Under Free Flag

by twillale

Chapter 9

CHAPTER IX

Today, most software exists, not to solve a problem, but to interface with other software.

—IO Angell

I smirk.

“I think they like it.”

“Who wouldn’t? I’m an artistic genius, remember?”

“You’re an insufferable, arrogant bastard, I remember. What about them?”

I jerk a thumb towards the hornless ponies.

“Projector that size can’t draw the whole thing in this sunlight. How about goggles?”

“Are you carrying extra visors?”

Tito looks at me with the indignation of a slighted artist, opening a satchel attached to his suit.

“I’m an engineer, Eri. Of course I carry extra goggles.”

*

Twilight slowly turns in place, taking in the enormous torus-shaped constructs built of thousands upon hundreds of thousands of paper-thin shapes hovering close enough to each other to seem solid at the slightest distance. Around the huge, slowly revolving wheels extend dozens of smaller cubes, spheres and shifting abstract tangles of lines and curves; everything outside the warm amber glow of the central structure hypnotically shifting colours in slow, pulsating patterns. The two unicorns gasp at the huge structure, heads swiveling to take in every detail at once.

“It’s... beautiful!”

“What kind of spell is this?”

Twilight carefully approaches one of the revolving tori, extending a hoof to touch the luminous surface. As her foreleg closes on the ring it slows to a halt, the mushroom-like lamellae spreading silently apart. As the unicorn gently touches one of the golden gills, noting the odd sensation of touching thick jelly, the four-cornered slice turns a pure white, a similarly rectangular page materialising above it with a slight rustle. It's blank but angled for easy reading. She quickly pulls her hoof back, and the page blinks away.

“It’s like... a library,” she whispers, “...a blank library.”

“That’s what they did that big magic dance for? Lame.”

Realising their friends are standing just outside the circle, Twilight and Rarity turn towards the sound of Rainbow’s voice, before looking a each other and smiling.

“You’re only saying that because you can’t see what we see, dear,” Rarity says.

“Well in case you didn’t notice, I’m not a unico— huh?”

“What’s going on, Dash?”

“The dancing one is trying to give us something. Looks like... eyeglasses?”

Twilight quickly trots in the direction of the others, the lowest of the golden shapes smoothly flowing around her as she passes through it, closing the gap as soon as her tail flicks through. Outside, the dancer is holding a bunch of curved spectacles in one hand, gesturing between the pair of glasses now in Rainbow’s hooves and the large, magical construct behind Twilight. Understanding what the devices are for, Twilight excitedly canters up to her friend, grabs the lenses from her hoof and promptly shoves them onto her face.

“Hey! What’s the big deal!”

The dancing magician smiles and turns his hand against the frames of the glass as if turning a key. Rainbow looks up, annoyed over the invasion of her personal space, and stops dead, comment dying on her lips as the vision of light flickers to life on the detachable visor.

“That’s a library?”

Twilight giggles as the pegasus shoots into the air, diving through floating geometrical shapes and doing laps around the central structure.

“Oh my gosh, this is so cool!”

Courage bolstered by the positive reaction of their three friends, the other ponies quickly don visors of their own and allow the magician to turn them on in turn.

“It’s like a huge cake of gold! Can’t eat it if it’s gold, though, that’ll hurt your tummy.”

“Well, Ah’ll say. Tha’s mighty impressive.”

“Oh, oh my...”

As the six friends move about, admiring the invisible structure, the magician finally offers a pair of the few remaining visors to Mountain Gale, who peers at the offered piece of equipment with suspicion. Casting a look at Chain Mail and receiving a curt but encouraging nod, the pegasus sergeant hesitantly places the lenses over his eyes, uncomfortably flicking his ears at the tight fit of the optics designed for a quite different shape of head, before submitting to the activation sequence.

The guardspony raises his eyebrows as the cheery ping of a chime plays in the cavalcade of colours and shapes flooding into sight. As he tilts his head, Gale notes the lenses actively darken the skies to highlight the glowing lines of the... library, the fact confirmed by a quick glance over lowered lenses. Steeling himself, the sergeant trots into the shimmering light, entering the central space just as the magician and the alien leader step through on the other side.

With a dramatic flourish, the magician takes a deep bow and retreats to the very edge of the circle, making room for the other figure to take center stage.

The assembled ponies turn to look to the leader as it looks around, as if to ascertain the whole audience is present, before extending a foreleg with a snappy gesture.

