First Contact? (Outdated)
Nobody moved.
Steffan stared at Amanda, who in turn stared at the alien, who in turn- well, stared back at her.
Looking at it, the explorer could see no trace of fear in the alien's eyes like expected- only curiosity and confusion, which were both understandable. She had no idea what to do, though- and apparently neither did the doctor, because he was also rooted to the spot, mouth catching flies.
Then the alien did something nobody expected: it gave a little smile, and waved.
Despite herself, Amanda giggled and waved back. She then tried a long shot. Foolish, perhaps, but worth a try at least.
"Can you understand us?"
The horse's vacant look, tilt of head, twitching of ear and lack of answer was deafening.
Then it made a little 'o' with its mouth, and shook its head. At first Amanda thought they'd met the sassiest alien in history, but then realized: it was intelligent enough to recognize the intent of the words and question, even if it didn't comprehend them literally.
That was both exciting and terrifying.
Apparently the alien thought Amanda had the right idea, because it then spoke in what she could only assume was its own language. It tilted its head again, waiting for a response.
Amanda shook her head, hoping it would get the message.
It did. It made- was that a scrunchy face and raspberry? -and spoke a few more times, but each time sounding... different.
It was trying different languages.
Picking up on this, Amanda shook her head to each one- they all sounded like complete gibberish, not even close to any human language she'd heard of. She had the feeling even dead ones wouldn't be remotely relatable.
She herself tried the multi-language approach: Porteguese, German, Mandarin, Japanese- none of them seemed to attract more than a blank look or shaking head from the horse.
It scrunched its face again. Then a figurative lightbulb seemed to go off above its head, because it hopped off the countertop, and headed for a pen stuck in Steffan's pocket. The doctor recoiled slightly at its approach, but didn't do anything physical. The horse tapped the pen, then made little... writing motions with its hooves, then tilted its head at Steffan.
He looked at Amanda and nodded. "Grab the whiteboard and marker pack."
She mock saluted, and rushed out.
-----
While the explorer headed out for makeshift communication supplies, Steffan and the horse sat across from each other on the floor, each analyzing every inch of the other.
Steffan honestly couldn't make out any aggression or even fear in the alien's body language- it didn't shiver, sat confidently and close (maybe too close), and didn't seem to search for any sort of weapon. It just... sat and looked at him.
It almost had the shine of a hyperactive child in its eyes- Steffan had a hunch the only reason he wasn't being bombarded with questions was because they couldn't understand each other. Not yet, anyway.
The horse also looked around the medbay, taking particular interest in the medical instruments it saw, like drills, scalpels and the stapler. It seemed almost familiar with them- like it had seen the objects before. Steffan supposed it might be possible. After all, many animals of different builds and biology on Earth could have common health issues.
He also rethought the extraterrestrial microbes threat, and remembered that was false. Alien biology was so different from human, the chances of diseases carrying over were astronomical- literally.
Of course, that was theoretical- it wasn't impossible that the horse and Steffan might transfer illnesses, however unlikely.
The horse suddenly stood up, and stepped to the doctor's side, seeming to look over his- fingers? He held them up for it, and the horse grinned and clapped its hooves. It held proper research etiquette, however- it didn't touch him at all, only peering at his hand from a respectable distance.
Deciding to be courteous, he removed a boot, allowing it to look at his bare foot. The sheer energy and interest of the horse alien was almost infectious- he could feel a smile forcing itself onto his face. He'd never expected an alien to be so... friendly. It was almost magical.
Wondering if the alien would reciprocate, he decided to mime out his request best he could, pointing at himself, then his hand, then it, then finally its horn and wings. It seemed to understand, because it sat down again, extending both wings.
Steffan stood up, examining its horn and wings, along with the mark on its rear. He of course respected its space, not touching- that would be rude and likely dangerous on many levels.
The horn seemed real enough- he couldn't see any signs of it being some kind of accessory, though he admittedly wasn't an expert. Its use was likely for self-defense, though if that were the case, he expected it to have two or more, and for it to be larger. It also seemed... blunt, more like a spoon than anything evolved to stab.
