Twilight peered through the lens of her telescope and sighed.
It was late at night, and Ponyville had gone dark and quiet several hours ago. The air was filled with only the chirps of crickets and the hoot of owls, including her own pet, who stood on the rail of her library balcony. Spike had fallen asleep perhaps half an hour ago, leaving Twilight alone.
She'd been trying to track the positions of stars using an older book from Ponyville's library, one made decades ago now. While Twilight knew it was outdated, sometimes these texts could present new information, and she had planned to use the book to study the previous positions to try and map the changes over the years.
She hadn't accounted for the fact that Princess Luna's return meant that the stars weren't just a bit moved from their previous places now, but now placed in differing parts on the sky entirely based on the whim of the Princess of the Night.
It was ultimately a lost cause, and she had wasted her time, but hadn't yet decided to head back inside. The tranquility of the hour and the lack of lights below meant that, while Twilight's original plans of documenting minor changes had been dashed, the sky itself was now much brighter without the pollution from below, bringing dimmer, more distant stars into view that only a pegasus' keen eyesight may have been able to see without aid before.
Twilight ruffled her wings at the thought. She hadn't gotten used to having those yet, for the most part still relying on her hooves as to not be seen flapping around town like a yearling filly.
She pulled away from the scope and spun it on its axis, covering the larger end with its cap. If her read was right, it was around two in the morning, and she would need to go to bed as to be up in time to open the library in the morning. Perhaps she would send a letter to Luna tomorrow to ask for an updated star chart, and for a calendar of the positions she planned on moving them to.
Owlicious' hoot was the only warning Twilight received before a large object flew across the sky.
Twilight's heart skipped a beat, and she ran closer to the balcony, thinking at first it was a pegasus falling from the sky at impossibly high speeds. But then she realized this was much too large, larger than even the elder princesses, and not at all pony-shaped.
She dumbly gawked at it for a few moments before quickly removing the end from her scope, trying to track the object's descent before it hit the ground. Perhaps it was some sort of furniture? A small bit of meteor? Those made sense, but the thing she saw didn't.
Her vision, clearer than it was just a month ago, could see through the telescope for a split second that it was some sort of giant metal contraption with legs and a dish on one end, reminding her a bit of a stage's spotlight. The speed at which it was hurtling towards Equis at meant she only had a few precious moments to try and track it before there was a distant bang, and the thing vanished from the skyline.
Twilight pulled away, a cold sweat forming on her skin, making the previously pleasantly cool night air now feel like ice as her heart hammered in her chest. Whatever that thing was, by her best guess, it had to be nearby — no further than the border of the Everfree. But what was it? She tried to picture the thing in her mind, using an unused scrap of paper to try and quickly draw an approximation of the object.
Something metal, with a big white dome on one end, and a needle sticking from it. Several thin 'legs', and more metal sticking out of one side in a clump. Maybe the length of three ponies, and certainly not anything she could recognize as ponymade. Even with studying the drawing she made, she couldn't guess a purpose. What in Equestria was it? And where had it come from?
Twilight looked around town. It was quiet again. Nopony had thrown their windows open in a panic, ponies weren't running outside to see what the noise was, there was nothing else in the sky. Perhaps they had all gotten so used to disasters happening that a boom just wasn't enough to rouse anypony, but Twilight supposed the lack of Ponyvillians screaming and running around in circles was a good thing.
Twilight took a deep breath, stilling her wild speculations. She knew just by looking at it that it was an object and not a creature, so there was no need to worry about it getting up and moving away from where it fell. It being a thing and not the typical villain of the week was also a positive, as machines had no evil intent.
She flared her wings, contemplating whether a blind teleport or her awkward attempts at flying might be better. She decided on the latter quickly, not wanting to risk accidentally materializing inside whatever the metal machine was and getting trapped, especially when she didn't know its purpose or composition. Though she was uncoordinated, at least her magic and alicornhood meant any dangerous falls wouldn't end up disastrous, as she'd already discovered through Rainbow Dash. A previous near-miss led to an instinctive and automatic teleport back to earth when she'd moved against the wind and lost proper positioning, as well as a lecture.
