Consequences (Outdated)
Omega rubbed aggressively at her temples, already feeling the migraine coming on from...
Well, this. Once she'd gotten past the initial shock and- she wasn't afraid to admit it, fear -of a living alien in her room, Chorol and Steffan had barged right after, the former stopping the alien from madly picking apart containers for whatever reason, the latter apologizing for the, as he put it, "inconvenience."
About five minutes later, everything had somewhat cooldown, and Omega was able to take stock of the situation, and get the stories from her explorer and biologist.
It was a damn nightmare.
The alien at the heart of this nonsense was currently sitting next to and slightly in front of Steffan, eyes downcast and ears flopped over- she still couldn't believe the first and only living ET ever discovered looked like an almost cartoonish purple horse. She could've sworn she'd seen it before.
"So let me get this straight," Omega snarled, switching from her temples to crossing her arms, glaring at everyone, but most of all her.
"You, in the middle of the night, without informing anybody, decided to take a rover unauthorized, drove out to God knows where, based entirely on a hunch."
"You then- somehow -found the first living alien humans have ever known, proceeded to take it BACK TO OUR DAMN BASE, again without alerting or informing anybody, and instead treat it like a friend visiting from out of town. Did I sum that up properly?"
Chorol (intelligently) said nothing, only folding her arms behind her and staring at the ground.
Omega took a deep breath, and sighed. "I can't tell whether you just pulled the luckiest, bravest, or stupidest stunt in history. LIkely all three."
She turned her head to the alien, but still addressed the explorer- from what she was told, the horse couldn't understand English. Rather expected.
"I won't say I'm not pissed, because I am very much so. But I also know your track record- finding groundbreaking discovery is apparently a children's game to you. But still- why didn't you wake me up when you arrived, or anybody else? Hell, why didn't you alert Night Command at any point? Why did you go alone? We don't have first contact protocols, sure, but we have protocols for literally everything else."
Chorol grumbled under her breath. "I was sent alone last time..."
The base leader narrowed her eyes, hissing in response. "That was under Henson, who, I'll remind you, is younger than you are, and has about a tenth my experience. That order would never have flown if I wasn't in sickbay."
Chorol returned to silence.
Omega sat down on her bead, trying to rub the sleep out of her eyes. "I need to think on what to do about you. You did break more rules than I can count on my fingers, but you did also discover a living ET, and handled the situation resourcefully- if not intelligently."
She looked back up. She turned to Steffan, and pointing at the alien. "Wake up the entire Bio and Medic teams, and get every scan you can ASAP. I don't care if you inhale a third of our coffee rations, this is critical. Whether it intentionally pulled that... whatever it was, or not, it still was capable of putting two human adults into crippling mental pain in seconds with seemingly little effort. For that matter, wake up at least four Sec units, too."
Both Steffan and Chorol were about to protest, but she waved them off. "I'm not saying we're going to lock this thing in the brig or shoot it, but unlike someone, I'd prefer not to let an incredibly ancient psychic alien wander around my base without supervision and, if necessary, detainment."
"It's a she, ma'am," the explorer mumbled again.
"How do you know? Yeah, it uses the same symbol, which is absurdly unlikely, but it doesn't mean they indicate the same term. A decade ago, kids laughed at the letter 'E', and adults had no clue what the joke was. I'm calling the alien an 'it' if and until it can tell us itself."
"As for you," Omega barked, pointing to the shuffling explorer, "give me the rover keys and your card, then head to your room immediately. At the absolute minimum, you're under suspension from any missions and equipment for a week. Do I make myself clear?"
The explorer sighed but nodded, handing her superior the keys and her security card. She then walked out, drawing the alien's gaze as she left.
"Now- I need to let Home Command know about this, rouse the rest of the base afterward. Keep an eye on that," Omega said, nodding to the alien, who was still glancing around the room with a strange look of longing.
Steffan nodded, then guided the alien out of the room, presumably going to wake the listed teams.
For her part, before any NASA message, Omega grabbed a beer from her mini fridge and downed it in ten seconds flat. She really needed it after these space opera shenanigans. Setting the empty bottle down, she decided against another, and instead booted up the computer. The message wouldn't actually hit Earth for ten minutes, but that was fine- not like they could do much about the situation besides give advice, and she had a feeling they were just as lost as her.
