August 12, 2015
Dear Diary,
We’re here. After another long day of travel, we're finally here.
It's a good thing the cars on the road at the time apparently didn't stick around, because otherwise driving here with trucks and buses might be impossible (guess we could still off-road, but that sounds like it would take forever). Roads are all clear. Well, there's litter, rubber bits, maybe a few tiny branches that've blown into the roads, but nothing that makes driving too hard. Probably won't stay this way. I know lots of plants can sprout in cracks, send roots through concrete, stuff like that. Freeze-thaw cycles will eventually destroy the roads, and they'll be covered in soil and plants before that. I wonder if we'll need to put a plow on a big truck or something at some point to keep an aisle clear of all that stuff, keep the highway routes we care about most drivable.
Whatever, not yet. Soon, maybe, but not yet. I can still see them just fine. A few leaves. Honestly I'm afraid those might be a problem in some of the more heavily wooded areas we crossed before anything else. Did you know I saw leaves as wide as my face? LEAVES GET THAT BIG! Like, real leaves.
The longer I stay out of California the more I'm glad to see somewhere else. It will be better to raise foals here. Not... not me raising them. Cloudy, or Moriah, obviously. Some pony else. Hear me, Cloudy Skies? Two words! I can't let my language change just because I get used to hearing it for a week. Or a day.
Spent most of the day traveling, because traveling is what we do. Or did. Did, ladies and gentlemen, because we have arrived! Paris, Illinois, has climbed from population 0 to the staggering metropolis of... 6. Okay, maybe that sounded better in my head. Whatever. Circled up everything in the town square (a real thing!), since all we are is a train of settlers travelin' out west... dangit, we're going the wrong way! I give up.
The grass up here is overgrown instead of dead. A pretty incredible change for me. With no sprinklers running, I would expect it all to be dead. Not so. It’s as much as three feet tall in front of many homes. Like the whole town was simultaneously abandoned and got overgrown. Well okay, that’s exactly what happened… but I digress.
While everybody went to the normal routine (a campfire, dried food and conversation while the animals grazed), I took my saddlebags and went with Huan for a little walk. I had a town map with me, but I didn’t really need one. It’s way small. Didn’t take very long at all to walk to the fairgrounds, and we didn’t encounter any huge stray dog packs along the way. There are predators smells here, though. Dangerous for us? Guess that remains to be seen. We could fence off the whole town if it comes to that, but I doubt it'll have to. Ponies are fast, and we're not nearly as helpless as we were a few months back.
Of course, I knew who would be waiting for me here. We'd already discussed it, and their carrier had probably been parked here all day. There was a safety-line painted on the ground, closer than the one had been in the city. I wondered why, though I know now. One of the enclosed tanks sat parked outside, its weapons tracking me as I approached. A hatch opened, and out came a single man in a protective suit.
It wasn’t Dr. Clark, but Captain Wright, the one who led the team who ransacked our shelter way back when. He warned me to stay back, gave the same warnings about them needing to shoot me as before. I agreed to comply, then took the saddlebags off and opened the side-pouch. I’d left the manacles right where I could get to them, along with the key. He didn’t really have a good angle to see inside at that distance (and I couldn’t be sure if that would release some sort of mystical cascade that would overwhelm him and anyone else who had come along). I didn’t like the idea of bringing the space-warping magic of the saddlebags much closer, but I needed them to be close enough for him to see. About 500 meters was the ideal distance, right on the edge of the fairgrounds.
Short of it? They work. I know what it’s like to be a not-earth pony, now. All that strength ripped away, and the ground beneath my hooves not talking to me the way it’s supposed to. Very hard to explain… it wasn’t very pleasant. There was one positive side-effect, though: when wearing the manacles, I couldn’t feel the lack of magic from anyone else either. It sucked to be wearing them, but I didn’t have an irrational desire to constantly run away. Which was good, because I’d probably have tripped over my front hooves and landed with my horse butt waving in the breeze.