The leader continues it’s gesturing, flexible digits taking precise formations with a purpose and grace clearly stemming from years of experience. With a flicker, the glass-headed figure disappears, in it’s place standing a slightly slimmer creature in the same general shape but clad in flowing red cloth instead of the tight black suit of before. Amber eyes smile at the equines.

“It’s the leader,” Twilight realises, “it’s showing us an image of itself.”

“So that’s what they look like underneath. Are those suits for protection?”

“I’d think so, yes.”

With a beckoning gesture from the first biped, the magician steps forward and a similar image flickers to life over it as well. Small, round glasses, similar in construction if not in shape to the ones the ponies are wearing, hang on the end of a short, triangular muzzle underlining dark green eyes and olive skin topped by an unruly black mane. Eschewing the loose attire of the other, the magician wears instead a more tight-fitting blue jacket, double rows of golden buttons running down the front, the garment terminating well below the hip. Both creature’s hind appendages are covered in black cloth, the ends encased in high boots.

The ponies observe the pair for a while, the strangers standing at ease, turning around to allow observation from different angles.

“It’s amazing they can stand upright with just two legs,” notes sergeant Gale with interest, “one’d think that they’d fall down with that kind of height.”

Fluttershy suddenly squeaks, backpedalling into safety behind the closest of her friends available.

“Wha’s the matter, sugarcube?”

“Uhm, you didn’t... notice? Their teeth?”

The buttery yellow pegasus points with a shaky hoof, the other ponies following the line of her indication, eyes settling on the smiles of the two strangers. Smiles flanked by sharp canines.

“They’re carnivores,” breathes Twilight.

*

Uh, what the hell happened now? One second everything’s hunky-dory and now they’re all scared and nervous. And why is that yellow-and-pink one hiding and pointing at my... face?

Oh.

Oh, come on!

“Jo?” I begin, voice sweet as honey.

“Yes?”

“Julianne, darling, are the ponies herbivores?”

“Uh, yes?”

“And you were planning on telling me this...?”

“What? I thought you knew.”

I wish I had one of Tito’s ancient mechanical headpieces, so I could slam a physical phone into its receiver to cut the call. As it is, I’m restricted to using my neural interface to kill the connection before I say something untoward, the line abruptly terminating in a millisecond-long click of static.

All right, deep breaths, count to five. Smile. Without teeth!

“Tito, pull up some imagery of healthy meals with no meat. Also, draw a pony not being eaten by a human.”

I get a long stare in response.

“Well, get to it!”

“Working for you is a waste of my considerable talents,” he grumbles, before getting to it.

It takes almost a quarter hour of carrots, coconuts, rice and holos of zero-G hydroponic farms to make the panicky toy horses calm down enough to move on to other topics. Surprisingly, the pink-haired ball of fear seems to come to terms with our dental equipment the fastest. You can never tell with the quiet ones.

Look, it’s not like I enjoy lying to the adorable things, but, like every good fabrication, this one has a grain of truth in it. I mean, the vast majority of meat consumed by exo-Terran humankind is either synthesised, vat-grown or recycled. Real meat, the flesh of a living animal, is a fairly rare luxury on streamworlds and is a royal pain in the ass to get. Not that it makes much of a difference, it all tastes the same to me. It’s a status and wealth thing, I guess.

Anyway, the point is that while we eat meat, we don’t eat meat. Now try to explain gen-engineering food labs and automated nutrition factories to a civilisation armed with swords and spears, using pictures.

I think we’re entitled to a little white lie.

When they finally breathe evenly enough to approach, I pull up a rotating representation of human teeth, arranged in their natural configuration. Pointing at the flat molars and opening my mouth to let the ponies observe their position in my virtual jaw. Yeah, that’s right. Omnivore. Yeees, nice pony, calm pony.

*

After displaying its teeth, the image of the leader returns to its original position. With the same movements as before, the little depictions of farms and strange free-floating orchards disappear, leaving only a fairly cartoonish but well-made representation of a biped and a pegasus pony leaning on each other, laughing, and holding a pair of half-eaten apples.

“Well, that’s a relief,” mumbles Twilight.

“Predators are perfectly natural,” pipes Fluttershy quietly.

“I hope they weren’t offended by our... episode,” continues Twilight, flushing slightly at the memory of the frantic explanations and images in the wake of the ponies’ little fit.

“Well anyone would be frightened if you suddenly found out that the other party could want to eat you,” huffs Rarity.

