>Your name is Anonymous, and you are Bored with a capital B.
>Somewhere around five years ago you fucked up while trying to do a drift around a black hole, so your ship was gone and the only body you had left was a survey probe you left abandoned in some system a while back. Of course, you just HAD to be on a paranoid kick at the time and had your mind hosted on a private server with no connection to the greater United Government network, so no phoning for help. You just had to wait for the twenty year mark for someone to come around checking why you hadn’t paid your rent for the private server space.
>Thank fuck you crammed your free space full of reading materials, shows, and games, though, although you were really missing both shitposting violently and non-virtual hands at this point.
>At the very least, the probe was still drifting through space to another system, might give you something interesting to analyze. It was only two standard weeks now until you were in proper sensor range, but so far it looked promising; five planets of Earth masses varying from point seven three two to five point six three one, G-type main sequence star at point seven three solar masses,
>You set the alarm for when you were in sensor range and go back to your games, which feels like it goes off far, far later than it should.
>Sighing, you run a preliminary scan.
>Star, normal, planet one, normal, planet two, normal, planet three, teaming with life, planet four-
>Wait a fucking second there.
>A planet with life, and with no space travel? Discovering a new live world was a massive payout and equally large bragging rights.
>Sure, you still had to wait some years more, but this was a pretty good way for it to turn out.
>Better adjust your speed and direction to enter high orbit, you suppose, angling the probe with the maneuvering thrusters to put it on a course for high orbit, then waiting and passing the time doing preliminary scans of the planet.
>The atmospheric seemed pretty damn close to Earth’s from the first glance, aside from the higher oxygen.
>Entering high orbit, you look over the world below, attempting to perhaps figure out more exactly what composed the atmosphere in more exact amounts when something far more interesting enters the frame: primitive buildings.
>Oh fuck, this is a huge discovery, a chance to make first contact, and a chance to get a body early.
>Now, maybe if you altered the emergency first contact package…
 
>You are Astral Spark, bored intern at the Ponyville Center for Everfree Studies.
>Levitating the collection of objects onto the table, you grab your clipboard over as you look at the series of objects on the sterile workbench, mentally preparing yourself for the long process of cataloguing them.
>These days always suck, you still don’t get why they always assign you to this rather than anyone else here on an internship; why couldn’t you go out in the field more than once every two weeks?
>On the plus side, one of the things they brought back was not a flora or rock sample for once.
>You eye the smooth black cube, glancing down at the notes section on your clipboard next to its number.
>”Extremely hard to manipulate with magic, potentially absorbent? Used grasping rod.”
>You sigh to yourself once more, the grasping rod they had left you with had one busted claw, so gloved hooves would have to be good enough.
>Saving it for last, mostly because you’d have to grab the keys and walk over to the anomalous objects warehouse halfway across the facility, you pick your way slowly through the assembled plants and rocks with your magic, performing the standard tag and bag that had become your day in and day out, making sure everything was all nice and sealed before shoving it all in the cabinet where it belonged.
>You still didn’t quite get why they need so many bloody rocks, but hey, you weren’t a scientist yet, so what the hell did you know? Although, you’re still pretty sure that they take the exact same rock out of storage every week and send it back for processing just to mess with you.
>Time goes by as you finally work your way up to the black cube, slipping on gloves both magically and chemically non-reactive for handling.
“So, bud, it is just you, me, and the ride.”
>You quote yet another bad movie as you grab it.
>You jolt, dropping it back on the table with a yelp as you feel something prick you.
>Oh no, oh no, oh no, was this how you died? Infected or poisoned by some strange magical object?
>Backing up you lift a hoof up to look at the glove.
>Nothing, no damage.
>Eyeing the object warily, you notice nothing on it that could have possibly poked you and breathe a sigh of relief. It was just something in the glove, nothing to worry yourself about, filly.
>Slipping the glove back on you pick it up without incident and head to the office, snagging the keys and giving a wave to that cute stallion Sunset Breeze before heading off to the warehouse, uneventfully placing it in one of the empty storage containers, locking it up, and making note of its location on your clipboard. Finally, it was time to go home and rest your poor hooves after a long, long day. Maybe a bubble bath with a couple glasses of wine would be a nice way to spend the evening.
>Signing your clipboard back in and adding the new locations to the registry so you didn’t get someone shouting at you after the weekend about not being able to find their stupid rocks, you leave, taking the long way home to get a nice, deep breath of the early fall evening air.
>Perhaps if you got enough people to sign a protest, you could get the pegasi to keep it a bit closer to this next year, rather than that grueling summer they dumped on you without warning.
>Damn stuck up Weather Factory pricks, you’re sure that the talking heads at management diverted a good portion of the rain and clouds so that the area around their summer cottages stayed nice and cool.
>Getting home, you immediately start getting the bath ready, and have a dinner of leftover dandelion salad in the meantime.
>Looking back on it, it could have used some apple slices.
>Notes for next time, you suppose, as you trot your way up the stairs to the master bathroom with a bottle and long-necked glass in tow.
