Another Mare's Sky

by PeppyJoe

1. White Noise

The New Pegasopolan Grand Observatory was a testament to ponykind's ingenuity. It was, in fact, not a part of New Pegasopolis at all; the architects had built it atop an unanchored cloud on the outskirts of the city, ensuring that it could easily escape any light pollution. The observatory relied on many non-cloud components that had to be sourced from ground settlements. Many were provided by pegasus colonies, but some were imported from New Unicornia during times of peace.

Regardless of the origins, the telescope was one-of-a-kind. It provided an unprecedented look into the workings of the night sky and had heralded a number of scientific discoveries during its more than eighty years of service. All of this was lost on White Noise, the technician on duty.

"Aaaaagh," he groaned, reclining in his chair as a classic orchestral song played through the speakers overhead and a constant grind came from the printer. It did not prove as soothing as he'd hoped. Currently, White Noise was waiting on the latest thaumospectrographic scan to finish rendering. He recalled perfectly well the memo that circulated several months ago, stating that "the NPeGO Advisory Board has determined that resources for the foreseeable future shall be allocated to the discovery and analysis of new phenomena in the region of space designated below..." At the time, the prospect of working with brand-new equipment searching for the great unknown had seemed absolutely thrilling, but he soon found that the vast majority of his time was spent simply waiting for the machinery to catch up.

The music and grinding sounds halted abruptly and the speakers issued a sharp "Ding!" to alert the technician that the render was complete. He turned his attention to the printer and carefully removed the freshly printed sheet. He carried it to a nearby table designed specifically to anchor the large renders that the analysis equipment produced, and fixed it in place. Switching on the overhead light and leaning forward to take a look, Noise immediately realized something was wrong.

A thaumospectrographic scan is used to detect the ambient magical signatures in distant objects. The technology was originally developed to locate Unicornian weapons and training facilities, but was easily adapted to studying space. Because every particle produces its own minute thaumic field, and because these fields change when specific elements and compounds are formed, analyzing the fields of distant stars can serve as an indicator of their composition. The NPeGO's new scanner was the first to be used for astronomy. It was cutting-edge—though naturally there were always rumors of what innovations the military had made—and could detect millions of variations in a single unified thaumic field. The device rendered these variations as millions of different colors overlaid around their points of origin.

Thus, it was a fairly obvious concern when White Noise saw that nearly a quarter of the star cluster he'd just scanned was enveloped in a solid white circle. His first response was panic, as thaumospectrography was time-consuming and he had evidently just wasted a full-spectrum scan. The white pegasus rushed immediately to the communication-gem inlaid in the wall nearby and tapped it. Once it lit up, indicating that the gem was transmitting to the desired pony, White Noise stammered out, "S-sir, something's gone wrong with the TS-scanner; the new render's feathered." His boss grumbled something incoherent that seemed to indicate he was on his way, and the gem went dark.

The stallion trotted dejectedly back to the table and began unpinning the sheet in order to throw it away. As he began to remove the last clip, though, he paused. A lesson from long ago came to mind; White is representative of active magic in thaumospectrography. That's a leftover precedent from when we could only render the scans in black and white, and unicorns were the only source of magic concentrated enough to show up. So the white circle wasn't necessarily a visual error—it could be an overwhelmingly powerful source of magical energy capable of registering on a cosmic scale.

That didn't help.

Still, White Noise felt like he ought to be doing something when his boss arrived, so he pulled out a ruler and found the center of the circle, where the source would theoretically be. "Sector 311, and..." he trailed off. "I need a star-chart."

White Noise pushed off from the table and hastily flew down to the archives three floors below. It didn't take long to locate the folder containing material pertaining to S-311, but it was thick enough—unusually so—that he didn't want to search through for a chart. Instead, he just grabbed the whole folder and returned to the lab, emptying its contents on an empty counter. He shifted pages around until he found what he needed. He spread out the star-chart and compared it to the new scan. After glancing back and forth a few times, he said with certainty, "The H. Lambda III system. Great." He frowned as he realized that the star-system in question was precisely on the epicenter of the circle; it didn't exactly prove his theory, but the alternative was far more likely and would have disproved it.

Fine. White Noise trotted back to the spread-out contents of the S-311 folder and tucked the star-chart inside. Before he could pack the rest of the sheets away, the headers on several of them caught his attention. He began to sift through them one by one.

H. Lambda III, Gravitational Anomalies. Revoked; author pending NPeGO-AB review

Unexplained orbital activity in Sector 311 Revoked; author pending NPeGO-AB review

A study of anomalous orbital mechanics surrounding H. Lambda III Revoked; author pending NPeGO-AB review

Each report was dated far apart, with the most recent being more than thirty years old. White Noise briefly wondered if this was a cover-up of some sort, but it seemed unlikely. The reports were still there, readily accessible; he decided it more likely that simply nopony had ever realized different ponies were coming to the same conclusions about this one odd solar system. He opened up one of the reports, and the assertions it made sounded absolutely ludicrous. It was well-written and academic, certainly, but it outright claimed that H. Lambda III was orbiting one of its planets. And yet... The pegasus glanced back at the scan, evidently showing a massive magical field surrounding the star system. This is absurd.

He glanced up, hearing a door open downstairs. His boss had arrived. Keep your mouth shut. "Noise, I should not have to come here in the middle of the night and deal with your horseapples!" This could end me. A gruff brown pegasus trotted into the room and glared at White Noise. "You want to tell me what happened?" He's not going to believe what I found.

White Noise put on his most enthusiastic grin and said, "You're not going to believe what I've found!"

Author's Note:

Here's an idea I've been entertaining for a long while, and finally started. The story, at least at first, will take the form of a series of connected but separate glimpses into the lives and actions of the ponies who played a major role in the discovery of and mission to Equus. It's also an opportunity to explore how pony society could have developed under divergent circumstances. I certainly welcome opinions and speculation; this was a fun world to construct.

Comments

[Semi-AutomagicCupcake]

Hmmm, very interesting.

[dapple26]

A good start to what I hope turns into a great story.