A Meeting by Moonlight
Spike yawned and opened his eyes. Something had roused him. It was still before sunrise, but the night-light was still on in the library loft. He glanced at the bed: it was empty, and the door to the balcony was half-opened.
The small dragon stepped into the gap. As he expected, Twilight was standing on the balcony next to her telescope. A notebook and quill were on a small table beside her. The telescope seemed to be aimed at the Moon.
Spike was about to speak when the air shimmered beside his adopted sister. Without warning, a dark-blue alicorn, bearing the mark of the crescent moon, stood there, her mane shimmering with the night stars.
Spike nearly had an early molt when he jumped out of his skin.
I wish she wouldn’t do that, he thought to himself. Princess Luna had been officially one of the good guys again for almost three years now, but her penchant for dramatic entrances could be annoying. Spike wondered if she knew this and did it on purpose.
Twilight turned and did a little half-jump, gasping. “Oh!”
“Greetings and well-met, Lady Twilight Sparkle,” Luna said, in a calm clear voice like liquid starlight.
“Greetings and well-met to you too, Princess Luna,” Twilight said, and deeply bowed.
“That is not necessary, Lady Twilight. We are all friends here.” The dark alicorn half-smiled, then gestured at the telescope. “I see that thou wert admiring my Moon.”
“Oh – um, yes, Princess Luna,” said Twilight. “It’s so fascinating through a good telescope – mountains, seas, craters – like a whole other world.”
“It is a whole other world,” said Luna softly. “The mountains are not sharp, as thou might expect, but worn smooth by eons of solar wind and cosmic rays. The seas are ancient lava plains, covered in a dust that puffs up softly to the hoof. The craters were made by meteors, mostly long before the first pony ever looked up to the sky with wonder. There is no air, no liquid water, and she bakes during its half-month long day and freezes in her equally-long night.” She sighed. “Nonetheless, it is beautiful.”
“Wow!” said Twilight, grabbing her quill and scribbling hasty notes. “Um, Princess – you don’t mind if I write this down, or even repeat it? You’ve just said things that no pony – I mean no normal pony, like me – has ever known before!”
Luna smiled. “No, Twilight Sparkle, I do not mind if thou, of all ponies, writest this down. And I wish people would talk more of the Moon’s beauty – not just as a source of light by night, but as a world in her own sake. I wish …”
She looked at Twilight with a strange intensity.
“You were wrong about one thing, though. Ponies have known all that I said, before. A long time before …”
Twilight’s ears bent forward attentively. “Which ponies?” she asked. “Clover the Clever? Starswirl the Bearded? How’d they find out?” She was almost squeaking with excitement.
“You have perhaps heard of an Age of Wonders, before Discord, before Equestria, before all history now known?” Luna asked.
“Oh, of course!” replied Twilight with the eagerness of a bright student giving the answer to a teacher. “Magic carriages that ran by themselves, giant metal birds that flew faster than any pegasus, fire spells that could blast holes through mountains, rockets to the …” She did a double-take. “Wait, are you saying that all that was real?”
“Yes,” said Luna. “And ponies once knew many of the mysteries of the Moon. A few even walked on her.”
“Were you there?” In her curiosity, Twilight had completely forgotten to display her usual deference.
Luna smiled sadly.
“Not exactly,” she said. “Princess Luna the Pony Alicorn,” she emphasized this precise phrasing, “was born long after the Fall, in the time of the Three Tribes, before there was an Equestria. But I … have ways of knowing things.”
Twilight was almost bouncing with excitement.
Luna looked up at the Moon. Her eyes seemed to be seeing things invisible both to Twilight and to the hidden watcher.
“Once upon a time, during the Age of Wonders” she said, “there were two twin sisters who were very smart … at least, that’s what everypony told them, and in time they came to believe it. Not smart enough …” her tone grew bitter, “… but still, they were quite clever at understanding and making things.
“One sister – the eldest by twenty-eight minutes -- Sundreamer, was a beautiful mare whom everypony, including her sister, dearly loved. She looked at the world with a sight that pierced superficialities and understood the deepest laws of the Universe. The younger, Moondreamer … she well loved her sister, and her sister loved her well in return.
“Moondreamer was less fascinated by the deep laws of the Universe and more by what could be made by those who understood them. She learned that the Moon and the other objects beyond the Earth were worlds as real as our own, and wanted ponies to travel to and know them, and someday to spread out and settle them. She hoped that in this wise ponies as a species might become immortal.
“Now, Sundreamer puzzled out the manner in which the Sun burns – have you ever wondered, Twilight Sparkle, why it has burned for eons and yet not run short of fuel, unlike even the greatest bonfire? – “
Twilight nodded, utterly enraptured by the story she was being told.
