• Published 3rd Apr 2012
  • 8,017 Views, 383 Comments

So Long, and Thanks for All the Ponies - Sir Ginger



A re-imaginining of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... with ponies naturally.

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Part 7- Dodging and Degrees

“RUN!” the word had barely escaped Zaphod’s lips before all four ponies were pelting away, acting more on instinct than anything. Dash took to the air and was streaking well ahead of the others when the first shot was fired. A bolt of sickly green plasma struck the rock next to Fluttershy, causing her to leap sideways into Rarity with a squeak of pure terror.
“Oh HELL no!” The turn dash made, going from a pony travelling at easily sixty miles per hour to a pony travelling in the opposite direction at almost a hundred would have made even a strong willed physicist weep. “You do NOT do that to Fluttershy!” She accelerated, pelting straight towards the cruiser. She passed directly over it, close enough to cause it to rattle.
The pilots immediately transferred their attention to her, firing off a futile volley at her form as it streaked away. “Get her!” “Yeah!” She passed back overhead again, even faster this time, and the ship almost crashed as it tried to keep its guns trained on her.
“GET OUT OF HERE!” she cried as she hurtled overhead, pursued by the cruiser. The other three could only stare after her in shock as she pealed away, leading the enraged police after her.

“When Zarquon made that one, he made a lethal weapon! Freeyow!” Zaphod had a rare expression of open admiration on both faces. “Keep running! Is she always like that?”
“Looking out for her friends, or being a good deal braver than you?” Rarity sniped back.
“Both!”
Ahead the ship shimmered into visibility and Zaphod pelted aboard.
Fluttershy paused at the ramp, staring outwards “DO be careful Rainbow Dash” she pleaded the smaller of the distant specks, which even now sped around the other.
Rarity draped one hoof over her “She’ll be fine. I’m sure of it.”
“That flying thing looks really dangerous though...”
“I don’t pretend to understand it darling, whatever it is though, I can hardly see it out-flying our Dash.” But even as they watched, the smaller speck began to descend rapidly, straight down. Dash was falling.
“Oh my!” Fluttershy squeaked. More flashes of light were just visible as the larger of the two flew downwards, in pursuit. It says something for the distance they were observing from that neither pony could see just how much a greater rate than the local gravitational acceleration Dash was gaining speed.


*

The Sonic Rainboom, according to that indispensable if unreliable guide to the galaxy, occurs when a being with the right affinity for rainbow magic accelerates past the local speed of sound, and momentarily completely and utterly buggers up the colour spectrum (to use the technical term) . It notes the incredible forces involved in causing an explosion of sound, light and magic strong enough to crack rocks, shake the very ground and send every cute critter for miles running for cover. It notes the G-forces involved. It notes the unusual and impossible way the mach cone forms too early and in bright colours, It also notes exactly how totally trippy it looks, and just how rare it is.

It does not note, however, whether or not flying directly behind something performing one is enough to total an armoured Galactic Police Department heavy pursuit cruiser. Fortunately for us, it doesn’t need to. This is because it has only been tested once, and everypony to witness it was left in absolutely no doubt about the result. (For the record, it absolutely is.)


*


Far away, a beaten up looking starship was doing a fair bit of tedious mucking about in hyperspace. Three of its occupants are currently asleep, leaving Twilight Sparkle to keep the student company in the cockpit.

Twilight pushed a pair of fuzzy twenty sided dice out of her face, and glanced over at the student. He wasn’t paying any attention to the distant twinkles through the visi screen, preferring to rootle through the sides of his chair. Every now and again he would unearth a piece of dry instant noodle, and eat it with every sign of enjoyment.
“Ahem.” Twilight interjected pointedly.
He froze, dropping the recently defluffed noodle piece guiltily. “What?”
Twilight sighed. She wasn’t a neat freak, but there was a limit. “So what’s your name?”
He scratched his unkempt facial hair, and frowned. “I don’t know. Never really thought about it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Never really needed one. My friends call me dude. Or bro. Or whatever.” He was still frowning, as if thinking hard about something.
Twilight tried to keep a smile on her face. “So what do you call your friends?”
“Dude, bro, mate, just...” He stopped. “Whatever...” He was looking increasingly disturbed by his lack of an answer.
“Nevermind.” Twilight turned, but the screen stayed resolutely uninteresting. Eventually she turned back “Sooo... what do you study?”
A look of relief washed over Dude’s face. “I study interpretive history.”
“Which is?”
“We try and work out what history would have been like if we hadn’t gone back and forth through time and altered reality so much. When the regular history department lost their funding to the Department for Divinity and Waterpolo, we took over some of their old cases.”
“Time travel... it’s possible?” Twilights eyes were wide.
“Yeah, but pretty pointless. All time is basically the same nowadays, people import modern stuff back in time and old stuff forward in time. Nothing really changes anymore, and I don’t know if I can even use that phrase since it implies “anymore” is somehow different from “anywhen.” It’s all cool you know?” He paused, then said with a smug grin “I’m getting my Bachelor of You Can’t Prove Otherwise.”
“And what if I do?”
“Do what?”
“What if I can prove otherwise?”
The creature sat for a moment. “Well...” He grinned “My degree would outrank your proof.”
“So... screw the rules, I have a degree?
“Exactly!”

