Dr. James Irwin was not having a good day. This was, in fact, the worst day of her life.
In the strictest sense, it was also the best day of her life, which did not suggest she was going to have a particularly good future.
She couldn't even have the satisfaction of vocally complaining about it, because everyone else in the world had things nearly as bad as she did. All four of the others were suffering in the same Biosleeves that James had been dumped into. True, not all of them had quite as much to deal with as she did. But she couldn't even find a quiet corner to sulk about it, because Olivia wouldn't let her.
"I want everyone to know what's going on," Major Fischer had said, her voice higher pitched than theirs, but somehow gruffer and more commanding all the same. Maybe it was the way she had cut her mane back, or wore her crisp uniform like she knew what she was doing on four legs. Whatever the reason, even Dr. James Irwin didn't dare question her. She cleaned up the slime leftover from the production of her sleeve, spent over an hour struggling into the weird uniform meant for a quadrupedal body with stumps for hands, and made her way back to Central for their first briefing.
A large conference table had been moved into the center of the room, with cushions spread around it instead of chairs. James made her awkward way to one of the seats, staring around at mirror-perfect copies of herself. Well, except for Major Fischer, who looked a few years younger and had an olive-colored coat and bristle-short mane. Each of the others had their name and position sewn onto their uniform, and James took in each one, since it was the only way to differentiate anyone besides the commander. At least none of the others had ranks—that meant they weren't military either.
Dorothy Born - Xenobiology
Karl Nolan - Political Science
Martin Faraday - Physics
Her own name was sewn onto her uniform, which had blue accents just like Karl's, which indicated the related focus of their disciplines. Martin and Dorothy's both had green for a similar reason.
"What do you do?" Dorothy asked from beside her, staring at James's uniform with the same intensity that James herself had searched it for her title.
"I'm the translator," James answered, her voice sounding identical to Dorothy's, but somehow less confident. "We have me and a negotiator, that must mean we found a civilization. Since we look like this..." She looked down at herself, blushed, then looked back up. "Well, I don't know what it means."
"The handbook doesn't suggest imitating native life," Dorothy said. "There's no reason we would have Biosleeves like this unless they were required. For... some reason. There must be an inherent biological reason for it. Perhaps this planet has unusual gravity, or strange radiation, or... some other factors that would make human life impossible. Until we beat them. Which we will, because we beat everything."
Martin rocked back and forth on her cushion, forelegs wrapped around herself, and muttering. "It isn't a planet, it isn't a planet, it isn't a planet..."
"There could be other reasons," Karl said. Like James, there was something of a nervous skepticism in the way she spoke, as though she were afraid of her own voice. "Political pressure from the native government, in whatever form it takes. Perhaps they're xenophobic, and the Forerunner negotiated an agreement not to create sleeves of any other species."
Major Fischer came in the open doorway. A drone rolled along behind her on a pair of rugged rubber treads, dragging a large metal crate as it went.
"I expect we're about to find out," Dorothy muttered. "Right? You're going to tell us what's going on?"
"Yes," Major Fischer said. There was no cushion at the head of the table, so she remained standing.
Given how much smaller she was, standing was the only way she wouldn't look comedically small compared to the rest of them. Now that she was thinking more clearly, James could detect a difference in smell as well. A very subtle crispness that seemed to suggest youth in a way she couldn't put into words.
"I only want to explain this once. When we're done here, I'll allow a twenty-four-hour rest period, which I expect each of you to use to acquaint yourselves with these new bodies. The translation is pony, by the way. We're called ponies. Pegasus ponies, which is why we have wings. It's all in the file under 'Translation Team Intelligence.'" The metal box resting behind her opened then, hissing with the sound of compressed storage gas as it did. Major Fischer turned around, lifting a bundle in her mouth and setting it on the table. She undid the Velcro with her mouth as well, revealing four standard computation surfaces.
Martin sat up suddenly, reaching for hers with surprising speed. But the major pulled them away. "Not until this meeting is over. I want your full attention."
"I thought I was the translation team," James said, her voice braver than it had been up until that point. "Did something happen to one of them? I'm here to replace someone? Or... am I backup?"
"Neither," the major said. "Translation is well ahead of schedule, and the team is integrated into pony society. They won't need your help. But I can't make sense of her notes about the alien language. We could wait for her to get back, or we could save time by having you go over the reports we get and start teaching us now. You have a week to read everything we have and get up to speed, and I want you teaching the rest of us conversational alien after that."
James opened her mouth to reply, but the major raised a hoof, silencing her before she could. "Wait your turn. We'll go over what I expect of each of you at the end."
There was much to explain. Some things they had suspected, like the complex alien society. James listened, but much of what she heard didn't sink in. The vital information, to her, had already been delivered. She wouldn't be out in the world learning an alien language. She wouldn't get to accomplish her whole reason for living—the whole reason she'd given the last twenty years of her life to study and practice. She would be nothing more than a glorified grade school teacher.