“So did Sundreamer,” continued Luna.
"By that time the ponies understood why in general – its burning is not chemical combustion, but another kind of fire, about which I suspect my sister will enlighten you in her own good time – but they did not know how to make that same fire on Earth, save for very short flashes which created truly-tremendous explosions.
“Sundreamer discovered, in theory, how such a fire might be laid and stoked and kept in a kind of hearth by ponies, to produce enormous amounts of energy. This could be used to power whole cities for millions of years, but what interested Moondreamer was that, in other forms, such fire could drive ships to the Moon, the planets; perhaps even the stars beyond.
“So the sisters worked together to build the sunfire engines which might make their dreams come real. Sundreamer labored to build the power plants, and Moondreamer to build chemical rockets by which the ponies might practice and master the arts of traveling in space, even before the sunfire would be ready.
“Now there were three things in the world which Moondreamer loved best. The first was her sister, and the second her dreams of space. The third was a pony, her husband: Dusk Skyshine.” Luna spoke the name softly, reverently, as if it were divine, and her eyes misted as she gazed into Twilight’s own.
.”Dusk was handsome beyond all stallions who ever lived, and in his mind the match of Moondreamer. He was adorably shy,” Luna smiled to herself, “but very brave, and though most times warm to other ponies, in time of danger he grew cold as ice, and his cunning cut through all foes to bring victory.
“Moondreamer met Dusk when they were foals, and they became fast friends, and in time their friendship blossomed into love, and they were wed. There was war, and Dusk went off to fight for his ponies. Moondreamer feared very much for him, but Dusk fought well and did great deeds, and though he was sore wounded …” a wince passed quickly across Luna’s face “… he came home alive to his true love, and in time was healed of his hurts.
“Dusk shared Moondreamer’s hopes for space,” Luna continued, “the more so because he was an airplane pilot – he steered the metal birds in which the ponies of those time flew, and he dreamed of one day flying them beyond the skies. It took a keen eye and a quick hoof and a cool mind to be a good pilot, and Dusk had all these in more than most mortal measure. When he came back from the war he studied the arts of aircraft design, and when he had mastered these arts he labored with the sisters in designing the ships of space.
“It took many years, but in the end they managed to build such a ship. And once again Sundreamer and Moondreamer remained home safely – though Moondreamer much wanted to go. But Dusk captained and piloted the ship.” She looked back at the Moon, and was for a while silent.
Twilight trembled. Spike knew his sister well enough to realize just how greatly she was suppressing the urge to interrupt and ask for the conclusion of the story.
“And he landed on the Moon,” Luna continued, smiling with obvious pride. “Ponies for the first time ever walked on the surface of an alien world, the way to which they had won with their own hooves and cleverness and courage. Ponies – our little, mortal ponies, without even wings or horns – proved on that day that their minds made them greater than the whole vast inanimate Universe!” Her voice shook with passion. “Dost thou ken?”
“Yes,” said Twilight softly, her own eyes misting as she looked upon the Princess of the Night. “I think I do.”
“And then …” Luna said, and hung her head. “And then …” Her voice trailed off.
Twilight’s eyes grew huge. “Did he … die?” she asked.
Luna looked up sadly.
“It would have made a better saga, I suppose, had Dusk died then and there, at the moment of his greatest triumph. A martyr to all Ponykind, a hero who paid the ultimate price to steal fire from the Gods themselves, and in his death bring salvation.
“But no. He lived, and came home from his greatest deed for his ponies, for all ponies, everywhere. And there were a few more flights to the Moon. And then …” Her eyes narrowed, mouth tightened, head hung. There was a long silence.
After a minute, Twilight’s self-control gave and she cried out: “And then what?!!” A moment later she realized what she had done and cried out: “Oops! Sorry! Your Highness! I beg your pardon ...”
Then Twilight jumped back, because Luna’s eyes were glowing with fury, her ears laid back, her mane standing on edge. Twilight could see the inner fires that had at the worst moment of Luna’s life made her the Nightmare. She tensed, preparing for her own destruction.
But Luna’s rage was not at Twilight.
“Then they gave up!” Luna shouted, in a voice that must have woken half the population of Ponyville. “They gave up! They had actually walked another world, they had her sunfire, they had my spaceships, they had put their hooves on the sill of the door leading out to Infinity, and they just gave up! They stopped building ships, stopped sending ponies out, all they did was launch piddly little rockets crewed by machines and they took pictures and told themselves that the whole rest of the Universe was of purely scholarly interest! They gave up!” Tears streamed from Luna’s beautiful blue eyes, her face was twisted in pain. “They gave up …”
Twilight made a slow motion toward Luna, one hoof gently raised.