The wings also seemed real- he could see each individual feather. It seemed highly unlikely it could fly; he didn't know how much the horse weighed, but considering it was up to his neck when on all fours, it had to be approaching Earth equine weights, right? The wings may have been obsolete, but then why so big? Perhaps the Martian gravity allowed it to fly- he could see no other explanation for it.
The mark seemed like a tattoo, but then he realized- it wasn't on the skin, otherwise the fur would've muddled it. It seemed to almost... hover over the rear, like a hologram. And when he neared it, he felt a strange tingling in his chest. He decided not to mess with it.
Miss Chorol returned with the whiteboard. She had to adjust its height slightly, and set the opened marker box on the floor. In case the alien didn't know what markers were, she opened and capped it a couple times for reference.
The horse nodded, and approached the box of writing utensils. A purple glow appeared around its h-
Pain.
Agony erupted in Steffan's skull, his brain, his mind. He collapsed onto the floor, not even able to scream through sheer suffering- merely whimpering. He clutched at his face and cranium, trying to claw whatever nightmare abomination had drilled into him. His eyes slammed shut, tears flooding. He was sure, convinced, certain he would-
Then it stopped, as instantly as it had appeared.
Steffan slowly opened his eyes. The pain had vanished utterly and without a trace. He turned to Miss Chorol- she was sitting up from the fetal position, telling him he wasn't the only victim.
They slowly looked at the alien.
It was in hysterics. Tears gushed from it, and it was definitely blubbering what Steffan assumed to be apologies in its language. It slammed its head onto the floor- begging for forgiveness?
Steffan looked at Chorol, who rubbed the back of her head, staring at the mess of a horse alien. She thought.
Then she nodded to the doctor, giving a thumbs up.
He kneeled before the alien, tapping it on the shoulder(?). It looked up, face red and snotted up.
He used soothing words- both because he believed the alien truly didn't intend whatever happened, and because he didn't want it to happen again.
It eventually calmed down, still spewing forth presumed apologies and still sniffling, but it looked at the marker box again.
This time, it elected to pop off a marker cap with a hoof- somehow -and grabbed one end in... its teeth.
Steffan decided never to touch that marker again.
It then scribbled a whole mess onto the whiteboard, at a pace The Flash would be jealous of.
-----
Amanda was shocked at how much the horse drew in so little time.
Gazing over the board, she could see four main points of interest: a simple drawing of the horse itself and- was that a female gender sign? That was... slightly concerning, but at least they knew what it- she, was, at least presumably.
The drawing also had a couple more bits under it- a half circle on top of a line, and stars scattered around a little 'kaboom' symbol.
Amanda looked at it for a minute, thinking. Then she turned to Steffan. "Is that its name?" She pointed to the lower drawings.
He put a fist to his chin. "Perhaps. I suppose it could be a descriptor of itself in some way, but if I were an alien introducing myself to those behind a language barrier, I wouldn't use terms or symbols for things only I had. That would be confusing."
Amanda looked at the symbols again. "It looks like a sunset or sunrise, and... shining? A sparkle, or glimmer, or something?"
Steffan shrugged. "Let's stick with 'Sunset Glimmer'. I don't have better ideas." Amanda gave a thumbs up.
She then looked over the other three scribbles.
One was a very rough sketch of Steffan and Amanda. Directly under them, there were two question marks.
Right where the sunset and glimmer were for the alien.
"It wants our names, or a descriptor, perhaps?" Steffan crossed his arms.
"But how do we... do that? I mean, I'm almost certain that we did not interpret its name correctly, assuming it even was a name."
"Hmm... we could use... fruit, for simplicity?"
"What if the fruit don't exist- or didn't exist -when and where it came from?"
"Good point. Well, we found those buried artifacts- an alarm clock and a shovel. Maybe those?"
