Reasons For Home Chapter 1
Before we start this story let me tell you a bit about me. My name is Lewis Jameson, and I used to spend my days working as a financial advisor for a company by the name of Space X. I had always lived a great life working for the company, and through the years had been promoted quite a few times within the financial department.
However, before the years in high school and college I I used to dream of becoming an astronaut, but as the years passed I began to learn that I was not quite fit for the grueling job. I was not a particularly brave person, nor could I take much movement before getting motion sickness, and disorientation. During high school, I realised that I had to settle for something... less daring, and what better career for partial failures like me than financing for a large corporate company?
So fast forward a few years, and there I was sitting at my personal cubicle, when I received a letter. This was in no form or way extraordinary. As a financial advisor one learns to expect random letters on a day to day basis. The letters would often contain anything from memos from the company I work for, Space X, or some sort of banking invoice. This letter, however did not fall into the ordinary zone of memos, and banking invoices.
The reason for this letter was that Space X had created a new project. Due the recent theoretical failure of the space elevator, and the cruelty of physics when people are on a rocket, they needed a way to get people who couldn't take many of the difficulties in a journey to space, like me, into space... Space X is a civilian company, therefore a lot of their budget is actually paid for by selling seats to brave, aspiring entrepreneurs. Sadly This did not give them a very expansive consumer base. People with lots of money are normally very smart, and very smart people tend to be wimps (no offence). Space X needed a way to expand their enterprise to the wimpy wealthy masses.
Space X had created a great plan to do just this. I’m sure everyone reading this has heard of cryogenics; the act of freezing a person solid so they can sleep for very long periods of time. It turns out that doing this is not just science fiction. Space X had created a ship that Used cryogenics to keep a person in hibernation during any large gut wrenching journey. Sleeping like this could both shorten long trips to a seemingly small amount of time, and greatly reduce food usage during the journey. Having something like a cryo pod would be useful for both trips to space, and long journeys with your mother in-law.
I had been chosen by space X as the perfect test subject for this technology. I had proven I was both dedicated to the company by my many years working a mostly dead end job there, and I had shown much interest in joining the space programs, despite failing to endure any sort of training. Due to my special circumstances I was going to be able to get a free ride into space, and despite all my shortcomings I was finally going to be able to achieve my childhood dreams, and more importantly get a week long well earned break from balancing budgets.
I of course accepted the offer, and my fairly minimal training began. Keep in mind that this ship was designed to be as simple, and easy to use as possible. I was not to mess with anything technical the whole journey. Just clearly labeled buttons and incredibly obvious instruction booklets for me.
After the incredibly boring three weeks of training was completed I began my journey. In short I would end up getting frozen solid, get shipped off to the moon, wake up only to send a radio message confirming I was alive, and check some readouts before stepping back into the cryo chamber, pushing a button, and beginning my journey home.
To this day I still don’t know what went wrong after the launch...
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Waking up from cryo is tough. I've only experienced it once, and I would not advise it to anyone. Imagine that feeling you get after sleeping on your arm for a night. You know that tingly feeling? Now apply that numbness to your entire body, and add on a complementary dose of a weakened bone structure, and a little muscle degradation, and you have just about what I was feeling at the time.
I was never much of a morning person, so I sat inside of the pod for quite a while before I was able to get my mind back in working order. Looking around the room I noticed that nothing had really changed since my trip had begun. The curved walls and low roof were all still in perfect shining cleanliness. The only difference was that instead of the many feet of cables that were here when I was initially frozen there was now only the blank walls of the cryo bay to greet me.
When I finally built up the motivation to attempt to step out of the pod I ended up falling straight onto the floor. I was far to weak from the effects of cryo to walk, and trying to do so ended in not so much success. Wondering if any bones had broken in the fall I began to crawl/drag myself over to the emergency box. This Emergency box was a sort of first aid kit for any sort of disaster, or trouble that could occur during or after the launching, and landing. The scientists who designed the pod had told me that I was supposed to be in perfect health when I awoke, therefore I was in an emergency, and my primary goal was to reach that box.
The journey was not a easy one, nor was it an interesting one. I slowly belly-crawled across the slick floors of the pod, eventually making my goal of reaching the E-box which was in fact conveniently located inside the floor, (an object I was developing very close relationships with). After reading a few labels I decided to inject myself with the very clearly labeled "In case of weakness upon awakening" syringe. It took a few moments for me to start feeling the effects, but when I did they worked wonderfully. The full tingly feeling left my body, and I began to feel much more energised, although due to future events I was soon thinking that it may have addled my brain a bit.