“Then Dusk died anyway,” Luna said. “That stupid, stubborn, magnificent stallion kept flying the few ships they launched into orbit. We hadn’t given up hope yet, not completely: if it cost too much to launch ships from the Earth, we had a plan to build bases in orbit, from which more sunfire ships might once again be sent out. There were spaceplanes – winged chemical rockets, that could take off and land under their own power, but lacked the supplies to reach the Moon. He was flying one of them – and it exploded. Just blew up, eighteen minutes after launch. The silliest thing. Someone forgot to fix a broken washer on one of the fuel lines, and it killed the stallion who’d survived a year of air war, who’d tested experimental spacecraft, who’d walked on the Moon. He was just gone, as if he’d never been.” The tears still flowed. “He was too old, why didn’t he see that, why couldn’t he make way for younger ponies …? Why did he have to leave … muh …” She broke down into incoherent sobbing.
Twilight tentatively nuzzled against Luna’s chest, offering what comfort she could. Luna curled a foreleg around Twilight, over her back, stroking her fur. Luna closed her eyes, her face relaxing into silent happiness, as her tears stopped flowing, dried. Her rapid breathing slowed.
They remained like that a long while.
Spike wondered why Luna seemed so upset, why Twilight seemed to understand her, and how Twilight’s affection was proving so helpful. Must be something to do with the Magic of Friendship, he thought. I’m glad that Twi’s starting to realize that Luna actually likes her. He might have said something, but he didn’t want to spoil the scene.
Finally Luna sighed, released Twilight. “Thank you,” she said softly. “I don’t tell this story often, and now you know why. It makes me – emotional.” Her voice returned to its normal calm.
“Is that the end of the story?” Twilight asked.
“Yes, for the most part,” Luna said. “The failure of the spaceplanes caused the ponies to turn away from space flight. They built no more ships of space, and Moondreamer no longer had the heart to follow her own dreams. Then, the magic came back, and the ponies chased a new dream … one that in the end caused the Fall of the Age of Wonders. But that is another story, and I have other things to do this night.”
“Thank you very much for telling me,” Twilight said, her own voice choking slightly. “I really appreciate your trust, and your friendship, Princess.”
“And I yours, Lady Twilight,” said Luna. “You should know that … I have … a very great respect for you. It was you, more than any of the other Element Bearers, who had the courage to face me in my madness, and the wits and skill to do what was needful, to bring me out of darkness. I … I might have killed you … but you never even flinched. You saved me, Twilight Sparkle, and you have my eternal gratitude for that. You … you came ba…”
“Achoo!” Spike sneezed violently.
The two mares turned in surprise to the young dragon.
“Sorry,” Spike said. “It’s a cold night. Um, I heard voices.”
Technically not a lie.
Luna sighed. “Well, as I said, it’s almost sunrise. Twilight, thank you again for that. You are a fit heiress to the ponies of the past.”
“We’ll do it again,” Twilight said.
Luna started in surprise.
“We – I mean the ponies of today, and of the future. I’ve studied a lot of history. We know more now than we did a generation ago, and our children will know even more.” Twilight gazed up at the Moon. “Someday we’ll re-discover how to make our own sunfire, or something as good, and build our own ships of space, and we’ll go back to the Moon. And beyond. Your – Moondreamer’s – dream. It won’t die. We won’t let it.”
Luna sniffled, and groomed her face with one hoof. “It is a cold night,” she observed to Spike. Then, to Twilight: “Yes, I believe you. As long as there are ponies like you, the dream need not remain dead.”
“And now,” Luna continued, “I must be gone. A new day dawns and,” she looked at Twilight with a strange expression, “we are no longer exactly who we were. Fare thee well, my old friend!”
“And fare well too,” replied Twilight.
Luna shimmered, and was gone.
Twilight looked in the direction of Canterlot, then turned back to the door. She yawned.
“Come on, Spike. Let’s get out of this cold.”
“Wow, wasn’t that strange?”.
“What was strange?” asked Twilight as they stepped inside. Her horn glowed for a moment, and the balcony door closed.
“Princess Luna,” elaborated Spike. “The way she was at the end. She talked about those times as if she’d seen them. Lived them.”
“Yes,” said Twilight, rather quickly. “She’s a really good story-teller.”
“She’s also really old,” said Spike.
“But not as old as the Age of Wonders,” pointed out Twilight. “The legends mostly agree that she was born long after the Fall, as she said at the beginning.”
