Gary looked eagerly at the computer screen. Symbols and figures were scrolling fast, but he was able to pick up, in that downpour of information, what he needed most: the atmosphere was almost earthlike—slightly more oxygen and less nitrogen, but well within tolerances—and gravity was only 1.1 g: he would breathe and walk normally. He sighed in relief: his long journey would not be in vain.

Satisfied, he shut the console screen down and glanced through one of the portholes at the planet below. Through the clouds, green expanses of land and emerald oceans were clearly visible. That wasn’t Earth, of course, but it was so close to it that he couldn’t help but feel butterflies in his stomach and a vague yearning for home. Like all the habitable planets in the galaxy, this ball of rock was a tiny island lost in the vastness of a cool, hostile, indifferent cosmos, a clump of loam orbiting a Sun-like star, where the seeds of life had run ashore and flourished. He strained his eyes to try and recognise some signs of sapient life—as he knew there was—but so far away, nothing was visible but the largest geographic features.

Humanity had long been aware that the fourth planet of the Tau Ceti system was hosting an intelligent civilisation. Sentinels had been sent and robots deployed on the planet’s unique moon. From there, big telescopes had been trained at the main planet, images had been captured and sent back to Earth, only a dozen of light-years away. They clearly alluded to a class C civilisation—in its early industrial phase—still very much agriculture-based. But most of all, they had revealed that the dominant species was quadrupedal, and, apart from bizarre colours combinations and winged specimens, closely resembled Earth’s ponies. It was not much of a surprise: intelligence was a highly adaptable process, and had sometimes chosen to bless very strange life forms, from the oozing silicon-based rock worms of Venus to the giant fish swimming in Titan’s icy methane oceans.

Along the years, more material had been collected, especially the first radio-transmissions of this still-dabbling-in-technology civilisation. Using the linguistic corpus thus collected, massively parallel computers had decoded the local language. Exo-sociologists had gorged on this bonanza, and many of the aspects of this foreign society had progressively transpired: it was organised as a dyarchic gynarchy, the power being equally shared between two benevolent regal sisters; other subaltern ‘princesses’ were crowned every now and then. The rest of the society was mainly composed of workers. No wars had been recorded, and poverty seemed to be unknown. But what had mainly engrossed the scientists was the rife usage of what the computers had translated as ‘magic’. As if the brain of these ‘ponies’ had evolved out an amazing ability to control a background form of energy and channel it into whatever they desired.

Reluctantly, Gary averted his gaze from this mesmerising spectacle, and focussed his attention back on the computer. “Computer!” he commanded.

“Ready for inquiry!” replied the synthesised female voice. Naturally, he could have chosen a male voice instead; but the default setting was on female, and he hadn’t bothered to change it. Statistically, male pilots preferred female voices, and vice-versa, so the flight technicians would always set the voice according to the pilot’s gender during the final preparations.

“Recall preloaded description of landing target. Start a broad swathe band X scan of planet and report match. Feed all images into the memory banks. Implement!”

He let the computer perform his large scale search, stood up and walked to a panel tagged ‘Q.C.D’. He grasped and turned the small handle, and the panel slid aside with a whisper, revealing a pokey recess in which several small, identical, cubes were stored. He randomly picked up one of them, and let the panel slide back into place automatically.

He considered the object he had seized for an instant: there was a small button set in the center of each face. By using quantum entanglement, the counterpart cube, left on Earth dozen light-years away, would flash at the very moment he pressed one of those button, despite the unfathomable distance between the two devices. Such were the bizarre laws of quantum mechanics: instant communication, where radio waves would have taken years to travel. This was, however, a very simple device, which allowed only for the most basic messages to be sent. Yet, it was sufficient. The more complex, extensive data would follow, at their own sluggish pace.

He pressed the blue, heart-shaped button–that meant he had successfully entered orbit–then discarded the now useless cube into the incinerator. Soon after, the female voice of the computer gently warned him that his landing target had been identified and located with a 99.9% probability. He ordered the machine to compute and feed the corresponding keplerian elements into the shuttle’s computer, then left the bridge for the laboratory: before embarking on the final part of his journey, he had still to get the local language stuffed into his brain. Hopefully, sophisticated machines would do that painlessly: a one-hour nap during which all the linguistic knowledge would be hypnotically drilled into his language centres; on waking up, he would be fully fluent, as if he had always been an ordinary native.

