Reasons For Home

by Sera-Pony

The Strange Planet

Chapter 2. The strange planet.

I woke up in the morning feeling as weak, and feeble as ever. After sleep for the night the stimulant dosage from yesterday had run out, and I needed another dose before I could function properly again. Depressed, I began to look for handholds to assist me in the incredibly hard journey from bed to cryo chamber. While I was searching for some sort of external assistance I noticed a peculiar box in the wall next to the bed. I reached up, and opened it to find a large supply of the stimulant. It was at that very moment that I would give many thanks to the ingenious designers who built this ship when I got home.

The simple fact that I would not have to drag, and shuffle my way back around the entire ship really started my day off well. I was nearly smiling with joy as I injected myself. The happiness lowered a bit when the stimulants did there job all to well, and I was unable to get any extra sleep. I was destined to be a morning person that day.

After overcoming my denial, and realising that sleep was impossible. I finally got out of bed, and began my normal morning routine. Get dressed, eat breakfast, begin the day’s activities. Short simple, and to the point. After a quick change of clothes I made my way back to the kitchen/dry food storage unit for breakfast. The menu this morning was was freeze dried cereal, and some re-hydrated powdered milk. I would never had imagined that cereal could be freeze dried, or that milk could taste stale... At least it could never possible go bad, or get any more stale then it was when I ate it.

It was about at my third bite of cereal that I finally left the no thought morning stage, and recalled how extraordinary yesterdays events had been. I briefly thought over the Highmans Horses from last night, but quickly dismissed it for a dream/hallucination. Not only had I been dosed up on stimulants, but talking unicorns with magic... Not happening.

I quickly moved on to more important matters. If I was stuck here alone I would need to find some sort of water source fairly quickly, and some sort of food in at least the next week. I also needed to build some sort of signal to help any rescue efforts to find me.

After finishing the mother of all stale bowls of cereal, I made my way back to the cryo chamber to try and find the ships survival kit. It would be somewhere in the emergency kit I had gotten into yesterday. the trip to the chamber felt much shorter with a full stomach, and a nice dose of stimulants. Once in the chambers I opened the kit, and found the basic survival kit safely secured inside of it.

Getting the kit out, and opening it I found a number of things: A lighter, a camel pack with some water sterilizer, a couple dozen doses of aspirin, some basic band aids, along with antibacterial paste, some gauze, A CPR mask, and a pair of scissors. Seeing that the only thing I needed to do was start a fire, and find food, and water. I grabbed the lighter, the camel pack, and some of the band-aids. I then headed to the airlock, and made my way outside.

The moment I was rescued any sort of effort to get food and water would be useless. As soon as I reached the outside I headed into the clearing, and began my search for some firewood. After nearly an hour of searching it seemed that my efforts were in vein. All of the trees seemed to be abnormally healthy. Not a good thing when looking for good, dry firewood. Even with plenty of light from the sun it seemed that there was little to no usable firewood in the whole forest. due to the lack of firewood I developed a technique to not get lost while searching.

Walking in straight lines from the ship, I would check any tree in sight, and then used the trees as markers to find my way back. I was able to find much more than I would have due to this. I even found a small creek that I could use for water fairly near the pods landing zone.

It was during one of these searches that I stumbled on what looked like a good dead, dry stick wedged into a tree. Being the perfect sort of stick to burn I immediately grabbed it, and tried to lift it from its position. Unfortunately for me it turned out that stick was also perfect for something else. Bees. The Bees had chosen the perfect place on the stick to build their nest.

The stick was both securely stuck to the tree, and the nest was in the perfect position on the other side of the tree trunk for me to not notice it until it was to late. While shaking the stick around trying to get it out of where it was wedged into the tree I noticed the infamous buzzing sound, and then to notice the nest attached to the other end of the stick. It did not take me long to turn around and run as fast as my drugged up, and weak accountant legs would carry me away from that stupid nest.

I ran for what seemed like an eternity. Running over roots, and weaving through branches I soon found myself exhausted, and struggling to keep going. That was until I finally attempted to stop and check behind me. It took a second for me to recognize it, but behind me was a incredibly large cloud of bees coming right at me. With greatly renewed motivation I began running full speed ahead. Running while exhausted like this was starting to take a toll. I began putting all of my focus solely on taking that next step.

It was due to this focus that I soon found myself nearly running full speed into the entities from yesterdays hallucination. I narrowly avoided them, but not the branch that sent me right onto the ground. All I could do was watch as the large cloud of bees came closer... Glowed a bright purple, and disappeared. Yep, a whole cloud of bees. Poof. I guess they may not have been fake...