After the effects had completed taking their course I made it my new goal to get to the communication center and contact Headquarters. The communication center was the only "technical" room of the ship. It held the ships communication system, along with many plainly labeled readouts that I needed to copy, and send to Headquarters. Although most of these numbers were useless to me, they would be a great help to all the technicians doing work on the cryo pods.
Contacting Headquarters would not normally be my first priority,(that award goes to food) but they would know what specifically had gone wrong to cause this whole weakness issue, and what I should do to fix it for my return journey. There was only one major goal standing in my way... I had yet to stand up.
So began the epic quest to reach the communication center. I spent quite a long time trying to stand without assistance before I noticed a nearby guardrail (Thank you engineers!). Using the rail I was able to, with much less difficulty slowly force myself into a standing position.
Once I had myself upright I began to slowly walk to the communication center, using various handholds along the main hallway to help support my weight, and keep me from falling face first on the floor. Once I reached the center I was exhausted! I practically fell into the main chair after the short rail-less stride from the door. I had never felt more relived in my life. I then turned on the console, and hit the very plainly labeled big red talk button and said. "This is Lewis Jameson I have had a malfunction with the cryogenetics, and require guidance. Over". The only response to this copy paste request was static.
It was here that I started to really and truly panic. I began to spam the radio with increasingly desperate cries for a reply. Receiving no replies after what must have been 20-30 minutes I began to wonder what was wrong. Could there be some sort of moon cloud? Impossible. Could they just be ignoring me? I doubt it. Could the satellite dishes be malfunctioning? Possibly. It took me over 10 minutes sitting in the chair staring stupidly at the console before I realised... I was not feeling very light.
The whole time I was dragging myself across the floor of the cryo bay, and stumbling down the halls of the ship like some sort of lifeless zombie; I had not thought once about how I should be happily skipping across the floor in low G. Normal gravity, although hindering the locomotion process, meant that I was not on the moon. In fact this meant I was back on earth! This well explained the fact that the radio was not working, there were a thousand things that could block a radio signal on our relatively turbulent home planet. Unfortunately
This coin had another side. The fact that I was on Earth instead of the Moon meant that something had definitely gone wrong, and I could be very well in a deep pile of metaphorical crap.
With that mystery settled I had no reason to continue sitting at the console and spend hours trying to communicate with cloud cover. After who knows how long of being in the cryo pod my stomach was empty, and I needed food, my stomach was making demands at this point. I stood up from the chair (which is much easier than getting up from laying on the floor), and made my way over to this ships so called kitchen. The kitchens were far more advanced than what they had on any of the Apollo missions, but they were no testament to the culinary arts. After a good reheated meal, and a good drink of water I was feeling much better. Maybe even good enough to take a trip outside!. I decided that I could probably manage to take a quick walk outside to figure out where exactly I was, what the sky looked like, and if the radio antenna was still there, and functioning.
So I started walking toward the main airlock of the ship, this time with much less assistance from the guard rails. There was an emergency exit, but opening that door would cause the fire extinguishers to go off, and I did not feel like getting wet, foamy, or getting my eardrums blown out. So It was safer, dryer, and quieter going with the main Airlock. After reaching the center of the airlock, through a thick metal door and closing this door behind me I did a quick check out the window to make sure that It was in fact earth.
Instead of a barren lunar landscape awaiting me. After confirming that I was in fact on earth, and not the moon, or somewhere more sinister I cycled the exterior door open, and stepped into the great outdoors.
The first thing I checked when stepping outside was the sky. Looking up only made my panic increase. There was little to no cloud cover, and what tree branches that would have been over the ship, were now either laying on the floor or hanging by a thread to the tree that that they used to be firmly attached to. This meant that it was not clouds blocking the signal from reaching HQ. It had to be a problem with one of the satellite dishes, or HQ was playing a VERY mean prank.
Before walking to the rear of the ship to inspect the antenna I took a look at my new settings. The main detail of the landscape was the sparse, randomly placed trees, and green grass. I was in a very lightly packed, but very green forest. The sun looked a bit low on the horizon, and was putting large amounts of glare in my eyes, but It was a very nice day.