She used the balcony to glide towards where she thought the thing may have landed, the breeze in her favor. She'd have to thank Rainbow tomorrow for asking the weather team to be easier on the wind speed. The lack of air traffic and having nopony around to gawk at their newest princess' pitiful attempts to fly made the trip that much quicker and less stressful than it already was, to which she was thankful. Perhaps Twilight would stay out late more often.
Twilight landed a few minutes later near the edge of the Everfree, managing to get there with only a hiccup or two. While she couldn't see the object, she could sense it with her new Earth pony abilities, the ground disturbed due west of the treeline. She could smell it, too. Something had been burning.
That quickened her pace, now on hoof. If whatever that thing was had caught the Evergreen floura on fire, it could easily spread to any pony settlements nearby, or to Zecora's hut.
Twilight burst through a grove of smaller trees and branches, eyes finally fixing on the object.
It was in the middle of a small field, though part of the machine had been smashed upon impact with the earth. Her estimates on its size and general shape were correct, though, up closer, Twilight could now see more precise details. The end wasn't a needle, but a fixed point, like a hollow cone. The "dish" faced outwards like a saucer turned upside town.
And, on the un-mashed end, was something truly eye-catching — a perfectly intact golden disc that was a near identical representation of an Equestrian record.
Twilight's eyes went wide. The disc was covered in strange symbols and markings, none she could make heads or tails of. Lines, circles, and diagrams were scrawled across the front in a clearly deliberate manner, and she didn't need to be a scholar to know that this wasn't a result of debris marring the surface. It was the only part of the object that seemed to be entirely in one piece. What parts weren't crushed into bits smelled almost burnt, or like they'd started to melt from the heat of entry into the atmosphere.
Twilight stared at the record. While she could try and teleport the whole of the object home, she couldn't easily fit something of this size in the library, and especially not without waking up Spike. It's crushed state meant that it might also disintegrate upon reforming, destroying any and all proof of its existence.
It didn't seem to be ponymade, or made by any Equissian species, in fact. The materials, the insides she could see that hadn't been destroyed, the odd construction, none of it was anything she recognized from any time period she had ever studied.
Excitement filled her, but she forced a slow breath to calm her nerves. If this thing — from outer space, from the past, whichever — she didn't want to further ruin what was left by rash action. Twilight's lavender magic gently encapsulated the disc, finding it attached only by prongs. She moved these as gently as she could, her aura's touch enough to sense that the pieces were delicate — almost snapping off at the lightest possible touch. Perhaps this object was old, it had to be to be in such shape. Metal wouldn't wear that quickly, unless it was extremely cheap, and holding something covered in gold certainly didn't scream "made poorly and from low quality materials" to her.
It almost felt like desecrating a corpse, or maybe a tomb, and Twilight sincerely hoped that the object's creators had intended for the disc to be removed.
She pulled the golden disc closer, quickly realizing that the markings were on a cover, not the item itself. Gently removing the sleeve revealed a disc that seemed suited for a large record player like the type Pinkie used at her parties, and a magical scan revealed that the gold was just a coating — it was copper inside.
Pony records were usually made using vinyl, but those made of silver and other materials weren't impossible. The player she scarcely used in the basement should be able to read it fine, and if not, a magical solution might be able to be found.
Barely resisting the urge to dance in place, or maybe hyperventilate, Twilight teleported herself and the record back to her library, not yet knowing that her precious cargo would be the start of a very, very long distance friendship.
The jittery excitement persisted the whole time Twilight tried to set up her record player, her hooves shaking so badly she almost dropped the disc. Trying to be quiet was harder, the urge to jump around like a filly and scream to the heavens that she had found something from beyond their world only halted by the prospect of waking up half of the town and causing a panic.
The record's golden coated surface glinted in the low light like an unearthed gem, subjected to scan after scan before she even tried playing it. She confirmed some things she already thought — it had absolutely no magic in it's composition, so it wasn't ponymade. It was old, incomprehensibly so, perhaps a couple hundred thousand years or more. It held information more than just sound, though in ways that made Twilight's head spin. It felt almost magical, but held no real mana, reminding Twilight most similarly of a projection circle for broadcasting images or memories.
She clapped her hooves together, shuffling through her pages of notes to gather her thoughts. Playing the record seemed to be the most common sense course of action, whatever other secrets it held could wait for her to gather more information, especially since she didn't yet understand the not-magical matrix it seemed to contain on the other side.