Eventually they got through all the background, and the major got around to explaining their responsibilities. "Dr. Born, I've loaded everything we learned during the first two generations onto your computer. I want to know what the hell killed human Biosleeves. Then you're going to design a Biosleeve that doesn't die." She held up one stumpy hoof again. "The fewer of these sleeves we have to make, the better."
"Understood." Dorothy pulled her computation surface towards her from across the table and started scanning its contents.
"Mr. Nolan, you're our negotiator, and we don't have any negotiating going on right now. I expect you to devote your time to studying everything we've learned about the aliens so far. I want to know what our political avenue will be, once we're ready to introduce ourselves. I also want to know how they'll react if they discover us before we're ready." She shoved the next computation surface in the general direction of Karl’s seat. "You have all of the translation team's notes, along with the observations of the previous generations. I think the former will be more useful to you. Feel free to send your questions directly to the translation team—if you need anything that isn't in the notes, I'm sure she can get it."
"Got it." Karl caught the computation surface as it went sliding by. "I'll let you know what I find."
"Dr. Faraday, I don't really know why the Forerunner made you. Physics seems pointless to me in our situation. But here's everything the satellites have found about our planet, so knock yourself out." She slid the pad over, just as she had with the other. "I expect you to make yourself useful. It's up to you to figure out how to do that."
Martin nodded, though she didn't seem able to form any actual words.
"And I already told you what you'll be up to," Major Fischer said, sliding James the last of the pads. James took it, though she didn't look at its contents like the others had done. Just now, she found it hard to care about what it contained. "Get conversational with the language, then you can teach us. Mr. Nolan is your focus, since she'll be our voice in any negotiation."
"So that's it?" Dorothy asked. "We can go then?"
"Not quite." The major went back to the box, removing another bundle from inside. She set it down on the table in front of them with a heavy metallic thump. The fabric fell open, revealing four threatening-looking metal objects. Rifles of some kind, whose specific designation James didn't know. "As I explained, this planet is dangerous. The natives are more capable than they look. The planet killed two generations of humans before we were even grown. Each of you will reach firearms proficiency D within one week. There is a range, and training materials are available on your computers."
"We're not soldiers," Karl said. "We're here to make contact with the aliens, not fight them. We're not invaders."
"You're going to defend yourselves if attacked," the major said, glaring at each of them. Almost like she wanted them to argue. None of them did. "In one week's time, we'll be leaving Forerunner Base to begin construction of this planet's first city. We'll bring any equipment we need with us, but I expect each of you to be coordinated in your Biosleeves and adjusted to your responsibilities. We haven't fabricated a psychologist, so if you've got any shit to deal with..." Her eyes narrowed as she glared at Martin. "You will deal with it. Is that clear?"
"Good." She rose, turning to go. "I won't be on-base again at any point today, so you're on your own for getting sorted. I trust the best and brightest of the Pioneering Society to get over whatever difficulties you're having with your sleeves." With that she turned, marching right out of control and down the hall deeper into Forerunner Base, with the drone rolling along behind her.
"Well..." Karl said, staring down at the rifles resting on the table between them. "We have an interesting leader, don't we? I hope she knows what she's doing."
"Doesn't matter," Dorothy said, rising to her hooves as well, though she didn't get any further than that. She stared down at the computer, then back at herself, apparently trying to figure out how she would carry it. "We do. Forerunners are dumb as old bricks. I'm sure the previous crews gathered all the data I'll need to put together a Biosleeve safe from the hazards of this planet. Though... it does concern me that they're apparently serious enough to kill our predecessors even when they spent most of their time in this base. We're supposed to be shielded."
Martin went back to rocking back and forth. "Don't understand..." she was muttering now. "And so, the fly stared into the fathomless abyss, contemplating its next landing. But safety never came."
"You think she might be overcooked?" Dorothy asked, not even lowering her voice. "Nonhuman Biosleeves were supposed to be difficult, but... the rest of us are plenty sane. Aren't we?"
Karl shrugged. "Everyone reacts to stress differently. The rest of us have more to worry about than you do, Dr. Born. Let Martin take his time." She turned, so she was mostly facing Martin now. "Forget what the major said, we know you're important. The military always gets its balls out in front of the rest of us, but we know better. I'm sure the Forerunner had good reasons for waking you up."
James rose to her hooves, taking the tablet in her mouth. She didn't care about her dignity really, so she didn't insist on staying upright like Dorothy. She nodded politely to the others, before walking awkwardly down the hallway. I know exactly how you feel, Martin, she thought. But it wasn't like she could climb back into a cryogenics pod and go to sleep—there was no such technology. They hadn't been woken up, they'd been created. Now it was up to them to make that creation mean something.
If we can.
* * *
"Dr. Irwin, can you come here a moment?"
