//------------------------------// // Ch. 7- The Whole Truth (And Horse Puns) // Story: Friendship is Magic Redux // by paiohelohelo //------------------------------// Twilight and Spike were standing together in an elevator that had been retrofitted inside The West Castle of Canterlot. Neither said anything; in fact, it had become quite awkward between the two of them ever since Twilight had unintentionally graced Spike with her naked presence. Alas, she was naked no more, wearing a fresh pair of jeans and a light, gauzy blouse that resembled a white kimono with elegant, abstract designs embroidered in red on the back and on the shortened sleeve cuffs. All in all, Twilight had to admit that she felt pretty freakin’ amazing after Rarity’s masterful (although admittedly non- voluntary) makeover. “You know Rarity designed that top herself,” Spike finally spoke up as they neared the very uppermost floor. “Rarity?” Twilight giggled. “Ohhhh… so you two are on a first name basis.” Spike blushed. “She used to be a designer … for a while after Harvard, I mean… but then she later decided to work for The State Department as a Foreign Service Officer, because, you know, she’s, like, a genius with languages… among other things…” Twilight full- on laughed. “What are you, stalking her on Facebook?” Spike blushed even harder. “Wh- What?! No!” He looked at the floor a little sadly and kicked at it. “Of course not…” The elevator door beeped and opened. Twilight smiled, motioning for Spike to follow her. “C’mon, Don Juan DeMarco, let’s go… we have a meeting to attend.” The hallways in The Western Castle where the meeting was located were so much more inviting than those in The Barracks, with warmer yellows and browns coloring the walls, and cool, blue colored lights guiding the way. Spike, realizing that he was supposed to be leading Twilight, hurriedly stepped in front of her and began leading her down the gentler halls, still a veritable maze, though they appeared so much more welcoming. Eventually, they reached a much larger, wooden doorway than the one at the general’s office, again covered in alien runes, but this one all white. Spike grunted as he heaved the weighty doors open to let himself and Twilight through. Twilight walked in, glancing about her every which way. She was inside of a large chamber with an elaborately shaped ceiling that rose high above her. The walls were covered with frescoes of different ponies charging and even flying, and Twilight noticed that there were three different kinds of creatures, with horns and wings between them. In the center of the room stood a large, round brightly polished wooden table with wooden chairs arranged all around it edges. At the center of this table was an ancient, gray device that sort of looked like a glum, oversized metal gumdrop. The only other people in the room were Velvet and a woman Twilight had never seen before, both waiting patiently for the newcomers. “Hello Spike, hello dear,” Velvet smiled and stood up from her chair as the pair walked in. She hugged her daughter. “How was the general?” “You were right,” was all that Twilight replied to her mother, who grinned sympathetically and hugged her again. Velvet then looked her daughter over at arm’s length. “My, my, my, somebody’s looking fabulous today!” Twilight looked at herself. “Oh, totally not my idea… but thanks.” The other women smiled. “I take it you’ve met Rarity, then.” “Quite a peach, isn’t she?” Velvet added. “And that hair…” Twilight grinned. “Oh, you have no idea,” she and Spike said simultaneously, and quickly looked at each other. Spike blushed furiously. “I don’t believe you’ve met Dr. Heartstrings, dear,” Velvet motioned to her companion, who shook Twilight’s hand. “Dr. Lyra Heartstrings, Head of The Archaeology Division,” Lyra introduced herself warmly. She was a little older than Twilight, with short, spiky hair and amber colored eyes. Around her neck was a small, gold locket, similar in design to the strange- looking Amulet on The Sonic Rainboom, depicting a unicorn raring up on its hind legs. “You must be Velvet’s daughter. She’s told me so much about you,” Twilight smirked at her mother while shaking Lyra’s hand. “Oh, really?” Lyra laughed. “Oh, yes, she won’t stop talking about you all the time, it’s really quite adorable. Is it true that in college you tried to become an indie rapper under the stage name ‘Twilightlicious’?” Twilight glared daggers at her mother, who was laughing hard right along with Spike. “Ha ha ha ha, oh, how did that song go? ‘I’m The T to The W, I, L- I- G- H- T-‘ “ Velvet started rapping. “That is the last time I EVER send you a link to my YouTube channel,” Twilight crossed her arms and huffed. Dr. Heartstrings moved on, fortunately. “So I take it that you’re here for a little history lesson on Equestria, then?” “Well, to be honest, I still don’t even really know what I’m doing here in the first