Memory of the Empire Chapter 4 (Machine Translated)


                                            Chapter 4


                                            Spring is here - and the dust is still the same.

                                            Not many miracles would happen in the lives of the ponies. At least, they did not know the beautiful period when the bearers of the elements existed. After the disaster, everything became an unknown - an unknown that was completely unsolvable and unwilling to unravel.


                                            Laura took care of all the luggage and wiped a little bit of fine sweat from her forehead. She looked at the luggage piled on the truck, and then looked at the dirt road leading to the village gate. There was silence.

                                            A trace of wind and sand swept across the ground, gently brushing her hooves.

                                            It reminded her of her childhood - the time she spent walking by the lake with her mother. Every night there was a breeze like this. Sweeping a small amount of wind and sand, gently brushing her immature four hooves, hinting to her the confusion of the road ahead.

                                            Confused, what else can it be but confusion?

                                            A life of uncertainty?

                                            She gently turned around and went back to the house - she meant to help her parents pack, but unconsciously walked upstairs to her room.

                                            Her father was quietly packing downstairs, the rustling of his belongings a constant reminder of all these changes.

                                            The paintings, the pictures, were still hanging on the wall intact. They seem to have aged a bit, but the joyful smile she had as a filly is still frozen in them. The dust on the surface does not stop her from remembering the time.

                                            The companions who accompanied her on her desert adventures are nowhere to be found ... and yet she can no longer recall their names.

                                            --No matter what, that is already in the past. Compared to the present, memories can only be the encounters of time.

                                            The sun is not very strong, but it still brings a touch of warmth to this slightly depressing room. Her desk, her bed, her window sill - and, yes, the cactus on the window sill.

                                            Her father had given it to her as a graduation gift from Titaingan University.

                                            She had always hoped that one day this cactus would produce a pale yellow flower - a surprise for her, for the world.

                                            It's just that Laura has been taking care of it meticulously for decades, and it has not been able to bloom.


                                            "Laura, do you need us to come up and help you pack?" Mom's voice suddenly reached her brain, which was drowning in memories.

                                            "Oh! Mom, no, thank you!" She returned from her memories to reality and looked at the time displayed on the handheld terminal on her left hoof, "I'm coming down now, you guys get in first."

                                            She stepped on those creaky wooden steps and trotted toward the truck at the door.

                                            Her parents were already seated in the back seat and were waving their hooves at her.


                                            Getting into the driver's seat, she rummaged through the pile on the passenger seat and pulled out the map.

                                            It was a long trip - the Crystal Empire Space Center was over 1100 kilometers away and there was a snowy mountain to cross on the way. It would take about three days of driving to get there.


                                            She took one last look around the village - or rather, the 16th residential area  - that she knew so well. All around, a number of vehicles and ponies were already moving.

                                            Some ponies had cars with enough capacity at home, so they could drive to the space center; those without cars, or those without cars big enough, would have to go to the train station and take the train to the space center.

                                            She glanced at herself in the rear-view mirror, then at her silent parents. Eventually she started the truck and drove with the traffic to the gate.


                                            Such a giant migration was taking place all over Equestria - the destination was the space stations in each region.


                                            Titaingan, also known as New Canterlot. It is the central city of Equestria after the war.

                                            It is located in a canyon oasis in the desert south of the ruins of Old Canterlot. It occupies almost the entire center of the canyon and is surrounded by this small canyon forest. Like Canterlot, it is also a huge integrated city, with 2 large railway stations, one for the train to the north and the other for the south; another large airport, and 3 space stations.


                                            Only today, the streets were crowded with ponies.

                                            The whole city looked like a collective*, and there were even some neighborhoods with royal guards diverting traffic . Again, these were the ponies going to the space center.


                                            Salinas, as the successor to Princess Celestia, there really isn't much she can do for this post-war world.

                                            This plan of the moment is pretty much the only way she can come up with to continue the Equestria... even though, as everyone knows, it's a desperate attempt.


                                            "The world doesn't give us much mercy or opportunity." She had said so, "and it won't give us much time to realize this."


                                            "Now, it's time."


                                            More than ten hours later, when the sun was no longer able to rise, the barren earth was revived by countless streaks of dazzling fire - all over the world, a bright blue flame trailing, above a sky glowing with a hint of white, racing toward space.

                                            The stellar light from this galaxy illuminated the outline of the entire planet at its feet - a fragmented, dried-up sphere.

                                            Three huge cylinders were inserted tightly in the southern part of the planet, using the strength of the mantle as a support structure, with some proton chain fusion reactors faintly visible in the middle ......


                                            Salinas had transformed the entire planet into a spaceship and was using it as a fuel tank.


                                            The pale star continued to shed a little impotent light on those cylindrical shells, and a line of large gray letters appeared in blinding white: Titaingan Ark.


                                            Soon, more small ships came from the barren brown planet and flew straight to the center of the three cylinders -

                                            As the procession of ships rounded their shells to the inner side, there was some white gas floating in that area - actually artificial clouds - a technology of the pegasus.

                                            Closer in, the ozone layer appeared, as well as the stratosphere. ...... The ships in the queue each lowered their altitude and came to the inside of the cylinder - the "ground" was covered with mountains, as if landing on the surface of a real planet.


                                            Below the clouds, there were beautiful green mountains, lush green jungles, white snow-capped mountains, and dark gray hills and rivers. A huge city, built of sturdy pillars on the mountainside of a snowy mountain - as the ship began to slow down, the ponies saw the familiar yellow spires and blue castles.

                                            It was the central city of Canterlot.


                                            Landing in the Crystal Empire's airship, the ponies saw the Crystal Empire of yesteryear.

                                            And Appleloosa, Manehattan, everything was exactly the same as in the old days. Three cylinders that reconstructed the past prosperity and memories of the entire Pony Empire.


                                            "Although you mentioned the reconstruction plan in the project to us before, this is far more spectacular than planned ......," Commander Moranov, the military commander of the Empire, sighed to Salinas.


                                            "... No, these are just appearances." She replied slowly, "Our home ... no longer exists."


                                            With a command, the former Equestria - the dying planet - blasted off into a super planet with the impact of an antimatter cluster beam that penetrated deep into the core of the earth - its tremendous energy igniting the proton chain reaction in the engines and igniting the entire heart of the ark.

                                            Carrying the remains of their home, the ponies embarked on a journey of more than 600 light years.