I was meant to land on a true landing pad, not some sort of forest but I figured that whatever had happened to cause me to take a round trip to earth also had messed up my landing destination. Taking not of how lucky it was to not end up in some sort of ocean or lake, I made quite a few laps around the ship while looking for the antenna. When I found it, it was sitting in very plain view on the top of the ship, laughing at me for my ignorance, and it was just out of my reach. I stared at it for quite a while, and could see no visible damage to the shell of the antenna or its base, so either the landing had to have cut some sort of wire, or jarred something loose in the technical area if it was broken. It could also have been that it was HQ with the problems instead of me.
While I was staring at the antenna I heard a voice coming from behind me, I called out in excitement and turned to meet my savior, only to meet face to face with a number of... Highmans Horses? They were many of them, each a different color, and my yell had alerted them to my presence. We were currently in a stare down. The longer I looked at them the less they appeared to be horses. The biggest issue was that some of them had horns, and were in fact unicorns, and on closer inspection some of them even had a small set of wings, and were in fact pegasus. Their noses were much shorter than the average horse, and they lacked fur. Instead they had incredibly long, and even stylised manes. Did I mention that they were all incredibly colorful? More importantly did I mention HORNS, and WINGS?
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So there I was, Staring at these horses, when I noticed that one of them was moving towards me. I was not afraid to admit that I was a bit scared of these horses. Bright coloring, which these horses definitely had, did not mean peaceful in the wild. I was starting to step back from them, and even thinking about running away when I heard one of them talk. Yep... Talk... This was not a good thing, not a good thing at all.
“Hello, my name is Twilight Sparkle. Me and my Friends were sent here by our princess to check a meteor landing, the first one in centuries... We did not expect to find a creature in it! what exactly are you?" It was still talking, its mouth was moving, and it was speaking... I on the other hand was speechless for the moment. The highmans horse talked! I was glad I had named this species what I did, because that injection must have messed with my brain. I decided to do a quick dream/sanity check. I pinched myself in the arm. To my disappointment, and great amounts of surprise It hurt. Wonderful... I can hear the calls of the loony bin, they are coming closer.
If I wasn't dreaming, and I was fully alert, and there was a purple unicorn really talking to me. There was nothing left to do but reply. "Umm... My name is Lewis Jameson. This over here is not a meteor, its a ship". I guessed that maybe these horses knew where exactly I was. "Do you have any idea where I am? I am kind of lost". The fact that they spoke English, meant that if I was lucky than they would have replied with some well known country or state, and take me to their human leader. I was not so fortunate.
"This is Equestria, home of the two regal pony sisters who control the sun and the moon. we are just a few miles away from the town of Ponyville." while the purple unicor was saying that, its "friends" who it had mentioned earlier had started to come out of the bushes, and joined it in the clearing that my ship had created in its landing. I guess they had thought me as dangerous, and had waited for this horse, who I assumed was their leader to speak to me first. I I was starting to get cautious of the group coming closer when the leader distracted me by replying to my question,. "What exactly are you, and what do you mean by "ship", I highly doubt that would float, and it does not have any sails or paddles?"
"I am a human, This is a space ship, designed to take me to the moon and back, not a normal boat like what you are thinking of.“ I replied, these horses probably didn’t have much technology if they had no clue what a space ship was, or at least did not have any sort of science fiction.
"You were banished to the moon?!?" There was a certain fear in the horses voice now. I wondered why exactly being banished to the moon was an issue. Perhaps there was some sort of supernatural story that they had dealing with that...
"No, nothing like that, I actually wanted to go to the moon, I was definitely not banished there. Heck, I didn’t even get to see it, whatever went wrong removed that part of the journey.” I was a little bit sad about the fact that the journey had gone wrong, I was really looking forward to actually be able to go the the moon.
"Why exactly did you want to go to the moon? Is it not barren up there? What would you go to see, or discover?". This set me back a bit, and It took me a while to reply. I knew why I wanted to get to the moon so badly, but how to put it into words... It was true that there was very little of use, and I did not really go for large amounts of money...
"I'm not sure really... It was something new, something exciting... I don’t know" I decided to turn the tables with a very important question "What exactly are you anyways?"
"Oh!, We are ponies, one of the only species in Equestria that are capable of controlling magic. There are four types of ponies: Earth ponies, who use magic for strength, and knowledge of the earth. Unicorns like me, who are able to directly control magic to do many things, and Pegasus who use magic to fly, and control the weather. There are also ponies like princess Celestia who have both a horn and wings, but they are very rare." Okay, Talking horses, I could understand. Talking unicorns... Maybe I could believe that. Talking magical unicorns, along with talking magical normal horses, and talking magical Pegasus, and some sort of combination.... This was getting out of hand. There was no way that they were not only talking horses, but talking MAGIC horses. Well, Ponies.