“Scared? I wasn’t scared.”

“Yea’, yea’, RD, we know.”

“No, really! I’m not— what’s this, now?”

At the gesturing biped’s call, weakly glowing lines form in the air, six fanning out from the leader to point at the coloured ponies and one connecting Mountain Gale to the magician, still working on details and shading on his impromptu work of art.

“Uh... what’s going on?”

“Maybe it’s trying to make a point.”

“Oh!”

“What is it, Rarity?”

“Well, look. What is the feature that separates us from sergeant Gale over here?”

“...he’s a guardspony?”

“Girls,” Rarity wiggles her eyebrows with heavy emphasis on the word, “what are we, that Mountain Gale is not?”

Twilight is the first to realise the implication of her friend, whirling on the grinning biped.

“She’s a mare! And the other must be a stallion!”

Six pairs of eyes take in the projections on the other side of the circle, noting features and comparing them to the more familiar differences of pony anatomy.

“Well, now that you mention it, they do have a lot of common features to us...”

“Yeah.”

“How exciting, I wonder what else we could have in common? I should— oh! I’ve completely forgotten to take notes!”

Twilight hurries to draw a blank page of parchment out of her bags, bringing quill to paper in a frenetic burst of writing. As the scroll fills with tight lines of text and intricate concept maps, the female takes a few steps, curiously peering at the levitating stationery from an oblique angle. Twilight’s quill stops as the biped waves to get her attention.

The red-shirted female stops the closest rolling torus and deftly draws her free hand across a spread of rectangles, the blank pages blurring into the air above the glowing section. With a quick double tap and a grabbing movement with her fingers—as if grabbing a fly from the air—the leader steps back, glowing pages remaining above the still ring without disappearing but rotating into a new configuration, flowing together into a large canvas.

She wiggles her index finger at the canvas, eyes moving over invisible controls. Twilight perks up as three high-pitched beeps sound in the magical space, and the lines of light thrum in response to an influx of outside power. Slowly lowering the scroll of notes, Twilight moves to stand besides Rarity, the other, more weakly attuned ponies looking towards the source of the new noise without feeling the strange vibrations.

In front of the spectating group, the central construct splits cleanly all the way to the top, smoothly sliding to the sides under the commands of the pointing alien. Hard, black lines sheathed in shimmering blue light flick on out of nothing, forming a narrow, angular alleyway to the looming shape of the alien vessel, a note hovering at the lowest frequency of hearing rolling across the dark corridor.

Rarity and Twilight edge backwards, with cold chills unheeded by their bespectacled comrades running down their backs, as ghostly spikes and translucent razor edges whisper in the air at the end of the tunnel where the corridor disappears into the metal hull of the great ship. Low murmurs like monotone voices hum in the distance.

“What’s in there?” Rarity asks in a small voice.

“Wards,” whispers Twilight in return, “very, very powerful wards.”

Fearlessly stepping into the open mouth of the newly formed avenue, the bipedal manipulator slashes her hands through the air, yanking an invisible line. In a rush of speed barely visible to the naked eye, a shining progression of pages tears through the air, cleaving the sinister alley like a golden beam. Instinctively ducking or dodging the immaterial pages into the air, the ponies scatter as the slivers of amber rush into the tori, merging into the giant shapes in a blur of flying colour. The blast takes less than a few heartbeats, the storm of shapes disappearing in the blink of an eye and leaving the equines disoriented and scrambling to readjust their concept of space. The ominous pathway collapses on itself with two angry beeps, the golden rings melting together and resuming their languid rotation.

“What— what just happened?”

The biped turns to the ponies, smiling broadly. Indicating the surrounding mirage with a sweeping gesture, she finally points to the large canvas, now alive with a bewildering labyrinth of tiny nodes and infinitely fine interweaving lines. Twilight pokes a segment of torus with her hoof, the pages jumping out of it as before.

Now, however, it is no longer blank. Hypnotised, she scrolls through page after page of images, moving recordings and texts in unknown alphabets, several rectangular pages displaced by tiny, three-dimensional models instead.

“She... filled it. She filled the library with knowledge,” she says quietly, enraptured.

Working through the rows, she walks a slow circle around the torus, images flickering by as fast as she can sweep her hoof over the still surface of the toroid shelf. Finally, she reaches the open canvas, leaning in to study the intricate designs on it. As her eyes scan the page, understanding dawns on her face.

“It’s like a spell diagram!”

