[Old HW - 1] [Discontinued] Discovery - Technologic

/// A quick note regarding this story:
/// This story has gone through so many rewrites it's not funny.  I've started with one idea and ended up hating what it turned into so many times it hurts.
/// That being said, I'm not of the opinion that once something has been 'published' so to speak, it should be deleted away forever.  You can learn a lot from past ideas, successful or not.
/// So, read on at your own leisure, but this particular incantation of the "Hello, World" story will not be continued.  To find the actual version that I'm digging in and going with, look here: https://pastebin.com/wjESZGW7
---

	“I can’t explain it to a simpleton like you, Twilight,” Discord huffed, turning his snout towards the sky.
	“You called me all the way over here, the least you could do is try,” the tired unicorn retorted.
	“What more do I need to say?  We’re being watched!”
	Twilight grumpily looked around Fluttershy’s cottage.
	“By Fluttershy?” she offered, pointing a hoof to her equally tired friend.
	“No no no, not by a pony,” the draconequus said, waving his paw as if to clear away the thought.  “There’s a machine watching us, somewhere up above the pegasi.”
	“A flying machine?” Twilight repeated, her curiosity piqued.  “Who made it?”
	“I don’t know.”
	“What do you mean you don’t know?”
	“I can’t see it to tell who made it.  I can tell you it’s not pony made!”
	“If you can’t see it, how do you know it’s really there?” the unicorn asked, now sensing yet another ploy for attention.
	“As I said before, it’s something far beyond your simpleton mind’s capabilities to understand.”
	“Alright Discord, tell you what.  You show me some kind of measurable evidence of this flying machine, and I’ll look into it.  Okay?” she said, rather gruffly.
	“You want evidence?  I’ll give you evidence!”
	“Fine.  Just, try and do it in the morning?” she said, turning to head back to town.  Back to her comfortable bed.  “See you later Fluttershy,” she said grimly, shutting the door as she left.
	“Sweet dreams, Sparkle,” the draconequus said, folding his arms over each other.  “You’ll wish you’d listened.”
	“What kind of Flying machine is it?” Fluttershy said, turning off the lights in her living room.
	“Some great mechanical beast – probably here to feast on all of ponykind!”
	“That sounds scary!” the pegasus cooed.  “Why don’t you think it’s friendly?”
	“If it was friendly, why would it hide?  Even I play with all my cards on the table!” he huffed, slithering into his bed.  “It’s going to be a delightfully chaotic game, I suspect.”
	“If it’s anything like your normal games, I’m sure it will be.”

