connect it without giving it mainframe access 74%
It was hardly the time to be worrying about Spike’s project. With Pinkie Pie’s revival, Twilight barely had the time or the energy for what would come next. But with as invested as Spike was into the project, some part of her worried that if she didn’t throw it out an airlock or help him soon, she would wake up one morning with the reactor shut down and the computer monopolized by another alien.
“Okay, Spike,” She swallowed, trying to keep her face neutral. “I’m going to work on it—I’m not just plugging in that thing this time. I’m going to do it safely. But while I work, I want you to start compiling a full report on Proximus B. Before I plug in that thing, you are going to give me a presentation. I want slides, I want lists, I want pictures. Understand?”
“Sure.” He pushed the cart towards her, with its retrofitted probe as cargo. “Just… gimmie a minute to say hi to Pinkie first.”
Needless to say, he wouldn’t get it. Down in the mainframe, Twilight got hourly reports from Fluttershy, at her own insistence. The doctor didn’t seem to recognize Pinkie’s condition as anything more than the damage of her poor freezing. Twilight would correct that impression if Pinkie didn’t improve.
The Equinox would not be “happy” running without its archive, but it wouldn’t actually stop anything. Of course, it wouldn’t ever boot again without the drives to load its OS into operating memory, but… that was a bridge they could come to another time.
If nothing else, Twilight could relax while doing some familiar work. Building a makeshift mainframe out of their archival racks and a single portable computer. She half expected the thing to implode when she tried to turn it on, but… apparently the portable computers were hardier than that. Its little screen glowed, then sat almost blank for over an hour as it indexed all the new space. Only when it was finished did she finally wheel over the probe and get a good look.
At a glance she could see Spike had scrapped all its internals, emptying out the transmitters and receivers and using only the basic shell. Well… the shell and the RTG. It hadn’t been plugged into anything, so she could only assume. “Can’t be much of a computer with just seventy watts, can you?” It didn’t respond, yet the screen kept flashing. I wonder if we can figure out how to copy those. That text is so much clearer than our screens.
Was it wrong of her to get distracted in her work? Maybe she ought to be moping around angry after what had happened to Pinkie. But instead she worked harder, gritting her teeth and not even stopping to eat.
She wanted to open the probe and see what was inside, but a glance showed her Spike had welded everything back together again, making that difficult. It did have a standard data port—the sort that was as wide as a hoof and lined with exactly 36 wires. Good thing their portable computer accepted the standard inputs. “I hope you’re friendly, whatever you are.” There was a good chance that nothing would happen—they were working with alien machinery, which might be fundamentally impossible for ponies to build. Like the Equinox’s drive? That didn’t slow us down.
The laptop screen flashed once, then went out. Every drive Twilight had connected suddenly lit up, with the sound of spinning disks filling the room over the cooling fans.
“Decompression in progress” said both screens in unison. “Estimated time of completion, 31 hours.” She waited a moment, wondering if maybe alien computers were as good at predicting times as Equestrian ones—but nothing changed, and eventually she just sighed.
She managed to tie everything down before she left—now that they were in orbit, any illusion of gravity was broken for everypony but her. And Rarity, assuming her brain didn’t get roasted on the way over too.
“How’d it go?” Applejack asked from behind her. She’d come in quietly enough that Twilight jumped, and without her concentration she immediately started drifting towards the ceiling.
“With the machine, or Pinkie Pie?”
“I just saw Pinkie,” Applejack muttered. “We always knew she was a little, uh… on the funny side. But I never thought…”
“Me neither,” Twilight winced, staring out the distant window. It was too much to hope the planet would be there—this window was pointed out at the night, and the same almost-identical stars that had followed them here.
“She’s tougher than she looks,” Applejack promised. “She’ll pull through. We’ve got good medicine, the best doctor we could hope for.”
“You’re just trying to stop me from feeling guilty. About… keeping her.”
“Sure,” Applejack didn’t hesitate. “But it’s the truth too. A lie wouldn’t help, because sooner or later you always get to the end. Can’t talk your way out of an empty fuel tank, or no more water in the electrolyzer. Best to face it while yer still breathin’, I reckon.”
“Guess so.” Twilight sighed. “Spike’s, uh… thing… will take another two days to do what it’s doing. But so far it looks like the Equinox is still running okay. Unless you came down here to report on alarms that haven’t gone off properly or something.”
“Nope,” Applejack smiled slightly, pointed towards the lift. “I just thought you ought to take a look at where we are. Came all this way, and you’ve been all cooped up down here since we got into orbit.”
“Sure.” Twilight followed her to the lift, then let her gravity fade as they started to rise. All the way up, past fabrication and the farm and medical and even past the crew deck. All the way to the top—the eye.
They stepped out, and Twilight didn’t even have to wander over towards the telescopes, or any of the computers. Spike was hard at work, surrounded by stacks of papers—she ignored him. This was one of the largest windows on the Equinox, a massive single dome of transparent crystal made for this precise purpose.
Proximus B wasn’t just a planet, it was a city, on a scale Twilight had neither seen nor imagined. The entire surface she could see was covered in reflective skin, with a few prominent spires and domes visible even from here.
A gigantic ring wrapped around the center of the planet, many times thicker than their entire ship. Faint lights glowed from all around it, faint lines of active machinery that would’ve dwarfed Canterlot station a hundred times over. And from nowhere else. The distant city below, despite its massive size, didn’t have so much as a single signal beacon.