James looked up from where she'd been staring down at her computation surface, staring for so long that the letters had all blended together into one unified, meaningless mess. She hadn't really been reading for at least an hour now. "Yeah, sure." She rose from the top bunk, hopping down to the lower level. As she fell, her wings struggled against the fabric, as though trying to catch her. They looked pitifully small to do something like that, but... the notes she'd been reading suggested that didn't matter. Though there was much information the notes didn’t contain--like the author’s name. Much to her frustration, considering how painfully familiar they sometimes sounded.
She landed on her hooves, maybe a meter away from the speaker. Karl had done a little to change her appearance over the last few days. She had cut her mane short, short enough that it approximated a male human haircut. It was still the same color as everyone else's, and she still wore the same uniform. No one had discovered whatever magical substance Olivia used to dye her coat, and she wasn't sharing. "What's up?"
"Martin has something," Karl said, her voice sounding exactly like James's. There was no getting used to that. "She's been... I don't know if you saw... going a little crazy in there."
James had seen it. The base had male and female bathrooms and showers, though up until now the male shower had been empty and unused. James had intended to use it anyway, in defiance of the Forerunner and its eagerness to make a crew with only a single sample of the alien species. But then Martin had claimed the area as her own domain, and started attaching printouts to the walls, scribbling all over them, and connecting them with string. In only a few days, the bathroom and showers had been so covered as to completely conceal what had originally been set up there.
"Yeah," was all she said. "All that number crunching went somewhere, huh?"
"I'm pretty sure she knew something was wrong from the day she woke up," Karl said. "She just... wanted to be sure, I guess. I don't know. I don't want to be too hard on her, we're all going through the same shit. Well... most of us are." She glanced down the hall. "Martin went to Olivia to call a meeting, but she said it was 'science shit', so we should deal with it. She's too busy setting up for our flight or whatever, so..."
"So let's go." James started walking, past Karl and into the hall. The restrooms weren't much further, with one on each side of the hall for each of the sexes. Not that she'd been in the one on "her" side more than once. "I wasn't happy with how much the military ran our lives last time. If the rest of us don't stick together..."
Karl followed. "Olivia will make sure it's the same way here? Yeah, that's already a work in progress." She lowered her voice, so quiet James had to stop walking and strain her ears to hear. "I checked the gestation pods, they're already working. Next batch of crew is an honest-to-god seal team."
They froze at the same moment, both hearing the same sound. It was another pair of hooves coming down the hall behind them. James tensed all over, fearful of what it might be—but her fear was in vain. It was only Dorothy, wearing only the back half of her uniform and a satchel over her shoulder. Her computation surface was stuck inside it, along with a few glass test-tubes. She smelled like she'd been in the lab for at least a full day. "You talking about what I think you're talking about?"
"Yeah." Karl gestured for her to join them. She did, bringing with her another copy of the same identical scent along with all the smells of the lab. As she flexed her wings, James found herself feeling slightly jealous. She was sick of how confined she felt in her uniform.
"Well, I'm as worried as you are. But at the same time... maybe not so much." She lowered her voice to the same hushed whisper they'd been using. "Forerunner gave the major authority because of the compound of all its different threat-calculations. I bet you one of these vestigial wings that the infeasibility of human crew-members positively dominates that risk calculation."
"You can't know how a Forerunner thinks," Karl argued. "I read the same handbook you did. Its value-system might be public, but it's been learning all this time. It won't be operating the same as a fresh Forerunner right out of the factory."
Dorothy's eyes narrowed. "No offense, but you don't know what you're talking about." She raised one hoof defensively. "Don't even say it. Yeah, I'm not CS, I know I don't either. Dismiss your shallow-minded objections and consider a moment how long mental profiles for this project have been recorded. When I was admitted, the big minds were still negotiating about how the probes would operate. I had a friend on the committee. We got together often. Well, one thing led to another, and... I read some things I shouldn't have. Swore on my grave I'd never tell a soul, but..." She looked up, through the stone roof of the chamber. "Dr. Dorothy Born is as dead as Darwin, and so is my old friend."
"Whatever you're going to say..." Karl looked increasingly annoyed. "You should just say it. Martin is still waiting. If we don't get in there soon, she might decide we don't care and put her discoveries away. It looked pretty interesting, when I saw..."
"Fine, fine." Dorothy grumbled, obviously annoyed she didn't get to tell her story in detail. "Well, long story short on the whole thing is that the probes might know how to adapt other brains, but that isn't what anyone wanted. They're supposed to spread humanity, not some human minds all dressed up to play pretend. Anything they can do to make that happen, they will. So, while Olivia has control over what the Forerunner does now, she'll lose that power the second I find a way to make humans who can live."
"And the rest of us go into their petting zoo," James muttered.
The others both stopped, staring at her. Almost as though they'd forgotten she was there.
"Irrelevant, even if it was true," Dorothy said. "This is bigger than us. We have the power to shape the future of the planet. Well, I do. When I crack this, and I will crack it... I'm going to be the one who decides who the Forerunner makes next. I bet you my other vestigial wing that it would even abandon the fabrication of that stupid pointless military force and make whoever I told it to. So long as they were human and I thought it would work. Why do you think it made a second generation of humans after it had learned that they can't survive here? Well, vanilla humans can’t—"
James cut her off. "Wait. There were two generations before ours? We could've already died here once already?"