>Levitating the bubblebath over, you squirt some in and slip in as it bubbles up, smiling as you pour yourself a glass of the moderate quality red.
>And now time to make all your stress melllllt away.
 
>Surveying the installed systems again, it seems like the nanite injection worked and you now have an established link to the first creature with sufficient brain activity to come in contact with the package, and it only took two months after drop!
>Now, however, you have things to do, first and foremost on the list figuring out how the actual fuck this thing works.
>As far as you understand it, this sapient’s biology just shouldn’t work. Reconstructions of it show that it superficially looks a bit like an old Earth equine, kind of, but that is where the similarities end. The somatic nervous system and brain both are more efficient than you would expect from their rather lackluster physical structure for no reason that you can see, and appear to rely on something you can not detect in order to function at all.
>More investigation is needed to figure out what the actual fuck is going on here, and this is going to make getting to a level of reasonable communication with it a bitch, never mind getting it to construct, under your guidance, either a body for you or a beacon for the UG to home in on.
>On the plus side, the bodily structure was familiar enough for you to get the nanite replication chip built as well as a very basic version of the neural communication mesh, which means that when you actually figure out how its brain works you can open up communications after running a few hours of thought through a program or two.
>Something of note, the creature has a horn with a surprising amount of nerves leading to it for unknown reasons. No solid theories at the moment on that one either, maybe it was once prehensile, perhaps earlier in its life, before hardening? Could always be an evolutionary remnant of such as well, evolved for some weird purpose.
>For now, however, your nanobots are pretty much depleted, if you want to build any more analyzing implants you’ll have to wait for them to replenish themselves with materials from what the creature touches and ingests; don’t want to take anything from the bloodstream without knowing its biology, after all.
>You were definitely looking forward to studying how the subject’s brain was interacting with the neural mesh, in particular, it seemed to take particularly well and naturally to it
>Say, perhaps you could try loading some data into the neural mesh, given how easily it is taking to it? Maybe, given enough calibration from transferring over some rather basic data, you could interact with it in a meaningful way through direct information packets.
>What luck, it appears to be going to sleep as well! This should give you some good data, and give you some time to crunch some numbers on its biology in the meantime.
 
>You yawn as you wake up, rolling over onto your side to look at the clock.
>Hello, nine am, what a surprise seeing you here.
>One plus side of your awful job is that the days it starts late feel all the better, you suppose.
>Yawning once more, you roll slowly out of bed, dragging the bedsheets half off with you as you stretch, some joint that you never bothered to learn the name of in your rear hind leg cracking pleasantly.
>Ohhh Celestia, that is some good stuff that will give you arthritis when you’re old.
>Something at the back of your mind seems to think that such is bull, though.
>You push it away for now, why should you doubt the doctors?
>Going downstairs, you grab a quick bowl of cereal and look out your window with a happy sigh
>Yep, the reflection of the ocean was still as nice as ever.
>You get a mild pain in the back of your head.
>Didn’t you hear that it was actually the blue part of the light from the sun scattering?
>Yeah, that seems right.
>Lazily making a hay and daisy sandwich and sealing it up, you set off to work, taking your time.
>Perhaps you should mention that you felt something prick you on the black cube yesterday, it could have been some poison or disease that would take a long time to affect you.
>A shiver runs up your spine at that thought.
>On the other hand, that means that you would have to tell your boss about a workplace injury that you didn’t report immediately.
>You suppress a shiver at that as well.
>Yeah, you’ll tell them if you start feeling poorly, but not before; screw getting in massive trouble for something that was probably nothing.
>Perhaps you should take a look at it again later today when you have the time.
>If you are more careful, you might be able to do some testing of your own, maybe figure out what exactly is up with it.
>I mean, it is blatantly not the standard Everfree stuff, even if the researchers don’t seem to think so, going off the fact that they passed it to you.
>You finally arrive at work, clocking in as you make your way over to your boss’ office.
>Knocking on the door, you wait for a response for a few seconds.
>”Come in!”
>Cracking the door open, your boss is sitting there at the table with a mountain of forms. It was actually a pretty convincing front, but you noticed a while back that they are almost all the same half complete forms as the previous weeks, he just shuffles about the shape of the piles every once and awhile. You are decently sure that he just sits there and either reads or jerks it all day long.
>”Astral Spark! I take it you are looking for what you’re to do today, now that you’ve cleared the cataloguing backlog, right?
“Yes, sir.”
>Good to see he is as chipper about doing nothing as usual.
>”Very nice. Anyhow, I need you to clean the storage warehouses, they have been getting more than a bit dusty as of late.”
>Is this really happening? Did he really give you JUST the job that you need?
>You shoot him a smile.
“Yes, sir, I’ll get right on that.”
>He goes back to pretending to work on the paperwork as you turn around to leave, slipping off to the warehouse, checking the schedule in the lunchroom on the way by as you drop off your lunch.
>Perfect, you just had to delay until one thirty in the afternoon and the only other person who might need to visit where you are going to be working will be gone.
>Grabbing a broom, dust pan, and feather duster, you get to work harder than usual to give you a gap to act in later without falling behind as time slowly edges by, the couple of hours passing by agonizingly slowly. At one fifteen, you take your lunch, placing yourself to look out the window.
