Mirrors of the Past

by Communist Starlight

Stella Bright

A pre-word: My name is Steel Beam, my cutie mark is a tape recorder and I work for Equestria Daily. My coat is brown and my mane is grey, despite being relatively young. I am an Earth pony. I decided that to commemorate the tragedy of a few years prior, I would write an article regarding first hand experiences. My boss laughed, and said that nopony would ever want to read that. I tried to argue, and eventually he came to the conclusion that "If you really want to write it, kid, you'd write a book." So take that, I wrote a book. I wrote a book of emotions, a book of love and sacrifice, of loss and visions. I've gone to far away lands to talk to people who first witnessed the space station launch to finding the people who were in canterlot at the time of it's destruction. This is not truly my book, in that sense. This is a device to remind people of the ponamity of it all, to help them remember - we're all living, breathing creatures capable of rational thought in times of stress, and that we still make mistakes. That we can love, that we can cry, and that most importantly, we can grieve.

It is a month after Twilight's coronation. The populace has settled and steps have been taken to downsize the gang activity. Canterlot is being rebuilt, and Equestria's aching hearts are healing. Before me sits Stella Bright, Astrodynamics Executive and the first one to figure out why our space station fell apart. In fact, she's the reason why there's an Astrodynamics at all. She sits at her desk, a simple, wooden thing. Behind he is a window overlooking the crash site of some of the debris of the space station, now turned into a memorial for the ponies that had died there. I sit before her, admiring the items she had acquired over the years. I have put my tape recorder on her desk to easily recall what she says.

[She stares at me as I have my paper and pencil ready.]
So, you want all of Equestria to know why we failed? Real simple. We launched the rocket straight up. In case you don't know what that means, it means we both caused damage and wasted fuel. In fact it was lucky we managed to get it into space in the first place. Well, no, we didn't. We didn't get it past the exosphere. Goddess, there was so much we didn't know. I tried to tell 'em, too, I said, "You can't just shoot straight up." They laughed, and told me to find a better solution. Well, what did you think I did? They had wounded my pride and dang it, I was going to make sure they payed for they're hubris. It started with a theory, 'what if...' yeah, that's it. What if. What if I... shot it sideways? Keep it going straight that way. Same problem, too much fuel. So I came up with a slightly better idea: A diagonal line. Now, that had it's problem too. I couldn't just keep it in a straight line, too much jostling and the intended flight path would fall out of order. I presented it anyway, they actually expected a result, heh. If they decided to keep their own noses where they belonged, possibly I would've kept my credibility when I presented my final idea. You know, the working one? Which, by the way, was the plan immediately afterword. But no, they figured out the "perfect" balance between weight and fuel. They didn't need my plan, one way or the other. They said, "Stella, if we wanted your plan, we would have come to you. Not only that, we can't even trust you to come up with something safe, judging by your last plan."

[Stella frowns at the memory, then reaches for the cider placed on her desk beside a picture. She shows me the picture.]

These were the ponies on the mission. 7 bright, young, capable ponies. Could they have fixed the problem? Maybe. Maybe if the damage sensor wasn't the thing crippled. In fact, we trained them to fix everything except the damage sensor. Oh boy, did our trainees sure learn quick. We split them up now, each crew member on the next space station will specialize in something and, uh, basically have a minor in something else. For example, [She takes a swig from her mug.] Let's say I'm good at biology. I have a small amount of knowledge of what you do, say, engineering. Suddenly, you become, I don't know, wounded because you misused a screwdriver. Hey, it happens. I know how to do your job and keep it held in duck tape until you come back to health. Oh, don't get me wrong, we didn't do that for the doctor. We made sure there was two doctors this time. We're not making any mistakes. Not again. We can't afford to have our funding cut because we don't know how to drop kick a shuttle from here to low orbit.

[She takes another drink from her mug. She sets it down, and stares into it. After a short silence, she begins to speak again.]

You want to know what I thought of the ponies handling that mission? Shoddy. They were green, the higher-ups said that if they were going to get experience, they might as well start now. They were idiots too. Told me so themselves. Well, not exactly of course. But they came pretty close. So not only was it a combination of a bad launch and crippled systems, but it was also because the boys in the control room didn't know how to handle a situation. What if they weren't green? What if the damaged sensor wasn't, you know, damaged? What if they used my plan instead? I guess we'll never know. Maybe the shuttle was just faulty. But I think, no, I know so, if they had listened to me, they would have gotten farther, done more. And those astronauts would still be alive.

[She shows me out the door.]

To make up for our mistakes, we're going to the moon. Steel... I think they're calling it Apollo.

Author's Note:

Woosh, my first story, ever!

This is a 'World War Z' inspired story. I apologize in advance is I let a vulgarity slip.