*

Interpretative history is usually thought to be about the fifth most useless subject in the entire multiverse. Because it works off no tangible evidence to produce no tangible result, it is utterly without applications in the real world. The only job available for a graduate of Interpretative history is to be a teacher of the same subject. Because it’s uselessness has done nothing to downgrade its popularity this has so far worked out fairly well, with the number of courses being taught multiplying every year. What once started as a drunken idea grew into a subject that is now one of the most widely taught and sought after courses in living memory. It is attractive for several reasons; the most important of which is the discrepancy between how hard it sounds to outsiders and how hard it actually is. At some point in the next couple of centuries however the number of students required to support the subject will exceed the population of the galaxy.

*

An eye-hurting streak of rainbow luminescence traced Dash’s path back to the Heart of Gold. An impossible arc covering the whole spectrum of light with a thick band of cartoonishly bright colour. Calling it a rainbow was almost insulting. Dash landed with a contemptuous flick of her wings, and stood for a moment with both forehooves raised, a smirk affixed to her face that at almost any other time would have been irritating beyond measure, but as it was it simply told her two concerned friends that everything was alright.

Fluttershy leaped upon Dash with a joyful cry. “DASH!”
Rainbow pushed her off with a laugh. “I’m OK ‘Shy, those losers couldn’t hit Equestria’s best flier! I could have got out of there drunk off my flanks and with a cup-cake in my eye!” She looked back at the slight singe to the end of her tail. “I meant to do that!”
Rarity was skeptical, but let it slide. “Well done I must say at least somepony here was brave enough to deal with Zaphod’s little problem. I suggest we ladies go and discuss exactly what is going on here, and who he thinks he is!”

*

Aboard the Heart of Gold Zaphod sat dumbstruck, his hoof poised over the Infinite Improbability Drive controls. Two very strong drinks were already wending their way through him, apparently in no hurry to calm his nerves as much as the bottle had promised they would. He had been waiting for the last moment to get out of there, because the light show had made interesting watching. Now he had revised his opinions of the ponies now boarding his craft intent on murder. That Rainbow one, she was officially the most attractive proposition in his immediate area.

That was the thought going through his mind as he got the sense slapped out of his right head by a hoof-swipe from Rarity.
“HEY!” Said his left head, looking up. “What the hell was that f...” his other head received a hefty back hoof and he sprawled to the floor. “What the Zark are you doing you crazy bit...” He bit the word off his tongue at the last second as Rarity gave a loud snort that promised only vengeance should the next word out of his mouth not end up being “Lady”, and the two following words not being “I’m” and “sorry”.
“lady. I’m sorry.” He shakily got up.”But please tell me what I’m sorry for!”
“Not only have you been half drunk since I met you,” Rarity stormed.
“Yeah, but”
“Not only are you a wanted criminal,”
“But baby”
“Not only did you put us all in danger to show of your horrific ego”
“Just a minute”
“Not only did you immediately run and hide leaving a Lady to defend you from the law, but you have also carried yourself thus far with nothing but the most deplorable and frankly distasteful boasting and showing off, not to mention lecherous flirting and drunken stupidity!”

Zaphod sat stunned. Subconsciously he began to reach for a drink before his survival instincts, so seldom used but now thoroughly on their toes, slapped him mentally for thinking of it. Ego cut in, telling his instincts to shut up and go back into the back of the mind. Pain sense came in to support instinct, but was blocked off when anger gave it the mental equivalent of a shove and the resulting mental scuffle ended only when Eddies cheerful voice sounded out, his jollity slightly forced and edged with a hint of panic.
“I hate to interrupt you guys, but my proximity sensors tell me that a hundred or so police cruisers have just entered the local vicinity!”
Grateful for an excuse to act, Zaphod took this opportunity to regain a modicum of command of the situation.
“Belgium! Get us out of here Eddie!”
“No problemo!”
As the ship began to put reality through the wringer, Fluttershy could be heard to mutter to Dash “I’ve never heard the b-word before, but the way he says it makes me sure it’s a bad word.”


*

The infinite improbability drive was created when a very clever student indeed had the bright idea of working out how unlikely it was for one to exist, and feeding that figure into a finite improbability generator. The use of a Bambleweeny-57 sub-meson brain linked to an atomic vector plotter, all immersed in a Brownian motion producer to alter the outcome of events has a long history, since it was realised that probabilities for certain events did not correlate exactly to observed rates of occurrence. For example, the chances of it raining on any particular day might be one in three, but on Bank holidays, days of picnics, music festivals or sports matches the prevalence of rain was observed to be considerably higher. Furthermore, the chance of bad weather can best be combated by preparing for it. Bringing a heavy umbrella and heavy waterproof clothing could almost guarantee a warm and dry day. By observing the way different overall conditions violated standard probability, miniaturisation did its work until the device became a frivolity, primarily used for childish pranks showing off.
The ability to teleport a spaceship across the universe without eventual reversal was reserved for the infinitely stranger Infinite Improbability drive. Nobody knows how it works, except that it has something to do with a pure gold nugget which may or may not be a relic of huge importance.

As it is the Infinite Improbability drive currently in Zaphod’s possession has taken our heroes out of immediate danger, for which they ought to be grateful. They will be of course, just as soon as everything around them stops being made of brown and Rarity ceases to be a Marshmallow.