> Starstruck
>  by Rudiobus
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> First Contact
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Astronomical occurrences aren’t anything new to me. I’ve been monitoring them for years, both the big ones and the small ones, and I can safely say that I’m used to the occasional oddity in the stars. But I don’t think I ever, not even if I had spent a thousand years doing my job, could have been prepared for the catalyst which set this story in motion.
I should probably explain myself. My name, or at least the one my parents gave me, is Just Star, though my colleagues just call me Starstruck. Like most ponies here, I was given an aptly fitting name, one which reflects my own path in life. You see, I’m an astrologer, a member of the Royal Aeronautics and Space Administration, or RASA for short. I spend my days, like any other astrologer, staring at stars and charting their movements, and, if I’m lucky, recording any anomalies I might see. 
That’s the real purpose of my job, you see.  Luna may control the moon and the progression of the night, but the stars have their own agenda. They’re too far beyond any of the princesses’ reach to be controlled, and therefore they’re treated with a sort of reverence by the royalty. It’s an old superstition in the Equestrian bloodline that the stars foretell future events. If they’re moving on their natural course, then things down here will be as peaceful as they usually are. If they start to act weirdly, though, it’s safe to say that things are going to get a little bumpy. I wasn’t born yet when Luna returned from her thousand year exile to the moon, but I heard that just before she did, the stars went absolutely nuts, wobbling in place an even drifting a bit off their normal routes through the heavens. It’s probably what that bit about “the stars aiding in her escape” meant in the prophecy of her return. 
Another story about the stars happened just about a month before my parents met. It was about the time the Crystal Empire came back, bringing that old shadow Sombra with them. The stars started to wiggle a bit then, too, but this time they formed a straight line around the planet, and moved in perfect unison with each other before the empire appeared out of thin air, at which point the just drifted back to their usual positions. 
Now, it had been a long time since anything big had happened. I was born three years into Twilights reign alongside the princesses, and things had sort of calmed down by then. Sure, there were a couple of resurgences of Changelings in the south, but nothing so important that the constellations needed to let us know about it beforehand. This lack of anomalies sort of diminished the role of our jobs here at RASA, and we became known across the land as the royalty’s fortune tellers. To be honest, they weren’t entirely wrong.  All of the oddities I saw in the skies up until the catalyst were little things. Maybe a star would move here, or another would wiggle in place for a second. At best, there might be two stars moving to the same place, and getting locked in orbit. All of these were treated as minor events. The star wiggling was a foretelling of duchess Rarity having her first child, and the two stars that got locked din orbit were just a reflection of the Buffalo tribes finally joining with Equestria to form our fifty third territory. As for the star that moved out of place, well, apparently that was a cosmic warning about Pinkie Pie losing a tooth from her diet of cupcakes and ice cream.
At this point, you’ve probably come to the conclusion that working at RASA isn’t the most exciting job in the world. Once again, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. I only chose to work there because I was good at it, and still had the childish assumption that I would be the one to bring it back to its glory days as the leading astrological research facility in the world. A few years later, I would still be working there, but only because it paid better than anything else, and like I said, I was really damn good at it.
Now, RASA is an isolated facility, located at the top of a large mountain in the Smoky Mountain range, due to their massive heights. Because of this, most of my colleagues and I rarely left the place, which meant that I literally lived where I worked. The day this story began was no exception. I woke up in the living quarters of the facility, wrapped in my blankets like a cocoon. Now, this a bit of a problem for a being which lacks opposable thumbs as well as the magical powers of a unicorn, so I had to struggle for about five minutes to get out of the tangled mess that was my bed. When I was finished, I stumbled to the floor, and got dressed for my job. At RASA, we had a policy about “appropriate clothing,’ so we were expected to wear lab coats at all times when outside our rooms. Why that is, I don’t know. I mean, we were astrologers and physicists, not biologists or chemists. There was no reason for us to wear protective clothing at all. I imagine it was Twilight’s obsession with professionalism that really drove the rule into place. 