“Well, I …” started Spike.
“… was listening the whole time,” said Twilight. “I know your habits. Not that I mind,” she hastened to add. “What better would I want from a good Number One Assistant than his quiet attentiveness.”
“Yes,” agreed Spike. “I’m very quiet. But still –“
“Yes?”
“She got really emotional at one point. When she talked about how Moondreamer’s husband died, how the ancient ponies stopped building those ships.”
“Well,” said Twilight Sparkle, turning back the covers and climbing into bed, “I suppose that Princess Luna has hidden depths. Many ponies do, really. You’d be surprised.”
“You’re pretty straightforward,” commented Spike.
“You’d be surprised. Night, Spike.”
“Morning, Twi.”
Spike watched for a moment as Twilight rolled over, face to the wall, and her breathing slowed to the shallowness of sleep. He decided to go down to make some breakfast.
He did not see that her eyes were open.
Open wide, and thoughtful.
END.
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Hmm, that wasn't bad. A good reason for Twilight to start a space race. This'd make a wonderful prequel to my own story. I really wish I'd thought of something like this.
One thing that kind of bugged me was the story being from Spike's perspective. I really didn't feel that that was neccesary. I would have preffered an ending with just Twilight reflecting on what was said, and planning for the future.
Yeah ... I had two obvious and one inobvious POV's to use here. Luna and Twilight, because they were the protagonists. And Spike, because where Twilight is, her Number One Assistant is usually not very far away.
The problem with using Luna was that she started the story knowing everything I meant to reveal, so the story from her POV would have been a set of "As I know, Bob" thoughts with the real tension being purely romantic -- which wasn't the story I meant to write. Twilight of course is the one who receives the historical revelations, so she would have worked better -- but the problem there is that I wanted to let the reader figure out the deeper thing that Luna was telling Twilight, and Twilight is one character to whom one should NOT pass the Idiot Ball, since she's very, very smart. She also understands metaphysics, and presumably knew before the story started that reincarnation was possible.
So I picked Spike, because he's a smart guy but not as smart or knowledgeable as Twilight, and he's also even more romantically-innocent than is she. That let me tell the story from the outside, but because he knows Twilight really well it's not that far outside: in particular, Spike can usually pick up on Twilight's emotional states (she was deliberately concealing hers from him during the story's end).
Equestrian technology is of course still at least many decades, perhaps about a century, from building spaceships. But it's not too far away from building the first small unmannned rockets, to test engines, fuels and guidance systems. I'd rate Equestrian technology as mostly equal to or better than c. 1850-1875 Earth, and Goddard was launching his first test rockets by the 1910's and 1920's. And he didn't know anyone who'd been through all this before.
They didnt give up, Luna. Their supiriors just decided that the money should go into researching new methods of war and killing instead
In our world, maybe ... though in part what happened in our world was more a problem of the generations who were making decisions during the 1950's through 1990's being those who had formed their values and opinions before manned spaceflight, let alone interplanetary colonization, became practical. To, say, Richard Nixon or Leonid Brezhnev, spaceflight was all about national prestige (including missile testing) and when America beat Russia to the Moon, it seemed to them pointless to go any farther.
In my version of the Ponyverse, it's more a matter of the Ponies being a bit less aggressive and opportunistic than Mankind (this is the dark side of their overall niceness as a species). They were also less warlike than us, so missiles were less important to them (though in "Feeling Adrift" I mention that Sundreamer worked on "sunfire bombs" which were used as warheads on long-range missiles Moondreamer designed, so they did have their own nuclear arms race).
In our world, we've started to return to space as the generation who grew up seeing spaceflight as practical has come to leadership positions in major countries and corporations. Right now we have a multi-lateral space race involving Russia, India, China and Japan; and such companies as Virgin Galactic, SpaceX and others (most of them being American).
In the Age of Wonders, the hiatus on ponied space flight that started with the disaster that killed Dusk Skyshine and his crew would have ended eventually, though maybe not quickly enough to please Moondreamer (she, unlike Princess Luna, was mortal). But what happened first was that the magic came back, it was incorporated into what was essentially magitek, and the Ponies turned to the construction of a vast, fusion-powered Wishing Spell which was meant to serve them as a Pony version of the Krell Machine from Forbidden Planet.
It would have been worse for them if it had succeeded than if it had failed: it would have after a few millennia ruptured Reality and destroyed their world more thoroughly than it did in Princess Luna's timeline. (And the PonyPOV universe has very powerful ClockRoaches, too ... ones that would give the Langoliers nightmares).
