One Giant Leap
Twilight let out a deep breath as the blast shielding lifted from the bridge windows. Their sixty day journey in warp had been some of the most anxious days of her life. Now though, it would all be worth it.
Sixty seven years ago, the fledgling organization that was Equestria’s space program, discovered and captured an alien space probe. After decoding the contents of a golden record that was found attached to the probe, ponykind had finally received confirmation that they were not alone in the universe. After that announcement, many wanted to know what the next step was.
That next step, was this. Proposed by Twilight herself, the R.E.S. Harmony was the first vessel capable to exploring the reaches beyond Equestria’s solar system. As the the ship recovered from exiting warp, Twilight was immediately drawn to the large window in front of her.
Less than ninety thousand kilometers away, was the planet she had spent the last six decades dreaming of. The bridge was totally silent as every pony gazed at the light brown and blue orb in front of them. Though for Twilight, her excitement was dampened when one of the scientists aboard spoke.
“Your Highness? I hate to break it to you, but I doubt this planet could support carbon based life. Sensors show the atmosphere has dangerous levels of carbon dioxide, very little oxygen, and what look like lethal levels of carbon monoxide.”
Twilight’s ears sank as she heard the pony speak. “Can you tell how long it’s been like this?”
“I would guess it’s been like this for a couple thousand years. I’m also detecting areas of severe radioactive contamination. If the air doesn’t kill you, the soil and water will,” the scientist reported.
How was this possible? Had Twilight just spent the last sixty years of her life, countless hours of labour, and billions of bits, just to look a dead planet? Saddened, she looked at the wall behind her where the golden record was hanging. Every time she came onto the bridge, she took a moment to look at it, if not to remember how she felt when she first held it.
“Uhh, Princess? I just picked up a radiation flare coming from somewhere near the planet’s moon,” came the voice of one of the many ponies on the bridge.
Twilight perked up and walked over to the pony. “Any idea what caused it?”
“Not yet. Though it seems very similar to... our... engines...” The pony said as his voice trailed off.
Twilight looked at him, only to see him looking out the window, eyes wide with terror. Quickly looking around the bridge, Twilight noticed that all eyes were looking directly ahead. Slowly, Twilight brought her gaze to whatever lay ahead of them
Floating just a few short kilometers away was a leviathan of a starship. Its dark grey hull was only given shape by the thousands of light sources that ran across in long broken bands. By comparison, Twilight’s ship was a lengthy hundred and fifty meters in length. However, the vessel in front of her could easily be measured in kilometers.
A few tense moments passed as everypony looked out at the new arrival. In a moment of clarity, Twilight managed to stagger over to the communications station and begin a repeating transmission. The young alicorn hoped that her message was being received by whatever stood menacingly in front of her.
Before the mission launched, it had been decided that if contact was made with the aliens who made the probe, the ponies would broadcast a part of the golden record as a sign of understanding and goodwill. The transmission would be sent once in the alien language, and once in Equish.
“Hello from the children of planet Earth, and hello from the children of Equestria.”
Twilight watched as the ship’s radio broadcasted the message for the tenth time. Then on the eleventh time, something sounded different. Looking down at the headset on the table, Twilight picked it up and placed it on her head.
A smile formed on her face and tears began to flow from her eyes as she listened.
“Hello children of Equestria. This is the children of Earth.”
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Funnily enough, I was just looking at your stories page, and thought, "I hope he publishes Voyage's End"
4642911
It got approved 43 seconds ago
4642914
NOICE
.................... Now I want a full story on this damit.
4642959 So much THIS!
4642914
Okay, I just got to reading it, and.... wow. Very nicely done. But do I smell a SEQUEL? I hope I do.
Moar.....
4643034 doubt it. this was supposed to be a short little fun thing
4643034
4643080
Who knows. There might be.
Did you sit through the 5+ hours of audio on the golden disc before making this fic?
I tried to listen to it myself but I got bored, after 7 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELnn9V01EiI
4643144
Not quite. I only listened to the parts that I needed to for the story. Most of the spoken audio is just greetings in a couple dozen languages. The rest of the audio are sounds of Earth.
4643218
Yeah, the pacing was kinda hard to get right. I wanted it to feel tense, but still doable within the two hour time span of the story. I was afraid of drawing things out unnecessarily, and in doing so, made it a bit too condensed.
Brilliant story, and idea.
4643263
Thanks for the catch. Fixed the wording to better reflect that.
Wow... this managed to get featured. Never thought I would see the day.
A sequel would be cool.
This was great. I would be interested to see a sequel, but only if it doesn't seem like it was forced.
4643429
That possibility won't be for quite a while. It will only happen if I can muster up a story that doesn't fell like it was written at gunpoint.
4643435 And stories written at gunpoint rarely turn out well.
4643100 Here let me fix that sentence for ya.
4643443 Yes, blood all over a computer screen doesn't help.
I'll get around to this fic soon. I can't resist me some good old realistic space fics.
Its
Excellent story. Short, but now one of my favorites on the site.
4643565
You should have seen all the math we did for this story.
Rate of Deceleration in a friction-less environment was the big one that took three and a half hours on its own. Totally worth exploring physics and orbital mechanics
4643570
Were you using Kepler's laws for your deceleration calculations, or did you go for one-dimensional kinematics?
