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LD Chapter 3: Prior Knowledge

By AchingScaphoid
Created: 2021-07-16 21:31:33
Updated: 2021-04-28 14:37:23
Expiry: Never
twilight sparklethrillercomedyspikemysteryponies in earthhumanslong distance

  1. Part 1
  2.  
  3. >Day 5 +3 weeks on Earth, basement/study of Addams household
  4. >Sunday, March 17th, 6:52pm
  5. >You are Twilight Sparkle
  6. >And it’s going to snow AGAIN on Tuesday, according to the radio
  7. >It’s forecasted to return to spring-like conditions after a second possible snowfall later this week
  8. >Humans seem to have absolutely no control over the weather
  9. >Which makes sense, considering that there does seem to be nothing magical here
  10. >You’re thankful for the cloak Rarity sent you
  11. >The basement doesn’t have any radiators and the blankets you were given get in the way of your hooves when you’re studying
  12. >You’ve been brainstorming ideas of how to prove magic exists
  13. >You’re trying to find things that are easy to demonstrate and can only be done with magic
  14. >You can hold up a book from Equestria for several minutes at a time now
  15. >You showed that to Jon, but he felt around for wires supporting it and only gave a tentative “maybe” when he couldn’t find any
  16. >The weirdest thing about that demonstration was that the book seemed slightly harder to manipulate while he was around
  17. >You haven’t been able to replicate that
  18. >You’ve chalked it up to divided attention and your recovering magic until and unless you find a better reason
  19.  
  20.  
  21. >You would be using your magic to write if you hadn’t run out of ink
  22. >You’re considering including a request for more ink in your report about computers
  23. >However, the Addams seem more than willing to provide for you
  24. >The only downside to this is that anything they give to you seems to actively resist magic
  25. >So, despite your continued lack of familiarity with hoofwriting, you’re using a ‘ball point’ pen made of mostly artificial materials that Eliza gave to you
  26. >She said she had plenty of those pens and could get more of them cheaply
  27. >Most restaurants back home charge for straws, but plastics are so common on ‘Earth’ that humans treat them as nearly disposable
  28. >At least you’re starting to get an understanding of this world
  29. >They have a good understanding of matter, so it makes sense that they might be able to make artificial materials more easily
  30. >You don’t know exactly how it was made, so you can only guess
  31. >You’ve had to take the Addams at their word for a lot of things, but there isn’t much of an alternative to that
  32. >At least not one that you’ve confirmed
  33.  
  34.  
  35. >This ‘internet’ is being described as a method of transmitting large amounts of information quickly in the form coded pulses of electrical and light energy
  36. >It’s described as a worldwide network of ‘computers’
  37. >Simple probability dictates that there would be at least a small repository of knowledge on a ‘server’ somewhere in a system that large
  38. >Or at least that’s the assumption you’re under at the moment
  39. >You haven’t really seen the ‘internet’ in practice
  40. >Or if you have, you didn’t realize it and didn’t understand what was happening
  41. >You haven’t had much chance to watch a ‘computer’ in use for something other than Spike’s entertainment
  42. >Whenever you approach a human that’s using a ‘computer’ they tend to stop what they’re doing to pay greater attention to you
  43. >It’s nice of them, but your current assignment is to learn as much as you can about ‘computers,’ and ‘The (new) Way Things Work’ says very little about how a ‘computer’ is operated
  44. >It doesn’t explain much more than the principles behind them
  45.  
  46.  
  47. >Your incremental reports are something the researchers at Canterlot are clamoring for more of
  48. >You’ve been told that they’re trying to make a ‘computer’ from scratch using acid replicated from the ‘batteries’ you sent as the power source and the ‘circuitry’ kit as a guide
  49. >Progress is slow, but it’s thanks to the text that the Addams gave you
  50. >It had a section on power sources that you marked for later reading on request of the research teams
  51. >It also explained that those odd, small pianos were those ‘synthesizer’ instruments that Jake mentioned
  52. >You’re going to make a practice of spending a minimum of twenty minutes outside of the basement daily for reasons excluding meals and other personal needs
  53. >You’re here to study and document, and dinner last week reminded you of how much you’d been letting slip under your nose
  54. >You haven’t set a specific time of day for that hour, and maybe it’s best if you don’t
  55. >The key to experimentation is control, and the Addams’ behavior might adapt to a known time when you’re going to be upstairs
  56. >You’re finishing up on some notes on how ‘random access memory’ circuitry works
  57. >No time like the present
  58.  
  59.  
  60. >Jake and Spike are playing that ‘video game’ again
  61. >There’s also a ‘radio’ in the living room playing some sort of quiz contest between three humans regarding the last week’s news
  62. >You could only gather the general idea of the show through the floorboards
  63. >It gets clear enough to understand as you ascend the stairs
  64. http://www.npr.org/2013/03/16/174447683/lightning-fill-in-the-blank
  65. (Audio link: the lightning round of NPR’s ‘Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!’ Listen as you read. One of the contestants is named ‘Bobcat.’ I have no idea why, but he is.)
  66. >The first question is about how a country declared a decades-old armistice invalid
  67. >You stop listening after you hear that subject
  68. >Jake and Spike come into view now
  69. >The ‘Mario’ character is jumping across some rotating cubes
  70. >Not much of interest there
  71.  
  72.  
  73. >Moving on to the kitchen, Eliza is just finishing washing the dinner dishes and is listening to the same thing on the ‘radio’
  74. >You hadn't realized that there was more than one 'channel' the 'radio' can receive up until a few days ago
  75. >These humans seem to listen almost exclusively to this 'station' and one that transmits classical music
  76. >You don’t see Eliza as often as the other two, so now seems like a good time to do something about that
  77. “Hi, Eliza.”
  78. >“I wasn’t expecting to see you outside of the basement after dinner.”
  79. “I’m trying to “get out of the basement more often,” as Spike put it. What’s going on?”
  80. >“Not much. I’ve been thinking about you, actually.”
  81. “What do you mean?”
  82. >“You remind me of my English Language Learner students.”
  83. “I still don’t understand how that language could be totally identical to Equestrian.”
  84. >“…What I mean to say is that you’re in unfamiliar territory, but you’re so dedicated to what you do. You’re learning about things you didn’t even know existed, and from what I can tell, you’re doing very well. It always seems like the students who realize the opportunity they have put the most work into what they do.”
  85. “I study this hard all the time.”
  86. >“Better than some of my other students, even if you are going to burn yourself out. It’s like they don’t realize that if they have their hands below their desk and are smiling while looking at their lap, they obviously aren’t studying.”
  87. >What?
  88.  
  89.  
  90. >“Computers double in power every year and a half. The pocket calculators my students and I use have as much processing power as the room-sized ones that NASA used to make physics calculations for the Apollo missions.”
  91. “I suppose that means it is out of date, but why do these conversations always seem to go back to mythology? And who is ‘Nassa?’”
  92. >“Haven’t you read that encyclopedia front-to-back yet?”
  93. “I’m trying to stay focused on one subject at a time.”
  94. >“You’re missing way too much. There’s a reason that Spike told you to get out of the basement and actually see things for yourself.”
  95. >Almost as if to prove her right, the radio catches your ear
  96. >The host of the contest asks a question on the radio about a transition of leadership in a very large country that you didn’t even know was happening
  97. “Yeah, I guess so.”
  98. >“At least you’re taking his advice. I think he might actually know more about us than you do.”
  99. “That’s an advantage I don’t think I’ll let him keep. It’s not like he’d write reports on all that, anyway. Do you mind if I stay and listen to the radio for a bit?”
  100. >“I don’t mind.”
  101. >You take a seat at the table behind Eliza
  102. >The human they’re quizzing right now isn’t doing so well
  103. >He got most of his questions wrong
  104. >The last question was on a very obscure subject, to be fair
  105. >You wouldn’t put ‘get sent to jail’ on your bucket list, but someone did
  106.  
  107.  
  108. >The audience laughed when the host said the law breaker spent their two day stay in prison “avoiding the gangs of neo Nazis, and taking a course called ‘Shiv Making 101’”
  109. “I don’t get the joke.”
  110. >“What part of it?”
  111. “What are those two things they mentioned at the end?”
  112. >“Shivs are small knives that prisoners sometimes make. I’d rather not talk about Nazis.”
  113. >You seem to have hit a nerve, so you’re going to look that up later instead of pressing on it
  114. >The host moves on to the next contestant, who is doing much better than the previous one
  115. >She gets the first question about the new ‘pope’ wrong, but she gets the next one about a cruise ship right
  116. >The third one mentions something called ‘google’ violating people’s privacy
  117. “What’s ‘google?’”
  118. >“It’s an internet search service. You type in a phrase or word and it looks around the internet for relevant results.”
  119. >Finding that ‘server’ full of knowledge might have gotten that much easier, even if the method might be a little shady
  120. >The next question is about a new particle that was discovered last Thursday called a ‘higgs boson’
  121. >If the humans learned something new, you’re going to have to append your previous report
  122. “What is this new particle that was discovered?”
  123. >“It’s supposed to be the reason that matter has mass.”
  124. >Oh wow, that’s rich
  125.  
  126.  
  127. >Try not to snicker
  128. >Try
  129. >Dang it, try
  130. >You’re not trying hard enough
  131. >She heard you
  132. >“What’s so funny?”
  133. >Be diplomatic
  134. >They were understanding about you not knowing what ‘atoms’ were
  135. “Do you mean to tell me that humans don't know about the fundamental energies? Really? I mean, really?”
  136. >“What are you talking about?”
  137. “All of this. All of it. Everything that humans have done, and humans never discovered how gravity even happens?”
  138. >Maybe, just maybe if you were an emotionless pony who could never feel anything, you wouldn’t be on a different planet, sitting at a table with your forehead propped against your hoof and laughing at how hilariously ironic it can be that a species understands so much but knows so little
  139. >You’re the only one laughing, though
  140. >This is horrible
  141. >But it's totally worth it
  142. “I’m sorry, I should go. I’ll explain it later.”
  143.  
  144.  
  145. >That wasn’t even close to twenty minutes upstairs
  146. >As you head back downstairs, laughing to yourself the whole time, you can’t help but think that it was more than enough
  147. >You lie down and wait for the laughing fit to end
  148. >THIS is worth writing home about
  149.  
  150. Dear Princess Celestia,
  151. I have made another interesting discovery regarding the state of human science. It appears that only
  152. recently (three days ago, at time of writing) that humans discovered why the fundamental energy of
  153. gravity exists. I will give further updates on this subject with my report on computers, which I expect to
  154. have ready four days from now. I would very much appreciate it if you could send a book on the topic
  155. of fundamental energies to compare with their discoveries.
  156.  
  157. Your faithful student,
  158. Twilight Sparkle
  159.  
  160. P.S. I’m out of ink for my quill. Please send some to me. Do the scientists need more batteries for that circuitry kit?
  161.  
  162.  
  163.  
  164. Part 2
  165.  
  166. >Year 22 and about two weeks on Earth
  167. >March 21st, 1:04pm
  168. >You are Jake Addams
  169. >You have one less thing to worry about thanks to the two things that you’re worried about
  170. >That book was a free pass to speak about almost everything in the MLP fiction
  171. >And a few other things
  172. >Apparently griffons are near-exclusive carnivores
  173. >That episode with Gilda must have been awkward off screen if all ponies are as squeamish about meat as Twilight is
  174. >But then how would she feed her owl?
  175. >And owls cough up the bones, too, so she’d have to clean that up
  176. >This could mean that she’s actually more scared of something than Fluttershy is, because Fluttershy’s been shown feeding fish to other animals
  177. >Almost everything
  178. >You can’t ask about that without raising some eyebrows
  179. >The book didn’t say much about the Equestrian attitude towards meat eaters
  180. >It did say that certain foods adapted from meat-based ones are popular in Equestria, like soy burgers and vegetarian hot dogs
  181. >You tried those once when mom bought some for herself
  182. >Never again
  183. >Dad’s soy milk is at least palpable, but meat substitutes make you pity anyone who wants to pretend they’re not vegetarian
  184.  
  185.  
  186. >You’re with dad right now, getting driven home from an appointment at church
  187. >The minister wants to have someone compile the email newsletter for him while he’s on sabbatical in May
  188. >Eliza volunteered you and Jon, so you have one more thing to do around the time that you ought to be studying for your finals
  189. >It doesn’t look like that much work, but work is work
  190. >Fuck work
  191. >If five million dollars fell into your lap right now, you’d go straight to the bank, deposit it somewhere that it earns interest, and never work a day in your life
  192. >But lightning never strikes the same spot twice in a row
  193. >You’ve probably had one too many unlikely occurrences, if anything
  194. >Twilight Sparkle and Spike living in your basement, and you’ve been ordered by the rulers of Equestria to prevent either of them from discovering that they’re cartoon characters
  195. >Why you?
  196. >And how the hell did they already know?
  197.  
  198.  
  199. >It’s interesting and all, but you find yourself distracted by thoughts of how to handle it so often that you’re starting to notice lapses in your attention
  200. >You missed part of what the minister was saying about formatting the announcements while you were sitting right next to him
  201. >That was part of the reason that mom insisted Jon come with you
  202. >The other part was that both of you would only remember half of what you learned
  203. >And that’s why she’s the one who calls the shots around the house
  204. >She’s only deferring to you about the guests because-
  205. >Uh oh, dad’s got a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel at a stop light
  206. >He said he tries not to be like his father was, but this sounds like his story about how his dad told him about the birds and the bees during a Sunday drive while holding the steering wheel like letting go of it would kill him
  207. “Are you okay?”
  208. >“I’m not okay, Jake. We have two living contradictions to everything I knew about physics, biology, chemistry, and even literature in our house.”
  209. “It’s not like I invited them.”
  210. >“They shouldn’t exist.”
  211. “Well, they do and I don’t know what we can do with them except let them stay.”
  212. >“I’m not seeing any alternative to that, either. That’s the problem I have with this; we can’t control it.”
  213. “We just have to wait.”
  214.  
  215.  
  216. >Green light, turn onto Riverside Street
  217. >“How long? A year?”
  218. “They said it would be less than that.”
  219. >“They said that they hoped it would be less than that. They didn’t know, and they didn’t prove that it would be less than that. For all we know, we’re going to have to keep them forever.”
  220. “Have a little faith. I think they understand magic better than we do.”
  221. >“Even then, they didn’t know. They weren’t sure, and that worries me.”
  222. “I guess you’re right.”
  223. >“And speaking of people just saying things, you never showed me that letter you said you got.”
  224. “I already said I can’t. It’s gone.”
  225. >“Then how do I know that you didn’t make that up?”
  226. “What reason would I have for doing that? This isn’t a game.”
  227. >“Right. You would have shot something by now if it was.”
  228. “Dammit, dad. You know that I didn’t mean a video game. Please trust me.”
  229. >“Just try to get another letter and let the rest of us see it.”
  230. “I don’t know if I can.”
  231. >You’re back in your neighborhood now
  232. >“She’s going to find out eventually.”
  233. “And we have to make sure that doesn’t happen anytime soon.”
  234. >“I really don’t see the problem with telling her.”
  235. “We have no idea what could happen.”
  236. >“She’s getting used to living here and she seems happy enough. I don’t think it would be anything horrible.”
  237.  
  238.  
  239. >DEFCON 3, IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED TO PREVENT HIGH LEVEL OPERATIONAL SECURITY FROM BEING COMPROMISED
  240. “Dad, please, just don’t. I’ll try to get another letter. I’ll do anything.”
  241. >“You could start by actually making some keys for my microtonal synthesizer.”
  242. >He turns onto Summit Avenue
  243. “You named that thing?”
  244. >“It’s not final. I might go with ‘universal’ or ‘sliding 288’ instead.”
  245. “I’ll start putting the keys together after dinner.”
  246. >“I also need you to pose in a couple of pictures for my April Fools’ Day page once I get the costume.”
  247. “Deal.”
