Prolouge

The Equestrian Solar System, is not, in fact, as ancient scientists had once believed, geo-centric. With the invention of advanced mathematics and devices such as the telescope, this belief was quickly shattered when the many races inhabiting the planet of Equis first turned their heads to the heavenly bodies floating above to study. What they found were, after many years of scanning the night sky, and improving technology and magic, eight planets orbiting their home star, of which they had learned was just a number of many in the universe. Most had a few visible Moons, and some of the larger ones even had spectacular rings, visible to anyone with a telescope. They learned how to track their movements across the celestial plane, how to predict the passage of solar and lunar eclipses. But, as time passed, the amount of information that could be gathered from simply gazing at these tiny points of light in the sky began to dwindle, and the scientists of the world were left to speculate with the surprisingly small amount of information available to them. With the gaps in the data proving numerous, the people of the small planet were left to their imaginations and unanswered questions of what could be beyond their blue sky, questions of life, the universe, and everything. But there was one question that troubled them more than all others, one that kept the highest of minds awake at night pondering.

Are we alone?

Far beyond the orbit of the gas giant Soln, the largest and last planet in the Equestrian System named so after the shiny gold color given off by it and its rings, something flashed into existence. It was a stubby cylinder, a multitude of antennas, solar panels, and other types of scientific equipment and miscellaneous thingamabobs and doodads sticking off at strange angles covering the surface. It had been designed for practicality, not looks.

There was no indication nor response from the machine at arriving at its new location. Dormant, it drifted towards the center of the system, following the pull of the yellow star of the system known as PH-34564 to all but those who lived there.

If it had continued on its current path, the strange metallic device would have been accelerated by the massive pull of the star’s gravity, skimming so low over the sun’s surface as to fry any rudimentary electronics the craft may have contained, before spitting the husk of fried metal back into deep space from where it came, with no one but whatever divine being had created the universe knowing of its sudden appearance around this unremarkable star. But something got in the way of its journey. Namely, a very large rock.

The probe, for that’s what it was, happened to pass close enough to this large rock to be attracted by its gravity. The probe’s internal guidance computer, that had, in fact, not been dormant this entire time and had been silently taking readings and measurements of each and every planet and moon in the system as it careened towards the sun, registered this change in trajectory and made the necessary equations to predict its new path. Unfortunately, it found that it would pass right through this planet's atmosphere, and at interstellar speeds, would leave much the same effect on the probe as its former path. Fortunately, it had a heat shield.

With one last burst of static from its transmitter, the metal cylinder began to fold up all the antennas, solar panels, scientific equipment and the miscellaneous thingamabobs and doodads into the body, oriented itself in the proper position for aerobraking, before, with one final beep, entered low power mode.

“Look Princess! A shooting star!” A small purple unicorn filly shouted, pointing up at the night sky.

“Hmm, so it would seem.” The larger white alicorn said, watching the bright dot shoot across the horizon. She smiled, finding an opportunity for further learning. “Say, Twilight, what can you tell me about shooting stars?”

“Ooh! Ooh! Shooting Stars, otherwise known as meteors, are…”

It would be many years before they realized how much that meteor would change not only their lives, but the lives of every single member of two civilizations, light-years apart, who both look up into the sky and ask the ultimate question…

Are we alone in the universe?