please, in the way that I please. I don’t have to think about it. I don’t have to justify it. I don’t even have to explain it. Out here, I can just live. The only pony here to judge me for that is a mare that I really don’t mind sharing every day with.” I recalled the kiss-mark on my previous helmet.
“As friends, of course.”
“If I hit on you intentionally, you have my permission to slap me.”
“...and if it’s an accident?” Realizing she was probably owed a few slaps, Odyssey changed the subject.
“Uh… well, what about you? Did you come all this way to run away too?”
“Sure. I ran away from my mom, the stallion I crushed on through school, and some of the things I said about Princess Celestia.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing I still believe now. The usual pseudo-intellectual drivel about how one pony couldn’t possibly lift something as massive as the sun. That was back when I thought being non-religious was somehow countercultural.”
“So, what do you think now?”
“That science only has the answers to questions we know how to ask. That magic is just another form of energy that adheres to a rigid set of rules. That nopony knows everything under the sun and the ones that claim otherwise know less than most. Oh, and that new discoveries are often made by running over the same tired old ground with an outsider’s eye.”
“It sounds like you’ve grown a lot more wise.”
“I learned a lot of hard lessons very publicly. They were situations that upset friends, family, and the ponies I cared about. I might be wiser for it, but I’m hardly the pinnacle of friendship that is said to be the model Equestrian Citizen. I survived by walking away.” I heard the stallion chuckle in reply on our radio channel, and both The Princess and I slowly turned to look at him.
“Oh, you didn’t think that conversation was private, did you? After the ice field and the missile strike? Isn’t it a bit premature to start claiming that you’ve survived?”
The submarine clicked into place and the doors slid open. Odyssey and I exited into an icy chamber deep under the oceans of Titan. A half dozen shark ponies stood guard. They were eyeing us nervously. The Prince exited behind us, discarded his helmet, and eyed us with similar nervousness. That was the same look we had gotten from the general populace when passing through the submerged streets of the cities above. We had tried removing our helmets to put them at ease, but putting a face to ourselves didn’t seem to help. They were all terrified of us. It didn’t exactly take a genius to imagine why, but that entire chain of thought evaporated the second we entered that chamber. I was fixated on what was in front of us. The both of us were stunned by the completely otherworldly sight of it. I couldn’t help but to beg my friend to describe it.
“Odyssey, what in the world are we looking at?” My fellow mare willingly approached the object. This visibly surprised the other shark ponies standing around us, who were staring on in shock. Maybe they expected us to be more intimidated by it. If so, then they had a lot to learn about ponies with a love for science. “It looks almost like the event horizon of a black hole but, that’s completely impossible.”
“I don’t think your intuition is totally wrong, Jupiter.” Odyssey sat on her haunches and reached out a forehoof to touch the impossible surface of the object. From the way that her hoof appeared to hover through the impossible black sphere, it didn’t seem to have any surface at all. She withdrew the hoof and pondered the sight of the intact appendage curiously. “Space is definitely bending here, like it would from gravity.” Something clicked for me in what she was saying. “Should I break out a pencil and a sheet of paper?” I smiled.
“As long as you don’t fold it and jam a hole through it.” She turned her head to me, a curious brow raised.
“You don’t care for the classic demonstration?”
“I prefer to draw a little line on either end and bend the sheet around until they touch.”
She blinked at that before softly rising from the floor. “That’d make a tunnel out of the sheet, right?”
“It does.”
“You’re right. That’s a lot better.” The Prince cleared his throat loudly at us. He had evidently experienced enough of our technical banter. For now, we let him speak.
“This is The Rift. It’s an anomaly at the bottom of the sea. It’s older than the whole of recorded history. We’re going to use it to dispose of you.” My response sounded appropriately offended.
“You mean you’re going to toss us in because you’ve got no idea what it is?!” He sounded equally offended in return.
“It’s The Rift. Anything that gets tossed inside never comes out.”
Odyssey sighed. “You can’t blame them, Jupiter, they don’t have the magic to know better. They’re not unicorns, they’d never be able to see the spell for the magic it is.”
“Odyssey, I’m an Earth Pony.”