  248. >He backs into the dead end street/shared driveway/whatever the hell the city was trying to make when they made the street you live on and then refuse to plow in the winter
  249. >The only good thing you can say about it is that it’s out of the way and not many people come to bother you
  250. >You go over the notes you put on your phone during the meeting with the minister as you walk in through the kitchen door
  251. >Login and password, content blocks should have dividers between them, church events take precedence over other events for space in the announcements section
  252. >Not too difficult
  253. >You can hear Spike playing Mario as you head for your room
  254. >And then you hear the pause noise
  255. >“Hey Jake, I finished it.”
  256.  
  257.  
  258. >In what, three weeks?
  259. “How many stars did you get?”
  260. >“All of them!”
  261. >Daaaaayum, this you have to see
  262. >Peeking into the living room, you see a ‘120’ on the corner of the screen
  263. “Good job, but did you-”
  264. >“-Beat the penguin in a rematch and find the green lizard guy on top of the castle?”
  265. >He must have a psychic connection to GameFAQs or something
  266. “I don’t even.”
  267. >“You don’t even what?”
  268. “I don’t even too many things to decide which I want to say. Do you want to get started on the next game now?”
  269. >“I want to know what it is. Is it Super Mario 65?”
  270. “That’s not a thing.”
  271. >“What is it? I want to know before I start!”
  272. “Just a moment, let me go get it.”
  273. >You duck into your room and close the door
  274. >Fishing around through the games drawer you realize that you might have actually sold the one you were going to give to him back when ‘Funcoland’ was still in business
  275. >You’re an idiot
  276. >You could give him your DS and let him play the remake of Super Mario 64, but that would leave the TV open
  277. >Oh, here it is
  278. >Under its sequel, of all places
  279. >That’s what you get for just leaving these things in a pile instead of sorting them
  280. >Spike is calling for you through the door
  281. >It sounds like he’s scratching at it a bit, too
  282.  
  283.  
  284. “Hold up a sec, I just needed a moment to find it. Save the game and turn off the Nintendo.”
  285. >You head back out with the game, holding the cartridge with the label towards your palm
  286. >Spike did exactly what you said and is standing expectantly beside the console
  287. >You plug in the game and turn it on for him
  288.  
  289. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C3m5Lno_20
  290. (YouTube link: the intro to Banjo Kazooie. Stop it right after the dragonfly goes by the first time.)
  291.  
  292. >Spike picks up the controller and skips the cutscene
  293. >You furrow your brow at him
  294. >Only a filthy casual would do that on their first time with a game, and you refuse to let Spike become a filthy casual
  295. “What was that about?”
  296. >“I wanted to play the game.”
  297. “Alright, just don’t get in the habit of skipping stuff.”
  298. >“Why not?”
  299. “This game will make you regret it. The last game could at least be figured out without the reading, but this one’s going to make sure that you paid close attention.”
  300. >“Are you sure I’ll like this one? It doesn’t sound like my sort of thing.”
  301. “It only really matters at the end. Just don’t overlook too much.”
  302. >“If you say so.”
  303.  
  304.  
  305.  
  306. Part 3
  307.  
  308. >You are Twilight Sparkle
  309. >And you are…
  310. >Done
  311. >That went a lot quicker with a quill you can actually use, and the engineers will have a bit less sloppy hoofwriting to decipher
  312. >This report on ‘computers’ and transcription of the final chapter of ‘The (new) Way Things Work’ is complete and accurate, to the best of your knowledge
  313. >You’d have Jon proofread it if he hadn’t effectively read all of what you’d written as you wrote it
  314. >All you have to do now is to send it
  315. >Rather, all Spike has to do is send it while you take a well-deserved break
  316. >You’re thinking you might actually delay sending it to get more free time
  317. >The magic teams have yet to find any promising undocumented sources of magical energy among the stars, so your optimistic delusion is on hold for the moment
  318. >You’re hoping that your delusion about going home soon doesn’t lose the ‘soon’ part, but that’s not up to you
  319. >At least there’s nothing rushing you
  320. >Think positive
  321. >This is an opportunity to finally read through something unrelated to the researchers’ requests instead of making a bunch of ‘read later’ bookmarks
  322. >The main thing holding you back socially is that there’s so many basic facts that you don’t know
  323. >Then again, that would be deceptive and mean
  324. >Being the ignorant one is a curious feeling, and not necessarily one you enjoy
  325. >It’s not unpleasant enough for you to want to make life unpleasant for others, though
  326.  
  327.  
  328. >You head upstairs once more and see Jake and Spike playing
  329. >No, that looks like a different one
  330. >Not important
  331. “Spike, I’ve got the report on ‘computers’ ready to send.”
  332. >“Can it wait? I just got started on this.”
  333. >Yes it can, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t be doing something important
  334. “You’ve been doing next to nothing for weeks now.”
  335. >“That’s because you’ve given me nothing to do.”
  336. >There’s no library for him to organize, but that’s not a valid excuse, either
  337. “I have something for you to do now, so would you please just do it?”
  338. >“I really mean that I just got started on this. It’s been less than five minutes.”
  339. >Sensing tension, Jake excuses himself
  340. “Then it shouldn’t be such a problem to stop.”
  341. >“Can’t you triple check your work or something? I just want to get past the first bit here.”
  342. “I’ve quadruple checked my work already. I think it’s ready to send.”
  343. >Jake comes back with a plastic object in his hand
  344. >It has a lot of buttons on it, most of which are labeled with numbers and symbols for mathematic operations
  345. >It looks like the ‘calculator’ you saw Eliza using
  346. >“Twilight, Spike, I think I have a win-win for you.”
  347. >“If it means I get to keep playing, I’m for it.”
  348. >“I think I might be able to get you some time.”
  349. >“Sweet.”
  350. >Spike goes back to playing the game, then mumbles about how he needs to stop reminding himself of something
  351. “What is it?”
  352.  
  353.  
  354. >“I know you’re keen on sending things back to Equestria, so I think you might want a computer to send along with that report.”
  355. >Oh he has no idea how much the research teams would like that
  356. “Jon said they’re expensive. Are you really willing to do that?”
  357. >“Not exactly. This is just a calculator. I might be able to put together a computer for you with some spare parts I have, but I’m missing a few parts.”
  358. “The ‘calculator’ is still a ‘computer,’ though. Does it cost much?”
  359. >“Nah, this is just a TI-30. I could get one of these for fifteen dollars.”
  360. “I’m still not familiar with the local currency.”
  361. >“It’s worth about as much as a meal at a normal restaurant. It’s not a big deal. Come on, let’s stop bothering Spike.”
  362. >He heads for his room
  363. >You follow him and get on the bed next to where he’s seated himself
  364. >“So anyway, it’s not a big deal for me to give one of these away. We have a bunch of calculators in the kitchen’s junk drawer if you need another. They don’t do much more than collect dust since just about every cellphone nowadays has a calculator program.”
  365. >And the researchers can get extras
  366. >This is your lucky day
  367. “I knew that ‘The (new) Way Things Work’ was somewhat outdated, but it seems to be missing a lot of information regarding ‘cellular phones.’ Do ‘calculators’ on ‘cellular phones’ work the same way as other calculators?”
  368. >He looks a little tense
  369. >It might just be the argument he broke up catching up with him
  370. >“They do.”
  371.  
  372.  
  373. “May I see the one on your ‘cellular phone?’”
  374. >Now he’s even tenser
  375. >You can’t think of a reason why
  376. “Is something wrong?”
  377. >He takes the ‘cellular phone’ out of a holster on his belt
  378. >He does something with it while holding it at an angle that makes its screen difficult to see
  379. >This seems to relax him
  380. >“No, I’m fine.”
  381. >He shows you its screen, which seems to take up most of the surface of one of the larger sides
  382. >There are a lot less buttons on the ‘cellular phone’ than you were expecting
  383. >You can only see three along the narrow sides of the device
  384. >It’s showing a picture of something nearly identical to the ‘calculator’
  385. >“All you have to do is enter a number, then an operator, then another number, and press the equals button. There’s an instruction card with that calculator for more complicated things.”
  386. >He taps the screen on the squares that have the same symbols as the ones on the ‘calculator’
  387. >As he does, the screen changes to show the numbers and operations he’s entering them
  388. >The screen must sense pressure somehow and then compute what coordinates the pressure is applied to and whether that corresponds to an action for the ‘cellular phone’ to perform
  389. >That’s probably why there are so few buttons
  390. “That book is really far behind. It didn’t show any machines that responded to getting poked on their screen.”
  391.  
  392.  
  393. >“Touchscreens are more of a recent thing. And you can just call it a ‘cellphone.’”
  394. “It computes what to do based on ‘sensors’ in the screen that determine what coordinates you poked it at, I’m guessing.”
  395. >“You’re quick on the uptake.”
  396. “It’s just a ‘mouse’ in a different form. So, what else can these ‘cellphones’ do?”
  397. >“They can run programs, they can send text messages and emails in addition to phone calls, they can-”
  398. “‘Email?’ Does it connect to the ‘internet?’”
  399. >“Yes.”
  400. “Would you please show me that?”
  401. >He tenses up a bit again, then makes the picture on the screen change from the ‘calculator’ to a mostly white screen with “Google” in colorful letters
  402. >Hopefully you didn’t just encourage him to spy on people
  403.  
  404.  
  405. >“What do you want to know?”
  406. “Is there any sort of encyclopedic area of the ‘internet?’”
  407. >He slides the screen of the ‘cellphone’ outwards to reveal a small ‘keyboard’ and uses it to type “Wikipedia”
  408. >The screen is showing text in a format that’s similar to the front page of a newspaper
  409. >Where the title of the paper would be, there’s the nonsense word ‘Wikipedia’ and a proud statement that it has over 4 million articles
  410. >“This is the single largest wiki. It’s constantly peer-reviewed and edited by its readers, so it’s mostly current on all the major topics.”
  411. >Jackpot!
  412. “This is exactly what I was looking for. Would you mind showing me some of it?”
  413. >“Do you have any topics in mind?”
  414. >Better question: what don't you have in mind?
  415. >Foremost is your current topic of study
  416. >You'll satisfy your own curiosities later, you have a job to do
  417. “I want to check all my work on computers against this, to start.”
  418. >He puts the phone away
  419. >He is being really weird right now
  420. “What- Why would you do that?!”
  421. >“I’m switching to my laptop. This would take forever if I did it on my phone.”
  422.  
  423.  
  424.  
  425. Part 4
  426.  
  427. >You are Jake Addams
  428. >You’ve been sitting in the basement with Twilight for four and a half hours
  429. >It’s interesting to watch her use telekinesis, even if it does look clumsier than you expected
  430. >It’s not interesting enough to keep you entertained
  431. >Spike had better appreciate this
  432. >You’ve heard at least two different renditions of “Teddy Bear’s Picnic” playing through the floorboards, so he’s past the first level by now
  433. >You don’t usually subscribe to religious beliefs that can’t be interpreted as “don’t be a dick”
  434. >But god almighty, this is taking forever
  435. >“That’s enough for RAM; now let’s move on to input devices.”
  436. >You move the cursor to the search box and click it
  437. >How many pages did this pony write?
  438. “So, how many pages is that report?”
  439. >“Three hundred ninety eight, not including the table of contents, index, and glossary.”
  440. >That’s not a report, that’s a goddamn textbook
  441. “That sounds more like a textbook.”
  442. >“I suppose that part of me always wanted to be an author.”
  443. >It shows, no wonder she ran out of ink
  444. “Do you ever write creatively?”
  445. >“I only did that once. I enjoyed reading it a lot less than I enjoyed writing it, so I threw it away. Some things just aren’t meant to happen.”
  446. >Like cartoon characters existing
  447. “…Said the alicorn sun princess’s student, who is herself a purple, talking pony.”
  448. >“Ha ha. I'm not even half as absurd to you as you are to me.”
  449. >Okay, sure thing Twilicorn
  450.  
  451.  
  452. >“You aren’t enjoying this, are you?”
  453. >Yes, thank you for noticing
  454. >She hasn’t commented on your stress since you came downstairs, but she HAS to see it
  455. “There are things that I’d rather be doing.”
  456. >“Would you let me use the computer?”
  457. >You’d rather not, even though you cleared your history, removed some sites from your favorites, and removed the Gameloft game on your phone while she wasn’t looking
  458. “I suppose the real question is whether you know how to use it.”
  459. >“It’s just entering words by pressing those buttons in the order of the letters you want and moving that arrow around with the black rectangle. I think I could get the hang of it.”
  460. “It’s not exactly designed for hooves.”
  461. >“I think my quill would work as a substitute for hands.”
  462. “I don’t think it would work on the touchpad, but okay.”
  463. >She taps her quill on the edge of the inkpot
  464. >“Let me try.”
  465. >The quill glows and starts to hover towards the computer
  466. “What are you looking up?”
  467. >“I want to verify that alicorns aren’t part of human culture. Thank you for reminding me.”
  468. >This could go bad fast
  469. “If they are, they're so obscure that it doesn't matter.”
  470.  
  471.  
  472. >“Well, humans were obscure to me but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist.”
  473. >shitshitshit
  474. >You didn’t check Wikipedia for that yet
  475. >For all you know, she’s going to see a picture of Celestia and realize you’ve been lying to her
  476. >As the quill approaches the keyboard, it suddenly drops and flutters onto the floor
  477. >It’s still glowing
  478. >If she’s messing with you because she already knows, you are going to break something
  479. “Why did you do that?”
  480. >“I didn’t.”
  481. “What happened?”
  482. >“I’ve never seen anything like this. It was like it just stopped responding to my magic.”
  483. >The quill floats back up towards the computer, but it doesn’t even get as close as it did last time before dropping
  484. >This repeats itself two more times
  485. >“This is very strange…”
  486. >She moves the quill back towards her paper without any problem and lays it flat
  487. >“Does Jon keep his cellphone with him often?”
  488. “Usually, why?”
  489. >“I tried to show him telekinesis earlier and it was more difficult than it usually is. Now I think I might know why.”
  490. >She’s pointing towards the laptop
  491. >“I think that computers might interfere with my magic, somehow.”
  492. “I don’t understand.”
  493. >“Neither do I.”
  494. >She lifts the quill again and brushes aside her notes for a fresh sheet of paper
  495. >“I need to send a letter about this. This could be devastating to the project.”
  496.  
  497.  
  498. “What project?”
  499. >She dips the quill into the ink and begins writing urgently
  500. >“The scientists in Canterlot are trying to build a computer. From what I can tell, it seems like proximity and size increase interference with magic. If this hypothesis is correct, completing the project could cause absolute pandemonium. I need to stop them.”
  501. “Spike mentioned the computer to me a while ago. How large is it?”
  502. >“They’ve closed off one of the castle ballrooms to the annual gala to make room for it.”
  503. >You may have been helping to build a doomsday device
  504. >Oops
  505. “Oh shit. How long have they been working on it?”
  506. >She turns around in her chair
  507. >“What?”
  508. “‘What’ what?”
  509. >“What you said.”
  510. “How long have they been working on it?”
  511. >“They just started building it.
  512. >Whew
  513. >“I meant the other thing.”
  514. “Oh shit?”
  515. >“The second word of that sentence. What does that mean?”
  516. >Ponies confirmed for never swearing?
  517.  
  518.  
  519. >The rating of the show kind of implied that, but really?
  520. >You learned from ‘The Complete Guide to Equestria and its Neigh-bors’ that Pipsqueak had been dressed as an actual historical pirate called “Patch”
  521. >He was more analogous to Blackbeard than to Jack Sparrow or Captain Hook
  522. >“Patch” would never get screen time if they showed what he actually did
  523. >Especially if he spoke the way real human pirates did
  524. >Well, ‘straight and honest’
  525. >Even if it means corrupting her innocence
  526. “It’s a strong swear that means poop. I was using it to-”
  527. >“Whatever. It’s like the human equivalent of ‘horseapples.’ Just don’t teach it to Spike.”
  528. >Ponies confirmed to have dirty mouths for reasons other than using them to hold things
  529.  
  530.  
  531. “At least we didn’t cause a disaster. What are you going to do if we can’t have computers around you?”
  532. >“I’m going to avoid using the larger computers unless I can confirm that they don’t affect my magic. I might need to cast spells in order to get home. Besides,”
  533. >She mashes a hoof against the keyboard
  534. >“they’re not exactly designed for hooves.”
