Chapter 3: A Blip
Twilight carefully hung her torso out of one of the windows of the train to ensure all her friends at the train station platform could see her wave goodbye to them as the locomotive began its journey to Canterlot. She had decided that she might as well take the trip by herself, considering that all she would be doing is studying with the princess, plus everypony already had something on their plate.
Applejack was still cleaning up from her family reunion, Rarity had a dress order to fill, with the assistance of Spike, given that he was staying at Carousel Boutique in Twilight's absence, Fluttershy always had her critters to take care of, and Rainbow Dash... Well, Rainbow wasn't big on nonfiction reading.
Twilight sat in her seat and checked her luggage for the third time in the past few minutes. After assuring that she had the book that issued this train ride she let herself relax. She picked up the complimentary magazines hoofing through them, fully reading some, others were only worth skimming. Rail Mall was pretty interesting, they had some pretty neat product ideas and interesting replicas from movies and books, but does somepony really need a time turner necklace from Harry Trotter?
Twilight's stomach growled, as if to remind her that she would usually be eating breakfast at this time. She rose from her seat and began to walk towards the restaurant train-cart.
Shortly after the purple mare began her walk, another member of the cart which Twilight's seat resided began to follow her; A mare in a black cloak that covered all revealing features. The densely clothed mare went unnoticed by Miss Sparkle, but if Twilight were to look at her stalker at a very precise moment, she could've seen where some mint green bangs fall out from underneath the mare's hood, before being swiftly placed in a more concealed spot with an aura of magic.
Somewhere else there was a library, or more so, a study. The walls were lined with multiple books and the room smelt of old paper and tobacco. There was a club chair facing a fireplace with small puffs of smoke occasionally rising into view. The sound of a door opening.
"Sir?"
"Please tell me this is important." replied a voice from the other side of the chair.
"We got a blip."
There was a brief time of silence, as if the voice on the other side of the chair was taking time to think.
"How does it stand compared to the others?"
"Well, it's not as big as the one from a thousand years ago according to the records, but it is bigger than the one a few months ago."
A sigh expelled from beyond the chair "This doesn't sound very significant, why am I being interrupted?" the voice's owner was becoming annoyed.
"Because, this one is mobile sir."
There came a series of coughs and a large plume of smoke arose from past the chair. The voice cleared its throat, "Now, when you say mobile, do you mean -"
"It is moving through space, sir. It has been projected out of the planet's atmosphere and is moving quite fast."
Another wave of silence fell upon the room.
"Focus the observer on it and alert the others." A figure arose from the chair casting a shadow that displayed the silhouette of a bipedal mammal staring into the flames of the fireplace. "Tell them it's time."
The door shut, leaving the man at the fireplace alone. He walked over to a mirror close to the fireplace. His reflection stared at him. Exactly the same reflection that he had seen for, how long was it now? 4000 years? 5000? It's hard to keep track.
The mirror displayed a man that appeared to be no more than 30 with brown hair and hazel eyes.
"Maybe this is it. This is finally the time we go back."
"Twilight Sparkle." a voice behind the purple mare spoke, The train cart that she had recently entered in the route to the food cart was completely empty when she walked in. Twilight turned around to find a unicorn mare covered from horn to hoof in black cloth, concealing any identifying features.
"Um... Can I help you ma'am?" Twilight asked.
"Yes, you can help me, you can help a lot of souls, by listening to me. I know you don't know me, but you need to listen to me right now and remember what I say."
Twilight was slightly scared and quite confused, but she figured if she let the mare speak then she would leave. Twilight gave a small nod and mentally prepared herself to run away as fast as she could if things got dangerous.
"You need to look and observe, you need to listen, not to her, but to them, listen, observe, think."
Twilight blinked multiple times, this mare was supposedly telling her something important, but she was being EXTREMELY vague.
"Um... Who exactly are you talking about? I mean... could you please... use more proper nouns and less pronouns?" Twilight gave a awkward grin.
"When it ends your thoughts will be clear."
"Ends? When what ends?"
"Do not be biased"
The cloaked mare charged her magic, filling the train cart with a thick smoke, making sight a useless skill.
"Wait! What are you talking about?" Twilight called out, but the mysterious mare was gone. Twilight stared around the empty cart, half expecting somepony to come out and tell her she'd been the victim of a television prank. After some short minutes with no TV producer coming to greet her, Twilight turned around to continue her journey towards the food cart. Before she opened the door to continue towards her destination, she turned her head to look behind her.
"That's strange, I could've sworn there was somepony behind me."
The man stood staring into the fireplace, watching the red warm-colored flames dance across the logs.
"Sir" He said mockingly. he disliked the formality that Sam had developed towards him, yes, Sam was his assistant and apprentice, and it was customary to refer to your elders as 'Sir' and 'Ma'am', it was just the fact that Michael viewed Sam as a friend, or a younger brother.
Michael began his walk to the observation room. An area that was encased by monitors and the hum of the cooling fans. The vast computing power of this room was dedicated to analyzing space, distant planets, solar systems, galaxies, multiple computers searching, working for a common goal.
To find home.
Instead of searching for life, which was found to be present in many places. Michael chose to search for magic.
Michael was a mage, and still considered himself to be one, even with his magic gone. He had studied magic passionately before the banishment. On one of his studies, he discovered that magic spells give off radiation. Not a dangerous form of radiation, but traceable. This radiation goes outward in all directions, is much faster than the speed of light, and cannot be blocked by any object. This means that almost any spell could be detected and sometimes traced, depending on the intensity of the spell, from an immense distance away.