“Granted, but you’ve got me for stuff like this. I can just tell you it’s a form of unicorn magic. I suspect it’s the result of some ancient, long-forgotten spell. These shark ponies have magical enzymes in their saliva that let them pick-up languages in an instant, but that’s all of the magic that they have.” The Prince looked taken aback by that appraisal of their abilities.
“How do you know that?” I laughed at his objection and explained it to him.
“The disk from Voyager,” Odyssey coughed.
“It’s a record.” I ignored her.
“It was covered in a liquid when we found it. The first words you spoke to us were from the greetings held in its grooves.” He looked equally surprised and offended by this.
“That doesn’t tell you anything about the limits of our abilities.”
“Sure it does.” The other shark ponies gave each other doubtful looks. They weren’t participating in the conversation but they sure seemed to understand it. “You found the probe because of its radio signal. You used that signal as a trap. You didn’t personally know our language, but a fluent speaker would have been immediately suspicious. With that disc, the right pony would look like they’d just learned about us on the spot. You kissed Odyssey to gather up the rest of our language, though you still didn’t know anything about Gender.”
“That could have been a lie, like the radio waves.”
“Yeah, except this one wasn’t clever. You genuinely didn’t know, so it’s reasonable to conclude that your spit only attaches foreign words to familiar concepts. It doesn’t pick up anything you don’t already know.” He didn’t look impressed.
“Is that all?” Odyssey certainly didn’t think so, and she said as much.
“Well, there was the missile as well. You’ve learned a lot from analyzing our radio and television transmissions about the arcane sciences. Although, it’s not enough to implement the magic required to get the same result. You lack the physiology to do that much. It’s the only good explanation. It was impressively close for a duplicate. I’ll grant you that but, it was far removed from the magical super weapons that dominated The Cold War back on Earth.” The Prince flinched at the mention of The Cold War, and I suddenly spoke up as everything fell into place.
“Goddesses…” Both he and Odyssey looked at me. “You’re genuinely afraid of us, aren’t you?” The Prince barked a laugh.
“Of course I am, you stupid girl. The most powerful nations on your planet nearly vaporized each other! And over, what else but, the resources you came here to find! I need to protect us all from your insatiable greed and lust for conflict. The experts have made that very clear to me.”
“But that war never happened. Sure, there was fighting and a lot of creatures died, but that was nothing compared to what was feared. That final, brutal exchange never took place! We made peace!”
“Only because you lacked the resources to continue the fight amongst yourselves. Were it not for a total economic collapse, nothing would have stopped that inevitable exchange. You only feign cooperation now so that you can carry your fight into the stars and lash out against more powerful foes. That’s why you brought your warships here.”
“Warships?!”
“You deny that your space planes were made for war? You deny that they have weapons?”
“A lot of our technologies were invented during times of hardship, but our mission is peaceful. We’re a scientific expedition, nothing more.”
“You’re a scouting party! You're fulfilling the needs of your superiors and nothing more. Your shuttle is adorned with the name Victory: Everlasting. If your mission is one of peace then explain that!”
“The only everlasting victory is peace.” His mouth dropped open and hung there. Mine would have too if I had the time to be impressed with myself. “And my superior is Odyssey, The Princess of Discovery.” I turned and pointed a forhoof right at her. “I answer to her and nopony else.” The stallion clenched his jaw shut, looking unimpressed. Of course he had a counter for that.
“She’s just a Chief Executive Officer at some telescope company.” I slammed my raised hoof to my chest.
“Not to me! She’s a pony with tender dreams and higher ambitions. She isn't afraid to do whatever it might take to bring The Magic of Knowledge to all of the creatures of the world.”
“Even you.” What? The Prince and I both turned our attention to a very appreciative looking Odyssey. Was she crying? The stallion didn’t seem to care much.
“What do you mean by that?” The Princess gently explained.
“The Rift, as you call it, is a wormhole. It was generated from a magic spell that’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Its power is imbued, as an enchantment, in a gemstone on the other side. It’s a pathway between two points in space. It’s a hole punctured through the folded sheet of paper that is our physical reality. In three dimensions, a circular hole like that would be a sphere. This isn’t an anomaly or an accident. It was deliberately placed here. It predates recorded history because, in its own way, it is recorded history. It's the only remaining record of how your ancestors got here. It’s all that remains of the cataclysm on the other side that made you flee.”
