Chapter 0: Prologue
Planet Earth, year 20XX A.D.
It was a sunny day in Cape Canaveral, not a single cloud in the sky and everybody was ready for a very important milestone in human history. The chattering of workers making sure there is zero error margin was like music for a certain launch director named Isaac Musk. The legacy his family weighed heavy on him since the moment he decided to focus his entire time on SpaceX.
Today one of the most important launches in the history of mankind was going to take place, it consisted in securing all of human history and knowledge on time capsules that will it orbit earth for millennia or in case our civilization cease to exist as we know it, for a constant signal should be broadcast to them constantly and in case of the signal is interrupted for a year, they were programed to return to Earth, ensuring that survivors won’t forget their roots.
In a dark room, a man lies on his desk snuggling a device like a teddy bear, countless empty cups of coffee, notes and locked monitors around him. He was one of the engineers in charge of the programing of the devices but stayed up all night long on a personal project. He was dreaming about food when the slide door of his workshop open revealing a coworker, Suzanne R. was written on her badge, she looked around noticing her coworker in such a sad position.
“Walter is the last drive ready?” she got no response, she moved closer to him nudging him on the shoulder. “Seriously Walter, Mr. Musk is going to kill us both if the drive is not ready for launch,” She noticed Walter was holding a drive on his arms connected to his computer, she moved the mouse and on the screen showed a warning for a [DOWNLOAD COMPLETE]. “Oh good you finished it on time,” she disconnected the drive and examined it “hey you forgot to number this one *sigh* well you should wake up already or else you will miss the launch”
“zzzZZzzz mmm yummy, mmMmmMM” Walter said, still in the arms of Morpheus.
“Oh whatever, don’t blame me if you miss history in the making, I need to have this installed right away” She left quickly leaving a message to Walter in case he wakes up in time, unknown to her there was another drive, exactly like the one she took, under the desk with the number 100 written on it.
[Three hours later]
“Oh no no no no no no no no no” Walter ran through the corridors of the complex, a drive tucked inside his lab coat, sweating like a pig knowing it’s going to a slaughterhouse, which might be the case if Mr. Musk realized what he did.“Oh God please let me be on time”
~WHAM~
“OUCH, Walter what the hell?” Suzanne said kneading her head and making sure her glasses weren’t broken.
“SUZY, PLEASE TELL ME THE LAUNCH HASN’T STARTED YET.” Walter said with a teary face.
“Not yet, oooh I knew you wouldn’t miss it for the world, you have worked on this as much as me, more even. But you didn’t have to be all teary, the launch will be in a few minutes, I was heading to the control room, why don’t you come with me and we can watch it together?”
He grabbed her arm moved her so they were eye to eye “Suzy listen to me, we need to delay the launch!”
“Are you crazy? Everything is already prepared and the countdown is going to start in a few minutes, you can’t stop this just like that! Why would you even want to stop...“ she grabbed Walter by the coat and her eyes turned as dark as a bottomless pit “What did you do?”
Walter was petrified, he had known Suzanne since childhood and he knew that there was nothing in this world more terrifying than her when she was angry, he also knew that if he didn’t come clean he would be, for the next few weeks, on a full body, arms and legs cast, drinking through a straw “well you see, remember when you went to my workshop to pick up the drive and left me a note?”
“Yes, so?”
“ok… youpickedthewrongdrivethisistherightone” he said while holding a device with the number 100 on it.
“WHAT!?! oh no no no no no no no no no” she started mumbling while losing all the color from her body. “We need to stop the launch… there is no way to stop the launch… we need to… we need… I know we can still strap ourselves on the rocket and leave the planet, that’s probably the only way to escape this mess YOU got us into”
“Me? Why only me? You were supposed to check every drive why didn’t you check this one?”
“I… I was busy with another project!”
“Yeah I bet, what is that project called? Oh yeah Armando from security right?… anyway, there must be something we can do, they will test every capsule in a week on space and they will discover there is one with the wrong information on it.”