"Better than what I would've said." Amanda wiped off the question marks- using the proper eraser, of course -and put down the said markings; shovel for herself, alarm clock for Steffan. She thought it made more sense.
Somehow.
The horse, 'Sunset Glimmer', seemed to be perfectly fine with that, because it grinned and clapped its hooves.
Another drawing was... a globe, an arrow pointing to it, and a question mark.
"Is it- she asking where she is?"
"I... would assume so, but we don't have a method of explaining that in drawing, I believe."
Both Amanda and Steffan turned to Sunset, pointed at the globe, and shrugged.
The horse made a scrunchy face.
Lastly was a completely straight row of symbols. They were placed side by side, and looked almost... almost...
Steffan's eyes widened. "Is that an alphabet?"
Of course! Sunset must've been hoping that, if they couldn't speak with each other, perhaps they could somehow get across using writing.
Unfortunately, Amanda didn't recognize anything in that alphabet, and she assumed Steffan didn't either. Seeing him frown from the corner of her eye, she was right.
But she did have an idea.
She put a hand out in front of Sunset, gesturing for the marker. The alien understood, dropping it into Amanda's hand. Steffan gagged, but she didn't care about Martian horse spit- that wasn't a concern right now.
She quickly wrote out the letter alphabet in English, directly underneath Sunset's. She elected not to use punctuation or the like- that would be needless for now.
She looked back to see if she was right. Judging by how Sunset was beaming, eyes twinkling, she guessed so.
So... now what? It was still nighttime, they still couldn't really communicate...
Sunset put a hoof to her chin, then looked at the doorway out the infirmary. She then looked at Amanda, pointing a foreleg at the doorway, and tilting her head.
Amanda decided it couldn't go that badly, and waved the alien along, stepping out the door. Sunset followed along, with Steffan trailing, a look of both interest and annoyance on his face.
-----
Sunset seemed to take in information like a sponge; she very quickly learned how a water fountain worked, could open doors with a hoof with only a moment of practice, recognized light switches immediately, and overall seemed to pick up on new things insanely fast.
Amanda had to admit, she was jealous- she could count the amount of people alive with that intellect on one hand.
They'd stepped through the kitchen, where Sunset 'o'ed at the linoleum flooring; Bio, where Amanda immediately promised herself never to get between Sunset's manic smile and that room; the drone control, where the alien seemed to heavily restrain itself not to disassemble everything...
Then the library.
Amanda would never recover.
As they passed by the entrance to the dorms, Amanda's head was in mist. It was so strange- Sunset seemed far more human than even possible, her mannerisms reminding the explorer more of an energetic brainchild than any superadvanced, sagelike ancient society. It was both comforting and confusing- the former because it meant Amanda (and humans in general) could relate to Sunset far more easily, but the latter because... she was an alien horse who acted and even sounded like a human.
Amanda was so caught up in her thoughts, she didn't notice Sunset had gone through the door to the dorms. She jerked awake, and was about to chew out Steffan for not stopping her-
The doctor was nowhere to be seen.
Amanda facepalmed, and dashed as silently as she could into the dorm hall. She could only hope Sunset hadn't woken anybody up. Especially-
"What the f- there's a damn xenomorph in my room!"
Terrific. Omega was awake.
Can you guess I like Twilight? 
I'd like to think I've portrayed her well so far from a foreign perspective, but I could be wrong.
Correction on the last A/N:
This is still definitely going to be my longest story by far, but 10k was a drastic underestimation. It'll be closer to 50k, maybe more. That epilogue chapter is still planned, but it's certainly a ways off now.
On a side note, I actually took the time to outline the entire fic! This marks the first time I actually planned a story, as opposed to just winging it. Hope it helps.
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At least this kind of xenomorph will only latch onto you to hug you.
10954547
A facehugger if you like.
Ahhh, language barriers! As far as 'where they are', the solar system probably hasn't changed tooo dramatically from Twilight's time. Drawing the sun and small circles for mercury etc - with a larger one for jupiter - would probably be enough to give her some indication that, yes, she's still on "mars" - and humans came from earth.
