Turn the Keys...
Ultimate Harmony
Twilight and her friends were in the middle of a world-threatening crisis. The fate of Equestria, and maybe more, rested in their hooves. They managed to discover the final key to to box Twilight found at the Tree of Harmony. All their hope was put into the small blue box.
They inserted each key into a keyhole then gave a glance at each other. Runes along the box's edges and sides glowed as it recognized the presence of the keys, letting magic course through itself. The star on top glowed the brightest. Even as their hooves shook, they all kept a firm grip on their keys and turned.
Or tried to. The keys would not budge. "Wh-what?! Why won't they turn?! We put all our hope into this box and now—"
The alicorn was cut short as a figure of light appeared on the suspended top surface. It was a projection of a creature they were not sure of. From what they could see, it stood on two legs and looked like a primate. They could also identify clothes on the figure.
Then it began speaking to them.
"Hello. If you are watching this message, then it means that the entire human race was wiped out."
"What?!" the mares gasped. They had not even enough time to wonder about the appearance of this seemingly random creature, and it tells them that an entire species was gone?
"If you have discovered this device by chance, then surely you must be wondering what it is."
Twilight looked at her friend's faces, who, like hers, were just fixated on something completely unexpected. She quickly returned her attention to the speaker, not willing to miss anything important.
"As this is supposed to be a basic, short introduction of only a few minutes at most, I'll only tell the basic story."
"Twi!" Applejack exclaimed. "Do we even got time for this?!"
"It's telling us what this is!" Twilight argued, tensely listening to the projection. "This could be extremely important!"
"We were invaded. We don't know where they came from. Just that one day they appeared around our planet and a moment later, our home was under attack. That continues to be the situation this current moment. As I speak, we are finalizing our solution to the situation."
"We fought back valiantly, something the human race could be counted on to do. For centuries, we've constantly warred with each other, but after that day, we were... unconditionally united as one."
"Kinda like how Equestria was formed?"
"Maybe."
"However, as we quickly discovered, our current weapons were not effective enough to stop the invaders. The world's stockpile of nuclear weapons were promptly considered to be the Earth's primary defenses, but unfortunately, that idea proved to be ineffective as quickly as it was suggested. With the way things were going, we might as well just nuke ourselves into extinction. At the best—some even said it was unrealistically optimistic—we expected to survive one month."
"One month? Oh dear..."
"The human race was both scattered and herded together. Through miracles, we were able to gather a large enough military force around this location, enough skilled people, and much of the world leadership. This became the location of the United Nations headquarters. Here, we would conduct the war for our survival. This, as it was, was the most important bastion of our people. A symbol of the refusal to give up hope that we would emerge victorious."
"How... commendable."
"Too bad it didn't work..."
"We received no indication that the invaders would consider peace. We tried, and those efforts immediately failed. We had no choice but to keep fighting on, soon clear that it was only to slow our demise. Good thing for us, our race had too much dignity to just stand down and just let the end come swiftly. Then again, who in their right mind wouldn't fight for their own home? The only things you have?"
The six mares were struck with the question, quickly finding no reason to disagree with the statement.
"Holding back bore fruit. We had the time to study alternative methods to fight back, motivated by desperation. Two weeks in, we came up with something that could help us, partially by studying the invaders. I won't give much details on those specifics though; that information should be in the archive.
"It was something we thought was initially borne of insanity. It was almost delving into metaphysics. They somehow discovered that we had some sort of... power within ourselves. A little more digging showed that everything had something akin to it. We were all connected by it. It was something we could somehow utilize in the fight against our enemies. We just called it energy for simplicity's, but because of how ridiculous the idea seemed, it was jokingly called many names—soul power or magic, just to name two."
"They... didn't have magic?"
"Apparently not..."
"No matter how much people ridiculed the idea though, they couldn't argue that it produced results. Unfortunately, at the same time, those results had heavy costs. The most powerful source of this energy came from within ourselves. As weapons from this were a technology created from desperation, we didn't have time to find if there was any safe way to utilize it. Our bodies were obviously not evolved to function this way.
"The way these weapons worked was that it sucked energy from a person to power it. As it was, while we were killing the invaders more and more by the day, we were also using up our own people to do it. No one produced any strong arguments against it since it was the only thing that was managing to hold the invaders back. But everyone knew we couldn't keep this up either. Forget morals, we were still going to make ourselves extinct eventually."
The six ponies could only continue staring on in horror.
"We were back to square one. Forget not knowing how many of them were on the ground, we didn't know how many more of them there were past that number. If we kept fighting, we weren't going to accomplish anything except slow the invader's takeover of our home. The end result was the same—the human race was gone."
