Part 1



>Day 1 +1 month +3 weeks
>You are Twilight Sparkle
>Your spell worked, and now you can sample human culture and society as close to firsthoof as you’re going to be allowed to
>After confirming that magic can influence a human body, all you needed was the chance
>Last night, you got that chance (and a reason to take it without feeling guilty)
>All you needed was a willing but unaware human
>Eliza didn’t fit the first criteria, and convincing her to let you do it would affect the second
>You would have felt guilty if it worked on her on your first attempt, but you needed to know whether this species was at risk of killing everything on the planet
>It was a matter of personal safety
>So much about this species is just unfathomable
>Not just how much work they’ve put into devising and constructing the most efficient ways to kill eachother, because all of that made enough sense to be compatible with what you already knew
>They’re so devoid of magic that they’re practically the inverse of magic
>That’s supposed to be impossible
>They might as well have negative mass or a body temperature of -1 degree Coltvin
>More fittingly, they may as well have a negative BPM for an average heart rate
>You wouldn’t have believed this if you hadn’t been the one to discover it
>Zombies are real, and you've been living with three of them for nearly two months


>You tried your magic on the doorknob of the basement exterior door this morning, and it absolutely would not work
>It’s not like you were going to go outside
>You don’t want to, considering the current conditions
>You don’t know how human society would react to discovering a mythological creature, and you can’t protect yourself if it turned out to be a violent reaction
>Besides, the weather reports are still way too cold for late spring, seeing how you’re in an arboreal temperate area at a latitude roughly the same as Ponyville on a planet that’s equally distant from a star of the same size and photonic output
>They should know that you were just testing it!
>They’re innately telepathic, right?
>You’re sure that at least one of them is telepathic
>Curiously, Jake didn’t say anything this morning about the ‘shared eye’ spell
>You were in the same room as him, thinking about how you cast it last night
>You also tried thinking to yourself about how photons could be duplicated and converted into magical energy to be teleported
>And a few nasty things about him just to see if you could get some sort of reaction


>He hasn’t done anything to keep you from seeing and hearing what he experiences
>He doesn’t care
>Or this telepathic ability doesn’t work on specific thoughts, just abstract concepts or memories from beyond a certain threshold of time
>Or he’s trying to raise your expectations so he can taunt you with how he can make it stop working any time he pleases
>Is it not enough for him that humans can read your mind and control how you use your magic?
>Most of the things in the house are actually only slightly harder to influence with magic than their Equestrian equivalents now that they’re letting you
>But they shouldn’t have to let you
>They shouldn’t have any control over this, or you, at all!
>That’s like paralyzing Rainbow Dash’s wings, or atrophying Applejack’s applebucking legs, or making Rarity colorblind, all on a whim
>They are taking away your defining talent just because they feel like it
>And it’s only worse because your talent is magic
>Having been born a unicorn, it’s doubly offensive that they’re fiddling with what makes you a unicorn
>They ought to at least realize that they’re doing things that make you extremely uncomfortable
>If you’re wrong (and you hope you are) then nobody should realize they have this power over you
>But the evidence that you’re right is there, and you can’t ignore it
>You’re going to have to err on the side of caution until you figure out what’s actually happening


>You’ll need to keep secrets from everyone, including Spike and Celestia
>The only way to be completely sure they won’t leak information is not to give them the information to begin with
>Withholding important information is essentially lying
>Rocks and hard places abound
>You’ve done one thing that you were going to be ashamed of, which means that you have to do another
>You would have felt some guilt about casting a spying enchantment on Jake
>But you’re not ashamed of that because it seems like he was already spying on you
>Confirm that Eliza is doing the same, and you’ve got your original target while keeping a relatively clean conscience
>You’re still angry that Jake made a Pinkie Promise to be honest but he’s still not telling you facts of an “ought-to-be-told-as-soon-as-you-arrive” level of importance
>Maybe telepathy is normal here
>He might have thought you already knew because he knew
>It’s possible that humans going digging around in each others’ heads all the time without any social repercussions
>A society without any secrecy?
>Subjectively speaking, that’s messed up
>Everyone is entitled to personal secrets
>It would be sociologically interesting if you didn’t find it so creepy
>It doesn’t help that they’re supposed to be biologically incapable of sustained bodily function due to magic deficiency
>You almost killed yourself from magic deficiency
>Humans are BEYOND dead by conventional medicine's standards
>Celestia, this place is weird


>You’re essentially living amongst corpses that aren’t behaving as if they are dead
>These mind-reading, magic-hijacking zombie apes might have a layer of social interaction that you never noticed because it was imperceptible to you
>You’re going to stay silent about it for now
>Jake hinted at it rather obliquely, so maybe if you wait he’ll do something more obvious
>You’re angry at him for doing it, but at least he had the courtesy to let you know what was happening
>Or he slipped up when he didn’t want you to know in the first place
>If he’s really telepathic, he may realize that you don’t like what he’s doing and stop of his own accord, hopefully avoiding a confrontation
>Or he’s just going to be confused about how you don’t want him to do something that he would think is normal
>You haven’t been watching long enough to get a real handle on what aspects of human interaction are different
>You're still nearly clueless about their culture
>And that's from when you didn't suspect them to be telepathic
>You asked Jon about his thoughts on death, which prompted him to lament the recent passing of his mother
>They do die permanently
>At least there aren’t zombies of zombies here


>He said that he hoped she “was in a better place,” wherever that is
>You didn’t prod him because you don’t want to risk your relationship with a cooperative human
>After Jake started being intrusive and morally questionable and your discovery that you’re surrounded by zombies, Jon’s probably the human that you feel most comfortable around
>That’s not saying much, as your opinion of humans in general has done nothing but worsen since you read about how an ‘Apache helicopter’ is the best thing ever
>Living or not, he’s a colleague and someone you can talk to about your work
>Even if he is confirmed to be interfering with your magic and is himself devoid of any magic
>You spend most of your non-study time with him
>Most of that time is spent trying to point out the impossibilities in each others’ scientific knowledge
>It's not usually productive, but it is entertaining
>Something to do since the work load dropped off


>He claimed that the only way you could move things without touching them would be if you had control over a gravitational singularity that’s rotating at near light-speed
>Sort of correct, seeing how telekinesis is the conversion of magical energy into gravitational energy to push and pull objects, but the specifics are beyond measurement
>However, he didn’t have an answer for the discrepancies between the calculations of human physics and the shape of galaxies
>Granted, he’s not an astrophysicist, but you’ll take victories where you can get them
>And you were pleasantly unsurprised to find that human physics has a very similar mathematical model of gravity wells to the one you’re used to
>They got most of it right, but not all of it
>It doesn’t account for a few variables, but it took a substantial amount of explanation out of the conversation
>Overall, Jon’s bearable
>Kind of
>For what you’re pretty sure is a walking corpse
>This place is worse than weird
>The more you peel back the layers, the more disturbing it gets
>Back on topic: Jon seems okay enough to work with
>Intelligent, helpful, a bit weird on a personal level
>He offends you on a biological/magical level, but that’s a given due to him being a human


>The glimpses you’ve caught of the neighbors and mail delivery human with the ‘visible magic particles’ spell confirm that this is at least a regional phenomenon, if not a species-wide phenomenon
>All the non-human species you’ve been able to observe seem to be identical or nearly identical to their Equestrian counterparts, magic and all, so you can only guess that this is unique to humans
>It’s difficult to look for the absence of something beyond a few meters, but if you pay attention and squint just right, you don’t need to have photonic line-of-sight to ‘see’ a human with magic
>You watched Eliza go about her morning routine while you lay in bed this morning for practice
>Eliza seems to be a caring if slightly worried person 
>Jake called her his “half Jewish mother that’s acting like a full Jewish mother [in the presence of Spike or yourself],” which may mean that this personality trait is inherited culturally or genetically
>You’ll look into that later
>And Jake is kind of a jerk, apathetic about death, and quite possibly telepathic
>You try to hold him to his Pinkie Promise and ask him to print things so he feels like you’re not neglecting him
>It might only be that these monsters are raising something slightly more monstrous than they
>Or this is a coordinated ploy that’s exploiting your relatively high level of trust in Jon and the apparent empathy of Eliza


>Alternatively, you’re entirely wrong about this telepathy hypothesis
>That wouldn’t explain the ‘purple smart’ remark last evening
>So you’re probably right
>You interviewed Spike about everything he could remember the humans saying, which revealed that Jake claimed you told him the reason for giving him ‘The Complete Guide to Equestria and its Neigh-bors’ was because Pinkie told you to
>You didn’t tell Jake anything about Pinkie other than her name, and you know he didn’t see the letter telling you to celebrate his birthday
>Spike said he was surprised that Jake seemed to know her because he was completely certain he hadn’t said anything about her yet
>That’s the sort of thing that he doesn’t consider ‘too mundane’ to remember
>The chances of Jake making a guess that accurate are slim to none unless he knows Pinkie from somewhere, or Spike is lying
>You trust Spike to the point that you’d consider the former to be more likely
>He knows Pinkie from somewhere
>Possibly from the inside of your head
>There’s too much evidence for you to ignore this
>And if he’s in your head, “an eye for an eye” is fair


>So you’re sitting in the basement, idly scratching out notes on the workings of ‘NOT logic gates,’ the ‘Olmec’ civilization, and occasionally taking a note or two on how Jake is going about his day
>You were curious as to how a society can function without any magic
>The bit about having so little magic that all members of the society should be incapable of homeostasis is a tad excessive, but you didn't set up this experiment
>As far as you can tell, the conclusion you can draw from this is “almost exactly the same, but they use electricity and motors much more often and can talk to each other whenever they want”
>You’ve been sitting around for five hours, staring at the ‘projectorless screen’ you made as a companion spell to the ‘shared eye’ spell
>Maintaining the ‘projectorless screen’ and willing yourself to watch it is becoming a test of magical and mental endurance
>Besides seeing the sheer number of ‘cars’ human society uses in a relatively urban environment, nothing unexpected has happened
>Jon claimed to own nearly half a dozen ‘bicycles,’ which led you to believe that those might be more common
>But it seems not
>He’s just a member of a ‘bicycling’ hobbyists’ club
>You’ve been hoping for another major revelation, but so far there’s been nothing


>Wednesday, April 10, 1:16pm, Room 11, North Academic building of college campus
>He is Jake Addams
>He is being shown a documentary about a political ideology that led to millions of needless deaths, many of them intentional

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pzMHD0F4yQ
(YouTube link: “The Bloody History of Communism” This link is here to show you which movie the story is talking about, so skip it if you want. Watch a minute or two to get a feel for it if you’d like, preferably around the 19 minute mark. If you don’t feel like doing that, the story describes it well enough. You are ABSOLUTELY NOT being asked to watch a feature length documentary. That would be cheap on my part.)

>There are several videos and verbal accounts of executions
>By gunshot, by hanging, by disembowelment, and also by a few methods that are disturbingly creative
>Jake and the other students seem to have no reaction to the violence they are witnessing
>The narrator is describing the acts as “heinous” and “horrible”
>You’re not sure you want to believe that the narrator really means that
>Words are cheap


>The professor, a slightly overweight middle aged male with dark hair, turns off the projector and reactivates the electric lights
>“Alright, someone write down where we’re leaving off. You guys got any questions?”
>“Why is it so harsh on Darwinism? I think it’s a real stretch to say that Darwin’s theory of evolution is directly responsible for Lenin's world view.”
>“I don’t doubt that it had some influence on Marx and Lenin's ideals, but you’ve got to remember that this film was made by a religious organization. They want to justify their views, and these historical events help build their case by presenting the opposite side as unreasonable.”
>“What about the cheesy music? I’m pretty sure I heard the Michael Myers theme in there.”
>“It’s the best I could find that covers all the important events in chronological order, so please forgive the bias and quality. Anyone else?”
>No one asks any other questions
>The professor breaks the silence
>“Okay, I have a question for you guys. Did anyone see the zombies in this part of the film?”
>Every human in the documentary
>“Nobody? I told you there were zombies in this! C’mon, Joe. I know that The Walking Dead is your favorite TV show. Don’t tell me you weren’t at least looking for zombies.”
>“I didn’t see them, Mr. Spadaccini.”
>“You kids are unbelievable. I was expecting someone to say that the people in the segment about Lenin’s engineered famine looked like zombies.”


>First they don’t care about death, now they’re joking about it
>There goes your hypothesis about only the youth of the species being apathetic towards death
>“Whatever. Class dismissed. I’ll see you on Friday.”
>Jake leaves the classroom and walks to a building with a cafeteria
>He orders a hot dog, likely composed of meat
>You look away as he consumes it
>Afterwards, he walks into another room with couches, what appears to be a table tennis set (seriously, the same sports?), and several other humans that you assume to be students
>He approaches another male human
>The other human is wearing garish sunglasses, has roughly the same skin tone and hair color as Jake, slightly heavier, and is wearing a pair of headphones around his neck in addition to the standard human attire of a short sleeved shirt and pants
>“Yo, Jake ‘n’ bake. How’s it hangin’?”
>“I’m doing okay, Don and on. I’ve got a meeting with the academic advisor to sign up for classes next semester.”
>“We’re not going home yet?”
>“Nah. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
>“Okie doke. I’m gonna be out in the woods for a minute.”
>“More like tokie doke. I know what you’re going to do there.”
>“Damn right.”
>Nothing significantly different or unexpected is happening
>You check Spike’s perspective
>He’s doing nothing of note, either
>You dispel the screen and head upstairs for a late lunch


>You give a quick “hello” to Spike as you pass by the living room
>He gives a delayed reply, too engrossed in whatever it is that he’s doing now
>He’s the biggest risk to your façade of happiness because he knows you the best
>He’d notice things that the humans wouldn’t
>Or he would, if he was paying attention
>In the kitchen, you get a butter knife, some peanut butter, some jelly, and some bread
>With your magic, thank heavens
>You can stand in the middle of the room and make it all come to you, just like you’re used to
>They’re letting you use telekinesis on just about anything that isn’t sharp, hard, or heavy
>Or rice cakes
>Or pre-packaged breakfast cereal
>Or the pills in the box on the table
>Especially the pills in the box on the table
>It wouldn’t take a telepath to figure out that you stole the multivitamins and food, but apparently Jake’s doctor is giving him some illegal-without-a-prescription substances and he REALLY doesn’t want to lose those
>This magic resistance, however it works, is betraying some of the humans’ desires
>You open the peanut butter jar
>There’s a lot less than there was yesterday
>You saw a spoon in the sink that had some peanut butter still on it a day ago
>Jon must be snacking on it
>They don’t want you to leave, they don’t want you to inflict physical harm on them, they don’t want you to take things without asking, and they don’t want you to use their ‘computers’


>Why they don’t want you to use computers is beyond you
>Wouldn’t that help you in a way that wouldn’t hinder them?
>You get to learn and they don’t have to go out of their way to help you
>You ought to ask about that computer Jake said he might build from spare parts
>This may be more complicated than simply what they want
>It could have something to do with the reasons behind their desires
>If so, that should supposedly assist some surreptitious sleuthing
>Once you’ve determined the exact workings of this… effect that humans produce, you’re going to write a paper on it and name it after yourself
>‘T. Sparkle Field’ has a decent ring to it
>Something more to be remembered by if they can’t get you back to Equestria
>Honestly, if you could guarantee that you could at least get your body back to Equestria, living or not, you’d feel a lot more secure
>You have no idea why humans seem to believe that there’s any life after death other than being remembered for what someone did when they lived
>You spread the peanut butter on one slice, and close the jar as you finish
>Some envy the Princesses for their perceived immortality through immense magical capacity
>The irony is that everyone is already immortal, in a sense


>Long after someone is gone, their actions continue to affect others
>You will never meet your great-great-great-great-great grandparents, but you have them to thank for your existence today
>And if someone does something important enough, their life will go on in retellings of their achievements
>Starswirl is just as immortal as the Princesses, in that respect
>You’re the single most important person in the world’s scientific community right now, so you’re guaranteed a biographical summary next to some of your work
>Hopefully, it won’t list your cause of death as “undetermined (contact lost, presumed dead)”
>The North Korean situation seems to be simmering down, from what you can tell by listening to the news on the ‘radio’
>Though none of the active wars are showing any sign of slowing down 
>Regardless of what’s happening, there’s still a chance that the humans could decide to end all life
>Yours included
>Making sure that all of the peanut butter is off of the knife, you open the
>No, wait, this is the squeeze-bottle brand of jelly
>Motors, ‘electricity,’ ‘radios,’ the possibility of death at any second because of weapons that had WAY too much time and effort invested into their creation as opposed to the creation of something productive, and plastic bottles of jelly that don’t require you to unscrew the lid to access their contents
>You’re still not used to this place


>If you could go outside, start doing ambassadorial work for Celestia, and tell the humans to hold off on the end of the world until you’ve packed your bags and left with Spike and a bit of reading material, that would be great
>Everyone gathered in Canterlot is thrilled to learn of the feats of innovation that humans have created in the absence of magic
>You assume that the human scientific community would like to study the feats of magic that have circumvented and augmented engineering as soon as they get over the fact that you’re “a magical talking purple pegasus/unicorn hybrid”
>And hopefully they would be better behaved than the research teams in Canterlot
>But no, you’re under house arrest in a house that isn’t yours on a world that you didn’t know existed that’s full of an obscure extinct species of apes that believe magic is fictional and are so devoid of magic that they would be declared dead by any respectable doctor, and double-dead by any unicorn that casts the ‘visible magical particles’ spell while observing them
>It’s all so frustratingly ridiculous
>You could swear that there's a horror movie about zombie apes
>To say that premise is B-list would be flattery, but you vaguely remember the concept
>You prefer trivia that's actually useful


>You’re half expecting to wake up in a hospital bed from this crazy coma dream where everything is the same, yet bizarre and different
>You’ve got to give your subconscious its dues, though
>It’s being very thorough
>If this is a dream, you may be thinking up some really useful machines and scientific concepts without doing any conscious thinking
>You squeeze some jelly onto the other slice, close the bottle’s lid, and spread the jelly
>Though the fact that so many of these machines are intended for violence or have potential violent uses disturbs you
>And then there are the world events you’re hearing about, as well as the prevalence of violent assault, sexual assault, and theft in the local news
>If this is being dynamically fabricated by your mind, you’re going to have to ask yourself some hard questions when you wake up
>Really, ‘suicide bombing,’ ‘genocide,’ and ‘nuclear warfare?’
>You have trouble believing that any sane pny would think that up, let alone that you would think of things like this
>It’s so overwhelmingly violent and perverse that you’re disgusted by the simple possibility that you’re the one creating it
>If this is actually happening and humans are the ones putting all of this knowledge towards the most counterproductive thing ever, that’s actually a twisted sort of relief
>Otherwise, you’re the one putting everything you know towards thinking up excessive ways to kill


>Everything here makes sense under scrutiny, even the things you don’t want to think about
>With a few caveats, namely the humans’ ability to amplify your magic or weaken your magic to useless levels simply because they feel like it, and the fact that you’re here instead of your library
>You levitate the jelly and peanut butter containers back into the ‘refrigerator,’ and put the butter knife in the sink
>But why would your mind go to that logical conclusion instead of creating a nice dream?
>Somewhere where people can just get along?
>Even so, wouldn’t Luna have tried to contact you directly?
>Maybe she can’t
>You’ve heard anecdotes of sentient creatures appearing to have one last overwhelming burst of mental activity immediately before the brain ceases function and the mind ends, as perceived through a spell intended to measure how much effort someone is putting into thinking
>You could have killed yourself in any number of ways with that teleport
>What seems like months to you may only be moments, giving her no time to contact you
>In that case, you hope Spike is okay, or at least having a better dream than you are
>You never saw totally eye-to-eye with your brother, but you know he’s going to miss his “little sister best friend forever” if you’re dead and you don’t know it yet


>You didn’t like watching Shining play soldier when he was a kid
>You had a lump in your throat when you told Shining that you respected his decision to join the Royal Guard, even though you didn’t approve of it
>It was his choice
>He got his cutie mark from it, so it’s what he was meant to do
>He was still your best friend during most of your youth, so you didn’t protest (much) despite your doubts
>You also have some doubts about the games you’re letting Spike play now
>They're not much worse than slapstick comedy, but still worse
>To be fair, you’ve been in fights a few times
>More than a few times
>You put the jelly and peanut butter sides of the bread together, and head downstairs again
>You weren’t the cause of those fights
>And the stakes were ‘win, or leave the world worse than you found it’
>The humans?
>The radio news says the country you’re in RIGHT NOW has the third highest gross domestic product: military budget ratio on the planet, but is affluent enough to be the first in terms of overall value of military expenses by a wide margin


>There was an across-the-board budget cut that’s beginning to set in, but they’re still spending so much that that the United States are unlikely to lose that distinction
>With all the work and resources they’ve put into developing ways to fight, it’s hard to believe that humans could be considering any alternatives to perpetual conflict
>The humans you hear on the ‘radio’ don’t advocate war often, and sometimes they even voice concerns about the possibility of a new war
>If humans are so afraid of war, why have they had so many wars?
>Wouldn’t they remember what their wars were like?
>Civil wars, world wars, cold wars, proxy wars, hidden wars, ‘cyber’ wars, ‘The War on Terror,’ ‘The War on Drugs,’…
>None of them have combat occurring near you, but it still worries you
>It COULD happen near you any day now
>If this is all a dream, this might be symbolic of an obsession, or maybe a strong phobia
>But that wouldn’t make sense
>Your entire life thus far has been lived in peacetime without even a threat of war, and you’re no military historian
>That’s probably the one area of study that your brother can claim that he knows better than you
>You were never interested, and you only studied it for the sake of completion
>Shining, on the other hoof, has almost every battle of the Mino-Griffonic War memorized


>That’s not to say that he’s a warmonger or a berserker
>He’d never take a life if he could help it
>With Celestia’s record of peace lasting centuries at a time, he may never have to do so
>Barring exceptional circumstances, such as his wedding
>He was incapacitated for most of that, but he told you that he was glad that he did his part to protect Canterlot in the end
>You were exaggerating about not swatting mosquitoes, but he’s that sort of pony
>That’s part of the reason he has his position
>In peacetime, the Guard acts mostly as an escort to important politicians while the standing army polices the borders and does civil engineering
>Soldiers who join because they like to fight don’t often rise through the ranks, you’re told
>Shining fit the bill there
>His interest in military history and strategy is more academic than a stupid fascination with fighting
>Lacking a wide selection of wars to study, he says the Mino-Griffonic war is his “favorite”
>You had him clarify that he meant that as purely appreciation of the tactics and politics involved when you heard him say that for the first time
>That war was fierce and hateful
>It was one of the largest wars in recorded history
>The windigoes nearly recovered from endangered status thanks to that conflict