Captain Wright was pretty amazed by the sudden drop in my radiation (to zero), that he called out all his men. A half dozen humans poured out of the airship and the tank, many lacking anything but a basic bio-hazard suit, the ones with those clear fronts that inflate and look really silly. Human faces inside; men and women who look the way I used to look. Weary, curious, frightened. I came all the way over to the circle, and eventually they let me inside it. It didn’t feel any different, aside from the terrible constriction the manacles already provided.
I had the key on my neck the whole time, though. I could’ve taken them off relatively easily (I’m a pro at mouth-things now. Do it for three months and see if you aren’t too), but I never did. Might’ve killed all those people if I did — humans the Earth surely can’t afford to lose.
I told them everything, though of course my memory isn’t nearly as accurate as the perfect crystal thing. I wish I could've used that. Convey how powerful Luna felt, her honesty and frankness. You can't get that just from me telling the story, even if I tell it well (and I don't, I'm not a very good storyteller!). Eventually showed them my “proof” in the form of the magic saddlebags and the artifacts I brought with me from Equestria. Even took a drone with me into the library, which seemed to work so long as the flaps stayed open.
What was the point of the magical song and dance? The HPI already knew about Equestria. Though they hadn't known for sure (until I told them) what Equestrians looked like, they knew about their magical powers. Their ability to open doors in space, in particular. So it was pretty obvious I'd been dealing with Equestria.
I’m not sure if I proved anything other than the fact that the Equestrians (they already knew about them, big surprise) had tons of powerful magic. They didn’t corroborate Luna’s story of interacting with Earth, though they never denied it. I hope our relationship with them will get good enough that they’ll eventually be open with us.
I want them to succeed. The HPI are the last true humans left. I don’t know if they have enough in that base of theirs to keep replacing their machines as they break. Having us on the outside, able to move through the ruins of civilization without having our brains fried, might be what makes the difference between starving one year or surviving. Do they have any long-term plans? It’s going to be hundreds, maybe thousands of years before we can refine more nuclear fuel for them to use in their reactors. Even an apparent ability to use waste fuels won’t keep them going forever.
I wonder if our wizard-ponies will get as advanced as the Equestrian ones. If magical shackles are possible, maybe a magical magic reflector is too. Freed of the need to blow all their energy into shields, I bet they could have a way easier time of things. Maybe have some surface colonies, albeit protected like castles to stop ponies from wandering in accidentally. Or… on purpose.
But why would we fight? God, we did so much of that in the old world. Even if our goals don’t perfectly align, nopony can afford to solve their problems with violence anymore. There are damn few of us, and there’s going to keep being a damn few for hundreds of years to come. The first wave of colonists I brought here will all be long dead before we start seeing the .7 million/year worldwide numbers, assuming Luna was right.
Dr. Clark is genuinely excited about the manacles; when Wright called him, should’ve seen how excited he looked. He wants to bring me back to “Raven” as soon as possible, so they can learn how ponies tick. Wanted to take me right then, actually. I said no, that I’d need to be with my friends for a month or so getting our colony set-up.
He was fine with that; most of his people were in Europe anyway, still trying to deal with all their nuclear plants.
You miss that?
He didn’t try to force me. Could’ve. I was surrounded by armed humans and guns. They’re all bigger than me, and I didn’t have any of my strength. Huan was watching from outside the circle, so they could’ve shot him before he got close enough without even trying.
They didn’t.
So don’t you tell me former humans and real humans can’t be friends. If the ponies of Equestria can be friends with gryphons and minotaurs and weird monsters, then we can be friends with our true selves.
So I couldn't show them the memory, that didn't mean I couldn't explain the essence of what happened. The reason earth is deserted is because the ponies made a spell to save humanity. It worked, and here we are. Everyone else is going to come back as ponies and the other races from Equestria over the next long, long time, though the immediate future shouldn't see that many. The magic wasn't going to go away, at least not if what happened in Equestria's universe suggests the future of our own.
Wright asked me a question I hadn't quite expected: Would the "spell" that made humans into Equestrians before something that could be replicated? Would the former human ponies on earth now be able to do it again, on a smaller scale?