Karl shoved past them both, close enough that the automatic sensor on the bathroom door beeped, and the door slid down into the floor. "Could we talk about that later? I already promised Martin I would bring you both for whatever this important thing of hers is, and she didn't look very patient."
Dorothy turned without another word, apparently uninterested in answering the question. James made a mental note to ask the Forerunner about the previous generations as soon as she got a chance alone. They probably didn't make one of me. It couldn't have known that there was a civilization here with a language that would need someone like me. There'd have been no point. It would be old-fashioned astronauts. She told herself that, but she didn't really believe it.
The bathroom was even worse than the last time she'd seen it. Even the floor now had images on it, so many that they all blended together. She leaned in to look at one at random. It depicted the planet from the air all-right, though it was zoomed in on structures apparently made of reflective metal. The image was so far away she couldn't really get a good look at them, but they weren't quite high-resolution enough to make out any meaningful details. James looked away, focusing on the narrow path between images she could walk without disrupting the intense effort Martin had gone to destroying the men’s restroom.
Of all of them, Martin looked as though she had taken her sleeving the worst. She wore only the inner-uniform, though the top half was upside-down and the fastenings were all wrong. Her mane was sweaty and tangled, and her eyes were bloodshot. Streaks of red paint stained her coat near her limbs and around her mouth, and several identical markers had been stuffed haphazardly into the openings of her uniform.
"Alright, Martin," Karl said, her voice higher, with forced cheerfulness. "We're all here. You can explain what you wanted us to know."
"Explain," she repeated, looking between each of them. "Explain. Only three. Where is four?"
"Major Fischer is not coming," Karl said. "Like she told you, remember? She's worrying about the base defenses. You can tell us, and we'll make sure she finds out."
Martin looked as though she was going to cancel the whole thing. She turned away, towards the wall of the showers, where the most intricate-looking mathematics was drawn. They all followed, though only Dorothy looked like she was making any sense of what was written there. Karl's eyes glazed over as much as James's did.
"I started with the satellite photos," Martin said. Her voice still shook, but having a purpose seemed to stop her from losing focus and giving up, because she didn't stop. "Before our first meeting. I saw that we had eighty in the network, which seemed strange given I knew the cameras were meant to orbit at extreme distance to keep their numbers down. What could a planet be made of if it needed eighty satellites? How much land would there be?"
She pointed to one side, where images the size of full sheets had been painstakingly arranged into a roughly round shape, with a large opening in the middle. "This is KOI-087.01,” she said. “The thing Major calls Earth. But it's not Earth. Earth is a planet. This isn't a planet." She pointed to another image, one printed on a single sheet of paper. "I had the computer composite this. There is some CGI to fill in the gaps."
James stared at the image, stared until her eyes had started to water. What she saw was impossible, she knew that just from the basics of astronomy she had been required to learn as part of the SPS. Nothing that large could be any shape but a sphere. What she saw was a thin disk wrapped completely around the perimeter of a tiny red star. There were a few smaller objects as well, flat satellites positioned at various points above the round object. When viewed from the side, she saw a colossal mountain range... so massive that it was distinct even from the satellite image, then solid material several times thicker than the crust, made of a rust-colored metal.
"Impossible," Dorothy said, after a long silence. "This can't exist."
"I thought so too." Martin walked away from them, pacing through the bathroom as she spoke. She didn't seem to care as she stepped all over her images and scribblings. Didn't seem to care if they followed. "So, I ran the numbers. Gravity first... we're experiencing very close to 9.8m/s^2 of gravitational acceleration... but this close to the star, there should be much more. Well... whoever built this thought of that." She stopped in front of a large page, filled with numbers and calculations. James just stared at them, grateful that Martin was explaining them.
"We're spinning. Fast, but not insanely fast. About 422.066km/s. That eats up most of the pull of gravity we should be feeling towards the star, but leaves us with about one Earth gravity."
"Nothing's this strong," Dorothy insisted. "I don't know materials, but I know that. Not nanotubes, not spider webs, nothing."
Martin shrugged. "I don't know what it's made of... but whoever built this thought of that too. There are two satellites, and the speed they're orbiting... they seem to be exerting an attractive pull on the object. Object out there, reduces the strength of the material below us. It's still... still beyond anything..." She sat down suddenly on her haunches, eyes wide. Her voice became a terrified whisper.
"For the numbers. This isn't a planet. Those things living out there..." She held up one hoof. "Things like us. Whatever put them there... could make a Dyson Ring. Everything about this place is artificial." She tapped the wall with one of her hooves. "The minerals we harvest to make our base, thinking we're the powerful invaders with our powerful technology... something an order of magnitude more advanced than we are put it all there."
"Not just that..." Karl sounded almost the same as Martin now. "They filled their world with primitives, and left them here. Was there any sign of an advanced culture in all those satellite photos you took? Could whoever built this thing still be living here?"
