2 - Contact
Radiant was floating in a silent lake as smooth as glass, with just her thoughts for company. She drifted under the moonless sky, the polished surface of water flawlessly reflecting the streaks of the galaxy, Ifing and its stars hanging over her head.
The water was warm and comforting, not unlike a favourite quilt one would snuggle under on a cold day. Radiant purred in content, drifting aimlessly under the backdrop of the night sky. She felt like a filly again, counting the stars in Luna's sky and trying to puzzle out the size of the infinite universe by herself.
Of course, being a full grown mare meant that she now possessed the mental faculties to understand the definition of infinity. That didn't stop her from humouring her foalhood memories and wondering just how many planets were out there in the lonely void harbouring life just waiting to be discovered.
Radiant stretched lazily, watching in fascination as the movement distorted the copy of the galaxy in the water. Ripples bounced into each other and grew in intensity until they formed into waves.
Beep.
She gasped as the water turned into an icy, oily sludge, growing thicker in consistency and chilled her to her core. It was harder for her to float now. Radiant tried to tread water, managing only a few feeble kicks before her limbs started to become weighed down by the slime.
Beep.
The waves crashed into her body and dragged her under the waterline. She coughed, her lungs hungrily sucking in air that was no longer there and gulped down more of the goop in her panic. Radiant struggled against the liquid, kicking and paddling in vain in a desperate attempt to make for the waterline.
Beep.
But the forces at play were too strong and not even a seapony could fight against conditions like this. Without her connection to the earth, a frail earth pony like herself was quickly wearing out. Panic flashed across her eyes as she sunk to the bottom of the riverbed, mercilessly raked across its coarse surface by the currents.
Beep.
A bright light engulfed her and she screamed in silence as it burnt away at her very essence, stopping only when nothing but pure consciousness remained. She drifted in agony, her bodiless form drifting in a bright void of jabbering voices that she didn’t understand.
And then the world went black again.
Beep. Beep.
Radiant stirred in her bed, feeling her senses return sluggishly to her brain as whatever sedatives in her body wore off. She knew that much, having become familiar with the loopy sensation more than she world have liked over the years.
The loud beeping noise beside her bed made her wince, but her limbs were still too heavy for her to move. She groaned at the thought of being made to listen to the shrill noise coming from the devilish device.
Other than that stupid device cheerfully reporting that yes, she was very much still alive, the room was oddly silent. Radiant couldn't hear any of the hustle and bustle that was a staple of the busier hospitals she had been admitted to. Too bad that didn't result in somepony coming to switch the irritating thing off.
The mare blinked, slowly taking in her surroundings. It looked strangely utilitarian, lacking the overly cheerful decor that had been plastered in so many of the wardrooms she had been in. The only hint of any attempt at decorating the drab environment were the walls, painted in a shade of inoffensive green.
Whatever empty space in the room was taken up by various carts that surrounded her bed, crammed with medical odds and ends that were probably related to whatever procedure the doctors used to revive her from her stasis. She didnt recognize much, except that they all seemed to be made of a matte white material.
Stasis. The mental fog in Radiant's head slowly cleared, returning a steady trickle of memories to her mind. She remembered volunteering to be turned into stone for the voyage to the Arion probe's origin system.
She also remembered that realistically speaking, Startrotter hadn’t expected for them to make the trip. The speed of the Trailblazer, combined with the vast distances involved meant that it would have taken close to four million years to make the trip.
The official plan was to send a craft to haul them home when ponykind had mastered space travel. How so was unclear to Radiant - the specifics were lost on her, except that there was a rather wealthy benefactor sponsoring the whole endeavour.
Personally, Radiant felt that the entire endeavour was rather hare-brained. Why waste their resources on something that amounted to a very expensive publicity campaign instead of actual research? After the hype of the moon landing, shouldn't they have focused on something more attainable like getting ponies in orbit around the gas giant Jotun or landing on Vanir?