I asked him why, because I was kinda shocked he'd be asking at all. Wright said. "The HPI was meant to preserve humanity. If we reach a point where we've run out of resources, or our equipment is failing, we would serve humanity better by surviving as something else than dying as ourselves. I don't think Dr. Clark would consider it unless we had no other options. It would be useful to know whether the possibility was open."
You can't imagine how excited they are about all the books on magic I brought back. They want us to scan each one, so their engineers can start on them. It was like Christmas for them. I'm going to try and be as optimistic as I can for them, because humanity needs a little optimism when there are only five hundred real humans and they live in a tiny hole called "Raven." I know they built a thaumic shield in just a few years, but that was back when they had the best minds of the world working on it. How long will it take them when they've only got a few hundred?
Well, they managed to improve the strength of their shield pretty significantly with the same equipment, so that's good. I'm not sure if it counts, since the improvements were just based on not having ever been exposed to a field this size before. Just a manner of recalibrating for the way thaumic energy acts in reality instead of based on some theory. Still, I could tell they were pretty confident. Less tanks, after all, not to mention the shorter line. I guess this will make scavenging a little easier, even if I still can't get within thirty feet without those manacles.
Clark is going to come up in person next week, to get what happened in much more detail. Seems fine to me. Hopefully it can be the start of a friendship. After all, I did what they wanted. We investigated the mysterious magic. Learned it was a Thaumic Arc Transmitter making all the "noise" (even if I couldn't tell them why Sunset Shimmer bothered to encode her messages). We'll keep the fairgrounds off-limits except for these meetings, to keep the area from getting "hot".
Time to turn my eyes towards practical matters. We’ve got a colony to build. After that, who knows?
—Alex
Oh noes, Alex is having mommy thoughts. Onwards, to the shipping!
...not going to say it.
Then can Alex even see over top of it? Now I imagines just A's ears sticking above it when they walk through it.
Couldn't agree anymore.
So good. Feels like I'm in a game called 60 seconds
6173707
i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/138/241/aac.png
No problem with the story getting longer! I simply want MOAR!
Wearing the manacles might not be a enjoyable experience, but it's nice for Alex to finally know what means being an earth pony, as a parallel of pegasus flight and unicorn telekinesis.
Also, good to see the HPI -or at least Clark- don't seem to be painted in a bad look (as they want to know if the chance to transform into ponies is available).
In hindsight, it might have been a mistake not to tell about the HPI to Luna: I doubt in the saddlebags there are the blueprints for the transformation spell (why include it if there are no humans on Earth?).
The people voting to continue the story absolutely wrecked the other options. It was about 100 to 20 and 20 the last time I checked.
Well, time to continue keeping up with this story and waiting for the sequel.
I don't know why, but I'm imaging Day as a mother in the sequel. Alex/Lonely Day strikes me as good mom material for some reason.
So does the HQ bunker has its own name?I was ready to ask this question few days ago becuase I'm preparing my own story involving HPI and in there there was another base settled up somewhere in Eastern Europe and called "Woodpecker". (99,998% it will be non-canon,so I'm doing whatever I want)
So this would actually be pretty funny if HPI uses bird species names as code names for their bases.
And little question about aircraft:Where they did land?Probably I've read too uncarefully,but I really don;t know what plane I must use as example of HPI aircraft.
So glad to see another good once a day update story going besides the Austraeoh series. Can't wait for more.
And good answers to questions from many chapters in the writing.
6173872 Well she already is kind of like a parent to the others already.
Ah, irony.
There's hope. Moreover, there's trust. Alex's use of the term "real humans" is worrisome on a personal level, but still, these are some very positive signs. Now to build up and settle down.
I'm curious, what would the sequel contain? Would it be their struggle to survive?
This is getting real promising.
The world had changed, traveling settlers go east now.
I'm not certain this manacle plan is a good idea at all, especially with all these humans getting up close and personal with Alex. The worst fail state of this experiment could easily cost earth a significant fraction of its few remaining humans.