---

The descent was surprisingly painless: no turbulences, no jet-streams, no other violent undetected phenomena; just the slight jars caused by occasional shears and convective currents in the atmospheric layers as the shuttle slanted down and down. Now Gary was relaxing, letting the craft fly quietly through the lower troposphere, gliding past scattered clouds over the wide expanse of a dark green canopy.

At last, on the edge of that big forest, a medium-sized town appeared. As the shuttle flew over it, he could make out the individual thatched houses, well flushed along the streets, except for two or three larger buildings crowned with spires which, he surmised, probably served an official purpose. On the outskirts, he spotted a huge, tacky construction that vaguely looked like a jagged, chintzy castle.

At this very moment, the blaring alarm of the proximity sensor went off. He was fumbling with the switches of the dashboard, trying to silence the deafening honk when, out of the blue, the shape of a winged pony appeared right in front of him across the pane: it (for he was not sure if the horse was a mare or a stallion) had a cobalt coat, a weird multicolored mane, and its reddish pink eyes locked on him. There was a brief moment of mutual amazement as both lifeforms looked straight at each other, then the pony’s mouth moved as if it uttered words–but they couldn’t be heard through the ten centimetres of rock solid sapphire glass that made up the front window. The flyer then recessed and dived down at an amazing speed.

Ten minutes later, the shuttle was well into the landing procedure. Gary had selected a wide expand of flat, grassy turf, opposite to the cartoonish castle that had flummoxed him, as a suitable place for the touchdown. The chemical thrusters were gently counteracting the fall of the shuttle, while he was busy hitching the various sensors to the communication engine which would send their uninterrupted flow of measures up there to the main vessel, to be in turn relayed to Earth. “Fifteen metres… Ten metres…” the voice of the flight computer droned on as the ground was coming nearer. At five meters, an additional counter-thrust was applied and for the last fathoms the shuttle fell as limply as a leaf; it barely shook when its landing gear finally made contact with the underlying ground.

Slowly, almost reflexively, Gary shut the flight instruments down, one after the other. He unbuckled his belt, and leaned over the dashboard to look through the window. Down there, on the ground, a crowd of equines was slowly building up, coming from far and wide: some were just strangely coloured ponies, others were winged, still others had a horn set into their foreheads. He swiveled his chair around, stood up, took hold of a QCD device, pressed its red square button, and proceeded into the narrow corridor that led to the aft rooms and the outside airlock.

---

Gary paused in front of the external airlock door, and looked at the suit and its helmet that were hanging in a recess. Of course, there was always the possibility of unknown harmful bacteria or viruses, some minute organisms his immune system wouldn’t be prepared to fight against; on the other hand, exiting from a spaceship in full suit could be interpreted as a sign of distrust or disdain.

He had to make up his mind, quickly.

He decided to take the risk.

His decision made, he checked that his miniaturised communicator was carefully tamped into his right ear (so he would be warned by the shuttle computer of any emergency condition), and groped in his trousers pockets for the portable defense field generator (one never knew what could happen). He inhaled deeply, held his breath inside his lungs for a while, as a death sentenced criminal drawing the last puff of his last cigarette, exhaled noisily and then brushed the big green button.

There was a slight rattle as, he inferred, the retractable gangway began to extend itself down to the ground. After a few seconds, the door slid open with a slight hiss; there was a gentle draught as the pressures balanced themselves out, and sunlight entered through the doorway, bathing the airlock in a warm and pleasant illumination; the familiar chirping of small birds reached his ears. He summoned his courage, and, slightly giddy, made his way to the outside platform.

Standing atop the stairs he contemplated the crowd below: assorted ponies of all kinds were all looking up at him in awe. There was no word, no sound, just a hefty silence pockmarked by the fitful chirrup of birds. He slowly scanned the assistance, searching for some sort of official; his gaze fell on a purple coated pony, both horned and winged; he knew from his pre-flight briefings that this pony must be one of the four ruling princesses—besides, she wore a gilded diadem. He racked his brains for her name. Twilight Sparkle, the purple one, that must be it. Around her, well parted from the rest of the mob, stood five other ponies, one of whom he recognised as the flying pony who had grazed his shuttle just minutes ago; another one, pink coated with a fluffy mane, was skittishly pronking around, as if it had springs attached to its hooves.