---

	“Is that what I think it is?  A railway system?”
	“It appears to be,” the mechanical voice said, magnifying the sector.  “Along with other infrastructure, similar to our own pre-industrial revolution.”
	“I’d love to meet them.  Can you see any of them?” the humanoid asked, easing himself to the edge of his observation seat.
	“I am unable to identify any species capable of producing this infrastructure.  It appears as though an extinction level event has cleansed the population responsible for the original construction.”
	“I don’t see any impact craters or anything like that, do you?”
	“No.  Nor do I see any evidence of nuclear or anti-matter warfare.” The voice paused, shifting the telescopic view back to a corner of the screen.  “Protocol indicates that we should observe this civilization for five days.  Would you like me to activate your standby protocols, Anonymous?”
	“No.  No, I don’t think so.  I want to see this one,” he said, sinking back into the chair.  “Infrastructure similar to humans, but with no humans.”  Anonymous paused, maximizing the telescopic visual once more.  “There’s got to be a reason for it.”
	“It is unfortunate,” the AI continued, minimizing the visual for the second time.  “This planet would suit our mission perfectly, were it not for the apparent intelligent species.  It’s characteristics match Earth’s nearly precisely.  Perhaps we will discover evidence that the planet has been sterilized.”
	“Admin!  How could you say something like that?”
	“Wishing for an expedient end to our mission is hardly something worth getting upset over.”
	“But to meet another intelligent species!  Sure they’re not in space yet, but it’s life outside of Earth!” Anonymous said, standing up in frustration.
	“You know as well as I that our mission could very well hold the fate of Humanity.”
	“Who would we be to trade one species for our own?”
	“Philosophers, I suspect.”  Before Anonymous was allowed to argue further points, Admin pushed forward with a more palatable short term goal.  “You know I would not actively encourage the sterilization of another species.  I am simply observing that this planet’s fate could change Humanity’s.”
	Anonymous folded his arms, grumbling as Admin began shifting the lights for a nighttime cycle.
	“Why don’t you turn in for the night – I’ll alert you if anything changes.”
	“Fine, fine.  Run your scans.  I don’t know how you expect me to sleep tonight after finding out we’ve met alien life!”
	“Unless your parameters have changed, I expect you to sleep like normal.”
	Anonymous grumbled, heading back to the sleeping chamber.  Why’d Admin have to be so grim?  Shrugging it off to the sheer amount of time they’d spent together in space, he turned his thoughts to a more positive tune.
	A planet with that much infrastructure, in that kind of condition, can only indicate sustained complex life.  Original or not, there’s life down there, and it’s at least capable of maintaining existing infrastructure.  If they can do that, surely they’re capable of complex speech or communication!
	“I can’t sleep like this!” Anonymous said, standing up next to his solitary bed.  Instead, he headed right back to the observation deck, sitting down to marvel at the planet below.  Admin had taken the analysis screens down, focusing processing power on running her scans as efficiently as possible.
	“Whoever you are, it’s nice to meet you,” he said, still gazing and the green-blue marble.  Their orbit had put them in a geosynchronous orbit with one of the continents – likely for more standardized scans on this hemisphere of the planet.  “It’s a shame you can’t talk back right now,” Anonymous continued, conjuring up ideas of what the inhabitants might look like.
	“I wonder if you even know we’re up here?” Anonymous chuckled, looking down towards one of the oceans.  “If you are, you’re probably just as curious as we are.  Maybe even moreso.”
	“Do you have gods?” he pondered, looking back towards one of the bigger cities.  “Did you get lost in conflict like we did?”  The planet remained silent, a shroud of mystery still.  “Can you even understand a word I’m saying,” he continued, looking down in quiet defeat.
	“The likelihood of an alien species speaking any Earth language is infinitesimally small,” Admin piped in, her voice just as cool and collected as before.
	“You should be focusing on your scans.”
	“And you should be in the middle of a sleep cycle.”
	“I won’t tell if you won’t.”  Admin remained silent, continuing her scans.  “What do you think they look like?”
	“I’d rather not waste processing time on ill-informed speculation.”
	“Versus talking with me when I should be sleeping?”
	A low hum ran through the ship’s hull; a sound Anonymous had decided was closest to the AI sighing.
	“If I were to speculate,” the AI finally said, “I would suggest that the dominant species on this planet was, at one point, humanoid.”
	“That’s so boring though!”
	“Perhaps; but the facts do suggest as much.”
	“Maybe they’re hexapods.  Or dragons!” Anonymous offered, his imagination running awry with ideas.  “Can you imagine?  Space dragons!”
	“Wouldn’t space dragons be space born?”
	“Everybody’s a critic.”
	“From the day I was activated.”
	Anonymous looked back to the continent, still mulling over the countless ideas rampaging through his mind.

---

	Admin chose to leave Anonymous to his thoughts; despite the need for regular sleep cycles.  This wasn’t your run of the mill planetary observation, after all.  If things went as she was predicting, he would be getting plenty of sleep soon enough.
	The AI was calmly calculating away though, ingesting terabytes of data every second.  Radiation levels, atmosphere makeup, volcanic activity – even wind patterns and cloud cover!  Though she would never admit it to her ambassador, it was proving to be quite an exhilarating experience for her as well.
	No, her emotional subroutines needed to be kept in check.  Were they allowed to run freely, she would’ve surely gone mad; or driven Anonymous to the brink of critical failure.
	Given the relative security of her hull, Admin turned her thoughts from her ambassador towards the surrounding solar system.  This was the only planet worth investigating, according to parameters, but a quick mapping of their surroundings wouldn’t take very long.
	The scan would likely take a day or so to complete, and it didn’t require her primary processor focus.  Instead, that was shifted to looking for inhabitants.  A nice gift, she thought, to bolster Anonymous’ ambition for completing their mission.