She squirmed in her bed, shifting the weight on her spine to a more comfortable position. To be honest, all she wanted was a way to go to space. She couldn't have cared less about the theory, and the prospect of actually making the trip was miniscule.
Radiant shivered, casting a glance at the rather impressive window beside her bed. What if she had actually made the trip?
She shuddered involuntarily, the fever dream of being chased by oversized apes surfacing from the depths of her groggy mind. It had felt real enough, the very real sensation of fear and choking on some kind of foul tasting goop forming a pit in her stomach.
On the other hoof, she did have her fair share of sedative induced delirium over the years. She once saw shapes in the shadows for nearly a week before the doctors figured that she was allergic to whatever herbal treatment they tried on her. It wasn't a fun experience.
A soft knock at the door snapped the mare out of her reverie. “Please, enter!” Radiant croaked with vocal chords that didn’t work quite right, waiting impatiently for the attendant to step through the door. “Miss, could you be so kind as to turn th-”
She didn't quite manage to finish the sentence as she found herself face to face with the creature from the images carried by the Arion probe. It stood in the room, silently staring at her with beady eyes that looked way too small for it, no, her - Radiant glanced at its chest. She was sure of that at least - to see with.
The being was clutching a plane of glass with her claw like digits. Radiant watched in fascination as she brushed the flowy, auburn mane that ended at her shoulders with the other appendage. Radiant thought that it complimented her coat, no, skin? Rather nicely.
For what it's worth, knowing that the smartest ponies in Equestria were wrong brought some comfort to Radiant. She has suspected that it was rather far fetched when the scientists told her about the gelatinous membrane theory during the briefing, but she kept her trap shut on the off case that they used her objections as an excuse to have her booted off the program.
Either way, she was at a loss for what to do. Her heartbeat was starting to drown out the silence in the room. She gulped. Do I introduce myself? Offer peace? Where was that changeling when you needed him?
“Good afternoon, I’m Doctor Moriah.” The alien mare spoke. It sounded foreign, and there was no way that Radiant should have been able to understand what she was saying. But the universe seemed fully intent on screwing with her today, and she was able to comprehend every syllable flawlessly. It was disorientating to say the least, and she was starting to find it getting harder to breathe. Don’tpanicdon’tpanicdon’tpanic.
“Do you understand me?” Doctor Moriah asked in a tone that vaguely reminded Radiant of an adult patiently trying to get a newborn foal to speak. It would have been hilarious if the situation wasn’t so different.
“I... I… yes.” She replied, her eyes widening at the realization that she was replying in the same language that the doctor was using.
The feeling was akin to somepony dumping an entire library's worth of knowledge into her mind, kept that information hidden deep inside her brain under lock and key and only revealed it to her just now.
Radiant was no linguist, but it sounded like she was speaking the language just as fluently. “I-I’m R-radiant Dawn.”
“That’s good, Miss Radiant. I see that the sedatives are wearing off nicely. How are you feeling today?”
“U-uncomfortable. My skin’s itching all over a-and my entire body feels sore.” Radiant stammered, taken aback by the casualness of it all. “W-where am I?”
“Well miss, I can assure you that those are simply a normal side effect of the procedures we did." The doctor said, tapping at the glass. To Radiant’s surprise, the object lit up with the ghostly outlines of a document of some kind. She couldn’t make heads or tails out of what was written on it though.
"Do you remember anything from before you were in here?”
“I don’t... T-there was a nightmare… I was… dying? That isn’t terribly helpful, sorry. I’m always dying. And there were… monsters, golems trying to...” Radiant blinked, faintly aware that the beeping in the background was increasing in tempo. "Drown me. I think they managed to."
"That was the Biofabricator. Normally, you'd be unconscious for the procedure but we couldn't risk it with your… physique." Doctor Moriah pulled up a chair and sat down on it beside her bed. “and those were our people in hazard suits. I’m sorry if they scared you, but it was a necessary precaution. We needed to keep the Biofab room clean from any pathogens they might have been carrying.”