place.” Lyra smiled again. “Maybe we should start at the beginning, then. The very beginning.” She motioned for Twilight to sit down at a chair, which she did, along with Spike and Velvet, who pulled a thermos out of her bag and presented it to Twilight. "Coffee?!" she gasped in delight. "Instant, dear," her mother smiled. "But I'm sure you don't mind." Twilight responded by flinging away the combination lid and cup and downing the thermos greedily. When everybody was comfortable, Lyra took out a small remote control from her pants pocket and clicked it towards the giant gumdrop on the table. It buzzed to life and immediately emitted a bright blue glow. A gigantic hologram of the planet Earth, similar to the displays on the EGO, popped up for all to see. “Sure kicks Powerpoint’s ass…” Twilight mused out loud. “About a half a million years ago, long before we even took step outside of our ancestral homelands, our species was just starting to evolve into the modern Homo sapiens we are today,” Lyra began as they all gazed up at their planet, a big blue ball floating amidst the vast, speckled expanse. “During that time, something fell from the heavens which would interrupt that natural process significantly.” Twilight watched as a rainbow- hued streak fired from somewhere out of the emitter’s range and fell towards Earth, the African continent in particular. “Six extraterrestrial artifacts impacted Earth together, in Eastern Africa, objects whose origin and construction we still do not fully understand; objects which we’ve come to call The Elements of Harmony…” Twilight watched as the emitter display followed the multicolored, glowing objects as they barreled through the atmosphere and eventually impacted against the surface of the Earth in a colorful splash of rainbows radiating outwards. The landing site was the barren, tan desert landscape of Ethiopia, only a little bit greener and with a little more trees. Twilight watched as a group of humans in stereotypical caveman attire approached the brightly glowing artifacts in a small crater; apparently, they did not land with that much physical force. “The native inhabitants of East Africa at the time came into contact with the first and last set of extraterrestrial cultural artifacts ever discovered in human history. They didn’t understand them at the time anymore than we do now, but The Elements eventually became very sacred items in their prehistoric culture.” “Very Kubrick- esque. Where’s the bone?” Twilight joked. Honestly, she didn’t know what to make of this. “Quiet, honey, the feature’s starting,” Velvet replied in jest. Lyra smiled as she continued. “No bones about it, Dr. Sparkle, this is the real deal, I assure you. However, the inhabitants also began to exhibit changes in their behavior as well. Though they were still physically lugging their bodies towards becoming modern humans, they had begun to form real language and accumulate more and more sophisticated technology to aid their increasingly sedentary lifestyle. In other words, they were turning into us. And fast,” The emitter flashed forward some time, showing the following scenes: the humans had built their tribe into a collection of grass huts surrounding the artifact; a little later, the area surrounding them became a mish mash of agricultural fields; still later, the grass huts became wood and stone structures as the settlement expanded exponentially, then continuing evolving at breakneck speed until it turned into the city they were now sitting in, Canterlot. “Who recorded all of this, anyway?” Twilight asked her mother. She smiled. “The Elements.” “After a few millennia,” Lyra continued, “the inhabitants finally reached the zenith of Equestrian culture. They had become much more technically advanced than even we are today, though the archaeological records and the Equestrian Codexes seem to indicate that, at their peak, they retained what we would now know as a feudal level of socio- political organization, with a monarchy coming to rule the undisputed center of Classical Equestrian civilization: Canterlot.” “I’m sorry to interrupt, but- question,” Twilight finally saw her chance, “why exactly were these people called Equestrians, anyway? I keep on seeing a whole horse motif running through this place, but I can’t seem to understand why that is. I mean Canterlot?” “Well,” Lyra tried to answer, “even though we now have Equestrian historical and archaeological records in our possession, and we’ve even learned to read the Equestrian language, we still don’t know what that language actually sounded like or what they even called themselves or their capital, beyond things like ‘the people’ or ‘the city’. It also seemed that, upon technologically evolving beyond the need for their horses, they elevated their prized animals to a religious standing and function, similar to the status of the cow in the much later Vedic and Hindu cultures. It