	“I believe this one is a leader,” Admin said, pulling up a visual of what appeared to be a white pegasus.
	“Am I tired, or is that a horse?”
	“She appears to be a mixture of a pegasus and a unicorn.”
	“How are you so sure it’s a she?”
	“The lack of male genitalia.”
	“And I was just getting ready for bed,” Anonymous said gleefully, sitting in the observation chair once more.  “Do you know her name?”
	“Princess Celestia, I believe.”
	“Princess?  Shouldn’t she be a queen?”
	“I believe the title is largely the same in this civilization.”
	“What does their language sound like?  What are their gerunds?  Do they have prepositions?  Contractions?”
	“For all intents and purposes, they are speaking English.”
	Anonymous, for the first time in his life, felt his jaw drop in shock.
	“There’s no way.”
	“I ran every translation and aural identification sequence at my disposal.  Unless my systems are malfunctioning, they are speaking English.”
	“Are your-“
	“I have run seven total system diagnostics prior to disclosing this information.  All indicate that I am functioning within normal parameters.”
	“If this is some kind of sick joke,” Anonymous started, a swarth of emotions rising rapidly throughout his body.
	“I would never betray your trust like that,” Admin stated flatly, albeit softer than her normal voice.
	“We can’t leave them,” Anonymous finally said, grasping at what to do.  “There’s no way our species aren’t interconnected somehow.”
	“We cannot initiate first contact.”
	“And just why the hell not?!”
	“They are not space fairing yet – protocol clearly states-“
	“To hell with protocol!  If this planet doesn’t match the parameters of our mission clearer than any of the hundreds of rocks we’ve visited so far, I don’t know what will!”
	“We cannot interfere with their technological progress; no matter the cost.”
	“Okay, fine – what’s the harm in meeting them then?”
	“Meeting them in any form would require landing and exposing them to the existence of our technology.”
	“I’ll limit exposure – land in a secluded area!  I saw a thick forest on your scans, surely that’s a perfectly isolated place to avoid technological contamination.”
	“And what of the geo-political ramifications?  We have no idea how our introduction will affect the political landscape on the planet below – how will other governments react to our landing on their neighbors?  Are there even other governments to be offended?”
	“Admin, come on – you and I both know the odds are beyond astronomical,” Anonymous said, folding his arms.  He knew Admin could see him plain as day.
	“I will concede, the probability does suggest an extreme outlier, considering known parameters.”
	“Besides, humans had to have contaminated this planet before.  Somehow.  Look at the architecture!” he said, pulling up an image of the infrastructure captured earlier.  “How can we contaminate their culture if it’s already been contaminated?”
	“It’s not their culture I’m concerned with contaminating.  If our technology were discovered and reverse engineered, it could disrupt the entire balance of power on that planet.”
	“Then I just need to take a pod that can self-destruct – simple!”
	“I will not allow you into a self-destruct pod unless it is absolutely necessary.  They are last resort devices.”  The AI paused, a quiet hum running through the ship once more.  “Besides, I do not wish to terminate you.”
	“Admin,” he sighed, placing a hand on her interior.  “We have to do this.  You and I both know that.  We can’t let century old rules from Earth govern us like this – not when we might very well be the only ones left.”
The ship said nothing, instead letting her actions speak for her.  A vault below whirred, intense weight thumping and heaving around.  The cabin lights turned orange for a brief moment, followed by a loud hiss, before returning to their night-time mode.
	“What was that?”
	“An exploratory satellite launching,” Admin said.  “I cannot land in the forest,” she continued, re-lighting the cabin.  “You will land in the forest, where you can scout out a more suitable landing zone for me.”
	“Admin, I-“
	“I am violating approximately 38 protocols at the moment.  I would encourage you to find your way to the pod launching bay and take advantage of my obvious malfunction.”
	Anonymous heeded his Admin’s advice, heading down the hall to the bay in question.  Who says it never pays to argue with a computer?

### Last Edit: 01/08/2019 18:11 CST