Walking outside, I took in the painfully plain hallway which led to each of my colleagues’ rooms. It was grey and dark, with a white carpet on the floor an a few overhanging lights to illuminate it. There were a few pictures on the wall, but each was just a simple work of modern art, not even meant to be looked at. Hell, one of them was just a red rectangle on a white canvas. It was the sort of thing you were supposed to pass by and acknowledge as a painting, perhaps as a way to get you to think “Wow, I guess this place isn’t as boring as I thought it would be.” Not like that worked or anything, but I guess it’s the thought that counts.
At the end of the hallway was the door leading to the lounge, which in turn led to the rest of the facility. I entered the lounge and sat down at the table in the center of the room, where three of my coworkers were having breakfast. A bowl of cereal waited for me at my seat, and quickly took a spoonful into my mouth without greeting my friends. 
“Well, good morning to you too, then,” said Lopside, a grey unicorn sitting opposite from me. 
I just nodded, and kept eating. The cereal in my mouth tasted like cardboard, so I added a little sweetener to it from the dispenser to my right.
“God, I hate this stuff,” I said, glancing at Lopside for a moment. A Zebra to my right named Adeben chuckled and nodded.
“Yeah,” he said, taking a sip of coffee. “I know what you mean. Back in Zebrica, they had us eating this stuff all the time. It toughens you up like nothing else, but boy is it bitter.”
“Must really suck to have to eat it here then,” I commented. Adeben just laughed.
“No, no,” He said, shaking his head. “It’s actually quite nice. It reminds me of home. Besides, when you’re eating something your entire life, you don’t really mind how it tastes.”
“Well, I wish they’d at least add something to it,” said a voice to my left. I turned, and was met by a white Pegasus mare named Lightning Dash. She was apparently a niece of Rainbow Dash, the famous captain on the Wonderbolts, so I was always awkward around her. I didn’t want Captain Dash getting words that her niece was being hit on by some Earth pony coworker. 
“Y-yeah,” I said, trying to act indifferent to her presence. “You know, y- you could just add some sweetener. Here, try it.”
I handed her a bag, and she clapped me on the back. 
“Thanks, sport,” she said, smiling, and rip the bag open, spilling the sugar onto the cereal in her bowl.
“So,” Lopside said to no one in particular. “Who think’s we’ll actually see something today? I bet five bits that a giant pink octopus is going to appear in one of our telescopes and freak us all out.”
I smiled a bit. We had habit of coming up with ridiculous scenarios in the morning, and betting money on which would come true. Of course, none of them ever did, which was the point, but we had fun coming up with the most outlandish possibilities. 
“Well, I bet that the stars will align into a giant arrow,” Adeben said. “Then, when the scouts go to where it’s pointing, they’ll find a rock sculpted perfectly into the shape of Celestia’s rump, and no one will believe them but the tabloids.”
“Both of you guys have got no imagination,” Lighting said. “I bet that if anything happens today, it’ll be the return of Starswirl the Bearded. We’ve been waiting sixteen thousand years for that guy, and I’ll be damned if he doesn’t turn up sooner or later.”
“You and that Starswirl,” I said in return. “If it were up to me, I’d say you had a crush on that old unicorn.”
“Maybe I do,” Lighting replied, smiling. “I like stallion who accomplishes big things, and no one did as much as he did.”
“Yeah, well, he’s probably dead by now, so don’t count on him coming back anytime soon.” Adeben said. Lighting glared at him for a moment, then turned to me. 
“So,” she said, “What do think’s going to happen today?”
“The same as always,” I said. “We’re going to be contacted by aliens.”
“That’s the fourth time you’ve said that,” Lopside said, rolling his eyes. “You could at least think of something original.”
“Hey, it’s more likely than a pink octopus,” I said.
“True,” Lopside agreed, and smiled once again. He put down his spoon and got up from the table, adjusting his lab coat to better fit him. 
“Ok,” He said, and put on a pair of lopsided glasses. “Time to go to work. Starstruck, I assume you’ve got the telescope again?”
“Yep.”