  535. >She finishes the letter and rolls it up
  536. >She cleans the quill and uses it to cautiously poke at the calculator
  537. >It doesn’t look like she has to try very hard to do that
  538. >She pulls the page of notes she had been working on back in front of her and dips the quill in the inkpot
  539. >“Back on topic, would you look up input devices?”
  540. “Fine.”
  541. >“I’m not going to keep you if you don’t want to be here. We can do this later.”
  542. “Oh. Okay, I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”
  543. >“You have a printer, right?”
  544. >She catches onto things way too quickly
  545. “I was actually about to suggest that. If you give me a list of things you want to read, I’ll try to find them for you.”
  546. >“Excellent! I need you to print something about each part of the table of contents. I’ve already seen the articles on main memory, secondary memory, operating systems, data compression-”
  547. >That won't be necessary, thank you
  548. “I remember which ones we saw. I’ll print those ones last.”
  549. >You start to close the laptop
  550. >“Wait, just a couple more things before you leave.”
  551. “Yes?”
  552.  
  553.  
  554. >“Do you have any spare batteries for this calculator?”
  555. “It’s solar powered. It doesn’t need them.”
  556. >“Ah yes, I put a bookmark on that earlier. I want articles about photovoltaic and heliostatic electricity as well.”
  557. “Right.”
  558. >“There’s one last thing I want to see right now. We got sidetracked earlier.”
  559. >She better not say what you think she’s about to say
  560. >“Would you look up alicorns for me?”
  561. >Fuuuuuck you were hoping she’d forget
  562. >You can’t refuse or she’ll get suspicious
  563. “Sure.”
  564. >You delete the ‘EZuLsgyF’ in the search box and type in ‘alicorn’
  565. >Moment of truth
  566. >She looks over your shoulder to read the page as it appears
  567. >Please don’t be culturally significant enough to spoil everything
  568. >You press enter
  569. >“Huh. I guess they are a part of human culture. I’m not sure whether or not to take comfort from that.”
  570.  
  571.  
  572. >It’s just a stub article with a brief mention of a fantasy author referring to winged unicorns as alicorns and the belief that horns were an alchemical ingredient
  573. >You are never going to get those five million dollars
  574. >“Actually, no. I think I won’t. Every p0ny who values their horn can’t stand that rumor about OMCM being a cure-all. The one thing I was hoping wouldn’t be a parallel between human mythology and Equestrian culture, and there it is.”
  575. “OMCM?”
  576. >“Organic magically conductive material. I have a book being sent to me that can explain in detail.”
  577. “Are you getting it from the castle library? I remember that the last one took a while because you had it sent from your house.”
  578. >“Unfortunately, no. The Canterlot research teams have requisitioned the entire castle library and are reluctant to share the few books they aren’t using. Getting them to give up one that they are using is out of the question if I can get it another way.”
  579. “And the princesses are just letting them do that?”
  580. >“It doesn't matter. They might try to negotiate something if I needed it immediately, but I don’t need it anytime soon.”
  581. “Well, alright then. Do you want me to bring that letter upstairs to send?”
  582. >“If you wouldn’t mind.”
  583.  
  584.  
  585. “Eliza told me you hadn’t read all the way through these books yet. You’re going to have plenty of time while I print all this.”
  586. >“Do you have any general history books? I’ve been meaning to read up on that.”
  587. “I’ll bring a couple of those down in a minute. Anything else?”
  588. >“Any other books you have on machinery, especially on electronics.”
  589. “I have a few of those, but they’re not very technical.”
  590. >“That’s not a problem. My next subject of study is going to be what the applications of human technology are.”
  591. “Okay, I’ll be back in a sec.”
  592. >You take the letter and laptop, then head for the living room
  593. >Actually, no
  594. >You head for your room
  595. >You scribble out a hasty letter and tuck it inside Twilight’s scroll
  596. >“FOR THE PRINCESSES’ EYES ONLY”
  597.  
  598. Dear Princesses Celestia and Luna,
  599.  
  600. My father, Jon, wants another letter to verify that there was a first letter. He is considering revealing the
  601. secret to Twilight, and he might actually do it if he doesn’t receive confirmation. Please hide your reply
  602. in the fifty third page of the next book to be sent to her.
  603.  
  604. Humbly yours,
  605. Jake Addams
  606.  
  607. Also, if it's not too much to ask, would you please tell me exactly how you came to be aware of the state of your existences?
  608.  
  609.  
  610. “Yo Spike, new letter to send. It’s sort of important.”
  611. >“Did something happen?”
  612. “Twilight thinks computers might make magic stop working. She wants the science guys to stop building theirs.”
  613. >He pauses and stares at you for a moment
  614. >“How the hay would that work?”
  615. “Beats me. Here.”
  616. >*Fwoosh*
  617. >“So, what's up with Sharkfood Island? .”
  618. “There's a cave on it that's buried in the sand, but you have to raise the island to get the big egg hidden in that cave. You don’t need to do anything there, so I’m not going to spell it out for you.”
  619. >“Can’t you at least give me a hint?”
  620. “That was the hint.”
  621. >“…Oh! The sandcastle!”
  622. “If you get the special egg inside the cave, I’m going to buy candy for you every day that I go to school.”
  623. >“You are so on.”
  624. “Just don’t get hung up on it. It’s one of the few things you don’t need to pay attention to in this game. You don't even get anything from it.”
  625. >“Except candy.”
  626.  
  627.  
  628.  
  629.  
  630.  
  631. Part 5
  632.  
  633. >Day…uhh…
  634. >What day is it?
  635. >I lost track, just go with the date
  636. >Tuesday, March 26, 12:00.
  637. >
  638. >12:00.
  639. >
  640. >12:00.
  641. >That can’t be right. We just had lunch and the clock in the kitchen was past 1:00.
  642. >The cable box was unplugged, idiot
  643. >They were trying to fix it and they reset the clock
  644. >All of the boxes have cables coming out of them. How was I supposed to know they meant that one?
  645. >THE cable box, not A cable box
  646. >Whatever. Video games time.
  647. >Indeed
  648.  
  649. >You press the power button on the Nintendo
  650. >You decide to watch the beginning movie this time just to be sure you’re not missing something
  651. >Jake keeps insisting that you pay attention to every detail
  652. >Including the reading
  653. >Allll of that reading
  654. >Why can't the characters just talk?
  655.  
  656.  
  657. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C3m5Lno_20
  658. (YouTube link: Banjo Kazooie’s intro. Watch all the way through this time.)
  659.  
  660. >Oh come on
  661. >One of the things the game showed said ‘Rare’
  662. >You’re starting to wonder if Twilight was onto something when she told you that this world might be trying to mess with her head
  663. >It might not be messing with your head, but if it starts messing with your heart like this you’re going to pull out your hair
  664. >Not really, because you don’t have any hair
  665. >It’s a figure of speech
  666. >You pick your save and start moving bear-dude through the castle
  667. >Kazooie is a lot faster, so you don’t usually use bear-dude to get around
  668. >It sort of makes you wonder why the game even has the bear guy
  669. >I think I know, actually.
  670. >Why
  671. >Bird-lady had to learn to walk. She didn’t know how to walk and she’s just now learning to fly. I think that’s a good reason not to cut out bear-dude. She would be helpless.
  672. >That’s kind of sad
  673. >That reminds me, did you ever figure out why Eliza seemed so glum during dinner last night?
  674.  
  675.  
  676. >Wow, get your hearing checked
  677. >She said why
  678. >There was some sort of sad ‘Past-over’ holiday
  679. >We’re in the same brain, dummy. I just wasn’t paying attention.
  680. >And why is that
  681. >You know I get cravings for sweets and meats if I can’t get my gems. Having a whole cooked chicken and that ka-filtered fish stuff right there was kind of difficult to ignore.
  682. >She was talking about how a bunch of people were slaves and died and stuff and then got enslaved and died again later
  683. >Oh.
  684. >Um…
  685. >Not anyone we know, right?
  686. >I don’t think so
  687. >Okay. That’s sad, but at least it’s not helpless bird-lady sad.
  688. >All three of them were talking for an hour straight
  689. >Seriously, get it together
  690. >But food.
  691. >Stop being so impossible
  692. >Is it even possible to die twice?
  693. >I think we had this conversation a while ago
  694. >No, that was about exploding twice. We never did figure that out.
  695. >Let’s leave Twilight to figure those ones out
  696. >We’ve got more important things to do, like getting metal fish guy’s chain loosened
  697. >But it’s way under the water. Banjo keeps running out of breath as soon as we get him down there.
  698. >Just do it, you almost had it last time
  699. >Clanky’s a fish. He’ll be fine if we leave him there a while.
  700. >Do it
  701. >The bubbles are hard to get.
  702. >Do it anyway
  703. >The music down there is creepy!
  704. >You’re going to have to do it eventually
  705. >And all of your excuses are horrible
  706. >All of your face is horrible.
  707.  
  708.  
  709. >We don’t have faces
  710. >Seriously, go do it
  711. >Just swim around the key three times like Jake said
  712. >It’ll be easy
  713. >Ugh, fine.
  714. >Oh hey, it sounds like Jake is home now
  715. >Don’t distract me while I’m trying not to drown!
  716. >My bad
  717. >Where is bubble fish?
  718. >Never mind, found him.
  719. >Grab a bubble
  720. >Hey, what do you think I’m trying to do?
  721. >You know what
  722. >I’m just gonna let you do this
  723. >Works for me.
  724.  
  725. >You keep swimming Banjo around the lock and through the key
  726. >It’s tricky to judge where the bubbles are
  727. >You keep missing them and going back to the surface for air instead, which resets the puzzle
  728. >A little frustrating, but that probably means there’s going to be a big payoff or some new place to explore
  729. >Jake comes by to check in
  730. >It’s an average, boring conversation
  731. >He asks how far you’ve gotten in the game, you ask how his day was
  732. >He always says his day was “fine” whenever your ask him
  733. >It makes you wonder whether he has any bad or good days
  734. >He should go on an adventure or something if his life is so boring
  735.  
  736.  
  737. >After a few minutes, he leaves to go do some reading for one of his classes and print stuff for Twilight
  738. >Speaking of Twilight, she’s headed upstairs again only a couple of minutes after you finish speaking to Jake
  739. >She wasn’t in the basement when you woke up, so she already had her daily upstairs-time
  740. >Twi’s talking to Jake about something
  741. >She sounds upset for some reason, but Jake sounds like he doesn’t care
  742. >Maybe he printed the wrong thing for her and shes overreacting
  743. >It’s not your problem, so you keep trying to swim around the key three times in one go
  744. >It starts to become your problem as Twilight raises her voice
  745. >You give up on trying to open the lock
  746. >Whatever they’re talking about is a distraction to you
  747.  
  748. >As if the game itself wasn't frustrating enough
  749. >What’s her problem?
  750. >Beats me
  751. >Let’s listen in and see if we can find out.
  752. >I like this idea
  753.  
  754.  
  755. >“I’m telling you, we aren’t all about war.”
  756. >“Then what the hay is this?!”
  757. >“It says right on the page. It’s an A-10 close air support jet.”
  758. >“I can see that! What was it built for? What purpose does it serve?”
  759. >“It’s for fighting wars.”
  760. >“By my estimates, it’s carrying a fifth of its weight in weaponry: It says here that it can carry even more! Why would anyone need that?”
  761. >“Yeah, it’s sort of ridiculous like that.”
  762.  
  763. >We should ask to see one of those. It sounds like it would look really silly.
  764. >Noted
  765.  
  766. >“How many of them are there?”
  767. >“I can’t say for sure. A few hundred? I think it’s somewhere around a thousand. Probably less than the Sukhoi 25.”
  768. >“And what is that? How many of those were built?”
  769. >“Another jet built on the same concept. Roughly equivalent, better or worse depending on who you ask about it.”
  770. >“Answer the whole question! How many? How much time, effort and money was spent on making these?”
  771. >“Probably one and a half or two times as many, I’m guessing. Development costs for either were probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars and dev time took about five years for each of them. It costs tens of millions to produce one of them, but the Sukhoi is a bit cheaper.”
  772. >“And these? What about these? An explosion that makes another explosion equivalent to kilotons of dynamite? What possible use could these have in any civilized society?!”
  773.  
  774. >So it is possible
  775. >What’s a kiloton?
  776. >It’s short for a kajillion tons
  777. >Whoooooah…
  778.  
  779.  
  780. >“I think they’re up to megatons by now. No, wait… yeah, they are. It says that on the page there.”
  781. >“What are they for?!”
  782. >“Same as the A-10, but it’s more powerful and less precise. Also a lot more expensive.”
  783. >“And how many of THOSE are there?”
  784. >“Not counting the ones that are decommissioned, approximately enough to make six or seven ‘garden’-type planets so irradiated that only fruit flies and cockroaches would survive.”
  785. >“And what, this Kim Jong person is just going to start strapping these to rockets?”
  786.  
  787. >So these are fireworks for wars? I don’t get it.
  788. >No, more like really big bombs
  789. >What does ‘irradiated’ mean?
  790. >I’ve never heard it before
  791.  
  792. >“It’s probably just a threat. Don’t worry, these threats aren’t that common nowadays.”
  793. >“And they used to be?”
  794. >“For a period of about sixty years, yes. It was almost constant. You can ask Jon about it. He was born around the time that started.”
  795. >“I did. He said you’d be the resident expert on this sort of thing.”
  796. >“I’m flattered, I guess.”
  797. >“So, how many space shuttles were built?”
  798. >“A dozen. They’re on the pricey side, though. Hundreds of millions of dollars to build one.”
  799. >“And how far can one of them travel?”
  800. >“Into orbit for a few weeks and back again. Challenger didn’t make it that far and… uhh… I don’t remember the name of the one that disintegrated during reentry. Point is that two of them broke midflight and everyone on board died. They were all retired last year.”
  801.  
  802.  
  803. >“So you couldn’t go to another planet if you needed to?”
  804. >“Nope. Besides, there’s nowhere we could get to within a lifetime that would be worth staying at.”
  805. >“Humans could make this planet uninhabitable seven times-“
  806. >“Up to seven times.”
  807. >“-Up to seven times, and they haven’t thought through to where the survivors to go? What kind of crazy world is this?!”
  808. >“One that’s still here.”
  809. >“What’s that supposed to mean?!”
  810. >“We could have offed ourselves, but we didn’t.”
  811. >“And you still could!”
  812. >“There’s a question you’ve been avoiding.”
  813. >“Oh?”
  814. >“Would you please ask it?”
  815. >“Very well. Why are humans doing all this?”
  816. >“¿Quiere que explanarlo en Español?”
  817. >What?
  818. >“What?”
  819. >“¿Puede comprenderme?”
  820. >“I don't know what you're saying.”
  821. >“Lo siento, senorita caballo. Me olvide todo de mi vocabulario inglés.”
  822. >“Speak normally!”
  823. >“One border south of here, that would have been speaking normally. It’s also normal along most of Riverside street, but that’s a different story.”
  824. >“Did you do that for any reason OTHER than to annoy me?”
  825. >“You just helped to illustrate my point.”
  826. >“That point being?”
  827.  
  828.  
  829. >“There are seven billion people. We don’t have a single culture or language. You’re lucky you didn’t land in the middle of Siberia or the Amazon jungle where there are people who not only wouldn’t be able to understand you, but they might not even know what year it is because they’ve been cut off from mainstream civilization for so long. Now those are people that might have eaten you.”
  830. >Good luck trying to bite through dragon hide.
  831. >“I’m counting my lucky stars. Get to the point.”
  832. >“A major factor of peace is how well all parties involved understand eachother. We have a lot of potential for misunderstandings.”
  833. >“That’s still no excuse not to try to resolve differences.”
  834. >“How do you recommend we do that?”
  835. >“Talk to eachother. I thought that would have been obvious.”
  836. >“If two wildly different groups meet to talk, how should the meeting be arranged to offend neither group? Which group’s language should they talk in? What should they eat? What should they wear? Where will the meeting take place?”
  837. >“I know a trick question when I hear one.”
  838. >“Precisely. There is no ideal solution.”
  839.  
  840.  