Gary forced a smile on his lips. “Princess Sparkle,” he declaimed loudly, so as to be clearly heard below, and bowed his head in deference, “citizens of Ponyville, on behalf of all the inhabitants of Earth, hail!”

The crowd seemed to freeze for an instant, then all of sudden burst into a loud buzz, as if all the ponies had decided to speak at the same time. After a few seconds, the voice of Twilight Sparkle rose over the din: “Silence!” she commended. Everypony ceased to speak at once, except the pink pronking pony who kept up squeaking “Squee! Squee! Squee!”. The princess looked askance at her: “For Celestia’s sake, quit it, Pinkie!” she said to her in a stern voice. ‘Pinkie’ acknowledged the order and stopped cavorting. Then Twilight Sparkle turned her head back to Gary.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“My name is Gary Seven,” replied Gary. “I’ve been sent by Humanity, as we, inhabitants of the planet Earth call ourselves, to foster and establish peaceful relationship between our two civilisations. We have a lot to learn from you, and we feel we could teach you a lot of things in return, especially in the field of science and technology, beginning by…” He broke off and make a gesture that took in the shuttle behind him, “…interplanetary travel.”

The princess’s eyes widened. “You mean you’re coming from another planet?”

“Our own solar system is located about a dozen light-years away from yours. A light-year is—”

“The enormous distance that light travels in a year. I know that. It’s fascinating,” cut Twilight Sparkle in. She hesitated, as if floundering for answers. “Did you voyage in this… vessel?”

Gary smiled. “No. This is a lightweight shuttle designed for planetary exploration. The main ship is in orbit around your planet.”

“How do you know our language?” asked Twilight Sparkle.

“Unbeknownst to you, we’ve been observing you for a long time. We’ve collected a lot of information, and especially your radio transmissions, which we have fed into our calculators, so that they could decipher them. Once they had, it was a snap to master your language using our advanced learning devices. That’s how I learnt your name, too.” He paused. “But why don’t you walk up the stairs and take a quick tour of my shuttle? It’ll be a bit cramped for you, but I think you can manage. I know you’re a science addict. There are a lot of things inside that no doubt you’ll find interesting!”

Twilight Sparkle did not answer immediately; instead, she glanced around at the neighbouring ponies. One of them, with an orange coat and a blond mane, came closer and whispered something at her ear. The princess shook her head in denial. She answered in a subdued voice, gestured towards the pink pony who beamed, and silently ambled to the stairs, which she climbed gingerly: the steps were too narrow for her four hooves to stand firmly on them. At last, she reached the raised platform.

“Follow me,” said Gary courteously. He walked into the airlock, and the princess went after him.

---

Two hours and a half later, Gary and Twilight Sparkle emerged from the shuttle. If the princess was totally worked up, he, on the contrary, was tuckered out: the princess had literally grilled him about all the instruments of the shuttle and more. He was no hard-core scientist, just an engineer, and had to remain evasive on the most theoretical questions about relativity, quantum mechanism and the Alcubierre’s superluminal warp drive. Worse, he almost had had to accept to make a quick return trip to the main vessel in order to fetch the science books he had taken with him, even though he had warned the princess that she would not be able to decipher his own alphabet, language, let alone the complex equations. But that Twilight Sparkle was so knowledge thirsty that she had not been deterred by such a flimsy excuse. Gary suspected she wanted him to teach her how to read those books, a task he felt unprepared for.

To put it shortly, what was supposed to be a quick tour had transformed into a thorough interrogation.

“Thank you so much!” Twilight Sparkle said as they both descended the gangway. “This was… thrilling and enthralling!”

“Think nothing of it, princess. The pleasure was all mine,” he answered, stifling a yawn.

“You seem fatigued,” the princess noted.

“I’ve been up for a long time now, and had to endure the stress of the descent as well as the excitement of this day. Yeah, I guess I could use some rest.”

They had reached the ground. The place was now deserted; everypony had vanished, probably heading back to their own business, once the first amazement past. His visit belonged now, it seemed, to the princess’s exclusive remit.

“I’m afraid there is a last ordeal you must put up with tonight,” said Twilight Sparkle. She smiled.

“And what’s that?” asked Gary.

“Come with me,” answered the princess. “This time, I lead the way!”