Radiant blinked. Hazard suits were mostly antiquated on Equus now, having been replaced by thaumic harnesses that did the same. The rest of what Moriah said was lost on her - she could understand what was being said, but the words were meaningless to her. “Biofab? People? What are those?”
Even if she did understand what a biofabricator was, she wasn’t prepared for any of this. She wasn’t trained for first contact and she was a cripple at best, Celestia be damned!
They had said that Project Trailblazer was supposed to be a PR stunt to garner support for the space program! The trip to the Arion homeworld alone would have taken all eternity.
Did that mean ponykind was no more?
The mere thought of it made her sick.
The doctor didn’t answer her questions straight away. Instead, she seemed perfectly content with reading whatever was on that slab of enchanted glass.
“Well, people are how we humans refer to ourselves.” She finally said, placing that strange claw like appendage on her chest - it reminded Radiant of a monkey’s hand, albeit less hairy.
“Humans? Is that what you call yourselves?” The mare croaked. “That’s… good to know. We were never quite able to translate what you were saying in the disc the Arion probe carried.”
“Ah… Right. Well, Miss Radiant, if you don’t mind me asking, how did your people discover Voyager 2? It wasn’t supposed to cross the nearest star in over two hundred thousand years.” More tapping on that piece of glass.
“The Arion probe?” Radiant frowned. The ‘human’ still scared her, but the interesting tidbit Moriah had thrown piqued her interest. “You mean it’s not even two hundred thousand years old?! We thought that it was ancient!” There was no way in Equestria that they could have just teleported over here - not even the princesses had that much energy to send them across thousands of light years!
“Wait.” Radiant’s mind ground to a screeching halt. This conversation was getting increasingly one sided, with Moriah doing the same roundabout questioning the physicians back home liked to do whenever they had bad news to deliver.
This was going to end now. “Doctor, you still haven't explained to me why I can understand you. What exactly is a "Biofab"? We didn't have anything like that back home.”
“Well uh…” The doctor shifted in her coat, looking almost evasive as she turned her attention to that stupid sheet of enchanted glass.
Just what was she tapping at? Radiant couldn't see any buttons on the artifact. Some kind of mind magic perhaps?
She waited and waited until an uneasy silence hung over them, broken only by the infernal beeping of the heartbeat monitor. Radiant steamed in her bed as she waited for her reply, mustering every ounce of patience in her body to wait.
She couldnt. It didn't help just how itchy and irritated her body felt. Was her fur supposed to feel this rough? She dragged her hooves under the covers, having half a mind to smack the strange device out of Moriah's grip.
“I don’t mean to be rude, doctor, but hello?” Radiant pried, hauling her way too heavy hooves out of the blanket and waved at the human.
She blinked.
Her hooves.
A perfect replica of the human's claws greeted her from under the sheets, finally understanding why her body felt so strange.
“OH CELESTIA WHAT THE BUCK!” Radiant screamed, throwing off the covers with newfound strength. She screamed as it unveiled a body that was most definitely not hers. She didn’t stop screaming as the claw-like-finger-things twitched, sending a torrent of sensation that her brain didn’t know how to process.
Her body might have been hidden underneath a hospital gown but it was clear through the openings that her once bright yellow coat was replaced by furless skin that was a gut wrenching shade of pink.
There was no sight of her two tone tail anywhere between her abnormally long hind legs that now ended in stumpy little knobs of flesh. Worst still were her forelegs. They didn't look as bad on Moriah, but things were different when it was her hooves being replaced with the sniewy things. It looked like somepony had decided to graft spider legs onto her hooves.
How she didn’t notice the changes until now eluded her.
She felt sick.
She didn't fight as Moriah eased her shivering form back onto the mattress, unable to break her gaze from her new body. It felt so unreal, but the sensations coming from them kept her painfully aware of the truth. "What the hell did you do?! T-they look like spiders!" She wailed, holding up the disgusting looking things in the air.