>The Equestrian military lost thousands of soldiers trying to halt the war by forming a wedge between the lines of the Griffons and Minotaurs to bring both sides to the negotiating table and prevent the windigo population from growing any further
>That was six centuries ago
>You take a bite of the sandwich
>Decent, but none of the ingredients have that ‘home made’ taste
>Thanks to Celestia’s deft political maneuvering, there wasn’t another war for five centuries
>The next one was purely accidental
>There's not a formal name for it because historians on both sides consider it an embarrassment
>Feral dragons started roosting in the southern territories of the Griffon Republic and destroyed several jewel-mining towns
>War broke out when Equestrian border guards thought some dragons that attacked their post had been driven towards Equestria in a deliberate action


>In actuality, the Griffons’ military was so desperate to get rid of the dragons that they didn’t have time to herd them in a specific direction or coordinate their dispersal
>That war went on for three months before either side realized that it was occurring under the false notion that their enemy had struck without provocation
>Messengers and diplomats couldn’t get through the combined warzone/dragon migration, captured enemies might have been lying, and everyone involved thought they were in the right
>It was completely unnecessary, and it cost hundreds of innocent ponies and griffons their lives
>The windigoes had another resurgence, but not nearly as much as the Mino-Griffonic War had given them
>At home, prolonged war could result in a long, harsh winter that would be difficult or impossible to recover from
>For humans, war could result in exactly the same thing, but entirely of their own making
>Lacking a reason beyond the abhorrence of war to prevent war from occurring, they have created one
>But if their winter starts, it's going to get hot before it gets cold
>You cast the ‘projectorless screen’ spell again
>Hmm… it seems as if Jake is listening to the human he met before you left recount the use of a hallucinogenic substance
>New aspect of culture, requires documentation
>Back to work



Part 2


>You are Jake Addams
>You’re cruising down I-95 with your buddy, Don
>Your friends are all some form of nerd or another
>Don’s the Warhammer 40k “Orkz and Imperial Guard player” / guns / semi-ironic “RON PAUL 2016” nerd
>He’s a pretty cool guy, even if he does smell like marijuana half the time
>One time, you picked him up in the town square while he was smoking a pot pipe right next to a police squad car
>He said he’d been waiting a while and unless the cops were total pigs, they wouldn’t care because he wasn’t causing a ruckus
>In addition to not giving a fuck, he’s way more sociable than you
>He has at least twice as many friends as you do
>He’s been going to conventions all around the New England area with them while dressed like a crab wearing sunglasses
>If anyone can pull off the ‘Crab Nicholson Extreme Sleepover’ feel, it’s him
>He said he’s thinking of changing it up and going as Warhammer 40,000 Techpriest if he can get the materials together for that costume


>That time he was at a con where there was half a cake left over from some event was a hell of a story
>You weren’t one of the people he went with, so you don’t know if any of this is true
>You don’t even care if he made it up
>He’s better at telling it than you, but the gist of it is that he saved a perfectly good cake from being thrown away, then he started distributing it on the convention floor
>He complimented one of the attractive-by-most-standards female cosplayers in a skintight costume who took a slice from him
>She took the compliment well
>A different attractive female cosplayer in a skintight costume overheard this
>She didn’t take it quite as well
>Thus began a catfight of sexual displays (which actually involved Catwoman, for the record) to claim the favor of a man dressed as the world’s chillest crustacean
>He didn’t ask anyone to do anything
>It was just an offhand comment
>It ended when one of them decided to flash their tits to him in the middle of the convention center
>This is the sort of thing he says happens to him once every few months


>“…and right as she closes the bathroom door, my perception of time stops working. Everything freezes. I’m not moving. Nothing is moving. The shower curtain was fluttering and it stops entirely. I hear the sound of the closing door echoing in my head. It fades a little each time as the room gets darker, until eventually it feels like a truck hits me. I snap back, look at the bottle of scotch in my hand and the LSD eyedropper on the counter and yell out into the hotel room, ‘Christina? Christina, I think I’ve had enough.’ She said it looked like I’d seen a ghost.”
“Why do you always have the coolest stories, bro?”
>“I actually go out and do shit, for one thing.”
“Yeah…”
>“So what classes did you sign up for?”
“Calc and computer aided design.”
>“I thought you said you couldn’t stand math.”
“I’m thinking of going into engineering. Maybe design. Or medicine. Something to do with how stuff fits together. Fuck if I can decide, but I need to take another math elective if I’m going to transfer to a state college. This is going to be like pulling teeth.”


>“Why not take a different math elective?”
“I said ‘pulling teeth,’ not ‘ripping off my lower jaw.’ I wouldn’t have even considered it if my mom wasn’t the head of a competitive math team and willing to tutor me in her free time.”
>“I still don’t see you having an easy time in calc.”
“I’m not optimistic either, seeing how I haven’t even taken trigonometry.”
>“I took some trig.”
“How was it?”
>Oh yeah, and Don is a casual racist in private conversation
>“If I had to describe that class in one word, it would be ‘niggonometry.’
>You don’t agree with almost all of what he says on that topic, but you let it slide because other than that, he’s fine
>He’s got a couple of African American friends, so he’s not a legitimate racist or a supremacist
>You were there when he was trying to ask one of them why black people like YuGiOh more than other trading card games and kept trying to apologize for any offensiveness in the way he phrased the question
>That friend took no offense, and it turns out that even an insider on that phenomenon doesn’t understand it
>It seems more like Don’s just trying to be a provocative asshole instead of being genuinely hateful when he’s being racist, anyway
“Is there a story behind this?”
>Sometimes you try to work him away from this line of thought, but you never make much progress


>“Oh, there’s a story behind everything. That class had one of those obnoxious ‘Shaniqua’ sort of negresses that’s all sass and no brains. You know the type. Every other word she said was about how great she was. She would chat in the back of the class with the other niggers, failing the course the whole time, and she didn’t actually care about her grade until it was a week too late to withdraw. After that, she complained for the rest of the semester that the teacher didn’t do enough to explain the material to her. It’s not the professor’s fault that bitch missed half the course!” 
“So did any of the people in her clique pass?”
>“Nope. Two of them dropped before the midterm, three attended classes only when they felt like it, and one of them just sort of disappeared after the fifth class and came back for the final exam.”
>That hint must have been too subtle
“Were there any other black students in the class?”
>“A couple. I see where you’re going with this.”
“And?”
>“They passed, C plus and a B minus.”
>You take the exit and start heading towards his house in Watertown


>“Real talk for a sec?”
“I’m listening.”
>“Alright, I know you don’t like it when I say ‘nigger.’”
“True.”
>“I really don’t see what the problem is with it.”
“I do. You can’t just call people niggers.”
>“You can if it’s not racist.”
“You’re not black, if you haven’t noticed.”
>“Define the word ‘nigger’ for me, in the context of how I use it.”
“It’s probably the most offensive thing you could say to someone of African descent.”
>“Nope. That’s not my definition. I go by the classical definition of ‘nigger.’”
“Okay… what’s that definition?”
>“The single stupidest, most annoying, and worst example of a group. A crow shits on my head when I’m at the bus stop waiting for you to pick me up? That crow’s a nigger. A dove shits on my head when I’m at the bus stop? That dove is a nigger. Guy driving the bus drives past me even though he has no passengers and I’m waving my goddamn wallet around like ‘HEY! I NEED A RIDE TO ANOTHER BUS STOP SO I CAN MEET UP WITH JAKE! I KNOW THE M.B.T.A. DOESN’T HAVE ENOUGH FUNDING, SO DON’T ACT LIKE YOU DON’T NEED THIS!’ Doesn’t matter what he was. He’s a nigger to me now.”


“So, what, everyone can be a ‘nigger’?”
>“Everyone has the potential to be a nigger. To me, ‘nigger’ is more of a description of who someone is than what someone is. There are niggers everywhere, of every color, and therefore I’m not being racist when I call someone a nigger. Hell, ‘Shaniquas’ are just bimbos that have a shred of wit and happen to be black, now that I think about it. Bimbos are just plain stupid, making them even more niggerish than ‘Shaniquas.’”
“So you think even whites can be niggers?”
>“Anyone can be a nigger. In case you thought I was a supremacist, I'm not. Everyone is equally deserving of my hate”
“Dare I ask if you have any favorites?”
>“White people the worst niggers in my book, because they think they can’t be niggers. It’s like how straight people think their sexuality is being called into question when you call them faggots. It’s a label, nothing more. You’re a faggot. I’m not saying you’re homosexual. I’m saying you’re a faggot, faggot.”
“Are you actually saying I’m a faggot, or was that just for an example?”
>“You’re a faggot, but you’re not a total faggot.”
>And there’s the provocative asshole aspect of it
>Might as well see if he gives a valid reason for that
“Alright, why?”
>“Watching My Little Pony puts you right up there on the faggotometer, my friend.”


>Oh, the joys of being openly brony
>FiM’s most recognizable symbol has a rainbow color scheme
>People have a worse view of you if they don’t understand why you’re into it, and the ones that do but aren’t into it as well are still slightly uncomfortable
>It’s just like being openly gay, but you're more likely to remain a virgin
“I agree, but that makes you a faggot too. Don’t act like you didn’t post ‘Big Macintosh is best pony’ on your Facebook.”
>“That was two years ago. I haven’t watched past the season two premier.”
“You still did it.”
>“Hey, you’re still more of a faggot than I am. Shut in, watching and probably masturbating to ponies half the time.”
“So being a brony means I’m a faggot? I guess you should be thankful that I’m not wearing a fedora, a ‘20% cooler’ T-shirt, and a pony figurine modified to fit on a keychain while strutting around with a body pillow of my pony waifu. I own approximately jack shit in pony merchandise.”
>Which is fortunate, because owning any pony memorabilia at all would have been sort of hard to hide from Twilight and Spike and bring up a lot of weird questions if they found it
>“Do you have a pony waifu?”
>Fuck it
>You’re in a hole, so you might as well dig until you hit daylight
>You’re almost at his house anyway, so this conversation needs to wrap up
“No. But if I did, it would be Applejack. She seems like the only one that’s sane enough for me to want to live with.”
>If you could pick, of course


>“Not only did you have an immediate answer, you also had a justification for your choice. You are such a faggot.”
“But I’m not the nigger of faggots.”
>“No.”
“Pine cones.”
>“The fuck does that have to do with anything?”
“Sorry, just a stupid thought I had.”
>“Sure sounds like it, faggot.”
“And that’s just a label, so I shouldn’t care.”
>“Now you’re getting it!”
“Are you telling me this because you’re trying to shape your own personal utopia where you can call anyone a ‘nigger’ and get away with it, or are you taking that MMDA social disinhibitor drug again?”
>“It’s MDMA, and yes.”
“Yes to which one of those?”
>“All of the above.”
“You are un-fucking-believable, Don.”
>“A man can dream. You know what else I dream? I dream of a Watertown that's not fucking boring. There's nothing to do here.”


>You pull up to his house
>He opens the passenger side door, steps out, and opens the back door to get his backpack off of the seat
>“See you on Monday, faggot.”
“Later, faggot.”
>You wait to see him go inside his house, then drive off
>The shit you put up with from that guy
>He’s cool and all, but hot damn if he doesn’t see the world as his playground
>The drive is uneventful, save for a couple of Massachusetts drivers
>You pull into your driveway
>You get your backpack off of the backseat and head inside
>Dad’s working on the Equestrian science book that landed on your toe a while ago
>Spike’s up to ‘Mad Monster Mansion’ in Banjo Kazooie
>In your room, you pull out your laptop
>You lay down on your bed to do a bit of web browsing and settle in
>You get a little under ten minutes of this before Twilight comes to you for what you’re guessing is another question she wants to have answered ‘straight and honest’ or to have something printed


>She was acting sort of weird last night, but you’re not sure why
>At least she didn’t have a breakdown like she did when she learned of how well humans can design weapons and then you told her about nuclear warfare
>She screamed “Don’t!” at one point when you said you were going to nuke some macaroni and cheese a few days after that conversation
>You could have cooked and eaten that mac and cheese in the time it took to convince her that you were only talking about microwaving something
>Since Eliza confronted her, she seems to have come back to what you’d consider normal
>Maybe even a bit beyond normal
>She started being nice all of a sudden, like nothing had happened
>“Is this a good time?”
“I’m not doing anything important.”
>“I’ve, uhh… I’ve been hearing things on the radio about something to do with homosexual marriage being legalized in this country. It sounds controversial.”
>Well, that’s a loaded question to come home to
“It sure is.”
>“Would you care to explain to me?”
“Alright, I’ll try. I think that the long and short of it is that people think that gay people have cooties.”
>Several seconds of silence
“What? That’s the truth!”
>“…Would you please elaborate?”


“Okay, but I think my take on it is pretty much the core of the issue. People aren’t comfortable with the concept of gay people.”
>You close the laptop and sit up
“Along with the concept of homosexuality being unnerving to some people, there are a few social stigmas attached to being gay. People might assume that a gay person is some sort of pervert or deviant or rapist, and there’s a bit of a religious aspect to it as well.”
>“What is that religious aspect?”
“Most religions don’t condone homosexuality. That’s more in Eliza’s field, so ask her about it if you want the details. And the cooties I mentioned aren’t just metaphorical. There’s a deadly sexually transmitted virus with a long incubation period that’s been affecting the gay community for a few decades now called Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Auto Immune Deficiency Syndrome. It’s particularly bad for the gay community in part because they don’t have to worry about causing a pregnancy, ergo they don’t need to wear protection or limit themselves as much. Factor bisexuals into this, and you’ve got a pandemic. That’s not to say that it’s not transmitted almost as often by heterosexual sex, though.”
>“So is the debate about the implications for public health?”


“Not really. It’s mostly political.”
>“What would you say is the prevailing opinion on this issue?”
“Most people are either indifferent or support the passage of the law, but there’s a vocal minority that’s lobbying for all they’re worth to keep it from becoming legal.”
>“Which side of the issue are you on?”
“It doesn’t affect me, and all it does is generate controversy. I say pass the law and be done with it, already. It’s not like there’s a good legal argument against it, most people want it or don’t care, and law shouldn’t be about imposing personal opinions on others.”
>“There’s no good legal argument even though it spreads a pandemic disease?”
“AIDS is a problem, but it’s not as big of a deal as you seem to think.”
>Hmm…
>You’ve got a bit of an opening to turn the conversation back on her
“So what about Equestria? How is this issue handled there?”
>“It’s still a little awkward, socially, but it’s not a political issue.”
“Why is that?”
>“It wasn’t much of an issue to begin with. Nopony except the ones who wanted freedom of marriage were passionate about the issue, but the issue dragged on and on because nopony was comfortable discussing this aspect of sex until about forty years ago. Celestia issued a decree legalizing it two centuries ago.”
>Dictator Celestia and same-gender shippings canon?


“Isn't she limited by a constitution, or something?”
>“She answers to the legislative branch as much as they answer to her.”
“And she just said that was the way things were going to be, without letting anyone vote about it?”
>“That’s not the most eloquent way of putting it, but yes.”
“Did she at least ask the legislators and public before doing this?”
>“She asked if they wanted the debate to end. They did, so she ended it in the way that would be the least harmful. Ponies who wanted to marry someone of their own gender would have been quite upset if they weren’t given the right, and the activists against that cause would still have felt awkward around homosexuals. They still do feel awkward, but it’s not worth campaigning against. Besides, I’ve heard that your president is circumventing the legislative body more often than any of his predecessors.”
>Well shit
>The biggest downside to her coming out of the basement more often is that she’s not cutting herself off from the news
>She actually might win this argument
>When she suddenly decided to go hippie on you about how much work humans have put into designing ways to kill, she was more passionate than she was knowledgeable
>Now you don’t have that advantage


“Most of what he’s ordering isn’t a matter of opinion, like homosexual marriage. People would throw a fit if he ordered that to become law.”
>“That wouldn’t have anything to do with his ethnicity, would it?”
“Yes. Well, sort of, but that’s not the main part of it, I think. Congress and the Senate are too busy bickering to give him bills to sign, so someone has to make policies.”
>“And you’re okay with him just passing executive orders left and right, whether or not it’s what the people want?”
“Celestia did it too, and Barack seems to be doing okay, at least. He’s not totally out of line with the public’s opinion or being blatantly self-serving, either.”
>“Celestia’s done it once every few decades, and her leadership is better than ‘okay.’ It’s apples and oranges. That is a common saying here, right?”
“Two things not worth comparing because they’re so dissimilar, yes.”
>“Do you have a rebuttal?”
“I’ve got nothing.”
>“Well, there you go. It’s been a pleasure debating you.”
>Because she won the debate, she’s happy
>To quote Han Solo: “Let the Wookie win”
>You didn’t let the pony win, but the result seems to be the same
>You still have your arms, and she’s happy


>She never did say what was causing her magic not to work, or why it seems to be working the way you expect it to now
>…she’ll probably tell you if she thinks you can understand
>Meanwhile, don’t get on her bad side and try to keep her from having panic attacks
“So, is there anything else you wanted to talk about?”
>“I’d like you to build a computer for me.”
>You were hoping she wouldn’t ask about this for a while
>You have no idea how you would make a ‘net nanny’ sort of program yet
“Easy enough, but I’m going to need to get some parts. All I have right now is a motherboard and a few sticks of RAM from when I upgraded my PC last year. I’d have a decent graphics card too if the last one I was using hadn’t melted, but I think it might be able to run without one. We’ve also got a few monitors lying around if you don’t mind dead pixels.”
>The Comp Sci textbook doesn’t look like it covers threading interaction between Visual Basic code and other programs, so that might not even be accepted for your final project
>You’re going to have to stall her at least until you’ve got that figured out


>Hopefully you can still kill two (Four? Five?) birds with one stone
>“No power supply, no read-only memory, and no secondary memory? That barely sounds like a starting point.”
“But it is a base that I can build off of. I should probably go to the dump and see if I can find a case that has the right screw placement for the ‘board I’ve got.”
>She gives you a stare that says ‘wow, you’re really doing this cheaply, aren’t you?’
>And she’s right
“I don’t need to make a supercomputer if you’re going to be using it only to browse the web.”
>The stare continues
“Jon does this all the time. It’s a good way to save money.”
>The stare continues to continue
“I promise to wash the case before I start working on it. I probably won’t need to because most of the computer hardware is in a different part of the dump from the other trash, but if it makes you feel better, I’ll do it anyway.”
>That seems to put her at ease again
“I’m probably not going to do this immediately. I’ve got final exams coming up at the start of the next month and it’s going to take a few weeks for parts to come in the mail.”
>“As long as you’re willing to print pages when I request them, I’m fine with our current arrangement. That said, I doubt that you’d want to do this forever. I think we’d both like that computer to be ready soon.”
>Riiiiight


“I’m okay with it for however long you need me to do it. By the way, is there anything you need me to print right now?”
>“I could use a few pages on telephones, sub-nuclear particles, and internal combustion engines, but it’s been slow lately. There aren’t many new requests. Most of what I’m doing is fleshing out my previous work.” 
“Spike said he’d been sending the same things back and forth a lot. He couldn’t tell what they were about, though.”
>“I'm essentially the consultant for the ‘Canterlot Computer.’ I also got through that encyclopedia. I sent it to Equestria, but it got sent back almost immediately. Celestia thought it would be better if I kept to transcribe and sent her the copy.”
“Anything urgent that you need to take care of?”
>“No. I’m still looking for leads on human technology to study, but those books you gave me last month were enough for me to create a list of most of the useful ones.”
“So… do you have a bit of room in your schedule?”
>“I suppose. Why?”
“I could get some movies for you. I know you’ve been meaning to get around to studying modern society, so that would at least give you something.”
>“That, uh… that would be nice.”
“I’ll put a list of movies together for you.”
>“Thanks. I need to get back to work. The test circuits of the ‘Canterlot Computer’ keep shorting out for some reason.”
“See you at dinner.”
>She begins to back out of the room
>You never really thought about how hard it must be for ponies to turn in tight spaces until now


>A second later, she comes back
>She must have remembered something
“Something else on your mind?”
>She says nothing and looks you in the eye
“What is it?”
>She taps the edge of her right fore-hoof to the side of her head
>You cock an eyebrow, but she says nothing
>She does it again, looking slightly confused
“What are you doing?”
>She does it one more time, looking a bit frustrated now
“I don’t understand. Is that supposed to mean something?”
>“…Never mind.”
>She leaves for good this time
>That was weird
>Maybe this is something that Jon knows about
>She’s been spending loads of time with him
>You’ve been meaning to ask about whether he got the letter, anyway
>He’s probably read it and already gotten rid of it, but you want to be sure


>Up off the bed, down the weren’t we going to sell the things in these boxes during the neighborhood yard sale day five years ago hallway, through the kitchen, and to the door of Jon’s office
>You lean inside through the open door, propped against the frame
>Jon looks up from the textbook Twilight gave him, probably because he notice you moving in his peripheral vision
“Hey dad, Twilight just did this weird thing where she taps the side of her head. Has she ever done something like that around you?”
>“What does it look like?”
“She just stared at me and did this.”
>You tap your knuckles against your temple
“Does that look familiar at all?”
>“Not in the least.”
>There goes that idea
>If it’s not some sort of egghead secret handshake, you’re stumped
>You don’t have any other ideas, so you move on to the second order of business
“So how is that book?”
>You step inside and close the door behind you
>“It’s an interesting read, to put it mildly.”
“How so?”
>“This isn’t what I’d consider scientific. There’s too much left untested. It’s mostly speculation and competing theories without enough evidence to make an airtight case for any of them. A quarter of it is right, or at least somewhat plausible, but the rest is just bonkers once you get into the details. They keep referring to magnetism as ‘selective gravity,’ for example. That threw me off until I remembered that this book was made before they knew what an ion was.”
>He didn’t bring up the letter, so you should


>You had an agreement with him earlier that speaking a language that Twilight couldn’t understand would probably be the most secure way to communicate with Twilight around
>Between your mostly forgotten Spanish classes and his decision a few years ago to watch telenovelas nonstop until he had a grasp of the language, the decision went to Spanish
>He would have preferred a language that he had some formal education in, like French or German, but you’re somewhere between monolingual and one-and-a-half lingual on a good day
>Besides, French is canon and Jon's Quebecois French is sort of nasally
>Twilight let slip that she only had a basic comprehension of a couple of languages other than her first one 
>It came up in a conversation about how Equestria had a language that was almost identical to Latin
>You think she said something about an ancient, sprawling pegasus empire relying on messengers between its distant towns and other nations
>She said that she was familiar with some root words, but couldn’t form a complete sentence if you asked her to
>If she doesn’t know Latin, there’s no way she knows Latino


“¿Y encontró otras cosas extrañas?”
>“No encontré.”
>He didn’t find it?
>You told him what page to look on
>How could he not have found it?
>Whatever, you’ll find it for him
“Dime el libro.”
>“Alguien no habló las palabras magicas.”
“Please give me the book.”
>“En Español, Jacobo.”
>Oh for fuck’s sake, dad
>First he accuses you of treating this like a game, now he’s playing with you
>Fine
>You’ll say the ‘magic words,’ and then a few more just to get across how you’re feeling
“Padre, por favor dime el libro cuando todavía quiero estar paciente contigo.”
>“Okay, okay! No tienes razón para estar impaciente.”
>Yes you do have a reason to be impatient
>He hands the book to you
>You flip it open and find page 53
>The second you touch it, it melts and a new sheet of paper emerges from it
>You pick it up and hold it so that both you and your father can see it
>It looks like two letters on the same page


Mr. Jon Addams,

Your son has informed us that you are considering telling Twilight Sparkle about a particularly sensitive
matter. We implore you not to do so under all conditions except our explicit request. We appreciate
your cooperation and continued hospitality. This letter will dispose of itself after you, your wife, and
your son have all viewed it once, or if Twilight Sparkle or Spike attempt to read it. Letters intended for
certain recipients of your family require that you send at least one letter to us that was written by the
intended recipient and recently handled by them. Otherwise, the concealment enchantment in the reply
will not react to them.