Tracing the intricate shapes with her hoof, Twilight’s excitement grows like a torrent.

“It is a spell diagram! The design is strange, and it’s ridiculously recursive, but the basic layout is the same as in basic magical theory! Here’s a balance node, this is a... yes! Control logic, here’s the input...”

The other ponies close in, peeking at the gibberish on the canvas over the shoulder of their engrossed friend.

“I don’t understand a thing about that mess,” decides Rainbow, before becoming bored and hovering up into the upper levels of the construct.

Rarity studies the chart with a thoughtful frown.

“I recognise the designs, but it’s really far beyond my understanding of magical theory. Twilight, are you saying this can be used for making a spell?”

“Yes,” exclaims the excited unicorn, turning to her friend with a grin “the design is unorthodox, but the theory seems sound. It looks very similar to the translation spell I was attempting, only with a ridiculous amount of safety catches and repeating patterns.”

“That’s nice, but... won’t that take a lot of preparation?”

“Yes. I’ll need to copy this...”

The unicorn pulls out her half-filled parchment again, flipping it over and copying a number of nodes from the labyrinthine tangle. Suddenly, the biped steps forward, shaking both it’s head and a front appendage. Miming a grabbing movement with both hands, a semitransparent copy of the canvas detaches itself and flits into her hands. Depositing the ghostly after-image on Twilight’s horn, she releases her grip, and the projection promptly implodes into a miniature version of itself, falling into a quick orbit around Twilight’s horn.

Twilight stares cross-eyed at the tiny chart spinning in circles around her head, feeling a niggling pressure not unlike the touch of the earlier red ring’s spell. Carefully activating her own magic, the same clicking sensation of latches falling in place resounds in her mind, followed by the ticklish caress of silk against skin. The small patch of light has disappeared, but Twilight feels a new presence form in her mind, resting against her psyche like a memory almost remembered but just barely eluding the conscious mind.

“Well, that certainly feels weird,” she comments, touching her head with a hoof and probing the strange feeling with her thoughts.

With a sudden release of pressure, the hovering chart suddenly escapes the confines of her skull, exploding into being in front of her face. Releasing her concentration, the luminous map recedes back into her horn.

“Oh wow,” she exclaims in wonder, “that is weird.”

Pinkie giggles loudly at the odd display.

“They put it inside your head! Now you can really have the library on your mind all the time!”

Snorting, the pink pony collapses in laughter, the others rolling their eyes, smiling at the antics of their friend, or doing both.

“Are y’all sure tha’s safe?” tries Applejack, poking Twilights head with a hoof.

“Ya can’t put too many apples in a basket, and, pardon me fer sayin’ so, but yer basket is plenty full already, Twi’.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not really... in my mind as much as it’s... in with it. This is excellent, now I can do research back at home!”

Twilight turns back to the tall alien, nodding her head in thanks. The other party reciprocates with a slight bow, before backing off. The lavender unicorn casts a final, longing look at the endless pages of data languidly floating around them.

“Oh, I’d so like to go through all this knowledge, but... I think we’ll have to get back to this tomorrow. There’s only so much studying we can do without being able to talk to the other party. Or read their alphabet.”

“Yes, it’s been a good while, already. I believe it would not be a wrong decision to retreat for today,” Rarity agrees, rubbing her head with a hoof, “...and besides, it’s very tiring to keep up this... connection.”

“Um, I’m worried that the animals are getting lonely...”

“Hey, are we leaving? ‘Cuz I’m getting pretty bored up here,” comes a voice from above.

“Maybe it’s for the best. Let’s saddle up, girls, and come back tomorrow.”

Removing their visors, the non-unicorn ponies line up to hand back the loaned equipment. Twilight and Rarity concentrate, feeling the connection to the aliens’ magic decouple, the spectacular colours fading so fast as to leave both mares blinking in the sudden brightness of the sun. The smaller rings re-appear, switching back to their angry red, before winking out entirely as the two hosts disconnect from the invisible assembly as well.

Twilight projects the gifted diagram back and forth a few times, discovering that the spell is in fact visible even outside the arcane dimension as the leader turns to the ponies, covered in her suit of dark fabric and clear glass again.

The two parties bowing to each other the ponies turn and trot away, the four bipeds watching them go.

“What in Celestia’s name were you up to?” begins Chain Mail as the group of seven returns to the waiting Guard detachment, “you were prancing around like crazy up there.”

“You didn’t listen in on our conversation?”

“Didn’t carry so well, all the way here. What happened?”

