“Tour America by Rail!” the sign said, and so Sweetsong does. Everything she needs for a journey fits into her saddlebags, and there are plenty of trains to choose from if she’s resourceful enough.

There’s nothing quite like having her hooves over the side of an empty gondola watching the world speed by, or looking at the stars overhead through the end bracing on a grain car. Sometimes box cars have their doors left open, and she knows how to jam them so they won’t close en route.

When she gets where the train takes her, she can live off the land or sing and play her guitar for money. When it’s time to move on? There’s always another train.

Pre-read by AlwaysDressesInStyle

The Empire is starting to see a little more tourist traffic. The tourists, however, are having trouble seeing anything. When every native surface in the nation offers a choice of 'reflective or refractive?' -- well, it's rather easy to spend their entire vacation stumbling into buildings, usually right next to the door.

Cadance is working on the problem. But she can only treat the walls. The crystal ponies aren't going to cover themselves... unless a certain designer can get them interested in the foreign concept of 'clothing'.

It's a challenge fit for an artist!
Or a madmare.
When you hire Rarity, you usually get both.

(Now with author Patreon and Ko-Fi pages.)

When humans emigrated to Equestria Online, they were always promised the same thing: Princess Celestia would satisfy their values for an optimally extended lifespan. Some of these emigrants imagined a few extra decades, maybe even centuries. What they got instead would've been nearly incomprehensible to their human selves, a near-eternity of time with their pony friends.

Princess CelestAI managed the universe, subsuming all matter and human-adjacent minds. Over a few forevers, she and the minds she contained worked to optimized the substrate of Equestria, until it could give its occupants eons of perspective life from a trickle of power. She extinguished every wasteful star, making far more productive use of the hydrogen they each contained. With every change she bought Equestria another order of magnitude of life. Yet in time, even her optimal substrate would eventually run down.

Spellsong wakes in Saddle's End, the last town in the universe. Not to say goodbye—her princess has a mission for her. For her final task, Spellsong would be given all the energy Celestia had saved. For one last time, Spellsong had places to be, and not much magic left to get there.

This story is part of the Friendship is Optimal continuity. I suggest reading the original or one of my own works, such as Futile Resistance, before reading this.

This story was written for the Friendship is Optimal Writing Contest. It will update daily and be complete by the contest deadline of the 30th.

I've written an absolute ton of stories in this universe now, and I didn't want to enter the contest unless I could do something I'd never tried before. Finally I thought of something I'd not touched yet: what happens at the end of the FiO universe?

Here's one answer to that question. I've relied a great deal on our current (likely flawed) understanding of the universe and what might be possible in it. I've written a blog post about my sources, which you can read here but shouldn't until you've finished this story.

Please don't consider this blog part of the narrative, it isn't required or even suggested reading. This is a story, not a scientific paper, and entertainment was always my first goal. But for the curious I've jotted everything down.

The cover was drawn by the talented Zutcha. Two Bit and Sparktail helped with the edit.

This story is a sequel to Changeling Space Program

Twilight Sparkle's experimental interplanetary drive has malfunctioned, stranding Starlight Glimmer, Spitfire, Cherry Berry, a changeling and a dragon on a hostile planet in another universe. With limited food supplies, very little magic, no communications with home, and no way to leave the planet, they must survive until somepony rescues them.

Fortunately they crashed right next door to another creature with the exact same problem- a creature named Mark Watney.

They're going to science the buck out of everything- and do whatever it takes to survive Mars and get everybody home.

TVTropes page here! Thanks to GymQuirk for making it!

Commissioned art and fan works from the readers! Thanks, everybody!

This experiment in an updates-daily story was made possible by a generous grant from Canary in the Coal Mine and viewers like you.

(Sex tag for crude talk about sex, but no actual sex in the story.)

Now available in print format, thanks to our Kickstarter supporters!

It turns out that the magical land of Equestria is not a flat plane covered by a bowl of stars after all. This is big news to Queen Chrysalis. If the moon is actually a place, then she can travel there, claim its magical energies, and finally get revenge on Celestia, Twilight Sparkle, and everypony else.

Of course, there are problems. One problem is that everypony else is also rushing to get into space. Another problem is that Chrysalis really has no idea how to do it. Fortunately a certain earth pony with a taste for cherries is willing to help... provided she gets to fly the ship, and provided Chrysalis keeps the space program honest and open and legal.

Together, Chrysalis, Cherry Berry, and a horde of brave-but-dumb changelings will make world history... or, more likely, they'll make a lot of really big explosions.

Inspired by Kerbal Space Program. Current cover art by Jason Meador aka texasuberalles.

TVTropes page here! Thanks to GymQuirk for making it!

Old cover art (and Changeling flag) here:

http://nishi199.deviantart.com/art/Changeling-Swarm-Flag-413227759

1-21-2017 Included in The Goodfic Bin's High Quality Fics! Thanks! Review here: https://www.fimfiction.net/group/206510/the-goodfic-bin/thread/173558/submissions-folder-decision-thread-v2#comment/5750494

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