Mr. Jake Addams,

That is a subject that we are not comfortable discussing. Do not ask again, and please do not address
future letters to us as “dear princesses.”


Princesses Celestia and Luna

>The shirt you’re wearing is feeling a bit too insulating right now
>Jon slips back into English
>“What did you ask them about?”
“They said that they already knew about the TV show. How they would know is beyond me, so I asked.”
>“That’s a heavy question. Why would you ask that?”
>That’s a question you probably should have asked yourself before you wrote that
“I- I don’t know. I just thought that I might not get another chance to ask.”
>“Well, now you know that you won’t get another chance to ask.”
“…Make sure mom sees this. I’m going to be in my room.”
>You fucked up


>Maybe you were treating this as a game
>Confirming your headcanons isn’t something you should be focusing on
>You’re not supposed to do this for your own enjoyment
>You’re supposed to take care of the houseguests
>The really, really weird houseguests
>Twilight thinks you’re okay, Spike seems to like you, and you’re obligated to help them regardless
>Besides, if they speak highly of you, the princesses might be more likely to forgive you
>You need to take care of them and make them feel at home
>If either of them ends up being a friend, that’s fine
>It shouldn’t be your overriding goal, though
>You need to take your mind off of your mistake
>You’ll write an apology and make a list for Twilight when you’re in a better mood
>You lay down and open your laptop again
>Let’s see what EqD’s drawfriend has today


>Twilight’s groaning about something not working
>She’s usually quiet unless it's something major
>Make her comfortable, make sure she has what she needs
>You get up and knock on the basement door
“Is something wrong down there?”
>“This spell is only working half the time. It’s supposed to work all the time!”
“Anything we can do to help?”
>“…No. I just need to be alone so I can concentrate.”
“We’ll keep it down for you. If you need anything, anything at all, just call for me or my parents.”
>“Right, whatever.”
“I meant that. I’ll start keeping a journal if it helps you understand our society better.”
>“That won’t be necessary… but thank you for offering.”



Part 3

>Sunday, April 14, 7:13pm
>Year 22 and ‘close enough to dad’s birthday to take him out to dinner and celebrate’ on Earth
>You are Jake Addams
>You are currently in a Mexican Mexican restaurant
>As opposed to an American approximation of a Mexican restaurant
>There’s one of those on the other side of the river that’s like that
>Only about a twentieth of its wait staff could be considered even partly Hispanic, their food is all pre-made, and their salsa is practically tomato sauce
>It tries to compensate by putting way too much cheese on its enchiladas and decorating their restaurant with as many pieces of authentic Latin American art as they could import
>The key word being ‘tries’


>There was another one that was unabashedly Tex-Mex roadhouse style and didn’t pretend to not be staffed nearly 100% by people who had absolutely no heritage from Spanish-speaking countries
>They had a big animatronic iguana hanging over the entry to the dining area that would welcome anyone who passed through a motion sensor
>You had fun setting it off again and again back when you were too young to consider that this might be annoying to other people
>That restaurant was a casualty of the economic recession, unfortunately
>Now the choice is between ‘Americans pretending to know how to cook like Mexicans’ and ‘the real thing, potential gastrointestinal issues and all, but good luck finding another place that serves chorizo sausage quesadillas’
>You’d take Riverside Street authenticity over fat and salt content any day
>Your family’s been doing just that for the last ten years
>Having a live mariachi band on weekends seals the deal, even if this restaurant is a hole in the wall worst kept secret of local dining
>You’re eating some chicken quesadillas because you’re not feeling particularly adventurous tonight
>Eliza had a vegetable quesadilla, and Jon had ‘Camarones al Diablo,’ the spiciest shrimp dish on the menu
>That is to say that they’re done and you’re not
>The ‘go to the bathroom after ordering to make it seem like the order comes quicker’ trick has that downside sometimes
>They’ve been occupying themselves with conversation while you finish


>“So how did your math team do?”
>“We tied for first. I think that’s pretty good, but it wasn’t as satisfying as I thought it would be.”
>“Why is that?”
>“Well, we the team we tied took the championship last few years, so it’s a bit satisfying just to know we were as good as them, but there was only one first place prize.”
>“What was the prize?”
>“T shirts and a plaque.”
>You swallow and look up long enough to comment on their conversation
“I don’t remember seeing you bring anything home, mom.”
>“I didn’t. That’s the interesting part. There was only one first prize and the judges gave it to their team instead of mine. I wanted to say that I thought it would be fair if my team got the prize because they haven’t come in first before, but there wasn’t any appropriate way to say it. It was so awkward! All I could do was wait to see if the other coach would offer it to me or stop the judges from giving it to him.”
“And he didn’t do anything?”
>“Nope. He’s got three first place plaques in his school’s trophy cabinet, and now he’s got another one.”
“I hope he’s got a good reason for that.”
>“I don’t know.”
>Topic over
>You go back to your meal
>“So, Jake, I’m going to the Boston Marathon tomorrow. Would you like to come with me?”
>Eliza doesn’t want you to go back to your meal
>She must have a quota for how much social interaction you do, or something
“I don’t really feel like it.”
>“Are you sure? The weather is supposed to be good.”
“I’d still rather not.”


>“Why would that be?”
>Great, now you need an excuse that's more convincing than the desire to be lazy
>She’s concerned about Twilight
>You have an idea
“I’ve been trying to avoid taking my leather jacket out because I know T is a bit sensitive about that sort of thing. I never figured out why. She’s told you about her pet, right?”
>Jon cuts in before Eliza can respond to your excuse and steer you back on topic
>“She told me she has one. She didn’t say what it is, just that it’s not S.”
“I think she considers him to be more like an adopted little brother or something. Would you mind asking her about what sort of pet it is? If it’s a carnivore, I’d like to hear how she can put up with it while being so strongly vegetarian.”
>“I’ll try to remember to do that. What was that leather jacket you mentioned?”
>He doesn’t remember?
>That was probably the single best purchase you’ve made, and you think he was there when you made it
“It’s the one I got at the clothing exchange at church for two dollars back in ’05. Don’t you remember it? It’s not like I haven’t worn it before.”
>“That’s still not ringing a bell.” 
“I think we got it during the same trip as the time we got that Coleco Donkey Kong mini arcade machine that we sold at a sixty dollar profit margin on EBay.”
>“I remember that game, but the jacket’s still not something I remember.”


“Wasn’t I wearing it last autumn?”
>“Not that I remember.”
>“I remember that you didn’t. You went straight to your winter coat and left it unzipped until the beginning of November.”
>Count on Jon to forget and Eliza to remember for him
>“Oh, you mean the one with the torn liner?”
“Yeah. The one I use as a windbreaker.”
>“You could borrow one of my spare bicycling windbreakers. I’m going to get another one for volunteering at the marathon, anyway.”
“What are you going to do there?”
>“They need qualified HAM radio operators to help them coordinate the medical stations along the route.”
“And you fit the bill along with about 300 other people in the entire state, right?”
>“There are more than that. So, if you’re coming to the marathon we could carpool to get there. I’d bring one of my folding bikes to get home.”
>Aaand you’ve been steered back to the topic of the marathon again
>You were sort of expecting mom to be the one that would do that, but whatever
“Sorry. The truth is that I really just don’t feel like going out tomorrow.”
>Eliza has a mix of curiosity and concern on her face
>“Any particular reason?”
“I’ve got a paper due in Ethics on Friday. I don’t have the writing prompt yet, but I’d like some time to unwind before I have to write it.”


>“When are you going to get out of the house? I’d like you to do something.”
“Evan called. He said he’s having a birthday dinner on the 27th.”
>“I’ll let you stay home tomorrow if you go to his dinner.”
>“I was sort of hoping to ride both ways. It’s finally getting warm enough to be comfortable biking weather.”
>You go back to your meal again, for real this time
>The rice and beans are gone
>There’s still half a quesadilla left, but you’re feeling a little full from the smoothie you ordered with this meal and a large lunch earlier today
“I’m not sure I’m going to finish this. Do you want to get the bill and go?”
>“We were just waiting for you to finish.”
>Eliza motions to a passing waiter to get his attention
>Oh hey, it’s Calvo the waiter
>That’s not his actual name
>It’s really Miguel or something else starting with M
>You don’t remember, so you just think of him as Calvo
>He’s a skinny guy who’s probably about twenty years younger than your father and twenty years older than you
>You don’t know him personally, but he’s the most recognizable waiter because he’s always got a shaven head 
>You think he might be the owner of this place in addition to doing waiting, but you’ve never asked
>He takes your plates and heads for the kitchen
>He seems to go out of his way to walk by the mariachi band, and even stops by them for a moment


>Speaking of whom, here they come now
>The ‘Calle al lado del Rio Taqueria’ is too small to have a stage for them, so they just sort of wander around taking requests
>Jon, Eliza, and you were all just about ready to take the bill, but Jon and Eliza were planning on staying until this happened
>The lead mariachi approaches your table
>“¿Tienen un solici… Pardon me. Do any of you have a request?”
>Jon jumps on the opportunity to show that he’s studied Spanish and actually remembered some
>“Ah, no conozco muchas canciones de mariachi, pero mi esposa y mi hijo me llevó a cenar para celebrar mi cumpleaños esta noche.”
>The mariachi is slightly surprised
>He probably wasn’t expecting someone so white to speak to him in his native language
>This must be a new band, everyone working here knows the guy who learned Spanish from watching cheesy romantic dramas on Telemundo
>The lead mariachi says something in Spanish to the mariachi with the big-bellied guitar
>He speaks too quickly and quietly for you to catch what he says, even if you did remember your vocabulary
>The rest of the band starts to tune their instruments while the guitar guy stops a young waiter who’s going by
>This time, you think you pick out the word “flan” as he speaks to the waiter
>The waiter powerwalks into the kitchen as the band forms a semicircle around your table


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_pLp4Ckbpo
(YouTube link: ‘Las Mañanitas,’ a slow-paced Mexican birthday song. Play it in the background as you read, and let it play all the way through.)


>As is tradition, Jon’s getting serenaded
>He’s loving every second of it
>Probably because he can understand more of it than you
>It sounds like it’s about hands
>Something like that
>Also something about waking up, birds, singing, and the moon
>The half of the customers that are from this neighborhood turn to watch
>They know what’s happening
>You spot an elderly man mouthing the words
>A few groups of the other customers notice that the attention seems to be on Jon, but it looks like they’re not sure why
>They’re probably thinking “It’s just another song in Spanish. What’s so special about this one?”
>You don’t blame them
>If you didn’t know this was for a birthday, you wouldn’t have guessed either
>It’s not a very lively tune
>What you’re picking up from the lyrics is very metaphorical
>It seems more like a congratulatory song than an invitation to celebrate
>Pleasant enough to listen to, but you can’t enjoy it because don’t understand enough of it to know what they’re singing about
>With nothing better to do, you start thinking of things to think about
>You’ve been meaning to make that list for Twilight, but you’ve been thinking about that letter you got


>Are they going to accept the apology?
>Getting one or both of the princesses pissed at you for asking how they know why they exist is kind of a big deal
>You included a bit about agreeing to build a computer for Twilight in your apology letter
>They might as well know beforehand, because you couldn’t prevent it without making up lame excuses or flatly refusing to do it for her
>You explained how that might be a risk and how you plan to deal with it, because they gave you a job to do and you’re not going to get their forgiveness easily if you fail
>No sense preoccupying yourself with that
>You won’t know if they’re not mad at you until you get the reply, and you have no idea when that’s coming
>Whatever
>Now, about that movie list
>‘Forrest Gump’ might be something worth showing to her because it covers a lot of recent cultural and historical topics
>Probably a few Disney movies so she can spend some time with Spike
>‘Do The Right Thing’ by Spike Lee is a good one that you watched in your Social Studies Through Film class a couple of semesters back, and it would help illustrate your point about how humans are too diverse to get along all the time
>‘Dr. Strangelove’ might be up her alley, assuming she’s willing to appreciate satire
>Kubrick’s also got a film about space exploration and the human attitude towards computers, so ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ might be worth showing her
>Explaining the ending might be difficult


>‘I, Robot’ covers that second topic a bit more
>‘Apollo 13’ might be interesting, especially because she could appreciate the scientific aspect of it more than you
>You were expecting her to mention the moon missions after she got through the encyclopedia
>You thought she would have said something about that
>You’ll ask her sometime later
> ‘Star Wars’ episodes four through six are practically required material for someone who’s never seen anything from Hollywood before
>That didn’t stop dad from watching episode 4 back when it was first released and then never seeing the others because he thought that one was silly
>You’re going to get some of the classics and good modern films that you’ve been meaning to watch
>You should probably ask your parents for a few suggestions as well
>And you’re debating including a Vietnam War movie, because her war-ginity might as well be taken by a movie that has a message she’d agree with
>There’s a bit of ‘Nam in ‘Forrest Gump,’ but it’s far from being the topic of the movie
>She’s said Equestria has had wars, so it’s not like you’re corrupting something totally innocent
>Whether or not she’d be willing to stick with it until it gets to the message of the movie is something you’re not sure of
>You could have sworn you heard her humming ‘Gimme Shelter’ a week ago, so she might at least enjoy the soundtrack
>Come to think of it, why not give her the full treatment?
>Movies, books, music…
>It’d keep her distracted longer


>The mariachi song ends, immediately transitioning into a new one
>You recognize the tune to this one, as do all of the non-Hispanic diners that ignored the previous song


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm4dmfimvwA
(Youtube link: A mariachi rendition of the traditional English ‘Happy Birthday’ song with the second verse in Spanish. Play this in the background as well.)


>Jon was loving the previous song, but now he’s really into this
>Everyone in the restaurant is singing along with the band
>The mariachis are doing their best to sing in English, but their accents are pretty thick
>It sounds more like “happy birfday tuchu”
>It’s the thought that counts 
>The three dozen or so native English speakers and less-accented bilinguals in the room are drowning out the imperfections with sheer numbers
>Between the mariachis’ instruments and the ad-hoc choir, you can only hear their strong accent if you’re trying to listen for it
>You’re singing along as well
>Why not go along with the moment?
>As they get to the “how old are you now” verse, the mariachis switch to Spanish
>The native Spanish speakers in the restaurant don’t skip a beat
>Most of the other people get partway through “how” before they realize the change happened and stop singing
>You stop too, because you’re not nearly quick enough to do a literal translation of the song while singing it
>It’s the conjugation on the word “tener” that trips you up
>They ask him several times, and on the third time you spot Calvo coming out of the kitchen with the bill, the box of leftovers, and a plate that has something with a candle


>As the trumpeter plays the “and many more” flourish, Calvo puts the plate of flan and some extra spoons in front of Jon
>“On the house. Feliz cumpleaños.”
>“Muchísimas gracias, Omar.”
>“Make a wish!”
>You got the waiter’s name totally wrong
>Jon thinks for a moment, then blows out the candle
>There are a few seconds of polite clapping and some soft cheering before everyone else goes back to their meals
>Calvo/Miguel/Omar puts the bill and box of leftovers on the table
>After he leaves, the mariachi band start up an instrumental reprise
>Eliza slips her credit card into the bill and signs off on the receipt with a generous tip
>She also puts a ten and a five on the table, then makes eye contact with the lead mariachi while sliding the money toward him
>He nods in appreciation and understanding
>Jon reclines slightly in his chair
>“This was an excellent birthday. Thanks again for taking me out.”
>“You’re welcome. By the way, the waiter left a note on the receipt. He said that he knows you can’t eat any of the desserts they serve here, but he’d feel guilty if he didn’t give you anything.”
>“A gift is a gift, even if I can’t truly appreciate it.”


>He scoops the whipped cream and cherry off of the top of the flan with his spoon, then pushes the flan out into the middle of the table for you to share with your mother
>The trumpeter who was taking great care not to play into Jon’s ear raises an eyebrow
>Jon notices and turns toward him in his seat
>“Soy alérgico.”
>The trumpeter makes an unspoken “oh” with his eyebrows before returning his attention to his music
>“Well, consider this my treat to you for treating me to dinner.”
>“Honey, I’m still on my diet.”
>“Oh. Uh, I guess it’s all yours, Jake.”
“Awesome. Thanks, dad.”
>A free dessert, all to yourself?
>You’ve always got room for a free dessert
>You are one lucky guy


Steam Chat
[BerberB X][NagromSreip X]
BerberB
In-Game
Combat Mission (that old WWII RTS that I modded so the Soviets represent c…
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BerberB: there were a couple of explosions at the finish line
BerberB: now they’re saying people are dead


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|
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Last message received: Monday, April 15, 2013 at 2:57 PM



Part 4

>Monday, April 15, 3:51pm, basement/study of Addams household
>Day 6 +2 months +0 weeks
>Today is the day that taxes are due from the citizens of this country
>You would have had their taxes done for them by today, but they said they didn’t want you to take on more work when you seem to be getting into a less productive but more restful sleep schedule
>Besides, they did it on their ‘computers’ almost as quickly as they could have done it with your help
>Today is also ‘Patriots Day’
>It’s starting to feel like there’s a holiday every other week


>You are Twilight Sparkle
>Jake is home
>His family is not
>There’s some ‘marathon’ event that Eliza is attending and Jon told you he had volunteered to work for
>You’d be listening to this annual event being commentated on the ‘radio,’ if only because you hope that you won’t have to be present for this event again before you go back to Equestria
>Spike and Jake didn’t want to be distracted from what they’re doing, so they’ve got the majority
>Majority says that the radio stays off, no stalling of negotiations, and you can' veto
>Jake showed no interest in listening to the ‘radio’ or going out today
>The weather seems like it’s becoming more pleasant, but he wanted to stay in because…
>Well… you’ll get to that
>You’ve made some observations about Earth’s weather
>The forecasts are saying that it’s finally starting to be spring-like
>This implies that spring should have started sooner
>There might be a lag between the time winter ends and the time spring begins due to the lack of weather control
>When they’re used to spring beginning is something you’re not sure of
>Winter Wrap Up happens in January, so by now it’s probably getting close to the first harvest of the year at Sweet Apple Acres
>You’ll ask the humans about what sort of seasonal changes they consider normal later
>Work has slowed down significantly since the studying frenzy that helped complete the ‘Canterlot Computer’
>You’re left without much to do other than study history and a few human inventions


>War, war, similarity to Equestrian or another known-but-separate culture, war
>This planet could be a windigo haven if only their magic-based feeding wouldn’t be blocked by this field that humans produce
>It might even turn out to be a symbiotic relationship if ‘global warming’ is as big a threat as some of the humans on the ‘radio’ are making it out to be
>That’s the one thing you’ve found in common between all the species that aren’t here
>All of them have some immediate reliance on magic, or were at least affected evolutionarily by magic
>What if there had been these creatures here, but they were eliminated by humans?
>You’ll never know
>Your mind wanders to this sort of thing when you’re studying, more so since the work load has decreased and your topics of study have gotten more diverse
>One thing at a time isn’t a viable option anymore
>You should have planned for that, but you were planning for dying at any second
>It hasn’t happened
>Yet
>Almost all of what you’ve studied about ‘electronics’ has been sent to Equestria with a relevant study guide and glossary
>The unicorn researchers have reported that the paper native to this planet seems to have gotten easier to manipulate with magic, but only marginally
>You’re going to need to find out exactly how humans are blocking and occasionally amplifying your magic if you want to tell the researchers why that’s happening, and you need to figure out how to do your experiments discreetly


>He’s intermittently cancelling out the enchantment
>You haven’t found a pattern that explains why he’s doing that, or if it’s intentional
>But it only seems to happen during conversations or when he’s using a ‘computer’
>Whether or not he realizes it, there’s something he’s trying to hide
>He either can’t or isn’t willing to totally cancel out the spell, because it always starts working again
>That only makes it more annoying because you can’t rely on the ‘shared eye’ to work or not work
>If you knew it would work all the time, you could count on being able to dispel and recast the viewing spell to watch him whenever you want to
>If it was totally cancelled out, you wouldn’t bother trying to get it to work, and you wouldn’t have to worry about violating his privacy if that’s something he’d care about
>What you’re stuck with is a blank screen for no reason you can discern, wasting magical energy while you wait for it to work again
>It’s a drain on your magic and it’s a frustration you could do without
>The CCU/CSGU rescue effort says that they might have a few potential locations for where you are
>They want you to try to go a day without using magic to confirm your location
>With how much magic you’re wasting trying to keep a moderately complicated companion spell going when the enchantment it relies on stops working, you might do that simply because you need a break
>Hopefully you won’t miss anything too important