  841. >“What about the ‘Warsaw Uprising’ and ‘Exodus from Egypt’ that were discussed last night? Even I can tell that it’s a stretch to say that those were purely misunderstandings.”
  842.  
  843. >What are those?
  844. >I’d slap you for being so dumb if that was possible
  845. >This is what they were talking about during dinner
  846.  
  847. >“In the case of the US’s internment camps, it sort of was. But that’s different.”
  848. >“This country did that too? Is this common?”
  849. >“No, no it’s not. How far have you read in the history textbooks?”
  850. >“The researchers in Canterlot aren’t concerned with anything other than paleolithic human behavior.”
  851. >“Why aren’t you reading these books we’re giving you? Those ones aren’t even rentals.”
  852. >“I’m being focused. I don’t want to know; I want to understand.”
  853. >“I hope you’re aware that you aren’t doing a very good job in that regard.”
  854. >“And how would you do if you got dropped in the middle of Equestria and then couldn’t leave the first house you entered?”
  855. >“I think I could get by.”
  856. >“I’d hope you could after getting a primer from that book I gave you.”
  857. >“Okay I’ll give you that. You were at a disadvantage.”
  858. >“And I’m working to get an understanding of this world.”
  859.  
  860.  
  861. >“You’re never going to truly understand it if you keep looking only where other people tell you to.”
  862. >How many times have the humans told her this?
  863. >Once or twice
  864. >“I’m trying to get as much information as I can on subjects that may be useful back home. Human history isn’t something I need to know.”
  865. >“I’ll give you that one too, but about those nukes we were talking about. They’re the reason that the major countries of the world don’t war with eachother.”
  866. >“Why is that?”
  867. >“Sic vis pacem, para bellum.”
  868.  
  869. >He’s speaking mumbo jumbo again.
  870. >It doesn’t sound like ‘eekum-bokum’ to me
  871. >Not that Mumbo Jumbo.
  872.  
  873. >“Why are you doing this again?”
  874. >“That’s Latin for ‘if you want peace, be ready for war.’ It’s the theory of deterrence.”
  875. >“Which is…?”
  876. >“That being ready for a fight is the best way to prevent fights. If we stop developing missiles, guns, and jets, whoever doesn’t stop will gain enough of an advantage that they’d put serious consideration into changing their foreign policy to ‘conquer and subjugate.’”
  877. >“Okay, but how does that apply to… oh. Oh sweet Celestia...”
  878. >“This is how a nuclear war would go: a country’s radar facilities detect intercontinental ballistic missiles headed their way. They fire their own missiles in retaliation, and the only winners are the ones who didn’t participate and aren’t downwind. We call it Mutually Assured Destruction.”
  879.  
  880. >What’s radar?
  881. >Maybe he meant ‘radio’
  882.  
  883.  
  884. >Neither of them says anything for a minute
  885. >Twilight’s trying and failing to say something
  886. >You almost go back to playing, but Twilight finally gets her words again
  887. >“It’s going to get everyone killed. You can’t live like this!”
  888. >“And yet it hasn’t gotten everyone killed. It’s a beautiful paradox.”
  889. >“It’s horrible!”
  890. >“Perhaps, but it works, and it works well.”
  891. >“It won’t work forever!”
  892. >“Of course not. Nothing does. The person who fires first is going to be forever remembered as the dumbest person to ever rule a country, so it’s extremely unlikely to happen.”
  893. >“If there’s anyone left to record that.”
  894. >“Meh. A few billion people would die, but we’d have to really be trying to kill everyone if we wanted to cause our extinction. ”
  895. >“Why are you so laid back about this? Don’t you care?”
  896. >“I care. I’ve just accepted the status quo.”
  897. >“You shouldn’t!”
  898. >“That’s your opinion.”
  899. >“That’s a fact. It’s going to get billions of people killed!”
  900. >“It won’t.”
  901. >“You just said that it would!”
  902. >“No world leader is so suicidally aggressive that they would try it. Maybe Kim Jong Un, but he only has ten low-yield bombs at most and North Korea’s isolationism doesn’t exactly help them build effective missiles.”
  903. >“There’s a chance it could get billions of people killed. That’s too much. It needs to change.”
  904. >“How can we change it?”
  905.  
  906.  
  907. >“Get rid of the bombs.”
  908. >“Who does it first? How do we make sure that everyone actually gets rid of them?”
  909. >“Do it simultaneously and then enforce the ban.”
  910. >“If we did ban them, there would probably be at least one nation that wants to have an ace up their sleeve. Even if nobody does that, now the only thing that would make us think twice about starting a war is whether the other side has an advantage that needs to be one-upped. We’d just keep developing other types of weapons until we had something as destructive as nukes, if not more so.”
  911. >“Then get rid of all the types of weapons.”
  912.  
  913. >That seems like a good idea.
  914.  
  915. >“Do you see those belts up there? They go with my old martial arts uniform. I used to train in a martial arts style invented by farmers who weren’t allowed to own weapons. They started using their bodies and farming tools in the place of swords and spears. If all the weapons in the world just, poof, disappeared, we’d find another way to fight.”
  916.  
  917. >Okay, maybe it’s not a good idea.
  918.  
  919. >“Do you humans just want to kill eachother? Is that it?!”
  920.  
  921.  
  922. >“Just because we’re really good at it doesn’t mean we’re single-mindedly devoted to it.”
  923. >“You had me fooled. What evidence do you have of that?”
  924. >“We have charities, free clinics, shelters for the homeless, wealthy philanthropists…”
  925. >“Those are just gestures. For all I know, humans are all wearing a mask of peace to hide the fact that they really do want to fight all the time.”
  926. >“A few do that. We don’t like them very much unless they fight for something noble and know when to stop fighting. Seriously, just read the books. You’ll understand.”
  927. >“I’m going to. I just don’t have time to do that right now.”
  928. >“When will you have time?”
  929. >“I don’t know.”
  930. >“When are you going home?”
  931. >“I already told you that I don’t know that.”
  932. >“Do you have any reason to believe that you’ll be going home so soon that you can’t slow down?”
  933. >“No, but that’s not a reason to stop working as hard as I do.”
  934. >“Then slow down for your own sake. You’re more likely to die of exhaustion than of a nuclear explosion.”
  935. >“I need to go write a letter to the Princess. We aren’t done.”
  936. >You hear Twilight’s hooves going down the stairs
  937. >You don’t really understand what they said earlier, but it sounds dangerous
  938.  
  939.  
  940. >You go back to the game and dive bear dude back towards the lock
  941.  
  942. >I think we might die here
  943. >I’ve gotten better at getting these bubbles. We’ll be fine.
  944. >I don’t mean that Banjo is going to drown
  945. >Jake said we’ll be okay. I trust him.
  946. >Are you sure
  947. >We could ask him if it would make you stop worrying.
  948. >I’d like that
  949.  
  950. >You pause the game and get up
  951. >You knock on his already open door
  952. >“You can come in, Spike.”
  953. “What was that about?”
  954. >“Twilight just found out that humans are really good at making war.”
  955. “What are the bombs she was talking about?”
  956. >“Nuclear bombs. They use an explosion to generate enough force to make atoms split or combine so quickly that they make a huge explosion.”
  957. “How big?”
  958. >“It could be big enough to destroy a city in one blast, depending on the bomb.”
  959. “But they aren’t used, are they?”
  960. >“They were only used once. The United States dropped two bombs and it’s been regretting that ever since. I don’t expect them to be used again.”
  961. “Dropped? From what?”
  962. >“Here, let me get my laptop out.”
  963. >He shows you a bunch of things, including that A ten thing
  964. >It has a lot less swords than you were expecting
  965. >It sounded silly
  966. >Now that you see it, you can’t help but think
  967.  
  968. >That actually looks sort of cool.
  969. >Yeah, it does
  970. >Let’s drop the game for a moment and stay here
  971.  
  972.  
  973.  
  974. Part 6
  975.  
  976. >Day 1 +2 weeks, +1 month
  977. >March 26, 2:05pm, basement/study of Addams household
  978. >You are Twilight Sparkle
  979. >You’re not sure what makes you more uncomfortable
  980. >The fact that at any second, you could die an agonizing, burning death
  981. >Or the fact that no one thought to warn you of that
  982. >It was almost like it was hidden from you
  983. >You were checking the index of ‘The (new) Way Things Work’ to make a reference guide of human technologies by type in that book that could be sent home so the researchers could make requests
  984. >You thought it was odd that there was one section about ‘nuclear power’ in the chapter ‘Harnessing the Elements’ instead of ‘Electricity and Automation’
  985. >The latter was closer to the end of the book and just before the chapter on ‘computers,’ so you’d gone by it more often
  986. >You’d only skimmed ‘Harnessing the Elements’ because you thought it wouldn’t relate to your topic of study
  987. >You were pleasantly surprised that you were wrong, but you’d planned to move on to the applications of human technology and how they could be reproduced
  988. >You were going through ‘HOW THINGS WORK,’ which is itself deceptively titled and would be more appropriately titled ‘WHAT THINGS ARE’
  989. >You were trying to find interesting and useful applications of human technology that you would study the principles of
  990. >The chapters in that book about vehicles were insightful
  991.  
  992.  
  993. >Humans have extremely complicated machines that enable flight at speeds that require the vehicle’s surface to melt in order to dissipate the heat generated by drag, machines that allow travel in extreme pressure and total vacuum, and, of course, many types of those ‘motorized carriages’ you’d seen on your first day here
  994. >Each chapter also had at least one example of how human militaries had changed the use of these machines from tools to weapons
  995. >You skipped those ones because you’re researching humans for the good of Equestria and any other researchers in attendance
  996. >The end of the book had a few pages about the various facilities used to generate electricity
  997. >When you got to a page about ‘nuclear reactors’ that referred to electricity generated by these reactors as ‘nuclear power,’ you connected the dots and went back to ‘The (new) Way Things Work’
  998. >It had a similar and slightly more detailed overview of ‘nuclear reactors’
  999. >The next page was about fission and fusion of ‘atoms’ and ended by saying that nuclear fusion occurs in stars and ‘thermonuclear weapons’
  1000.  
  1001.  
  1002. >You wish your perfectionist impulses hadn’t driven you to turn the page
  1003. >But you had to know this
  1004. >It’s another appendix for your report on ‘atoms’
  1005. >For whatever reason, Jake doesn’t seem to mind that all of the planet’s life teeters on a knife’s edge
  1006. >Sure, the radio said that North Korea doesn’t have missiles with the range to hit anywhere near you
  1007. >But there are people who are in range
  1008. >And if humans can get an object into orbit, they can get a ‘nuclear explosive’ to any part of the world
  1009. >Jake even said ‘intercontinental’
  1010. >Wasn’t it enough for this world to just make you feel uncomfortable?
  1011. >Does it need to make you fear for your life constantly as well?
  1012. >You can't study when you're dead, so you need to warn Celestia
  1013. >You describe your situation as it was explained to you, word for word
  1014. >You tell Celestia that if contact is suddenly lost and does not resume within two days, the worst should be assumed
  1015. >You make sure to include a preemptive goodbye to your family and politely request that Shining Armor consider your ongoing repartee to have ended in a draw
  1016. >Even if the CCU/CSGU team doesn’t find a way to get you home, it might not matter
  1017. >You might never see your friends and family again
  1018. >Back to emotional square 1 you go
  1019.  
  1020.  
  1021. >You head back upstairs with the letter tucked behind your ear
  1022. >You look in the living room, but he’s not there
  1023. >You hear him ask what the difference is between a clip and a magazine
  1024. >A weird question, but now you can tell he’s in Jake’s room
  1025. >They’re sitting on the edge of his bed and looking at his ‘laptop’
  1026. >And then you hear Jake say that they’re two types of things that hold bullets
  1027. >Not on your watch
  1028. “Spike, go play your game. I need to talk to Jake.”
  1029. >He looks at Jake, who shrugs
  1030. “Out.”
  1031. >He hops off of the bed and slips past you through the doorway
  1032. >You’re staring daggers at Jake
  1033. >He pulls the ‘laptop’ a little closer to himself
  1034. >“…Yes?”
  1035. “Don’t you ever do that.”
  1036. >“What did I do?”
  1037. >Feigning ignorance?
  1038. >Confirm feint, work from there
  1039. “You know what you did.”
  1040. >“I really don’t. Are you talking about humans collectively-”
  1041. “I’m talking about you.”
  1042.  
  1043.  
  1044. >“I’m still not sure what you’re talking about.”
  1045. >Provoke, see if this causes him to slip out of the feint
  1046. “Then you must have very poor memory. You were doing it just a moment ago.”
  1047. >“It’s not the best, but you’re not helping me by making me guess.”
  1048. >May not be a feint
  1049. >Make him realize what it is
  1050. “Turn the ‘laptop’ around.”
  1051. >He turns it toward you so you can see the screen
  1052. >There’s a picture of something
  1053. >You’re not really sure what it is
  1054. >It’s made of dark metal and plastic
  1055. >There are several paragraphs of text beneath the picture
  1056. >They’re about a firearm of some sort
  1057. >Suspicion confirmed, as if there was doubt
  1058. “Now you look at the screen.”
  1059. >He turns the computer back towards himself
  1060. “Notice anything?”
  1061. >He scans it for a moment, then looks back at you
  1062. >“I don’t think anything changed, if that’s what you mean.”
  1063. >Out of patience
  1064. “That’s because this was exactly what you were showing to Spike.”
  1065. >“Oh.”
  1066.  
  1067.  
  1068. “Yeah, ‘oh.’ I’m not letting you indoctrinate him into this fanclub humans have for violence.”
  1069. >“I wasn’t doing anything of the sort.”
  1070. “It sure looked like you were.”
  1071. >“He asked.”
  1072. “That didn’t mean you had to show him.”
  1073. >“But I did show him.”
  1074. >Stating obvious, either stupid or off guard
  1075. “I am aware of that. I don’t approve.”
  1076. >“Okay, but he was the one who wanted to see this.”
  1077. “And I’m going to talk to him about that later. Right now, I want you to know that I’m not going to stand for this.”
  1078. >“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize this would be such a problem.”
  1079. “Right after you tell me about how humans could bring the whole planet to ruin?”
  1080. >“Would you have preferred that I try to sugarcoat it?”
  1081. >He’s getting his wits back
  1082. “I’d prefer that you don’t lie to me.”
  1083. >“I wasn’t lying. I didn’t choose what the truth was.”
  1084. “Withholding information is still lying.”
  1085. >“What?”
  1086. >Interesting reaction, see if he breaks and tells you something you don’t know
  1087.  
  1088.  
  1089. “You know what I’m talking about.”
  1090. >“Please stop being so circumspect.”
  1091. >Didn’t break
  1092. “Do I have to spell it out for you? You should have told me about ‘nuclear wars’ sooner.”
  1093. >“Oh. I thought it wasn’t important enough to be worth mention-”
  1094. “Not important? Is my life not important to me? There should be signs posted everywhere that say ‘WARNING: POTENTIAL NUCLEAR WARZONE!’”
  1095. >“I’m telling you. It’s not going to happen.”
  1096. >Expose flaw in argument
  1097. “And you can say this with absolute certainty after you tell me that humans have almost as much capacity for misunderstandings as they have for violence?”
  1098. >“The will to live transcends all culture and language. We know what’s in our best interests.”
  1099. >Try a different angle
  1100. “How is killing twenty six unarmed people, most of them children, and then killing themself in someone’s best interest?”
  1101. >“He was insane. He never should have had access to a gun.”
  1102. “Should anyone, considering what sort of guns humans make?”
  1103. >“Are you really taking it down to that level?”
  1104. “I just did. Explain.”
  1105. >“Fair warning. You probably don’t know a barrel shroud from a buttstock. Change the subject.”
  1106. “I don’t, but I don’t want to change the subject.”
  1107. >“Last chance.”
  1108. “Don’t change the subject.”
  1109.  
  1110.  
  1111. >“In the early 20th century, alcoholic beverages were banned because some crotchety old lady with a hatchet said that alcohol is what’s ruining society-”
  1112. “I said don’t change the subject!”
