7 - Base of the Mountain
The last of the large space corporations including SpaceX will be decommissioning the last of their chemical launch systems by the end of the quarter. They will be replaced by VASIMR plasma engine equipped spacecraft. Some predict that not many will be constructed due to the recent progress in fusion propulsion technologies heavily reported on last year…
The world's first AI citizenship was granted in Canada this week. With the spreading opinion of AI’s being real people, the age old fears of robotic uprisings will gradually be replaced with peace and respect for the newly acknowledged people of Earth…
The automated facilities on Mercury have, after many technical delays. launched the first hematite mirror and solar collector. The energy from the project will be redirected back into it, vastly speeding the process. Due to the exponential growth the project will experience, the planet will likely be entirely deconstructed somewhere between seventy and a hundred years from now...
Asteroid 2027c71 has finally entered geosynchronous orbit above Kenya. The asteroid, recently renamed ‘Seed’ as the result of a moderated online poll, will begin conversion into the first ever space elevator. The carbonaceous asteroid will appear to grow towards the world over the next several years as the most advanced techniques of carbyne/carbon nanotube production are employed. If successful, the next elevator will be deployed in Ecuador in approximately eleven years. Even though the country is unlikely to pass seismology tests, it is suspected that the United States is prepared to spare nearly unlimited funds into any geoengineering project needed to stabilize the mountain range…
Today, on the ten year anniversary of ExxonMobil’s bankruptcy, the climate change crisis has officially been declared to be resolved. While world temperatures are falling and several major cities are expected to be recovered, we can still expect fierce storms for several years. Ice reclamation projects are expected to be mothballed and wildlife organizations plan to recover thousands of species from extinction over several decades as ecologies are repaired…
The first viral genetic treatment is underway. As opposed to the standardized process of creating designer children while they are embryos, a virus was used to modify the DNA of every cell in a man's body. If it goes well, multi stage treatments will undergo testing, possibly bringing treatments to the previous generation. Cosmetic changes may become available to the masses in a few years…
Five Years Later…
---Twilight Sparkle---
“Why are we here?” I asked. Spark Eclipse dragged me out of the lab he had set up for me yesterday to board an airplane. I was right in the middle of my latest project too. When we landed in a place called Africa, we got in a car which took us to a seemingly random plain. He had the vehicle stop when we came into view of a quartet of tall structures. They were equally massive and strange. They stood in a triangle and angled away from each other. They seemed to resemble scaffolding more than they did actual buildings.
“You'll see.” He said unhelpfully and got out of the car. I plodded out of the vehicle on my heavy legs. I had expected us to go to the complex ahead, instead the prince of all ponies in the world and the oldest living pony I had ever met pulled a blanket out of the car and sat on it. I stared for a moment before simply following and sitting down beside him. His gaze was directed upwards towards the overcast sky. I stared at the same place yet nothing was happening. Meanwhile my thoughts began to drift.
It had been a long time since I was injured and trapped in this world. I wish I had fought a little harder to stay focused on positives. Perhaps it would have been better to lie to myself and just insist that there was hope when there was none. Luckily hope came around anyway. It was similar to my first encounter of Discord. I was hopeless then too until I read the friendship letters that Celestia was spamming me with. Poor Spike.
Regardless, I had been slowly adapting to the world. I learned the word ‘spam’ for example, and about email and the internet. Yes, the internet was explained to me once already but I had no retention of that event. From there it was days long journeys through wikipedia. Some of the things I’ve found have been quite messy and disturbing while others were great. You can always trust the cats.
As disheartening as this world’s history was, I was equally confronted with my own world’s history. Slavery, war, close calls in destroying the planet. Earth by nuclear weapons and climate change and Equus, as it is called in English, by Nightmare Moon, Discord, and possibly other times that I don’t even know about. Luckily things are okay on those fronts. I now feel thankful that my biggest concern is how I miss my friends and family.
Over the last few years I had been mostly focusing on magical studies, attempting to devise a way to travel the stars with the help of human technology. Spark had asked me to forward results and conclusions to him before moving on to something new. While I did so, I couldn’t tell if he was doing anything with it. He seemed to run his nation almost entirely through his headset, only once in a great while would he go somewhere in person.
I still didn’t know why we were out in Africa somewhere. The buildings ahead looked impressive, even among other feats humans and the local ponies have performed. Perhaps if I paid more attention to the news. We were clearly waiting for something.
It was that very moment that I spotted a large group of pegasi fly up into the clouds and begin pushing them out of the way. As the blanket of grey was pushed towards and over me, I saw something begin to poke out. As it was exposed it grew upward and upward. It seemed to vanish into the distance, and it was being lowered.