It was soon that I heard the things moving towards me, and soon a slightly worried voice came from above me. "Oh, wow. That was quite a large cloud of honey bees. Are you OK?"

I took quite a few deep breaths, and began to mentally prepare myself before replying. "I’m fine, Thank you," As I then got up, and got a good look at what had just spoke I nearly freaked out. It was definitely the pony from yesterday. I couldn’t just have been a hallucination could it?

"It was nothing. A teleportation spell on something so lightweight is easy," Said the pony. Seeing its face, I now knew I was once again talking to the one with the magic from yesterday. "Why were they chasing you anyway?"

I smiled a bit and replied. "I tried to pull the stick their nest was on out of a tree. It was really dry, and I was going to try and use it for firewood,"

"Why in the world would you need firewood?". asked the unicorn

"I was going to start a fire back where my pod landed," It was then that It dawned on me. I had no idea where I had just run to. Luckily I was talking to 6 "people" who probably knew exactly where my pod was. "Were you by any chance headed to see me?"

"Yeah, we were going to come, and talk to you some more. Remember?" Replied Twilight

Given a ray of hope I said. "Would you mind taking me back there? I got a bit lost running away from those bees."

"Sure, and maybe you could show us around the inside of the ship as repayment for us helping you!" She replied, probably wanting to see what exactly a space ship looked like on the inside. I however was not very sure about doing that. There would be severe consequences if they did something to break the ship, heck there would probably be consequences if I even let them in.

“Sorry, I don’t think I could do that... I don’t think I am allowed to let anyone into the ship,” I replied. “Maybe I can just tell you about it instead.”

“Well... That’s fine. I am sure I can learn a lot just from the outside anyway!” The unicorn replied.

I looked up at the sky, and back down at my watch. "Well lets go. I need to get back soon," If someone had found the ship I wanted to be there as soon as possible. I was never gone too long when looking for firewood. These bees threw me quite a bit off schedule.

I soon found myself walking with a group of colorful talking ponies as they lead me to the ship. Despite my constant state of amazement I managed to discuss a few things with them while we were walking. I learned quite a lot about the ponies themselves, mainly how their names seemed to co-relate to their colors and personalities. This fact would come in very handy in the future. I was very bad with names, and the way these ponies were named would make my life much easier. I also learned that the groups individual personalities were just a diverse as their colors. Ranging from the book smart Twilight Sparkle to Rainbow Dash, who possessed what one may call “speed fever”.

As we began to come into view of the ship the conversation had begun to delve into the question of where I was from. After hearing Twilight comment on how there were no humans in the entire world according to their princess I had gone on a small rant on how large the earth really was with all its oceans and continents. Unfortunately for me I had underestimated what they knew.

“Yeah... we know about other continents. There are even ponies that have crossed the oceans, and have set up some colonies up there. Its a very tough place to live by what I’ve read on it.” said Twilight.

“Ooooh, I know about those colonies Twilight. Some of them throw these really funny parties too! They don’t even use balloons and streamers, can you believe that?” That comment had come from Pinkie Pie, who I would have defined as the class clown of the group.

“If you have explored other continents then you should have found some humans. There are people on nearly every corner of the world. There is no way you could travel across the ocean without you meeting us or us meeting you.” I replied; Mostly ignoring Pinkie’s small rant. Looking back, I really was being a bit condescending toward what I thought was a a technologically in-superior race.

“Yeah we have definitely been to other continents. I know what an island is, I am not talking about those.” Despite this comment I still doubted that they could have crossed oceans, and not met humanity. They had to be doing something wrong, or not crossing oceans at all.

“If you have actually been to other continents, you would have had to meet humanity.” I restated. “I am not sure you really comprehend how large the world is.” I was pretty sure that it was impossible for humanity to go extinct in a week, these ponies probably had a very small world-view.

"How about this? I’ll light a signal fire, and after someone comes to rescue me I can show you what I mean by continent." I said.
After speaking I started walking over to the small stack of firewood I had made. The stuff I had dropped when getting chased by bees would have been nice to have, but I would have to do with the smaller pile I had collected before that point. I had just begun to stack the wood into what looked like a campfire, when I heard a quiet voice from behind me.