became taboo to slaughter a horse or harm them, and they were incorporated into the mythology and rituals of the day, being bred into smaller and smaller pony breeds for non- riding related purposes. Hence, The Equestrians… and Canterlot.” Wow… Pinkie Pie must’ve simply gone nuts when she found that out, Twilight thought to herself. “Eventually, the Equestrians became too numerous to contain within Equestria itself, and the inhabitants soon became forced with a choice: colonize the rest of the planet, or find somewhere else to live. The Equestrians, however, seemed to have developed a strictly environmental and pacifist philosophy… at least at first.” “Proto- hippies, got it,” Twilight jabbed again. Velvet nudged her disapprovingly. The scene shifted to show great, big white and gold spaceships, rounded, blue- striped, cigar- shaped beauties with arrays upon arrays of yellow- tinged thrusters behind them, lifting off from the runway at Canterlot, towards the great big, blue sky above. “ At the peak of their existence, the Equestrians decided to literally leave the world outside of their kingdom; the rest of planet Earth was designated as a sort of nature reserve, for the benefit of all plants, animals and non- Equestrian peoples. These other species of human beings did not seem to react in the same way to The Elements of Harmony as the Equestrians’ ancestors did, though they came to enjoy amicable trading relations with Equestria; The Equestrians themselves decided to leave the planet and find new, non- inhabited bodies to inhabit, presumably after extensive terraforming using their mind- numbingly advanced technology. To ease the difficult sort of voyaging required to colonize these faraway planets and moons, however, the Equestrians themselves needed to become more than they already were; thus, they began to genetically modify themselves. First, they needed to better control their complex power and propulsion systems; eventually a group of their own inhabitants accumulated certain genetic markers, very few of which we understand completely, in order to manipulate those technologies involving extremely complicated physical forces and principles… very of few of which even you’d understand, Dr. Sparkle,” Lyra smirked at Twilight, whose interest in the matter had finally peaked in earnest. The scene still was still on the Equestrian ships taking off, flying outside of Earth’s atmosphere, and disappearing in a multicolored flash amongst the stars. “As their genetic modifications were passed on to their children, the first group became what we now know as the Unicorns, from the animal symbol which denotes them in The Equestrian Codexes. However, the Equestrians also needed specialists to operate and navigate their enormous arks to travel to their colonies faraway, especially precarious journeys if you realize that they travelled with engines capable of propelling them faster than light. Thus, another group was born through another set of genetic transformations, a group who would be able to feel almost at home in the hostile environment of outer space, to actually feel what the others couldn’t in the interstellar currents. We named this group The Pegasi after their symbol, a winged horse. Lastly, to accommodate the extremely vast amount of data it took to travel within and maintain the complex network of Equestrian colonies, some of which extended far beyond our solar system, the Equestrians needed a computer or a set of computers much more powerful than the rapidly aging mainframe that currently runs Canterlot. They eventually decided to endow another group with genetic modifications in order to allow them to store computer data and run programs through the human mind itself, in conjunction with existing Equestrian hardware, so that every member of this last group could act as either an individual or communal quantum computer. To us they are known as The Earth Ponies, mostly because of the unadorned horse symbol that denotes them. In the late era of Classical Equestrian civilization, the three groups began to symbolically imbue the reigning monarch with all three of their genetic modifications, in order to solidify the bonds between the now Unicorns, Pegasi, and Earth Ponies. We call this period of the genetically combined monarchy ‘The Era of Alicorn Rule’, again because their symbol, which was inscribed on all of their royal documents and devices, is that of a winged, horned horse.” The scene of migrating ships froze by Lyra’s remote command when Twilight raised her hand for another question. “So what you’re saying is that these people kinda looked like us, but had horns and wings on them?” Lyra smiled. “No, Dr. Sparkle, they looked exactly like us. Observe,” Lyra pressed her remote again. The scene changed to the runway of Canterlot again, where many different people were loitering around one of the ships, preparing to board. Twilight could’ve