Although the sun and the moon are of the few extraterrestrial bodies that we ponies fully know about, we have still observed as far as we can view with our telescopes and found nothing but an endless array of stars, nebuli and the occasional meteorite. Some have speculated of more than just stars; whole extrasolar planets, in fact, have been theorized. I've read about them numerous times in my many visits to libraries. I also, to an extent, share a similar fascination with the mysteriousness of the cosmos.
Princess Celestia is recognized as the most expansive accumulation of knowledge and information comprehensible to anypony, which has led me into suspicions that she knows far more than she is letting on. The thought of Celestia being in full knowledge of what objects or life forms lie beyond our world makes me almost fearful of the alicorm. I never used to think this way about the princess whom I considered my mentor for so much of my life, yet something changed just a few days ago. Before going to bed, I was staring blissfully into the starry sky from my room in Ponyville, where I can enjoy far less light pollution than Canterlot where I used to live, and so I was leisurely looking up at the thousands of stars and trying to pick out constellations. It was then when I noticed something moving. It was a dim, tiny red dot glowing at the same intensity as the stationary stars that surrounded it. It drifted in a straight line at what seemed like just faster than a snail's pace in a southerly direction. I watched it until it disappeared from my view behind a rooftop.
I lived above a library (something I was rather pleased about, since I love reading). The next morning the first and only thing on my mind was to decipher what I had seen the night before. Even before breakfast I ran downstairs straight to the bookshelves. Yet I found nothing. No book contained any information on unidentified red lights in the sky. I sat at a desk and lay my face in my hoofs before eating cereal rather angrily.
After I had calmed down from frustration, I turned my attention to the radio I had in my bedroom. Radios were a new invention and, being someone fascinated with all things technological, I was quick to obtain one. I sat down, fiddling with the small wooden knob between its two large speakers. A long static “gsshhhhh” came droning from the appliance. I shrugged and raised an eyebrow. There were no radio stations that broadcast to Ponyville, but I still listened, mostly on a whim to play with this new toy of mine. I twisted the knob slightly clockwise. I almost jumped and hit my head on the ceiling at what I heard next. The static was gone, replaced by silence that was only to be interrupted by beeps of varying pitch. I stayed still, listening for a few minutes. The beeping, haphazard as they sounded, seemed to be repeated in a clear rhythm. All in the same order. Where those noises were coming from remained a mystery to me, and I quickly drafted a letter to tell the princess on this unusual phenomenon.
Dear Princess Celestia,
Today I was listening to the radio I bought last week. I heard only static until I tuned it slightly. When I did, the static was gone, and was replaced by a series of random beeping noises. Would you know anything about this?
Twilight Sparkle.
I didn't think it necessary to mention the unidentified object in the sky that I had observed the night before.
After I had sent the letter, my mind was so fixed on the day's previous events that I never left my room. I only stared at the sky and occasionally at Ponyville's quaint streets in front of me. Waiting. Her reply was taking longer than any other had done previously. Was something bothering her? Was I bothering her? I began to wonder if my letter had somehow become lost along the way to Canterlot. But Celestia's reply did eventually arrive. Upon snatching the letter, I tore open the envelope in anticipation. In hindsight, I should have been more careful as I almost tore the paper it was containing. But I read it as slowly as I could in order to properly analyse every word.
My dearest and most faithful student,
What you have heard is nothing to be alarmed about. Your radio has simply picked up a signal from a pulsar, a highly-condensed star which is emitting electromagnetic radiation.
Princess Celestia.
Perhaps she was right; it wasn't out of the question. I pondered on what else could have made those signals the radio's antenna intercepted. Instantly, I remembered the red glowing object from the previous night. Could that have been transmitting it? I considered writing another letter to Celestia to try to rebuke her claim that I was listening to a pulsar and that there was another extraterrestrial object closer to Equestria emitting a series of beeps. Yet I had no evidence. Nothing for my claim other than my own eyes, which I wholly believed didn't lie to me. So I waited for night to fall again and diligently watched the sky above me for any sign of movement.
