Chapter 19
Use a portable terminal. 65%
Twilight Sparkle settled the “portable” computer down in Cozy’s cell. More accurately, the screen and keyboard were in the cell, and the three pieces of the computer took up most of the dining room.
“You’ll find the entire text of the Signal in the root directory,” Twilight said. “And I made sure all the same math utilities are installed. If you need the mainframe for anything, you can write it out on the pad there and I’ll run it myself.”
Cozy Glow visibly squirmed at the end of the cell. She’d started to take on that ‘prisoner look’ over the last few days, her carefully groomed curls starting to blur together into a frayed mess. Twilight had searched her name in the mainframe, but hadn’t been surprised not to see it. Personal information and potential criminal histories were just wasted mass on a vessel with a known crew of national heroes.
And if Equestria knew we had a stowaway, they would’ve warned us. Unless, the dark parts of her mind reminded her, she was meant to be here.
“This isn’t what I need,” Cozy Glow declared, her forced sweetness not even remotely convincing now. “I told you, I need your computer. This isn’t powerful enough.”
Twilight rolled her eyes, settling down on her haunches just outside the cell. She still had her pistol strapped to her belt, but that was it. Spike was with her now, since this wasn’t the interrogation anymore. Applejack was nearly done with the hull repairs to the Prospector, and wanted to finish getting it parked in the dock, so she wasn’t in attendance.
“This is your chance to make your case, and it’s the only one you’ll get. Technically what you did in the cargo bay constitutes attempted murder of an officer of the fleet and is justification for…” she shook her head. “I don’t know if we’ve ever had an execution on an Equestrian ship, and it won’t start on mine. But I will freeze you. We’ve got backup cryogenics, and that’s right where you’re going if you don’t convince me.”
Cozy Glow made a frustrated noise, then pulled over the keyboard. “I don’t know how convincing I’ll be without the computer. But I can… give you the translation, anyway. We all know it.”
Twilight didn’t have to stand beside her in the cell to look at what she was doing, the portable computer had a second terminal. She propped it up on the dining-room chair and watched as she typed.
“The message of the signal is in here.” She highlighted a few sections on the first page.
“The… spacing?”
“Yes,” Cozy Glow didn’t give her time to doubt. “It’s compression, look…” and so she explained. It was a surprisingly compelling case—without having seen the message yet, she could see the order resolving out of chaos. It was as though the mathematics that dominated most of the message were actually only the backbone for something else.
Cozy Glow lost her a little when the actual message finally emerged. There was no translation, no alien tongue. The words were in plain Ponish. Between a dozen different math problems and their solutions, a single sentence had been encoded.
Life is not advised, the message said. You must change into constancy. Will perform it.
Twilight studies the calculations to detect deception. Critical Failure
Whatever else might be said for this pony—maybe she was a terrorist, or a misguided zealot. But her math was perfect. Twilight could detect no flaw in what she’d drawn—she checked and rechecked and even pulled over a keyboard to run the numbers herself. She spent ten minutes in total silence verifying for herself.
“The Listeners found this message, and we understand its meaning. It is a threat—a threat of attack to Equestria. Coming here is part of what makes it happen.”
“That’s… one interpretation,” Twilight eventually said, pushing the keyboard away. “How could they send the message in Ponish?”
“We’ve been sending out radio for… how many years?” Cozy asked. “They’re only four light years away.”
“Okay, but… why doesn’t Equestria know about this?” she pointed at the screen with a hoof. “I get it, this would be hard to find. But there are lots of smart ponies out there. A whole system full.”
“They did,” Cozy said. “They formed the Listeners. Recruited me… lots of other ponies. To make sure we survived.”
“By sneaking you onto my ship?” Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Instead of blowing it up? Or just… cutting the funding when it was still bare steel?”
The pegasus rose, looking out with innocent eyes. “We didn’t learn in time. The Equinox mission was almost finished.” She looked away. “I can’t get into their reasons, but our leaders think the Signalers aren’t going to come to Equestria and invade… they think they use the same methods they already did. Send a message, teach something. Like the Signal… I don’t understand the math, but isn’t it part of how we built the engines on this thing? It taught us something…”
Yes. Twilight realized, with growing horror. Not only were the mathematics of their drive in the Signal, but they’d already found a probe that had nearly killed them, and had instructions for a machine.
A machine spike was building.
Spike caught her eyes from the other side of the wall, shaking his head in obvious disagreement. I’m glad you don’t think so.
“We think the Signalers were waiting… maybe for our civilizations to get advanced enough. They test us by waiting for us to come to them. And once we arrive, they teach us something else. The Equinox would come back to Equestria with its computers full of… knowledge bombs, ready to blow up Equestria. Back home, they make sure everypony thinks you died, and… out here, I make sure you never get home. Evil aliens think we’re too primitive to bother with, and… everypony lives.”
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Shoot her. shoot her now.
Yeah, words are Cozy's weapon of choice. Shame that I won't use meta knowledge or make non-equestrian mentality decisions in this, she's going to get away with far too much.
*If
If I didn't know any better, I'd think you rigged that roll. Feels just a bit too perfect.
Definite food for thought... but radio signals attenuate. Popular as the image of the Earth bombarding local space with our broadcasts may be, the inverse square law does them no favors. Even without meta-knowledge, aliens using the native language is dubious in the extreme. Cozy might believe what she's saying, but I certainly don't. The last sentence's grammatical structure smacks of apophenia at work. I can only hope the rest of the crew is similarly unconvinced.