Moriah flinched. "We’re… I'm sorry. We would have asked, but given the circumstances we had to act quickly." Moriah said, her voice soft and gentle. "The electronics in your ship were badly damaged when we recovered it from orbit. It took us longer than expected just to get it working and our previous… tests showed that your cells would have started to degenerate as soon as the reverse process took effect. You would have died, Radiant."
"So you just decided to turn me into some freak without asking?! Just how stupid are you people?" Radiant snapped, slamming her… hand against the railing. It hurt, but it felt good. “Have you ever considered what the ponies back home would think of me when I go back looking like this?”
"Miss, please! You were dying! We took a big enough risk with the Biofab and Neuroflash just to save you! There was no knowing what side effects your body might have experienced with the nanites!" Moriah raised her hands in a gesture that was lost on Radiant. "We tried to salvage what we could of your body, but we didn't have enough data to work with!"
Radiant growled at the blurry figure in her vision. Nanites? What the hell were those? "Don’t you go hiding behind your mumbo crap and expect me to understand! I don't care if I died! You could have tried to tell me before you started chasing me down!” The mare yelled, hot trails of tears running down her cheeks. Part of her wished that she could strangle the doctor here and now, peaceful contact be damned. They could have at least tried.
“I’m sorry miss! We tried to save your original body, but your cells were dying off too quickly. We would have fabricated one that was your species but we lacked the data needed! The nanites can’t ” Doctor Moriah’s calm demeanor was a stark contrast to the teary eyed human’s whimpers.
Part of it irked Radiant. She wanted the doctor to yell at her and call her an idiot, that she could have been left to die just so she had a reason to scream back at Moriah. It was terribly frustrating for her to be given none of that.
“You can get through this Radiant.” She felt the doctor’s hand rest on her shoulder. Moriah had probably wanted to comfort her with the gesture, but all it did was make her feel cold and distant. “We already have the best therapists on standby for you. When you’re feeling up for it, maybe I can introduce you to some of my friends. You’l-”
Radiant had enough. Therapy? They crammed me into this stupid body and they expect me to get past this with theraphy?!
“GET OUT!” Radiant slapped her hand away. She hadn’t managed to figure out how this stupid body worked, but at least her forelegs still felt like forelegs.
“Miss!”
“OUT!” Radiant shouted until she saw stars. She had enough of the doctor and her myriad of excuses. All she wanted right now was to be left alone.
"At least let me sho-"
"OUT!" Radiant smacked the railings again, fresh trails of tears flowing down her face. It was foalish of her to be behaving like this, but Radiant didn't care. If they crammed her into this hell of a body without asking, then they would have to deal with the consequences. Whoever they were.
Moriah sighed in defeat, finally putting that glass of hers away. At least the doctors on this world knew when to drop their case. "Please, let the nurses know if you ever decide to change your mind."
Radiant turned away, not wanting to look at the human in the eye. She sniffled, letting the tears flow down her cheeks as the door shut behind her with a resounding click.
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This is why earth astronauts go through a psychological screening.
love the responses to finding out hope it dose not get glossed over looking forward to next chapter
9988218
this is why you done change peoples/ponys species without asking she handled it better then i would have
9988218
To be fair, I don't think "how to react if you encounter an alien species that, for benign reasons, changes you to their own species" is covered in either the psychological screening or the following astronaut training.
I wonder if Radiant still has her magic. That'd be another big loss.
While I preferred she stayed a pony, I'm very interested to see where this goes. Xd
I said whoever disliked this story, your mom's a hoe
There is a Grammer error but beyond that great work
Ah, the good ol' inverse of the HIE trope where the protagonist becomes a pony. Haven't seen this one in a while. I look forward to finding out what you do with this!
9988225
Pff. Sudden species change is a constant danger of just living in Equestria.
9988281
only if you are friends with a over powered unicorn
9988283
Discord, poison joke, turn-into-a-tree disease, Celestia knows what all else?