“Good. I’ll want an hour by hour update, like always. Everpony else get back to what you were doing yesterday, and I’ll see you all at lunch. “
Getting up from the table, we all moved upstairs, in a large, domed observatory. Adeben and lightning went over to their respective seats by the radios, putting on their large headphones so they could hear if anypony currently on the Equestrian Space station needed them. Meanwhile, Lopside went to his desk to wait for my updates while I sat down near the massive telescope in the center of the room and gazed into the eyepiece. As always, the sky was calm and still, and I sighed as I realized just how ordinary the day was going to be.
For the next few hours, I fed Lopside updates of what the stars were doing, and she recorded them into a large notebook at his desk. I f I saw any anomalies, He would record them and put them into his computer, which would them access the RASA archive to predict what the anomaly might mean. Over all, there were two anomalies five hours. One was a star which jittered once before falling back into place (probably foretelling good weather next month) while the other as a small, blue star which moved back and forth in place for thirty seconds (a typical sign of a royal love triangle.)
I was about halfway through my seventh hour working, just before we were supposed to get off for our lunch break, when I noticed something which actually managed to peak my interest. At the corner of my sight, I saw a star flicker for a moment, briefly disappearing into the darkness of space before reapearring. Now, I had seen a lot of things happen before, but never had I seen a star disappear. It returned in just brief second, but by then I had my full attention on it.
“Hey Lopside,” I called. “Turn the telescope a bit to my left, would you? I think we might have something a bit out of the ordinary.”
Lopside pressed a few buttons on the control panel on his desk, and the telescope moved a few feet to the left, giving me a better view. For a few momnets, everything was normal, until yet another star flickered and vanished before reappearing again.
“Wow,” I said. Lopside looked over at me, his eyebrow raised in confusion.
“What is it?” he asked. 
“You won’t believe me, but some of these stars are disappearing momentarily.”
Lopside sighed. “Starstruck,” he said, “That happens all the time when a planet passes in front of its star.”
“I know that,” I said, seeing more stars flicker. “But this is different. These stars are flickering in a pattern, a predetermined course, even. This definitely is something weird.”
“Hey guys,” Lightining said, “I think I’m getting something.
We both turned to look at her, and were shocked to see the look of absolute excitement on her face. She and Adeben were listening intently into their radios, with expressions of complete awe. We quickly trotted over to them and put on the spare headsets that were lying about as Adeben patched us in to what they were hearing.
At first, I heard nothing but the screech of radio waves which commonly bombarded the atmosphere. It was a disorganized wreck of low and high pitched screeches which made me want to cover my ears. Slowly however they became more organized, more tolerable. The pitch lowered, until finally it seemed like a rhythm, a beat which sounded almost like that of Morse code. Lopside began to scribble down notes in his notebook as the realization of what was happening hit him. 
“Do you think it could actually be aliens?” He said, staring at me in excitement. I just shook my head, too stunned to say anything.
“Let’s not go that far just yet,” Lightning said. “I’m going to stick to the logical here and say we’re picking up a spy broadcast from the government if nothing else.”
“But why would they send message send Morse code?” Adeben asked, siding with Lopside in the argument that we had somehow managed to contact extraterrestrial beings. “They could just talk to each other in military mumbo jumbo, like they do in the movies.”
“In the movies?” Lightning said. “Please. Besides, we’re not even sure if this is Morse code at all. It could just be a strangely organized sequence of signals, like the POW signal.”
“Let’s be optimistic here,” I said, still stunned by the sudden turn of events. “At any rate, this a hell of a lot more exciting than our usual day at work.”
Lopside chuckled, as did the rest of my colleagues, and started to walk to the door to the lounge. 
“I’ll go call the Canterlot office on this,” He said. “If it’s a military signal, they’ll be able to tell us, and we’ll stop listening. If not… well, I just hope these guys aren’t the invading type of aliens.”
Lopside disappeared into the lounge, and lightning took off her headphones.
“I’m recording all of this, so we won’t miss anything,” she said to Adeben and I. “Until we get a conformation if this is extraterrestrial, let’s just go have lunch and think about what’s going on.”