Instead, it backfired the moment they switched it on. A massive discharge of energy triggered multiple gigaton-range mass conversion explosions, and the Laws of Nature themselves shifted, destroying all electronic devices and sloshing oceans out of their seabeds in catastrophic tidal waves. The continuum cracked, and monstrous creatures were loosed into the Pony reality.
Pony civilization was in an instant thrown back to the Early Iron Age. Almost all Ponies died, much knowledge was lost, and the Age of the Tribes began. If it hadn't been for the eventual rebirth of Sundreamer and Moondreamer as Celestia and Luna, what is today Equestria might be a demon-haunted anarchy, ruled over (lazily) by Discord and preyed upon by random wandering monsters both created by Discord and seeping in through the flaws in spacetime formed in the Fall, in which the Ponies desperately struggled as a species to survive.
The sad thing is that Princess Luna hasn't even told Twilight Sparkle the whole truth, because she can't bear to disappoint her. Their microcosmos has changed in ways making it difficult to access the larger Universe. Their Moon is being overrun by the Night Shadows. Unless some major deeds can be done, the Ponies have no future beyond the Earth.
And it's in part the fault of Sundreamer and Moondreamer themselves, because at the time they saw no better way of saving their species from complete annihilation in the Fall. This is something of which Princess Luna is only too horribly aware.
Fodder for more stories.
3596012
Let's not forget that it was modified methods of war and killing that got us to the moon in the first place. What makes me sad is that the only reason the space exploration programs got so much money and attention back then is because it was our way of beating the Russians in the Cold War without turning every continent into glass, not because we wanted to expand our reach and explore the universe around us. But someday we'll take to the stars again. Once we figure out how to get over the little stumbling blocks in physics like fusion power and the speed of light, we'll go places and find things we never imagined possible. A concept that could lead to faster-than-light travel is in the works, and people are slowly figuring out how to make fusion power feasible. But it will take time and patience. With just about every other form of technology advancing at a break-neck pace, it's easy to think we've given up. But we haven't. We're just getting started.
3732669
Oh, absolutely -- and the very first two chapters of my incomplete G3 Age of Wonders story Trinity is set in the Manehattan Project, and is about just that situation (a major technological advance coming from military necessity). And Moondreamer's moonship USS Luna grew directly from missiles designed to deliver the sunfire bombs.
I don't think that what actually happened in our history after Apollo is more than a temporary setback to Man's expansion into space. And what happened to that of the Age of Wonders after the crash of Dusk Skyshine's spaceplane would also have been temporary -- had not the magic come back, and Ponykind turned to the more seductive promise of the Great Wish.
And. four thousand years later, Equestria is climbing the long road back to spaceflight capability.
We're lucky in that we're on our way back after just four decades rather than four millennia.
3732669 Thing is... didnt NASA get closed or at least defunded after the last goverment shutdown?
3734038
It's been defunded and refunded. Obama's no friend of manned space exploration. But he did one thing which turned out well, though I think he thought he was killing our space program.
He turned over a lot of routine government launch work to private contractors.
This has led to the success of SpaceX, to name the most well-known company providing heavy lift launch services. Their Falcon/Dragon rocket/capsule system is already in service, and it the Dragon capsule has both manned passenger and unmanned cargo variants.
We're finally getting to the point that science fiction of the Interwar and Golden Age predicted: namely, a situation in which private individuals and companies will own and operate their own spaceships for commercial purposes. It took something like 50 years after the first manned spaceflight for us to get here.
In the Age of Wonders equivalent timeline, the rediscovery of magic has led the Ponies to seek a shortcut, and they've already begun the research into building their own inadvertent Doomsday Device.
One more thing: America's national space program is not the world's. Even if we turn away again from space, the Chinese and other Powers are now decisively turning toward it. The Moon will be colonized, but there's no guarantee that its future masters will speak English. Or cherish individual liberty.
Starlight, " . . . I envy you Princess . . . in the timeline that had be washed away to prevent reality from breaking apart . . . I was the ONLY pony to die a natural death . . . I didn't have to see my and Bright Eyes' dream vanish into nothing for the sake of everything."
3734083
"In the Age of Wonders equivalent timeline, the rediscovery of magic has led the Ponies to seek a shortcut, and they've already begun the research into building their own inadvertent Doomsday Device."
OracleMask on deviantart's "Looking Glass Ponies" saga is centered around what if they had worked out the original bugs that had caused that reality to implode? . . . And could they save the world this time?
*Dusk
It must be very strange to be telling this story to someone who was actually there, but doesn't remember any of it.
4015873
Indeed, Luna's telling the story to who Dusk is now.