Before alerting Home Command, Omega pulled out a drawer, and from it, one of the artifacts that a team besides Chorol had unearthed. The Arch personnel had already finished scanning and investigating it, so until it could be shipped to a museum or storage, she decided to hold onto it. She didn't know why, exactly, but she could swear she always heard a strange humming from it, an almost ethereal tune.
The artifact was a little crown made out of gold, with inset blue sapphires, and a rather large purple star crystal on top.
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woohoo, new chapter!!!
Wait, what?! Oh, for the love of… SO sworn am I that our species gets incrementally more stupid by the generation for idicoy of that magnitude to develop.
Anyway, story wise, this is a nice interstitial chapter. Thst had to be some consequences for a covert and unauthorized sojourn into the heart of Mars. And now we wait for the cabbage back on earth to lose thier little minds…
11025463
Yeah, you can imagine I got them kicked out ASAP. There's stupid, and then there's u g h.
I hope I struck a good balance between Omega being (rightfully) pissed as hell about Amanda breaking pretty much every rule, but still maintaining a mostly calm demeanor and handling the unexpected situation with as much competence as she could- understandable to be stressed when you wake up with an alien horse in your room.
Glad to see you're back.
Hopefully Twilight gets some hugs before this is over.
If I were the human here, I'd probably be assuming that one living alien means that there are others.
That former housemate sounds like they're either on something or they're mentally ill.
11025471
I think you struck the perfect balance of annoyed and elated.
Well this has been a fun past 4 chapters. 8/10 Great job on the chapter and that also works for how dumb your roommate was.
So, reading this whole story, I'm guessing Celestia (or maybe Luna) died with the planet and is the Cadaver, and Twilight tried to work on a solution to save the planet, but only managed to make a cry-pod with the assumption that somebody else would be able to solve the problem then wake her up.
Of course, I wonder what happened to the ACTUAL Sunset...(And Starlight too I guess).
11025627
Could be Phobos of Demios was Equestria's "Sun" and when Celestia passed on it became inherit rock and what ever magic force that kept it functioning as a pseudo-star was also responsible for the atmosphere, the air thinned and Twilight rushed to find a solution and turned to stasis chambers to save the survivors?
Another possible explanation, some scientists theorize the asteroid belt between Earth and Mars was once a planet but was destroyed eons ago in a disaster, what if said disaster also cause the Martian atmosphere to be blown away, and Celestia died of exhaustion while projecting a barrier spell to keep what didn't get blown off in a dome where the survivors could breathe? Or perhaps the planet that exploded was Equestria, and Celestia exhausted her self with a massive emergency teleport to Mars, and the plant proved more hostile that the pony scientists projected?
11025573
Well to be fair, routers do get kinda warm, it's why the good ones have lots of air vents. I can see the logic of "they like warm places, the wiffybox is warm.... I have an idea!"
11026608
Bacteria etc still have a wide range of precisely designed toxins, made to interfere with human proteins. They have adhesion molecules so they can stick to surfaces, and while a subset of the proteins those alien bacteria use (membrane attack complex-alike proteins) may have wide-ranging effects, they'd still probably be less severe for aliens.
However... We can't ignore how similar life was on Equus before contact. It's entirely possible there were some time travel / teleportation shenanigans, and this stuff isn't quite as alien as we assume...
11026050
Eh, problem with the first theory is people were controlling the sun before Celestia.
Brought out the element of magic, hm? Maybe she noticed the connection to Twilight's cutie mark. Interesting.
And certainly a good power source for large-scale time-travel >.>
11026109
They might have also been confusing flea behavior with how bed bugs tend to hide somewhere adjacent to their actual target. Still doesn't excuse dousing the wifi with computer-b-gone, but might explain their reasoning.
11026050 It's too small to put out enough heat over a wide enough area even magically made into a Sun. It's not even 8 miles in diameter on its longest axis. The only way to make that work is to assume the magic expanded the moon's diameter dramatically, to at least a few hundred miles. Then you must remember that the regular Sun also exists, so Equestria would have 2 Suns even if this was the case. But then there's also the issue of where the Moon is. Phobos is also tiny rock, a mere 14 miles in diameter. It could never eclipse either Sun unless its orbit moved so close to the planet it would be torn apart by the tidal forces.