>Perhaps half way through your lunch, just as you expected, you see the pony who might interfere, Autumn Mist, walking away from the building. Perfect.
>Finishing up your lunch quickly, you make your way back to storage, making it look like you are cleaning as you take the cube and its packaging out carefully, slipping on the spare gloves that you keep in your bag.
>You place a simple enchantment on the door, effectively doing the opposite of lubing the hinges and making it squeak rather loudly to alert you to any intruders. Slipping to the back of the warehouse, both out of line of sight from the entrance and where you were cleaning earlier, you snap up a standard examination kit from a cart and a folded up table for use.
>Setting the black cube onto the surface, you instinctively try to lift it up in your magic and feel a stabbing pain in your horn and somewhere in your brain, stopping as you wince in pain.
>Right, resistant to magic. Why did your brain hurt as well, then, rather than just your horn?
>More things to investigate.
>A close visual inspection of the object reveals each faces is entirely smooth, for a lack of a better term, with no zero transparency and a metallic luster.
>Pulling out the ruler, you measure it carefully, and each length is… exactly the same, five centimeters in all directions with no variation that you can see.
>Still no sign of whatever stabbed you.
>Popping open the mineral testing kit, you grab the loupe and give it a careful look.
>No striations, no fractures, no weathering, no signs of it being worked, just nothing. The featureless surface is just that, entirely smooth, and you could find no sign of anything that might have broken off after stabbing you.
>More so, although the edges are all precise ninety degree angles, the points do not feel sharp enough to puncture gloves that easily. Whatever this is, it definitely is not natural, there was little doubt in your mind now.
>Someone made this, but why?
>It probably wasn’t a trap, as it would have likely killed you by now, and just dropping it in the Everfree would be a rather ineffective deployment method. Furthermore, you are pretty sure that traps are generally meant to protect something, and there was nothing else found at the site to your knowledge.
>You place the dark cube off to the side and move on to the hardness test, let’s see if you could potentially get an idea of what it is made of.
>Starting with quartz as you don’t expect it to be soft, you draw it across the surface slowly with your hoof.
>The edge of the quartz powdered against it, and easily at that.
>With little more than a frown, you start a test at hardness eight with a topaz.
>Still no scratch. To double check, you test the edge of the object against the mineral and there is a definite scratch.
>Up to corundum, then.
>Bringing it up to the object’s face, you lean a bit more of your weight into it as you make your attempt.
>Nope again. Must be somewhere between nine or ten, or perhaps even at ten itself.
>Eyeing the diamond in the case, you snatch it up, scratching it against the surface. Perhaps some of its flakes would reveal some more information.
>Nothing, nada, no scratch, zip.
>You are pretty sure that this means that whatever this… thing is, it is made of the hardest material known.
>The implications of such are mildly uncomfortable.
>You place the diamond back in the case with the rest of the testing supplies, packing them all back up while eyeing the smooth, black surface. They might think something happened if they look in the case and see that the diamond scratched.
>Grabbing the scale, you spend a moment zeroing it in before measuring the object.
>Three hundred and seventy five, accurate to three decimal places.
>Quick mental math says that this thing has a density equalling exactly three grams per cubic centimeter, making it lighter than diamond as well as harder.
>While it may be immune to direct magic, you could certainly use some indirect effects to test it.
>Holding it with tongs, you concentrate for a moment, a flame springing to life underneath the object fueled by some invisible source but otherwise completely mundane.
>For a few minutes you stand there heating it, the metal glowing, before you finally release the flame.
>Cautiously, you hold the back of your hoof up to it at a small distance.
>Nothing, which is a thought that you are getting really used to thinking.
>Almost gingerly, you bring your hoof closer and close to it, feeling nothing even as you finally touch. It was still just the same.
>Also thermally non-conductive, it seems.
>You would start testing again when you came up with more plans, you suppose, as you pack everything back up, rebagging the object. as you move the testing supplies back to their original location, starting back towards the cabinet where the cube was stored.
>The door creaks, and you react on instinct. Still out of sight, you slip the object back into the nearest cabinet and slide it shut.
>Grabbing the broom, dustpan, and duster again you get back to work, pretending to not have heard whoever came in.
>”Astral, are you in here?”
>Blast, looks like it is your boss again.
“Over here!”
>You walk towards the source of the disturbance, shortly coming face to face with him, and he is smiling wider than usual. That definitely is not a good sign.
>”I took a look at the schedule, and it turns out you were only scheduled up to two thirty today. Looks like you get to go home early!”
>More accurate is that he saw he was a bit over budget and cut a few ponies’ hours this morning without warning, probably.
>You put on your best fake smile.
“Alright, boss, what time is it now? I lost track a bit.”
>”Three o’clock.”
>And there was the half hour of unpaid overtime.
>You manage to keep your composure and nod to him.
>You turn and trot out, dismissing the spell on the door after you leave the room and adopting a scowl after you leave the building.
>Oh boy, you are going to go heavy on the wine tonight.