  1113. >“I’m coming back to it, and you’d know that if you’d read those books we gave you! A knee-jerk movement joins her and pours all the alcohol they can find down the drain. Meanwhile, organized crime sees a business opportunity. They prosper off of bootleg breweries for a good decade or so before people realize how stupid they were to agree with that old hag. If something is outlawed and desirable, the outlaws will have it for sale. Besides that, banning any and all weaponry from civilian ownership would require fundamental alterations to this country's constitution. We can't just get rid of them like we tried to do with cocaine.”
  1114. >Citing historical evidence?
  1115. >You’re going to have to confirm that story later
  1116. >Nevertheless, he’s shutting you out
  1117.  
  1118.  
  1119. “So what is it, then? What is it that drives humans?”
  1120. >“We’re ambitious. We want to make something of ourselves, and we compete to be better than everyone else. Besides, doesn’t Equestria have a military and capitalist economy? That’d make you one to talk.”
  1121. >So he wants to take it to your home now?
  1122. “We have a self defense force and a system that works!”
  1123. >“A system that works, huh? Where have I heard that before? Any monopolies I should know about?”
  1124. “Shut up while I’m talking! We have a military out of necessity that acts in the interests of the people at all times. They haven’t had to fight a foreign war in 114 years, and even then it was because the griffons were driving dragons out of the northern mountains and into Equestria! Our markets are regulated to prevent monopolization and exploitation of consumers, and it’s designed to ensure that as many ponies prosper as possible!”
  1125. >“I can’t comment on Equestrian financial laws, but I’m sure your military wouldn’t mind if a crate of human-made guns appeared on their doorstep. It’d ensure the peace by being so dominant that no one would dare attack your country again.”
  1126. “They aren’t the bloodthirsty brutes that humans are.”
  1127. >“Bloodthirsty brutes? You’re making an awful lot of assumptions for someone who made a fifteen page index for their report. Have you even met anyone from your military?”
  1128. >Oh, that’s a personal attack on two levels
  1129.  
  1130.  
  1131. >This is about honor now
  1132. “I will have you know that my brother is the Captain of the Royal Guard, and he wouldn’t swat a mosquito unless it bit him first!”
  1133. >“Wait, as in the one I told Spike to call an ‘absent-minded nincompoop?’ Yeah. I came up with that one. You’re welcome.”
  1134. >The hay with it all, just give in to emotion
  1135. “YOU’RE an absent-minded nincompoop, and it’s going to get you killed!”
  1136. >“And you’re ignoring my point! Armament is the bugspray that keeps us from having to swat anything!
  1137. >“Stop all this fighting!”
  1138. >Spike wants to join on your side of the argument, it seems
  1139. >Simultaneously with Jake, you reply
  1140. “That’s what I’m trying to say!”
  1141. >“That’s what I’m trying to say!”
  1142. >“No, I mean YOUR fighting. Right now. I want to play videogames and I can’t focus if you two are shouting at eachother.”
  1143. >Oh, right, you came upstairs to send a letter
  1144. >This argument has gotten nothing accomplished, anyway
  1145. “Ugh… I’ll be back in a minute.”
  1146. >You go back out to the living room
  1147. >You slip the letter out from behind your ear and give it to Spike
  1148. “Send this. If Jake wants you to look at his ‘computer’ again, I want you not to let him show you anything I haven’t already seen. Are we clear?”
  1149. >“Okay, but I don’t understand what was so bad about what he was showing me.”
  1150. “Those machines were built for killing people, Spike.”
  1151. >“Oh. I sort of forgot about that.”
  1152. “Remember it next time. I don’t want to catch you salivating over those things again.”
  1153.  
  1154.  
  1155. >You turn back towards Jake’s room and hear the *FWOOSH* of Spike’s fire behind you as you walk
  1156. >Back to Jake’s room, back to business
  1157. “As I was saying, this has to change.”
  1158. >“And I’m saying that’s a pipe dream. Pacifism is inherently flawed.”
  1159. >Finally, something you can agree with
  1160. “Did you hear me say pacifism?”
  1161. >“…No.”
  1162. “I wasn’t advocating pacifism. What I mean to say is that human weapons have gotten too deadly.”
  1163. >“I agree that some of them are a bit excessive, but disarming wouldn’t do any good.”
  1164. “At least do something about ‘nuclear weapons.’”
  1165. >“Hey, we would love to, but the problem is that we can’t do that without causing instability. The Cold War is over, and we still have a decent amount of time on the Doomsday Clock, so it’s not as bad as you think.”
  1166. >Well, that’s a bit of a relief
  1167. “Two terms I don’t recognize.”
  1168. >“Sorry, I guess I am an absent-minded nincompoop. I keep forgetting that everything here is totally foreign to you.”
  1169. >Not totally foreign, and that’s the unsettling part about it
  1170. >You won’t get anything from complaining about it to him, though
  1171. “I’ve just been accumulating a bunch of phrases that I don’t understand. Could we please go over them?”
  1172. >*BuuuuuRRp*
  1173. “Just a minute.”
  1174.  
  1175.  
  1176. >Back out to Spike, who is expectantly holding the letter while still looking at the ‘television’
  1177. >As you step into the hallway, you get an idea
  1178. >Your magic seems to be recovering well
  1179. >If ‘computers’ are as ubiquitous as they seem and you could potentially be here for years, you’re going to have to learn to work through that interference
  1180. >Spike is holding something from Equestria, so it shouldn’t be too hard if you have a bit of room between yourself and the ‘computers’ nearby
  1181. >You may as well test yourself
  1182. >Your horn glows
  1183. >Spike glances over to see why you’re not coming to take the letter, then loses interest when he sees what you’re doing
  1184. >Your magic wraps around the letter without any problem
  1185. >This actually feels pretty easy
  1186. >Almost too easy
  1187. >You float the letter over towards yourself
  1188. >This is actually perceptibly easier
  1189. >Is this world is actively defying your expectations?
  1190. >Test this later
  1191. >You unroll the letter telekinetically
  1192.  
  1193. My faithful student,
  1194.  
  1195. Twilight, foremost, I need you to remain calm. If you believe you are in imminent danger, you may cease
  1196. all research immediately and study any subjects you deem necessary to your continued health. In place
  1197. of or in addition to your daily status report, please respond to this letter as soon as possible. I will
  1198. forward your letter to your family depending on your response or lack thereof.
  1199.  
  1200. Please, stay safe.
  1201. Princess Celestia
  1202.  
  1203.  
  1204. >Jake says you’ll be fine
  1205. >You’d like a second opinion, though
  1206. >Eliza isn’t here, so there’s only one other person you could check this with
  1207. >You head through the kitchen with the letter floating alongside you
  1208. >It’s getting difficult again, so you tuck it under your wing
  1209. >This might be worth dedicating some free time to
  1210. >The next time you get some
  1211. >Jon always leaves the door to his office open for you, figuratively and literally
  1212. >“Do you want me to go over the Canterlot Computer’s schematics again?”
  1213. “Not now. I have a different question. Do you think North Korea is going to start a ‘nuclear war?’”
  1214. >“They’re delusional. They have a new leader who’s young and brash, but the generals of his army are almost as old as I am and have a slightly less delusional view of the situation. I doubt he’d start any kind of war without consulting them first. I think he’s just doing this for attention.”
  1215. “What about ‘nuclear weapons’ in general? Do you think a global ‘nuclear war’ could happen anytime soon?”
  1216. >“If it didn’t happen before the end of the Reagan administration, I doubt a nuclear war will happen now.”
  1217. “Right. Thank you.”
  1218. >Whatever the Reagan administration is, he sounds confident
  1219. >Hopefully you aren’t the only one who’s been holding on to an optimistic delusion
  1220. >You give Jake another “back in a second” as you head past his door and into the basement
  1221. >You levitate your quill out of the pot and start to write out a letter
  1222. >Again, telekinesis feels easier than it normally does
  1223.  
  1224.  
  1225. >You accidentally press too hard against the page and snap the quill, creating a large spot of ink
  1226. >The ‘calculator’ is right there
  1227. >Your hypothesis about computers interfering with magic might be wrong
  1228. >Odd, but you’re in the middle of something
  1229. >You retrieve one of your thankfully infinite supply of purple quills from your saddlebags and start over on a fresh sheet of paper
  1230.  
  1231. Dear Princess Celestia,
  1232.  
  1233. I have been assured that the likelihood of a nuclear war is minimal. However, I would still prefer that
  1234. you relay my request to my brother. I’m not in the mood for that anymore. I will send my daily report
  1235. as usual.
  1236.  
  1237. Your faithful student,
  1238. Twilight Sparkle
  1239.  
  1240. >With that, you use your telekinesis to roll up the paper and-
  1241. >Wait a minute, this is paper that you were given
  1242. >By humans
  1243. >Paper from Earth, which is responding to magic almost as well as the paper you brought
  1244. >Okay, what is going on here?
  1245.  
  1246.  
  1247. >You test out your ability to move the paper around
  1248. >Slightly more difficult than it would be with a piece of paper from Equestria, but otherwise normal
  1249. >You try with the piece of paper you discarded, and it behaves similarly
  1250. >You try the same with a blank piece of paper and paper marked with only lines of ink, and they behave as you would expect paper from Earth to behave
  1251. >This is bizarre
  1252. >You take all of the pieces of paper upstairs with you
  1253. >You head for Jake’s room
  1254. “Hold out your ‘laptop’ for a moment. I need to test something.”
  1255. >He obliges
  1256. >You levitate the papers one by one around the ‘laptop computer’
  1257. >“What are you doing?”
  1258. >The only consistent trait is that they all seem to become more difficult to control around the ‘keyboard’
  1259. >You try the same thing around the ‘desktop’
  1260. “My magic getting almost no interference. It might even be stronger than usual. I’m trying to figure out why.”
  1261. >This time it becomes harder to control around a single button
  1262. >The button is labeled with the symbol humans associate with activation
  1263. >You don’t understand
  1264. >Do certain ‘computers’ not want you to use them?
  1265. >You’ve been told that their sequences of on-off/yes-no switches aren’t yet sophisticated enough to simulate intelligent decisions, but what you’re observing leads you to believe that the computers themselves are trying to stop your magic from working somehow when you try to use them
  1266. >If that’s the case, ‘computers’ might not just be intelligent, but they’re also jerks
  1267.  
  1268.  
  1269. >This could change everything
  1270. “I need to send a letter about this. Just a moment.”
  1271. >You rush downstairs and add a postscript to your letter
  1272.  
  1273.  
  1274. P.S. This paper seems to be easier to manipulate with magic than other paper from Earth. Noticeable
  1275. increase in magical ability at the moment, unsure why. Computers may only interfere with magic near
  1276. controlling surfaces. Not confirmed. Recommend that engineers resume construction.
  1277.  
  1278.  
  1279. >You hurry back upstairs and give Spike the letter to send before Celestia gets any more anxious
  1280. >You head back to Jake’s room, where he’s been waiting patiently
  1281. >“Are you going to stay this time?”
  1282. “Unless I get a reply to that letter.”
  1283. >“Do you want to keep berating me about how humans are going to get themselves killed?”
  1284. “I don’t see a point in continuing that argument. Let’s call it off.”
  1285. >“I'm fine with that. So, are you going to go straight back to work?”
  1286. “No, we were about to go over some phrases I don't know.”
  1287. >“Oh right... wait, didn’t we give you a dictionary?”
  1288. >One for children 12 and under, yes
  1289. “It’s… lacking. Anyway,”
  1290. >You quickly do the ‘Pinkie promise’ gesture
  1291. >“I’m not going to lie.”
  1292.  
  1293.  
  1294. “I’d like to go backwards in terms of when I heard them. What is the ‘Cold War?’”
  1295. >“A 40 year period of tension between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization characterized by clashing political ideals, espionage, and a nuclear stalemate. We call it cold because there was very little open warfare.”
  1296. “How does it relate to the ‘Reagan administration?’”
  1297. >“Ronald Reagan was the president of this country around the time that the Soviet Union collapsed.”
  1298. “What are ‘intercontinental ballistic missiles?’”
  1299. >“Aptly named rockets. They’re the primary method of delivering nuclear bombs, along with dropping them from aircraft or mounting them on shorter-range missiles.”
  1300. “What is a ‘holocaust?’”
  1301. >“That’s more Latin. It means ‘all is burned.’”
  1302. “What is ‘Latin?’”
  1303. >“It’s a dead language that became the basis of many modern languages, English included.”
  1304. >That only raises more questions
  1305. >Their language has almost everything in common with yours, now
  1306. >Why?
  1307. >He can’t answer that, so you silently regret not studying ancient Equestrian languages and continue with your questions
  1308. “What is ‘The Holocaust,’ used as a proper noun?”
  1309. >“We were talking about during our Passover dinner. I’m surprised you didn’t pick up on what it was.”
  1310. “Nobody said exactly what it was, and I left early because being around meat makes me feel nauseous.”
  1311. >“I’m not comfortable with telling you. You'd miss so much context. I'd prefer that you look it up for yourself.”
  1312.  
  1313.  
  1314. “Please, tell me.”
  1315. >“All I’m going to say is that it’s the most infamous, but definitely not the worst.”
  1316. “I’d appreciate it if you would tell me where to research it.”
  1317. >“It was one of the events of World War Two.”
  1318. “And what exactly was it?”
  1319. >He thinks for a moment before speaking
  1320. >“It was a genocide.”
  1321. >There’s another one
  1322. >You may as well ask him now
  1323. “What is a ‘genocide?’”
  1324. >He looks at you blankly
  1325. >He’s at a loss for words
  1326. >“I’m sorry. I don’t want to answer any more questions right now.”
  1327. >You’ve gone and asked a stupid question again
  1328. >You should probably go downstairs and take his advice
  1329. “Thank you for that. I might come back and ask about some more phrases later.”
  1330. >“Yeah. Okay.”
  1331. >As you descend the stairs, you can’t help but try to analyze his reaction
  1332. >He’s acting weird again
  1333. >Just mentioning this seems to make Eliza and Jake’s moods decline
  1334. >What could have been burned that would make them feel so gloomy?
  1335. >The roots of the word he said lead you to believe that it has something to do with genetics and death
  1336. >Maybe it’s a disease?
  1337. >You don't know how a genetic condition could affect combustibility
  1338. >Down at your desk, you flip the encyclopedia open to its index
  1339. >Holi, page 286
  1340. >Holliday, Billie, page 331
  1341. >Hollywood, pages 298 and 347
  1342. >Holocaust, page 433
  1343. >You go to the section about history and find the appropriate page
  1344. >As you read, your eyes settle on a statistic that alarms you
  1345. >Six million?
  1346. >And this isn’t the worst one?
  1347. >Stop the ride
  1348. >You want to get off
  1349.  
  1350.  
  1351.  
  1352. Part 7
  1353.  
  1354. >Saturday, March 30th, 12:42pm
  1355. >Year 22 and ‘a few weeks, I guess’ days on Earth
  1356. >You are Jake Addams
  1357. >And now YOU are out of ink
  1358. >This isn’t actually a problem
  1359. >Twilight hasn’t asked you to print anything since Wednesday, so it’s not getting in the way of her work or anything
  1360. >What is a problem is that you don’t know why she hasn’t asked you to print anything after she had you print everything you could find about electrical engineering and computers
  1361. >And you don’t know what she’s doing, period
  1362. >Even Spike doesn’t know what she’s doing because she forces him out of the basement when he wakes up and stops doing anything until he goes to sleep
  1363. >You’re lucky she still allows Spike into the basement, because otherwise the washer and dryer would be totally inaccessible
  1364. >Mom hasn’t seen her at breakfast and she’s not coming to any meals
  1365. >She seems to be timing her bathroom trips to avoid contact with everyone
  1366. >You’d say she’s gone dark, but the internet consistently flips out over depictions of humanized Twilight Sparkle with dark skin
  1367. >It’s evident that she’s upset about something
  1368.  
  1369.  
  1370. >Eliza said that half of her puffed rice wafers are gone
  1371. >She initially blamed Jon for snacking on her diet food, but he claims he’s innocent and you know you didn’t take any
  1372. >You noticed a bag of Tasteeos went missing, along with some of the contents of your bottle of multivitamins and a few cans of minestrone soup
  1373. >You’re ruling out a hunger protest on the grounds that she probably took them
  1374. >Besides, what would she be protesting?