Just how advanced is this civilization? They're at least years ahead of us, likely decades.
"I went all the way to Proximus B and all I got was this lousy SIGNAL!"
T-shirts and bumper stickers for sale at the concession stand or by phone, just call 1-800-HAHAHA for details.
Nicely done, Star. I'm hooked, for sure.
"It was hardly the time to be worrying about Spike’s project."
It's hard to believe Twlight is so incurious about the results of their communication with the aliens they made this entire journey to visit.
Called it! Who wants to bet its a robotic machine race?
Oh, yikes. Whatever civilization this is was so advanced and they're just... gone? Like that?
9326194 Centuries, easily, if that ship was any indication.
9326207
I guess this planet is... more than meets the eye.... [Ok Il' go now....]
9326207
I made that bet a few chapters ago, but I think they are uploaded minds.
Or after thos closing lines an extinkt empire whit a message in a bottle worning.
Ooooo, first look at the new planet! If anyone needs me, I'll be over here singing Baba Yetu to myself.
9326226
Now that you mention it...
An impossibly advanced ecumenopolis... without so much as a working radio. This could be tricky. Hopefully the remote mainframe doesn't just have instructions for yet another generation of more advanced computers.
At least Applejack's sincerely optimistic about Pinkie's chances.
9326227
The possibility of being uploaded minds making use of robotic bodies is just as likely as normal sentient robots
9326226
Autobots roll out! Lol
i would be very careful about stripping resources on this planet
9326213
There's actually a theory that goes along the lines of your average sentient races tearing themselves apart or otherwise destroying themselves with their advanced tech before they can expand into space fast enough. Ie their advanced tech is their downfall so the signal could very well have been a last ditch effort to put up a beacon to warn any other races who were advanced enough to pick it up not to make the same mistake
9326202
I think Twilight's primary concern is making sure everything isn't falling apart, both in terms of the ship and her crew. Between the Equinox's rough exit, and everything about Cozy Glow, she's got a lot to worry about.
Hah, I finally have time again to think about this properly and there’s no decision to make. Nice not to have things getting too much worse for once... heck, I was afraid that the probe would malfunction if it wasn’t connected “immediately” (not that my voting for 1 would have made a difference), but it seems all right so far.
The processing has begun.
Hail Transistor
They've found Coruscant.
They better check for power signatures in case of dormant sentinels or an uploaded civilization.
I hate to be the first one with the depressing speculation, but this reminded me of a quote from an old science fiction book, The Last Planet by Andre Norton—apparently also published as Star Rangers:
The way the author tucked in tidbits like that (it's just a side reference with no impact on the story as a whole) is probably why I remember her so well. Hopefully the situation here is less grim than in poor Tantor, but I encourage you to read the book in the link. Thanks to Baen for making these freely available!
Oh boy, megastructures.
FYI, a planetary hab ring, assuming it has multiple levels, could easily house as much usable living space as the planet it's hung around, assuming it's not too spindly (I'm assuming it's thickness is in the dozens or hundreds of kilometers, considering it's visible at a distance). To build one would also take structural materials strong enough that using them, you could build the Leaning Tower of Piza 10 times higher, at an 80° angle.
9326194
Going by some theories, they archieved virtual conscience (and are apparently capable of copying or uploading it), and taking that they can and have built a giant ring around their planet, and are capable of contacting civilizations very, very far, they are probably technologically millenia ahead the human race.
(For reference, we have absolutely no idea if those things are even possible)
This could be very bad or very good... though odds are looking good for the latter.
9326245
I'd be more worried that it contained docking permissions and a guidance system. That'd be an awkward thing to get shot down over.
"I swear officer, we had our docking and guidance programs, they're just locked in an isolated terminal!"
9326458
Nah, it's clearly The Library, an ecumenopolis that is one single library full of books. Watch out for vashta nerada...
> Twilight dies of excitement before the vashta nerada can get her
> Twilight Sparkle has been saved
It's a good thing many compression algorithms use much fewer resources to decompress then compressing. Still, what is it bootstrapping?
9326458
With the ring stolen from Kuat.
9327739
Technically it was stolen from this youtube video but let's not get technical >.>
Well, we found them at least!
Wow, these guys are advanced. Or maybe were advanced, it's hard to say. Makes it even more interesting to me that the integrated circuit tech that the alien fabber produced was so recognizable, but maybe that's the easiest tech whoever sent the message expected recipients would be able to easily produce.
9326654
Interesting. When I first saw the word "Tantor" there as I skimmed the comments I thought "do you mean Trantor" until I actually read your full comment. "Trantor" was a planet in Isaac Asimov's universe that has referenced several times, most notably as the capital of the Galactic Empire in both the Empire and Foundation series. It was also basically one big planet-wide city. Tho after the collapse of the empire those who remained on the planet started stripping it back to the soil in order to farm.
9328417
Yes, and this made tracking down the quoted reference a lot harder! I had conflated the two in my head to where it was the planet-city of Trantor (divorced from its Asimov setting) that was put in eternal quarantine.
Thankfully, once a bit of research had beaten the misconception out of my head, I was able to get the actual source right on the first try despite not having the city's name.
9328417
I cannot describe how happy I am that someone thought of that.
9327740
Isaac Arthur! Hell yeah!
Hey, what is the first rule of warfare?