Taking a deep, if shaky, breath, Twilight set the record onto the player, casting a quick troubleshooting spell to try and gather the speed at which it should be played. She didn't understand enough of the symbols to know the intended rotation speed, so a magical guess would need to be enough.
There was a few seconds of silence after the needle touched down, and, then, there! Noise, like speech, though nothing Twilight could even remotely understand.
The creatures of Equis spoke in dozens of different languages, so translation spells did exist. They didn't work the way manual translation did, where words may be exchanged from language to language using a dictionary and come out precise. Instead, most relied off of intention and approximations, translating meaning but not always literal word-for-word rehashes, better than nothing when an interpretator wasn't avaliable. It wasn't as exact or precise of having a creature translate, but it was all she had, and she could tell just from the sound that these noises weren't made by any being off of Equis. She wasn't even sure she could imitate some of them, the tone and inflection unlike any she had ever heard.
Twilight removed the needle and reset it, readying her quill for note taking the same time as she cast the spell.
The contents went on for over an hour, but Twilight had stopped taking notes only a few minutes in, utterly awestruck.
They called themselves humans (a fact she only found out once she recast the spell, after it continued to simply call their species "sapiants"). They were from a planet called Earth, and lived in a solar system with several other planets. These planets orbited a star, their sun, a stark contrast to Equis' system, where the sun and moon moved around their world. They had included greetings in countless languages — offers of friendship, wishes for peace, invitations to come visit their world and to send a message back. Sounds of the animals and phenomenon of their planet, only half of which Twilight could identify for-sure origins of. Music, music from another world in other languages, all different styles and tempos and feelings.
She ended up with a dozens of pages of notes, information, speculation, and jubilation. There were other species beyond Equis, and they wanted to be friends! So many, billions of them, on another world!
And that was before she flipped the record, following the not-magic's mapping to create something akin to a projection spell.
Images. The circle from the cover, which she only made connections to after observing it. Diagrams. Pictures of alien landscapes and mathematical concepts that Twilight digilantly transcribed. Pictures of these humans and their world. A map of the movement of their continents. Creatures with Equestrian analogs, and creatures she had never seen before. Machines beyond understanding. Homes. Families. Lives of a species across the galaxy, creatures who lived a million years ago.
Twilight wasn't sure just one pony could document this. This changed everything. Everything was going to change. This wasn't just some vague message, there was a craft and the record. The record! It wasn't just a record, but a priceless artifact. Even with all the information could be gleamed from this, there was still so much she didn't know.
The cover...
Twilight held it back up.
There was some she could identify without research. The calibration circle in the first "image" was there, as well as the First Element. There was something that reminded her of a map of some major stars, but didn't align with any stars around—
Twilight's eyes widened, and she leaned closer. It didn't align with Equissian stars, but humans weren't from Equis! If somepony was to try and find the stars here, they might be able to find the planet Earth.
Some stars pulsed with energy, though this was near impossible to track by normal ponies. Luna, however, would almost certainly keep some sort of log of them, or know how to find these!
Twilight stayed up to the early hours, Celestia's sun creeping well over the horizon before she finally stepped back to relax. Over an hour of content had been summarized and put into different sections of interest as well as she was able, with sections of special interest given extra attention (such as the two greetings from what she thought were leaders of some sort, one written, one spoken).
Spike stumbled down the stairs at half past six in the morning, blearily looking into the library's main floor to find a scene that was odd even for them. Twilight, playing what sounded like gibberish off of a record that shone like the stars, the room scattered with notes as she hovered perhaps a dozen books in the air around her, all while jumping around excitedly. She hadn't even noticed his awakening yet, and Spike sighed. It was going to be a long day.
Notes by Twilight Sparkle on Contents and Speculation Regarding "Golden Disc" Found on Extra-Equistrial Object (EEO), 8th Moon 19, 1003 PLR.
The EEO was located at the edge of the Everfree Forest on 8th Moon, 1003, at approximately 2:24am CET. EEO initially was observed in the western sky, in a fireball, and crash landed at the location given. Upon arrival at the scene, front end of the EEO was destroyed due to its fast impact with the ground, rendering much of this area unsalvageable. At best guess, the EEO is about the size of four ponies in width and height at its central point, with thinner "legs" that stick out from this point.