  1375. >War?
  1376. >There are four people who would know that she’s protesting, and none of them could actually do anything meaningful about that
  1377. >You can tell what she's not doing, but what IS she doing?
  1378. >Not all the news is bad, even if Purplesmart is behaving worryingly
  1379. >Two days ago, you attended a focus group about your college’s online and smartphone prescence
  1380. >You were barely aware that they had one, and you didn’t know about the focus group until Berber gave you the flier about it because his classes conflicted with the time the group was meeting
  1381. >Despite the poor public presence and general slapdash nature of it, the group itself was pretty decent
  1382. >There was free pizza and a raffle
  1383. >You got fifty dollars from that raffle
  1384. >So did the two people sitting next to you
  1385. >There were only about 15 people at the focus group and they forgot to shake the basket full of raffle tickets before doing the drawing
  1386. >Not five million, but it’s something
  1387.  
  1388.  
  1389. >You’re sitting in the kitchen putting together keys for dad’s whatchamacallit instrument
  1390. >You also posed for his April Fools’ Day pictures (it was only a labcoat, fortunately)
  1391. >You’re listening to RadioLab on NPR, which always has the weirdest stories
  1392. >You’d prefer some classic rock, but the only classic station that your parents (Jon moreso than Eliza) can stand is the classical music station a little ways up the dial
  1393. >Something about a lady with 'AMLR' who orgasms when she hears people whispering and an American guy with ‘yellow fever’ who gets a Chinese woman a visa just so he can marry her, even though she can barely speak a full sentence of English
  1394. >You aren’t really listening because it isn’t really news
  1395. >What you are listening to are the sounds coming from the basement
  1396. >It was weirdly quiet for the last couple of days
  1397. >Today it sounds like Twilight found more stuff to break than there could possibly be in the basement
  1398. >Seriously, what is she doing?
  1399. >She can’t be so upset that she’s doing stress relief on whatever she can find, can she?
  1400. >You just told her the truth
  1401. >You didn’t choose what the truth was
  1402. >Though you are choosing not to tell her a specific truth
  1403. >That’s different
  1404. >She wouldn’t get anything from learning about that
  1405. >And if the sound of something being smashed once every few minutes is any indication, she wouldn’t act rationally if she found out now
  1406.  
  1407.  
  1408. >She isn’t acting rationally, regardless of what she’s doing, or why
  1409. >In fact, even if Celestia was okay with you letting her in on the great secret that she, specifically, is not supposed to be real, that window of opportunity may have long since closed
  1410. >You might have been worrying a little too much about how she would react earlier
  1411. >Now all of your fears seem founded
  1412. >And it’s not like strapping your laptop to your chest would save you, because she debunked that idea last Tuesday
  1413. >Hoo boy, this is not going well
  1414. >The bright side of this is that Jon told you he thinks it’s a bad idea to tell her now, so that’s a loose end that’s tied up
  1415. >Tied with a granny knot, but tied up for now
  1416. >You hear Spike calling for you from the living room
  1417. >He usually doesn’t need your help with the game
  1418. >He also knows you’re doing something that Jon would prefer that you don’t get distracted from, so it can’t be that he just feels like talking about something
  1419. >You push your chair back from the table and stand up
  1420. >Something just broke in the basement again
  1421. >The noise itself has been driving dad insane all day, not to mention the worry that she might be breaking something valuable
  1422. >Spike says that nothing seems out of place whenever he goes downstairs
  1423. >You would know if she decided to trash the water heater
  1424. >Taking Spike at his word, you’re stumped
  1425.  
  1426.  
  1427. “Be right there, Spike.”
  1428. >“This is kind of important. I think you need to see this.”
  1429. “I’m coming, I’m coming…”
  1430. >You amble through the hallway past the why do we even have these boxes here they don’t have anything we couldn’t put in the basement
  1431. >Rounding the corner into the living room, you see that Spike has Banjo jumping around in some cave area and
  1432. >No way
  1433. >SPIKE, HOW THE FUCK
  1434. >“So, uh, why did you say this egg isn't useful if the game said it was?”
  1435. >You can’t believe your eyes
  1436. >He got that cave above the water, all right
  1437. >He’s leaning back on the couch, not caring or not knowing what he’s just done
  1438. >You walk up beside him, conscious of the fact that your jaw has gone slack
  1439. >“Is something wrong?”
  1440. “Hold on, I need to check something”
  1441. >You pull out your phone and bring up the calendar
  1442. >…Two, three, four… multiply by five…
  1443. >How many days of finals do you have?
  1444. >It doesn’t matter
  1445. >He just cost you half of the money you won
  1446. >No, not cost
  1447. >He earned that money
  1448.  
  1449.  
  1450. “Spike, I don’t know how you did it, but you’ve earned about twenty five days worth of candy.”
  1451. >He does a tiny fist pump and says “Yes!” under his breath
  1452. >He doesn’t even know
  1453. >You grab him by the shoulders
  1454. >You’ve never touched him for more than a few seconds before, but now that you have, you can say it feels really strange and you’re not sure you want him to give you a hug any time in the future
  1455. >He’s feverish by human standards but scaly
  1456. >You fight the urge to shiver at the strange sensation
  1457. >Don’t get distracted, holy shit he needs to realize the significance of this
  1458. “You don’t get it. I made that bet knowing that it was all but impossible to lose. Don’t get me wrong, I would still get you something occasionally, but this was supposed to be something you couldn’t do.”
  1459. >“Heh, yeah. I am pretty good at this.”
  1460. >Get it through your thick skull, Spike
  1461. “I’m not exaggerating at all. This had thousands of people completely perplexed for years. The developers of the game had to go and TELL people how to do this because nobody could do it. You just did some savant shi-”
  1462. >*BuuuuuUUUuurp*
  1463. >OW
  1464. >TOES
  1465. >SHOULD HAVE WORN SOMETHING MORE THAN SOCKS
  1466. >“Sorry, I can’t always tell when those are coming.”
  1467. >SORRY DOESN’T MAKE LARGE TEXTBOOKS NOT LAND ON TOES
  1468. “Ow!”
  1469. >“You aren’t hurt, are you?”
  1470. “Pain yes, hurt no!”
  1471.  
  1472.  
  1473. >You realize that you’ve been squeezing Spike’s shoulders a lot harder than you probably should
  1474. >You let go and pull the book off of your right foot so you can hold your swollen digits instead
  1475. “Tsssssssssssss ow. Ow. Ow ow ow. Ow get me an ice pack ow.”
  1476. >He scurries towards the kitchen and you hear him open the fridge
  1477. >He’s back as quickly as he came
  1478. >Good, because a spot of blood is starting to form on your sock
  1479. >He takes a pack of frozen gel and wraps it around your foot
  1480. “Ow. Thank you.”
  1481. >“You know, I have a sort of rule for when stuff like this happens.”
  1482. “What is it?”
  1483. >“Well, if stuff gets in the way when I belch it up, I think I’m entitled to see what it is.”
  1484. “Does giving someone a limp for the next few days count as being in the way?”
  1485. >“I’d go with ‘yes.’”
  1486. >Your foot temporarily relieved, you take the time to pick up and look at the object responsible for what feels like a cracked toenail
  1487. >It’s a large, maroon-colored hardcover with bold black lettering that says ‘Advanced Fundamental Energies Stud-’
  1488. >It isn’t actually about a stud, it just feels like it’s suddenly been magnetized to pull away from you and you couldn’t read the rest
  1489.  
  1490.  
  1491. >Sure enough, it’s glowing reddish-purple
  1492. >You manage to keep one hand on it and pull it back long enough to read the rest of the title
  1493. >‘Studies, first volume, third edition’
  1494. >A wild-eyed purple alicorn who looks as if she hasn’t bathed or slept in days peeks out from behind the door to her lair
  1495. >She speaks in a raspy, dehydrated voice
  1496. >“Give.”
  1497. >Fuck, she’s coming totally unhinged
  1498. >“Give me the book.”
  1499. “Can’t I take a look at it first?”
  1500. >“Give it to me.”
  1501. >It feels as if she lets you pull it back
  1502. >Thinking she means that she wants you to give it to her as soon as you’re done, you flip open to the table of contents
  1503. >Can’t go to page fifty three with her watching, but you at least want to know what this is about
  1504. >What if she goes to page 53?
  1505. >Hopefully Celestia and Luna thought of that
  1506. >From the looks of the chapter titles, the My Little Ponyverse’s understanding of the composition of matter hasn’t advanced much beyond ‘earth, wind, and fire’
  1507. >Not the disco group, either
  1508. >Twilight doesn’t look like she wants to party on and go dancing in September
  1509. >She looks… frustrated?
  1510. >Strained?
  1511. >Some combination of the two?
  1512. >You don't want to test her patience more than you already have, whatever the case
  1513. >You let go of the book, which flies at astounding speeds towards the basement before stopping mere inches from her nose
  1514. >It floats aside, Twilight not moving a muscle throughout all of this
  1515. >She’s glaring at you like you’re the most despicable thing she’s ever seen
  1516. >“I knew it.”
  1517.  
  1518.  
  1519. >She darts back into the basement without another word, grabbing the string on the doorknob with her teeth and pulling the door shut as she moves
  1520. >Knew what?
  1521. >You look at Spike, who has been watching in astonishment and confusion
  1522. “What was that about?”
  1523. >“I have no idea.”
  1524. “Does she usually do things like this?”
  1525. >He turns to the basement door
  1526. >“She’s done this a few times, but it’s not like her to just… push everyone else away like this, even me. I’m worried for h*uUUUURP*”
  1527. >There is a small scroll immediately in front of Spike
  1528. >He scoops it up and unrolls it so he can read it
  1529. >Fifteen seconds later, it’s glowing purple and sliding under the basement door
  1530. >“Weird.”
  1531. “I know.”
  1532. >“No, I mean the letter.”
  1533. “What about it?”
  1534. >“It was just a list. It said ‘1: Stop being such a grump, it’s making people worried. 2: Jon and Eliza’s birthdays are coming up, and you could totally do them a favor by helping them file their taxes. 3: Rarity is literally buried in orders for lab coats, so you might not hear from her for a while. 4: I was told to include the word apple somewhere in this letter, so here it is’ and then a bunch of smiley faces and arrows pointing to the word ‘apple.’”
  1535. “Who was it from?”
  1536. >“Pinkie Pie.”
  1537. “That sounds like her.”
  1538. >“Wait, you know her?”
  1539. >YOU ARE A FUCKING IDIOT
  1540. >Think fast!
  1541. “Twilight said that Pinkie was the reason that she asked about my birthday.”
  1542. >“That makes a disappointing amount of sense.”
  1543. >Nailed it
  1544.  
  1545.  
  1546. “So why didn’t they send it with the book?”
  1547. >“That makes a disappointing amount of sense too, but that’s because it makes no sense. I don’t get it.”
  1548. “Maybe they forgot?”
  1549. >“That’s the best explanation I can think of. Oh, what was that word you said earlier? The one that started with an ‘s?’”
  1550. >YOU CONTINUE TO BE A FUCKING IDIOT
  1551. >As if Twilight needs another reason to be angry at you
  1552. >And you’re still not sure what the first one is
  1553. >“It was ‘suff aunt’ or something like that.”
  1554. >Oh
  1555. “A savant is someone who is impossibly good at something. Like a person who could see a single face in a crowd while they’re walking down the street and then draw a perfect portrait from memory.”
  1556. >“Ahhh okay. So! About that bet I won. I prefer chocolate bars and hard candy. Nothing too fruity, but feel free to mix it up sometimes.”
  1557. “Got it.”
  1558.  
  1559.  
  1560.  
  1561. Part 8
  1562. >Thursday, April 4, 8:27pm, basement/study of Addams household
  1563. >Day 2 + 1 month + 2 weeks on Earth
  1564. >You are Twilight Sparkle
  1565. >Celestia said that you could stop to study whatever it takes to keep yourself alive
  1566. >You’re taking advantage of that
  1567. >You got Jake to print a bunch of information pertinent to the construction and operation of the ‘Canterlot Computer,’ as Jon has taken to calling it, got some spare ‘calculators,’ and you’ve been studying and sending it in chunks in order to keep the researchers satisfied
  1568. >For the last eight days, you have been doing almost nothing but magic strengthening exercises and practicing a few very specific spells
  1569. >The CCU/CSGU rescue team hasn’t found any new sources of magic
  1570. >The reason being that as soon as you cast your own magic detection spell, you found out that this entire planet seems to be a magical singularity
  1571. >The amount of potential magic here is off the charts, which is assisting your recovery greatly
  1572. >Aside from Spike and you, there's no way for it to be channeled, leaving the planet isolated from any other magic in the observable universe
  1573. >The rescue team has been looking in all the wrong places
  1574. >There is no new source of magic
  1575. >You’re going to have to make your magical energy more obvious, even if it means you’re holding a matchstick in front of the sun and saying it’s gotten brighter
  1576. >There’s a more immediate practical reason for practicing your magic, but that’s a secret to everyone
  1577.  
  1578.  
  1579. >You’re also forming a report on human history based on ‘Traditions and Encounters, Fifth Edition Volume 1’
  1580. >Ostensibly, this is to look for more applications of human technology that could be useful
  1581. >You already looked through the history section of the encyclopedia
  1582. >Summaries, not much more than the bare minimum of details
  1583. >The dedicated history textbooks are much more in depth
  1584. >You recognize that it would be more expeditious to skip to the most recent 200 years, but you’re satisfying your own curiosity (and survival instinct) in addition to being thorough
  1585. >The 'Industrial' Revolution can wait for now
  1586. >You want to be sure you’re not missing anything
  1587. >Besides, Celestia said she wanted every aspect of this civilization to be studied
  1588. >You’ve read the first chapter several times over already, upon request of a rather vocal minority of the researchers in Canterlot
  1589. >The Paleolithic Age doesn’t tell you too much about how humans got to where they are now, so you’re starting the chapters on the earliest recorded history
  1590.  
  1591.  
  1592. >They call it ‘Mesopotamia,’ the land between the rivers
  1593. >Lingua Equum Alatum/‘Latin’ roots, named afterwards by a more recent civilization
  1594. >It’s only a description of the geographical location of the city-states that were built there; the inhabitants of those city-states called it something else
  1595. >And they fought with each other continually
  1596. >And with the ‘Assyrians,’ who fought with the ‘Egyptians,’ who fought with the ‘Hyksos’
  1597. >The ‘Hyksos’ people were superior to the ‘Egyptians’ in wars in part due to their domesticated horses
  1598. >Judging by the index, this humans and horses in war thing isn’t a one-off
  1599. >Fantastic
  1600. >The closest thing to what you are that there is on this planet, and they’re essentially slaves that get dragged off to war whenever the humans feel like it
  1601. >At least near-prehistoric humans made laws to keep everyday life from becoming chaotic, however brutal those laws may have been
  1602. >‘Hammurabi’s Code’ gave you a moment of inspiration
  1603. >You haven’t seen anything outside of the house since you got here
  1604. >You’ve found a spell that might help with that
  1605. >The only problem is what it would do
  1606. >Casting it goes against your ethics
  1607. >You’d be exploiting their trust
  1608. >That assumes you still have it
  1609. >It’s been getting more difficult
  1610. >You run the risk of losing their trust entirely if you’re caught
  1611.  
  1612.  
  1613. >This world is strange, foreign, uncomfortable
  1614. >Threatening
  1615. >The history of humans is a history of violence
  1616. >From what you can tell, their present is as well
  1617. >You need to guarantee that you can protect yourself
  1618. >Your greatest asset would be your magic
  1619. >In any other situation, you would trust your life to it
  1620. >Your magic defines you
  1621. >You would never let anyone take it from you
  1622. >But something isn’t right
  1623. >It doesn’t work the way you expect it to
  1624. >It’s not the computers
  1625. >You think you know what it is
  1626. >That could be how it works, or it might be more specific than that
  1627. >If you’re right, your magical ability could be getting used against you right now
  1628. >It would be without your knowledge, and you have no way to stop it
  1629. >You thought it could be proximity
  1630. >Maybe some sort of radiated energy
  1631. >Just keep as much as you can between yourself and the sources and you’d be fine
  1632. >Sort of like ‘Alpha’ and ‘Beta’ rays, but only affecting your ability to use magic
  1633. >Doesn’t seem that simple
  1634. >The effect may linger
  1635. >How quickly it decays is unknown, as they’re always back before the effect fades
  1636. >That could be false, it may just be constant exposure because the radius is larger than expected and/or your protection is inadequate
  1637. >What if it’s the food?