A blip is a reading of magical radiation. Using multiple receivers, Michael had found a way to triangulate the location of their home planet. Granted, the accuracy was ±1000 KLY² (Kilo Light-years), but finding the location of a planet that is hidden among space in the time frame of 5000+ years, that's quite an accomplishment. But the memory of the very first blip, and his reaction, was still very prominent in his brain.
The very first blip showed that a very powerful spell had been cast. A banishment spell. The thought made him shudder. But something was off, this particular spell should’ve taken six alicorns at full magical power to cast, and that didn't make sense, for multiple reasons. Alicorns were hard to come by, Michael had only seen two in his lifetime, the thought of which sent a pang of anger through his head. He refocused his thoughts to the matter at hand. Six alicorns focusing all of their magic on an imprisonment spell? All of them would have to wholeheartedly believe that the receiver deserved the punishment, and alicorns are very hard to persuade. To get even two alicorns to agree with one another would be difficult.
So 6 alicorns was out of the question. Could it be possible that one alicorn had cast such a spell? Indeed there were magical charms throughout home, but on that would make a caster’s magic 600% more powerful? That is...
“Wait... Six...” Michael stared at the blip readings with his face white as a ghost, a pure white, and within seconds it went from one extreme to another. From a heavenly white to a red more vibrant than the sun..
“NO! HOW COULD SHE USE THEM?! SHE-S-SHE CAN’T... she... she...”
Michael slumped against a wall and slowly slid to the floor. With his head between his knees he began hyperventilating.
“How... How did she use the elements?”
“Sir, are you ok?”
Michael let out a deep breath that he had been holding throughout his flashback. He had been standing in the middle of the observation room with his eyes shut. He opened his eyes and turned his head to see Sam.
“Why do you persist to call me ’sir’? I have told you that you can call me Michael.”
“Mother says that,” he says in a somewhat mocking tone “sir and and ma'am are the proper terms for a young man to use when speaking to his elders, It has become a force of habit.”
“Well while you are in my apprenticeship, you should refer to me as Michael, respect from the student to the teacher should be equal from the teacher to the student, and I do not wish to call you sir.”
“Yes si- Michael”
Michael chuckled slightly at his apprentice's error. He shifted his gaze towards the monitor displaying the overall analyzation of the blip. In the more recent years Sam had taken over the analyzation of the blips, editing and tweaking the system to make it easier for him to use, but also making it as legible as Zebrafrican
“Tell me Sam,” he says in a quizzical manner, “what can we determine from this blip?”
Sam walked over to the monitor and began eyeing over the array of pixels, analyzing the information being displayed. He pulled out a keyboard from it’s drawer in the desk and began typing commands into the console. Images popped up on the screen, moving walls of text and multiple progress bars, some racing and some crawling in relation to speed.
The boy was very knowledgeable in regards to technology. In the 10 years of his apprenticeship, he had made many leaps forward in the search for home. Sam stood staring at the screen as new waves of information swam across it. After all the diagnostics had ran, Sam finally spoke.
“Well, it’s quite an interesting spell,” Sam said before returning his fingers to the keys and typing, “It shows much resemblance to a preservation spell or a stasis spell.” Sam halted his keystrokes and stared at one of the screens, which soon displayed an image of space, spots of many colors, red, blue, and white, set upon a black background. In one area of the screen a yellow rectangle blinked, encasing an area of space that appeared to be complete darkness.
“The spell seems to be strong enough and consistent enough to be tracked; it will take some time though.”
The way Sam said that was odd, as if he didn’t view finding home as an accomplishment.
“Very good Sam, you are a marvelous assistant.” Michael said, putting his hand on Sam’s shoulder, he could feel that his muscles were tense. Michael took a seat in one of the many swivel chairs placed throughout the room. “Now, ask me.”
Sam looked back at Michael with an attempted look of confusion before saying, “What do you mean?”
Michael smiled at Sam, “Attempting to hide emotions from someone of my age will not be met with success, so speak.”
Sam took a seat on one of the other vacant swivel chairs and looked and rubbed his left hand on his chin for a few minutes before finally asking his question.
“Why?”
Michael stared at Sam, not understanding the specifics of his broad question.
“Why try go back?”
Sam had obviously spent quite some time thinking about this, Michael could see the thought and caution on Sam’s face with each word.
“I mean, with all due respect... we’ve made a home here... people are happy, they... they have families and... moving is hard... my family moved from the Central when I was younger... and that was hard, for all of us... that was only a few hundred miles... this is a different planet, that many generations haven’t seen, and some people haven’t even heard of it, like the border colonies, they don’t teach the kids about home there. What if... people... don’t want to go?” Sam paused multiple times throughout his little monologue, expecting some type of retort from Michael, when in reality all he got was a smile.
“There is a very simple response to your first question, but it is not so for the second.” Michael took a deep breath. “It is our home, and we were unjustly ejected from it, so we must return, to make things proper again.” Michael chuckled slightly, but not from humor. “And as to your second question ‘if people don’t want to leave’, that question’s answer is more complex. You see, when we, the human race as a whole, were sent to this rock-”
Michael was cut off by a beeping coming from the computer. He shifted his gaze from Sam to the monitor, and what he saw make his jaw drop wide open.
“Michael?” Sam questioned worriedly, “What’s wrong? Michael?!Sam turned head and looked at the monitor. “Is... is that a-”
“Yes Sam, it is.”