Still, the horror of the situation has yet to set in. She probably thinks that humans are some evolution of - idk, dragons, diamond dogs? - who survived, and are moving to collect the survivors. The sheer time she's been in stasis... She'd have no idea.
10954547
Gahahaha! News is definitely gonna travel quick...
10954547
Truly a terrifying beast of ferocity and power.
10954576
Knowing Twilight, she either realized immediately and has kept herself distracted to not freak out, or will only realize it when it's extremely blatant.
"What kind of horrific climate catastrophe caused your arms to shrink so much, lose your claws, and replace scales with skin? Did Pinkie Pie find the dev console again?"
I appreciate that you are showing how some times bad thing's happen. And no one is really to blame and I am on board for the realization for dear Twilight. I hope you really flesh out the horror of it. And that she can feel the horror of it.
I mean what is the correct response to that.
Also...and a thought...I kind of imagine at times she may find herself unknowingly cold to her new...allies? After all it must have been a million's of year's to that end. It seem's resonable that she would find herself depressed even if she wants to know what happen's, ya?
Further, you could have the sunset trigger memory's of her friend and that could lead to a realization on what happen's?
10954593
I do not know who this "Twilight" is. Mayhaps you be referring to Sunset Glimmer?
Twi will definitely have a... response to being the apparent only survivor of Equestria.
10954601
Ah, I see. Makes one wonder what happened to all the other's if she was left there...or did they themselves evolve.
Oh, and, Congrat's on making your first outline!
I'm not sure I agree with the alien microbes thing. It significantly depends on the type of pathogen. If it's looking for a particular protein or cell, they're probably safe, but a disease looking for something more basic could be a worry. Viroids and fungal infections would be my top concern, while prions would be my lowest concern. Bacteria, parasites, and viruses fall somewhere in between, with concern slightly increased if panspermia is real.
I'd also worry that if pony diseases can't interact with humans, then can ponies even digest human foods? Part of our digestion process relies on our gut microbiome.
10954681
I'm not an expert on... well, anything, but certainly not diseases and transfer between living beings. I'm keeping it simple because it's less of a headache and I'm lazy.
10954681
Given that amino acids etc are being found in asteroids, it's very likely aliens could digest local proteins. Sugar is another question entirely, of course - though I suppose one could argue that a form of convergent evolution on something so basic could be logical.
Viruses are innately going to need to perfectly match the target's proteins, and basically need the exact same DNA-reading scheme, which is near impossible, barring panspermia (with panspermia it's still very unlikely a problem).
Bacteria and fungi are another question, but adherence is still going to be a monster of a problem for the invading pathogen, not to mention the compatibility of their toxins with host proteins. No compatibility, no toxicity unless you're going for something brute like a membrane attack complex - that still massively limits the potential for the pathogen to fine-tune its response to immunity etc.
It's really helminths (worm infections) and other such multicellular (and extracellular!) parasites that would probably be most likely to spread interspecies.
scientist 1 : we're going to do an expedition to Mars and we're going to investigate
scientist : I feel good about it
ME :
Dunno, you portrayed her as a sole survivor of her long dead everything so far. Not sure she'll be happy to know Celestia, Luna and the rest of her entire planet are dead.
I'd like to see where this is going, though.
10954793
Assuming they are dead.
10954796
Well, they found at least one much larger alicorn corpse. That was mentioned. Not a definitive whose corpse it is. Could be Cadence as well. Would be nice if she isn't the sole survivor, though.
10954793
10954796
Celestia was pretty concrete, what with the "twice the size" alicorn skeleton they found. Can't say one way or the other about Luna, Lovehorse, etc though. That'd be spoiling.
I will say though: I won't be adding the Sad, Tragedy, or Dark tags, because they won't be applicable to this.
10954800
10954803
Really depends, time is a fickle mistress, some Alicorn might have had millennia to grow larger than Celestia ever was as she or he stoop guard on the facility. Assumptions are easy to make and can lead you astray. Who knows what happened back then, or what happened after Twilight was entombed there. With the timescales there could have been literal Pony Mad Max running about after those who could were saved and before the planet grew too cold for the rest.
