Sun and Moon
Penumbra walked down the street with a purpose to his steps. The post office had sent him a confirmation letter, letting him know that his specially ordered telescope had finally arrived. It had taken three months to arrange its delivery, and it was finally here. Penumbra entered the post, and sitting at the desk was a bored looking mare with a pair of glasses resting on her nose. Penumbra eagerly approached the desk, and the mare barely looked up.
“Name, and reason for your visit?” Her monotonous sounding voice was a clear indication that she didn’t care who was actually there. Penumbra cleared his throat, hoping to garner a bit more attention that the mare was giving, but to no avail.
“My name is Penumbra, and I received a notice saying that my package arrived. I was hoping that I could pick it up.” The mare spared a casual glance at Penumbra before she let out an explosive sigh. Slowly, she pushed herself back from the desk, and she stood on her hooves. With a small gesture she indicated for Penumbra to follow, and so he did.
After a moment the pair came to the back room, where a large table was covered in unsorted letters, and some smaller packages. Against the back wall, though, rested a fairly large package, with a myriad of caution stickers stuck on. Most of them read fragile, but there were a few with arrows, saying which side was the top. Penumbra couldn’t stop the smile from coming to his face.
The mail mare approached the package, and pulled a small sheet of paper off of it before reading it over. After almost five minutes the mare finally put the paper on the table, and she pulled a pen out of her mane.
“Sign here, here, and here.” She indicated the spots where Penumbra had to sign, and he did so eagerly. After a few additional signatures the mare rolled up the paper, and she tied a small ribbon around it. “It’s all yours. The Equestria postal service hereby relinquishes all responsibility for the safe delivery yadda yadda yadda. You already know what I’m going to say, so I’ll just leave you to it.” With hardly a backward glance the mare leaves the room.
An incredibly inappropriate giggle escapes Penumbra as he looks at the package, and he quickly glances around, to see if anypony heard his awkward giggle. Satisfied that he was alone, he quickly used his magic to lift the package. Despite the immense size of the package it wasn’t as heavy as he expected. Still, it was awkwardly large. Soon enough, though, Penumbra was walking down the streets of Ponville, heading for his home on the outskirts of town.
Along the way you pass a few ponies that recognize you, and they give some friendly waves. You return them, but only halfheartedly, as you are too busy thinking about the observations you’ll be able to make with your new ‘toy.’ Just as your house comes into view you hear the voice of the one mare that has shown an interest in your studies. With the amount of care one shows a newborn foal, Penumbra lowered the package to the ground before turning to face Twilight, who was approaching.
“Oh, good day, Twilight. I finally got my new telescope. After three months, and a mysteriously misplaced order form, I finally have it! My old telescope is great, but this one has more than ten times the magnification, and even magically enhanced lenses!” A smile breaks out on her face as Penumbra speaks, and he can tell that it’s genuine, unlike a good number of ponies who ask about his work.
“So, you’ll get to work right away? Start proving some of those wild theories you’ve come up with?” Her voice is tinged with happiness, and Penumbra knows that she’s really interested in what he’s doing.
“I’ll have you know that the Doppler Effect is more than just a theory! I’m certain that it’s really happening! And with this,” Penumbra makes a flamboyant gesture towards the package, “I’ll be able to prove it!”
“I just bet you will, Pen. Mind if I tag along to see it unveiled?” Penumbra nods, and with practiced ease, Twilight lifts the package. “I’ll carry it the rest of the way.”
After climbing the hill, the two ponies enter the house, and head to the observatory built on the roof of the house. It took Penumbra several months to build it, and even more to make it able to rotate as smoothly as it does. Almost an hour is spent unpacking, and assembling the telescope, and conversation between the two ponies flows easily. With a sad smile on his face, Penumbra removed his old telescope from its small mount, and he opened the ornate case in which it sat.
“Goodbye, old friend. I spotted my first nebula with you.” Penumbra slowly closed the case, and with a sense of finality, he locked it closed. “But now I have a new friend. One who will help me to see the truth of our world, and the space around it! Or, I’m certain that once night falls I’ll be able to see space.” Twilight can’t help but give a small giggle at your over eagerness to begin using your new telescope.
“Well, since it’s barely noon, how do you intend to spend the day? You’re not going to just sit in here and wait, I hope.” Penumbra shakes his head, and begins walking down the staircase that leads back inside his house. Twilight follows, and soon they are standing in front of a large bookcase, covered in several hundred small notebooks.
“I’m not going to spend it waiting. Nor am I even going to spend it at my house. I just wanted to take a look at my shelf of discoveries before I left.” Penumbra gestures to a small, offset, portion of the shelf. “Those few journals are the theories I’ve made that were confirmed. Only, about, ten journals rest over there. I’m certain that you’re familiar with the Nova Theory?”