>You might have already missed something important and have no idea that you did
>If Jake’s telepathic, as you suspect, he might be doing this on purpose
>Maybe even because he thinks it's funny to tease you like this
>In which case, he’s a jerk and you’re going to throw that jar at the floorboards of his bedroom an hour after he goes to sleep instead of just testing your aim on objects around the basement
>However, humans could also be able to block magic without knowing that’s what they’re doing
>What worries you is that he hasn’t directly mentioned that you’re watching him or made any new references to things that he can’t possibly know without having read your mind
>Even if he’s an isolated case of humans who are capable of telepathy, you’d think his parents would have known and told you
>And a lot of things could be chalked up to simple coincidence
>That doesn’t explain how he could know exactly what sort of pony Pinkie is
>Keep an open mind to all of the possibilities and impossibilities
>You may be wrong
>Only maybe
>You’re still upset with him
>You made him promise to be honest
>Actually, no
>He made a promise to you to be honest
>You didn’t ask him to do anything, which makes breaking that promise even worse
>Especially if he’s being an intrusive jerk and hiding things from you while pretending to be a helpful if somewhat immoral person
>That’s definitely breaking a Pinkie Promise to be honest


>You’d like him to just tell you where he heard about Pinkie already
>You wouldn’t put it past Pinkie to be so weird that she can interact with humans without actually being on this planet
>A huge missed opportunity on her part, but that would make sense
>Or it would make sense because it doesn’t make sense
>Pinkie Pie: no explanation necessary (or possible)
>You ought to send her a letter asking about that and whether Jake’s keeping his promise
>Jake was only supposed to be a test subject, as well as the target of an impulsive emotional response
>You were completely sure he was spying on you somehow, and you wanted to see if A: that’s entirely normal here, which is uncomfortable but convenient in that you can watch him and he wouldn’t mind, or B: that it’s unacceptable, which gives you a reason to call him out on something he shouldn’t be doing if he tells you to stop
>Humans are near-culturally identical to ponies and most other known sentient species, so you were banking on it being the latter for your peace of mind and security
>C would be that you’re wrong
>But you don’t KNOW that you’re wrong
>If you do find out that you’re wrong about the telepathy, you can rest easy knowing that nobody realizes they’re restricting how you use your magic, so they can’t take advantage of that


>You’re leaving the enchantment in place for now
>You’re hesitant to remove the spell because it’s a valuable asset to your ability to understand this culture
>You’ve already learned about tension between the different ethnicities and cultures of humans as well as seeing an example of a different modern culture, amongst other things
>And picked up on a few new words that you don’t want Spike to say
>Wait long enough and you’ll see what the human attitude towards this sort of privacy is
>If you find out that he wouldn’t approve and he’s not going through your memories and thoughts, you can just dispel that enchantment without him knowing that he even had an enchantment placed on him
>So you still have a justification for continuing to watch if you’re wrong, at least until you figure out whether you’d get in trouble
>You can’t say you approve of what you have seen him doing today, but you don’t have much else to do aside from studying miscellaneous bits of technology and the civilizations based around the Mediterranean Sea between 2000 and 4,500 years ago 
>The two along the northern coast and central islands are the ones from the first book you read here
>An interesting tidbit you found is that a ‘marathon’ 26 mile race is named after the battle of Marathon, with the length of the race determined by how far an army had to run nonstop to get from that city to a battlefield, though a courier ran much further on the same occasion
>It has nothing to do with mares


>Notable similarities to Pegasi Empire and ancient Minoan Empire include the following: attributed with invention of indoor plumbing, number and prominence of philosophers, style of dress of citizens, armor and armament of military forces, size of ‘Roman’ Empire and Pegasi Empire, reliance on couriers and trade, identical names for Minoan and human Minoan Empires
>It’s getting harder and harder to surprise you with this sort of thing
>What did surprise you is that Jake seems to be killing for entertainment
>Not like the ‘gladiators’ were forced to, because he’s doing it on a computer
>He’s playing some sort of ‘video game’ on his computer about war
>You don’t like the way unnecessary fighting (and apparently killing) seems to be rewarded in the ‘Banjo Bear’ game Spike is playing, but you’re letting it slide for now
>What Jake’s doing tops that by so much that you don’t even want to bother comparing it
>It’s disgusting in concept and in practice, but you’re not going to understand why humans have a violent culture if you don’t witness at least some of that violence
>You’ve been dispelling and re-casting the ‘projectorless screen’ intermittently so you can work without Jake’s concept of fun distracting you from the mechanical and electrical engineering ‘web pages’ he printed out for you and his textbooks about human history
>It stops working for no known reason every few minutes, anyway


>Of all the possibilities that could be generated by billions and billions of numbers given visual and auditory representation, someone decided to make this instead of a ‘program’ that would do something useful
>And it seems as if this ‘program’ is intended as entertainment
>You’re not clear on whether this game is intended to be representative of actual human conflict, but it keeps rewarding him
>Fix something
>Number goes up
>Break something
>Number goes up
>Stand next to something
>Number goes up
>Wait for something to happen
>Number goes up
>Use some sort of firearm or explosive on another human (but only the ones who aren’t dressed a certain way)
>Number goes up
>And up and up and up
>It’s like leading a mouse around with a line of cheese crumbs
>He keeps wanting that number to go up
>So he keeps killing and performing actions auxiliary to killing in exchange for additions to that value
>The fact that he seems to enjoy it only makes it worse
>What sort of sick person takes joy in ending lives?
>You know this is just numbers, not real lives, but the idea of it sickens you
>At least part of the current human society considers war to be synonymous with entertainment
>And what he’s ignoring in favor of continuing to add to that number is unbelievable
>He hasn’t even tried to call them


>Possible effect of combat or confrontational situations causing pleasure and obliviousness to outside stimuli, possibly only youth of the species, number may be a way of stimulating this
>Not confirmed, purely speculative
>Investigate later
>Or don’t
>It might be that nothing you discover about humans matters, anyway
>After all, this very well could be an unconscious construction
>The ‘automatic transmission’ method of shifting gears on a motor is probably more important in any case
>It’s understandable that they would build devices to fit their needs, lacking magic or association with a species capable of magic
>You feel slightly foolish for your outburst now that you’ve read the summary of their history in the encyclopedia
>Of course they’d make absurdly complex machines with the sole purpose of using them to kill
>They’ve had so many wars that their arms race has been accelerated to a ludicrous rate of advancement
>But why do they keep going to war?
>There’s a reason for each individual war, sure, but some of those reasons are quite flimsy


>The ‘Crusades for the Holy Lands,’ for instance, were fought because humans were convinced that there was only one way to behave if they wanted to live after they die
>Such a claim had no empirical evidence to support it, but it was believed by millions, even the educated
>You really need to get around to asking Eliza about ‘religions’ in detail
>It’s a strange sociological phenomenon, thinking death has no consequence, and may even reward the deceased
>There’s a reasonable explanation for that, but you don’t know it yet
>The things without reasonable explanations are just as disturbing
>Jake may know things that he should have no way of knowing, possibly using telepathy without anything resembling magic, or an even more unnerving method
>If he’s slipping a tentacle into your brain as you sleep, you’re teleporting straight home regardless of whether you think you can make it
>You still have no idea how your magic could have done something so drastically different from what you wanted it to
>Magic is usually so finicky that if one point of focus is off by millimeters or the minutest detail of a mental image is wrong, the spell fizzles and nothing happens
>You know you did the spell right, though it did feel…weird
>You always triple check your calculations for a teleportation, so it can’t be that
>Magic is only supposed to do exactly what you want it to do
>But somehow, you ended up on a planet that was just right for you to have initially confused it for your own


>You have no idea how any of this is possible within reason
>You have no idea how two completely separate cultures and biospheres could be so similar
>You have no idea how you, a single alicorn born as a unicorn, could teleport yourself so far that even scientific notation wouldn’t be adequate for representing how many miles you’ve traveled
>It reeks of impossibilities
>You’re noticing a bit of possible symbolism that could indicate that this is a dream
>Some of the humans have traits that are comparable to ponies that you know, including your friends
>Jon has a mixture of Pinkie’s lack of seriousness and Rainbow Dash’s affinity for exercise, but with an academic twist
>Jake’s representative of your discomfort with your brother’s career and cutie mark
>Eliza’s organized like you, compassionate yet forceful like Celestia, and has the same occupation as Cheerilee
>Spike is…
>He’s Spike
>You’ve known him for just over a decade, so of course he’s going to be in your dreams
>There’s not much to interpret from that
>There are also the hallmarks of a nightmare
>Fear of never seeing home again
>Fear of death
>Fear of war
>Fear of losing your magic
>Fear of being controlled
>Monstrosities


>You’re still holding off on sending a letter to Celestia about humans being able to live while being physically bereft of magic and interfering with your magic
>If she showed that to the scientists, that wouldn’t just cause a riot
>You might lose all of your credibility with the scientists that have no choice but to take every word you write as truth until they can verify it for themselves
>And then what?
>Would the Canterlot School for Gifted Unicorns faculty/Canterlot Court Unicorns rescue effort give up on you too?
>What if Celestia herself doesn’t believe it?
>You’re not sure what to expect from her
>She did something you didn’t anticipate recently
>That candy Spike sent to Pinkie got intercepted by a small group of feral dragons
>Those dragons then went to Canterlot, mailpony in tow
>They presented the shaken but mostly unharmed mailpony as a sign of no ill intentions
>They claimed that they’d caught the scent of that candy and, after apprehending the mailpony, learned that this candy was somehow from another world which is currently the focus of a scientific revolution
>With all modesty that’s due, you’re entirely responsible for said revolution (now THAT is an objective fact!)


>That mailpony is lucky that they were all the type of dragon that’s old and wise enough to know that they’d get nothing out of rampaging about just because they can
>Dragons around the age of 35 are dangerous because they’re physically and mentally mature but still willing to abuse the raw strength that they wield
>The most dangerous are the ones that spontaneously mature physically, as you learned from Zecora and personal experience
>The ones that intercepted the mailpony were all in the 125-150 range, but one of them claimed to be 200 years old
>Celestia said they were welcome to stay and help
>Rare elder dragon or not, letting even one of them join in on the research doesn’t seem like a good decision to you
>Some of them left to get other dragons who might be able to help, so who knows how many will end up stomping around Canterlot?
>Nearly 25 years beyond natural draconic life expectancy and with wisdom surpassed by few other than Celestia and Luna, but capable of crushing a pony, griffon, or possibly a minotaur with a misstep or starting an inferno with a sneeze
>There’s too much chance of something tragic happening


>Like the stallion that flew into the side of a building because he couldn’t see through the glare coming off of the ‘heliostat generator array’ on Friday
>He’s not going to be able to fly again for months, and it’s going to be at least one month before he can even walk again
>Celestia had such high hopes for that method of generating ‘electricity’ to power the ‘Canterlot Computer,’ but now the prototype ‘solar array’ is under a covering until further notice
>Humans seem to have a knack for making discoveries that would be overlooked in favor of magic or missed entirely by conventional societies
>And killing eachother, but the point is that they’ve made devices that are ingeniously simple but undeniably useful, and some of them are actually better than their magical equivalents
>All the other methods for generating ‘electricity’ involve some form of kinetic energy being converted by running magnets through coils of copper
>Retrofitting a dam for ‘hydroelectric’ generation or rigging a bunch of windmills to act as ‘dynamos’ would require a quarter of the scientists currently in Canterlot to go to a remote location just to supervise the labor
>And they wouldn’t get to study your findings as soon as you send them, which they’d definitely consider to be too major a downside to be willing to volunteer for that job


>The only logistically feasible option was to purchase and repurpose several steam engines
>Not the best alternative, seeing how the Canterlot weather teams can only keep the wind blowing away from town for so long before it starts to disrupt the pre-planned weather for miles around
>They’re trying to devise an alternate weather pattern that would allow them to do this more often, but until then they have to shut down the computer whenever the wind needs to be shifted in a direction that would get soot all over the upper-class citizenry’s expensive clothing
>Despite the protests of the Canterlot citizenry, the ‘Canterlot Computer’ is up and running
>Sometimes it even works
>14,000 ‘bytes’ of ‘random access memory,’ 256,000 ‘bytes’ of ‘read only memory,’ and a ‘processor’ working at a frequency of 3,000,000 ‘hertz’
>And it only takes up half as much space as the engineers were anticipating
>Jake did them a favor by giving you those ‘calculators’ last month
>They have a decent opinion of the humans you’re lodging with
>Of course, they probably don’t know the humans as well as you do


>Jake is callous and apathetic, but still helping you for some reason 
>Jon’s weird and stubborn, but knowledgeable
>Eliza was the one who confronted you and lowered your productivity, but that was for your own good and the demand for new work dropped shortly afterward
>But you’re certain that they don’t know that the humans of this region, and possibly everyhuman, is secretly a zombie that can control how a unicorn uses the most valuable part of their body
>This has to be a nightmare
>You’re stranded on a planet where the dominant species can control your body and possibly read your mind at will, on top of being animate corpses
>So you’re constantly preoccupied with the ultimate violations of independence and privacy, as well as the possibility of a spontaneous death
>You’re without any way of knowing when those will happen or how to prevent any of them
>If only you were still blissfully ignorant to that
>This place was okay, at least until you started finding out about all the nasty things here
>You can’t ask for much when you’re getting free lodging and meals
>But you would prefer it to be somewhere safe and corpse-less
>You want to know everything you can
>Sometimes you wish you didn’t have that drive
>But you’re doing this for the benefit of so many others, so you grin and bear the burden
>And lie like there’s no tomorrow


>That’s life
>You’re seeing more and more that suggests Jake doesn’t care about life
>He has basic survival instincts, but he consciously seems not to care about life in general
>Over an hour ago, the computer showed a message that there were explosions at the finish line of the ‘marathon’ race which had killed people
>And what does he do after he sees that message?
>He goes straight back to playing this lurid game and he’s been doing nothing but that for the last hour
>Jon and Eliza are there, and they could be hurt
>Shouldn’t he at least care about them from a practical standpoint?
>They’re the ones who have the most responsibility over the household, so what happens to them affects him
>It’s been over an hour since he got that message, but he hasn’t done anything
>He hasn’t even turned the ‘radio’ on
>You want to go upstairs and tell him he’s missing something, but that would arouse suspicion
>You’ve been restraining yourself from doing so
>After all, how would you know?
>It sounds like a ‘car’ is coming
>You’re hoping it’s Jon and Eliza
>You hear the engine stop and someone comes inside shortly afterwards
>Only one person
>Their footsteps rapidly approach Jake’s room
>“Jake, did you hear?”
>That’s Eliza, but where is Jon?
>“I heard. Berber sent me a message about it.”
>Oh, so he did notice
>There’s your cue to head upstairs and act surprised


>You open the door to see Eliza leaning into Jake’s room
“What’s happening?”
>“There was some sort of explosion at the marathon. That’s all I heard.”
>Note: don’t mention number of explosions
>“Where’s dad?”
>Odd, he beat you to asking where Jon is
>“I don’t know. The cellphone network is overloaded. I tried to call him, but everyone is making calls to see if someone they know is hurt. I tried to call you after I couldn’t call Jon.”
>“I didn’t get any calls. Do you know what aid station he was at?”
>Taking that at face value, most humans may legitimately care about death
>It’s getting easier to pretend to be surprised
>“I’m not sure.”
>“Wait, what’s going on?”
>Spike finally notices the commotion
“Some sort of explosion happened at the race today. We don’t know where Jon is.”
>“What sort of explosion? What happened?”
>“We need to check the news. Spike, shut down your game.”
>“Can I leave it running? Does it work like that?”
>“It does, but we’re not going to run up the electric bill if we don’t need to. Save the game and shut it down.”


>The hours tick by
>You’re transfixed yet repulsed by what you see on the ‘television’
>You realize now that you haven’t had much opportunity to see the ‘television’ in use for its original purpose of receiving images and sound from a remote location
>Spike has been using it during most of his waking hours
>Not now, though
>You put him to bed early
>He shouldn’t have to see this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdgGj7wON10
(YouTube link: ABC news’ broadcast from the night of April 15, 2013, which includes several angles of the blasts and some surprisingly bloody footage of the aftermath. Watch at least until the 3:00 mark, but ideally you should watch until the 7:00 mark. 7:00 onward is a witness interview that I didn’t find particularly interesting, but suit yourself.)

>The ‘television’ news is a lot like the ‘radio’ news
>More or less the same, but with pictures
>At least as far as you can tell it is, because they’ve been talking about nothing but the bombing on both of those devices for nearly two hours
>This is the first time you’ve seen the outside world at night
>Humans must have a lot of electricity to spare if they can have non-gas lamps lining their streets
>Interesting, but that’s a side note to why you’re watching


>Two bombs went off
>You’ve seen footage of one of the blasts
>It keeps getting shown again and again
>The crowds at the sides of the road are cheering the runners approaching the finish line
>A digital stopwatch is counting the time since the race started on the sign above the finish line
>At four hours, nine minutes, forty three seconds, everything is normal
>The only remarkable thing is the two humans in white shirts pushing some sort of carriage towards the finish line
>4:09:44
>There’s a puff of smoke inside one of the crowds
>The banners and flags lining the sides of the roads shift direction for an instant, the ones that were previously limp and windless jump in surprise
>One of the runners, an older male who was at least 30 meters from the blast, stumbles and falls
>The policehumans in bright vests all reach for objects on their belts and begin to run towards the smoke
>3 dead, ~150 injured with several requiring amputations, and the count is still rising
>The police are claiming that the explosions appear to have been intentional
>Possibly an act of ‘terrorism’ to intimidate and shatter a sense of security
>It didn’t work on you
>You were already intimidated and you didn’t feel safe
>The ‘War on Terror’ is being fought here
>You knew this would happen
>Their history is continual war
>It was only a matter of time until you were caught in a warzone
>Nobody has heard from Jon
>Eliza isn’t sure where he was stationed along the race’s route


>It didn’t look like there was any sort of medical station near the blasts, but you’re still worried
>Your research partner may be dead
>More so than usual
>Statistically, he’s more likely to be wounded and even likelier to be in good health, but stuck at the ‘marathon’
>In any case, he’s incapacitated and can’t help you
>That would be…
>Inconvenient
>Yeah, inconvenient
>He’s not someone you have a personal relationship with
>How could someone have a reciprocal personal relationship with a dead person?
>That would just be silly!
>Dead people can’t do anything, let alone hold a conversation!
>It would hinder the research being done to merge human and Equestrian knowledge, but you could do it without him
>You don’t want to do it without him
>Solely for practical reasons
>Okay, fine, he’s as much of a “friend” as a mortified molester of magic can be
>A lot of the relationship is practical, but there’s a tiny smidgeon that isn’t
>He claims to have been especially bookish during his youth, which is something you can identify with
>Having a local to explain what’s different here is useful
>And a lot is different because this planet is a ball of unmanaged pandemonium


>No weather management, no one making sure the birds migrate on time, the time of sunrise and sunset is changing each day, you’ve been told that the lunar calendar doesn’t match the calendar that humans use, and the dominant species is simultaneously alive and dead
>The only certainty here is war
>War, war, war, war, war
>Door
>Someone’s opening the kitchen door
>Stay put, get ready to hide behind the ‘television’ in case it’s someone new
>“Jon!”
>“Honey, this is why I prefer to work from home.”
>It’s him
>You dart through the hallway
>You hear a door opening behind you and the kitchen door closing over your rapid hoofbeats
>You see Jon and Eliza embracing in the kitchen
>Your momentum carries you forward
>The amount of planning you put into this action was insufficient
>You’re going to run right into their legs
>You beat your wings in a sad attempt at air braking
>Your lack of practice with these new limbs causes you not only to continue forward, but to rise almost two feet as well
>Now you’re going to run into their upper torsos
>That would probably bowl them over entirely
>Oh dear, what did ‘First Timer’s Flight Guide’ say about this?
>No time
>Just do what you’ve always seen the pegasi do
>Wings in, shift weight rearwards, spread wings with trailing edge perpendicular to direction of travel
>Dash makes this look a lot easier than it actually is
>You’re slowing, but not enough to avoid a collision


>You flap frantically to try and slow yourself further, spreading your forelegs to avoid punching either of them
>Close eyes and brace
>Contact
>You’ve slowed down just barely enough to bump them without affecting their balance
>Straight into the logo on a new jacket John is wearing
>It’s a solid blue (inaccurate) depiction of a unicorn framed by a circle and the words ‘Boston Athletic Association’
>You’re still flapping
>These wings have minds of their own sometimes
>Conscious motor control is more precise than reflexive motor control, but reflexive motor-
>Irrelevant, wings still flapping, corrective action required
>You grab on to both of them with your forelegs to prevent yourself from flying backwards
>This brings you into a relatively stable hover
>Something brushes past your left wing
>You open your eyes
>Jake is embracing his father
>He must have been just behind you
>You’ve somehow managed to get yourself into a group hug with all of the humans of this household
>This is a situation you find slightly uncomfortable
>If anyone asks, that was what you intended to do from the start
>You daren’t let go for fear of ending the moment prematurely
>You also don’t want to lose control again
>Wings are difficult to use
>The hug continues for approximately three quarters of a minute, ending when Eliza backs away from Jon while keeping a hold on his shoulders


>You drop to your hooves
>“Jon, what happened? We couldn’t get through to you!”
>“They had all the volunteers stay at their posts. I tried to call you again and again, but it wouldn’t work.”
>“Where were you stationed?”
>“Nowhere close to the explosions. I wish I had been closer, because I felt so useless sitting there. I wanted to do something to help.”
>Jake begins to ask questions
>“Could you hear the police radio? Do you know what’s going on?”
>“I probably could have listened in, now that you mention it, but it didn’t occur to me. I was supposed to keep on the channel for event organization. All I know other than this being some sort of terrorist attack is that another station was treating a man who hit his head after he had too much beer and tried to vault one of the barriers. It took over an hour to get an ambulance to him.”
>“It’s good to see you’re alright, but how is he?”
>“I hope he’s okay. An hour is a long time to have a head wound untreated”
>Eliza pulls him close again
>“We’re just glad you’re safe.”