They ambled away to the village. At some point, Gary looked back at the shuttle. The evening sunrays were pouring over it, brightly reflected by the metallic hull, and, from that distance, it was as if the whole craft had suddenly caught fire, a blazing ember, a fiery shape against the dark green backdrop of the meadow. He realised that this tiny shuttle was the only fragile link with Earth, trillions of kilometres away, and felt a slight lump in his throat. But he quickly dismissed his uneasiness: there was absolutely no reason for anything to go awry.

They quietly walked by the first houses, neat, perfectly lined up thatched bungalows with chirpy, brightly coloured façades and shutters, flanked by small and well kept flowerbeds. The overall impression was very pleasant, until Gary noticed that the abodes were all closed and dark, as if nobody lived inside, and the street was strangely desert. Had he landed on the verge of a ghost town? The idea unsettled him. He stopped.

“Where are all the ponies gone?” he asked to the princess.

“That’s for you to find out!” she replied, and winked at him. “Don’t worry, you’ll soon have your answers!”

They resumed walking, went on along the empty streets. As they proceeded towards downtown, little by little, the bungalows gave way to more refined, multiple storey houses, yet as neat and charming. Until they finally arrived at the edge of a large square, in the center of which a massive, spire-crowned building was standing.

“We go right here,” said Twilight, pointing at the building with one of her forelegs.

They crossed the square to a small wooden stairs that led to a double door. No light nor sound came from inside.

Twilight Sparkle walked up the stairs, and stopped at the door sill. “Come along!” she said, turning to face the human who straggled behind. “Get in!”

Gary hesitated. The darkness inside wasn’t foreboding well. The princess noticed his hesitation, and smiled.

“Oh come on!” she protested. “That’s no trap. Guaranteed!”

Reluctantly, Gary resumed walking up, then shuffled past Twilight into the building. He pushed the right door, trode in, and discovered a pitch black room.

“What of it?” he asked, turning back.

At this very instant, bright lights were suddenly switched on amidst thunderous noise as thousands of crackers exploded simultaneously. A shoal of streamers and confetti fell on him, and a big “SURPRISE!” resounded. Gary whirled around, just in time to watch the crazy pink pony he had spotted before hopping straight to him. The rest of the room was teeming with other ponies, and, along the walls, large wooden trestle tables had been installed, each one loaded either with large bowls of candies, enormous cakes or bunches of bottles.

“Hi!” squealed ‘Pinkie’ when she was sufficiently near. “My name is Pinkie Pie, and I’ve thrown this mega-ultra-super-hyper-duper party just for you! Welcome to Ponyville! Now come, I must introduce you to all my friends! Quick!”

She took hold of his right arm and pulled him towards the middle of the room. Gary looked back with puzzled eyes to Twilight Sparkle, who was still standing on the threshold, beaming. The princess winked at him and waved a hoof, as if to wish him good luck, just before he was swallowed up by the flock of ponies gathering around him.

---

It was well into the wee hours. The party was still in full swing; Gary was hardly anything even remotely human. His brain was put on auto, his ears were barely registering the braying music anymore, and his eyes were just two tiny chinks through which light filtered with difficulty. He was, more accurately, a sort of zombie shambling around aimlessly in the middle of an ever-shifting crowd of wild motley quadrupeds.

He had talked too much, danced too much, eaten too much, drunk too much. He felt strongly nauseated; all the cider mugs he had swilled during the evening, probably. Tottering, he feebly asked the closest pony for the loo. The—mare or stallion? He couldn’t tell—kindly escorted him all the way to the corresponding door. What does a pony loo look like? he reflected, but the thought crashed into the black hole that was his brain almost as quickly as it had sprung up.

Maybe he pushed the handle too hard, maybe it was something else, but the door gave way unexpectedly under his pressure, and he clumsily fell through the doorway with a big thump. “Shit!” he exclaimed as he found himself lying on a soft floor. Behind him, he heard the door hinge back closed, and was surrounded by total darkness again. Something next to him made a weird sound, like… Like what? He couldn’t nail it down. His brain was melting away. He felt as if he would fall asleep right here.

Then he heard a soft clop, and a light was turned on.

A grey, nondescript pony was standing there, looking at him with curious eyes. Glancing around, Gary saw he was in a narrow corridor flanked by a row of cubicles, in each of which a big hole had been dug in the cob ground; the place reeked of urine. He belched, and barely had time to crawl shamelessly to the nearest cubicle before barfing.