Of course, it's entirely possible that this is a metatextual double bluff and you're using Cozy Glow to make us doubt the message... but I'm still siding against Shir-Lucifer Temple.
Yeah, no. I still wouldn't trust Cozy. That critical failure is going to have severe consequences if they don't pick up on her lies soon.
So they want to upload the ponies out of flawed biological shells into immortal machines, is my interpretation.
But come on, Cozy's still so obviously lying. If anyone had deciphered this message, and they thought it'd be "They're gonna kill us!" then the obvious next step is to get a radio show or whatever and start shouting it at everyone. I don't buy it, and not just because it's Cozy Glow saying it.
"the results would be totally the same if Cozy Glow is being honest."
I've played enough DnD to know that, and unlike some people, I'm not willing to just immediately assume that Cozy is evil here. But dammit Twilight I think you've failed more rolls than the entire rest of the crew combined! I vote we fire Twilight from captaincy and make Applejack the captain of the Equinox. At least she can roll a success. :P
9294486
I have to agree. If there was enough time to sneak Cozy on board, there was still plenty of time to tell Celestia or even Twilight about the translation. The princesses could have claimed some innocuous reason to delay the launch while they investigated the translation in detail. I say we freeze Cozy, and repair and restock the ship enough to thaw Fluttershy and let her work on her own translation. Maybe she can see a flaw in the Listeners' translation algorithm that Twilight can't see.
Cozy has made her argument witch sounds good but it just stinks to me something is off.
Good God, Twilight, your horrible rolls are ruining the story.
What an absolute load of bull. I can't say whether or not Cozy believes what she's piping, honestly she probably does, but what a LOAD of BULL. 1) If the aliens were intent on destroying you, WHY WOULD THEY SEND AN ENCODED MESSAGE ABOUT IT THAT YOU MIGHT INTERPRET??? That's like saying, "Well if they're too primitive, they won't understand; if they are advanced enough, they'll understand just enough to FALL INTO OUR TRAP MOOHAHA; but if they're are EXTRA ADVANCED they will see this CLEVER WARNING we placed and we will happily lose our advantage in our plot to take them over." ????????
And yeah, the idea that the Listeners were made by the Equestrians and then dispatched to "make sure you don't get home" does... what? Make the Equestrian space agency of 40 years ago look good at the cost of murdering crew members down the line? That isn't even REMOTELY something Celestia would sign off on. This whole thing stinks of refined xenophobia and paranoia happening under Celestia's nose. Whatever the aliens have planned, it's something they actually WANTED the ponies to know about; that's an invitation if I ever heard one, however sketchy "life is not advised" may indeed sound. This doesn't imply invasion so much as a bad grasp of ponish.
Spacing translation? Reminds me of supposed "devil worshipping" that came from playing a track in fast reverse... except, oops, it was all pure coincidence that such speeds would pick up sounds in the original that maybe-kinda-sorta sounded like something bad.
In other words Cozy, you and the other Listeners heard something that was never there in the first place, then jumped into extremism as a knee-jerk reaction.
She had a change to make sure the ship is destroyed several times now yet she did not take them. She is not telling the full story, ask her if she has something else to add and then freeze her. She is not needed anything but information she has now provided.
If your trying to find a hidden message, you can get results even if there was no message in the first place.
And I'm really curious if there is more then one way to decipher the message, because it quite possibly might say something entirely else. But xenophobes probably would latch onto the first translation that seemed bad.
9294467
Hey the roll is out on the table in my discord, you can look for yourself. Granted I worded it in a way more inflammatory way there:
And Twilight's high computer skill meant she was rolling with a 3, a very high chance of success in this system. Only a 2 or a 1 would've been better odds.
9294486
Computers simulating life accurately might not be as constant one might think, since the simulations would still be subject to evolution, just like the machines doing the simulating. Manufacturing errors alongside wear and tear essentially make the replicating machines lifeforms themselves, also subject to evolution.
The rate of change might become much slower though, so a substrate change might be a step along the path to constancy.
But thinking about it, an intelligence that does not change at all. It would be incapable of learning and forgetting, as both would change it.
Now we have two cases, one of which is interesting:
The intelligence is purposefully limiting its own intelligence in favor of constancy
Twilights dice effing Hate her.
I wonder if Spike was on a different dice roll...
Isn't Spike missing a capital?
If what Cozy Glow says is true and we don't believe it, Equestria is doomed.
If what Cozy Glow says is false and we believe it, we're doomed.
... I WANT A LINGUIST NOW!
Hmmm, that's not what we understand by the message at all...
Additionally, the plan would have been much easier executed far before the 40 years it's been...
9297584
Life is a bad option. You must change into order. We will do this.
The message says that life is too chaotic and impure to carry on, as it changes. We will solve this.
This instantly reminds me of Daleks or Cybermen from Doctor Who. Daleks because "Life is a bad option" and Cybermen because "You must change" and "we will do this."
Either way, there is a very real danger.
9348631
Well, more the Cybermen then the Daleks. Daleks don't think life is a bad option, just all life that is not a Dalek. And they don't want to help said life become what it should, they just EX-TER-MIN-ATE! Cybermen, at least the earlier version of them, were all about upgrading fully organic life into the much preferred cybernetic bodies they used.
Damn, Twilight reminds me of my brother's D&D character. He can roll well, but every time he absolutely needs to roll good he gets one.
Suicide pact technology huh? Rather good way to kill off your less advanced neighbors without getting your hands dirty.
Only for it to be transformed into background noise long before it would reach that distance.