>The trio hug again
>You were there earlier, so it would be rude not to join them
>You get up onto your hind legs, grasping at their midsections with your forelegs
>“It’s good to know you all care… especially you, Twilight. We’ve only known each other for two months.”
“I don’t think there’s too short a time to know someone before you care about whether they’re safe.”
>Okay, maybe you had the wrong opinion about these humans
>That doesn’t change the fact that they’re freaks who are constantly molesting your horn, but you might have been wrong about their society being intrinsically violent
>That was in the books and on the ‘computers’
>This is what you’re seeing right now
>It appears to be genuine
>You’ll give them another chance
>But you’re not letting your guard down


Steam Chat
[BerberB X][NagromSreip X]
NagromSreip
Offline
---------------------
NagromSreip: www.youtube.com/watch?pb=W5tnGydr
PainedUlnar: That link doesn’t go anywhere
NagromSreip: oops
NagromSreip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa0Q5OwnVuQ
PainedUlnar: Oh goddammit Don
PainedUlnar: Why do you send me brogre stuff all the time?
PainedUlnar: And why does that mashup work so well?
NagromSreip: It’s not a mashup
NagromSreip: It’s a song with LAYERS
PainedUlnar: I’ve got to finish this paper. See you in the morning.
NagromSreip: K bye
PainedUlnar: Good morning.
PainedUlnar: I rolled over in bed, pulled out my laptop, and the first words out of my mouth are “what the shit is going on?”
PainedUlnar: So yeah, you’re going to have to build a ghillie suit and sneak dat shit by yourself if you want to go to school today.
PainedUlnar: But you probably don’t want to go.
PainedUlnar: Have fun trying not to get shot either way.

---------------------
|
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Last message received: Thursday, April 18, 2013 at 11:38 PM



Part 5

>Friday, April 19, 9:05am
>Day ‘Eliza is home, but it’s Friday’ on Earth
>You are Spike
>Eliza is home, but it’s Friday
>She ought to have left hours ago to teach at that school for humans
>You were surprised to find her when you woke up, because she’s usually gone long before that
>Twilight has been getting you up earlier and earlier for some reason, but never early enough to see Eliza before she leaves
>But here she is in the kitchen
>She made toast for you, even
>You could have made it yourself, but she insisted
>*ding*
>And now you have to wait for her to get the toast from the toaster
>You know what they say
>All toasters toast toast
>Those videos were pretty funny
>Sort of weird that Jake hasn’t offered to show you any more of them or shown you how to use the other computers
>Not that you mind, because you’re making progress on ‘Banjo Kazooie’ and he said that he has the next game in that series for when you finish
>Eliza gathers a plate, knife, jelly, and the extra crispy toasted bread
>She lays it all out on the table for you, and you start to spread the jelly on your toast
“Thank you.”
>“You’re more than welcome.”
“So, uh, why are you here?”
>“Pardon?”
“Why aren’t you at school? Is today a holiday too?”
>“No. The police said they want everyone to stay indoors.”
>That’s easy enough for you and Twilight
“Is something happening again?”
>“One of the people who bombed the marathon is on the loose.”


>You hear Jake say something like “a ship is blowing its horns” from inside his room
>You couldn’t hear him very well, but that’s what it sounded like
>Eliza walks off to his room
>She tells him to stay home today

>Works for us. We’re stuck in Banjo Kazooie.
>I’m telling you, we’re doing it wrong
>There has to be an easier way
>And he’s going to tell us what it is.
>We’re missing something
>He told us to pay attention, and there’s something we’re missing
>Worry later. Food now.
>Wait, we sent Pinkie another bag of those M&M candies, right?
>We did on Tuesday
>Oh, okay. I just had a little panic attack for a second.


>One and a half hours later, Jake is up
>No school for him means no candy for you
>But it does mean he can get up whenever he wants
>Which means he didn’t until it was 10 in the morning
>He’s just having breakfast now
>He said something about having to finish a paper last night, so you didn’t want to bother him about this then
>Fan blades all over the place, and no way past them
>At least no way you can see
>You’ve gotten every other gold puzzle piece on ‘Rusty Bucket Bay,’ but the one in the engine room of the ship is impossible to get
>The blades move too fast
>You can get past one or two fans before the next one knocks you off of the pipes and into a bottomless pit
>You’ve scoured the level for some way to slow the blades down
>There’s nothing
>Nothing you’ve found, at least
“Jake, are you done with breakfast yet?”
>“Give me a minute!”

>There’s no way we’re doing this right
>Nothing else in the game has been this hard
>We’ll wait for him. He probably knows what we’re doing wrong.
>I say we figure out what we’re doing wrong before he does
>He thinks we’re really good at this for a beginner
>This is going to be the first time we’ve needed help from him
>If we don’t ask him for help and do this on our own, he’ll still think we’re super good
>Okay, genius, how are we going to do that?
>We didn’t figure out where the other jiggies in ‘Clanker’s Cavern’ were
>It might have something to do with that


>But we’re talking about this level. It’s probably here.
>But there wasn’t anything here
>We just need to look harder.
>We’ve looked everywhere
>Well, I don’t feel like going all the way back there to check. We’re staying here.
>I’m telling you
>We’re missing something that’s not here

>You hear him putting away the dishes
>“So, what’s up?”

>Here he comes.

“I can’t figure this part out.”
>“Oh, how the mighty have fallen. So, where are you?”
“Rusty Bucket Bay.”
>Jake leans over your shoulder
>“Oh. This part? I thought it would be obvious.”
“Yeah… but it’s not. I can’t get past the fan blades without getting hit.”
>He doesn’t say anything
>You’ve made a mistake somewhere, and it’s a big one
>You turn to look towards him
>He’s already looking at you, and turning to him made immediate eye contact
>“You got the invincibility move, right?”
“Is that in this level?”
>“No.”

>Told you
>Shut up.

“Is it in the level with the big snowhuman? I never figured out what that ice key was for.”
>“We call those snowmen, and no. It’s in Clanker’s Cavern.”

>I told you
>Shut up.

“I couldn’t find a few jiggies there.”
>“Why didn’t you tell me about that sooner?”
“I thought I could do it myself, or I had to go back to it later, or something.”
>“Go back to Clanker’s Cavern and try to find them again. Let me know if you’re still having trouble.”


>Thirty minutes later, you’ve found nothing
>You’ve looked in the entry area, all the underwater spots, and on top of the pipes
>No progress made
>It has to be something obvious
>But you have no idea what
“Jake, I’ve got nothing.”
>“Be there in a sec.”
>He walks out of his room
>“Alright, I’m not sure how you didn’t find it. You knocked out the golden teeth on Clanker, right?”
“Yeah.”
>“Swim inside the holes they leave behind.”
“That’s what Clanker said to do, but that would mean he’d eat Banjo.”
>“It doesn’t do anything bad.”
“You sure?”
>“Sure as sure gets.”
“It’s just the sort of thing that seems like a trap, is all.”
>“You could also go in through his gills.”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought to try that. I’d only gone past them a few times and they didn’t look like they were open wide enough to fit inside.”
>“You have to wait until they swing all the way open. Try it.”
>You swim Banjo over to the gills
>Sure enough, it works
>It’s all gross and fleshy inside, but you’re in and you didn’t get Banjo hurt
>“See what I mean about paying attention to details?”
“I guess.”
>“That’s not even half of it. How many seconds did you get to complete the maze inside the pyramid in the Gobi Desert level?”
“I don’t remember.”
>“Well, you’re going to need to.”
“Wow, seriously?”
>“Super seriously. I’m going to go get you a pencil and some paper.”


>Jake walks off in the direction of the kitchen
>I had my doubts about this game.
>But it has been fun
>It has, but it’s asking us to do some dumb stuff now.
>Jake returns with the items he promised
>“Start by writing down all the stuff that Gruntilda’s sister told you.”
>Favorite magazine, pastime, yadda yadda yadda…

>This is some really stupid stuff.
>I don’t mind
>Hang on, I just thought of something

“So is the one about the timer for the maze the only one I need, or…”
>“You’re going to need to write down just about every one.”
“But I don’t think there’s a way to do some of those puzzles over again. Is there?”
>“There’s one way.”
>The next four words are words you didn’t want to hear
>“Start a new file.”

>Oh are you kidding me?!
>Okay, so maybe it is kind of dumb

“Are you serious?”
>“You could just go through the rest of the game and get to the quiz part without the answers so you’ll get really frustrated then, or you could start a new save where you write down all the answers and breeze through the quiz at the end. I’m not saying you need to. I’m just saying that I think you should.”
“So I have to do it all over again and write down everything?”
>“Just about.”
“Even the alligator game in Bubblegloop Swamp?”
>“You might be able to get away with skipping that one, but it would be safest if you didn’t.”
“Ugh…”
>“Sorry. I’m just saying what I think is the best thing for you to do at this point. You don't have to if you don't want to.”


>Are we doing this? I say we don’t. We can deal with the quiz when we get to it.
>Remember that time you had a whole bucket of strawberry ice cream in one go
>Yes.
>Remember how I said I’d never let you be the one who makes long term plans again
>Fine…

>You hit the pause button
>Save and quit
>Main menu
>New game
>“I’m really sorry about this.”
“Don’t be. I’m making my choice.”
>“I… well, okay.”

>This is some really, really, really stupid stuff the game is making us do.
>Sort of, but it’s for something good later
>I don’t want later.
>And that’s what gets us indigestion
>This isn’t fun anymore.
>It’d be less fun later if we didn’t do this

>“Spike.”
>Jake is kneeling down beside the couch
>“Don’t worry. It’s going to go a lot quicker now that you know where to go and what to do.”
“I guess… it’s annoying, though.”
>“I’m sure there are a few parts you’d like to replay.”
“The sled race was sort of fun.”
>“You’ll be back up to speed before you know it. You’re a thigh high pinball wizard. You've got this.”

>Did he just call us…?
>Yup
>Oh, we’re not leaving that unanswered.


“Who’re you calling thigh high?”
>He stands up to full height and looks around
>He doesn’t find what he’s looking for, so he locks eyes with you
>“It must be you. There’s nobody else in the room as short as you, thigh high.”
“Don’t you call me thigh high, cargo butt.”

>Hah! That’ll show him!
>Wait, are you actually mad at him or what
>What’s going on

>“Hey! Who are you calling cargo butt?”
>You take a look around
>Nobody else is here, so you stare him back in the eye
“There isn’t anyone else in the room who gives me a face full of the rear of his cargo pants every time he turns around. It must be you.”
>“Don’t you call me cargo butt, thigh high.”
“And don’t you call me thigh high, cargo butt.”

>He’s still looking us in the eye. I’m going to stare him down.
>Are you mad about this
>Sort of. I want to see how long he lasts.
>…
>Five seconds. He blinked.
>So did we
>We’re not breaking off.
>Okay, whatever
>I… wait, there’s a twitch on our lips.
>Uh oh, gotta keep that down.
>Stone faced. Stay stone faced.
>A snicker leaked out just there
>You’re losing it
>So is he. He almost smiled. I’ve got this.
>Stone faced.
>Stayyyyyy… oh, forget it. I can’t stay mad at this guy.


“Hahahah… ohh… nicknames?”
>You put out your left claw towards him and ball it into a fist
>He makes a fist with his right hand
>“Heh… yeah. Nicknames.”
>Bump

>I have no idea what just happened
>And that’s why you’ll always need me to stick around.

>“Really, though. You’ll be ready for the quiz in no time.”
“Thanks.”
>“I’m sure you know what to do, so I’m going to go make sure my professor got the paper I sent him. Call me if you forgot anything.”
“Will do.”
>He walks out of the living room and into his bedroom

>Okay, back to the game.
>Nice to have someone who's willing to look out for us like that, even though he's telling us to do something we don't want to.
>Blah blah blah, tutorial, blah blah blah…
>Just teach Kazooie how to walk already.
>Up the spiral hill thing, across the br*uuUrrrP*
>Into the stream below the bridge.
>No royal seal, no witnesses. We’re reading this.


Hi Twi!

Yeah, about that Pinkie promise. Overall, it’s being kept, but in a really strange way. Understanding why
was sort of complicated, and involved a bunch of dictionaries. AJ helped too, but that’s sort of obvious
because this is about honesty and not lying and being truthful and you get the idea. Really, why
wouldn’t I call in the Element of Honesty for this? Everything about it is so confusing! Now, the really
weird part is that he IS kind of lying. That’s dishonest, right? That’s what I thought, but I was wrong! He’s
being honest while not telling the truth! Everything about that is just so kooky! Finding something kooky
by my standards means it’s REALLY kooky, right? (It is.) Really, really kooky. Speaking of kooky, that
reminds me of cookies, which I’m baking, and they smell delicious because one batch is sugar cookies
and the other batch is chocolate chip, and soon I won’t have to make two batches to get that smell!
They should be ready by the time that you finish the last sentence of this letter which would be just
about… now.

Eating cookies and thinking of you,
Pinkie!

And no, I haven't met any humans before. I've got a list of some that I want to meet eventually, but we've
all got our little fantasies, right?


>*BuuuuRRp*
>This one has your name on the outside
>Also a few specks of dried chocolate


From: Pinkie Pie
To: Spike

Spike, THIS IS THE BEST CANDY EVER! This was too good to keep to myself, and the Cakes thought
the same when they had some. Awesome doesn’t even start to describe the taste. “Really Ultra Super
Awesome” is better, but I’m still working on how to describe it. Somepony with a bit of expertise in
candy was needed to help replicate this, so they got Bon Bon to come help while I went to Twilight’s
library to get some sciency stuff to help us sciencify the science out of these things. We’ve determined
that the candy is composed of sugar and chocolate, beakers break a lot easier than we expected, and
also that I’m about three times as weird as Lyra is. It’s not much, but PROGRESS!! Rainbow Dash said
she’d be willing to take personal letters and candy deliveries like this in the future, and maybe only eat a
little of the candy while she’s flying back from Canterlot, so don’t worry about any more of these getting
stole’d by big meanypants dragons. Laters!

Oh, and Rarity says hi. Or at least I think she was trying to say hi. “Hi” and “help” sound really similar
when the person saying them is tangled inside 15 mega XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXL size canvas lab coats.


>Wow, no wonder we haven’t heard from Rarity.
>Isn’t there someone else who could make lab coats
>She probably offered to make all of them herself. You know how she gets when she gives herself an obligation.
>True, true


>Five hours later, Eliza goes outside for the first time today
>They couldn’t find whoever it was that they were looking for, so she’s going out for a walk
>Meanwhile, you’re taking notes
>How many windows on buildings, how long you’re given to do things, everything everyone says
>Boring stuff
>And you’ve only just unlocked the third level
>This is going to take at least a day
>It’s probably going to take all weekend
>You’re starting to feel like you’re trying to replace Twilight
>She’s seemed sort of frazzled lately, but not much
>She told you not to worry about it
>It’s just that she keeps jumping between topics of study
>She’s a horrible liar
>That letter about being outside the “photonically observable universe” spooked her, but that was something she got yesterday
>She’s been jittery for at least a week
>Something’s up, but it’s not anything big enough for you to bother with yet
>You think she’s fine for now
>Or at least you hope she is
>It always seems to be some sort of snap instead of a drawn out spiral into crazy with her
>The snap is usually followed by a spiral into more crazy, but there hasn’t been a snap yet
>You think there hasn’t been a snap yet
>Hopefully it’s just stress
>You wonder what’s for dinner tonight



>Four hours after that, you’re in bed in the basement
>All the lights are out
>You’re waiting for your eyelids to feel too heavy to open
>That’s what Twilight wanted, and who are you to argue?
>It’s not like she was interrupting anything you’d want to stay up for
>You really could not have picked a worse time to get stuck in Banjo Kazooie
>Jake’s home all day 
>He’s not playing his videogames the all the time
>The weekend starts tomorrow, meaning there would be two more days before you’d maybe get a chance to ask Eliza for help
>So you’re doing this the hard way
>Also the honest way, but whatever
>You’re still cheating him out of candy
>But candy is delicious and he’d said he’d get you candy anyway
>You’re just getting more this way
>You’ll tell him eventually if he doesn’t figure it out
>You can hear Twilight coming into the basement
>The sudden sound of her hooves on the wooden steps and the news on the TV coming through the door behind her startles you into being just barely more awake
>You crack an eye open


>She’s walking around by the light of her horn
>It’s a little more flickery than usual
>You can hear her muttering something as she goes past the bed
>Something about how it only took four days for someone to disappoint her, and how she can’t believe that’s something people would cheer about
>Whatever
>You’re too tired to concern yourself with her problems right now
>She’s probably got it under control
>She clicks on the desk lamp and gets to work
>You turn over in the bed to face away from the light and close your eyes again
>You hear her cast a spell, but when isn’t she doing that?
>Nothing worth staying awake for
>Soon, you’re dreaming of a sea of jewels
>Crunchy, sweet, all for you, and you never get full no matter how many you eat
>Today was a very Spike day


Steam Chat
[BerberB X][NagromSreip X]
NagromSreip
Online
---------------------
PainedUlnar: But you probably don’t want to go.
PainedUlnar: Have fun trying not to get shot either way.
NagromSreip: Well this sure puts a damper on 4/20
PainedUlnar: This might cheer you up
PainedUlnar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3DzjrLNn7w
NagromSreip: Yeah, that’s got me feeling a bit better
PainedUlnar: Happy early Hitler n’ hippies day, you racist stoner bastard
NagromSreip: I already told you, it’s not racist if I hate every race equally
PainedUlnar: Yeah whatever
NagromSreip: HAHAHA OH WOW
NagromSreip: Are you watching CNN right now?
PainedUlnar: Can’t use the TV at the moment
PainedUlnar: What’s up?
NagromSreip: They’ve got live newscasts coming in from all over the city
NagromSreip: But none of them have any fucking idea what’s happening so they’re commenting on the most mundane things like they’re important and even making shit up as they go
NagromSreip: They said a place had an overwhelming smell of gun smoke, then a minute later a guy tweets that he’s right there and it doesn’t smell like smoke at all
NagromSreip: This is why I hate mainstream news outlets
NagromSreip: They’re trying to spin the news into being a blockbuster movie
PainedUlnar: Would you rather watch HBO or C-Span, given the choice?


NagromSreip: I think we already discussed this
NagromSreip: But yeah, reality is equal parts boring and convoluted, I wish they’d just admit that instead of trying to entertain me
NagromSreip: They’re succeeding in entirely the wrong way
NagromSreip: Except for that bit about how the older brother ran over the younger one
NagromSreip: That has a bit of tragic comedy to it
PainedUlnar: Spot your namesake yet?
NagromSreip: Still looking
NagromSreip: I go away for five seconds, and then I come back after I hear a fuckton of shooting outside
PainedUlnar: I just heard on the radio
PainedUlnar: “Watertwon is boring,” right?
PainedUlnar: *Watertown
NagromSreip: It figures that the news crews are going ‘hurr durr high power military style automatik assault machine gunz’ when I can hear that shit right now and I can say without a doubt in my mind that it’s semi auto at most
PainedUlnar: >Expecting newscasters to understand anything about guns
PainedUlnar: >2013
NagromSreip: They got him
PainedUlnar: Dead or alive? Either way, fuck yeah
NagromSreip: Alive
NagromSreip: And naked, for some reason
---------------------
Kinky. I hope he lives long enough to tell us why he did it.
---------------------
Last message received: Friday, April 19, 2013 at 8:51 PM



Part 6


>Thursday, April 25, 12:15pm
>Year 22 and ‘college finals are coming up’ on Earth
>You are Jake Addams
>Not only do you have no idea how to make a ‘net nanny’ program in Visual Basic, Professor Hanan said she wouldn’t accept it
>Go figure
>It wasn’t in the book
>So now what?
>She did just teach the class how to make applications with a timer function
>You could probably make a game with that, like clicking stuff before a timer runs out
>You feel like getting lunch more than thinking up a new application
>You’ve got a week to choose, anyway
>You’ll think of something
>There are probably better programs you could get if you bought one or asked Don to pirate one through the seven proxies that connect him to the undernet
>You’re losing ground in keeping her cut off from potential sources of pone
>She’s taken to watching the nightly news since the bombings last week
>Not much you can do about that
>She’s sticking to the same few channels and only watching during prime time, so you should be okay for now
>Crossing the quad from the computer lab, you realize that it’s actually a moderately nice day out


>Still sort of chilly, but 65 Fahrenheit isn’t exactly uncomfortable
>You’re wearing a button down shirt that you got for two dollars at the clothing exchange last Sunday over your polo shirt, which is more than enough
>No really extremely good deals there, but you got some new over shirts and a retired BDU pattern camouflage coat
>It still has the previous owner’s name tag under the size label
>Something to wear when next autumn comes around that might freak out Twilight, despite being really practical and a steal of a price
>At least you can make an argument that nothing had to die to make this
>Probably a good idea to keep that in the closet for a while too
>Nice day or not, you’re not keen on doing outdoorsy stuff just because
>So you don’t linger in the quad and head straight for the student center
>What’s the cafeteria got today…
>Tacos
>Nah, you don’t feel like having Mexican food again so soon
>You grab an individual-size cheese pizza and pay the cashier, then head for the lounge across the hallway
>There are all the usual suspects, but you only know a few of them in passing
>You recognize them all, but most of them are strangers or acquaintances at most


>There’s the “always playing ‘Magic: The Gathering’” group taking up a table in the middle of the room
>There’s the hyperactive STEM program guy who has the most Middle Eastern name you’ve ever heard playing ping pong with that guy who brought in his Wii last year
>There are a few people sitting around the edges of the room with laptops, probably none of them doing any actual work on them
>One of them’s wearing a camouflage smock and has the second most Middle Eastern name and definitely the first most North African name in the room
>You head over to him
>“Jakob, mein herr! How goes it?”
>This is Berber, the mousy Morroccan WW2 military equipment enthusiast and brony to the point that he watched G1 just for contrast
>It’s not hard to tell which side of WW2 he’s the most interested in
“Pretty good. How’s the campaign?”
>“I’ve moved on to the Africa missions. Progress is slow. Mostly because this game is really old and its menus are clunky.”
>You sit down next to him
“There’s probably a reason I hadn’t heard of ‘Combat Mission’ until you started playing it.”
>“I can’t see why. It’s got a great editor and I’ve downloaded something like a few hundred user made scenarios so far.”
“I’m not saying it’s bad or anything. It’s sort of hard to judge without having tried it. I’m just saying that it’s obscure.”