"Um... I don’t want to bother anything, but I don't think we should be starting any fires in the forest. We could set off a forest fire...," Whispered Fluttershy. This pony had always been quiet, and was easy to identify due to the "flutter" in her name, and the butterfly tattoo. I was going to have to ask what those were later. The other half of her name fit also. She had hardly spoken the whole walk to the pod, despite the others rapid firing questions, and answering my own.

"Fluttershy is right," Said Twilight. "Not only could you start a fire, but Ponyville could see the smoke, and panic. We shouldn’t be doing anything to attract too much attention right now."

"You're probably right. Heck it is probably not too hard for anyone to find this ship from the air in the first place," I replied. I was never one to really care to much about the possibility of starting a forest fire. However I did not like the idea of sending an entire town into a panic before even meeting any of them.

"Wait a second. How do humans fly with no wings? Do you have Pegasus men?" Asked the pony named Rainbow Dash. She had been one of the more talkative ponies on the walk. It was fairly easy to remember this ones name due to the match between hair color... colors, and name. This pony seemed to love speed, and talking about speeds she had achieved. She even said that while flying she had broken the sound barrier, which was quite impossible for any flesh and blood creature to do.

"Not in the way that you do," I replied. We have machines that fly for us instead of wings. We just ride in them, and control where they go.”

"So kind of like pinkie's flying balloon bike? aren't those really slow?." replied Rainbow Dash

I guess they did know a bit about creating things, at least hot air balloons. “No, our machines are much faster, and more controlled than any sort of hot air balloon.” I replied

“I still doubt any stupid machine could fly faster than me!” Boasted Rainbow Dash. "I can even outrun fireworks!"

I thought back to the hyperbole about the sound barrier from earlier before replying. "I don't think you understand how fast these “machines” can go. Not only can they go faster than the speed of sound, They are capable of traveling across entire oceans in less than a day, and some are large enough to hold hundreds of people while doing it," I smirked a bit while I was talking. I knew that even though the pony may have been exaggerating, I was telling the full, and total truth. I was always proud of what technology had been able to accomplish. Even if I had nothing to do with it.

"Ha! I will believe that when I see it." The rainbow haired Pegasus replied, reflecting my exact thoughts on her earlier comment. I started to reply again, when we were interrupted by an exited voice.

“Oh, I got it! What if instead of you lighting a fire I cast a lighting spell over your ship,” Said Twilight. “Then any rescuers can find you, and there will be no risk of starting a fire, and because the light will only be on top of your ship there will be little chance of scaring Ponyville!” said Twilight. She had apparently felt bad about making me not light a fire, and was trying to think of a solution the whole time I was discussing aircraft with rainbow dash.

Figuring there was no harm in trying, and eager to see more of this “magic”, I gave my go ahead. I watched as Twilight’s horn began to glow just as it had before. Soon after the air over the ship began to appear to shimmer and shine just as Twilight's horn. The air above the ship soon looked as if someone had taken powdered glass and suspended it there while shining a flash light onto it. I could see the light coming off of it, even with the sun out.

"There, that should help it stand out," Said Twilight

Still a bit amazed by the fact that this was even possible There was only one thing to say. "How in the world is that possible?"

"Just a modified illumination spell," Replied Twilight. "I didn't do anything except change its area of effect from the area around my horn to the top of your ship, and I did not put too much mental energy into it so it should wear off in a few days. I had some trouble with the....”

The long slightly boring conversation marked the end of the days interesting events. The rest of the explanation was fairly long, and way to detailed but nevertheless useless. Most of it was focused on what I would call magical jargon. After the discussion on magical theory the conversation turned to revolve around the ponies questions on what technology can do, and my questions on what the ponies could do with magic.

I was greatly amazed with the things that could be accomplished by these ponies with magic. They could even control the weather! On the other hand the group seemed amazed at what technology did without magic. They seemed more amazed at what technology could accomplish without magic, instead of just being amazed at what it could accomplish in general. I guessed that most of what I said was already possible for the ponies to do.

The exception to this was computers. Twilight was absolutely amazed with the concept of computers, and the Internet. I think she was a bit disappointed when I could not explain how it worked. I was able to explain some things such as light-bulbs, and airplanes already, and it had greatly interested some of the pones. It seemed that magic took a lot of this basic knowledge from them. They simply didn’t need to know it.

I did try to ask a few times as to what magic was on a basic level. The best answer I got was that magic was a force of the universe, just like gravity. Maybe it was something that was somehow never discovered by mankind yet nature had been using for centuries. You know all those commercials talking about how we should save the amazon? This is why!