“That’s preposterous!” The stallion shouted, before I gently tried to explain.
“Didn’t you think it was odd that aliens on another world were equines just like you? When I first saw you standing in our ship, hidden in the suit, I could tell from your overall shape that you had to be from Earth. It never even occurred to me that you could have been from another world.”
“Then you lack imagination! Stop wasting our time! We’re throwing you in The Rift and ending this once and for all. With two of their astronauts dead and their ship so obviously vaporized, the creatures of your planet will never expend the effort to darken our doors again.”
Odyssey laughed. “I’ll do you, ONE BETTER.”
The booming echoes of the infamous Royal Canterlot Voice slammed through the hall of The Rift with monumental energy. At times like this, I wondered if Odyssey wasn’t just a little bit more than Celestia’s adopted niece. Her spirit rivaled the legends of Princess Luna! My friend turned towards the portal, horn alight, eyes blazing solid white with sheer magic.
“I’LL WILLINGLY ENTER YOUR RIFT!” Her horn flared with the glow of intense magical energies as she reached out across the span of space with a power that could move entire suns. “AFTER I FIX IT, WE SHALL BOTH DEPART!” The darkness beyond the portal shifted. Rock and magma and tunnels and caves shot past our view on the other side. The sphere remained stationary in the room as The Princess rapidly moved the anchor on the other side. The helpless prince could only cry out in terror.
“What are you doing?!”
I stepped out of the sphere and onto the streets outside of Canterlot. I was on Earth. Odyssey was in front of me. We were surrounded by utterly dumbfounded royal guards. You could now see either end of the wormhole clearly through the other. A primitive, uncut gemstone of Celestite was hovering nearby under its own power. Odyssey could barely stop staring at it. She used a great deal of willpower to look at me as she spoke.
“I didn’t move it far, just three hundred kilometers or so.” That was awfully close to an inland city like Canterlot.
“It wasn’t at the bottom of the ocean?”
“I think it used to be.” Odyssey looked past me and gasped in shock. “No, wait, stop!” She tried to take a step forward and tripped over herself. I spun around to see what had her worried and accidentally sidestepped catching her fall. The Prince of The Shark Ponies had a hammer raised. He was about to strike at the fragile gemstone that powered The Rift!
“Prince Razorfin, you can’t!” I pleaded as Odyssey stood up beside me.
“Why the hell not?!” He demanded.
“Because it could doom your people.” We both looked to Odyssey for an explanation as she continued to speak in a calm and serious tone. “You were right to fear us. Our people haven’t learned the right lessons. We really are just exploring together as a veiled means towards a greedy end.”
“Then why should I trust you?”
“Because we’ve already started our expansion across the solar system. Even without Saturn, we’ll inevitably develop a more capable civilization than you could ever hope to stand against. We’ll outstrip you, we’ll strangle you, and your society will strain beyond its breaking points and collapse. You could fight us for a long time, but not forever. We’ll win.” Was that supposed to make him feel better? He looked terrified! I was hardly a master of diplomacy, but I was seriously hoping Odyssey had a point to make. “Unless.”
“Unless what?!”
“We work together to find another way.”
“Like?”
“The Rift.” He grew a perplexed expression. “We just traveled across dozens of light-minutes of space in an instant! The Rift’s magic was unknown to us before today. If we can copy this forgotten arcane technology, if we replicate it? Instead of fighting each other over the limited resources in our own small solar system, we can send out ships to place anchors like this across the stars. Even at a fraction of the speed of light, we’ll have access to hundreds of other worlds in a matter of decades. All of them could be connected through a network of wormholes just like The Rift.
The universe is infinite! Its resources are boundless, but we need breakthroughs like this in order to get to them. Otherwise, journeys between star systems will take generations, and things will never change.” I turned from Odyssey to look at the stallion. He considered these words for a few moments more, but I could tell from the look in his eyes that he’d already made his choice. He lifted the hammer back a short distance, and let it drop from his mouth. It clattered to the cobblestones below and sat in silence beneath the unbroken ancient gemstone floating above.