sworn the scene came from just yesterday, or not that long ago at the very most, as all the people looked like normal human beings. Sure, they were dressed in strange, colorful robe- like garments and had different hairstyles, but they were, without a doubt, human. The interesting thing was, the variation between their physical features was enormous and shocking for a single, ancient population; their skin tones ranged from black to brown to yellow and white, with all of the world’s racial features blended into every single possible combination between them; their hair and eyes not only reflected all the colors every human being could possibly possess on Earth, but also shocking pinks, greens, blues, purples, and even metallic colorations. Yes, they were human, but Twilight thought that they all looked a little too much like science fiction actors discussing their next scene. “Isn’t it amazing?” Lyra beamed, leaning on the table as she watched the long dead passengers. “Everything so deeply engrained in the history of human civilization, about how people who look differently from one another are separate kinds of people… the Equestrians took it all for granted. All of it, races and what have you, meant little more to them than simple, willfully intentioned aesthetics… you know, I really, really wish the government would let me publish that anthropological report I’ve been working on… sure, they let me post it online, for plausible deniability purposes, in the form of a My Little Pony® fanfiction- of all the things the government would allow, can you believe that?- not that I ‘m complaining about the ratings it got, but still- ” “Lyra,” Velvet interrupted, reminding her that she was in the middle of giving a presentation. “Oh- sorry!” Lyra giggled, realizing that she started going off on a tangent. “The Ancient Equestrians just fascinate me sooo much,” Suddenly, Twilight realized that there was audio coming from the emitter; the passengers were talking amongst themselves as they prepared to leave Mother Earth, and Twilight could distinctly pick up some snatches of speech in between the general murmur: “- Oh, Radiant Nova, this will truly be the start of a new life for us, together, can you picture it?- a life amongst the stars- “ “Yes, Moondancer, my beloved. How I love you so- “ “- I say, Starswirl The Bearded’s new treatise is the most important piece of Equestrian literature to date- “ “- Mommy, when we get to Crystallia, do you think there’ll be trees there as well? Snowdrop told me her mother said that they just started planting them, oh, I do hope- “ “Wait a minute,” Twilight shook her head as if she felt crazy, “they’re all speaking English. I even heard one of them say ‘Equestrian’. What’s up with that?” Lyra smiled. “I guess this is your first time encountering The Alicorn Tongue Effect, huh?” Twilight thought that sounded rather gross, to be honest. “…The what?” “The Alicorn’s Tongue is sort of a universal translating program built into Equestria’s mainframe. It uses your EGO to measure what parts of your brain are activated during speech, and then estimates the meaning of your words so that it may, using the vocabulary and grammar of any language inputted into it, translate any one language into any other. The IT Division, with Dr. Belle’s assistance, has uploaded all of the world’s modern languages into Canterlot’s Mainframe; the result is that you can hear and understand the EGO transmissions from these Equestrians that were recorded millennia ago. Thus, to you and I, they sound like they’re speaking English, our native language, but to anyone else they could be speaking French, Chinese, Arabic, you name it.” Out of nowhere, Twilight started to think of Ali Wong Toussaint, the gorgeous foreign exchange student that she had gotten pretty serious with in high school; unfortunately, they could never really communicate anything meaningful to each other due to the language barrier, and so their relationship pretty much ended by senior year. Man alive, he was good- looking... “Ahem... please, continue,” she snapped to attention and cleared her throat. “The Classical Equestrian civilization period came to an abrupt and extremely violent end,” Lyra clicked her remote. “A plague soon began spreading throughout Canterlot and beyond, one which even their greatest medical technology could not stop.” The scene was still Canterlot, but it was different. The city was dirtier, people were in the streets, shouting or crying next to piles upon piles of elaborate coffins, and for the first time Twilight saw what looked like Equestrian warriors about, bedecked in some sort of gleaming golden armor from head to toe, with golden helmets and slatted visors completely covering their faces, holding shiny silver weapons resembling rifles. “The reason why they couldn’t stop this new disease was because the virus was targeting the very pony markers that they had