  1638. >No, the effects would have been much stronger and more consistent if it was an ingested source
  1639. >There are too many variables you can’t test without raising suspicion
  1640. >But you need to know
  1641.  
  1642.  
  1643. >Someone’s knocking at the door
  1644. >Spike is already in bed, but not asleep yet
  1645. >Potential test subject
  1646. >“Twilight Sparkle. We need to talk.”
  1647. >Eliza, female, matriarch of household, schoolteacher, specializes in high-level mathematics
  1648. >She goes outside frequently enough for your purposes
  1649. >You just need to do this without her noticing
  1650. >It’s not like you can just ask her
  1651. >Control the experiment
  1652. >You shed your cloak and ascend the stairs, trying not to disturb Spike
  1653. >Most of the floors in the house are wooden (save for the unfinished concrete basement), so the last few days have given you some practice in moving quietly
  1654. >You open the door to a very impatient looking human
  1655. >Again, assuming that’s also common body language
  1656. “Yes?”
  1657. >“What have you been doing downstairs all this time?”
  1658. >Partial truth should satisfy her
  1659. “The ponies trying to rescue me have been stargazing through spells that detect magical energy to figure out where I am in relation to them. They haven’t been making any progress, so I’ve been practicing my magic almost nonstop to make myself more obvious. It takes a lot of concentration and effort to do as many spells as I have.”
  1660. >“I can understand that you want to go home, but look at yourself.”
  1661.  
  1662.  
  1663. >Aside from working slightly harder than usual, you don’t notice anything out of place
  1664. >“How late have you been staying up?”
  1665. “I’ve been going to bed at 2:30 sharp for nearly a week now.”
  1666. >“I’m going to bed in an hour. If you don’t get in the shower and go to bed before ten tonight, I’m writing to your teacher. If she’s anything like the travel guide says she is, she’s going to tell you to do exactly what I just told you.”
  1667. >That sounds plausible, with a few arguments to make against her request
  1668. >Your situation is exceptional, to say the least
  1669. >Having a multinational research team waiting for every scrap of information you can send their way doesn’t permit much downtime
  1670. >Working to make sure that you at least understand why this planet could get you killed is something you don’t want to take downtime from
  1671. >It feels degrading to submit, but you’re going to have to go along with this to stay on good terms with Eliza
  1672. >You might need that
  1673. “If that’s what you want.”
  1674. >The impatience fades from her stance
  1675. >Time to test whether this is related to emotion, or more specific than that
  1676. >She had Spike do a load of laundry earlier today, so your towel is in the hamper in the master bedroom
  1677. “Would you get my towel, please?”
  1678. >“Of course.”
  1679. >She turns and leaves, returning shortly with a beach towel they provided for you
  1680. >Your magic wraps around the towel
  1681. >Barely easier than an item from Equestria, but noticeable
  1682. >You creep it onto her hand, then her forearm
  1683. >Slightly more effort
  1684.  
  1685.  
  1686. >She notices the glow on her arm and pulls away quickly, leaving your magic supporting a pocket of thin air
  1687. >You’d need to focus exclusively on her if you wanted to hold her arm in place
  1688. >But you don’t
  1689. >You may have already scared her
  1690. >Your hypotheses are rapidly being proven true, meaning that this may cause an undesirable result in your next experiment
  1691. >Smile and play it off like this is normal
  1692. “Sorry about that. I’m usually not this clumsy.”
  1693. >False yawn for effect
  1694. >Scratch that, actual yawn for effect
  1695. “I guess the sleep deficit is starting to get to me.”
  1696. >She kneels down to eye level with you
  1697. >Her right hand is coming towards your head
  1698. >Oh no
  1699. >Did you get her angry?
  1700. >She’s going to slap you
  1701. >You shouldn’t have tried to use magic on her
  1702. >You try to hold still and let it happen
  1703. >You’re going to have to let her do what she wants
  1704. >Her hand makes contact with the back of your neck
  1705. >Softly
  1706. >And she begins to stroke your greasy, unwashed mane while speaking in a tone of genuine concern
  1707. >“From a teacher to a student: you need to slow down. You won’t do your rescuers any good if there’s nothing left to rescue. Please, start getting to bed at a reasonable time.”
  1708. “R-right. I’m sorry for worrying you so much.”
  1709.  
  1710.  
  1711. >You want her to stop touching you
  1712. >She does, fortunately
  1713. >She turns to head toward the kitchen
  1714. >Walking behind her towards the bathroom, you have a good opportunity right now
  1715. >Jake’s door is closed, Jon is in his office, Spike is in bed
  1716. >No witnesses
  1717. >You concentrate
  1718. >It’s more difficult than it was during practice
  1719. >That just means you need to will it to happen that much more
  1720. >This needs to go flawlessly
  1721. >Your horn glows and releases one of the more complicated spells you’ve been practicing
  1722. >The beam of magical energy flies soundlessly towards the center of her skull
  1723. >It fades as it gets within inches of contacting the back of her head
  1724. >She doesn’t seem to notice anything
  1725. >Hopefully it did what it was supposed to do
  1726. >‘The Specialist’s Spellbook’ only said what it was supposed to do, not exactly what it would look like as it happened
  1727. >It might have been different because she’s larger
  1728. >You go into the bathroom, trying to slow your gait to belie your nervousness
  1729. >You’ve done something your ashamed of
  1730. >You need to know if it worked
  1731. >You shut the door behind you
  1732. >You cast the accompanying spell, forming a panel of visible magical energy
  1733. >Nothing
  1734. >Absolutely nothing
  1735. >You cast the first spell exactly as you were supposed to
  1736. >It worked on Spike, and it should work on any living creature
  1737. >You should be able to see it, but there’s nothing there
  1738. >This is worse than you thought
  1739. >She couldn’t have known it was coming
  1740.  
  1741.  
  1742. >You get your washcloth, formerly a dishrag, off of the rack with your magic
  1743. >It’s easy
  1744. >It’s stiff with disuse, stuck in the position it was laying in when you left it to dry last week
  1745. >You’re stiff with fear
  1746. >You're being violated
  1747. >Part of your body is no longer yours
  1748. >You set the water in the shower to a cold temperature
  1749. >You need it that way
  1750. >How is any of this possible?
  1751. >Are they inside your head?
  1752. >What else can they do?
  1753. >Could they prevent you from leaving simply because they don't want you to?
  1754. >What ARE they?
  1755. >Is this why Jake could speak so casually about death?
  1756. >Are they even alive?
  1757.  
  1758.  
  1759. >Ten minutes and a quick towel-drying later, you have more questions than answers and don’t like the answers you’ve found
  1760. >As with every night, you go over what you’ve learned during the day during the moments when your memory is most likely to record them accurately
  1761. >The ‘Bantu’ were the most widespread people of Africa and seem to be culturally similar to some of the Zebra tribes
  1762. >‘Hebrews’ and ‘Assyrians’ have been in conflict for millennia, making the cross-border strikes in the Syrian Civil War that much more significant
  1763. >‘Phoenicians’ may have been responsible for the beginning of human development of the alphabet in its current form: parallels, if any, to Equestrian development of written language not yet known
  1764. >‘Egyptians’ had complex mummification and burial rites for their leaders and nobles in order to prepare them for a life after death
  1765. >Humans appear to be able to be able to nullify or amplify your magic, both at will and unconsciously, and can resist telekinetic and enchanting spells with alarming effectiveness
  1766. >Other spell types not yet tested, but you can only assume the results would be the same
  1767. >You’re helpless
  1768. >Worse than that, it may be specific to what the humans want
  1769. >You can’t let them know they have this power over you
  1770. >You’re going to have to work around it
  1771. >You have to turn it to your advantage
  1772.  
  1773.  
  1774.  
  1775. Part 9
  1776. >Tuesday, April 9, 5:03pm
  1777. >Day ‘I lost track, but it’s been a couple of months’ on earth
  1778. >You are Spike
  1779. >You’re in the kitchen getting ‘information’ from Eliza
  1780. >Eliza is on her laptop looking up recipes and other things
  1781. >This internet thing is really helpful
  1782. >You’re getting this information to keep up appearances more than anything else
  1783. >And you’re also getting snacks
  1784. >The corn chips are a pleasant change of pace from potato chips
  1785. >Jon seemed impressed when you were putting Tabasco sauce on them after hearing that they were supposed to be eaten with a spicy sauce
  1786. >He was sort of upset that you finished the bottle, but impressed
  1787. >That sauce was all drippy, so you’re eating the chips plain right now so you don't have to clean up again
  1788. >Eliza insisted you only take a few because dinner is going to be soon
  1789. >She’s helping you, so you agreed without a second thought
  1790. >Squid prom queen
  1791. >No, that’s not right
  1792. >Quad pop quote
  1793. >Quibble prat-
  1794. >Forget it
  1795. >She’s doing something for you so you’re doing something for her
  1796.  
  1797.  
  1798. “So what’s the one after that?”
  1799. >“Please do not tell her about the secret in her cellar.”
  1800. >Heh
  1801. “That code should be easy to remember. Thanks, Eliza!”
  1802.  
  1803. >She’s such a nice lady.
  1804.  
  1805. >“I remember when Jake got stuck on the sandcastle. It took him almost a week before he gave up.”
  1806. >You turn to go back to your games
  1807.  
  1808. >If she’s so nice, why did she do this for us
  1809. >Doesn’t matter. Candy.
  1810. >I wonder what Jake brought for dessert tonight?
  1811. >Let me rephrase that
  1812. >Why is she cheating Jake out of money for us
  1813. >Dunno. Ask her.
  1814.  
  1815. “Uh… Eliza?”
  1816. >“Yes?”
  1817. “Why are you telling me the codes I need to get those eggs? I mean, it’s Jake’s money. He’d still have it if you didn’t do this.”
  1818. >“You’re a good kid in a bad situation. You deserve a bit of love, and he would have told me if he was looking forward to some new game that’s coming out, or something like that. It would have just sat in his bank account.”
  1819. “Yeah, but he’s your kid, and this doesn’t feel right.”
  1820. >“Forever and always, my baby he’ll be, but he’s not a kid anymore. He was the only child I ever had, but it’s been a long time since I could call him a child.”
  1821. >Huh
  1822. >The tone in her voice sounded like she was remembering something nice
  1823. >Not like Jake remembering something nice about one of the games he gives you
  1824. >He sounds more excited
  1825. >Eliza sounded like she was missing something
  1826.  
  1827. >I caught none of that. What’s this about?
  1828. >She likes kids, I guess
  1829. >That’s good. We’re a kid.
  1830.  
  1831.  
  1832. >Back to the living room
  1833. >Jake’s door is closed and you know he’s playing his games, so he can’t hear much
  1834. >Back at the Nintendo, you guide Banjo to the ‘Gobi Desert’ sand level with the triangle buildings
  1835. >Twilight said that those buildings were built with slave labor
  1836. >She is being such a killjoy
  1837. >To you, at least
  1838. >Twi’s being nice to all the humans
  1839. >She’s just doing whatever they tell her to do
  1840. >She even offered to do their taxes because they're having birthdays this month
  1841. >They said no and said that it would be enough if she just started a reasonable sleep schedule
  1842. >Aside from freaking out when anyone comes into the basement without knocking first, she seems normal-ish
  1843. >Still no idea what’s up with that
  1844. >She’s coming out of the basement a little more regularly than before she totally shut herself in, so good for her
  1845. >She also stopped not doing anything until you go to sleep
  1846. >She’s actually getting into the bed a little after you do
  1847. >And sometimes she stays on her end of the mattress
  1848. >About time she started to mellow out after that whole nuclear whatsits argument
  1849. >This place isn’t that bad
  1850. >Desert named after a camel/camel named after a desert level isn’t as nice
  1851. >It might not have as much quicksand as the Mario level with the triangle building, but it’s definitely trying
  1852.  
  1853.  
  1854. >You get Banjo to hop onto the flying cloth thing and over to the spot where the door is supposed to be open now
  1855. >It takes a minute for the cloth thing to get over there
  1856. >You’d go on top of the dog statue guy who had a stuffy nose to use the flight pad there, but you want to take the scenic route
  1857. >It’s kind of weird that this game seems to think that the easiest way to cure disease is to shoot eggs at something’s face
  1858. >Yup, door’s open
  1859. >Banjo goes through, there’s trumpets playing a fanfare, and there’s some sort of box with a sculpture of a guy on the lid
  1860. >“Hit the button in front of it.”
  1861. >Jake must have come out of his room after he heard you go by
  1862. >You do as he says, and the box slides open to show another big question mark egg
  1863. >“I still don’t know how you could do this. I’m never making a bet with you again.”
  1864. >Jake sits down next to you
  1865. “I told you. I’m just that good.”
  1866. >“No you’re not.”
  1867. “Yes I am!”
  1868.  
  1869. >Uh oh, I hope he didn’t catch on to us
  1870.  
  1871. >“No you’re not.”
  1872. “Yes I am!”
  1873. >“No.”
  1874. “Yes!”
  1875.  
  1876. >Well, if he has, it’s been a decent run. Over a week of free candy’s a decent accomplishment.
  1877. >Let’s make him call us on it, if he has
  1878.  
  1879. >“No.”
  1880. “Prove it.”
  1881. >“Lava isn’t for swimming.”
  1882.  
  1883. >Okay, maybe not
  1884.  
  1885.  
  1886. “Are you still going on about that?”
  1887. >“Are you still an idiot?”
  1888. “I’m enough of a not-idiot to get free candy.”
  1889. >“Touché.”
  1890. “I don’t speak fancy.”
  1891. >“I said that you win.”
  1892. “And the prize is edible! What did you get for me today?”
  1893. >“You know the deal. Not until after dinner.”
  1894. “Can I have a piece? I want to know what I’m getting.”
  1895. >“Well, since it’s already in pieces I guess you could have some. I’ll be back in a second.”
  1896. “Thanks.”
  1897. >You get Banjo to retrieve the egg, and he starts making more promises (which Jake claims are empty) that it’s going to be used eventually
  1898. >Jake said something about the Nintendo computer being changed so the ‘stop and swap’ thing that was built into it wouldn’t work anymore
  1899. >It doesn’t make sense to you that humans would try to make their computers work worse than they used to
  1900. >Jon’s computer seems to work worse every day, and he yells at it sometimes
  1901. >Twilight wants you to stay in the living room when he does that
  1902. >You’re fine with that, because that’s usually where you are anyway
  1903. >Jake’s back from getting the candy from its less of a hiding place and more of a 'can’t reach it' place in the sock drawer and sits down beside you again
  1904.  
  1905.  
  1906. >It’s a very small brown paper bag labeled ‘M&Ms’
  1907. >The picture on the bag shows colorful hard candy and a mascot that looks like the candy
  1908. >He tears a corner off of the sealed bag and digs out a single, round candy for you that’s about as large as one of your claws is around
  1909. >“Here. I was going to get you some Skittles, but that’s not really hard candy and you don’t like fruit-flavored stuff, so I got you this.”
  1910. >He gives it to you
  1911. >You pop it in your mouth and start to suck on it
  1912. >It’s meh
  1913. >Not really that sweet, and there’s a bit of a waxy texture to the outer layer
  1914. >“Why aren’t you chewing on it?”
  1915. “It’s a hard candy. I want it to last, duh.”
  1916. >“Look at the package again.”
  1917. >It says ‘milk chocolate’
  1918. >Why and how a hard candy would be chocolate flavored is beyond you
  1919. >Humans have some interesting stuff, but you’ve never heard of fudge so thick that it could be considered a hard candy
  1920. >The flavor isn’t improving and it doesn’t taste anything like chocolate, so you bite down and
  1921.  
