First Contact with an alien race became worldwide news within twenty minutes of footage being sent by satellite uplink to the major governments and news stations of the world. Practically overnight, the idea that humanity wasn't alone became utter fact. The strange thing was that the aliens turned out not to be little grey men, but odd ponies. Twilight Sparkle, and once she was coaxed into joining her horned friend on the ship, Fluttershy as well, spoke with the crew at length for about an hour. It didn't tell them everything, of course, but it did give them some answers. The massive island was called 'Equestria'. And it was apparently a Diarchy. A rare thing for any on Earth to contemplate, but there it was.
It was all over the news, the papers, and the Internet by the next day. People were talking about the odd aliens all over the place. Schools stayed closed for the entire week worldwide due to the discovery, while pundits chattered on news stations about what was going on. Vatican City had gone starkly silent, as the hierarchy of the Church tried to figure out what this meant. The United States government called an emergency session of Congress to debate how to respond to the existence of aliens right off the coast of its northernmost state.
Meanwhile, Equestria's inhabitants were dealing with the issue as well. The incursion into another world had many ponies talking at length. The so-called barrier that separated the two worlds was confusing. Earth saw Equestria as a medium-sized island, but this made no sense. After all, Equestria was a land-locked kingdom, and they could easily step into parts of equestria that shouldn't exist anymore or that should be somehow blocked off depending on one's view, because of the barrier. But this wasn't what was happening. In Ponyville, the town was meeting to discuss the matter.
"Order! Order please!" Mayor Mare called, waiting for the townsponies to settle down. "Now I understand everypony is excited, but we need some decorum. It wouldn't do if we all lost our heads because of this. Now, as we all know, our own Twilight Sparkle was the first to truly make first contact with a world that seems to somehow exist outside our own in a manner we haven't been able to understand the physical laws of yet. I would like Miss Sparkle to please take the podium and speak on the matter. Twilight?"
Hooves stomped as Twilight took the stage amidst the applause. She gave the townsfolk a smile and held up a hoof to ask for silence and was happy to receive it.
"Thank you Mayor Mare." the Element of Magic said giving her a nod of acknowledgement. Then she turned back to the crowd. "Citizens of Ponyville, as the mayor has said, Fluttershy and I made first contact with an alien race calling themselves Humans. They come from a planet which they call Earth." There was a smattering of curious mutters at this. "I am well aware of the fact that this name is familiar to anyone who knows the history of the founding of Equestria, and of course one of our own pony breeds is referred to as Earth ponies. There is, as yet, no known explanation for why we share this particular term in common as a proper name, rather than just as a word for the physical ground upon which we walk, which is often referred to as such. I suspect it to be a quirk of what appears to be a kind of universal knowledge that stretches across dimensions."
Twilight took a moment to gather herself as she knew this would be a fairly long speech normally and not everypony would want to stand still long enough for her to give the kind of lecture she'd like to. So she had to keep it brief and let ponies ask questions.
"As far as what I have learned from the humans, one of the most important things they told me is this: Equestria has partially emerged within their world through unknown means somewhere in the near-midpoint in one of their oceans—they call it the Pacific— and currently sits between two of their landmasses. One is called Eurasia and the other is called North America. Each landmass plays host to a number of different nations. North America is split between two: Canada and the United States of America. Eurasia is split into more countries than I think I can count off in the time we have tonight. Russia is itself one of the two primary countries in terms of sheer political and military power on the landmass though."
"I heard that there's more humans than we can count just in one part of their planet alone!" a pony cried. Twilight nodded.
"That's true actually. Well, sort of. There's nearly two billion humans in a country named China alone, which is part of the landmass they call Asia, itself considered part of the overall Eurasian continent."
The various ponies gathered chattered excitedly amongst themselves at this news. Twilight gave them a few minutes before speaking again.
"Earth does not have a singular ruler. Instead each nation has their own form of government, each with a various head of state that has varying degrees of power in their government. The ship that we encountered was sent out by the United States, whose chief executive is called the President. The President is in charge of America for four years at a stretch, and can be removed from office by elections or by impeachment if it is believed he has broken their laws. The current president of the United States is a man named Barack Obama."
"So they don't have any kings or queens?"
Twilight shook her head at the question. "None who could be considered a global power in any true sense of the word as they define it. In fact most monarchies have little to no real political power on Earth anymore, and those monarchies which retain sovereign power have been largely reviled for the abuse of their subjects."
"Then how does anything get done if they all have different leaders?" Bon-Bon asked. "They're all one race, right? Why don't they have a singular ruler?"
"I honestly don't know, but they gave me the impression that most countries do work together despite having disparate rulers. They have...a sort of council, similar to a town council, but on a much larger scale that they call the United Nations. Though don't be fooled, not every country on Earth is part of it. A majority of nations are, however." Twilight answered. "Each nation appoints an ambassador who represents their nation based on the will of their respective governments and are the liaisons between one another, though the various rulers of each country are known to make trips to various places all over the world."