Before any of the true conversation about the in depth parts of our culture could begin the ponies had to leave again. There was some sort of event back in the town, and they would be missed if they were not there. I once again said my goodbyes, agreed to be waiting for them the next day, and watched them walk back the way they had first come from.

I sat down to think after they left. The fact that these ponies even existed was still bothering me. Their body structure really had me intrigued. They seemed to be the human equivalent to monkeys, from their lack of fur to the shorter more expressive faces. They also shared a scary number of cultural similarities. They even did simple things like smiling when happy, or shrugging when they did not know something, I could have closed my eyes when talking to them, and almost confused them for real people.

I was not too sure how much I really trusted these ponies. Despite the fact that they had even helped me earlier, I couldn't help but think that they were a bit... off. I still somewhat believed that they were simply a figment of my still hallucinogenic minds imagination. Seriously, Talking ponies, unicorns, and Pegasus that both spoke English, along with having the same nonverbal body language. Not a very likely occurrence.

After my thoughts I decided to use the extra time on the ship wisely. The first think I did was go back to the communications center and check if anyone was listening, or had tried to contact me while I was gone. After wasting an hour desperately trying to find some human contact I finally decided that trying any more was pointless. If nobody was replying after all of my attempts to contact them the radio system had to be broken somehow. In the end the hour wasted was still worth it. It was not as if I had anything better to do at the time.

After spending quite a while sitting at the radio system my stomach decided to remind me that It was about time for some lunch. I headed over to the ships microwaves, (I'm no longer calling it a kitchen) and made myself a meal any school cafeteria worker would be proud of. While I was sitting at the ships kitchen tables, and eating my lunch another idea came to me. There were supposed to be recordings of the entire trip on the ships computers. I was supposed to send them to HQ when I got to the moon so they could review anything that needed changing. Seeing that I never was able to contact HQ to send the video, and have them figure out what went wrong. I could try to get a hold of these videos, and watch them I could figure out what exactly happened to the ship, and why I was in my current predicament.

Luckily, despite the ships mostly nontechnical design, the ships designers had decided that the future customers would also like to see this video. Due to this fact it was pretty easy to get access to the video. In fact it was provided very plainly on the bedroom computer console. A few minutes figuring out how the system worked, and the cursed video was soon playing.

The video began with the pod’s launch. I watched as the pod, sitting on top of the “giant firecracker” part of the ship, slowly rose through the atmosphere making its way into high orbit. I fast forwarded through the large amount of time that the pod spent orbiting the earth. It was both very unlikely that something had gone wrong in this stage of the trip, and I did not have the attention spawn to watch that amount of footage. I did take a few moments before fast forwarding the video to observe how beautiful the earth was from orbit.

After watching the video move in high speed for a few minutes the moon came into the cameras view. The ship was landing. I watched as the ship activated the thrusters on the bottom, and began to slow. Even with the thrusters it seemed to land harder than I thought it should, although that was not likely to break anything. It hit the moons surface hard enough to send A plume of dust up into the view of the camera. Dust slowly began to settle, and the video clip came to an end.

I then toggled the second clip, which was a time lapse of the whole time the ship spent sitting on the moons surface. The clip started normally, beginning where the high quality video had left off. The dust that was in the cameras view settled in an instant. I then watched the earth jump around in the background as the clip progressed days and days were flashing by in an instant. After nearly thirty minutes of waiting for the clip to end I began to worry. I then impatiently put the video into fast forward. Time passed even more quickly Thirty minutes, Forty, Fifty, an hour, hour and thirty, two hours, three and a half hours... The clip lasted nearly 4 hours before it finally went dark, due to lack of allotted video space. That camera was supposed to be able to hold at least a year of footage....

after skipping over most of the four hour time lapse, I started the next clip. This one was a true video instead of a time lapse. The video began as the ship began the process of lifting off with a shudder. The pod then began to make its way upward. The liftoff from the moon was much less dramatic than that of earth. The lack of gravity really made it look like the ship was simply hovering with some sort of sci-fi technology instead of rockets. It was soon that the pod was once again in orbit. I set the clip in fast forward yet again, not wanting to view the process; I soon found myself pausing the video. Was I looking at.... Earth?

It was the same blue, and white planet I was used to, but it was very different. I could not recognize any of the continents. No America, no Europe, Asia, Australia, or Africa. Not even Antarctica! The whole planet was entirely made up of what looked like new continents. It was not as if there was continental drift, they looked truly new.