A disc, about 3-4 hooves in diameter, was located on a relative undamaged end of the craft. The disc is made of gold-plated copper and was covered with a "sleeve" depicting multiple suspected diagrams. Only a few of these could be completely identified, and show the First Element, a suspected star map, and an image showing the first image projection from the flipped side of the record.
Upon playback, speed was adjusted to an approximate three and a half sections per rotation via a troubleshooting spell. The speech is not recognized as any past or current Equistrian civilization, or any dialects of such. Some of the sounds made in the "speech" would be virtually impossible for a pony to make, suggesting a potential difference in mouth and throat structures. This was later confirmed.
A rough approximation of the speech on the record was made using a translation spell, but the results of this are likely inaccurate in many places due to the lack of a recognizable language.
The first language is listed as "English" and has a greeting in this language from a "Leader" of an apparent organization called the "Uniting Nations", which contains 147 nation states among its members. The record was sent by a species called "humans" (first translated simply as "sapients", presenting likelihood that these "humans" may be their planet's only sapiant race). The speaker offers a message of peace, friendship, and a desire to learn. He (?) seems to recognize the universe as much larger than most ponies believe, claiming that their planet is simply a "small part" of the whole.
The next section includes greetings from various humans in over fifty languages, some that the translation spell apparently found similar, but not the same, as others. These included messages offering their friendship, and expressing hope and good will. Even with several cycles of translation, no apparent threats or concerning messages were detected. Several of the greetings contained a request for a return message, or to be visited. A couple referred to us (or other intelligent species not from their planet) as "Great Ones", perhaps indicating a sort of religious or spiritual significance.
Some of these contain other information. One describes the planet Earth as the "third planet from the Sun", implying the existence of at least two others in their planet's "system". This is different than the our system, where the sun and moon revolve only around Equis — although I do not recall of ever learning of any such thing. Another mentioned a "machine programmer", showing that advanced technology, like the crashed EEO appeared to be, may be relatively commonplace on "Earth", perhaps to combat their apparent lack of magic, as no magic, mana, or spell work was detected on the disc or its craft.
What then follows is many more greetings, combined with an unidentified noise, most likely an unknown animal. A loud tone plays, then several identifiable noises, akin to rain, rumbling, bubbles, a heartbeat, trains, and dogs. Also included is something best described as a code made of longer and shorter beeps, though the translation spell wasn't able to give any real interpretation.
The third "section" includes 27 pieces of music of varying styles, tempos, and genres. These range from only 43 seconds to eight minutes, 52 seconds. Many contain sounds that seem to be analogs of Equestrian instruments, like violins. While some have speech, others are either acapella or simply instrumental.
The flipside of the record reads similarly to a projection matrix, though no trace of magic was noticed on either the disc itself or the EEO that held it. It is possible that, with the absence of such powers, the beings who produced the record may have developed technologies that also can transmit and read data. The images are almost certainly more accurate than the audio translations, as none contained much language that would need translated. There were 117 in total, the last being a letter.
The first is an apparent calibration circle, as review of the cover after seeing the image confirms that the same symbol is present there. This is followed by a star map and an image of something akin to a galaxy, though not one that is identifiable. The following three present translations for their space and time definitions, which may be of help later with regards to understanding the rest of the cover. There is something akin to a sun, then an apparent color or visual spectrum, all of which were visible. The following photos are in black and white and color, showing planets, apparently differing ones.
One of these planets is blue, with green and yellow land masses, and is a near-Equistrian analog.
More scientific data follows, and then there are images of these suspected "humans".
Humans are a sort of great ape or primate, though they lack the heavy body fur and quadrupedal stance expected of of the species. They have manes but no tails, and with oddly shaped legs. They seem to have different sexes, and reproduce sexually as well, shown through imagery and the representation of a human infant.
A culture of medicine is present, as a doctor delivering one of these infants is depicted. Human females (?) have teats on their chest to feed their young, as opposed to the lower teats of a mare.
Humans of varying ages are depicted, including some adults and juvenile. Like pony foals, their children are smaller, though their proportions indicate they might not be able to ambulate on their own after birth, being stubbier than expected.
Several maps show continents on a planet, which match closely to the Equis-analog shown in previous imagery, leading to belief that this is their "Earth".