9988283
Trees, Poison Joke, Discord...
9988300
9988301
ok if you dont live in fucking Ponyville poison joke only grows in the Everfree trees and far a i can tell only Everfree and discord i cant remember him changing anyone form in cannon, even so if you live any ware away from Ponyville you dont deal with that crap
look all i am saying is, losing what you are is a huge deal all of the ways you said can be reversed unless she is very lucky she will be a human forever one of the monsters that stole her body from her think how she must feel for fucks sake i hope they put a suicide watch on her because i can really see someone taking there life in her situation the nightmares of drowning are real her body stolen facing death she is doing very well considering
9988283
9988300
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9988313
Or take a trip to visit Mr. Aris....
And there, not only do you get turned into a half-dolphin-thing, but you also get the dubious pleasurable experience of breathing liquids, just like Radiant got to
9988218
Is there ANY official protocol for coming across an alien species?
9988242
To the two people who disliked this story, both your mothers are Hamsters and your fathers smell of elderberries
I suspect there is a currently unknown wormhole whose ends are just past the heliosphere of the Sol system and the heliosphere of Equestria's planetary system.
No surprise, really. The doctor handled this poorly, unfortunately. Radiant's reaction was entirely predictable, considering her situation.... but under such circumstances, emotions will be running too high and shock / pain are way too fresh for rationality or argumentation to mean a damn thing. She doesn't want to understand, she doesn't want to be comforted, she wants to cry and rage.... which, again, is frankly ENTIRELY understandable.
When someone breaks a leg - and I mean, snaps the damned bone completely in half - then all the calm assurances in the world aren't going to do any good. The pain is too fresh, too overwhelming for anything else to matter. The mind and body need time, above and beyond all else, to come to grips. Don't deny anything, don't justify anything, don't refute anything, don't offer a "bright side." And when they inevitably want time and space, GIVE IT TO THEM. The only thing that's going to get them back in a talking mood is time to process what they just experienced.
So.... all things considered, it went pretty well. The doctor messed up, but not badly.
9988455
Yes, actually.
Most of it boils down to:
If not in charge, contact someone who is and keep everything put.
If in charge, get someone higher up in charge and keep everything put.
Repeat until you get to the president.
Well... buck.
I'm more or less used to humans turning into ponies in fanfics, but I can't say the same for the reverse.
Anyway, I expect that the humans did this as a last resort measure to save Radiant's life, but that won't be much consolation for Radiant. Having your body changed like that without your explicit consent will feel like a very blatant violation of her fundamental rights and bodily integrity.
Hey, but this is, in a way, good news, right? Once you do have enough data on ponies, you can turn her back! Best case scenario, the data's on the pony ship is sufficient. Even if that's not enough, well, she has a changeling crewmate, doesn't she?
Worst case scenario, make contact proper with Equestria, so that you can gather the data from other ponies.
Well, an entirely understandable reaction. Logic like "they saved my life..." is puny in the mind when one is faced with extreme emotions.
9988704
So the golden rule of extraterrestrial contact is "call the Commander in Chief"?
9988704
I'm sure every nation has a similar protocol... I'd hope they'd default to the UN, giving them an actual advantage over individual nations for a change.
9988266
Good catch! 😖
Probably would have been helpful to tell her they can probably change her back once they find Equestria
9988970
Unlikely. While it is supported by multi-national effort and is technically independent, NASA is, in the end, a United States agency.
I liked how this version she was a bit more coherent and 'first contact' was more softly done. Still wish they had both been...better at it. Radiant freaking out at form and all, but then super advanced aliens so might want to give SOME sort of introduction that was prepared even if it was rote and decided by committee before she got in the spacecraft. More wonder at meeting aliens too, even if yeah she is one for whatever medical reason. Could have just used her being a tad more professional before breaking down is all regardless of circumstances being very stressful true. Other then that really do like that you're expanding this and hope to see more soon.