built into themselves. The Equestrians had, in a little less than a dozen millennia, artificially evolved at a tremendously rapid pace, and they soon found out that they didn’t know how to cure the sickness they had brought upon themselves. Their entire civilization began to crumble as millions of people succumbed to the illness.” The scene changed again. Again, the city of Canterlot looked the same as before, but was now enclosed in a large bubble of energy as the view of the emitter shifted to high above it. Twilight nearly jumped as a large, black object screamed from behind her and dove towards the city with others like it following. It looked like a jet fighter but was more alien in design, very spikey and cruel; the fighter and its squadron fired upon the city’s force field, long, brilliant bolts of blue energy impacting the barrier again and again. Some sort of long, forked cannon- like device, also jet- black, popped up in the city below the shield and fired an even larger beam of blue light. As it reached the barrier, the projectile penetrated it with ease and completely annihilated the attacking objects in a big flash of fire and outwardly exploding shrapnel. “God…” Twilight gasped in horror, her eyes bathed by virtual flames. “As The Pony Plague tore through Equestria, unchallenged, the peaceful political and cultural atmosphere gave way to militarism and tyranny. Several competing factions fought for control, all to no avail. If they weren’t blowing themselves to smithereens, they were rapidly dying from the virus. Soon, the disease spread beyond the stars to the colonies, and, as they began to destabilize as well, all contact with Earth was cut off; subsequently, we hear no more about them in the historical record. In the end, they undoubtedly suffered the same fate as the Equestrians did.” “And what did finally happen to them?” Twilight asked. “As a society? Extinction,” Lyra clicked her remote, and the emitter turned off. She shook her head, as if she was silently judging the Equestrians themselves. “After the start of The Equestrian Civil War, historical records become spotty at best. You must understand that The Pony Plague, as it viciously tore a person’s very genetic material to pieces, made the victim become very, very delusional, almost rabies- like in symptomatic presentation. Whatever historical records we have left from that period are extremely disturbing, to say the least. I highly doubt you’d want to watch as many gruesome massacres on emitter as I have.” Twilight shuddered, trying to imagine it. She really wouldn’t. “What we know is that the casualty count from both war and pestilence became too high, and that all of the remaining inhabitants who had half a mind left migrated en masse out of Equestria. In a delusional state brought on by her Plague infection, the last reigning Alicorn Queen closed up the city of Canterlot in a spacetime distortion using the very latest in Equestrian technology; she had become insanely paranoid of the city being attacked by outside forces, perhaps from one of the faraway colonies. Of course, any of the refugees could have returned using the single Alicorn Amulet they had stolen away and which somehow survives today, but apparently no one ever tried, as far as the very last Equestrian records tell us. From the closing of The Eye, The Elements of Harmony seemed to have ‘gone dark’, so to speak, until your mother later helped to restart them, so the rest of Canterlot’s fate is purely archaeology. US Special Forces were first sent through The Eye in 1990, shortly after scientists had learned to manipulate The Amulet using modern computer programming. They found Canterlot to be eerily empty as well as completely spotless, all except for one ghastly sight- the thousands of human skeletons which lay everywhere. It seems as if the remaining Equestrians, isolated by The Eye and finally succumbing to The Plague, had turned the city into an enormous open- air mausoleum. The soldiers had thus discovered the very inglorious end to the Equestrian civilization.” “But… what happened to the refugees?” Twilight inquired, feeling a cold chill run down the length of her spine. “The ones who made it out of Canterlot? Did they succumb to the infection as well?” Lyra nodded. “Initially many of them did, yes. From what we can tell from the last Equestrian stone inscriptions, they carried The Pony Plague with them beyond Equestrian lands. The tribes of non- Equestrian humans were both immune to the disease as well as sympathetic to these strange people, and took them into their primitive settlements, even trying to heal them as best they could; in the end, their shamanic magic couldn’t stop the virus, which lethally continued to ravage the artificially enhanced humans. However, as time went on, it seemed the last of the Equestrian doctors came to discover that some of the Equestrians had a natural immunity to