3734083 Someone's been reading their Heinlein. Yes, with any luck humans will become a space faring species, and it'll be because of Space X, and Virgin Galactic, and Sierra, and Reaction Engines Ltd and Bigelow Industries, not governments.
My own personal design for modern era Equestrian fusion power plants (Star Heart Reactors) is thaumo-tech, and based on a simple idea. A lighting spell, like an LED, converts energy to light. Solar cells convert light to energy using similar principles. Therefore, couldn't you reverse a light spell and use it to convert light back into magical energy? Of course, you'd probably need to feed back some of the energy to sustain the spell, but the total magical output should be positive.
My own head canon is that it was reverse engineered from how Equestria's geocentric sun works by Twilight Sparkle. Magic compresses the hydrogen together in a ball normally far too small to even hold together,let alone achieve fusion. Magic also tweaks the strong nuclear force over a very small area up to an intensity where you could practically set off a fusion reaction with dynamite.
Fusion occurs, and light and heat is produced. This is captured by a spherical shell of force that embodies a reversed light spell. Magic is generated, and the power feeds back into maintaining the magical effects that sustain the fusion process and hold the sun together. Since you can make light spells change colour, the reverse spell could be made selectively transparent, and in the sun's case, the narrow band of visible light and possibly some IR and UV either side is leaked.
This means the high energy X ray and gamma waves are contained,making the Equestrian sun safe to be inclose proximity to a habitable planet. The eergy that powers the process is power that isn't being used for anything useful anyway. The rest is just a matter of runnihng it at the right level of reaction.
A Star Heart Generator is just that in minature, with the runes that sustain the spell effects inscribed on the interior of the orihalcon or crystal vessel that contains it. Two additional effects are needed, a magic force field just inside the shell to contain the plasma, and a 'teleport siphon' or swapping spell, that's constantly pumping in hydrogen (deuterium/tritium mix) and venting helium by switching the two. If you could transfer the thermal energy between the atoms, you could even economise on energy and make it safer (though a miligrams of helium, even at plasma temperatures, is not dangerous.)
Obviously, since the thing doesn't need to let out a paortion of it's energy as light and heat, excess magic is output, giving you a self sustaining source of untyped magical energy which could be converted to electricity via a lightning spell or used as is.
I also came up with an Equestrian electrical generator which is basically a prayer wheel with a lightning spell encoded on it, driven by some source of mechanical power such as a wind or water mill, or even a steam engine. The only problem? It's DC current, and therefore is not suitable for long range transmission. So no distributed power grids and none of the fascinating phenomena you get with AC.
Electric motors would do the process in reverse, and incandescent bulbs can be DC. Pegasus couriers and magic would decrease the need for the massive infrastructure investment required for telegraph cables, which is why you have railroads but not telegraphs in Equestria. X-rays are directed light spells, not CRT tube generated.
There's been no equivalent of Farady, Lenz, Maxwell, or Einstein in Equestria, and even fusion power is probable understood from the point of view of transmutation magic or alchemy rather than quantum physics.
4509625
I'm a huge fan of classic science fiction. So was Moondreamer.
4509625
One of the few global events making me happy these disastrous last five years has been the growth of commercial space travel. It's going to reach a point very soon where nothing short of the destruction of our civilization on Earth will stop our expansion outward to other worlds. And a few decades after that, not even the destruction of our civilization on Earth will stop it.
How could you have fusion power, go to space, and not stay.
Ponies. Wat r u doin. Ponies. Don't stahp.
4690705
The Ponies have less aggressive initiative than do Humanity. On the other hoof, they are also less violent, more forgiving, and better at love and tolerance than is our species.
But then, Humans have had the technology to send manned missions to our Moon for the last 45 years, and we haven't actually done so since 1972. That's 43 years. What's our excuse? Sure, we don't have fusion, but we have had designs for fission atomic rockets since the 1960's, and we could have chosen to pick one of the designs that could have been built in orbit rather than launched NERVA style and use it as a Lunar shuttle.
Princess Luna's cry of anguish to Twilight at the wasted and now lost legacy of her earlier self of Moondreamer, and the death of Dusk Skyshine in the attempt to win it back, is also mine at the lost opportunities of our civilization beyond this Earth. Some Cataclysm may come to us as well; if we fail to expand beyond the Earth first, it may be fatal to our future as a species.
4690770 Well, (1) Fission power has a bad reputation, making it politically awkward; (2) Other nations objecting to your nuclear powered rockets is also politically awkward (this reason was better before 1990); (3) Having fusion power would alleviate some domestic issues otherwise distracting us.