"What exactly do you mean by magic?"
"You don't know what magic is?" I nodded my head yes, no reason to reply out loud. "magic is the force that keeps the whole of Equestria in one piece. It keeps everything in order, without it the sun wouldn't go up or down, the clouds would move on their own, the whole world could fall apart around us." I was just beginning to comprehend what exactly what had been said when this pony continued. "How in the world have you never heard about magic!?!"
"I really don’t think its magic that does half of those things. Most of what you said happens on its own. No magic involved.” In hindsight that was a really stupid thing to say right off the bat. It really sounded a bit like magic was something these ponies worshiped for causing all the good things in their world, kind of like God. And had I said something of that sort in the middle ages I would soon be looking for my head.
"So you would have to see magic before you would believe in it?" I was relived at this reply, and even more skeptical than before.
"Yes" I replied. I was really expecting a generic “look at the world around you” sort of reply when I answered.
However It was not a moment after that word left my mouth that the unicorns horn began to glow, and a nearby stick matched the glow. I watched silently as a stick levitated up to my hand. When I grabbed the stick out of the air, the glow surrounding both the stick and the unicorns horn dissipated, and it fell back into my hands. Well... staring at a now very normal stick, and I was eating my words. Looking at the stick I would never have been able to tell it had just been floating in mid-air.
I was bewildered There were no strings, no tricks, no magnets, just a floating stick. This could be a great discovery for science, and humanity for a while. A whole new field of research! I really hoped that HQ would be able to find me soon. This was amazing! For some reason I was still fascinated with the stick, long after it had stopped floating.
"Wow Twilight, He actually looks amazed! I think he has really never seen magic before. Just wait until he sees one of my patented sonic rainbooms, he wont know what hit him!" A rainbow colored Pegasus had spoken up, probably surprised that I was telling the truth. After this comment the leader shot it a bit of a mean look.
“So if you don’t have magic where you come from, How in the world do you get to the moon? That ship looks really heavy” Said the pony who had called herself “Twilight Sparkle”.
Still recovering a bit from the recent display of magic, I replied “Well... There was a very large rocket attached to this" This explaining was not important to me, I needed to know more about this magic! Physics were being destroyed right in front of my face! "What else can you do with this magic!?" I asked.
I think this "Twilight" was a bit surprised by my continuing interest, maybe it was a boring subject around here. "Well... Magic can be used to do tons of things. Most ponies use it for levitation, but some use it for for more complex actions. Anything from fancy light shows to growing a mustache."
The fact that they could do something like this far dwarfed even the technological revolution, and its child the computer. If humanity could build something to control this, and use it along side with computers the possibilities were endless! Robots would not be a thing of the past. My interest doubled. We had been talking for quite a while, and my legs were starting to get tired the sun was also starting to set, but I had to know more "How are ponies able to do this?"
Twilight looked at me a bit weirdly when I asked that, but she repeated herself "all unicorns like me are born with the ability to use magic, but it takes years of study to truly understand, and learn to control it." She glanced at the group before continuing. "We need to start to head home, Its starting to get dark, and its quite a walk back to Ponyville. Do you want us to come back tomorrow?"
"Um.. sure” I would probably be there the next day, and I highly doubted Headquarters would be able to find me without the ship transmitting, and with it being dark. after my reply the group said their goodbyes, a few of them looking a bit disappointed. My guess was that they had been told not to speak, and had thought they would get the chance to ask a question or two. They were a very quiet group aside from their leader.
I really hoped that HQ would be able to find me I did not want to die stuck in a place like this, with such potential for advances, but nobody knowing. I made my way to the crew pod, where my bed was, being sure to place the once magical stick in a storage compartment the wall on the way there. I spent a few moments staring at the stick in my hand before walking back to the airlock. Still just an ordinary stick...
It took me quite a while to sleep. the ship had quite a few lights blinking on and off in the crew compartment, and the room was a tad brighter than what I was used to. I also had quite a few things on my mind, with good reason. At the time the most prevalent question was weather or not I was insane. I couldn’t really do anything about that one so I quickly moved onto more important issues. The fact that I was stuck in some random place was quite a problem. I would need to find food, and water, along with building some sort of signal fire for any sort of rescue efforts coming through the area. It had been a really strange day, and as I drifted off to sleep I was wondering what exactly was going to happen next.
I don't think I could have even begun to predict what was to come.