“Walter there is nothing we can do about this the launch is starting as we speak” Suzanne said with a long sigh “we need to report this to Mr. Musk, worst case scenario we will lose our dream jobs and if that happens you will wish it was YOU on that rocket”
[Some time after launch, on the Director’s office]
“What a great launch, beautiful launch I never get tired of them. I remember when my dad used to bring me to every launch and then we went for ice cream… anyway, I was told you two wanted to see me, what are my programmers up to now?” Mr. Musk said while holding a cup of coffee, looking at a pair of engineers that looked like they have seen a ghost.
“Yes sir, my colleague here needs to tell you something” Suzanne said while pushing Walter. He calmed a bit, having his best friend next to him helped, even if she was shooting daggers at him.
“Mr. Musk as you are awa-wa-ware we are in charge of programming the d-d-drives launched today, also to feed all the required information on the equipment”
“Yes I know, I hired you after all”
“W-w-well you see, I was not only working on t-t-that, but I also had my own p-p-project”
“I see, are you talking about the device that you are holding right now? It looks like one of the drives that should be on the capsules”
“Yes sir, I-I-I need to confess that I…” Suddenly an alarm goes off from the communicator from the Director’s desk signaling that there is a call coming in.
“Excuse me a moment this sounds important” he said pressing a button, a screen pops out of the wall with a worried looking, bearded man wearing glasses.
“Mr. Musk we got a problem,” he said while fixing his tie “one of the capsules malfunctioned and is now escaping Earth’s gravitational pull, is expected to be out of it in a few hours.”
“Which capsule was it, Is there a way to recover it?” Isaac said with an angry tone holding his own chin.
“It was the 100th capsule, there is no nearby ship able to recover it and preparing one would take a few days, we calculated its trajectory and we estimate it will be close enough to the moon and several other planets to be accelerated by them and then it’ll take around 10 and a half years to leave the solar system... But don’t worry sir, I already sent the order to begin a mission to recover it”
“Hold it!” said Isaac rubbing his mustache “I’m thinking on something, let’s treat this as a happy accident and make the best of it. Why don’t leave this capsule on it’s own and let it drift around the stars”
“But Mr. Musk”
“Aaron, it was one of one hundred capsules, all containing the same information, so even if we lose one or two the project would still be a great success, besides weren’t those capsules designed to be near indestructible and self maintained?
“Yes sir”
“And didn’t it have a computer able to reproduce all the files in a way that even a 5 year old could start it?”
“That’s also correct sir.
“Well, what if the capsule finds its way to another civilization, one from far beyond the stars and is able to teach them everything about us,” he said looking up and with arms wide open “wouldn’t that be wonderful?”
“Well if you put it that way then it actually sounds quite amazing Mr. Musk,” Aaron said while scratching his head “I guess I’ll call off the mission to recover it, we already lost contact with the capsule anyway so now we just have our estimates”
“Good, now let everything return to normal and let me know when the party to celebrate this accomplishment will begin, Isaac Musk out” he pressed the button cutting the call, now he directed his attention to the other two visitors he had to attend “So Walter, you were saying something about that drive on your hand?”
Walter snapped out of his daydream, seeing his boss so happy and outgoing, even when there was an error of this magnitude on the project made him feel that he could confess and still keep all his limbs “Oh yeah Mr. Musk I actually came to confess that bBGbagff” Walter tried to say when his mouth got suddenly closed by Suzanne’s hand.
“What he is trying to say is that he used an extra drive for one of his projects and didn’t reported it, but he feels bad about it and told me he will wipe out the drive he selfishly used and return it to the supply department,” Suzanne said while holding Walter’s mouth captive with her hand “Isn’t it? Walter you big goof... he says yes”
Isaac laughed and crossed his arms “Was that all? oh come on you know you can talk to me, is not like you put the wrong drive on one of the capsules right?” he laughed even more “Don’t worry about it, after all if it wasn’t for my programmers then the whole thing would be just a waste of time I say keep the drive and use as you need, now if that’s all I still have things to do, this 'happy accident' actually gave me an idea for our next project”
“Yes Mr. Musk” Suzanne said dragging Walter out of the office.
[a few minutes later]
“Suzy why didn’t you let me confess to Mr. musk? I swear he was in the best humor he ever had since he hired us! Now we both lied to him and we will probably get fired, no we will get thrown in jail or worse, he will have us disappear like those mob bosses on the old vids when they discover what we did!”