But don't think I'm not sympathetic.
4690973
What makes you believe that fusion power wouldn't acquire the very same "bad reputation?" The bad reputation has nothing to do with the actual characteristics of fission reactors as opposed to other power generation systems, and everything to do with a fear of new technology coupled with -- I think now, having watched this issue for most of my life -- anti-nuclear propaganda funded by the oil-producing and exporting states. Fusion power would be new, it would threaten older energy interests, and so hostility would grow. It probably will meet political opposition in our world when it becomes real.
In the Age of Wonders? I'm sure that Saddle Arabia, Qurac, Kasemistan and Carbombya put lots and lots of oil dollars into opposing fusion power. And worse ... but that gets into the secret war between the Joes and Vipra.
Well, heck, they were even right. The proximate cause of the Cataclysm was Destruction blowing the fusion reactors which were meant to power the Great Wish. It's just that, by having failed to colonize other planets before attempting the Wish, the Ponies of the Age of Wonders ensured that the Cataclysm would fall upon their whole species, rather than on the part of it located on the Earth proper.
I'm not actually sure that the Soviet Union would have objected in any serious ways to our building fission rockets. Such rockets would be poorly-suited for offensive weapons (for missiles what one needs is a higher acceleration rather than specific impulse) and would have been used primarily for interplanetary flight. There was no treaty against them either: what the Test Ban Treaty forbade (accidentally) was Orion, the nuclear impulse drive (bang-bang-bang on the pusher plate).
And the Moonships we actually built were pure chemical rocketry. We stopped building them, too.
We really have no excuse.
4691032 I think that fission's bad reputation was from a little bit of Chernobyl and a lot of "onoes nuclear bombs" guilt by association. And probably what you said. But I am not at all sure fusion power would be subject to the same (first two) reactions.
As for the Soviets, you may be right: we had NERVA, and it was our government rather than theirs that shot it down (according to wikipedia). I was probably conflating it with Project Pluto.
You know, this brought a tear to my eye... having been born in the same year as Voyager 2 was launched and having followed everything about space exploration since childhood. I often think about where we as a species could have gone over the last decades if maybe a third of the money poured into ridiculously bloated military budgets and / or siphoned away by the powers that be had instead gone towards science in general and space exploration in particular.
Heck, ESA just made history by managing to rendevouz a comet 300 million miles away and deposit a lander on its surface... with a project so underfunded it was 15 years in the making and to a considerable part used designs from the 1980s as there was no money to make new ones. It cost every EU citizen 20 cent per year over the project's duration. Just think of the possibilities of what could be achieved with a real effort.
Also, money spent in this way tends to have a return on investment of three to four times the initial expenditure due to the technological advances achieved to bring the projects to fruition, along with the growth of infrastructure and industries...
But today governments sit by and hope that a few private companies will achieve what they are unwilling to commit to when even the wealthiest billionaires will never be able to even remotely achieve what a concerted international effort would.
*sigh*
Sorry for the rant... your story really touched me. I feel for Luna.
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I am so glad you got that point. Not only was it one of the major themes of Luna's conversation, but it's one of the major themes of my whole Shadow Wars universe -- that the Ponies have a high destiny, if they take it. This was a dream that Moondreamer and Dusk shared, and it was one of the reasons they loved one another.
I think that Humans are on the way back up to the stars, though -- the new Space Race is multi-lateral, which makes it less easy to end. No one player can end the race by pulling out -- if, say, China bowed out of Lunar exploration, that would not mean that America could go "Ah. We won. Time to end this wasteful expenditure," because there are many other players.
My random thoughts and opinions on things related to this chapter:
http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/492570/shadow-wars-correspondence-a-meeting-by-moonlight
It was short. 7/10
I have to say, I was pretty hesitant to read this story. While I don't consider the pairing of Luna and Twilight as bizarre as some others, I still have a bit of hestitance towards romance. However, I am glad that I had transcended my own prejudice and actually read this absolute marvel of a fanfiction. As somebody who simply adores the night regal, I have to say that I absolutely and without a doubt adored this work. It was short, yet sweet and to the point. Honestly, if it were any longer, the emotion could have been lost among the details. Instead it is presented as it is, raw and powerful with a very amazing message behind it.
Now, i know you never stated this in the fanfic, but I have a feeling that you used reincarnation or soul transferring as the means of remebrance. Luna is very closely tied to the Moon and thus she would know of the hardships that the celestial body went through. Both royal sisters have a certain connection to both the spirit realm and can transcend farther than the material plane, so it wouldn't be too farfetched to come to such a conclusion.