The final image, perhaps one of exceptional importance, is a letter from the leader one of the human nations. The name isn't fully translatable, suggesting a name not similar to those of any Equistrian tribe or species, but translates the office he holds as "Elected National Leader", with power suggesting something akin to one of Equestria's princesses. The letter is transcribed in full below, and was translated over several times, with edits, to ensure the closest possible message to the original:
"July 29, 1977
This Voyager space ship was constructed by the United States. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation-states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.
We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered, and the surface of the planet may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in this galaxy, some —perhaps many— may have inhabited planets and space-faring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand this record, here is our message:
This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our photographs, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe."
While the date equivalent of their listed year cannot be determined, magical analysis of the record suggests it is perhaps over one million years old, much, much older than the oldest recorded Equistrian tribes. If the dating is correct, this letter may then be the oldest surviving written record known to Equis — and it's not even made by creatures from this planet.
Given the timeframe and our current understanding of evolution on Equis, the scale only leads to further questioning and concerns. The oldest known ancestor of modern ponies and Saddle Arabian horses is perhaps only fifty thousand years old, if that, and ponies only began writing and recording history in ways we can understand since about eight to ten thousand years. If the humans depicted in the record were from a million years ago, are they still alive? If they are, their species has almost certainly evolved greatly from the time when the EEO was sent out, perhaps to a point where they could well be unrecognizable, even if their species was already around a hundred times longer ponies were. Any current possible humans may not even remember that this message was sent if documentation on it didn't survive. Given the technological level of just this million old EEO, current humans may not even be located in the same star system anymore, or even the same galaxy. After all, there are ponies obsessed with doomsday scenarios of giant asteroids hitting Equis (ignoring the fact that Princess Celestia and Princess Luna would likely be able to stop such a thing). If humans are as advanced as I think, and if they have no magical defenses, such a thing threatening to hit Earth may have led to a planet-wide evacuation to one of their local planets shown in the images — and that's if their technology hasn't advanced to the point where leaving their planet on a "space ship" of sorts isn't as common as ponies pulling carts.
Sending a return message by copying parts of the surviving technology may be possible in a few years, maybe. While ponies have less advanced machinery than what I could see off of the images, EEO, and record itself, we do have magical that humans don't. Further investigation into the how will be required.
(Note to self: Talk to the Mayor in the morning about securing the EEO crash site before curious ponies try and investigate it themselves, and send a letter to the Princess.)
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
Third planet, yellow star Tell us where your children are We have come here from afar To answer their invitation - "Absent Hosts", Unreal Estate
After a long period of failed attempts, it was decided that magic, not technology would pilot the return message.
Even with help from the non-Equine races, Equis lagged far behind human technologial advances, though the age of the craft made this even more obvious. If the estimated million year origin was accurate, the vessel would likely be primitive to any humans now, their species many times older than ponies. Even if they'd wanted to, however, copying the original ship was impossible, even once the crash site was sectioned off and the wreckage taken for examination. Too much of it had been destroyed from the entry into the atmosphere, and much of what had survived that was annihilated upon hitting the ground.
Instead, the creatures of Equis would rely on something much more familiar to them — magic. Statis spells, teleportation, and trackers were common enough already. All that was needed was a container and a plan.
Eventually, a return craft was made. Instead of metal like the humans, theirs used ancient, persevered oak, twisted with gems and more than a few protection and preservation spells. Patterns in the wood and jewels would make sure it wasn't mistaken for any sort of debris. Runes for teleportation were carefully etched into the back by Equestria's best and brightest. A teleportation circle — but not one that would in any way be called "simple".
Runes were already uncommon when a only third of the pony population had horns, and with only very few of them who knew any complicated spellwork that would require such a thing. Only a select group of ponies could write them beyond a few lines, and it was this group, as well as the Princesses, who made the design.
It was a sort of steadily increasing teleportation loop. While it would need ignited by horn at first, the runes would eventually leech magic and energy from their surroundings, perpetuating the cycle. First it would only teleport a the length of a small town. Then twice that. Then four times. Then eight, steadily increasing each time the loop began, until it was reaching distances that would be impossible to measure.