The Q&A session went for a little over two hours, with Twilight giving the ponies of Ponyville whatever information she was able to glean from the humans. Which, she suspected, was even less than the very point of the tip of the iceberg. She had only had a short time, relatively speaking, to spend with the strange beings, and sadly, they didn't carry any of their history with them in book form. They didn't need to since most of it was information they knew already, having grown up and learned about it within the confines of their own world.
Celestia nodded to herself as she reviewed the situation. The plan should work. It would take some effort to get the world governments to agree, and many would refuse outright. But if she could get some of the major powers to allow it, it would be the first step in the plan. It would take a great deal of magic and it would have to be mixed with human technology for it to be truly effective, but it could be done. Now she would simply have to convince the Elements to aid in the plan. Fortunately, she had a plan for that. Gathering the 'evidence' had been easy enough. Once she had managed to find a way to slip amongst them undetected, which had been the difficult part. Shapeshifting had always come easier to Luna and Discord than to her, so it did take some time to gather what she needed. Luckily for her, information was easy to come by once one knew where to look for it. It was simply a matter of putting it to use. With that in mind, she pulled a roll of parchment from nearby with her magic along with a quill and inkbottle and began to write a letter to her faithful student....
"So what have we got?" The President said.
"Well, Mr. President, we know about as much as you do." One of his aides replied. "We got this letter from the Equestrians via one of their...uhm...pegasi, I think they're called, and asked that this be delivered to you directly. Apparently these are being distributed more or less worldwide.We were asked to address the issue with Congress as soon as possible."
"...Well, let's get going. I'll read it on the way."
[/hr] Twilight entered the chamber where Celestia was waiting, and smiled at her mentor.
"Hello, Princess," the lavender mare said, "what did you need to see me about?"
Celestia gave her student a kindly smile and gestured to a device she had set up. "Twilight, I am told you were the one who made overall first contact with our unusual....'neighbors'." The alicorn replied. Her smile fell. "I'm sad to say it seems we have been deceived about what they are really like."
Twilight gave Celestia a confused look.
"I don't follow, Princess."
"I have come into possession of very disturbing evidence about the true nature of humanity in my magical scrying into the history of Earth. As some of our technology is compatible with theirs, I was able to create duplicates of some of their historical information on mediums they call Videocassette, film, and DVD. Despite the complexity of these devices, I have managed to convert information into something we can use via our own technology. Primarily film projectors. Though I have also succeeded in duplicating their VHS machines."
After a few minutes to set the devices up, Celestia allowed the information she had carefully culled unfold in front of Twilight, a cold smile on her face as her student watched. It went unseen by all.
So far, so good.
The news about the barrier's threat was met with fear and distrust. According to letters that Celestia had sent out, the barrier was created on accident, resulting in a breach between dimensional planes, and that it came about because of her performing high level magic at a time when the fabric of the Equestrian's dimensional plane was still recovering from two major events in their world: the first was the return of Discord, a creature who lived for nothing but chaos and insanity, and whose powers were enough to cause even the two co-regents of Equestria to know fear in their hearts. They had once defeated him with six ancient magical artifacts that had been reassembled by everyday Equestrians. Known as the Elements of Harmony, these artifacts had once turned Discord to stone and had repeated the process in his most recent attack. Not long afterwards, perhaps less than half a year later, Equestria had been attacked by shapechanging creatures called Changelings. Though they had been driven off, the sheer magical power required to do so had put a strain on an already frayed dimensional boundary that separated Equestria from the rest of the multiverse at large.
In the midst of performing high level magic— she refused to discuss what she was performing it on or why— Celestia had accidentally ripped open a hole in reality. This was how Equestria had come to be here. The barrier was a creation of hers to prevent either of the two worlds from consuming the other. She refused to say why ponies could go in and out of the barrier at will, yet humans and human technology met a spongy wall of force that prevented them from doing the same and gave no reason to explain her refusal. Despite the lack of cooperation on answering that question, Celestia did provide one other piece of information on the barrier: Due to the nature of the dimensional rip, it was possible that the barrier could begin to slowly expand if the rip opened wider between the two realities and that it would expand outward towards Earth, rather than Equestria due to the fact that it had been created to protect her world. Anything the barrier engulfed would be left intact, save for those humans who were unable to get out of the way of the barrier if it happened.
To prevent the potential loss of life this could cause, Celestia had proposed a solution. A radical one at that:
Turn the entire human race into ponies.
The response was an explosion of frenzied disparate reactions worldwide just from the suggestion itself.
The Vatican came back into the open at this, and declared Celestia a servant of evil, trying to detour the faithful from God's hands.
The United Nations debated whether or not to consider Equestria a potential threat to the world's security. At the same time, they also had to consider whether or not that because Celestia was willing to be forthcoming about the issue, she should be approached about having her nation join the UN, and try to find some other way to deal with the potential threat the barrier represented.
Ordinary people around the world began their own discussions on the matter. The supposed solution was still a ways off from even being in the experimental stage, but the threat the barrier now presented loomed over the world like the sword of damocles, waiting to drop.