When his stomach was emptied at last, he felt somehow relieved. Leaning on his hands, he first sat with his back against the wall, then finally stood up. He gazed at himself. His palms, arms and clothes were all stained with obnoxious splotches of crud. Reflexively, he rubbed his hands against his trousers, then searched around for any tap or spout, but saw none. He felt pathetic. He dragged himself back to the door, and exited from the toilet.

Twilight Sparkle was waiting for him right on the other side. She eyed him from top to bottom. “Are you sick?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” Gary apologised. “I think I’ll call it a night. That was too much for me. Could you be so kind as to help me back to my shuttle?”

The princess smiled. “I’ll do better,” she answered. “I’ll put you up for the night. Obviously you need a good shower, a good bed, and I can get Spike wash your clothes while you sleep. I’ve got plenty of free rooms, you know…”

Gary felt a bit embarrassed. “Do I look so miserable?” he asked.

Twilight Sparkle chortled. “I’m afraid you do, yes!” she answered. “But no big deal!” she added.

“Are you sure you want to put me up?”

“Sure, it’s totally fine with me.” To Gary’s amazement, she knelt down. “Come on! Get on my back. And don’t protest. It might be your only chance to mount a pony princess, you know!”

Gary winced, vaguely aware that there was some sort of double-entendre here, but his mind had passed beyond any ability to catch it. He plopped himself down astride the princess’s back. She stood up, and ambled nonchalantly to the exit, under the puzzled look of all the other attendees. “Squee!” exclaimed Pinkie Pie as they sidled past her. “Twily has a crush!”

---

Gary woke up suddenly in cold sweat. He sat in his bed, panting, scanning for… For what? The large bedroom around him was empty. Through the shutterless windows, shifting shafts of pale lunar light were casting unreal, ghostly shadows on the floor. He had had a nightmare, that was all.

He got off the bed, and padded to the window. In the sky, the moon was shining brightly, accompanied in its nightly ride by the familiar, yet alien shimmering of the stars. He strained his eyes and tried to make out some constellations. But he was not on Earth, and though the most distant stars had not appreciably moved, the closest ones weren’t where they were supposed to be anymore. It occurred to him that one of these stars might well be the Sun.

That thought was like a trigger: it conjured up images of his journey, of his arrival, of this first contact, of the big shindig. He smiled. What a dandy day he had; even in his wildest dreams, he had not anticipated such a warm welcome.

But something was nagging at the back of his mind: too warm a welcome, a little voice kept saying. Would we have done the same if someone had abruptly come out of the stars during the 20th century? Wouldn’t we have been wary at first? Have shun him?

Why was the town so desert, by the way?

What if…

His heart started to pound madly as a sudden wave of fright washed over him. He shouldn’t have accepted to sleep here. He had to go back to his shuttle. Now.

Panicked, he rushed to the door, and from there down the mighty stairs that led to the entrance hall. He was halfway through it when there was a big flash behind him. He stopped and turned around. Twilight Sparkle stood there, watching him with a threatening look.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked; her tone was surprisingly husky.

“Err… To the toilet,” Gary answered. “You know, with all the cider I quaffed down, I woke up with an urgent need and—”

“No,” Twilight Sparkle cut in. “You didn’t.”

“What?… Yes!” Gary protested.

“No, you didn’t,” the princess repeated coldly.

There was a brief hush. All of a sudden, Gary turned around and ran for the gates, screaming.

He never reached them.

---

Early in the morning, a sad procession made its way through the busy streets of Ponyville. Coming first, a couple of ponies bore an elongated box roughly made of nailed birch planks; behind them, the princess Sparkle and her retinue, heads low, dejected.

After a long walk, the cortège arrived in view of the tract of grass where the shuttle had landed. Close to it, a deep, rectangular hole had been dug in the turf, and a slab erected. The ponies paced to the brink of the hole, then stopped. Twilight Sparkle grabbed the wooden box in her magic, and placed it carefully into the excavation.

Mayor Mare made a short speech, praising the courage and the boldness of this explorer who had come all the way down from the stars to share his knowledge and extend his friendship, only to meet his doom at the end of his journey.

When she was done, earth was shoveled back into the hole until it was fully leveled.

After a last goodbye, everyone dawdled off their way, reassuming their true shape to enjoy the day off Chrysalis had given to them.