Such a spell was barely theoretical, and the energy required for the initial lighting beyond the capabilities of even many of the most talented unicorns. However, it was decided that they wouldn't be alone — the best of Equestria's current magic users, as well as all four princesses, would be just enough to start the loop.
Many ponies were skeptical of course. Even after much waiting, then trepidation as they waited to see if the launch would be a success, learning it had been only soothed initial questions.
What if it took too long to arrive? What if the location it headed to was wrong? What if the container was hit by an asteroid, or destroyed by radiation, or there were no humans left to receive it? If they got it, what if their reply took another million years to reach them?
Would humans even still be alive?
There was nothing to do but wait and hope.
Maia Troyer, vanquisher of asteroids, former senior archivist of the Homeworld, namer of many species from beyond Earth...nevertheless had a terrible cold.
She scanned the skies again regardless, annoyed but unperturbed. Her job these days was a relatively thankless to most in terms of excitement, and often subject to many pointless questions, but Maia would never say she disliked it.
For millenia, humans had always searched for intelligent life beyond the Homeworld. At first, it was simply looking for radio signals. Then sending physical craft. But those days were so long ago that only scant records had survived, only preserved based on the very scant chance a reply would be received.
Eventually, the effort expanded. As humans began to leave the planet, there were, of course, explorers among them. At first only the Solar System was searched. Nothing. Then the nearby dwarf planets. No luck. Finally, the closest exoplanets. No signs of life were found, though occasional traces of it were — signs of previous biology on now lifeless worlds.
Then there was a breakthrough. Life, in its most basic forms, was discovered on far-distant skies. Single celled organisms, scatterings of minor flora and fauna — but nothing intelligent, nothing that could be communicated with, not even to the level of the more sentient of Homeworld's animal populations.
Many gave up. If other intelligent life was out there, it was said, it likely wasn't around anymore. Perhaps it had self destructed, gone extinct, or never even existed in the first place. Surely if something as old as humanity, or even older, was still around, it would be discovered by now. Surely, other societies, if they existed, would also ponder the Great Paradox?
Maia refused to believe such things. The universe was vast. It still expanded every day, and only so much of it was able to be observed. Mapping was slow going even with the latest technology, so maybe something was there — it was just too far away, or not advanced enough, or was hiding. Maybe other species just flat out didn't care or weren't curious enough to leave their planets of origin.
Maia was one of the few who still desperately looked for signs of life from the cosmos, always yearning for proof of any intelligence beyond Homeworld's own.
Yet the skies remained as silent as they'd always been.
It was disheartening, but at least the simple life proved existence could be born from planets other than the Homeworld. Perhaps one day there'd be a signal, a message, a ship, something. Maybe she was just fooling herself, but in a way, Maia found that her job gave her an odd sense of purpose. If it was all for naught, at least the messages she sent out may be discovered by other humans, farther in the future. At least if humanity ever died off, any civilizations billions of years from now may find the artifacts they sent, so they might be remembered and known. It gave her a different perspective. She didn't have to leave Homeworld like so many others did, she could stay right here and explore in her own way, especially with her body beginning to fail her.
She was just over a century old. As opposed to most, who had forgone biology (whether wholly or partially) for the certainty of steel and artifical flesh, Maia had only the most basic of alterations. The old "uploading panic" from millenia past still haunted the most traditional of Homeworld's human populous, and while Maia wasn't so extreme, she still found the idea of becoming entirely mechanical disquieting.
But that wasn't important right now. She had a job to do, even if her role only existed because of her own interests.
Today, besides the usual scans and answering pointless questions from others that could be solved within a few seconds if they tried, she was doing research. While many old documents hadn't survived the march of time (decay, deletion, and disregard was responsible for larger gaps in information that many realized), those that remained often had hidden gems, even if the details were incomplete.
Some of the first objects humanity of old had sent out into space were probes, meant both for information gathering, and, upon their usage period ending, sent to drift endlessly into space on the rare chance that other life beyond Homeworld would find it and send a reply.
That hadn't yet happened, but it was good to document such things, even when details such as the direction the probes were sent in, or what information they had been originally meant to gather, had been lost to history. Searches had been started to try and find these lost pieces of the past, but such things had yet to be successful, especially considering the distances involved and missing information. The latter set of these probes, ones with primitive recordings of the past, were estimated to take 40,000 years from their launch to reach the nearest star system besides the Sun. It had been a million years since that time, and knowledge as to their direction, status, and appearance had been lost. For all humanity knew, all could have been destroyed by rogue planets or asteroids.