Nothing else was correct either, the oceans were wrong, the ice caps were nearly gone, merely a speck of white among a sea of brown and green. The whole center of the world was also a green color, not the blue ocean one would expect to see if the ice caps had melted. As a whole it was much greener than how I had seen it in the first video. It looked more alive, but yet it seemed dead due to its lack of diversity. After staring for some time at this strange sight I once again set the video into fast forward.

The pod came closer to this strange planet and began its descent. I watched the flame cone develop around it as it entered the atmosphere, then as it deployed its parachutes, and come down towards a forest, Looking closely I could see what looked like the town the ponies had been referring to earlier, there were a few areas that looked like some sort of town or city. There were a few other interesting features of the land around me. This clip would at least be useful to have a birds eye view of the whole area. Then ship finally crashed down through the forest canopy, and the video ended.

I sat for quite a while staring at the dark screen when the video ended. This was impossible. It had to be some sort of joke, trick, or something. There was no way that the video was the truth. First off the pod was made to come back after only a week. I really doubted it could survive an eternity on the moon. Secondly even if I was frozen, there was no way I could have stayed alive long enough to survive that sort of time passage. The only problem with the joke theory was the ponies from earlier... they were living proof of something having gone wrong. I really doubted that anyone could, or would go that far for a simple prank. Heck I even doubted anyone would use a multi million dollar space ship for a prank either.

This video made the reason that HQ had remained silent this whole time painfully obvious. Perhaps that was why I was so weak emerging out of the pod. I would have to have been incredibly lucky to survive all that time without any sort of injury.

Even if an incredible amount of time had passed It was probably still possible that somebody was out there. Heck these ponies didn’t really mean anything, they may even be some sort of experiment, a human experiment. I could just be sitting in a science base... Couldn't I? There could be someone out there right now trying to contact the strange, archaic vehicle that had just come from the moon. I could just wait at the radio room until some future human decides to contact me. There was still a chance.

After finishing my meal I made my way back to the bedrooms of the ship. I then removed the mattress, blankets, and pillows from the bed. I dragged these down the hallway to the communication center. I set up a makeshift bed in the middle of the floor in the room using these materials.

After I had set up my makeshift bed I laid down. It was early, but due to this recent news, and my weakness.... CRAP! Remembering something very important I quickly got back out of bed, returned to the bedrooms, reached into the cabinet from earlier, and got a dose of stimulants. Had I forgotten those.... Lets just say I would have had a bad day. Soon after my mistake I was I began to comprehend what I just seen in that video.

It began to dawn on me that Everyone I knew was probably gone, or very very old at this point. There was a very good chance that all of humanity humanity was gone, and I could be nothing but a relic of a long dead past. I began to slip into true depression before I remembered something. Humanity couldn't gone, why? There is no way any sort of disaster, or even an infinite amount of time could defeat a species as powerful as my own. The loss of any of my family and friends had much more of an impact, but it helped knowing that I had "died" a hero to my family. In the end it was all a waiting game. Somebody would find me eventually.

I spent the last few moments of consciousness staring at the radio console, hoping to hear a voice calling for me, but hearing nothing but some really strange background static.

Comments

[Sera-Pony]

Well. Here it is, the update.

I really have to force myself to put this here instead of reading it over, and checking it "just one more time!". For some reason I feel that there are a ton of errors in this chapter, please forgive the failure to use perfect grammar, tell me if I messed up anything.

Thanks for reading.

EDIT: I did try to work on the dialogue a bit more. I don't think it will be too good, but I did try to make it feel more realistic. I also fixed cryo, and cryogenic in ch1.

[Mad Library Scientist]

Um... "Posey?" "Firefly?" "Surprise?"

[Sera-Pony]

392518
I don't know who decided that April dolls meant that they could fundamentally screw up anyone updating today, but they did...

its fimfiction for April fools, not me.

anyone reading, I guess you have to save it as a text file, and use find and replace to properly read the story.

I can understand a joke, but this type of thing really makes me mad.

[Anteh]

You can disable the april fools thing on bottom of the page "Toggle G1 Mode"

[Sera-Pony]

393330
ahh. thank you for that.

I need to learn how this system works, do new updates for stories need to be approved? It seems to me that they don't, or there is no indication of waiting for some sort of approval, yet this fic is still sitting back where it was before I updated it....

No new readers means no new reviews, no new reviews means my story could be crap, and I would just keep writing crap with no correction!