A harsh voice came in over the PA, loud and shrill. "We're taking off in ten minutes," the major's voice said. "Everyone report to the hanger. And don't leave anything behind. Ten minutes and we're gone." There was a click, and silence descended again.
They all stared at Martin, waiting for her answer.
"Probably not," she said, looking like she hadn't even heard the message. "But there are some ruins that might be theirs. They're on the other side of the alien country... Equestria, right? Yeah, that. So, we'd have to fly over it. But we could."
"We should get going." Dorothy turned to the door. "Thanks for explaining all that, Martin. I suspect the commander will be more rational about your concerns when she hears there could be serious security threats we haven't considered. Apocalyptic, planet-viability compromising concerns."
"Dyson Ring compromising," Martin corrected, not meeting their eyes.
"Right." Karl followed Dorothy towards the doorway. "I'll explain it for you, Martin. Maybe she'll listen if I can do it before she gets bored."
They left, leaving only James behind with the nervous physicist. Martin didn't seem interested in packing up any of her notes here. It would probably be difficult, given her calculations covered the walls.
"Did you learn anything else?" James asked, once the door shut.
"Lots of things," Martin said. "But mostly I learned that I'm afraid. Whoever could construct a superstructure like this, way out in space... whoever set it orbiting around a red dwarf with its mass perfectly balanced, accelerated it to mitigate gravity... what would a race like that do to us, if they knew we were here?"
"Maybe they're dead," James suggested. "I read Lovecraft when I was younger. In one of his books, humanity had evolved from the worker slime used by the aliens who settled Earth the first time. Maybe they died out, and their workers evolved to intelligence, just like humans did in the story."
"That's worse!" Martin exclaimed, suddenly meeting James's eyes with horror on her face. "Then we have to be afraid of whatever killed them. Do you know how to kill a class two species? Me neither."
"Well, on the bright side..." James began, though at this point she wasn't sure that Martin wouldn't just twist her words into something frightening. "We look like ponies. Maybe if things go bad, we could just blend in. Pretend we were never here. The Forerunner would be screwed, but... at least we'd make it."
"Great."
The PA over their heads beeped again. "Five minutes! Get your asses in here, everyone! Don't make me ask again!"
They didn't.
It's a god damn Halo!
I know not really, but it looks like it
Are the "liveable parts" supposed to be on the outer side?
The sunlight wouldn't have any chance to reach it if the sun orbits in the middle of it.
sorry but you went and made Equestria a god damn ring world and lost me.
That's a pretty ingenious twist!
A ringworld! I was expecting some kind of interesting configuration to make a system where the sun and moon could be controlled (or, I guess, the rotation of the Ring and orbit of the moon instead?) that would still fit in a science fiction story, but that is seriously clever.
Really like as well how much personality difference can already be seen between all the otherwise identical clones.
"Hey, maybe we shouldn't build our new city in that mysteriously uninhabited region after all?"
"Uh, the forerunner says that it has already accepted that island as its first city site and won't allow us to change it."
"..."
"Oops."
An interesting concept, but it would seem unlikely.
How would they have a frozen north if it appears that the rim of the ring is equidistant to the sun as the middle? Not to mention the major problem of how they have a night and day cycle when the inner part of the ring would be constantly exposed to the stationary sun they orbit.
Holy shit
Well, this got a whole lot stranger in a hurry.
I'm assuming that those two satellites are the 'sun' and 'moon' that Celestia and Luna control. Then again, orbiting implies that they're moving on their own rather than remaining stationary until the appointed times when the alicorns are supposed to 'raise' and 'lower' them, so maybe Celestia and Luna don't have as much control as ponies claim.
Also, I'm now very curious as to how Discord's reality-warping powers fit into this picture.
This leaves me with so many questions.
Hopefully they get answered.
Wait, so is there a second James Irwin??
So how does day and night work on a ring world? Does it twist itself inside out?
8283922
No, you would have to live on the inside of the ring to experience the centripetal force that keeps your feet on the ground and to see daylight. Ringworld by Larry Niven has a pretty good description of what a ringworld is and how it could theoretically operate.
8283961
There are squares floating along the inside of the ringworld spaced evenly and moving at a different rate than the ringworld itself. As they move they either allow light through or block it creating a day/night cycle.
8283969 That's not what's being shown in the picture, though. The outer surface is clearly depicted as the habitable one, and unless the artist misunderstood the concept, it looks like the author intentionally deviated from the standard model. In such a case, it looks like they're relying on the red star's gravity to keep their feet on the ground, and the ring's spinning is keeping it from reaching lethal intensity.
As for the day/night cycle, Martin did mention a couple of satellites orbiting the ring. They could be the substitutes for the sun and moon.
So interesting
............. ...
8283952
Uh, yes? How did you manage to miss the fact that another one was being canted because the Forerunner assumed foal!James was KiA due to weeks of radio silence?