All of this is a good example of how the crisis actually went down could work out fairly well in the long run. Humans on the inside with tech having support from ponies on the outside with magic, the sky is the limit for how this new society could develop as time passes.
Idle thought, I wonder if there's any chance that humans born after the Event will gain magic resistance over time on account of being born into an already magical galaxy?
I like this Wright guy, he asks the important questions.
6173675
i.stack.imgur.com/OEmun.jpg
6174154
Well the story to survive has already been told, and nothing major will really change in the others' lifetimes.
Once you get 50+ years out though, things might become interesting. There are a lot more animals on Earth than people, and all of them are getting smarter by the day. Technology will be failing, old buildings crumpling. Various ecological disasters brought about by dams and levees failing. Significant change in ecology from invasive species with no checks or balances.
And, all the old guard HPI staff will be retiring or dying off by that point. There may be a suitable collection of descendants who were never human among the survivors.
Have I mentioned there is magic in the world? 50 years of magical saturation . . . And mutation. Magic is described as being caused by expressing harmony, and on Equus we have seen a physical, intelligent manifestation of that. And of chaos too.
6173872 I think she'll do ok. (well, after yet another identity crisis)
6174386 On humans evolvng to gain magical resistance: it's possible, true, but I think a more important question here is "how many generations would it take for that?"
Now that it's mostly over please don't forget to give us some info about what you did to encrypt the text on the magic circle in LA.
6174635 With magic involved, it might be faster than straight up evolution would normally allow. Heck, it could conceivably be one generation.
6174713 If you want to push magic to the limit of what it's know in the fic, we could or transform all the rest of humans into immune-to-magic ponies and call it a day. Alternatively, call Discord.
No, I'm talking about non-intervened species evolution. That won't take one generation.
6173591
https://derpibooru.org/171183
6173505
6173620
6173591
Apparently people want me to draw a thing. I probably will, then. Or at least give it an attempt.
I'm no Rarity, though.
Onward and upward, here we go towards the start of a civilization of ponies!
I'm liking, I'm liking, and HPI aren't war mongering dicks! Wow... well done calling out my bullshit theory.
6174901 I'm also talking about that. We don't know how evolution works in a galaxy wide magic field, and it would be a mistake to assume anything for certain.
It's also possible that a human gestated in such a field will be magic immune from conception just as a matter of course. Might be hard to test with everyone stuck behind shielding 24/7, though.
Thank you, Captain Wright.
I think the first order of business for the HPI's survival will have to be some way to turn thaumatic radiation into electrical energy, and that's probably going to require some combined pony brainpower. (And that's gonna take a while, since collectively the pony population is still in Magic Kindergarten.) The easiest way I can think of is simply to enchant an object to emit heat, then use that to boil water to power a steam turbine. Wouldn't be worth much at first, but if you can scale that up... well, that's exactly how nuclear reactors work. Then of course there's the matter of transmission of said electricity....
Man, I'm glad I'm not in charge of this mess.
Oh yeah. Did the magic vaporize them too?
Ha.
If they way people get time displaced in this story is based on how useful their talents and skills are, then I'd probably be one of those people who gets flung hundreds of years into the future. I suck at pretty much everything.
6173707
DON'T WRITE THAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Is that a reference to Raven Rock?
6175096 Why my dear, that sounds fabulous!
In all seriousness though, it's highly appreciated. Thanks for the attempt!
6173675
Hey, this is a family story! We don't do that sort of thing here!
6173688
Hey, she's not that short! She's just... shorter than the others!
6173706
Never heard of it.
6173707
Not again! Please God, not again!
6173727
Lots of people do. I'm not sure if they'll like my plans for the immediate future, but I hope they will. I think I've just about worked it out. Finally.
6173748
Yep! No more speculation and stress. All done.
6173756
Yeah, they did. I'm not sure if I'll just keep posting on this story, though. I think I might instead go with a sequel that's closer to this one than my original plan to go years in the future. Instead the sequel would pick up right where this one left off, just structured differently so that I can play with another style.