Twilight nods eagerly, before a look of surprise makes its way onto her features. “You’re the one who made that theory? I never knew that you were so accomplished!” A blush forms on Penumbra’s face, before he manages to mumble a few incomprehensible phrases. “It’s an amazing theory, though. We’re all created from the dust left behind by exploding stars. It’s hard to imagine something like Celestia’s sun exploding, though.”
Penumbra quickly overcomes his embarrassment at the prospect of talking about his work with sompony actually interested in it. “Well, you see, Celestia’s sun is still quite young. The few observations I’ve made lead me to believe that it’s less than half it’s maximum age, so we won’t have to worry about it dying anytime soon. There are some stars, though, that are exploding as we speak. They’re too far away for us to ever know, but with all those stars out there, it’s bound to be happening somewhere.”
The conversation continues for quite a while, before Penumbra’s stomach emits a deep gurgle, letting both ponies know just how hungry they both are. The trip to the small café in town takes only a short while, and soon they’re both enjoying a meal. Penumbra keeps looking to the sky, and soon he spots a rainbow colored blur whizzing across the sky. Soon enough the blur rockets downwards, and both ponies watch as the blur becomes a cyan pegasus. She canters over towards the table, and both ponies shift over to make room for the weather pegasus.
“Good afternoon, Rainbow Dash. Lovely weather today.” Penumbra makes sure to be his usual polite self, and Rainbow just scoffs, knowing that you do it out of habit.
“Yeah, it’s supposed to be clear for the next few days, so I was just taking care of a few straggling clouds. No biggie for a pony like me.” Her bragging doesn’t impress Penumbra, but he puts on an impressed front.
The meal passed quickly, and soon Penumbra and Twilight headed over to the library. Penumbra passed on reading anything about space, since he already spent enough time looking up there. Instead he simply grabbed a hoof-full of books, and he began reading as he saw fit.
Before Penumbra knew it, Twilight placed a small plate with a salad on it next to him, and she gave him a warm smile. “It’s almost eight o’clock, so I figured I’d give you something to eat before you went up to your observatory.”
“Thanks, Twilight. I appreciate it.” Rather than gobble it up in seconds, he took his time, enjoying the quality of the meal. As he finished, he smiled at Twilight. “Truly, thank you for that. And thank you for letting me spend the day here. Had I stayed home, I would have gone crazy with anticipation. I’ll be sure to share any findings I make with you as I make them. But, now, I will return to my home, and begin my astral observations.”
Twilight walked him to the door, and soon Penumbra was on his way back to his home. He glanced up at the sky, and his smile grew wider. It was a perfect night. Not a cloud to be seen and the moon was still relatively low in the night sky. Unable to control himself, he broke into a gallop.
Soon enough Penumbra was in the observatory, making sure that the telescope was properly set up, and that it wouldn’t come crashing down as he adjusted the various knobs, and levers. Focusing on a known star, he checked the magnification, and focus. Once everything was squared away, he began his observations in earnest.
Several weeks passed, and in those weeks Penumbra proved eight of his theories correct and more than twice that number incorrect. However, he began to notice an odd pattern in both the sun, and the moon. His observations were showing certain numbers, and distances, that couldn’t be correct, given what he’d been told his whole life.
Over the next few days Penumbra began to plot the course of the sun, and the moon, across the sky. Without doing any analysis on the numbers you managed to accumulate several pages worth of data. He simply glanced at the numbers before he put them into a small bag, and he made his way to the library. He needed an unbiased second opinion, and he knew just who to ask for it.
“What do you want me to do?”
A massive sigh came from Penumbra’s mouth as he tried to explain, again, what he wanted Twilight to do. “These numbers are all related in a certain way, and I want you to tell me how these numbers are related. I am almost certain that I know the relationship, but I want to see if I’m just imagining the correlation, or whether it actually exists.”
Twilight looked at the pages for several minutes before she grabbed a piece of parchment, and a quill. Her equations started out with no rhyme or reason, but after a full hour she started keeping some equations down, instead of scratching them out. Penumbra couldn’t keep the smile off of his face as he saw the exact same equation he derived appear on Twilight’s parchment. However, she goes a few steps farther. She eventually comes to an end, and she looks to Penumbra with a smile on her face.
“There. It’s the only equation that matches more than ninety percent of the data points. Although I have to say that I’ve never seen an equation quite like this.” Her brow furrows as she looks at all the data more closely. “But I can’t quite figure out what it means. Clearly it’s a cyclical pattern, with an incredibly long period.” She looks back to Penumbra with a puzzled look on her face. “What is this data from?”
“This data is a series of observations I’ve made regarding the moon, and the sun. The equation you derived is a bit less cluttered than mine, but it tells the exact same story. The sun, and the moon, both rise and fall at exact, and calculatable intervals.”
