6th Moon 30, 1004 PLR
To the humans of the Earth, third planet from the star Sol,
Your "spacecraft", Voyager, was discovered by the beings of this planet approximately eight moons ago, but I find myself only now able to pen an adequate reply. While we as a people are mighty in the ways of magic, the ponies and other creatures that make up the nation of Equestria have fallen behind in the ways of technologies, which are more prominent in peoples like the Minotaur, though not nearly to the level of your displayed "human" inventions. As such, it has taken many moons to calculate the approximate location Voyager traveled from, to map your star system of origin using the depiction you provided, and to compose a reply in the form of a record of our own. At the time of my composing this, a suitable return ship has not yet been complete, though several prototypes are now in the testing phases.
My sister and I are the rulers of the land of Equestria, a great nation of perhaps five million creatures, the vast majority being races of ponies. While we control the sun and moon with our respective magics, most, including ourselves, never truly considered the idea of other life elsewhere in the cosmos. Ponies are more simple than that, content with the world around them, and we are often preoccupied with settling the problems of our own citizens. However, your message has been well received not only by us, but the populace as a whole.
Equestria relies on friendship as a form of magic, and I mean this in the most literal sense of the word. My protegé, the pony who found your fallen ship, detected no ambient mana on the record it contained, and this was confirmed by the Canterlot Mage Council. As such, we hope our words, messages, and offers of friendship in return are understandable to you, as they rely heavily on magics to transmit instead of your advanced technologies. As you appear to be more advanced in this manner than us, we are confident in your abilities to do so.
If such is possible, I wish to tell you this:
I offer my hoof as leader of Equestria to the humans of planet Earth in the name of friendship and harmony. While we have determined the age of your craft is in excess of a million years old, longer than ponies and myself have existed, it is our sincere hope that your species has thrived in the time since it was sent. We also understand it may be possible that your people have lost documentation of Voyager in the first place, so a copy of your original record will be returned with ours. The date on it is listed as "July 29, 1977", and is from a "Jimmy Carter". While the sender has long since passed on if our guesses as to human lifespans are correct, I would like the populace of your planet to be aware that it was his letter than has sparked me to write this in return, though I am fully aware that he will not be able to read it. I only hope that, if your peoples also believe in an afterlife, he can take solace in that his words were well received, and his message of good will greatly reciprocated.
It is my sincere wish that we will be able to open contact with one another — to teach, to learn, and to befriend. If humans receive this message and are able to understand it, please send a reply as you are able. We will include a star map on our record, as you did with yours, to assist in finding our approximate position. Let us meet together in friendship and harmony, and may the wings of destiny carry you aloft to dance with the stars.
Your friend,
H.R.H. Princess Celestia, Canterlot, Nation of Equestria, Planet Equis
Incomplete? Hmmm. . . Is this the kind of story that is better off open ended, or is a definite ending required here? I do not know, but the choice is yours.
Oh man, I hope it doesn't take a million more years
Before I read this, I must know: Why didn’t Twilight immediately share this discovery with her friends?
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She went full Twiggles in the face of previously-unknown knowledge and basically tuned out the rest of the world.
I expect more from this or else...
Now, I would like to see him face of against our all time favorite brit in a show like kitchen impossible or Kühlschrank öffne dich.
Certainly would be amusing.
If they know where eath might be how far way from us are they. In other word were would you put Equistra? Might I suggest the horse head nebula? Take a left at Alnitak C , third strar of said nebula. I like your story hope to see more.
Me está encantando
And i've caught up!
Wow, what a read! I do love these kinds of fics, and will look forward to seeing more
A shame that Celestia can't really interact with Carter... Though, if they confirm humans DO NOT exist in the future, they could potentially drag a few to their world/time with time travel magic? Wonder what the limits are on that...
One thing I don't know if you considered,
If the probe entered Equus' atmosphere like a meteorite, it would probably burn up completely beyond recognition. I don't know if it's possible for an unpowered, space borne object to entire a planet's atmosphere without having to do deal with reentry stresses, not to mention falling countless miles to the surface. That implies that someone or something engineered and was intimately involved with the immediate delivery of the voyager to Equus, which is an exciting prospect. Perhaps the ponies will be getting a response back much sooner than they expected!
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I honestly didn't consider it that much, my bad. But Voyager's computers have already lasted well beyond what was intended, and IRL are currently having issues on one of the probes. It's 70s tech that has survived extremely well for what it was, but being from the 70s also hinders it, since most of the current hardware can't exactly be swapped out for "newer/better" models due to the whole distance thing. I'm not sure Voyager, even with functioning systems, could slow itself down. I think it currently mostly sends readings back to Earth (?), but is having issues with even that now.
I plan to add another chapter to this fic. Unfortunately, hard science isn't really my forté — which is kind of dumb for a sci-fi fic, but whatever — so screw ups w things like that are expected, both due to lack of understanding and the fact that if the whole thing was destroyed without a trace, there'd be no plot...
I'll go with some sort of atmospheric magic? I know ponies can fall and get hurt in the show (the early show episode where RD crashes and hurts herself, then ends up in the hospital, comes to mind). But maybe there's some sort of innate magic in all of Equis (or at least Equestria) that helps stop or slow major instantly fatal impacts? She hit the ground pretty hard and fast in that episode, but is only shown with...a single normal bandaid on her head, a broken wing, and needing a few days of bedrest? ...Then again, gravity seems kind of inconsistent in universe, since ponies falling out of the sky still is shown as Dangerous, but pegasi and griffins (who, iirc, aren't shown to have magic?) can still fly, even though their bodies don't seem like they should be able to.
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Welcome to writing! I don't think there's anyway around this problem except to have it pointed out by other people.
If you didn't consider it beforehand, and you have an ending now, I honestly wouldn't worry about it. Let the hard sci fi nerds make their own voyager fic. There's already plenty of ways for an informed reader to fill in the blanks.
I'm sure you've already seen this, but if you haven't, I recommend checking out the voyager website: https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/
Here's my favorite page, it has an interactive map showing where both the voyager probes (and a number of other interesting probes and objects) in relation to the solar system:
https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/#where_are_they_now
Meanwhile, from the overview, this paragraph might be of special interest.
Back to thinking and hard sci fi things, it seems like you're past that narratively speaking. Unless equus is about to launch a return mission (like in the other voyager fic). It might be fun to have a character realize "Hey, there's no way this thing could've survived entering our atmosphere," and leave it there as an extra layer of mystery. Maybe it was some kind of space dragon that dropped it off on Twilight's door step, or perhaps aliens did it. Maybe even humans themselves launched something to catch up with the probe and escort it safely onto the surface of Equus. Maybe humans ceated magic in the first place. Maybe Luna brought in without telling anyone. Maybe it was Equus itself that saw the probe, deciding to let its celestial maintainers know about their cosmic neighbors.
TL;DR It can be better to let those kinds of possibilities play out inside readers' heads.
No Luna?
Well, this has been delightful. Eagerly awaiting the next chapter!
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Thank you!
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I always got the sense that Celestia was still the one "most in charge" and the one who'd be more inclined to send official documents and 8s more of a representation of their country, and this is still meant to be set almost right after Twilight becomes an alicorn. I always got the sense that Luna still was kind of in the background at that point, but I also haven't watched the show consistently post-S4 — so perhaps I'm incorrect on that matter.
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Well, she was very much in the background for most of the show. Ish. Sort of
If Humans have not reached Equus by now, we have either regressed technologically, or gone extinct.