6173872
>.> No way this would eeeeeeeeeeeeeeever happen. <.<
6173910
They use computer-guided VTOLs. Something like this:
s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/db/cc/42/dbcc42c66f59c88361f965a8bd055b4e.jpg
They have two sizes. Can land just about anywhere, though they used LAX in the story.
6174154
Not as much as this story. They probably won't ever struggle for food with such a small population. I can't imagine they'll enjoy winter much, though. It would probably take place right after this one, but travel faster than this one did. Less a daily diary, and more a conventional prose story jumping from character to character over time.
6174386
This question will be answered in later stories. Narratively, it probably wouldn't be much fun if they could. Oh yeah, second generation doesn't need shields, we were safe all along! How funny we thought we were gonna die? Happy endings all around!
6174645
Sure! Maybe I'll make a blog entry about it or something.
6175086
That looks like exactly what must be going on with the ferrets. Brutal world for the rabbits, though. Wouldn't want to be one of them.
6175096
(late, but)
i1.kwejk.pl/k/obrazki/2012/04/99a2c1c46dc2e3e999cca0c8e9f243d9.jpg
6175156
I've killed many, many theories.
Realistically though, the HPI can't afford to be war-mongering right now. They're very badly outnumbered by ponies, and they weren't equipped to fight a war. They can go get all those resources from all over the world, but every crate of guns they store is less room for food or medicine or machines to make more of those things. I'm sure they've kept the smallest safe inventory. (honestly I expect they had almost no guns at all until they started having trouble with "animals" after the Event).
6175375
Eventually they'll find a pony with a special talent for magic. Should get easier once they do.
6175661
Kinda. Nothing with people in it stayed behind. The whole vehicle went ahead in time with the ponies still inside, like what happened to Moriah.
6176465
It's more about how well their soul matches the new pony body they're given. A good match means a near arrival (which means the people left behind right after the Event are likely to adapt the fastest, and those later and later understand how to be ponies worse and worse. The last to arrive might be entirely non-functional, I'm not sure.
6176604
Well, let me know if you come up with anything! This setting goes way into the future, though I might not get to write about those times as soon as I wanted (people want more of the immidate stuff first, so I think I'll put that story in the "second in line" position.
6176650
i3.minus.com/jbhWluEAipLBs3.jpg
6176650 I kept on thinking of it as the spaceship from that other fic, which I can't remember it's name right now.
6177334 Vertical Take-Off and Flight aircraft?Thought about V-22 Opsrey.
But still,thanks for the picture.
6177168
That wasn't the choice in the actual scenario presented, was it?
No one had a choice in the matter, and the time displacement means to me my immediate and extended family will be gone for my entire life with no goodbye, and be so far gone no message or monument to them can survive the test of time, and the Mona Lisa will be destroyed anyway. Plus, when they do appear, they may die anyway due to conditions of their arrival.
Versus the possibility my family, extended and immediate, might die and human civilization may survive.
.I have nothing against the help, just the time displacement.
First, let's make a distinction between what was intended and what actually happened. Luna offers no apology between the two, despite to her it becoming apparent that things have gone wrong.
It appears they intended to have their cake and eat it too, leaving enough humans behind to maintain cities and knowledge and provide the bedrock for the future returnees. I'd probably guess there was no intention of splitting families apart either.
What happened was family splitting, leaving people inappropriate to survive behind while sending away those who would be appropriate, and In general not leaving enough people behind period to really save anything due to the lack of ability to manufacture replacement technology while almost all our knowledge is stored as such.
Giving Lonely Day non-retroactive photographic memory is just another example that the Princesses don't comprehend the scale of information about to be lost. There is literally so much that if Lonely Day did know everything and started writing it all down at 100 words per minute, with no break for anything, she's not finish even recording a quarter of that knowledge before the 10,000 years are up.
Details out of the way, let's actually address the core of the issue you appear to have. Civilization and remembering the past is considered an important value, for several reasons.