8283940
As an other commentor mentioned, it could be that the ring world actually twists itself to give the illusion of a day/night cycle, which would also mimic the rise and setting of the sun.
But as for the frozen north, what if that part is frozen for a reason? I'd hazard a guess that the frozen north acts like a natural boundary between this section of the ring and other. It's entirely possible that each section was meant to house a separate intelligent species, but over the countless years, some managed to migrate across such barriers.
If the creators of this ring world are still around, or at least were a few thousand years ago, it could be possible that the windigos could have purposely driven the ponies into another section for the purposes of experimenting with a mixed species section. It is only by sheer chance and time muddling the details that hearth's warming eve has turned into a societal revolution that bonded the pony tribes together.
8283969
In this case it appears that the star's gravity provides the downward/inward force, with the centripetal force cancelling a lot of it, to the point where the net inward force is ~10m/s²
As someone else said, the daylight is provided by the reflections off a disc located further out; the Equestrian sun. Its basic orbit would likely be on an incline, to ensure it actually reflects most of the time.
They would have to be a relatively small distance from the star in order for it to provide over 10m/s² of gravity, but I don't care to figure out how close (probably well closer to the star than Mercury is to the sun).
Alternatively, if the ring world doesn't twist itself for night/day, and instead has a reflector for the sunlight energy, then that would explain why no one has seen the inward curvature of the ring world. The ponies would have known about it, but they wouldn't have said anything to Lucky Break because it would considered completely normal to them, but Olivia and the others would have said something if they had known before now.
It all makes sense -- humans built the ring, for some reason (maybe a science experiment), and the probe happened to land on it in the far future. It would explain all the Earth life and mythology.
Also, poor James... all of them. Maybe they could become best buds instead of resenting each other? Right?
8284017
It's not really possible for the ring itself to rotate. The inner sections will be shorter than the outer sections. It would somehow have to extend, causing massive tidal disruption, wrecking coastal cities on a daily. That is assuming that the 'breakpoints' are only in ocean instead of tearing apart continents.
The habitable outside with the orbiting satellite reflecting the actual sun's light, which somebody mentioned above, would actually explain everything very nicely. It can be moved, generating the the day/night cycle. It can be aimed, reducing sunlight to the northern portions to cause their frigid climate. It can be controlled by Celestia, explaining the powers of the Princesses in this system. I'll take it on faith that the gravity of the real sun keeps their hooves planted on the ground without destroying the ring in the process.
Far from my early doubts this is actually a very elegant system. Well played.
I'm really not sure how to feel about these people. It could just be written in such a way to make people believe one thing while in reality it's something else. But things they are saying concern me...
Also Equestria is a ring word?
ci.memecdn.com/6564193.jpg
My prediction:
It was humanity itself that made the dyson ring, hence why it is so full of mythological creatures from humanities past.
And it's possible because if two things: the probe spent so much time in space that humanity created ftl travel that circumvents relativity, and the probe probably experienced relativity as well while in interstellar apace
"I'm pretty sure she knew something was wrong from the day she woke up," Martin said.
shouldnt that be karl speaking, not martin?
I am assuming the position of the star as well acts kinda like the inner molten core of the planet? Also it makes you wonder just how thick this ring world is as well.
HALO!!!
So when do the covenant and the unsc make an appearance? Lol
That is mind blowing to be sure, and I don't think anyone else has ever done the pony planet like this before. Well done. Xd
The story just got more AWESOME!!!
As interesting as this story can be, pretty soon it will need to stop raising more questions and start answering some. It's starting to hit diminishing returns.
First, I just wanted to point out that you need to make minor corrections on that illustration. As-is, the shape of the shading at the transitions between dark and light parts makes it look like the lit part is closer to the viewer and the ring is black on the inside and has uniformly lit greenery and oceans on the outside.
That, said, this reveal worries me.
On the plus side:
1. Alternative sci-fi cosmologies for Equestria are dissatisfyingly rare
2. You've been doing well so far
3. This should help to balance out the worrying sense of "the former humans other than our main character are going to arrogantly cause much suffering, aren't they?"
(And, by alternative sci-fi cosmologies, I mean other than "Through some kind of magical gestalt, Celestia manages the planet's rotation and Luna manages the moon's orbit")
On the minus side:
1. This is very much an "ante up" sort of situation. By throwing out the familiar and time-tested ideas, you set yourself up for either great success or great failure.
2. As someone who's read a lot of sci-fi and a lot of fanfiction, I'm honestly not sure if you've been doing well enough.
3. MLP canon and ringworlds aren't well suited to each other.
The problem with making Equestria a ring ties into the "not sure you've been doing well enough" in that, by their very nature, Equestria and ringworlds are hard to combine.
Equestria is a "small place" and it's about people. While its inhabitants may only be human in the psychological sense, it takes that air of anthropocentrism that generally defines fantasy and amplifies it in various ways. (ie. Fantasy worlds operate on the guiding principle of making the main characters more important to the setting that in real life. Things like magic and gods and such are all tools to increase the amount of relevance and power-to-change-things that individual people have, compared to real life.)