"Ever since the United Nations was brought here, the topic was constantly, heavily discussed. Finally, we had to accept the fact that there was no way out. So, our only options now were to choose what to do with our death. And being the special species we are, we decided that our current path was unacceptable. We had to take as many of them with us as we could. We had to go out with a bang.
"The UN decided that all remaining research was being directed towards our final act. For nearly a week, how to accomplish this was deliberated. And near the end of that week, the researchers found that there was one source of this magical energy greater than the ones we held in our own bodies. They said it was the soul of the very earth itself. This was when we settled on the final symphony. We called it Project Harmony. Its purpose—to finally create harmony on earth.
"Through superhuman effort, we finished the device in the span of less than a week. We were nearing the end of the fifth week of the invasion, and we knew that we weren't going to be able to hold on much longer. This was it."
The six mares, captivated by the tragedy unfolding before them, watched as the projection expanded to show a large device. It bore resemblance to a tree, but it looked very artificial in nature. Yet despite being a massive construct of metal and wires, they couldn't stop wondering about its resemblance to the smaller Tree of Harmony.
"This device would gather as much power as it could. I can give a basic description of the device. It's grounded to the earth, allowing its power to flow into the earth's well of power. It had five main 'collectors' which took energy of a certain resonance—ours."
"Are those... supposed to be the Elements?"
"These were supposed to siphon energy as much as it could from its surroundings. Everyone within a certain radius of this device was going to die from this process alone. We didn't know how large this radius actually was; some estimated the entire globe.
"Once it had no more power being collected, this was all fed down into the earth, where it would all be released in a colossal wave. They estimated that it would at least affect an area twice the diameter of the Moon's orbit. It was said that the wave produced by this device would wipe out all beings with a similar energy resonance. As it was, the... 'frequency' had a connection to sapience. That meant that it would only wipe out humanity and the invaders. And we couldn't ask for any better."
The projection changed to show many humans around a table.
"Soon, the moment's going to come when we end it. End all of the chaos. Our leaders will stand around the control panel. Reminiscent of the controls of our own weapons of mass destruction, all the keys had to be turned before we can activate it."
"Are these... these the same keys?" Rarity wondered out loud.
"Must be..." Twilight said.
"There are six keys. Five for each of the UN Security Council members, and the sixth to represent all of mankind."
The voice sighed.
"In a few hours, this is what we're going to do. We're going to turn the keys."
In the image, six people surrounding the table turned a key. On top of the table, a central pedestal lit up.
"The activator is going to be armed. We're going to put our hands on it, push down, and soul-nuke the bastards off of our planet and out of our solar system. End it all once and for all."
There was a simulation of the device activating, a wave expanding out and across the planet. Then it returned to the original figure, the narrator.
"I don't know what or who will rise from our ashes if anything at all. However, whatever... whoever you are, know this: we, the human race, paid the ultimate price for the purest form of harmony."
He sighed again, contemplating. "We had a religion here. They had a book, and in it they said that man was placed on the earth to care for all creation. As I see it, if that's true, man's creator either had enough of us or loves us so much that we were given the answer to this crisis. Anyways, I hope we fulfilled that mission. I hope that through our actions, something will rise again, in the peace we have gained for our little blue sphere of life, since right now, that's the only thing left we could hope for."
"If this works, then hopefully something... someone will find this in the distant future, which is precisely why this recording is being made in the first place. Maybe you'll have horns coming out of your head. Maybe you'll have wings. Hell, maybe you're quadrupedal. I don't know what or who you are, but I pray that you will never have to go through our experience. And should you ever find yourselves in a terrible crisis, remember that you are all connected and that being together makes you all stronger."
"If you found this by chance, inform your leaders to lock it up somewhere safe. If you were searching for it, this is your warning so that you know what kind of power you are holding. If this is your goal, then go ahead and turn the keys. This is our legacy, our final gift, and our goodbye. "
The recording ended, leaving the box silent and still, though it felt light the glow of the box itself was humming. The bright star on top felt like a bottomless pit.
The six ponies spoke no words, instead trembling in place. There was nothing they could say after what they just witnessed. The silence was remedied as the note about being in the middle of their own crisis registered in their heads, causing them to quake even more.
"Twi?" Applejack began. "Is... is this that thing they used? Why does it look different?"
"It must have something to do with all the magic," Twilight answered. "The earth's, the tree's, everything must have caused it to change form."
"But will it still wipe everything out?" Rainbow asked.
"I don't know. But... do we have any other choice?"
Though their nervous hooves shook, they all firmly turned their keys. This time, the keys turned. Then they removed their hooves from the key handles and waited.
The box's sides opened like a blossoming flower, but the top remained in place, as they would quickly see, supported by a rod in the middle. They all leaned in in anticipation.
Twilight's hoof hovered over the box.