First is that knowledge directly improves quality of life. Imagine if all knowledge of medicine disappeared: the remaining populous would have to suffer from things that could be easily treated, in lots of pain, and die significantly before their time, for a large ways into the future.
That's just a single component.
Another is that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. The survivors will fight amongst themselves, and even if they didn't, how many generations will live and die before that level of society is reached again? Maybe far more overall than would die in your scenario.
A third part is just the comfort of being remembered. Not having immortal leaders, only three things really give people's life meaning: improving the situation for future generations, personal satisfaction for a life well lived, and achieving a limited form of immortality via being remembered.
Otherwise life takes on a kinda nihilistic attitude that nothing we do matters because it has no long-term impact.
Finally, examples from the past inspire others. Both in motivation via examples wild ideas being done at all, and in being the foundation for future creations. Science on the shoulders of giants after all. That's the purpose of things like the Mona Lisa.
Not to mention that when we consider the fall of Rome and the dark ages, no one considers that time to be a good time, especially for those that went through it. But everyone praises the miraculous saving of knowledge from antiquity by monks who, if they had really understood what they were copying, may have tried to burn most of it for conflicting with their dogma.
That's what I mean by the extremely short term view of saving people versus saving long-term knowledge, and society choosing the latter.
Functually, there is no difference between billions dying and billions being sent thousands of years into the future from the perspective of those who remain behind to watch their society collapse. So in a way Lonely Day got the worst of both worlds.
6177334 Yeah, it definitely is a "family" story. After all, it looks like some will get made. The only question is by whom...
(Sorry, but you did set that up perfectly)
6176956
40.media.tumblr.com/58eeaf65e8df8d62a90598def4c4bef1/tumblr_nr45guQJ2c1rsmidfo1_540.png
I'm definitely not a dressmaker by any degree.
6177670
Adorable
6177334 I think this 'chapter' of A's tale is over and a sequel would be in order. Seems sensible if you're going to be trying out a different format.
A little bit of theories
The great story about misunderstanding and confusion
I've got theory which is based on one idea - Magic in our galaxy is "evolution enforcer".This means what magic in our world is used by Universe to make other step to the Universe Collapse (or something like that),evolutionary process of the Universe.Humans and onther sentient aliens (they exist,confirmation is here!) are creating mgic and sending it to the galaxy center.What happens next?Luna gave an answer:
Before we've knew about fate of humans in Equestria - their souls were sent back to the galactic core.
So that is the thory itself?
I think what souls are relay station for the magic and they are sending magic to the galactic core.Once galactic core is transformed,there is no need to transfer magic anymore.
Some words about suls themself before coclusion:I think what spirits are all parts of the galactic core.Any living creature has its spirit,even bacteria and virus.But spirits are only a "starter kit" for ones who will produce magic.Only sentient creature can produce magic and in our world magic is produced by inventions.
There is one... Em,law,I think? Let's say what this is a law.
So I have a law about souls:"Spirit can evolve into a soul only when creature has big brain,but big brain can exist without a soul".
This means what any living creature can have big brain,but creature can use it with all functional only then spirit evolved into a soul.
So living creatures with souls can produce magic through inventions and soul leading this magic to the galactic core.
Another question is "Why do our souls cannot survive in the Equestria?"
The answer is simple enough:Soul isn't designed to transfer so large amounts of magic and while it's trying to transfer in to the galactic core,sould is destroying itself...
Horrifying.
At this moment galactic core takes the (dead)soul inside itself to reload soul or remake it ino the spirit again.
So here is conclusion:Souls are the evolved spirits which transfer magic to the galactic core.Once galactic core is transformed,there is no need to transfer magic anymore,so this basically means what souls are now... "Immune" to the magic,yes!
Souls aren't designed to transer large amounts of energy,so they taking severe damage while trying to tansfer it which leading to the galactic core to took damaged souls back.
This conclusion literally says what ponies have not helped humanity,but destroyed it.By misunderstanding,of course.