A Ringworld, by its very nature, seeks to drive home how insignificant we are. It's a larger-than-life place, where the setting itself is the real main character and the actual characters just serve as a way to convey the readers and provide context.
I suspect this is why Professor Litmus said "you lost me" (8283925).
Whenever readers come into a story, whether or not they've already been given a set of expectations (sequels, fanfiction, etc.), they want to build and solidify a sense of what the story is as quickly as possible. (ie. tone, atmosphere, scale, scope, etc.) ...and, if you don't do a good enough job of steering that, they'll latch onto the wrong conclusion and then feel betrayed when it's wrong.
Furthermore, all the parts of a story need to work together in unison. Otherwise, they end up tearing each other down as they try to build themselves up.
In this case, the issue is that you spent over 40,000 words (A first act should be about 30,000 words, if you're going for the "120,000 words per book" limit that professional editors impose on first-time authors) giving readers the impression that this would be a personal story about a single main character, caught in the larger context of an apparently canon Equestria, then you suddenly "zoom out" in scale and scope in an instant and without any warning. (Until the reveal, I thought the physicist was just taking magic and Alicorn-based orbital mechanics a little too hard.)
With your ringworld revelation, you've suddenly got James, the isolated pseudo-human in the body of a child, in a big, unknown nation, and "Ring, a feat of stellar engineering of which Equestria is a tiny part" fighting over which should be the main character and what the scope of the story should be.
I should probably clarify what I mean there, so here are some back-of-an-envelope calculations:
Niven's original ringworld has more surface area and population (trillions) than all the planets in Known Space.
Now, admittedly, Niven's ring is a bit excessive in terms of how wide it is (those "maps" of various planets are full-scale recreations) and Niven's ring is around a G-type (Sol-like) star, so the habitable zone would be further out, but the aspect ratio (North/South to East/West) of the surface of a ring inherently presents a bit of a problem for scope.
According to this diagram, the smallest habitable zone around a red dwarf seems to be somewhere around one quarter of 0.1 AU (so 1/40th or 0.025) of an AU... so the radius of such a ring would be roughly 3.75 million kilometers. Simple geometry says that circumference is 2πr, so the east-west direction on such a ring should be roughly 24 million kilometers.
Now, let's assume that the ring is as small as possible. That means that either the North/South or East/West axis of Equestria's "known world" should run from impassable terrain below one air-retaining wall to impassable terrain below the other air-retaining wall.
(Normally, I'd say that East/West is the direction in which the ring rotates and North/South is from wall to wall, but with Equestria's weather, who knows if they have the kind of prevailing winds you'd find on a planet.)
Earth is roughly 40,000km in circumference, so half of that (20,000 km) from pole to pole. (The approximate version is a nice round number because the meter's original definition was related to the size of the Earth.)
That means that you can fit roughly 587.5 Earths along the length of the ring. (And bear in mind that Earth's surface is roughly 70% ocean.)
We don't know how big Equestria's known world is, but I did my calculation based on the ring being as narrow as possible. Whether the Equestrian segment of the ring is smaller than Earth or the species of Equestria haven't mapped from wall to wall, any change in the assumptions will just make Equestria and its known world an even more insignificant piece of this awe-inspiring construct.
8283919
Halos, which are a knock-off of the "orbitals" in Iain M. Banks's Culture series (Basically, the Utopian, philosophical, clever, witty sci-fi that Star Trek was aiming to be, but amplified) are roughly planet-sized and no spin they could produce would counter the star's gravity as described because you need the "up-down" of the ground to line up perfectly with the pull of the star's gravity all the time. (Which can't happen with something too small to completely encircle the star.)
This is described as a "dyson ring", meaning it's a Niven Ringworld, completely encircling the star at the distance where a planet could be habitable.
Sci-fi genius!
I've seen a lot of stories with the 'Equestria as Artifact' or at least with the Equestrians Sun and Moon being such. And I've even seen a few minor Dyson Sphere concepts. But this is unique I think. Reverse Ringworld!
I was enjoying this.
Now I'm loving it.
... Except for the paranoid pony 'Mares-in-Black'.
I could do with less of that.
(I know it's not going away, but a little 'Mane 6' action to make us remember why we love Equestria would be nice.)
8284070
Yeah, I think for my next eventual project, I'm going with a Dyson Sphere.
8284064
Would explain why the ponies speak Esperanto.
Also,
8284094
It is supposed to be darker on the inside. The landy part is on the outside. Shocking, right? Take that, science!
8284111
My statement about it needing correction stands. Unless they also stellar-engineered an even bigger photography light box (not shown for simplicity), the kind of uniform lighting pictured is impossible on a surface as convex as the visible 50% of the outside of a ring when using point light sources.
That said, I was a bit confused, given the mechanical implausibility of making up for the nonexistence of a foundational material as strong as skrith with point gravity sources.