>“It’s really versatile, though. Super easy to mod. Even I could make a texture pack for it.”
“You’re really proud of that, huh?”
>“It’s sort of disappointing that I only get to see part of it most of the time. The flag changes are in every mission, but even the missions that are supposed to have Herman Goering’s division don’t actually use the skin for his division. It’s in the files, but the mission makers just use the default Wehrmacht force instead of the specific division, so SS-Fallschirm-Panzerkorps ‘Twilight Sparkle’ never sees any action in the war against the Changelings. I worked so hard putting her name on the cuff titles…”
>His interests… intersect in a unique way
>Which is to say that he has an unwritten fanfic in his head about how a bunker full of SS soldiers went into cryo sleep or something and woke up when the Elements of Harmony were used in the pilot episode of FiM, so now there are Nazis running around Equestria instructing the Royal Guard in the use of Nazi vehicles and weapons while getting into hijinks that coincide with the other episodes
>And he’s adamant that they’re ashamed of the ‘slaughter the non-Aryan swine’ part of their history
>But hey, there have been weirder crossovers, and you’ve known him since long before he became a brony or Nazi-phile
>He’s always been this weird
>Not that you care, because he’s a good friend


“Yeah, I know that feeling. I had a great idea for a program to make for my Comp Sci final that just got shot down. It was probably too ambitious, anyway. I’m probably going to make a speed test game or something. Speaking of patterns, is that a new coat?”
>He saves his game and starts to shut down his laptop
>“Yup. I finally switched from that Pea Dot reversible that I had to keep flipping between winter and spring camo.”
“What’s this one?”
>“I picked up this Oak Leaf B pattern smock yesterday. It even came with a matching zeltbahn.”
>Zeltbahn?
“Zeltbahn?”
>“Zeltbahn.”
“What the hell is a zeltbahn?”
>“Imagine Legos, but made of cloth.”
“That doesn’t sound like it would work very well.”
>“Not like actual Legos! I mean like they’re big pieces of camouflaged cloth that are modular and can be used for just about anything. It’s the sort of thing you’d see on an infomercial: ‘Zeltbahn! Use it as a blanket! Use it as a poncho! Use it to carry your gear! Combine it with your friends’ zeltbahns! Call now to order, and we’ll give you two for the price of one!’”
“You’re no Billy Mays. It does sound kind of interesting, though.”
>“Hold on a sec, I'll show it to you.”


>He stows his laptop and retrieves a large, rolled piece of cloth from his bag, unrolling it for you to see
>“This is the zeltbahn I got. I’ve seen diagrams of how to make a huge tent using nothing but zeltbahns, which lead me to believe that the Axis had the Allies outpaced in terms of in-the-field slumber party technology.”
“Isn’t an outdoor slumber party just camping?”
>“You need to use a dedicated tent for your tent for it to be considered camping. Tying a bunch of blankets together is something you do at a slumber party, so it’s a slumber party.”
>He rolls up the zeltbahn and puts it back
I should go to the math lab. I have an appointment to keep with my tutor.”
“How long is it going to take?”
>“Shouldn’t be more than half an hour.”
“You want me to stick around and give you a ride home?”
>“I could just walk, but if you’re offering, then sure. Thanks!”
“No problem.”
>He gets up and leaves
>You take this opportunity to try to three-star some levels in Angry Birds
>And you actually get a couple that you were stuck on before Berber returns
>It took something closer to 40 minutes, but you didn’t want to leave him hanging
>You catch the shuttle bus to lot G and walk to your car with him


>You’re both greeted with news of a garment factory collapse in Bangladesh that killed a few hundred people as soon as you put your key in the ignition
>“Wow, that’s a lot of dead.”
“Think it will change the topic of the news?”
>You pull out of the parking lot and onto the road
>“For a day or two, maybe. Then it’s going straight back to the token attempt at immigration reform the bombing sparked.”
“Probably. So, how about that manhunt they had going?”
>“Kind of weird that they had so many police officers doing what was essentially martial law. What were they hoping to accomplish with that?”
“I dunno. I guess they just wanted to make it look like they were doing something.”
>“Yeah, but what they did do was kind of Orwellian. I don’t like it.”
>That deserves a verbal poke in the ribs
“I can agree that it was excessive, but coming from a Nazi fanboy…”
>“Oh hush, I'm not a fanboy! I don’t like everything about them, especially what they did. I just think their uniforms and stuff look cool. Besides, I look sorta Arab and my dad’s a Moroccan immigrant. You know I get freaked out every time something like this happens.”
“I guess you have a point there. They did search the wrong guy’s apartment because he was from Saudi Arabia.”
>“The weeks after 9/11 were terrible for my dad.”
“I can imagine.”


>You drive across the train tracks
>“I just don’t like what the governor and investigators did in response to this. First they make it look like they’re doing something by overreacting, then they have everyone who took video or pictures of the event send their stuff in to be analyzed, then they admit that they can’t do their own job and ask the ever stoic and reliable denizens of the ‘net to do it for them.”
“Yeah, it did sort of seem like they were flailing and hoping that something would work. Why else would they call the bombs the Tsarnayevs used ‘WMDs?’”
>“I’m more uncomfortable with how they just got the footage from everyone. I mean, being raised Muslim doesn’t help with that because I’m probably on five government watchlists just for existing, but whatever happened to general privacy in normal situations? Why does everything need to be recorded?”
“Lucky me. All I have to worry about is which corporations are tracking my internet history and debit card purchases.”
>“I wouldn’t say we’re in the same boat. Maybe the same harbor, but definitely not the same boat.”
“I’m just saying that I empathize. I sort of liked the online manhunt they had going, though. That was interesting.”
>“Why? What’s there to like?”
“I hadn’t heard of the crowdsourced manhunt until a few days ago. Granted, it could have been a test of the general citizenry’s loyalty to the state before they REX 84 our asses, but I wish I’d heard of it when I could have participated.”
>“Okay, but why?”


“There’s an idea for a social situation I’ve had kicking around for a little while now. It’d be like ‘Hashtag: Occupy’ meets ‘Big Brother Is Watching You,’ but instead of the police monitoring the people, everyone is monitoring everyone in an anarchist security state.”
>He shoots you a look that you can’t really describe
>Your eyes are on the road, so you can’t look to get a better idea of his expression right now
>“…Anarchist security state… you have filled my mind with fuck.”
“The best part is that it’s sort of happening already. China’s been doing it for years.”
>“Now you’ve filled my mind with fuck and made the conversation relevant to that meme. Just because they call themselves a ‘People’s Republic’ doesn’t mean that everyone there counts as ‘the people.’”
“No, no, I don’t mean their formal security apparatus. What I mean is that they’ve got so many people connected to the internet that if someone does something worthy of public condemnation and it gets enough attention, an online lynch mob spontaneously fucks their life. There was a woman who stomped a kitten to death for a snuff porn video. ‘Was.’ She can’t get a job anywhere that has people who know who she is now, and that’s most of mainland China.”
>“Blacklisted by an eighth of the human race?”
“Mmhm.”


>“Damn.”
“It’s beautiful and horrifying all at the same time. I love it. I never put anything on the internet without first thinking ‘what will people think of this’ because of it.”
>“What if they get the wrong person? Mobs aren’t that smart and you can’t change a group’s opinion easily.”
“That’s the only bit I would fix. It needs to be on an individual basis, accountable, and respect basic privacy.”
>“I really don’t get this.”
“Like one week you’re supposed to watch one guy, then the next week you watch another, and everyone else does the same to you unless you’re in a bathroom or something. If you catch someone doing something bad, you report it and turn in evidence to a group responsible for more thorough investigation. As long as there aren’t exceptions to who’s being watched and the investigation group has its members rotated out occasionally, I think it could work.”
>“Okay, now I sort of get it, but I think it’s really weird. How can everyone trust everyone?”
“Everyone watching EVERYONE, man. Trust is enforced because there’s always a witness. If someone’s caught abusing the system or refusing to report crimes, that’d be punishable too, right? Someone would see it and report it.”


>“I still think it’s really weird.”
“Does your phone have a camera and internet access?”
>“Yes.”
“You and millions of others are all in the system already. It’s totally normal. It just needs to be organized and have a few kinks worked out before it’s exactly how I imagined it.”
>“…my brain has reached its absolute capacity for fuck. It can’t be any more full of fuck than it is now.”
“I noticed. We pulled up to your house two minutes ago.”
>“I noticed too. I just couldn’t stop listening to that twisted genius you just unleashed.”
“See you on Tuesday?”
>“Schedule permitting. I’ll be in the lounge around noon.”
>He gets out of the passenger seat and grabs his bag
>“Jake, you scary.”
“So I’ve heard.”
>“Never let anyone take that from you.”
>He closes the passenger side door and heads inside
>You wait to see him open the door, then drive to the highway
>It’s midday and the traffic is light
>You get home quickly and pull in to the driveway
>You go inside, say hello to dad, and check if Twilight needs anything
>She doesn’t
>She’s still bugging you to make that list you said you’d give her
>It’ll be ready eventually
>You just don’t want to give it to her before it’s done
>You set down your backpack in your room and head for the living room


>Spike’s in ‘Click Clock Woods,’ so either he’s finally done taking notes or he’s given up on that
“How’s the game, thigh high?”
>“I’m all caught up, cargo butt!”
>That answers that
>“…And it only took three days longer than I was expecting it to.”
“Nice work. How many pages of notes did you end up taking?”
>“Fourteen double sided pages. And counting. This is the last level before the quiz, right?”
“Yep. Mind if I see those notes?”
>“Here. They’re right on the couch over…”
>He starts rooting through the massive pile of stuff you still haven’t cleaned off of the couch
>“…somewhere in here. Why does nobody clean this up?”
“Nobody’s ever felt strongly enough about it to want to clean it up, I guess.”
>“I know that feeling. Here they are.”
>He hands you the pages
>You leaf through them in silence as he jumps Banjo around an incomplete treehouse
>Wow, he was thorough
>He just about wrote a strategy guide
“Color me impressed. I think you actually might have done more work than you needed to.”
>“Is it enough to get me through that quiz?”
“More than enough.”


>“And Twilight says I never apply myself to anything. Nope! The truth is that there’s usually nothing I want to apply myself to.”
>“You apply yourself to helping me whenever I actually have something for you to do.”
>There is no way hooves are naturally that quiet
>She’s out of the basement and right behind you, and you didn’t notice until she spoke
>You jumped slightly when you heard her, but Spike starts talking to her like this is totally normal
>“Well, there’s not exactly a library for me to sort here.”
>“I know. I don’t like leaving you idle like this, Spike.”
>“I don’t mind.”
>“I can tell. Spike, Jake, I’d like to speak with both of you separately, please.”
>Spike pauses the game and turns towards you
>“You want to go first, or should I?”
“I’ll go.”
>“I gotta find a way to pay you back for all of this.”
“It’s nothing.”
>You hand the papers back to Spike and turn around
>Twilight starts leading the way to the basement
>You take a few steps, then get an idea
“Actually, if the two of you are going to be here for the long term, we might as well have you doing some household chores to pull your weight. Spike, do you mind doing dishes?”
>“I’ve got waterproof scales and I can’t be hurt by scalding water.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. We’ll get a stepladder or something so you can reach the sink.”
>“Righty-o.”


>You continue down into the basement
>Twilight motions towards a chair in her workspace 
>You sit down and she takes a seat for herself
>“Just a few quick questions. First, what’s your attitude towards death?”
>That’s a loaded question
“Wow, um… I don’t know. It’s bad, I guess. People shouldn’t die unless they deserve to.”
>“Right.”
“Sorry. You just caught me off guard, that was all.”
>“I should be the one apologizing. There’s not really any way to ask that question that’s not blunt. I’ve already asked your parents and I was itching to get your thoughts.”
“No offence taken.”
>“Don’t worry, the next questions aren’t as uncomfortable. I just wanted to get that one out of the way. My main questions are just to get some definitions to terms I’ve heard.”
“Go ahead.”


>“I forgot to ask what the Doomsday Clock was the last time that you mentioned it. What exactly is it?”
“It’s a metaphor for how close the world is to nuclear war. A bunch of political scientists came up with it. There’s a panel that’s been moving the minute hand back and forth to reflect world events since the beginning of the Cold War. Basically, how close it is to midnight is how close we are to a full nuclear exchange. A half hour to midnight is absolute peace and disarmament, one minute to midnight is if nuclear war is all but guaranteed to happen tomorrow. It’s been hovering around five or six minutes for about a decade now.”
>“Why are you so familiar with war, anyway? You’re not a soldier, are you?”
“Nope. I’d probably be deferred on the physical trial if I signed up. I’ve just studied that subject a bunch.”
>“You wouldn’t happen to have any books on exactly how humans fight, would you?”
“I don’t think so. I just browse the internet for that sort of thing. I first heard of the Doomsday Clock in Frank Miller’s ‘Watchmen’ graphic novel, though. I might borrow that from a friend for the media collection I’ve been trying to get together for you.”
>“Still waiting on that list, by the way.”
“I’m working on it.”


>“Just like you’re working on that computer. So, what is this nine eleven event that I’ve been hearing about recently? Something to do with the death of an ambassador, correct?”
“September eleventh is the date of the event. 9/11/2012 was the one you’re thinking of. Some big protest in Libya turned violent or some terrorists used it as an opportunity to attack the embassy, or something. It’s not really clear. The real 9/11 is the one that happened in 2001.”
>“And what happened then?”
“Wasn’t that in the encyclopedia or textbook?”
>“Neither of them covers history past the dot com bubble.”
“Oh. Well, 9/11 was an attack staged by the Al-Qaeda terrorist group that involved the hijacking of four passenger jets in the United States. One of the jets was crashed into a field during a struggle between the passengers and hijackers, but two of them destroyed the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the other crashed into the side of the Pentagon.”
>“You’re talking about the pentagonal building that houses this country’s military commanders, I assume?”
“Yes. The attacks killed about three thousand people, including the attackers. That’s the official story, at least. There are a lot of critics of that point to flaws in that story and manipulation of the footage of the event. They’ve found some evidence, but they never made a convincing case because they’re a relatively small, fringe group that’s very academically unsound.”


>“Thank you. That will be all.”
>You get up
>Hang on a second, she said she didn't need anything just a minute ago
>Why didn't she ask then?
“Didn’t you say there wasn’t anything you needed just a moment ago?”
>“Oh! I was, I mean, I just remembered a second ago.”
>Loaded questions and weak excuses
>She’s hiding something
“Is something wrong?”
>Now she’s off guard
>“I’m fine. Really.”
“Look, if something’s making you uncomfortable and we can take care of it, we will. You’re our guest, and we’ll take care of you as long as you’re not giving us reasons not to take care of you.”
>“I… no, I’m fine.”
“If you had to stop and think about it, I doubt you are.”
>“…”
>You’re on to something
>She seems lost in thought for a moment
>Keep her comfortable, but don’t be overbearing
“You don’t have to tell anyone if you don’t want to. It’s just that you seem tense for some reason.”
>“…I’d rather not talk with you about it. Could you get Spike, please?”
“Okay. I didn’t mean to intrude.”
>She shuddered just barely enough to be noticeable when you said “intrude”
>You’re not sure what it is about that word that’s upsetting her, but you’re only going to make her more upset if you prod now
>“I appreciate the thought, but this is sort of personal.”
“I’ll go get Spike.”
>“Thank you.”
>Well, that accomplished nothing
>You head upstairs and tell Spike that he’s wanted downstairs, then head for your room


>You pop open your laptop and start fiddling around with the timer function in VB
>Scripting is boring
>You’ll save this for later
>You decide to check your YouTube subscriptions instead
>Let’s see
>Professional YouTuber and abuser of glitches in the video games of the ‘Skate’ series HELIX SNAKE is doing all sorts of cruel impossibilities to his character through the magic of ragdoll physics
>The Game Grumps are playing games and shouting a bunch
>Spike’s in the doorway
>That was quick
>“Dude. Dude, you won’t believe this.”
“What’s up?”
>“Twilight Sparkle thinks you have no life.”
>That’s not something you find hard to believe at all
>Shit, you believed it already
“I’m not surprised.”
>“You’re not?”
“I spend most of my free time indoors and I haven’t gone out to do anything with my friends in weeks. I’m just glad that she and I seem to share an opinion for once.”
>“No, not like that. I mean that you, your parents, and every human has no life.”
“She really thinks that?”
>“That’s what she just said to me.”
>“And it’s something that I just asked you not to go blabbering about. This is serious!”
>Twilight’s at the top of the stairs just behind him, from the sound of it
>You can’t see from your spot on the bed, but Spike can see her over his shoulder


>“Twilight, this is something he needs to know. All of them need to know this.”
>“Why? What do they get from knowing this?”
>Now Spike turns all the way towards her
>“They’ve been going out of their way for us for months now to give us a place to stay and things to do, but it’s not for them. It’s for you.”
>“I’m thankful, but-”
>“Twilight, listen to me. You wouldn’t feel any better if you kept this to yourself.”
>“…Okay, I’ll tell him, but no letters about this. I don’t know what the scientists would think if I told them.”
>Twilight walks into view
>“I should explain. I’ve discovered that all humans, or at least the ones I’ve managed to see, have no lives.”
“You are making a sweeping generalization that I assure you is quite wrong. I just don’t feel like putting the effort into making more friends.”
>“I don’t mean social lives. I mean homeostasis. It’s a universally accepted causation in medicine that having magic within the body is essential to life, and anything that has no magic is dead or wasn’t ever alive. The less magic something has, the less alive it is. I was so weak when you first saw me because I’d run through almost all of my magic. Every living thing that I’ve been able to observe here seems to have normal levels of magic. Humans, though… humans have absolutely no magic within their bodies. You’re not supposed to be able to live.”
>Wat


“Hold on, how are you so sure of this?”
>“The spell that lets me see magical particles can be used to estimate how alive something is by the concentration of magic inside its body. The first time I saw a human through it, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Humans don’t have zero magic. They somehow have less than zero magic. It’s so little that I can actually see the void of a human body through solid objects.”
>“Basically, she’s saying you’re a zombie. How cool is that?”
>Spike, wat
“What?”
>“You know, zombies? Dead guys who walk around like ‘URRRRGH BRAINS’ and eat brains?”
“I know what a zombie is. Twilight, before you ask, I don’t eat brains. Just…what? I don’t understand. How am I dead if I still have a pulse?”
>“I dunno, but I think it’s cool! I knew they had to be real…”
>“I don’t think it’s ‘cool.’ I think it’s disturbing. We’re in the presence of things that SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE. Every living thing is supposed to have at least some magic. They’re going against a universally accepted causation of biology and harmony!”
>“Twilight, I’ve said this a million times, but you take harmony way too seriously.”
>“And I’ve asked you 37,100 times, rounded to the nearest hundred and not counting this one, why you don’t take it seriously enough.”


>You’re not sure what it’s about, but this looks like the start of an argument
>They’ve spent enough time apart
>The last thing they need is to start fighting
“Twilight, I’m sorry about not being something that fits your definition of possible, but you can do magic, if you haven’t noticed. As far as I knew, that was impossible.”
>Good, they seem to see the reason in that
>AND they’re not going to argue because you changed the subject back
>Twilight’s still uncomfortable, though
>“I guess impossible did go out the window a while ago, didn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
>“I… I’m sorry for not telling you.”
“I’m fine with it. I’ve probably always been this way.”
>“Just, uh, please don’t touch me unless I tell you to. You know, since you're...um...dead.”
“Actually, you said that you could see us through walls and stuff, right?”
>“Yes.”
“Could you please not do that while we’re using the bathroom or naked or anything?”
>“If I wanted to study human anatomy, I’d just look in the encyclopedia. Seeing a live specimen is nowhere close to the top of my list of priorities, thank you.”



Part 7


>Day 4 +2 months + 2 weeks
>You are Twilight Sparkle
>You’re not wrong
>You just made a mistake because you overreacted
>It’s different
>Either way, you’ve done something you regret
>That’s not the worst part, though
>You can’t undo what you’ve done
>Not meaning that you can’t make it so you never cast the ‘shared eye’ spell in the first place
>You actually can’t because you wasted your one use of that time travel spell
>But that’s not the point
>You can’t remove the enchantment from Jake
>Try as you might, you can’t get it out of him
>What, does he WANT you to watch him?
>He said something about that on Thursday
>It was strange, possibly even by human standards if his companion’s reaction is a measure of that
>But that doesn’t make sense
>It’s not fair by his standards
>He should be subconsciously blocking you all the time, if that’s how it works
>You’re not sure how it works, but he’s not watching you back
>Right?


>You’ve got absolutely zero solid evidence of telepathy (still a possibility), but he’s letting you watch him regardless
>Good news there
>They seem not to know that they’re the ones influencing how you’re able to use your magic, meaning you can start your experiments without much fear of being discovered
>The bad news is that they’ll probably figure it out through circumstantial evidence if you’re here long enough, and you can’t expand this little experiment to Eliza without compromising your morals further
>You can’t get rid of it
>You might as well take advantage of it
>If he didn’t want you to, he wouldn’t let you
>Right?
>You’re stuck with what doesn’t seem to be a completely average specimen, but you’re not about to get a new one
>That’s the problem with a small sample size; you can’t count on it giving information that applies to the larger group
>The larger group isn’t much better, from what you can tell
>You’ve pretty much given up on watching Jake at home, so it’s not as bad from a moral standpoint
>There’s nothing you haven’t already seen him do that you couldn’t have seen him do in person
>Save for whatever is causing him to block your access to his senses
>You’ve confirmed that one of the conditions for when he does that is whenever he’s bathing, using a toilet, or otherwise not fully clothed


>Every human you’ve met seems to be embarrassed to be seen undressed
>Again, there’s the issue of sample size, but you can’t ask Jake to go around asking people to strip their clothes off so you can document their behavior
>That could be ridiculously awkward and might tip him off to your spectatorship of his daily life
>You don’t dislike him enough to want to make him do that, and you’re not sure how you’d do that anyway
>It’s not necessarily him that you dislike
>Well, sort of
>He’s helpful, but he's still a freak of nature for lacking the basest of energies
>And it’s just your luck that Spike would tell Jake about that immediately after you tell him 
>They’re too close now
>It’s a good thing you decided to test Spike’s loyalty with a secret that’s relatively harmless, so long as it never reaches Canterlot
>The humans probably won’t be able to interpret it because they know little to nothing about the true workings of magic, and Spike is probably too distracted to care
>What you do dislike about Jake is what he stands for and how he doesn’t seem to care about death
>You think you’re finally starting to figure that out


>Humans don’t care about CERTAIN things dying, but they care about some others
>Which things and how many different types of things varies for each individual
>Like how the crowds on the ‘television’ cheered about how one of the ‘Tsarnayev’ brothers who carried out last week’s bombing had accidentally crushed his accomplice with a ‘car’ while resisting arrest, but mentioning the ‘Holocaust’ can start the waterworks
>That’s not funny at all
>That’s a horrible way to die!
>Even if they “deserve it!”
>Jon and Eliza thought it was slightly funny, too
>Even less appropriately, there were advertisements for ‘cars’ during the news broadcast
>You also overheard Jon at dinner speaking quite passionately about killing rabbits because they were eating from the family garden and how he was considering using their meat for a soup
>Rather, you heard it through Jake because the weather was good enough for them to want to eat outdoors
>You’re going to have to wait to react to this until you hear it directly
>Until then, you'll pretend nothing happened
>Disgusting
>And to think that you were beginning to like him


>Saturday, April 27, 7:18pm, living room of Evan’s house
>Jake is in a room with two other humans, one slightly taller than him with a similar hair color and skin color, the other slightly taller than the former with black hair and a slightly tanner skin color
>Former named Evan, latter named Danilo
>Your understanding of the situation is that Evan invited two of his friends to a birthday celebration with some of his family
>They went to a restaurant that served fish and other sea creatures as its primary dishes
>The group returned to Evan’s house not long ago, and they are currently in the living room of the house
>There is a ‘television’ and a large couch in the room, similar to Addams’ residence’s living room
>The ‘television’ itself is large and flat, unlike the Addams’ cubic ‘television’
>You could comfortably sleep on a mattress of similar dimensions
>Possibly outdated, un-miniaturized ‘television’ technology or intentionally large for use in the ‘home theater’ that the humans discussed
>They’ve been discussing which movie to view
>They can’t seem to come to consensus, despite the limited options


>Evan reiterates his opinion on the matter for the seventh time
>“I’d really like to watch ‘Office Space’ for the first time tonight, but I also haven’t seen ‘Leon: The Professional’ yet.”
>Jake and Danilo reiterate theirs
>“I’ve heard a lot about ‘Office Space’ without having watched it, but I’ve been meaning to watch ‘Leon.’ We could watch both.”
>“I’ve already seen ‘Office Space,’ so I’d like to see ‘Leon.’”
>Evan and Dan go back and forth over their preferences AGAIN
>“I have ‘Point Break’ in the mail. I think it would be better if we waited until that came so we could have one comedy movie night and one action movie night, but whatever you guys want is fine.”
>“I want to watch ‘Leon.’ Comedies aren’t as good the second time around, you know?”
>“I guess we could watch ‘Leon’ and save ‘Point Br-’ ‘Office Space’ for later.”
>Jake takes issue with this
>“Evan, it’s your birthday. Why are you letting us choose for you?”
>“You’re guests. I need to do what you want.”
>“But this is YOUR birthday.”
>“I want to be a good host.”
>“You’re doing okay at that, and thanks for the lobster dinner, by the way,”
>“It’s nothing. Just consider it one of the perks of my dad being a professional sports lawyer.”
>“but why is it taking so long for us to pick a movie? We’ve been discussing this since we left Legal Seafoods, and that’s three towns over! Danilo, back me up here!”