“Well... Look, I’ll explain on the way,” sighs Mountain Gale, “...it’s a lot to take in.”

*

The formation of ponies disappears back into the woods. I’m fairly sure they’ll be back.

“Huh, turns out those horns can act as comlink interfaces, data storage units and projectors as well,” I muse aloud, absolutely certain that I don’t even want to think about how that works.

“Hey Ace, how about that drink?”

“...yes. I’ll be on the observation deck with a bottle.”

“You’re my favourite brother.”

I cast a passing glance at Julianne craning her neck to catch a final glimpse of colour through the woods. She’ll be back in the lab with her head in a data engine before I’ll even get to the briefing room, I promise. Xavier walks up to me as I follow Tito up the ramp, the engineer already disappearing behind the airlock doors.

“Do you think we’ll have any use of the translation software they got?” he asks.

“I don’t know, but it’s worth a shot. Besides, it’s a common enough program, it’s not like we bequeathed great secrets of dangerous potential upon them. And the purple one seemed to get what it was about.”

“Yes. It— she seemed the most active in interfacing with us. Well, in a rational manner, at least.”

I chuckle as I remember the first events of the meeting.

“Yeah, that pink, fuzzy one was pretty intense. An odd group of envoys, to say the least.”

“Courtesy of social status?”

“Maybe. I’m sure they’ll be back again.”

The cool spray of the decontamination nozzle hoses the airlock down with a wet hiss as the heavy doors clang shut behind us. Stepping through the drying airstream and through the opening inner doors, I release the locks on my helmet and shake my hair free.

Ah, yes, nothing like stale, recycled air to conjure up a thirst.

“Let’s take a review in the briefing room in half an hour. Same crew as before, plus Tito.”

“Understood. See you in thirty.”

The inner door slides shut on silent rails behind Xavier’s black-clad back, his headwear loosely hanging from one hand with the eye visor reflecting corridor lights. I wiggle out of my suit, hanging it inside one of the red personal lockers and stuffing the hard full-face helmet into its shelf. Throwing on a loose, brown tunic, I saunter off in the direction of the combined briefing room and observation deck, already tasting single-malt low-gravity-distilled whiskey on my tongue.

*

Comments

[EmeraldIngot]

That... was... AWESOME!!! I can't wait until computers are like that IRL...

[hitro666]

1,610 views in total and only 29 likes? come on guys!
also thanks for the chapter

[WordPlay]

You have me intrigued! Looking forward to the next chapter.

[twillale]

1561661
Honestly, I suspect it's because getting through the first chapter is like rowing in syrup. It's more than a little clunky.

1562601
Thank you! I hope you'll enjoy the rest as well.

[Explodium]

Fabulous, humans-meet-ponies without one of the parties acting like total douchebags.

Have a cookie.

[DarthPony]

Aaaand I'm still waiting for them to be able to takl properly with each other. Please tell me that will happen, pleaaase.

[twillale]

1570045

Pinkie is a kind of a dirty shortcut for not having to come up with a proper first contact situation. Guilty as charged.
I know what you mean, though, and I hadn't planned on it to be this Pinkie-heavy as the story progresses. It'll all work out better once the other characters get a little more flesh on their bones.

Thank you for the feedback!

EDIT: Pinkie is also best pony, so your argument is kinda invalid. But I forgive you.

[GreenZebra]

Wow. My first thought is, how is this not ten times more popular than it is? I'm loving almost everything about this story. Realistic first contact, separate languages, ponies completely in character, humans acting like mature adults..

One criticism, I found it just a little hard to imagine what's happening during Twilight's interaction with the human team. Best I can come up up with is that at high enough sophistication, magic and science really aren't different at all. This would explain Twilight downloading stuff into her brain and apparently how the dream realm interacts with whatever hyperspace analogue you've made for their ship.

Anyway, watching this, would give more than 1 like if I could. Eagerly await later chapters.

[twillale]

1577414
O ho ho, I revel in your confusion and misery!
Fret not, all will be revealed in due time.

Well, kinda. The problem with writing science fiction is basically encapsulated in the Arthur C. Clarke quote in chapter 6, I think. Write too close to your own age and it's unrealistic, write too far out and it sounds silly.

Honestly, though, my primary motivation is just annoyance over "it's f****ing magic, dude" as a catch-all explanation for everything.

[nemryn]

1563031
I know!

[Moonreaper666]

3016147 TCB stories suck balls!