8283940
"inner part of the ring" is dead. Cooked. They're on outer part of the ring. "The Sun" they see is one of satellites, not the red dwarf.
I saw that and immediately thought Dyson Ring which puts me ahead of a few of the people sent on the mission at the very least.
As for how to deal with a class two species... Gently...
This does explain some of what Forerunner has done so far. It is "frightened." I mean finding a class two would be the kind of thing that puts Earth in a lot of danger.
Equestria has seemed to me as a "fallen culture" in rediscovery mode. Starswirl's time could certainly have been more advanced than the ponies are now.
There could be a progenetor race that had a "forbidden planet" type discovery with magic -- say all of their people could do whatever they wanted by thought -- oops the id monsters just killed everyone... BUT such is not necessary. Celestia and Luna could know an awful lot more than they let on. I mean "Mortality Report" had a world which could be like this one that worked well.
Really all this does is put the humans on the back-hoof. It means they have potentially more to fear than the typical advanced humans invading Equestria story.
So it is a like Halo then? This could be very bad with a possibly nutso military person in charge.
... Urohringr? Is that you...?
Meanwhile, back in Camp Uncanny Valley...
Yeah, James meeting James is gonna be awkward. And I'm a little concerned about what Olivia feels she needs a seal team for.
Interesting bit of astro-speculation!
ok, ok, WHAT?! There are just too many characters and events happening at once. I don't even know what's happening. My dimwitted mind will figure out what's happening sooner or later.
So James has read At the Mountains of Madness -- but not Ringworld.
I can even see a candidate for shoggothoid life:
The Smooze.
8283940
I would say that the land faces out and the red star serves as the gravitational anchor and a heat source like the center of a plant has. Then there are the two satalites orbiting the ring, which is probably the light source and moon. It's possible Equestrian Magic controls the temps, which may be artificially warmer, thus allowing a frozen zone.
One problem I see is that Major Fischer is neither smart enough nor has a sufficiently flexible mind to command this sort of mission. Note: this is not a problem with plausibility, nor with Fischer as a military officer. It's a problem with her match to the mission.
The sort of bureaucratic incentives that could lead someone like Fischer, who has absolutely no desire to be here, to be here, are horribly plausible. Fredrik Pohl and Jack Williamson wrote stories about the sort of strange incentives that exist when you can duplicate people for dangerous missions.
This also shows some of the command problems with manned nanoprobe missions. Because the crew isn't running on the computer during the voyage, the AI must be in charge to some extent; but that means that the overall strategic mission planning on-site is to some extent vulnerable to flaws in the AI programming. Because the crew isn't all working together during the voyage, their relationships are unstable when they finally arrive.
I wonder if they'll be able to speak with rationality and unity to the Princesses when they manage to make contact?
It doesn't help that their equipment is inadquately shielded and hence potentially-dangerous to natives. Nor does it help that they landed, and began operations equivalent to being shapeshifting aliens, exactly where a Hive of other shapeshifting aliens was operating. I'm guessing that Equestria has the Humans confused with Changelings.
I'm also guessing that it's distinctly possible that the Forerunner sublight probe got overtaken by the expanding front of a now FTL (or faster-STL) capable civilization, whose descendants, with vastly superior technology than that of the culture that built the Forerunner, built the Ringworld. Which would nicely explain the mythological similarities, and make the name "Forerunner" rather hilarious, in hindsight.
The Dyson Ring sounds like something out of stellaris
8284183
Oh, that meeting will be intense!
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I realized as much and revised my opinion in my second comment.
Wouldn't they be more a Class 1.5 Species?
I mean, They aren't harvesting the entire output of the sun... But really the difference between a Dyson Ring and Sphere still is so far beyond us, even in the fic...
This fic just keeps getting more interesting and more terrifying to really think about.
This must continue.
I really wasn't expecting a Halo ring, gotta say. Also, still wondering why the Forerunner made James again.
It... all makes sense... Reason ponies don't explore far or never make it around the world because the the whole planet is a giant Halo ring!
That is the question... Who built an infinite world that holds fantasy magical creatures from myths and legends of Earth and leave them there? Could it be that we were all made by the same alien creator for purposes unknown or died from another species and how does the EQG world fit into all this? Is it just another part of the ring on the other side which no pony can't go over since they'll be either block by a force field or get suck into space then consume by the drawf star...
Do the Royal Sisters really control the sun & moon or actually move the ring to bring night and day?
....Oh my goodness It's Alicorns that made the enti... - message lost due to interference in Equestria government
8284146
Or another possibility could be that the ring WAS built by humans. I imagine the possibility that while the forerunner probes were slow boating their way through the cosmos, humanity could have advanced quite far in the time between the probes launch and its arrival to Equestria. It would also explain all the flora and fauna that resemble stuff from Earth. Also if I remember right, Lighting Dust mentioned that English sounds like draconian which could be another clue.
8284155
I'm now imagining the head SEAL to be an equivalent to Master Chief.