>One of the perks of choosing the ‘screen’ spell over the ‘goggles’ spell for viewing Jake’s activities is that it didn’t appear to you as if you were eating the lobster
>You’re uncomfortable watching meat being eaten, and you’re less comfortable watching it be eaten sloppily
>You’d be hard pressed to contain your own dinner if you had to watch Jake eat his entirely from his perspective
>Jake admitted several times that he had no idea how to remove the lobster’s shell
>He ended up forgoing utensils in his desperation
>It wasn’t pretty
>“I wouldn’t mind seeing ‘Office Space’ again.”
>“See? We can watch ‘Office Space.’”
>“Yeah, but Dan said he wanted to see ‘Leon,’ too.”
>“I did, but I’m not stopping anyone from watching ‘Office Space.’”
>“Now I don’t know which to pick.”
>“Oh for… Evan, stay right there. I’m going to the kitchen for a sec.”
>Jake proceeds to the kitchen and retrieves a bottle labeled ‘Corona’ from a six pack container on the counter
>Hopefully that’s just a brand name for something
>These humans and their brand names
>Why can't they just call things what they actually are?
>Humans probably would be crazy enough to try to bottle their sun’s atmosphere, but not crazy enough to sell it to eachother in bottles
>They always draw a line somewhere, but never soon enough for you


>He returns to the living room and pulls a small metal object from his pants pocket, unfolding it as he walks
>“Alright, if you can’t decide, I’m going to help you decide.”
>Jake levers the cap off of the bottle
>“You can decide now, or drink this beer and then decide.”
>Contents of bottle confirmed to be alcohol
>Jake places the bottle on a coffee table near Evan
>“It’s up to you. Happy 21st.”
>“I already decided.”
>“And?”
>“We settled for ‘Office Space’ while you were getting the drink because we figured out we’d be here ‘til one in the morning if we watched both.”
>“Oh. Well, you’ve still got to have this beer…you know, because it’s open now.”
>“But I don’t want it. That gin and cola at dinner tasted horrible.”
>“Yeah…but this is a beer.”
>“It’s a Corona. I hear those taste bad too.”
>“Fuck, what are we going to do with this beer? I had some earlier and I can’t have more because I need to give Dan a ride home, your parents are out shopping, your brother’s on his deployment, and both your sister and Dan are underage.”
>“Isn’t not thinking things through my thing?”
>“Oh, shut up, you.”
>“I will if you quit stealing my act.”
>“What the hell are we going to do with this beer?”
>Danilo speaks up
>“Pass it here.”
>“Dan, you’re 19.”
>“My family lets me drink while I’m in the Dominican Republic and it’s not going to hurt anyone. Pass it here and let’s start the movie.”
>“Well, if it solves the problem…”
>It does solve the problem
>Illegally, if you understand correctly


>This is the problem you found in Jake’s plan for surveillance
>What happens to the people who report crimes like this all the time?
>Either tattletales will become heroes of society, or the system will be enforcing a thankless routine
>Once it becomes a number instead of individual cases, do the people who have prevented the most crime become heroes, even if all they’re preventing is something like spitting on the ground?
>Humans don’t seem to do good things for the purpose of doing good
>The nations aren’t living in peace simply for the sake of living in peace
>Politicians haven’t resolved political issues for the sake of having a functioning government
>Businesses don’t hire workers for the sake of preventing unemployment
>Jake said the reason for news being broadcast is for people to hear about it and act on it
>Listening to the radio, you doubt that’s true
>Why do so few of them do anything to improve their situation?
>Do they need a reward?
>Some number to keep pushing upwards so they can feel purpose?
>Would ponies or the other species do the same in this situation?
>Again, this could be totally irrelevant
>There’s a likely possibility that this is just a dream


>If humans are extinct or never existed in the first place, studying the differences between Equestrian and Earth society is pointless and you should just focus on the hard sciences
>But you already went through a significant portion of that
>The most you can do to entertain yourself is watch the ‘television’ after Spike goes to bed, and even that’s technically studying
>You’ve left yourself without much in the way of practical foreign subjects to study
>You could finally get the details on ‘religions,’ but you’d like to figure out how they influenced human history and society before you learn more about them
>You’re already doing more than one thing at a time
>Jake’s still not gotten that list together after two and a half weeks
>This could be your first opportunity to watch a human-made movie
>You could use some number to keep adding to
>Maybe you should keep a running tally of how many reports you send or how long it is between breakdowns of the ‘Canterlot Computer’
>It keeps getting ‘short circuited’
>No one has figured out why
>It’s not heat or moisture, the power supply is stable enough, and the design is sound when it works
>There’s got to be something that’s


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKlDBi0cyIA
(YouTube link: Part of the opening credits of ‘Office Space.’ If you’ve never seen a white ‘n nerdy IT guy singing along with 1990s gangsta rap about “lay[ing] shots nonstop until they see [someone’s] monkey ass drop,” this is going to be a very new experience to you.)

>ALKSFJD
>Well that snapped you back to reality
>If this is reality
>You should probably just try to enjoy the movie
>“Yo Jake.”
>Great, birthday boy is trying to start up a conversation
>With any luck, they’ll have the sense to stop before the opening credits end
>“What’s up?”
>“You ever get around to watching Cowboy Bebop like I wanted you to?”
>“I’ve been meaning to get around to that. I still haven’t.”
>“What about-”
>“Haven’t watched Azumanga Daioh either.”
>“Oh.”
>“I think I might get around to it this summer. Actually, do you have any suggestions for other movies and stuff? I’m thinking of getting through some of my backlog and rewatching a few of the classics. Maybe some books and music too.”
>Oh good, he’s actually doing work on this
>“Personal favorites first, I’d say Goldeneye, Blade Runner, The Matrix, anything and everything by Kubrick… have you seen the Man With No Name trilogy?”
>“It was a free rental on YouTube a couple of years ago, but I missed that. I’ve been meaning to watch it ever since.”
>“Definitely that, then. And get around to watching those animes. I think you owe me a bit for having me watch ha-”
>…
>Ugh, it’s cut out again


>You can only hope this won’t get in the way of watching the movie
>Who knows how long this could last?
>Ten seconds pass
>Thirty seconds
>One minute
>“-could see why people would like it, but it never hooked me.”
>“Probably didn’t help that I s-”
>Huh, it faded back in for a moment
>It hasn’t done that before
>Not enough for you to get the context of what was being said, but it’s a first
>Something about Evan seeing the appeal of something, but not being attracted to it himself
>If Jake’s hiding something specific from you, it’s something humans like
>That’s a uselessly ambiguous clue if you ever heard one
>This might not even be worth pursuing
>Though why it let up for that brief moment is an exciting development
>As far as you could tell, human ‘anti-magic’ (title is a work in progress, update if better idea found) was infallible
>Perhaps there’s some weakness in this ability that you can exploit?


>You’re going to have to try and figure that out if you want to be unhindered in your magic
>Speaking of which, it’s working again
>You’d put your head down to take some notes on the history of India and the lost civilization of ‘Harappa’ after you’d skipped forwards to study cultures that resemble those from Equestrian regional history
>Seeing “Minoan” in a supposedly human history book caught your eye, but you’re back on track now
>India is (un)surprisingly similar to the Vanara Sultanates back home
>If a civilization resembling the Xiezhi and Qilin pops up, you’ve got one more piece of evidence that what you’re experiencing now is a mental construct
>As the spell begins to function again, you hear Jake’s voice
>“-yway, what’ I’m trying to go for is the definitive media experience. As in what we’d bury in a time capsule if we wanted to summarize our culture as it is right now using a compilation of our art.”
>“Skip the music then. I can’t stand this modern shit. No effort’s put into it.”
>“Don’t worry, Dan. I’m going to get all the really important bits. That probably means having a bit of lead-up to modern stuff.”
>“So you’d do something like a progression from classical to jazz to swing to rock?”
>“Yeah, yeah, exactly.”
>“Alright. I don’t know too much about swing and jazz and stuff, but when you get to rock, let me know.”


>“Thanks. Oh, and E?”
>“Yeah?”
>“I know Goldeneye is your favorite, but I’m probably going to go with a Connery movie. No offence.”
>“None taken. I just like the way it portrayed post-Cold War spying.”
>As predicted, their conversation ends with the opening credits
>The movie itself seems to be based around the stress associated with employment
>It’s not clear exactly what the main character’s employer does for their business, though it involves copious amounts of ‘computers’ and ‘telephones’
>The premise of the movie changes when the main character hires a hypnotherapist
>In his first session with the hypnotherapist, he is put into a trance to remove his anxiety
>The hypnotherapist dies of cardiac arrest before the trance can be removed
>As a consequence, the main character stops caring about his job and unfaithful womanfriend, and has significantly lower social inhibitions over the next few weeks
>You’ve never asked Zecora what would happen in this situation, but you’re pretty sure it wouldn’t work like that
>That’s not nearly as distracting as the punchline of that scene
>They made a joke out of someone dying
>Ha ha
>Humans…
>Well, you’re never going to understand them if you don’t watch at least SOME of this
>…No, that’s enough human-watching for now
>You have trouble finding the movie comedic after that point
>It’s getting close to Spike’s bedtime, anyway


>You dispel the screen and call it a night for your human studies
>You head upstairs to tell Spike to get ready to go to bed
>He stops the game the moment you open the door
>“Twilight, what were you doing? I called for you three times.”
“Oh! Uh, I guess I didn't hear you somehow.”
>He hops off of the couch with both of his claws behind his back and approaches you
>“You weren’t doing anything that would keep you from hearing me, were you?”
>Well, having the sound from Jake's ears go straight into yours is more secure, but you can’t tell him that
“No.”
>“You didn’t hear me belch? That usually makes you come running.”
“I’m doing a few things at once. I’m bound to miss some things when I multitask.”
>Now this is just embarrassing
>He puts a claw on his hip and begins to tap his foot, keeping his other claw behind his back


>“I know you didn’t tell me everything on Thursday.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
>“There’s something wrong, and you don’t even want me to know about it?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Spike.”
>“And why is that?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you.”
>“So? Tell me.”
“I can’t.”
>“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean that I can’t let you know because I can’t let anyone know.”
>“Can you tell me why?”
“I’m afraid of what everyone would think.”
>“Eliza asked me about whether magic is the equivalent of a sole or something, but I had no idea what she was talking about. As far as I can tell, none of the humans mind that they’re zombies. If you won't tell me, tell them.”
“It’s not th- I mean, I just can’t trust anyone with this information. I’m sorry.”
>“I’m not happy with that answer,”
>He reveals the scroll he was keeping behind his back and holds it out to you
>You take it with your magic
>He brushes past you to get to the basement
>“but you’re going to have to spill this eventually, for your own sake.”
>You hear him hopping down the stairs as you unroll the letter




My faithful student,


I have several small updates regarding the situation in Canterlot which may interest you:


The Saddle Arabians’ and Zebras’ ambassadors and scientists have arrived in Canterlot with the
intention of joining our research and spreading its discoveries. They claim that their invitation was
delayed by sandstorms originating from an unanticipated oceanic storm’s winds. Our equine fellows
shall be accommodated suitably, as will the simian Vanara and the reptilian Xiezhi/Qilin, whom the
Saddle Arabians claim are passing through their territory to join us and should arrive within a month’s
time.


The Canterlot Computer has suffered yet another short-circuit malfunction, this time in layer 5,
section 3F. The cause of this malfunction, like the others, has yet to be determined.


Other than that, the situation at Canterlot has been relatively normal. You are going to come home safe
and sound, even if it’s going to be a bit harder than we anticipated. Don’t give up.


You don’t need to inquire about dragon-related accidents. I’ll let you know if anything happens, but I
expect their visit to be uneventful. You may be worrying too much about a situation you don’t fully
understand. These dragons are quite nice once you get to know them.


Yours,
Celestia


>You’ll have time to think about what Spike and Celestia said later
>Time to go over the schematics of the ‘Canterlot Computer’ for the thirteenth time this week


Steam Chat
[BerberB X][NagromSreip X][redleader27 X]
redleader27
Online
---------------------
redleader27: hey Jake
PainedUlnar: Oh hey Evan, I don’t see you on Steam often
PainedUlnar: What’s up?
redleader27: Just checking in
redleader27: I hate to ask, but didn’t you say you were getting a gift for me
redleader27: ?
PainedUlnar: FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
PainedUlnar: I JUST FOUND THE GIFT CARD IN MY POCKET NOW
PainedUlnar: I have half a bottle of Corona before dinner and my judgement and reasoning is off for the rest of the night
PainedUlnar: You’d think the six hours between drinking that and leaving would do something about that
PainedUlnar: When’s the next time we can meet?
redleader27: I think Drew has a get together planned for that town carnival next month
redleader27: See you then if I don’t get a movie day organized before that
---------------------
|
---------------------
Last message received: Saturday, April 27, 2013 at 11:47 PM



Part 8

>Day ‘done with Banjo Kazooie’ on Earth
>Thursday, May 2nd, 1:10pm
>Wait, doesn’t the day come after the date?
>Doesn’t matter
>It got the same point across

>You are Spike
>And now you need something to do
>You just beat the second game Jake gave you
>You’re not about to go looking through his room for the game
>You’re redoing some parts of Banjo Kazooie to pass the time until he gets back
>Not very entertaining, seeing how you already did it once
>The quiz you had to prepare for wasn’t too hard with your notes
>You actually did take too much notes
>Better safe than sorry
>The only really hard part was the boss fight afterwards
>Aiming that diving attack was way harder than it should have been
>You’re not going to do that last boss fight again
>You might not have time for that, anyway
>Jake should be home soon
>Until then, you’re finding things to do
>The breakfast dishes are done
>There are probably only a couple of lunch dishes
>Better than nothing


>You save your game and get up
>You stroll into the kitchen and scoot a chair over to the sink
>You pile a couple of cookbooks onto the chair to get a bit more height
>As you crawl up, you get a look at what you have to wash
>There are a couple of plastic containers, plates, and some forks and knives and such
>You squirt some liquid soap onto the sponge, then soak it in lukewarm water
>It’s barely even steamy
>There’s never any real hot water around here unless you have someone boil it
>Bathing isn’t uncomfortable, it’s just ‘meh’
>Could be better, could be worse
>Jon doesn’t like you using the hottest water too long, so you count yourself lucky for not needing shampoo
>Unlike Twilight, who’s going through a bottle every week
>Enough about that, though
>You’re done washing the dishes, except for the cup you were using earlier today
>One left

>Let’s not wash this one.
>Why not
>Because I don’t want to. I have a plan.

“Hey, Jon?”
>No answer
>You hop down from the chair
“Jon, you there?”
>Hopefully he didn’t go out for a ride on his bike or off to try and get more of that weird instrument done
“Jon?”
>“Just a minute!”


>Oh, good. He’s still here.

>He comes out of his office
>“What do you need?”

>Let me show you the difference between laziness and efficiency.

“Could you get the orange juice out of the fridge, please?”
>“Sure.”
>You could have just told me what you were going to do
>I would have settled for hints even
>Something like “Eliza did some shopping yesterday” and “we’re thirsty”
>I just wanted to show you that I can get good ideas sometimes.

>Jon opens the fridge and gets a big bottle off of a shelf you can’t reach
>He hands it to you and starts to go back to his office

>This doesn’t look like the usual orange juice bottle.

>‘Orange peach mango juice’
“This isn’t the orange juice.”
>“Huh? Oh, Eliza’s starting a new part of her diet. She’s going to start making smoothies. She wanted to get a different juice that wasn’t as tangy.”
>Well, no orange juice
>You decide to try the new juice instead, pouring it into your cup
>You take a sip
>Sweet, but not sickeningly sweet
>There’s still a bit of tang from the orange juice without as much aftertaste
>If you had to describe the flavor in one word, it would be “nectar”
>If you were allowed three words, it would be “my new favorite”
“Huh, this is pretty good. Could we get this instead of orange juice from now on?”


>“I suppose we could.”
“I think I’m going to have another cup of this before we put it away.”
>You start to pour your next cup
>“That’s what I thought when I had my first cup. I guess there’s a reason it’s got the acronym ‘O.P.M.,’ right?”
>You tilt the bottle back up abruptly, making the juice slosh around with the motion
“Huh?”
>“Nevermind. Look, I have a few papers to get to Twilight about how magical viscosity could explain how disproportionate gravitational lensing occurs in astronomy.”
>You start pouring again
“I’m going to pretend I understood that.”
>“It’s about how small galaxies seem to bend light in a way that wouldn’t make sense unless they had more mass than they ought to.”
>Your cup full, you tilt the bottle back up and screw the lid back on
“So… little thing, big weight, light gets all bendy-bendy.”
>“And the answer lies in the seemingly arbitrary nature of magic. It’s a wonder any science gets done on your planet.”
>You give the bottle to Jon, who puts it back in the fridge where you can’t reach it
“Trust me, you learn to stop questioning it after a while.”
>“Call me a slow learner, then.”
“You’re a slow learner. Anyone who actually understands the nitty gritty details of how magic works is crazy smart or just crazy.”
>“Which of those do you think Twilight is?”
>Sip
“It depends on her mood.”


>“Which do you think she is right now?”
“A little of column A, a little of column B.”
>“I noticed she seems kind of nervous recently.
“It’s been going on longer than just recently, I think.”
>“She’s been keeping her distance ever since she told me about how she thought humans weren’t alive.”
“I dunno when she figured that out. It seems like she was keeping it to herself for a while.”
>“She seemed happy enough to me until she told us about it.”
“Yeah, but she’s giving off signs that the whole zombie thing isn’t all that’s on her mind.”
>“It doesn’t make sense to me. Why would life depend on magic? Everything about life can be explained without that.”
“Oh, this is grade school stuff. Life’s supposed to be linked to how much magic something has. Some scientists think that it’s sort of like the energy that makes all the other energy in the body work because without it things usually don’t last long. Like, if someone gets hurt they release magic, and right as they… well, die, all of their body’s magic comes out. I’ve heard of ponies getting knocked out or even dying because they were using too much magic too quickly and drained themselves. Twilight’s a huge neat freak, so I guess she’s just fixating on how humans are the one thing that’s different.”
>“I noticed her study area seems to be the best organized place in the house. Do you think she’d be willing to do that for the rest of the house?”
>Sip
“…Doubt it. It doesn’t bug her enough and the mess isn’t hers.”


>“So could Twilight find planets full of life just by using a telescope?”
“Not really. Magic usually scatters all over the place.”
>“She never told me why it doesn’t do that here.”
“It’s just that nothing’s using magic here, I guess. I'm probably wrong. It must be more than that which is making her nervous, though. More than you being semi-dead, too. There's something about how her eyes move.”
>“Has she told you what’s bothering her?”
“No, and that’s the problem. She’d usually tell me anything. Something’s freaking her out, but she’s not saying what. Probably something about how she’s having trouble with her magic. She’s really sensitive about that.”
>“I tried asking her about that. She kept deflecting the questions.”
“Same here, though I didn’t ask about magic. She flat out told me that she didn’t trust me enough to let me know what’s bothering her. She doesn’t trust ME. I’m like a little brother to her.”
>“I was wondering about that, actually. She seems kind of demanding of you when she has something for you to do.”
“It comes with the territory. I live with her, she has me do stuff. She says it’s to ‘earn my share’ or whatever, but she never punishes me if I skip a bit of unimportant work to do something I want.”
>“It just seems more like she’s treating you like a beast of burden, or a pet.”
>You’d been taking a quick slurp of the juice when he said that
>You swallow quickly to respond to him


>You’re no pet
>That sells your friendship with her waaay to short
>Pets are happy if you give them back scratches and stuff
>It’s not like those aren’t nice, but she’d have to do something like give you a gift to put you in a good mood
“No, no. Nothing like that. She knows not to push me too much and she gives me plenty of time to myself. Besides, she’s got an owl for a pet. He does the night work for me. Or he did before we left, at least.”
>“What do you mean by ‘does the night work?’”
“Like getting books and stuff and helping her organize notes when it’s too late for me to stay up.”
>“I didn’t know owls could be trained to do that.”
“I didn’t know owls had to be trained to do that.”
>“That sounds exceptionally intelligent for a bird.”
“Nah, he’s about average for an animal. What, are owls not like that here?”
>“…No.”
“I’d forgotten how weird this place is.”
>“Are all animals smart enough to do that on your world?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
>“So her pet’s carnivorous and preys on what is essentially intelligent life, but she’s such a vegetarian herself. I don’t get it.”
“What can I say? He’s useful. She just keeps the meat-eating bit out of sight, out of mind. She lets him hunt for his own food, so it’s not like she has to go over to Fluttershy’s place for dead mice every week, or something.”
>“Flutter-what?”
“Fluttershy. It’s a friend of hers who takes care of animals and stuff. She’s been looking after Twilight’s ACTUAL pet ever since we disappeared.”