“Didn’t you listen you big monkey? One of the capsules malfunctioned and now we have lost contact with it! It was the freaking capsule that the drive you had was installed. There is absolutely no way in hell that they will discover what we did now. There must be someone watching over us I just know it… what was in that drive anyway?”
“Oh, well you see…”
“Please tell me it wasn’t porn, eww to think that an alien civilization will find it and will look at your disgusting fetishes, they'll probably come looking for earth and destroy us for defiling their civilization”
“What?! No, no way, it was music just music and some audio files of stuff I liked” Walter informed her waving his arms all over.
“Seriously? Why do you need a 5 zettabyte drive for music?”
“Heh, you know I love listening music and other stuff while I work, I put all the music humanity has done in it… or at least up until late 2020s you know, after that everything became trash… But whatever I’ll have to start all over and it took almost 3 days to complete it… by the way, you were with Armando right, you finally asked him out?”
Suzanne stepped back and blushed at the sudden question but since she was caught, there was nothing she could do about it “You won’t believe me if I tell you…”
[Years later, like between 10 and a gazillion years later, give or take]
Planet Equum, year 10XX A.S.
Princess Twilight was watching the stars through the telescope on her castle while taking notes, she has been following a meteoroid with a trajectory that put it in direct collision with the Planet Equum. She calculated that the size of this rock was enough to survive entering the atmosphere leaving a small rock for future analysis, luckily not big enough to pose a threat to anypony or anycreature, well unless it falls directly on their head. Twilight had marked on the calendar and a map the estimate day and location the meteorite would end up falling, with some margin of error, of course, it would be tonight, around the same place she and her friends enjoyed a meteor shower a few years ago, she was excited and couldn't wait for the meteor to fall, it would be the first time she will be able to participate in a recovery of a space object in quite a while.
“Spike?... Spike? SPIKE! Where are you?”
“In here just getting everything ready for our mission today, I can’t believe a meteor is falling right next to Ponyville”
“I know, I remember the last time I had the chance to recover space debris with dad and Shining, you were still too young to stay late, so you couldn’t go, I’m glad to have an opportunity like this to share the experience with you,” rubbing her hoof on Spike’s head “I just wish Shining and Starlight wouldn’t be so busy the entire week, I bet they’d love to join us” she said while dropping her ears and looking a bit sad for not having her brother share this event like in the past.
“Yeah but at least the girls will come, hey! I know what will make you feel better, going through the checklist for this evening.” He pulled a list and a quill ready to check everything.
“You know me too well Spike, ok let’s begin… Scrolls?”
“Check!”
“Quills?”
“Check!”
“Telescope”
“Check!”
“Helmets?”
“Security first, check!”
“A non burned edition of Astronomical Astronomer's Almanac to All Things Astronomy?”
“The big blue book on stars, moons, planets, the universe?”
“That one”
“Check!... you are never gonna let me forget about that one uh?”
“Nope. Pillows, blankets and snacks?”
“Check, check and deliciously check!”
“Well ok we got everything, let’s go already I don’t want to miss a thing”
They arrived with plenty of time to prepare the blankets and pillows and to set up the telescope, the rest of the mane 6 arrived shortly after and helped with the preparations. Everything was set when Twilight announced that the object could be seen near the horizon just as the sun was setting, everypony watched in awe the light-show of the space rock burning at the moment Pinkie started trembling.
"Pinkie darling are you cold?" Rarity Asked grabbing a blanket with her magic.
"NoOoOoOoOoOo" she stopped trembling "I think it's like last time A DOOZY" Pinkie said trembling again.
“Um Twilight… I reckon you said this was a space rock, right?” Applejack directed Twilight to the Telescope “‘cus that ‘rock’ looks mighty shinin’ to me to be a rock”
“What? Lemme see” Twilight looked through the telescope just to realize that just like applejack said, the ‘rock’ was too shiny to be a rock and that wasn’t all, since it wasn’t burning on the atmosphere at all, the size of it could actually damage wherever it landed “Oh no, this wasn’t supposed to happen, we need to stop it or at least slow it down, an impact of something that size could do major damage.
“Can’t you push it with your magic Twilight?”
“No Rainbow, it’s still too far from here, I need to go near it” She flew up directly to the burning chunk of shiny space stuff and rainbow flew next to her.