10954803
I have a feeling that time magic and mass portals gonna be involved.
10954808
It's just hit me... That may have been the Equestrians' plan all along.
They didn't know when Equus would be habitable again, or if anyone would come and find them. So they make a facility where they go into stasis. Slowly, the pods fail. Each mage that wakes gives the next set of pods a full pulse of magical charge, then leaves the stasis chamber to die - explaining the tons of empty pods. Unicorn after unicorn, alicorn after alicorn, recharges the pods with all their strength, allowing the system to be self-sustaining for perhaps a billion years.
Celestia gave everything she had when the surface was so harsh that she couldn't even step outside, and then died, being recovered by the humans. Eventually, the chamber recognizes that someone has come in from the outside - and, assuming that the calamity was over (or someone could help), it frees Twilight from stasis, so she can portal everyone to the future.
It makes a lot of sense, especially if this isn't being tagged 'sad' or 'tragedy'
10954807
See, you're assuming I'm smarter than I actually am. Appreciated though.
10954808
You are the third person to mention time magic. I am curious why that's so common?
10954835
People want the pones to be saved
10954834
You are simultaneously completely on the mark and dramatically incorrect. Not saying where
It does feel really cool to see people theorizing already about what happened and what will happen. Part of the fun of a mystery, I suppose.
The fact that she knew the symbols for female and question mark needs an explanation. Not just symbols that represent the same thing but the actual same symbol.
Hope this has a downer ending for ponies…. Dunno why, but I feel that could be interesting, maybe it was too late to save them back then, but maybe there’s something that can be done now.
10955209
There will certainly be an ending.
10954835
Well, if she's the sole survivor there's pretty much only one mission she can possibly have and that is save her entire world after it was destroyed by some catastrophe in the past. At least that's the only possible mission in case you are not writing a tragedy. Also, she was the only one in a proper "cryo"-pod and her chamber was hastily made which means she came up with the solution for their problem right before the world ended and hadn't time and resources to preserve everyone in similar stasis.
So, how can you save a civilization which died a billion years ago? That's where time magic might be involved. You open a portal into the past and let everyone come all the way into the future. Of course this only works right when you allowed to create time paradoxes since would she save everyone in the future there wouldn't be Celestia's skeleton and mass necropolis of all kinds of ponies. Of course her plan may work even without paradoxes, but that means it semi-fails since all ponies found dead will fail to evacuate in time.
Also, how would your perfectly preserve your body for the unknown amount of time until world un-f itself? Possibly for millions and billions of years? And instead of science you work with magic. Time magic again. You just make a pod which freezes entire flow of time in a localized space and set certain conditions for it to unfreeze. Guess she haven't took lack of breathable atmosphere into account as a condition to stay locked.
Actually, when I was reading first and at least part of the second chapter I had an idea you were building to entirely different plot which involves Mars being empty and inhabited on inside.
10955233
I always love comments like this. Thank you for spending the time to think and theorize about some nobody's horse words.
You are correct about the hastily built chamber, but what if I told you (and this relates directly to the ending and epilogue, so watch out) she wasn't in that pod on purpose?
Paragraph 2 and 3 are pretty spot on, although Twi didn't make the pods.
That does sound like a neat fic idea, although this would then be less Mystery and more Adv or SoL, depending on the direction you took.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2269567-most-life-on-earth-will-be-killed-by-lack-of-oxygen-in-a-billion-years/
Huh, we're about a billion years off being in the same position as Equus. 80% of the habitable period of earth is behind us. Well that's disturbing. Extraordinarily far away and probably curable by geoengineering, yes, but disturbing. Probably happens to a decent proportion of intelligent species too, around or above half worse than us, an unfortunate few in Equus's position.
Thanks for turning the existential horror of reality into pone, Whirl
10955262
Ok, that's even more interesting.