Luna is very in character here and I love how emotional she gets. To me that is who Luna is. She is not as reserved as Celestia, but more upfront with her feelings. Both Twilight and Spike were done exceptionally well here and I love how curious Twilight is. It is sad how some fanfics seem to loose that charm of her personality, but you have it done here to a tee. And Spike is just as loyal as ever, which is quite a relief, seeing as how most authors get him wrong.
Now for the rest of the story, mainly of the Dreamer sisters and the world they lived in. I really like the symbolism used here as their times can be closely related to our times. My favorite line was when Luna exploded and scrutinized the ponies of the past (or maybe the future?) for being too blind and toio nearsighted to actually venture forth beyond the Moon. They would just send machines and gather data, loosing the touch of themselves in the process: This serves as an interesting point as it helps us understand the problems with modern times, for we too can be blind to see.
Dusk's dreams and adventures really struck a chord with me as he seemed to be lone voice of their adventurous spirit, trying to break free from the cold and calculated hands of science and shortsightedness.
In the end, i really love this piece of artistic genius. It represents everything that a fanfic should be and portrays an interesting perspective on the world in which we live in. Keep up the good work, my friend.
4509625 I'm really liking the amount of thought you put into this!
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I think in vanilla canon it's improbable for one big reason -- there's never been any hint in the show that either Luna or Twilight are attracted to mares. In the Shadow Wars Story Verse, there's a very specific reason, the one outlined in this story, for their love.
Pretty much, yes. Moondreamer Finemare and Luna Selena Nyx are both aspects of the (almost as old as the Universe) Cosmic Concept of Gravity. Dusk Skyshine and Twilight Sparkle are both aspects of the (much younger) Cosmic Concept of the Magic of Friendship. Luna can remember her other Aspects in some detail; Twilight can't yet at all (this is before her own Ascension). Mere mortals may reincarnate, but do not as easily access the memories of their past lives.
I'm glad that you like the way I handle Luna, because she's one of my favorite characters in the series. Both she and her sister are layered personalities, but what it amounts to is that -- while they are both good Ponies -- Celestia prefers to handle problems by subtle social manipulation, while Luna prefers to deal with them directly. They deeply admire each other's abilties, and each tends to underrate her own worth -- Celestia subtly and very privately, while Luna by comparison has mood-swings between elation and depression, and can get very gloomy and self-loathing in the worst depths of her despair (especially if she really has something to be sad about).
I like both Twilight and Spike a lot. Both of them are brave, honorable and loyal examples of the best produced by the Canterlot gentry; this true of both Twilight, who actually is a Pony in every sense of the word; and Spike, who is a Pony by upbringing. Both of them have absorbed and believe in the highest ideals of Equestria.
Twilight is highly-curious: it's one of her distinguishing character traits. She wants to know and understand everything around her. If this weren't restrained by her strong sense of morality, she might be the mad scientist some writers imagine her. She's also very brave: note that in the story it occurs to her that Luna might explode with irrational fury, but Twilight isn't intimidated enough by this to back out of the conversation. Her courage is one of the aspects of of her personality which Luna admires about her, both in canon and in the SWSV fanon.
Spike loves Twilight as his elder sister, and views being her assistant and friend as his highest calling. This colors his view of all sorts of close relationships, especially with mares -- he finds worth in helping the worthy. If you've read Audience Reaction, you'll see that forty-five years in the future of this story he's become, essentially, Rarity's Number One Assistant (and best friend and husband); Spike's mind set is still similar to that which he had as a child in that regard. It's not a bad attitude toward life, provided that one's loyalty really is toward someone worthy -- and both Twilight and Rarity are worthy Ponies.
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The Age of Wonders is here being presented as a deliberate analogy with our own world. In the early 1970's we turned away from our expansion into space, essentially because our political leaders had never viewed it as more than a prestige contest and our scientific leaders were too short-sighted to regard anything beyond the Earth as potential homes for humanity. We are starting to turn back toward manned expansion into space, but we've lost half a century, and there is still a great danger that we may be wiped out on the Earth, either as a civilization or as a species. I wrote this in part as a cautionary tale.
Having read "Teacher Zero" before reading this, I had some insight reading this that the original readers didn't. Jordan, you mentioned in one of the comments that
. I probably wouldn't have figured it out right away, but after thinking about why Twilight reacted the way she did. That's more because I get so immersed in entertainment that I don't think to make connections.
For example, in the comments of "Teacher Zero" you mentioned you were 51, and as I read the comments here, I realized that you grew up during the heyday of space travel and science fiction. Suddenly your love of science fiction and space travel grew a whole new depth of significance.