What remained was the records, both written and literal. While Maia lacked details on the exact contents, images and art of the discs had survived, preserved by those before her just in case they were ever re-discovered. Flat, circular, and bright gold, with cases showing maps and diagrams leading to their solar system.
The Golden Records.
Somewhere, in the space between the stars, an object phased back into existence once more.
It literally appeared out of thin air (or lack there of), all but twisting reality around it as it faded into an opaque form once more. A simple amalgamation of oak wood and crystals, sticking out from the simple space debris that surrounded it. While Messenger wasn't truly sentient, all magic was, in a ways, alive, built on the emotions and intent of the caster. It knew where it was headed, and knew it was only a minute at most before it would once again move into the area between worlds to travel another great length.
It wasn't as if Messenger minded. It had no real sense of mind besides keeping track of where it was and avoiding obstacles. It could tell through a brief scan that it still had a ways to go before reaching the "Earth" it had been directed to, but the length of its teleports would mean that it would reach the system that surrounded the planet sooner rather than later.
All it had to do was wait.
Her searching was very rudely interrupted by an obnoxious beeping from one of the monitors, which eventually led to all of them repeating the same noise in synch one after the other. Maia set down the physical documents, blinking blearily. She only then noticed that several hours had passed — the sun outside having gone now and leaving the whole office lit only by the brightness of the screens.
She hadn't received any messages this urgent or in such a multitude since the skies were alight with supernovas so many years ago.
It only took a moment before the realization took effect, and Maia hurried over to the closest screen, both to silence the blaring noise, and to see what the emergency was. If a ship had crashed, she and other nearby humans still on Homeworld might be called to assist. It could be that an asteroid was incoming, though that would usually just cause a warning to brace for impact as it was destroyed, risk of debris raining down slim but possible.
It was no normal message.
Instead, the monitor displayed a series of rapidly flashing pages of information and diagrams. It was almost too fast to track. Maps, confused messages to and from the equally puzzled Space Force, multiple angles of some...object.
It vaguely resembled a cross between a wreath and a bird nest, if such things were knit out of oak branches instead of sticks and scraps and many times that size. But instead of holding eggs, there were purple gems embedded into and in the middle of the wooden mass.
And it was, apparently, manifesting into and out of existence, and heading towards their Solar System.
Some of the messages were to her — asking if it was something humans had sent before — but most were from various scientists and inhabitants that remained on Homeworld, disbelieving what they were seeing or insisting it must be a prank.
It wasn't just visual. The object vanishing and reappearing a distance away was noticed on maps and scans, causing even more disbelief. Not even humans had gained the ability to teleport randomly, not without wormholes at least, and this thing was doing it without any assistance or visible technology.
Tentative explanations were floated. A memorial sent adrift by the recent Sedna Exploration Force? No, they claimed ignorance, and why would they make one like that anyways? Debris launched off Homeworld by accident? It was awfully artistic for it to be a mistake, and using wood in such a manner when it was meant to be preserved would be incredibly daring. The nature reserves were usually strictly guarded.
As Maia watched with the same befuddled fascination, an idea came to her.
It was always assumed that a message from extraterrestrial life would cone in the form of a technological feat greater than humans could create, but perhaps they weren't a mechanical society. No one had ever seen aliens besides the basic life, after all.
If this object was truly coming from deep space, heading their way, teleporting....maybe it was magic. Wasn't there an ancient proverb she'd come across about advanced enough technology being akin to magics? Maybe they were so advanced that what humans saw as "weird wood and crystals" was actually some sort of incredibly advanced machinery?
Thankfully, Maia didn't have to voice her eccentric hopes to the void, as messages repeating this same idea soon came. Of course the Space Force denied such ideas, still apparently believing it was of Homeworld origin, just undocumented.
But then the object vanished again, and when it reappeared moments later, it had somehow moved from the Oort Cloud to just outside of their planet's gravity field.
And stopped.
Though she wasn't in a position to look to see what was happening, Maia saw the dimmed light through her window suddenly brighten into a kaleidoscope of colors.