My eyes grew wide. I recognized the object in front of me, but I hadn’t realized that it was being built. With stunned amazement, I watched as a dark, perfectly straight line lowered itself towards the ground. It was quite close before the clouds were moved, so it was only a couple minutes before it was level with the tops of the towers it seemed to be sliding between. It was another several minutes before it reached the ground. Part of me expected it to stop and another part expected disaster, yet it just kept going. In hindsight it made sense. It would make for a good foundation. With ponderous slowness and precise movement, it came to a stop and the four towers leaned inward, eventually contacting the elevator and firmly anchoring it. Also, I later learned, thousands of tons of concrete were poured into the hole it was inside of as a cherry on top, or on bottom I suppose.
After things settled down a bit, I saw several massive vehicles crawling over the terrain toward the thirty thousand mile pole in the ground. “That was interesting, but I still don't why we are here.” I complained.
He smiled. “Merely interesting?” He said as he stood up and threw the blanket in the car. “What's more interesting is we are taking it for a ride.”
I was silent as I followed him in, not really comprehending how he could have meant what he said. While we traveled closer I used my own headset to lookup what I could on the elevator. As the vehicle approached the base, I saw the massive vehicles tilting objects up and onto four spaces between the ground towers. It quickly became clear that two of them were quite similar to multi story hotels while the other two were simply large tanks with doors. Probably for the exclusive use of cargo.
“It's not finished yet, right? We can't just use it.” I queried.
“Actually, it is done. There's going to be a city around it soon but right now it's ready to go based on the reports I'm reading. I've got a reason to get us up there anyway.” he explained.
It wasn't long before we had improvised our way onboard one of the hotel-esque units. I assumed he was in constant communication because there was no law enforcement or other government agents coming out of every crevice like the movies I’ve seen show.
I felt my weight increase as the whole thing accelerated upwards. From what I understood, we would be out of the atmosphere in a few minutes and at our destination in a few days. Meanwhile there was one other thing that I wanted to ask.
The stallion in question had instantly made himself comfortable on a lounge seat facing a huge, nearly panoramic window. As I approached I could see that his eyes were still more focused on reading text on his headset more than on the world below.
“Spark, I can accept that there is something you want to show me. That's fine. It's a privilege to be on the first ride up the elevator, and it's pretty exciting to be going to space. It's like I'm already getting closer to home, but I don't know why you are here with me.” I asked at length.
He stopped what he was doing and looked me in the eyes. It was somewhat disconcerting. I've almost never seen him without his attention split.
“Fine,” he said, “I'll tell you. The reason I am supporting you so much, giving my country's resources to back you is because I am selfish. The well-being of the ponies of this world is not my number one priority. It's my number two priority. The thing I want the most is to go home. Even just for a few days. I won't throw other ponies lives away to do it, but it's what I want the most. If it's all the same to you, I'd appreciate it if you would keep this to yourself.”
He turned away and walked away towards a stairway. “Wait!” I shouted before I could think about what I was saying, “It's okay, actually you need to be like that!”
He stopped in his tracks and looked towards me. “And why is that?”
My thoughts raced for a second until they settled down on a plan. “You need to be selfish enough to take care of yourself. If you go over the edge, the whole world would be in danger. I told you about Princess Luna right?”
His focus returned to his headset. A moment later he nodded. “So you did. Thank you for reminding me. It seems fair to say that achieving this trip is in the interest of just about ten billion people.” He moved to the stairs before pausing. “Thank you. On another note, I did spill that I was backing you with a lot of resources. I'll say that the surprise involves that. I'm going to be turning in early tonight. I didn't get any sleep last night.”
I watched him head up to the private rooms above. I sat down on a chair and looked back out the window. I was quite happy that the issue was diffused. Celestia would say that it was quite diplomatic of me if she had seen it. I wondered how she was doing as I watched Earth seem to sink below me.
---Celestia---
I was quite frustrated. I had attempted to leverage the nobility to little success. Well, the effects on the nation were terrific, I wish I had thought to do it a long time ago. Simply put, I dangled favors and concessions in front of the nobility in exchange for setting up schools for the mundane and magical sciences and funding research. Essentially what Luna did with her coffee idea. The problem was that it did not seem as if we were any closer to finding Twilight. I realized that it wasn’t quite reasonable to simply expect somepony to find the answer in a couple months or a couple years, but one could hope.
Luckily we know that it’s not too late. In the past, whenever a bearer of an element died or lost connection to their element such as myself and Luna a thousand years ago, the gem would turn to stone. It was Miss Pinkie Pie’s idea to check the tree to see what the state was. It was with both joy and worry when we discovered that Twilight’s element was dimmed. Not stone, yet not as luminescent as it normally was. It was reassuring though. If it was in perfect condition, one could suspect that it didn’t need its connection to ponies anymore and that it was simply fine, but its dimness demonstrated that Twilight was either quite distant, injured, or both. I returned to it frequently. It had grown brighter in the early weeks but now it was just stable.