Also, I realized that it's possible to save entire population while let it die at the same time and without time magic whatsoever. That is as long as there's a way to record minds and body information of population and store them in the past then clone bodies and write minds into these bodies in the present. So, this could be achieved with a mind magic and transfiguration, perhaps. As long as it's permanent one.
Hmmm, other locations might be possible ...
Theory: (even if it never comes up) The Equestria we know is geocentric, so what if Phobos and Deimos are this Equestria's dead (artificial) sun and moon? Not sure what happened to the real sun though, given it would have been pretty young at the time but obviously still existing.
The alternative to true geocentrism would be for magic to actually be rotating Mars instead, but that runs into some serious momentum/inertia issues.
Why was there a sudden height change in the alien?
It hadn't been until now that the naut really looked at the alien. It was purple, with a deep blue and pink streaked mane and tail. Horn and wings. About waist height ch 2
The wings also seemed real- he could see each individual feather. It seemed highly unlikely it could fly; he didn't know how much the horse weighed, but considering it was up to his neck when on all fours, it had to be approaching Earth equine weights, right? The wings may have been obsolete, but then why so big? Perhaps the Martian gravity allowed it to fly- he could see no other explanation for it. Ch 3
10955867
I would guess it's just a wording mistake, and she's up to his neck when reared up on her hind hooves.
Amanda, and now Dr Steffan rightly deserve the ass-chewing they're about to get. Not contacting anyone else was highly irresponsible. Having more personnel ready, even if not in the room, would be ideal. Multiple doctors and biologists ready would have been able to quickly verify if there was anything they could recognize that Twilight was carrying that might harm humans and vice versa, not to mention seeing what the range is for her powers to cause psychic pain to humans.
This is intriguing so far. I'm curious how long it will take Twilight to brute force learning English.
10955867
10959311
Crap, good catch. Thank ya and fixed.
And for the record, Twi's neck height for Steffan, breast height for Amanda. Miss Explorer Woomun is tall.
10959329
One could see it different ways. Yes, it was super not cool to not alert Omega or literally anybody else, but they also had to deal with a completely unexpected living alien. Proper procedure is all well and good, but first contact out of nowhere might kick that to the curb. Omega will still be pissed though.
Knowing Twi, all of a day.
10959346
Yes, I do very much agree that protocol kinda goes out the window when an unanticipated event occurs, but Amanda did have lots of time on her drive back to the station when she could have called in and contacted someone. It likely would have been safer for Twilight if more people were awake and ready. She's going to have to answer for making poor decisions, even if nothing untoward ended up coming from it.
10959329
Nouns and names in under two hours, barring species-specific differences in the basic mechanisms of spoken language. Very simple sentences within 24. Basic conversational speech in under one week, at which point she will go ham on trying to understand the explorer's language describing technical matters, including physics and mathematics. Complete fluency inside of a month, native conversational fluency and near-perfect accent within three. She's at whatever level exists way the hell beyond "genius," and her effective IQ is literally too high to measure properly. And every last bit of it is going to be hyper-focused on bridging the communications gap as fast as possible, because that's going to be the key to understanding what happened to her world. They're probably going to have to force her to rest, eat or sleep.
10959346
As I understand, petting a pony is said to be a great way to soothe anger and frustration and reduce stress. Omega will be fine.
Yes, I'm suggesting that our intrepid explorers are going to want to schedule "pony breaks," as Twi prefers. Also, that just hanging around her might induce a kind of a contact high and a certain lifting of the spirits.
.
I love this setting, a nice idea. I would have liked for more consistent protocols. For example, if you make a groundbreaking discovery, you are likely to be assigned to be in charge of a small army of scientists rather than being sent alone. Sending an astronaut alone? Omega is bonkers. Also, there is a lot of room for magic to be the cause of an astronaut going out of their way, doing seemingly random stuff to find something that wants to be found.
The Magical Martian Horse god immediately killed him.
Oh Kay, you have my Woot..
this sure is an entertaining story