  1922. >Whoa.
  1923. >WHOA.
  1924. >HOLD UP.
  1925. >HOLD.
  1926. >UP.
  1927. >Is this what I think it is?!
  1928.  
  1929. >“You like it?”
  1930.  
  1931. >HECK YES I DO!
  1932.  
  1933.  
  1934. “This… is this sugar coated chocolate?”
  1935. >“I never really thought of it that way, but I guess it is.”
  1936. “THAT IS THE SMARTEST IDEA EVER! I need this to be a thing when I get back to Equestria! Every mouth in the world MUST KNOW THIS TASTE!”
  1937. >Spontaneous hug
  1938. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou-”
  1939. >“You’re welcome. Please let go.”
  1940.  
  1941. >Need something to write with.
  1942. >Pen sticking out of the couch cushions.
  1943. >Opened envelope.
  1944. >Good enough.
  1945.  
  1946.  
  1947. Best candy ever. Send to Pinkie.
  1948.  
  1949. Spike
  1950.  
  1951.  
  1952. “Jake, I need that bag.”
  1953. >“Not until after dinner.”
  1954. “No, you don’t understand! I need that bag!”
  1955. >You snatch it from him before he can get it out of reach
  1956. >He just sort of sits there and watches as you roll the bag up so the candy doesn’t come out, stuff it in the empty envelope, and inhale
  1957. >You almost send it, but you think better
  1958.  
  1959. >Gotta get some more of these before they’re gone.
  1960. >Don’t be such a pig
  1961. >Nyuuuuh. This is worth pigging out on.
  1962.  
  1963. >You pull it out of the envelope, unroll it, pop a couple more in your mouth, then roll it up again and stuff it in the envelope to actually send it
  1964. >*FWOOSH*
  1965. >“Um…”
  1966. “You are a hero. The bakeries of Equestria are forever in your debt.”
  1967. >“I…”
  1968. “You are the best human ever for showing me this.”
  1969. >You feel a reply coming up, and turn away from Jake out of courtesy
  1970.  
  1971.  
  1972. >They’re going to think it’s awesome, you can tell already
  1973. >*Buurp*
  1974. >Huh, small letter this time
  1975. >They didn’t even roll it up
  1976.  
  1977.  
  1978. Spike,
  1979.  
  1980. Please do not send items that are unrelated to current research.
  1981.  
  1982. Princess Celestia
  1983.  
  1984.  
  1985. >This must be how really smart people feel when they get great ideas that never amount to anything except getting laughed at
  1986. >“Ouch. She snubbed you pretty hard.”
  1987. >“Spike, did you get something?”
  1988. >Twilight is out of the basement and levitating a book and something made of glass
  1989. “Nothing important.”
  1990. >“Let me see it.”
  1991. >Now she’s levitating the letter, too
  1992. >She seems to be almost back to her normal, makes-stuff-float-around-all-the-time self
  1993. >“She shouldn’t have to tell you this. What did you send?”
  1994. “Candy.”
  1995. >“That isn’t important at all. Back to the reason I came up here in the first place: I’m going to need everyone in the kitchen for a minute.”
  1996. >Twilight trots out of sight in the direction of the kitchen
  1997. >Jake’s following her
  1998. >Well, you may as well see what this is about
  1999. >“That’s the book that crippled me last week, isn’t it?”
  2000. >“Ten days ago.”
  2001. >“I’m not holding enough of a grudge to keep detailed records of when it landed on my toe. It still hurts a bit when I walk…”
  2002. >Twilight puts the book and glass thing on the table and heads into Jon’s office
  2003.  
  2004. >Ohhhh it’s the jar of jam
  2005. >I was wondering what she did with it once we ran out of jam
  2006. >Still cracked, I see. Didn’t she say she wanted to fix that?
  2007.  
  2008.  
  2009. >Twilight returns with Jon and has everyone stand over by the fridge, facing towards the sink and hallway
  2010. >She actually looks kind of happy
  2011. >I wonder why
  2012. >The only reason she’d look this happy is if she’s about to make herself feel smart. She’s going to teach them something.
  2013. >She takes her place at the other side of the room
  2014. >“Ahem. The reason I’ve had you all gathered here is to-”
  2015. *BuuuuuuRp*
  2016. >Twilight’s expression drops
  2017. >The scroll is whisked over to her by her magic
  2018. >“…dear Spike, blah blah blah… claimed they were… blah blah… Luna assures me they are… oh, unbelievable.”
  2019. >Twi tosses the scroll onto the table
  2020. >She levitates the book to float beside her, gesturing to it
  2021. >She tries to pretend that nothing frustrating just happened
  2022. >“As I was saying, I’d like to show you some of the scientific knowledge that I was raised with. The theory of the Fundamental Energies is the basis of most science as I knew it, and I believe it’s more or less compatible with the discoveries I’ve made during my time here. The energies are thermal, photonic, gravitational, constructive, destructive, kinetic, and magical.”
  2023. “Do I have to stay for this? I already know all of this.”
  2024. >“You should probably stay anyway. There’s a bit of new material for you to learn after I finish with what you already know, and a review wouldn’t hurt. Moving on, the electromagnetic spectrum and atomic theories helped fill in a few blanks that have been vexing us for a while.”
  2025.  
  2026.  
  2027. >Jon speaks up
  2028. >“That sounds a lot like the fundamental forces of physics, but with magic.”
  2029. >“It’s the way everything interacts, so that’s a decent comparison. Magic is thought to be the base of every other type of energy. It can be used to create any other type of energy, but only beings that produce Organic Magically Conductive Material can channel it efficiently enough to cast spells. Like so.”
  2030. >She makes a ball of fire appear
  2031. >“Thermal.”
  2032. >She creates a bright light from her horn
  2033. >“Photonic.”
  2034. >She floats the jar over to her
  2035. >“Gravitational. You should be familiar with those first three.”
  2036. >She makes the cracks in the jar disappear
  2037. >“Constructive. Also good for accelerating cellular mitosis, influencing others, and just about anything to do with creation or healing.”
  2038. >She causes the jar to spontaneously crack
  2039. >“Destructive. Self-explanatory.”
  2040. >She fixes the jar again and pushes it with her hoof so it floats lazily back to the table
  2041. >“And kinetic. You’re probably already familiar with this one as well. Jon, are you convinced that magic exists yet?”
  2042. >“In the absence of a better explanation, yes.”
  2043. >“Good. Each one of the fundamental energies can be converted into another through changes in environmental conditions, physical force, or magic. That’s the short version. The rest is in this book, if you want to get into the actual calculations of it.”
  2044. >“Why didn’t you mention electricity? That occurs naturally. I’d assume you would have discovered that.”
  2045.  
  2046.  
  2047. >Jake cuts in
  2048. >“Are all unicorns equally capable of magic?”
  2049. >“No. It’s like a muscle. It can be trained and strengthened, and several recessive genes figure into it slightly. I got extremely lucky in the genetic department.”
  2050. >Jon takes back his place in the conversation
  2051. >“And researching the atomic theory and electromagnetic spectrum did what, exactly?”
  2052. >“It was speculated that it’s possible to cut something until it’s impossible to cut again by conventional means. That’s basic logic and experimentation. What we didn’t know is what that something would be. One model of this was the Gravitic Dust Model, which theorized that there are miniscule particles that make up matter and have differing levels of gravity. It was sort of right, as you can tell. The main detraction from its credibility is that it couldn't explain why the dust had differing levels of gravity. Learning about how electrons bond atoms together helped to finally solve the mystery of how magnets seem to be able to produce a gravitational field that only affects certain materials, as well. The electromagnetic spectrum helps explain a bit of the interaction between the fundamental energies. Proving that thermal and photonic energy are always related was one of the many small breakthroughs, though the scientists back home are trying to figure out if and how the theory of the electromagnetic spectrum is entirely compatible with the facts they know about magic.”
  2053.  
  2054.  
  2055. >“And what do they know about magic?”
  2056. >“A lot less than they would like to. Magic is sort of a catch-all for situations where there is no discernible answer. The scientific process for figuring out how smelting worked was ‘what happens if you mix two different melted metals? You get a different metal. How does that happen? It might be magic, because we can’t really see what happens and we know you could do the same thing without heating the ingredients using this transmutation spell.’”
  2057. >“And how does magic work?”
  2058. >“I’d say that it’s one part willpower and one part skill, but that doesn’t do it justice. Explaining the principles behind spellcasting to someone who can’t cast spells is like explaining how to paint a masterpiece to a person that was born blind.”
  2059. >“Please, try anyway.”
  2060. >“The best explanation I can give succinctly is that there are particles of magical energy almost everywhere that living creatures absorb and channel. They can travel faster than photons-”
  2061. >“Somewhere in the afterlife, Albert Einstein is crying out in rage.”
  2062. >“-and make up a nebulous, mostly static form that spans the entire observable universe, save for some pockets of low or no concentration of magical energy. This planet is inside of one of those pockets but is dense with untapped magical energy, which is helping my recovery greatly.”
  2063.  
  2064.  
  2065. >“Didn’t you say that you believed this planet had no magic?”
  2066. >“I assumed that the planet itself had almost no magical energy, and what energy there was seemed to be limited to living flora and fauna. I was pleasantly surprised when I found I was wrong. Spike’s letters are making a sort of tunnel through the vacuum, but magical energy is somewhat like a liquid in that it has surface tension which is holding it together. At the moment, there's a very thin and fragile strand of energy that’s not nearly stable enough for me to want to try my luck by teleporting through it. Once it is stable, it becomes a matter of where I am relative to my destination, how much of magical energy it would take for a rescue team to make a round trip, and whether that's something that can be done with a feasible number of rescuers.”
  2067.  
  2068.  
  2069. >“How can you tell what Spike’s letters are doing? And how did you get here if there’s not a way to Earth through this… this cloud?”
  2070. >“I’m still asking that second question. I have no idea how my teleportation spell took me somewhere other than where I wanted to go. I didn’t want to come here, so it simply shouldn’t have happened. If I did want to come here, I don’t know the exact direction or distance I’d need to go. The probability of ending up at ground level on a planet that can support life by pure chance is too small to measure. Additionally, teleportation spells’ efficiency and margin of error are inversely and exponentially related to the distance between the casting point and destination. Under normal conditions, trying to go more than a few kilometers would spit me out at my destination so drained of my magical energy that I’d die without immediate medical attention, but nothing about my circumstances are normal. As for the first question…”
  2071. >She casts a spell that puts a bit of a white glow into her eyes
  2072. >“With the right spell, I can see the particles as though they were naturally visible.”
  2073.  
  2074. >Hey, that doesn’t look right
  2075.  
  2076. “Twi, your eyes look a bit darker than they usually do when you cast that spell.”
  2077.  
  2078.  
  2079. >She removes the spell’s effect
  2080. >“I didn’t notice. Jon, would you mind going through this book and seeing if you could help the researchers back in Canterlot try and match this up with human scientific knowledge? I figure you’d be able to help because you’re more familiar with the human side of the subject.”
  2081. >“I’d be happy to.”
  2082. >She levitates the book into Jon’s hands
  2083. >He bends at the knees and groans with fake strain as she releases it
  2084. “Excellent. That concludes our lesson of Fundamental Energies 101. Spike, I’m going to need you to sit at the table with me for a little while longer. Don’t worry, we’re just going over the basics. I know you don’t have the attention span for taking in everything between valence electrons and quarks in one sitting, and I doubt we'd have the time for that anyway.”
  2085. >“Twilight, I was thinking about making a gluten-free apple crisp for dinner tonight. Would you like that?”
  2086. >Jake slips past Twilight to head for the hallway and quietly says something like “pardon me, purple smart” as he passes her
  2087. >Twilight freezes
  2088. >You climb up onto one of the chairs
  2089. >Eliza is calling for Twilight
  2090. >Twilight looks down the hallway at Jake as he’s walking away, then snaps back after the second time Eliza calls her name
  2091. >“Oh… right. Yeah. That’s fine. That’s okay.”
  2092. >She sounds like something is wrong, but she leaves before you can climb down from the chair to ask her
  2093.  
  2094.  
  2095. >But she said she was going to go over some new stuff with us
  2096. >What’s up with her
  2097. >Eh, probably something we wouldn’t understand.
  2098. >I dunno
  2099. >She seemed sort of freaked out
  2100. >We’ll deal with that in a minute. Let’s check this letter.
  2101. >She was acting kind of weird
  2102. >More than usual, I mean
  2103. >I’m sure she’ll be okay long enough for us to read this.
  2104.  
  2105.  
  2106. Dear Spike,
  2107.  
  2108. In the time since the reply to your last letter, Discord sampled one of the candies and claimed that they
  2109. were of good quality. He then proceeded to offer the candies to Luna, and eventually convinced her to
  2110. try one. Luna assures me that they are indeed quite delectable. I will honor your wish to send this item
  2111. to Pinkie Pie. I assume that you want her to attempt to duplicate this example of human cuisine, and will
  2112. include a letter conveying this desire to her.
  2113.  
  2114. Apologetically yours,
  2115. Princess Celestia
  2116.  
  2117. P.S. I Just tried one. I Almost tried two. I can’t believe nop0ny, griffon, minotaur, cow, mule, donkey,
  2118. dragon, diamond dog, buffalo, or otherwise ever thought of this before.
  2119.  
  2120. P.P.S. I Tried two. I think something is wrong with me. I need to send them away before they’re all gone.
  2121.  
  2122.  
  2123. >I knew she’d come around.
  2124.  
  2125.  
  2126.  
  2127. Part 10
  2128. >Wednesday, April 10th, 3:12am, Jake Addams’ bedroom
  2129. >You are Twilight Sparkle
  2130. >You are not ‘purple smart’
  2131. >Not to Pinkie, not to him
  2132. >You could hear it in his voice
  2133. >He didn’t just think up that nickname
  2134. >He heard it from somewhere
  2135. >You know it’s not Spike
  2136. >You asked Spike if he’d ever heard that nickname before, only to confirm that Spike doesn’t remember ‘mundane’ details unless you tell him to
  2137. >There's only one other way he could have heard it
  2138. >This will not stand
  2139. >First it’s your body
  2140. >Now it’s your MIND
  2141. >The two things that should be yours and yours alone are being invaded, violated, disrespected
  2142. >And on top of that, you have to put on a front of contentedness just to keep your magical ability
  2143. >If this spell works, you’re going to have a little retribution
  2144.  
  2145.  
  2146. >Sure, he might find out
  2147. >He probably will, if you’re right
  2148. >No, you have to be right
  2149. >You are right
  2150. >He’s going to find out
  2151. >You don’t care
  2152. >You want him to know how it feels
  2153. >He’s not letting you have privacy, you should return the favor
  2154. >If it bothers him, you’ve got a position from which to argue that he shouldn’t be peeking inside your head whenever he feels like it
  2155. >He might try to stop you, but that’s something to deal with if and when it happens
  2156. >If he doesn’t stop you, he has no shame, and you’ll have someone on the outside
  2157. >Both possible outcomes are in your favor
  2158.  
  2159.  
  2160. >Your horn glows as you cast the detection spell, bathing the room in a purplish light
  2161. >The formerly invisible mist of magical energy rolls in, surrounding you with a dense haze
  2162. >On the bed in front of you, the shape of a human creates a void in the miasma
  2163. >You move around as quietly as you can, shifting your perspective to see him from different angles
  2164. >It’s not blocking your view of the magical energy on the other side of his body
  2165. >He appears like a glass sculpture, lensing and distorting your view of the energy around him instead of the hard, dark nothingness of an unwilling or resistant human
  2166. >He should be susceptible
  2167. >Excellent
  2168. >Your horn glows and fires the same beam that failed to connect with Eliza
  2169. >It enters the side of his head, the light it produces momentarily outlining some of the capillary vessels in his skin
  2170. >He stirs, but doesn’t wake
  2171. >No point in staying here
  2172. >You won’t know if this worked until morning
  2173. “Eye for an eye, you abomination.”
  2174.  
  2175.  
  2176.  
  2177.  
  2178. 34363833

The Aftershow part 1: Here Be Dragons

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