Somewhere up here was a analogy between Luna and firefighter,so I think it's my time to make another one:
Luna is like firefighter who extinguishes lighted gas and replacing you uncooked meat with already cooked salad.
Note:I know what explanating isn's my strong side so if somebody wants to see clear version of some of the fragments of theory - I will be ready to explain.
Note II:Have forgot one of the majorest detailes:HPI are immune,since transformation of the galaxy center is over.I think what if this haven't happened yet,it will happen in 0.5-1.5 years after transformation event took place.
6177670 YESyesyes! Thank you so much
You just have a knack for those pony expressions. She looks great! Even if she doesn't look all that appreciative here :)
Perfect.
6177334 Maybe, but Day can still be a Mother Figure
6177688
A gender switched auto mechanic and self-loathing newly 16 year old that put herself under enormous pressure to achieve an unattainable goal and has been under extreme stress, including life or death situations, and close to mental breakdowns due to complete despair at all the unfairness for months... gets her first chance to yell at someone, anyone, who had something to do with how the whole thing played out.
That being happens to be a princess of Equestria with this fact alone putting Day extremely on edge beforehand. The princess takes Day's fear of her away by being kind and understanding. That last thing probably removed the cork.
Appropriately, Luna doesn't apologize but accepts the hate for what it is.
Well... I shuddered as well when I read it the first time. It still sucks, but I can certainly understand her now. She even began to reflect on that a little later on when she realized there were a lot of very important questions she didn't ask because of that emotional implosion. She also is shocked when she hears the HPI would like to have ponyfication as a last resort.
That could have been handled better... but she wasn't thinking clearly. At all.
Finally, a human who is speaking sense. But then, Alex is just a young male 20-something auto mechanic with the hormones of a 16 y/o female. I shouldn't be expecting him to display as much rationality and perspective as an elite of humanity's last hope.
(And before any 16 y/o here gets hissy, I was 16 y/o once too. And I'd slap my 16 y/o self just as hard.)
6173753
It was a horrific mistake, born in anger and conceit. Hey Alex, have a little taste of Luna's immortal regrets. If you ever become wise enough to even realize that you made a mistake.
6177424
My comment was made in response to a sentiment shared by several, including yourself in those early posts (unless I'm mistaken): (Paraphrase) "It would have been better if Luna just transformed all 7B humans into ponies and left it at that. Sure, a few billion would die in the ensuing mass panic, rioting, and starvation/disease, but that's a fair price to pay for the immediate supply of manpower and talent which would help preserve human tech/civilization after all the dying is done. Luna's way may save more human lives, but we'll lose a lot more technology."
That's the sentiment that pissed me off.
First, a human should show some gratitude that an alien decided to go to the enormous trouble of saving him at all. Luna doesn't owe you anything. That the alien is not omnipotent and therefore could not do a perfect job of it, does not give the human a right to complain.
You're missing the forest for the trees. It's a good thing that an immortal princess does not have your limited perspective.
You're whinging over the possible loss of approx 2000 years' worth of human achievement. She's betting on a species which, as long as it plays its cards right, can go on to flourish for hundreds of millions of years. Or perhaps for the life of the universe, if it becomes spacefaring.
And that's the difference between saving something alive, vs saving something inanimate. One is the living future, of human potential. The other is the static and dead past. As someone already said, civilization is a tool. It is not a god to sacrifice your children to.
6177778
So your theory's primary purpose is to make sure Luna made as big a mistake as possible? What's the motivation? So that New Humanity can start a righteous war against Equestria the next time their astral orbits cross?
6177824
Well, yes. I came to the same conclusion after reading this chapter, before coming upon your comment here. But as I said, I'd slap my 16 y/o self just as hard.
Well it doesn't look like the humans are in to eradicate magic and restore the world the way it was anymore, but I will keep my eye out there is still the possibility the HPI is only acting friendly while they have something to gain from it and is actually not looking out to build a world where humans and ponies can live together in harmony.
I would probably end up as an draconequs, how mad I am
Fuckers should be more humble considering they're going to be depending on you for survival shortly.
At least someone is being reasonable.