The Plague or, at least, to its killing effects. These lucky few mostly stemmed from the Earth Ponies, the group who supposedly had the least amount of genetic modification done. All of the Alicorn royal family who had escaped, as well as most of the Unicorns and Pegasi remaining on Earth perished, leaving very little of them behind to trace, genetically. The Toba Catastrophe many, many generations later further reduced the number of their descendants. However, the Earth Ponies, who after becoming cut off from Equestrian technology reverted back to just ordinary, albeit highly developed, human beings, continued to thrive; they adopted, out of necessity, the hunter- gatherer lifestyle of their kin, eventually moving far beyond Africa and rediscovering, among other things, agriculture, technology, medicine, hatred, mistrust, and a lust for war. As the saying goes, the rest is history… and our prehistory too.” Twilight sat in silence with the rest for a while, allowing it all to sink in. “That’s it?” She asked plainly. Lyra smiled, placing her remote on the table. “That’s it, Dr. Sparkle. Any questions?” “So, that’s another reason why you call them Earth Ponies. Because the entire planet is descended from Earth Pony… people…” “Not entirely,” Lyra continued. “There still remains traces of the Unicorns and the Pegasi in every single living person on Earth. When these ancient lineages pool together, as they may very rarely, their descendants might even accumulate enough genetic markers to become, for all technological intents and purposes, full- blooded.” “But what about the Alicorns?” “It would seem as if they did not survive to the present day.” Twilight, slowly, knowing what she was about to ask, turned to her mother. “…How exactly do you fit into all of this, again?” Velvet smiled, brushing her daughter’s hair with her hand- petting her, really. “About fourteen years ago, I was approached by The US Government for The Equestria Initiative. It turns out they had finally discovered that Canterlot ran on a very unusual power source- the energy from The Elements of Harmony themselves. I was brought in to study and maintain them and… once I was in, Twi, once I really got started, you have to understand, it just…” she bit her lip and closed her eyes, starting over. “…You have to understand, dear, why I did it all. What we’re doing here together.” Twilight’s hands were ice cold. Her brain was buzzing with all the sundry realizations bombarding it. So that was it, huh? She thought numbly. The explanation I’ve been waiting for all these years… right out of an archaeologist’s mouth, for the most part. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” she asked in an almost whisper. “Oh, honey… I just… couldn’t…” Velvet looked at her daughter apologetically. There then was a heavy silence, which seemed to fill up the entire room without being satisfied, inanimate as it was. “I really… should be getting back to Harmonics,” Velvet finally spoke up, slowly. “And I think Luna Everstar would really like to see you now.” Twilight blinked at her mother. Her hands came up to rub her eyes. “Oh, yeah…” she gave a little sniff, “I’m just like dad around here, a real big- shot celebrity.” Velvet smiled. She didn’t try to hug her daughter again; she knew better than that. “Thank you, so much, for the explanation, Dr. Heartstrings,” Twilight got up to shake Lyra’s hand, “You should really option that into a movie. Maybe Stanley Kubrick would even want to direct it.” “Um, Stanley Kubrick is dead,” Spike muttered from the side for the first time as he got up from his seat. “At any rate, it was a real pleasure to finally meet you, Twilight,” Lyra bid farewell. “I do hope that you enjoy working here.” “Thanks,” she smiled weakly as she and Spike headed for the door. Before they left, Twilight looked at Velvet again. “Guess I’ll see you later… mother?” Velvet was visibly pained; she had a million and one things that she wanted to say to her daughter, right then and there. “… See you soon, sweetheart.” As Spike and Twilight got into the elevator, the uncomfortable, oppressive silence seemed to follow them right on their heels. Twilight didn’t say anything because her mind was still racing from what had turned out to be, after all, a paradigm- shattering reinterpretation of her world. She also mulled over the story that Dr. Heartstrings told, just not with quite the same importance. Spike was nervously silent, but he kept on giving her long glances until she just couldn’t take it anymore. “Yes, Spike?” she finally asked, as gently as possible. “So… uh… you and your mom don’t really-“ “No, Spike.” “And both of you are-“ “That’s correct.” Spike’s brow furrowed. He needed to think really hard about what he was going to say next if he didn’t want to upset Twilight any further. “Sooooo… is that ‘Twilightlicious’ song still available on YouTube, by any chance?” Twilight just sighed.