So Earth got wrecked by... something. It took some 37,000 years for the ponies to get there, and if humanity ruined things around today the planet would bounce back by then, so something happened 'recently'. Anything from one or more thousand years from now wouldn't be humanity, due to the rate at which our tech is pacing in that time 'ruining' Earth would equal 'blowing it up', so it couldn't have been humans.
I want to know what happened to Earth.
4643590
I believe we used one-dimensional kinematics.
4643607
They are THE MOST useful equations aren't they?
**input theme from 1980's movie "Spacecamp" here**
Equestria ships are small... Compare to Earth ones at least. That's what I learned.
And so, the first interstellar ship comparision has been made.
4643624
made writing this considerably easier. Kept me from having to make up believable numbers.
4643666
When the planet was viewed through the telescope, the colors they were seeing were along the lines of what you would see when looking at Mars. Just flashes of those two colors without any features.
but yeah, otherwise spot on. Though it does depend on where the object is in its orbit
This story was amazing and it actually made me cry at the end.
4643752 and me (an editor), and the author's mother (literally)
4643758 it makes everyone cry. Or almost everyone.
Haiku of the excellent story:
Discovered a gem
Though hid from our eyes til now
Morning sun reflects
Your muse is being kind! Ouch! So much for climate change.
It's nice to see real, honest to god quality make it into the feature box. Thank you, and well done.
To think that this may be a possibility for the future of generations. To have another form of life find this golden disk and, maybe, attempt to find our little planet. Whether they're in peace or not, that's definitely not happening in our lifetime.
Normally, I'm not very attracted to stories that hit the featured box. There are few that have made me try to read them, but I tend to not be interested. When I saw this, I decided to give it a shot, because it didn't seem like some attempt to gain more fame or something (I'm being broad here). No, this is different. It relates to one of the biggest things mankind wants to find: life beyond our solar system. We've found planets, stars, black holes, galaxies, etc etc in search for life beyond us or for other scientific discoveries. With this story, Equestria experiences a probe enter their little slice of the universe that has spent 37,000 years in space when they're just starting to discover their own sense of wonder.
I don't know what to feel, personally. I want to say I feel amazed, or perhaps some sense of joy at the outcome of this story. That sense of wonder that Twilight must have felt when she encountered new life, the life she has worked so hard to discover, must have been just perfect. While I may not experience that wonder in the future, the thought of future generations maybe experiencing it excites me, personally. I'm not a very avid space guy, but I'd like to think that the universe is a wonderful place, and so is this little fanfiction.
As much as I want to see more, perhaps it's best we let this story's voyage end, too, hm? Where one voyage ends, another begins. Let the mind interpret what might happen next and leave us with the sense of wonder and excitement.
If I've repeated myself, I'm sorry. But this story is just beyond most of the stuff I'm made to read through approvals and stuff I have read willingly. This really deserves its fame. Continue writing.
4643570 Space isn't exactly frictionless, but for the story I'll roll with it. bravo btw.
For the record, I am not chiding or belittling your story. It is (IMO) one of the best shorts I've read on here. Since you did the effort for the math, I thought I'd toss in some info you might appreciate. Just a conversation point, not arguing with the story. Suspension of disbelief and all that.
Everything from space dust to (and I'm not kidding here) photons can have a physics altering effect on a probe. NASA was playing around a few years back with the idea of using high output lasers to put pie pan sized microsats/reflectors in low orbit. Obviously they haven't but the physics backed it up. *shrug*
Oh, and at 37,000 years of travel any probe would
still be in thejust past theOort Cloud. Voy. 1 just hit the heliopause this year.It will pass Gliese 445 in about 40k years though, so perfectly fit for where the ponies are.
Awesome chart (courtesy of NASA, but stolen from wiki btw) It is a logarithmic distance scale though. I can't seem to find the parameters used, but it is great to show the distances.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/PIA17046_-_Voyager_1_Goes_Interstellar.jpg
teesd.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/TheBattle.jpg
4643808 hm. Interesting. What exactly is this Cloud?
this was a great story,
4643841 Nothing has ever been out there, but the running theory is that it is cosmic debris, planetesimals, the occasional comet orbit, and random space crud/gasses/ices at the every edge of the solar system. The far edge is considered the boundary of the solar system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oort_cloud
4643808
Ooooooh. This is way cool.
4643882 Thought you'd like that
Again, congrats on the great story. And I expect a sequel of some sort. 
I kid, but it would be nice.
Honestly, this is one of my worst nightmares for humanity; someone finding the record, and coming here to see our planet destroyed by our own stupidity. It's like if the person you've loved forever surprise visits your house, only to find that it's a mess... or in this case, the body of someone you raped and murdered (Sorry Mother Earth
).
This story makes me think, "Hey, remember the wildlife sounds on that record we sent you?"
"Oh yes, they were quite lovely."
"Well, you better hold onto it then, because that's the last time your gonna be hearing it from this planet!"
4643894
It would be tragic to see our world reduced to nothing but pollution and remnants of war.
But what could have destroyed the Earth?!
Super Kami Guru: Yeahhhhh, sorry about that. I farted.
img574.imageshack.us/img574/5381/superkamiguruapproves.png
I actually cried a little
I was just about to start writing something similar to this, oh well, ya beat me to it. Congrats on this, it's probably better than what I would've written. I hope to see more in the future.