“So? Everypony knows that the sun and moon rise at a certain time every day. Both Luna and Celestia keep to incredibly strict schedules when it comes to raising the sun and moon.”
“That’s just it! They don’t! The sun and moon rise by themselves! In fact, they don’t rise at all! The planet we’re standing on rotates on an axis. That axis is tilted in such a way as to cause the seasons! The moon moves around our planet at a certain distance, and it takes a specific amount of time for it to move around our planet. And the sun! The sun is the best part of it all!” Penumbra takes a step back, trying to organize his thoughts. “Twilight, the sun isn’t some sort of magical energy source, like the books tell us. It’s a massive ball of fire, millions of miles away!”
Twilight raises an eyebrow, but says nothing. Penumbra notices, and his tone changes. “You don’t believe me, do you? I thought you might not, so I prepared all of my notes on this, and even a model!” He quickly produced all the rest of his observations, and he placed them before Twilight. “That pile of papers is all the observations I’ve made regarding my ‘Heliocentric’ theory. And to help the whole process make more sense I’ve produced a model.”
It takes a few minutes for Penumbra to build his model, but when it’s assembled Twilight looks at it for several minutes before she begins to actually start moving it around. “Assuming that your theory is correct, what will it prove? The two princesses will never let this be published. It directly contradicts what they’ve been telling the world for centuries.”
“It does more than that, Twilight. It destabilizes the basis for the monarchy we live under! Don’t you see? The Princesses are in power because they claim to move the sun and stars to make day and night. They claim that without them we’d be plunged into eternal night, or a never ending day. But that’s not true! We don’t need them to rule over us any longer! We can create a new system of government. One where we don’t have to bend to their wishes! A system where the ponies of the land have a say over what happens!”
Penumbra continues for several hours, explaining how his findings will finally free all of Equestria from the monarchy. As the sun finally sets, and the moon rises, Penumbra makes his way back to his home, filled with an unusual amount of pride at his discovery. His arrival at home is uneventful, and soon enough he is in bed, and asleep.
As Penumbra rises from his slumber he finds himself in a place he never imagined he’d be. He sits upright immediately, and he looks around, trying to see if he really was where he thought he was. As he takes in the entire room he can’t help but feel giddy to see that he was in the Royal Canterlot Observatory.
His giddiness is short lived, though, as he realizes where he is.
Why is he here, rather than in his bed, back home? His impending deluge of questions was cut short by the sound of a throat being cleared. Penumbra quickly turned to find the source of the sound, and he was amazed to see Princess Celestia herself in the room. Somehow, in his state of euphoria at seeing where he was, he missed the princess standing in the room. Immediately he lowered himself to a deep bow, and the Princess began moving towards Penumbra.
When she was just a few feet away she stopped moving and began speaking. “Do you know why I’ve brought you here, Penumbra?”
“No. Although I could probably make a few guesses if I had to.”
“Please do.”
“I suspect that it has to do with my latest discovery about the heavens above. The fact that neither you nor Princess Luna actually have any bearing on the sun and moon. It’s quite likely that my discovery, if made public, could quickly destabilize your basis for ruling, and then there could be a revolt.”
“It seems that you have a better grasp on the situation than you give yourself credit for. While my sister and I do not control the sun and moon we do have more power than you can reasonably fathom.” Her eyes narrow, and her voice takes on a slightly hostile tone. “A revolt would not end well for the ponies of Equestria.”
“You would force ignorance upon the populace to protect your own rule? You would deny the ponies their right-”
“You have no rights!” The princess’ eyes began to glow, and Penumbra took a hesitant step backwards. “All that you ponies are, everything you’ve come to love, has come from the work of my sister and I! And if we have to spin some fanciful tales to ensure your loyalty, so be it! But I will not allow you to usurp my sister and I over something so minor!”
“Minor? Your entire basis for power derives from your control over the sun and moon! Now that those are taken from you, you have nothing! And clearly you are not the benevolent ruler that you wish us to believe! The ponies will learn of your deception, Princess. Do what you will with me, but the truth is out there, and soon enough it will come back to haunt you.”
“The truth has been there for more than a millennium. And you are the first to stumble upon it. I have no fear for the future. You, though, should certainly fear what is to come.”
“I don’t think so.” In a burst of light, Penumbra disappeared from the observatory, leaving Celestia in an empty room.
“He should not have been able to escape through the wards I created. Unless…” She quickly examined the room, and she found what she was looking for, and what she had feared finding. A few fragments of bone had embedded themselves in the floor, and walls. “I hope that your sacrifice was worth it, Penumbra.”
She cast a last glance around the room before she quickly shook her head and began making her way for the exit. “The second rebellion has started… I can only hope that I fare better than the last time.”
--There it is. The beginning of the second rebellion. I hope that this meets the expectations I have for it. More to come soon.
AVANTE!
-Howitzer