The moon was full that night, and I stayed watching even after the light from my bedroom was the only light to radiate from the entire town. My eyes swished from left to right, up to down until both my eyes and neck ached from their long shift of vigilance. Last night the object was heading a few degrees away from South, so I stayed watching for the direction that I estimated it would be coming from. Nothing. I sighed, taking a long blink as to give my eyes a break from working this hard late at night. When I opened my eyes again, I saw it. A little to the left than it was last night, and still silently gliding across the night sky ominously. Red and glowing dim enough for a pony to miss if they weren't searching for it. I scrabbled away from the window, flapping my wings haphazardly to the radio and switched it on. The beeps resonated throughout my bedroom, sometimes high pitched enough to hurt my ears. I watched the red object in the sky, glowing its constant faint crimson. I wondered if it was in orbit. If I could work out its velocity, I would be able calculate when and where the next sighting would be. I sighed, looking up at it. Feeling frustrated as to how it seemed just out of my reach.
I was still not used to having wings. When I looked back at those two feathery appendages in a moment of whimsical madness, decided that I would fly as high as I could to perhaps get a clearer view of the supposed satellite. I leapt into the air from my balcony with all four of my legs, flapping my wings in rapid succession to retain airborne and gain altitude. Almost dazzled and hypnotised by the stars, I headed straight upwards without allowing the red unidentified object to leave my sight. Yet no matter how high I flew, the stars always stayed just as far away, and the red object drifted further along its linear course, growing progressively faint as it gained distance from me. My wings were beginning to ache. I felt light headed, so I decided to give up on that flight and return home. But I couldn't find Ponyville. Below my hooves was nothing I could see but a flat blackness. The single dim light from my bedroom candle couldn't be seen due to the extreme altitude I had reached, and it was probably the whole light on in the town at that late hour. I almost panicked, but kept my cool as I descended slowly while trusting my still-rusty airpony instincts to estimate my pitch and bank angle. I felt a popping sensation in my ears from the shifting air pressure. Of course, I had no idea where I was going, only that I had to get my hooves on the ground. After an agonizingly slow and careful flight to the ground, I began to see the black outlines of trees jabbing through the darkness below my wings. I still could see very little, and despite straining my eyes to their maximum capability I still scraped my wing on a branch, loosing balance and tumbling into the tree and to the forest floor. The last thing I recall was my feeling body crashing down and slamming to the ground.
Next thing I knew, it was morning. The sun Celestia had raised was creating long beams of piercing light through the branches. Birds sang, filling the forest with a cacophony of varying melodies. I ignored them as I picked myself up, shaking my wings from dirt and leaf litter and flying again to treetop level to get a better idea of where I was. Ponyville was roughly a mile ahead of me, so I flew there as quickly as I could. After a night's sleep, my wings were well-rested so I reached my home with ease, despite the pain on one side from hitting the ground. I landed gently as I could on the balcony and trotted into my room. My candle, although having burned through most of its wax, was still burning. The radio that I had left beeping had turned to static. The light in the sky had left, and so did the beeping from the radio. This led me to believe that the noises were, indeed, being broadcasted from whatever was in the sky.
I spent most of that day calculating and studying. I only left my room to use the bathroom or to get food. I never drew my attention away from the chalkboard and books. Time passed me by until I stepped back from the chalkboard. I'd done it. I calculated the object's velocity, but had also realized it was moving in a polar orbit. This meant that if it had been up long enough, it has passed over the entire world. Furthermore, if it was emitting beeping radio transmissions, then I thought whoever made it must want it to be noticed. Perhaps it was a code of some sort. I had also estimated the next time it would pass over Ponyville. I glanced at the clock tower I could see from my bedroom window. It was 4 PM, which meant I had two hours until the next flyby.
Although it was still daytime; I was determined to see it with my own eyes, before it headed too far to the west and away from Ponyville. Quickly, I grabbed a pair of binoculars, swinging them over my neck and flew as quickly as I could for the nearby mountains. Once high enough, I soared with my wings swept back most of the way to the barren mountain range. When almost at the side of a steep rock face, I pulled up, riding my momentum until having to flap my wings hard enough to reach the top. Once at the peak of the mountain, I sat down. My rump hit the cold peak harder than I anticipated, hurting slightly. I raised the binoculars to my eyes, squinting and focusing back on Ponyville's clock tower which stood high above the thatched roofs that surrounded it. I wanted to see how long it had taken me to reach the mountain; an hour and a half. At the realization that I had almost no time to waste, I jumped up; wings extended, and flew higher and higher. I ascended faster than ever before, sweating yet not stopping to wipe my forehead, scanning the clear blue sky. Soon, however, I began to grow cold in my extreme altitude. I knew that it was reckless to fly this high without a coat yet still pressed forward without relent. A tiny speck caught my attention, and I slowed down. With a shivering hoof, I picked up the binoculars to my narrowed eyes and saw what I was looking for.