With that in mind, my drive to motivate my nation to think of new ideas was endless. None of them were dedicated to finding Twilight per se, but simply the growth and maturing of knowledge in the sciences would help some of us think of things. Just the other day I had been watching an experiment in which some ponies were attempting to construct a wagon propelled by magic instead of other ponies. Due to some instability caused by my sheer magical presence, containment of the energies failed, sending the wagon soaring across the university’s property and over several blocks of a light commercial district. I plucked the earth pony out of the air with my magic, but the wagon sailed right into Donut Joe’s restaurant. I paid for the damages.
Perhaps one day, as I sit it my study doing paperwork and peering distractedly out my window to the city below, I can have her back.
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I know your plan is getting contact with Equestria for Twilight and Spark, but I really would like to see more how the Earth has changed due to the ponies. If ExxonMobile can go bankrupt and in ten years global warming is fixed there is something else going on here. Plus Twilight needs a few more friend I think as she is still barely coping with what has happened to her. Also this chapter is not bad it is just setting up the next act on Earth and Eqquis.
7648375 I remind you this is late 2040's or early 2050's. Forgot which. But yeah this is future stuff. Also yeah I had been thinking about her friends issue too. Plans have been forming.
7648466 I think I found a mistake: Part of my expected it to stop and another part expected disaster, yet it just kept going.
*Instead of my, its me
7649798 Thanks :P
7649991 no problem :)
While I'm deffintly enjoying the originality of this story, I don have some concerns. The first is the following passage:
This thing is, this is completely impossible. Clouds one Earth are vastly less dense and much larger then Equestrian clouds. I have personally been inside a cloud once when it intersected a mountain, visibility was good enough that it was considered safe to drive up there. Trying to push an Earth cloud out of the way is like trying to push fog out of the way. In fact, fog is what you get when a cloud is so low that it collides with the ground.
The other is that having five years pass seems like a missed opportunity to have Twilight to experience some culture shock. How would she react when she finds out that the sun, moon, weather, and seasons all run on their own with out the need for interference, and that everybody is fine with it? How would she react when learning that the words "anypony", "everypony", "nopony" are frowned upon because they automatically exclude non-ponies? Or that not only is Spark no longer the head of state as in his own words "making somebody a ruler just because they have both a horn and wings is pretty silly," but the average pony on the street treats him with much less reverence then Equestrian ponies treat Celestia?
Aside from those two issues, I'm really enjoying this story.
7651457 Thanks.
My thought about the clouds was that unless the physics of oxygen, nitrogen, and water are fundamentally different on the two worlds (not in my universe), then the role of magic should be the only factor that separates them. Therefore magic would be capable of manipulating clouds, perhaps by creating a field around the pegasus that pushes and compacts the cloud without causing further condensation. Besides, there's a decent chance that the reason for that will become involved in the story.
I probably should have shown the culture shock and adjustments, but for some reason I didn't think to do that at all. Maybe I thought it was overdone, but it was likely just a complete oversight. At a minimum I hope to learn from leaving that out, though I already plan for moments in which her alienness shows through.
7653623 It seems that having the pegasi condense the clouds into smaller, denser ones seems like it would be more trouble then it's worth. First, you have to pack the clouds together, which is going to take a lot of time considering how comparatively huge Earth clouds are, and second, the clouds are going to disperse when the pegasus has to leave. Personally, I think that pegasi would be better suited to carrying atmospheric instruments to measure humidity, wind speed and direction, ect. That and having "eyes in the sky".
7660403 RIght, well, you do you. :P Going to stick with what I've got.
A useful figure to remember for not-quite relativistic rockets is: 1 gee = ~1 light year / year^2
I like the idea you have for this story, but it could do with some additional content per chapter. Right now I feel like its snippets of the tale you wish to tell being shown, when a whole lot more could be added in.
7692001 That is true. I've been reading some other books, actual original fictions, and I realized that I've had a huge lack of character interaction and the actual doing of things.
I will push through till the end, but all the chapters up until whatever point I become happy with my writing may be rewritten sometime in the distant future.7692276
Fair enough. Good luck with your work.
Just wondering how they doing when Prince Spark Eclipse and Princess Celestia made contact which more interesting to me than twi and celly's reunion.
I wish it had shown Twilight's surgery being done. I feel sorry for her. Being sent across space to our world in the future where Ponies and Humans coexist in harmony and it is a long way back home for her. Besides they had to put her to sleep so they can fix up in time since her life was on the line.
2048? This should prove interesting.
How is the next chapter going for you?
10335850
I've learned a lot about writing and some other things. I am writing a new story I plan to start posting in a few weeks. I may continue or reboot this story eventually.