9988811
Rather, pass the buck till you can't any more lol
There are more specific protocols for specific agencies, such as NASA discovering via telescope or other detection methods, discovering via crashed landing (render aid, quarantine, call president).
But in general, yeah it boils down to "this is above my pay grade" until you run out of pay grades
9989384
Is the lack of direction due to the fact that it would be impossible to communicate with beings who have a far different biology, culture, technology, and philosophy than others?
9989425
Not really.
It's more because this would be a Black Swan event, or as close to one as we could imagine.
There isn't a super concrete procedure because nothing like this has ever happened before. So it ends up as a more general set of actions while "experts" get the chance to figure out something.
And it would be doubtful that language and culture would be a problem. The earth is a rather small target to crash land on accidentally. So we would have been studied for a while before any form of contact would occur, even if the first contact was accidental in nature.
If you want to learn more about this stuff Isaac Arthur on YouTube has a good first contact series for different circumstances in which first contact could be made.
9989440
So basically, humanity discovering aliens would be like humanity discovering an entire world of magic hidden from us: there is simply no precedent for dealing with this. Not even Henry Kissinger, Otto von Bismarck, or Metternich COMBINED would be able to properly negotiate with aliens.
By contrast, your saying an alien civilization is so advanced, its technological advancement means it already has a generally good of idea of human norms.
I think that is called the "zoo hypothesis". It represents the best-case scenario about aliens: that they've not only achieved technological supremacy, but are incredibly peaceful, and have chosen to protect and observe human beings until we can rise to their heights.
9989489
Well, it's not a matter of being so advanced that they know us. Rather all it would take is a simple remote observation post listening in on our broadcasts would be sufficient. A single twenty four hour channel would supply thousands of phrases per day to analyse. Add in all the other channels for all the countries on earth and you would have a massive sample of customs and norms available to parse.
Secondly, what could we have to bargain with? Any space faring race would have needs so far removed from our capabilities that we would have no way to provide them.
Raw materials? They can grab it from any other planet without bothering with locals.
Water? The gas giants have more then we could ever provide.
Additionally, we couldn't stop them from just taking anything. We have no leverage. Any power supply capable of powering interstellar travel would supply enough power to destroy continents.
Here is a link to a video about first contact situations. It's kinda long but worth a listen. Isaac has a speech impediment that makes him talk like Elmer Fudd, but once you acclimate it's hardly noticeable.
9989528
Could there be an interstellar civilization that could be summed up as "Space Fascists?"
A society that knowingly engages and destroys planets out of some jingoistic ideology. They believe in survival of the fittest, and they'll strangle young civilizations in their cradle?
9989546
Yes. If nothing else but to maximize resources for themselves.
Or they might do it without malice even in the case of a rouge paperclip maximizer.
9989629
The paperclip scenario is a strange one: it imagines humanity being destroyed by stupidity, not malice.
9988455
The international consensus is that if we were to receive a communication from extraterrestrials, we will not respond. In the words of sci-fi authors Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski:
9989862
So, the rule is "don't talk to strangers?"
9989933
More or less.
9989980
That was the moral of the Jimmy Neutron movie, believe it or not.
This is really promising! You’re a great writer, and I can’t wait to see where you take this.
Well it's January 30th of 2020, and I'm really hoping this excellent story continues.
R u ok?
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Hello, yes! I am perfectly fine. Ran into a few snags here and there thanks to life, but I'm still working on the story!
10060975
Well if you have hit any roadblocks in the story feel free to ask for help. If you want to that is.
After reading the second installment, I was thinking of ideas on how to explain both the human, and equestrian ships moving between the Stars, much much faster than any being anticipated.
Was the scene of Radiant Dawn in the river a dream?
I like the gradual introduction to all these sci-fi concepts, and how you dropped characterisation between them. This reminds me Eva by Peter Dickinson, which is about a girl who has her mind copied into a chimpanzee (it sounds scientific if you don't think about it!) to save her from a coma, but it turns out the scientists have an ulterior motive.