“Woa woa woa, don’t you think this is too dangerous? I mean I’m all up for an adrenaline rush but don’t you think this is unnecessary?, why don’t you just let it fall, it will fall on the outskirts of Ponyville anyway”
“Actually Rainbow, due to the added mass, there is a chance it will fall directly on Ponyville, I will not take that chance, I need to make sure it won’t hurt anypony, besides I’ve lifted bigger things already, how hard can this caravan sized chunk of metal flying at that tremendous speed be right? Hehe” she nervously laughed, she finally reached a distance where she could feel the object with her magic, she started channeling a spell to slow the shiny metal thing and was surprised it wasn’t as heavy as she estimate it must be hollow she thought, still, it was a huge effort to slow it down and redirect it somewhere it won’t cause any problems. It finally landed just near the Everfree Forest it made small crater and scared a lot of animals but luckily no creature was hurt in the process.
Twilight helped by Rainbow landed, you could see that she was sweating profusely due to the effort of trying her best so the object landed undamaged, she could say while maneuvering the item, that after the atmosphere burned all the rock that covered it, only a metal sphere remained, too perfectly round to be naturally made. She was a little skeptical but she would figure it out once she is able to check the sphere close and personal if her theory was right this could mean a big discovery.
“*pant* well if that wasn’t a doozy *pant* then I don’t know what it was *pant* Rainbow can you do me a favor and bring the others? I really don’t want to leave this here in the open for too long” Rainbow just saluted and flew to bring the others, in the meantime Twilight was really tired but was strong enough to go near the strange sphere to try to make heads or tails of it. As she sensed it, it was perfectly spherical shiny with some relieves that could probably be symbols of some sort. It didn’t take too long to bring the rest of the mane 6 and Spike to the landing zone and everypony was surprised of what fell from the sky.
“Ok what in the hay is that Twilight?” Applejack asked poking the strange metal construct with a stick.
Twilight quickly reacted pushing AJ’s stick with her tail while hugging the metal sphere “DON’T! I mean be careful I wouldn’t want to damage this thing”
Rainbow laughed at Twilight “Come on Twilight that thing fell from the sky, how could a stick damage it more than the fall?”
“I’m sorry is just that this huge sphere could mean a big deal on the scientific community, if I’m right this could mean that there are intelligent life out in space” you could notice how Twilight had stars in her eyes shining with happiness, at the idea of a discovery of this magnitude, she was even floating without flipping her wings. “Which takes me to our next step, I used a big deal of my magic saving this object”
“You mean saving Ponyville?” said Spike with crossed arms.
“Yeah that too, but what I need right now is help moving this to the castle where I’ll be able to study it thoroughly and methodically” she said in a sultry tone with hearts in her eyes and blushing profusely “countless hours of study, testing, trial and error, I can hardly wait!” everypony rolled her eyes and helped rolling the big ball of metal to the castle. The girls left for their houses and Twilight had Spike sent a letter to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, a response arrived the next day asking Twilight to keep her discoveries a secret until she is sure the 'thing' is safe and to not push herself too hard like she tends to do, Twilight was excited for the prospect of learning about aliens and she didn’t have to wait long for answers to this enigma.
To be continued
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need more my friend ps its good
9704620
I'm glad you like it.
This story is good, my mind that has been possessed by any and all music loves the concept here.
But here’s some constructive criticism before I risk another Airship Mauled, you have tons of punctuation errors. I did get through a fair few chapters on Airship Mauled, so I will continue reading this, but I just wanted to let you know.
9733281
Yeah I tried, the dude who was supposed to proof read this bailed out and haven't gotten anyone to replace him, English is not my main language so I struggle a little bit with punctuation, hopefuly I can find somebody to assist me soon.
9733281
Is Airship Mauled any good? I see it still being updated since I saw the first chapter a looooooooooonnngg time ago when it first came up.
10040120
Personally I have no idea, I've been trying to catch up with the fics I want to read but between work, gaming, house shores and writing on this fic, I don't have much time for anything else.
Not sure what's going on but I respect that Walter somehow managed to collect 5 zetatbytes of music
10901337
Well it's the future, so at this point it's not that hard, just takes time... a long time.
This should not be one sentence, Twilight would have a heart attack or at least fall unconscious due to lack of oxygen.