“Sure,” Adeben said, and the two ponies began to join Lopside in the lounge. 
I followed quickly behind the two, and for about fifteen minutes we sat in the lounge, eating away at hay sandwiches and listening to Lopside talk with the mare down at the Canterlot office.
“Yes, I’d like to report an occurrence of interest,” Lopside said calmly. “We’ve been getting a signal to our radios, and we were just wondering if it’s of equestrian origin. If you could just ask one of the princesses if the mil- wait, what?”
We all turned to Lopside, whose eyes had grown wide in confusion. He took a gulp of water from the glass at his side, and spoke into he telephone again.
“I’m sorry,” he continued, “Could you repeat that? You said that this isn’t a military operation. So the princess doesn’t know about this? Wait, she does? Well, then why the hell weren’t we alert- oh. Oh my, I’m sorry. Yes, yes, we’ll be sure to get on it. No, don’t worry; we won’t let the public know about this until the princess gives the order. Yes, thank you, goodbye.”
Lopside slowly put down the phone, and turned to stare at us. He was no longer as excited as he was before, but now shocked and concerned.
“Lopside, what is it,” Adeben asked. Lopside just shook his head and took a deep breath.
“It’s not a military message,” he said. “And the princess knows about it. She just sent us her own recording of the message for us to listen to. Apparently… well, it sounds like it’s not going to be good.”
“Where’s the message?” I asked. Lopside pointed upstairs.
“They sent it to our computers,” He said. “it’s there right now,.”
We were all silent for a moment. None of us knew what to do. If this was for real, which it certainly seemed it was, then we were about to listen to the first recorded message between our planet and the citizens of another. Slowly, Lightning got up, and walked over to the staircase leading to the observatory. 	
“Well,” She said, “I guess we’ve got do what we’ve got to do, and listen to it.”
We all nodded in agreement, and without a word went up to the observatory tpo listen to the recording. Putting our headphones in, we sat down, and waited a moment before playing the message. As soon as we hit the play button, we were met with the loudest, most hideous noise we had ever heard. It was like the screeching before, but amplified tenn times, a garbled sound like something trying top speak through water and static. It began to form like the message before, evening out until we could both hear and tolerate it, and words began to form the noise.
“Citadel…” the voice on the radio said. It was barely audible over the roar of the interfering radio waves. It’s sentences were cut by it, with small fragments of the message coming through to the ponies on the other side. along with my colleagues,  I listened in intently, writing whatever I could hear down.
“Citadel…” the voice continued, it’s deep, grumbling tone sounding more like a growl than anything else. “Equine peoples… ascend… harbinger… peace from the inscrutable… meaningless resist… be saved from… reply…. we are the salvation of all….”
The recording ended with a loud screech, and we quickly took off our headphones. Lightning scrambled away from the radio, cursing as she did so.
“Sweet Celestia,” she said, her eyes wide in shock. “What the hell was that?”
“It sounded…. It sounded…” Adeben tried to say, but stopped halfway through his sentence to slump to the ground, hyperventilating in existential terror. 
Lopside ran to his friend’s side, wrapping his arms around him to try and calm the zebra down. I looked at the two before turning to Lightning.
“We just talked to aliens,” I said. “We just talked to freakin’ aliens!”
I couldn’t contain myself any longer. I started to bounce about the room, my smile stretching from ear to ear. Lightning chuckled, though it was more out of concern of the overall situation than it was out of joy for our discovery. 
“Oh my god,” Adeben started to say. “Ohmygodohmygodmohmygodohmy-“
He was stopped mid-sentence by a slap in the face by Lopside.
“Calm down, man!” Lopside said, looking Adeben straight in the eyes. “There’s no reason to freak out!”
“No reason to freak out?!” Adeben replied. “We just talked to ALIENS!”
“I know,” I said, still smiling. “I just said so.”
Adeben turned to me, his eyes wide in horror. 