It was black. The red glow must have been an illusion, or a light that was attached to it. I struggled to figure out just what shape the object was as it tumbled across my field of vision. It seemed to be cylindrical with multiple appendages, some of which looked sharp and pointy, like metal.
“A pony shouldn't fly this high. You could get hypothermia or even fall to your death after succumbing to hypoxia,” said a stern yet welcoming voice. I span around in mid-air, lowering the binoculars. Although I recognized the voice the moment I heard it, as the regal tone Princess Celestia was far too distinguishable to confuse with any other, I still gasped and widened my eyes to see the alicorn hovering at my side. “Why don't we get our hooves back firmly on the ground?” She suggested. I nodded slowly.
“H-how did you know I was here?” I asked, puzzled, once both of us were standing back on the mountain top.
“Did you think your assistant wouldn't notice how you were acting strangely these past couple of days?” The princess chuckled, “He alerted me of your unusual behavior, so I figured I'd better keep an eye on you.”
“I see,” was all I could think of in response.
“I would scold you for flying so recklessly,” Celestia began, “but I can't blame you for not ignoring your curiosity. I, too, have been mystified by the Black Knight Satellite.”
“Black Knight?” I looked up at her, tilting my head and raising an eyebrow.
“That's what it's called. I'm sorry I told you were hearing noises from a pulsar. But there are some things some ponies are better off not knowing. Now though, I've reconsidered,” she looked down to me, into my eyes and smiling in earnest, “I think there's no harm in you knowing. After all, you've done enough of your own research to have found out most of it anyway.” Princess Celestia gave another light laugh.
“Know what?”
“That the satellite exists,” she put it simply, “I first observed it shortly after banishing my sister to the moon and studied it extensively. Yet I was never even able to touch it! To retrieve it and unlock its mysteries,” she sighed, “but with the advent of radio technology, you're the first pony to have listened to what it is transmitting. A code, perhaps?”
“Yes,” I said quickly, “maybe if we decode it, we can finally find out what it's doing here!” I said quickly and enthusiastically. She nodded at my words as another question crossed my mind. “Celestia, where do you think the satellite...Black Knight Satellite, as you called it, came from?”
She stayed silent for several seconds after I asked the question, then finally said “I suppose you know that this world before Equestria was federated by my sister and I, was a turbulent place. There isn't much of a record of those 'dark ages' before us because books and archives were either simply not written, or destroyed. But we know that there is some evidence of an advanced civilization existing eons ago. We don't know if they died out from war or disease or natural disaster, evolved beyond their physical forms, or relocated to the stars. But I think this satellite is a remnant of that civilization. One of the few surviving books from those times contained a limited amount of information on the satellite. It was there where I found its name; 'Black Knight'. It certainly peaked their curiosity, if they didn't simply build it themselves.”
I'll admit; my mind was a little blown by all this. But I maintained my cool in front of the regal alicorn. “If it's all that's left of their civilization, then maybe that's why they want us to know why it's there. Maybe they don't want to be utterly forgotten about.”
“Precisely. But I believe there's more to it than that. It's in polar orbit, so it can pass over every part of the world's surface. Do you want to know what I would use a satellite for if it was in polar orbit and could therefore pass over every part of the world's surface?”
I gave up, “What?”
“Surveillance,” she replied.
By then, the satellite had slipped away, and the sky now dark with stars twinkling high above our heads. We talked more of theories on the satellite and of the strange phenomena we knew about that was beyond our world, waiting to be touched by a hoof. How her Sun was once just a huge cloud of dust and gases before succumbing to microgravity. We talked of how the life in Equestria would contrast to any that might exist on another world and how some organisms might just exist as information and nothing more. Or the parallel dimensions that might be continually next to us but invisible and unfathomably complex in their own way with diverse ecosystems and technology. But as we talked, I couldn't get the Black Knight Satellite off my mind. I realized that this was due to the fact that I considered each possibility of life outside Equestria as a possible origin for it. Soon I grew too tired to talk any longer, and so Celestia escorted me back home.
Meanwhile, clear of the atmosphere, the enigmatic black object continued to tumble high above the Equestria. Its onboard transmitter diligently sending out its series of coded beeps as it had been programmed to, so very long ago by advanced unseen entities.
Beep. Beep. Beep.