The hypothesis that the asteroid belt was a former planet was disproved decades ago. We know for a fact now, by direct sampling in fact, that most of the large asteroids were always separate bodies. Some, such as Ceres, Vesta, and 2-Pallas are surviving protoplanets, though Ceres may also have migrated inward from somewhere around Saturn's orbit since it contains such a high proportion of water and its crust is basically frozen salty mud left over when the initial thick layer of volatiles warmed up were blown off by the Solar wind. There's even an outside chance it's an escaped moon from one of the giant planets that managed to find a new orbit, since its orbit is not too tilted relative to the general orbital plane of the other planets and neither is it particularly eccentric, which would not be expected if instead it originated from the Kuiper Belt. Maybe a surviving moon from early Uranus when it got whacked onto its side.
The asteroid belt also doesn't have as much material as you think. Ceres, a protoplanet only 450 miles in diameter contains 1/3 of the TOTAL mass of the asteroid belt. And with all of belt squished together, you'd only end up with a tiny planetoid 4% the mass of Earth's Moon. Indeed, the body would be about the right size for a descent-sized Moon for Mars, which is about 10% the mass of Earth.
So, the best bet for more 'realism' would be to say that it was Mars' Moon that was destroyed... and so long ago that some of the material managed to reform the largest asteroids while the rest just floated about as rubble-piles (which is what most of the small asteroids appear to be, though some are fragments blasted off the larger asteroids by collisions).
To be dramatic, you could say it was the battle with NMM that did it. Blew up the Moon, pones all died. So tragic.
11116400
Hard Science might not b best for explaining Magic really, also this is fundamentally a different universe so things can be different for the sake of the story. As long as it keeps the logical consistentancy of it's own Universe.
11116582 Even magic, when well-planned in a story, ends up making sense.
The devil's in the details. Always make your weirdness 'plausible', especially if it's going to be explored in any depth. It's one thing to have a weird thing in a short one-shot story where the details are left very nebulous. But an exploratory story or an adventure that heavily depends on world-building plot elements require a little more construction to make them work.
11117084
In the end comments are for speculation, it's up to the author to sort the details and makes changes only if they think it fits.
> Cancelled
Well, crap. Thanks for giving us some kind of closure at least. Seeing stories go for years without updates is something us readers know all too well.
11118152
I think marking it Cancelled was the best choice, seeing as I'd originally intended this as a one-shot and didn't effectively plan a full plot and mystery out. I think it was better to leave it as maybe mildly interesting rather than screw it up with a half-arsed and meandering story.
That said, I may come back to it eventually to write a proper plot for it, once I've more writing experience and have a clearer idea of how I want it to play out.
11118163 Honestly, and this is coming from one of the mot BRUTAL, MERCILESS, SAVAGE, COLD-BLOODED, BLOODTHIRST critics in the omniverse, I think you were doing a pretty good job already.
It speaks even more that you're clearly thinking about how it was going to progress and realizing there were some logical issues that would have come up that couldn't be solved as things were set up.
That's the mark of a TRUE writer, the ability to genuinely self-critique and see where the problems in the plotting lie. You show great promise.
11118163
If you revisit the idea, I'll definitely take a look. I think you were doing well compared to most stories on the site already.
Anything else in the pipeline, I'll check that out too.
To the cancelled folder you go, good story.
11118211
11120469
11160109
Ey mates, the rewrite is officially in progress
I didn't know it was canceled and now there is a rewrite. i thought it was fine but cool
11238267
Welcome back Whirl, hope to see more of adorkable Twilight learning bout aliens but at the same time finding a way to revive her world.
Life on Mars, shocker.
I know in the original only twilight survived but i wish maybe in the rewrite cmc somehow survives.
Oh, it is dack, a rewrite, it is back.
11238300 Twilight survives... but only by being dead.
She mixed magic and science together. The results were just as devastating as mixing Coca-Cola with Pepsi.
11238239
Neat. Looking forward to seeing where the story goes!
Just going to wait rereading this until it's been rewritten
I'm waiting for a new chapter, expecting one to be presented shortly!
the story can not be left untended as is; it requires a continuation.