“Well,” He said, “how do we know what they want? For all we know, they could be getting ready to blow us off the face of the planet! Even worse, they could be thinking of blowing the planet off the face of the universe! We have no idea of what they want, and all we can do is sit here like frightened children and wait!”
“Exactly,” Lightning said, “So what’s the point of being afraid? We can’t change things either way, so what’s the point of getting all worked up over the inevitable?”
Adeben stopped hyperventilating for a moment, suddenly snapping out of his crazed mood.
“Oh,” he said, looking about the observatory as if he had forgotten where he was. “Good point. I’m… I’m sorry; I don’t know what came over me. I’ve never felt that scared before in my life. Why, I was just about to-“
“Adeben,” Lopside said, letting go of Adeben and sighing. “It’s perfectly alright. We’re all a bit nervous, and it was only natural that somepony here was going to freak out. Frankly, that’s what really concerns me about all of this. I can only imagine how ponies will react when they find out we have who knows how many aliens orbiting the planet right now.”
I was just about to respond to Lopside when the phone on Lopside’s desk began to ring loudly. Lopside rushed over to it, snatching it up to his face as somepony on the other side spoke through.
“Hello?” Lopside said. “Yes, we listened to the message. Fascinating isn’t it? Oh yes, we’re all so excited. Does the princess want me to come to Canterlot for th- What? I’m not allowed to go? But I’m the head researcher in RASA! I-oh… you want Adeben to come? Yes, well I understand. But someone from here has to go to represent the equestrian sect of RASA, for the sake of publicity at least. Listen, I have someone here who’s waited a long time for some fame and- oh, yes! Yes, thank you, I’m sure he’ll be happy to know. Yes, thank you very much! Bye now!”
Lopside slammed the phone down, and turned to Adeben and I.
“Well, boys,” He said, “You’re going to Canterlot!”
Adeben’s jaw dropped.
“Me?” he said. “Why me? I just arrived here two months ago, and I haven’t done anything of importance? Why in the world would the Princesses want me to come?”
“Because the Zebrican parliament demands it,” Lopside replied. “They want as much credit as possible for this discovery, and they know that having a Zebra scientist on the discovery team will do just that. Like it or not, you’re going to be the most famous Zebra in history!”
“But you’re nto going?” I asked. “I heard you say that on the phone. The meeting on the message is going require an equestrian scientist be present. Who are you going to send in your place?”
“You, obviously?” Lopside said. My mouth dropped open now, too.
“But why- m-“I started to say, but Lopside cut me off. 
“I think it’s pretty obvious why,” Lopside replied. “You haven’t gotten much credit in the two years you’ve been here, and it’s about time you did. I’m already known as the leading scientist on astronomy here at RASA, and Lightning’s related to one of the bearers of harmony.  Out of all of us, it’s you who need your time to shine.”
I stepped forwards to thank Lopside, but he just stretched out his hoof to stop me. 
“There’s no need,” he said, smiling. “Besides, we’ve got to get you all packing. Due to the circumstances surrounding this conference, the scientists and politicians coming to this event are travelling by teleportation to get there as soon as possible. The conference itself starts at midnight, so you’ll have to go now.”
“Teleportation?” Adeben asked. Lopside nodded, and the zebra gulped down a wad of saliva. 
“Yeah, I know,” Lopside said, chuckling. “Don’t worry; I’m good at casting these spells. You’ll barely feel a thing. Now, do you guys need a moment to prepare, or are you ready to go now.”
I jumped forwards, nodding my head in confirmation. Adeben hesitated for a moment, before nodding and stepping forwards to my side.
“Good,” Lopside said, his horn beginning to glow. 
A circle formed around Adeben and I, and I began to feel my atoms begin to separate. From what I had heard, they would split apart for a fraction of a second and form together once we arrived in Canterlot, leaving us completely unharmed. 
I took a moment to look at my friends as the spell went into effect. My eyes met with Lightning’s for a moment, and she smiled. I smiled back, and for a moment I forgot the nervous fluttering in my stomach. Then the spell split us into trillions of atoms, and I was gone, off to Canterlot.