>You take another slurp of your juice, only to be greeted by the bottom of the cup
>May as well wrap this up
“Anyway, that’s enough of talking about ponies behind their backs. This conversation got a bit uncomfortable, to be honest.”
>“Sorry.”
“No hurt feelings.”
>“I’m going to go get those papers now. I’ll be right back.”
>He heads back into his office
>You get just enough time to clean out the cup you were using before he comes back
>He gives you the papers full of what you think are math equations
>Lots of symbols on them either way
>You don’t understand most of them
>You walk through the hallway and knock on the basement door
>No response
>You knock again
>Still nothing
>You tug on the string on the doorknob
>The second the door opens, Twilight scrambles to do something out of sight


>“Don’t come downstairs!”
“Umm… okay? I’ve got some stuff for you from Jon.”
>“Oh! Oh, thanks, Spike. Would you please knock next time? I’m doing something sort of, um, delicate.”
“I knocked two separate times.”
>“I’m sorry, I must not have heard you over the spell I’m casting.”
“This again? It must have been so loud that nobody else heard it.”
>“Look, it’s a really really important spell and I need to concentrate very hard to get it to work right.”
“And what exactly does this sp-”
>Your lips are now sealed shut by a zipper
>“Can’t tell you unless your lips are like that all the time! Literally or figuratively. Your choice.”

>This again? Come on, Twi.
>She’d only do this if she’s really freaked out
>She wasn’t this freaked out last time
>Whatever is wrong, it’s getting worse
>#1 assistant time. Figure out what’s making her so stressed out, fix it, get thanked.

>You pull the tab from one side to another, opening the zipper and making it disappear
“I like eating too much to keep the zipper there.”
>“Well, then too bad because you went and told everyone about the not-living-because-no-magic thing right after I told you I didn’t want you to!”
“If it makes things better, maybe you should just tell everyone. We all know you’re hiding something by now.”
>“No-nonononono, it’s not like that. This would only make more problems if it got out!”
“Is it embarrassing? You’re not going deaf, are you?”


>“I’m not going deaf. That’s the only thing I’ll say about it. No hints! I can’t even trust you with… huh. Maybe that’s it?”
“Maybe what’s what?”
>“Just thinking aloud. Would you leave the notes at the top of the stairs, please?”
>You leave the notes on the top step

>And nothing got accomplished in that conversation. Great.
>Don’t blame yourself
>If she wants to be crazy, she’ll be crazy until she un-crazies and realizes she was being crazy over nothing
>How many times has she done this before? Sixteen? I think we’re up to sixteen by now.
>Truthfully, I’ve lost count

>“Spike?”
>She sounds like she un-crazied
>“Spike, are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
>“I know you want to help, but I wouldn’t even tell Celestia if she was in your place right now. I can’t trust anyone to know about this.”
“Even me?”
>“Even you. This would cause nothing but trouble if it got out.”
>Huh
>Well at least she learned something from last weekend
>She sounds pretty broken up about whatever it is, but if she thinks it’s best to keep it to herself and she’s actually right this time, it’s not our business
“Twilight. If you think I can help, please, just tell me. It hurts to see you like this.”
>“I want help, but I have to be alone. I’m sorry.”
“I understand. Whatever it is, good luck. You sound like you need it.”
>“Thank you, Spike.”
>You close the door


>Hold on, quick thought I just had.
>What is it
>Just a question for her.
>You open the door again
“So… if you wouldn’t tell Celestia if she was here right now, does this mean that this isn’t some sort of super-secret mission from her?”
>There’s a thump in the basement
“Oh, or maybe it IS a super-secret mission from her, but you’re trying to throw me off? Is that it?”
>There are several thumps in the basement
>“No hints, Spike. Celestia doesn't know about this. Don't even think of sending letters about this, either.”
“Alright, alright, I just wanted to know if I was missing out on something awesome.”
>You close the door again

>What was that thumping noise?
>If I had to guess, I’d say it was a forehead impacting a table or similar piece of furniture from a distance of approximately four inches while accelerating to a speed not in excess of three miles per hour
>Wow, look at the brains on you, Mr. Big Words.
>I have all the brains because I am the brains
>Let me know if you want some
>It sounds like you could use them


Steam Chat
[BerberB X][NagromSreip X][redleader27 X]
NagromSreip
Online
---------------------
NagromSreip: Hey I found my old N64
NagromSreip: Do you have a copy of THPS?
NagromSreip: I’d give you five bucks for it if you bring it in to school on Monday
PainedUlnar: How about ten?
NagromSreip: six
PainedUlnar: Seven and a half?
NagromSreip: Deal
PainedUnlnar: Actually, I’d be willing to give it to you for two dollars or less if you waited a
couple of months
PainedUlnar: I’ve been meaning to do a media binge this summer and I might need it for that.
NagromSreip: No biggie, I’ve already got like thirty games for this thing
PainedUlnar: Alright, cool.
PainedUlnar: So I watched Office Space for the first time last weekend
NagromSreip: DUDE
NagromSreip: SRSLY?
NagromSreip: SRSLY DUDE?
NagromSreip: YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED THAT UNTIL JUST NOW?
PainedUlnar: Yes, and I deeply regret not getting around to it until now. I think Peter is probably the most identifiable everyman character in the history of film.
NagromSreip: Probably because this is practically your theme song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udUCjJphE-0
---------------------
Lol yeah. I’ve always loved that song.
---------------------
Last message received: Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 10:02 PM


Part 9

>Day 2 +3 months on Earth
>Wednesday, May 8, 8:29am, just outside of Jake Addams’ bedroom
>You are Twilight Sparkle
>You’ve had plenty of time to think about what Spike and Celestia said
>You were sending a few too many worried letters about dragons on the research teams, and Spike is sort of falling out of touch with you because you’re keeping things from him
>It’s probably time to give the Addams’ their basement back in full
>You have a few new things on your mind, too
>First, whether you should stop using the ‘shared eye’ spell just because it’s beginning to arouse suspicions
>Second, why Jake isn’t working on those two things he said he’d do for you when it’s been nearly a month since you first talked about it with him
>Third, how humans seem to have control over how you use your magic and how you might go about getting it back
>The answer to the first is “not yet, but Spike has been disenchanted so you can’t watch him anymore”
>Jake will finish his final exams, and, if his mother is to be believed, he won’t go outside very often
>You’ll be without a reason to keep using the spell, or a reason to keep the basement off-limits (you’re kind of surprised they let you keep it for that long, actually)
>He won’t have ever known you cast it on him (assuming he’s not just concealing the fact that he might be telepathic) so you won’t have to make a big deal out of it
>You’ll probably just leave it in place


>Removing magic from a living being that never had magic before is un-trodden ground
>You’re not sure what could happen if you managed to succeed in removing the enchantment, so the safe choice is to stop trying to remove it
>And it’s your only option until you figure out number 3
>The solution to the second is to pester him until he takes action
>Hopefully, he’s not delaying this intentionally
>You’ve seen enough of the ‘internet’ to know you’re missing out
>Withholding information
>Besides, what possible motivation could there be for him to do that?
>Aside from pure malice
>That doesn’t seem too likely
>He’s a bit of a jerk, but he seems to be more of the apathetic or unintentional sort of jerk than a passive-aggressive or actively aggressive jerk
>And he’s offering to do things for you
>The only problem is that he’s not actually doing them
>He’s also supposed to be dead, but he’s not
>Humans
>That brings you to the third thing on your mind
>If this is a subconscious ability, as you suspect it is, he might build the ‘computer’ for you only for you to be unable to use it
>The obvious solutions are to tell all the humans or try to work around it by some other means
>Poking at a ‘keyboard’ all day with a pencil in your mouth doesn’t sound very appealing
>You’d get neck cramps, and graphite doesn’t taste very good (not speaking from experience)


>On a tangentially related note, you asked Eliza to put some flowers or grass clippings in the smoothies she’s started making recently
>She’s not going to because she thinks it would ruin the flavor for everyone else
>You haven’t had any real greens in a few months now
>The nasturtiums she puts in her salads just aren’t the same
>Back on topic, working around the ‘T. Sparkle Field’ is going to be important
>You think you might be on to something
>It’s not necessarily what they want
>It might be what they trust you to do
>It could also be preconceived notions
>Or their current emotional state
>Or which day of the week it is
>Or something else entirely
>The first and second sound like they’re the most promising
>Having a book from Equestria become more difficult to influence with magic in Jon’s presence would make sense in that context
>That was around the time that you first arrived, before he was willing to accept the possibility of magic existing
>Either he was so sure that you were trying to do something impossible that it affected your ability to use magic, or he was scared of your perceived threat against his understanding of what’s possible


>The first is a frontrunner by far, though
>Preconceived notions wouldn’t explain their desire to prevent you from using ‘computers’
>Even the ‘television remote control’ becomes unusable if you try to do certain things with it
>They know you can use it
>Unless they’re occasionally getting the idea that you can’t change the ‘channel’ and realizing they’re wrong shortly afterwards, it can’t be that
>Telling them about one of the secrets you’ve been sitting on might have given you a brief glimpse of whatever it is that Jake’s not trusting you to see
>If that’s the case, you just have to get their trust without letting them know they’re the reason why your magic has ebbs and surges of effectiveness
>Easier said than done
>If you can pull it off, there’s a longshot chance that it would be enough for you to get yourself home without the CCU/CSGU having to gather almost every unicorn and qilin in one place just to distribute the load of the spell to an acceptable level
>So unless Eastern Magic Theory has an explanation for how you could get yourself here that could also be used to get you back, you’re probably stuck here for life
>The logical first step in your longshot optimistic delusion is to see whether opening up the basement again gains you some trust, and with it some more freedom to use magic as you please


>Speaking of the xiezhi and qilin, the culture of China isn’t exactly the same as theirs, but the collective philosophy, art style, architecture, and agricultural techniques (sans magic, of course) are there
>That’s enough for you
>The naming conventions and language also seem to match, as in Qin Shi Huang
>Province, family name, given name: intonation can drastically change the meaning of phonemes
>Incidentally, Shi Huang of Qin Province is considered to be the first emperor of China
>He’s a fine specimen of humanity as well, destroying knowledge and slaughtering scholars in creative ways while spending a fortune on military preparations
>The only good thing you could say about him is that he standardized the width cart axles
>His military preparations are still visible to this day from miles above
>They call it the ‘Great Wall of China’
>Constructed in sporadic bursts over the course of one millennium with a total length of roughly 13,000 miles
>The xiezhi and qilin didn’t have to build a massive wall to repel invaders because there weren’t any
>Even if there were, they’d have removed all the workers who died in its construction from the soil-based core of the wall


>The Chinese ‘Great Wall’ is estimated to have up to a million corpses inside of it, mostly of construction workers killed by exhaustion
>It’s sometimes referred to as ‘The Long Graveyard’ 
>Appropriate, because it may have an average of 76.9 corpses-per-mile
>If this is a dream, you’d really like to know where these grim extraneous details are coming from
>And, more importantly, why they’re there in the first place
>You’re no madpony
>In more modern bad news: there’s a drought and wildfire at the same time in California, Syria is believed to be using deadly gas on its own citizens to end a civil war that’s lasted for two years, Israel attacked Syrian forces near its border, and the surviving bomber from the ‘marathon’ attack last month is on trial with a likely sentence of execution
>So it’s business as usual on Earth
>There were also three women who were rescued from a decade-long kidnapping, which is supposed to be good news
>You’d like to know why that’s good news to humans, when it’s more like bad news becoming news that’s slightly better
>It’s still bad news because there was a kidnapping, which is unheard of amongst ponies
>Good news would be “kidnapper has a change of heart, turns himself in before committing act” or no kidnapping to begin with
>Another thing you’d like to know is when Jake is getting up
>It’s 8:35
>You heard Jake’s alarm watch go off twice while you were waiting here
>*Knock knock*


>You hear some rustling from behind his door
>Then you hear him, and he sounds expectedly tired
>“Nnnn…what?”
“I need to talk to you.”
>He’s not speaking so much as he’s groaning phonemes in a sequence that could be interpreted as words
>“Can’t this wait?”
“I think I’ve waited long enough.”
>“What do you want?”
“Oh, nothing. I just noticed you weren’t getting up after your alarm. I wanted to make sure the person WHO PROMISED TO MAKE A COMPUTER FOR ME is going to get out of bed on time.”
>“’M workin’ on it.”
>No he isn’t
“Jake, I’ve been patient until now. It’s been a month. As far as I can tell, you haven’t done any work on this.”
>“Sorry.”
“Would you please give me a deadline you’re going to have this done by?”
>“Not now.”
>If not now, when?
>Tease and add a bit of singsong for motivation
“If you set a deadline now, I’ll leave you alone!”
>“Mmmnugh… Have it ready after my finals are done.”
“Thank you. Sorry for bothering you first thing in the morning like this, but this is taking a lot longer than I was hoping it would.”
>“Talk with you about this after breakfast.”
>Satisfied, you head downstairs
>You probably should have had him set a deadline in the first place
>Doing it as he was waking up might have been a bit mean, but so is promising to do something and shirking that responsibility


>You open up ‘Traditions and Encounters’ again to read about the metaphorical ‘Silk Road,’ which was neither a road nor composed of silk
>The human method for silk-making is to boil pupating silkworms, which seems both cruel and unnecessary
>You won’t bother calculating how many silkworms would die to make the ‘Silk Road’ a literal expression
>It was more of a loose overland trade route from China to Europe that was used to export Chinese silk, which was in high demand in western countries
>And it was the backbone of a violent, conquering empire that eventually fell to internal squabbling
>It roughly resembles the route the xiezhi/qilin and vanara are taking
>That’s one more thing you’ve noticed that points to this being a dream
>You haven’t done any meaningful geological analysis, but it occurred to you recently that Earth’s continents looked very, very vaguely familiar
>Shift them around a bit, and you’ve got what could pass for a globe of your home planet
>Or it might if you were trying to fool somepony who was legally blind
>It figures that you’d miss the big picture by focusing on the details
>The encyclopedia’s ‘Pangea’ mega-continent looked sort of familiar, but you couldn’t place the resemblance until you squinted to blur the image of it


>You’re making a note to try modeling what would happen to various geological stages of Earth in the presence of controlled weather and the residual effects of magic use when you hear Jake at the top of the stairs
>“Good morning.”
“Again, let me apologize. Come downstairs if you’d like.”
>He trudges down the stairs
>“No, it’s my fault that I’m taking so long. I haven’t done much work on this at all.”
“Any particular reason?”
>“The semester’s almost over and I’m tired of doing work.”
“You’re always tired of doing work.”
>“I’m more tired now.”
“You said you’d have both things ready next week, right?”
>“Yeah, yeah. My finals end on Monday. I’ve got a rough draft of the list and some of the material on hand, if you’d like to get started now.”
“Yes, please!”
>Finally, a reason not to be disappointed!
>“Any particular subjects you want to get to first?”
“Aside from the obvious, I’m curious about how ‘horses’ and humans relate with one another. Something about what humans think magic is would be nice as well.”
>He walks into view and stops
>“I’m guessing that ‘the obvious’ is war and violence and such?”
“Exactly.”
>“You’re really fixating on that, aren’t you?”
“I’d ask whether it alarms you, but I already know the answer.”
>“Yeah, I’m going to see if I can get my philosophy book’s rental extended or something. You’ve got us wrong.”
“I have yet to be convinced. Could we please get back on topic?”


>“I don’t have any movies or books with a lot about horses right now. I’ll rent them later. If you want something about magic I could get you some Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter novels off of the shelf in my room.”
>Spike yawns from behind your spot at the desk
>The conversation must have woke him up
>Deciding not to watch Jake at home means that Spike can sleep in again, but neither of them need to know that
>“‘Morning, zom-butt.”
>“‘Morning, thigh-high. Hey, Twilight, do you want a few movies you could watch with Spike? It seems like you’ve been apart during most of your time here.”
“I’d like that.”
>You turn around to face Spike, who is sitting up on the bed with a groggy look on his face
“Spike? Would you like to watch some movies with me?”
>“Right now, no. Later, yes.”
“Excellent.”
>You turn back to Jake
“Just to be clear, these movies are all appropriate for children, right?”
>“The ones I’m going to get right now will be.”
“Good. I don’t want to expose Spike to something too violent or rude.”
>“I’ll try to keep that in mind. It’s nice to see you smiling sincerely for once, and I wouldn’t want to ruin my chances at seeing that again.”
>Wait, you’re smiling?
>How come you didn’t notice that?


>“I’ve got to get going. I’ll leave it all on the couch for you. Jon should be able to set the TV up for you.”
>He jogs up the stairs while you organize your notes so you can come back to them without losing your train of thought
>His footsteps sound around the house and stop in his room for some time
>Eventually, they continue and leave through the kitchen door
>Odd, you were actually smiling for some reason
>…Let’s chalk that up to finally getting what you’d been asking for and not look into it further
>You’re about to head upstairs yourself when Spike belches out a scroll
>He lobs it towards your desk over your withers
>Still organizing your notes, you net it in your magic without looking and unroll it
>The movies will have to wait a moment


Twilight Sparkle,

Princess Celestia tells us that we have been authorized to contact you directly to streamline the
troubleshooting process. We still do not know why the Canterlot Computer is suffering from short-
circuit malfunctions with the frequency that it does. Please contact the human known as Jon and ask for
his help. We wanted this to be a product of local design with minimal assistance from humans, but we’re
at our wits’ ends. We can’t find any pattern to it: It just won’t stop breaking. We were hoping that the
Zebras and Saddle Arabians would bring a fresh pair of eyes to this and spot something obvious we’d
been missing, but that hasn’t been the case. The present malfunction is in section 5E of layer 8, RAM to
processor conductor 1.


Canterlot Computer Chief Engineer Square Root
Griffon Republic Science Team, Electronics Division Head Scientist Markus Isfugel
Minos Scientific Emissary, Electronics, Senior Scientist Fyteia Agrotis


>Maybe a bit longer than a moment
>If Ms. Agrotis is willing to put her name on this plea for help, they’re desperate
>She’s stubbornly proud, even by minotaur standards
>Rightfully so; she studied her way out of farm life and into the most prestigious universities her country has to offer
>That’s roughly equivalent to a pony going against their cutie mark in digging ditches to become a surgeon, especially since the Minoan naming conventions are similar to the Equestrian naming conventions in that they usually predict the talent of the individual
>Given, it’s in a different language
>The Griffons don’t do that, for some reason
>You can see the Northern Griffonic word for “ice” in their head scientist’s surname (and boy, do they use THAT word a lot in the northern Republic), but there’s not much to suggest that he’s a scientist
>It could be that your mind decided to apply their naming conventions to humans just to hammer in the idea that you’re somewhere foreign
>Gathering everything you can that relates to the design and operation of the Canterlot Computer, you head upstairs again
>You levitate the stack of notes just above yourself as you move, holding it especially high as you pass through the kitchen
>Spike is toasting bread with his breath as he usually does
>Getting your notes incinerated is something you’d like to avoid right now
>He tells you to ask Jon for help getting something from the ‘refrigerator’ as you enter Jon’s office


>The closer you get to the office, the less buoyant the paper becomes in the magic field
>You lay the notes down a few feet earlier than you’d wanted to, then step into Jon’s office
“Jon, I’m going to need you to stop working on the Fundamental Energies book I gave you.”
>“How bad is it this time?”
“Layer 8, 5E, RAM to processor conductor short.”
>“Any idea why?”
“Not a clue.”
>“Well, I guess I’ll get to work…”
“I think you mean ‘we’ll get to work.’”
>“Oh?”
“What, did you think I’d just leave this to you?”
>“It’s what I was expecting.”
“One more thing. Jake got some movies for me and he said you’d help me get the ‘television’ to play them.”
>“DVD or VHS?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t see them yet.”
>“Go check and come back. I could write an instructions sheet for you.”
“I’d appreciate that. Just a moment.”
>You bow out of his office to see what was left for you in the living room


>Spike stops you before you get that far
>“Did you ask him?”
“Huh? Oh. What did you want from the fridge? I’m sure I could get it for you just as easily as he could.”
>“Are you sure? Your magic looks sort of weak right now.”
“I’m fine, really!”
>Flashing a false smile does nothing for your cause
>His behavior recently seems to imply that he’s onto at least one of your secrets
>He hasn’t seen you spying on Jake, but he suspects you of doing something in the basement and he’s likely told the humans about it
>“…Just get me the juice, please.”
>Prove yourself to him now and he might not be as suspicious about your magic
>A familiar magenta energy coats the handle on the upper door of the ‘refrigerator,’ pulling it open
>Scanning the contents of the fridge, you spot a bottle labeled as juice
>With the assistance of your magic, the cap of the bottle unscrews itself and starts spinning like a frisbee in the air
>You pull a fresh cup out of the cupboard as you extract the liquid from the bottle
>Keep it simple, don’t spill a drop…
>The glob of juice floats towards you as you while Spike picks the cup out of the air in front of him
>You reform the glob into a rod-like shape, spiraling and swirling that rod around your body as you direct it into the cup
>Perfect


>You release the juice while screwing the lid of the bottle back on and closing the ‘refrigerator’ door
>He seems impressed and nonplussed at the same time, if such an expression is possible
>“Not bad, but if you’re trying to steal Trixie’s act you’re going to need some sort of animal symbol.”
>He starts to take a sip
“Oh, I’m not done yet.”
>Your magic grabs the juice once more and abruptly forms the liquid into the shape of a hissing serpent rising from the cup
>Spike flinches, pushing the cup away
>He recovers almost as quickly as he flinched, realizing that a serpent made of juice isn’t going to do any harm
>He admires your work for a moment
>Then he slurps down its head
>You release the rest of the juice in his cup
>“I guess you are fine. The little drops coming from the ends of the fangs were a nice touch.”
>You didn’t put those there
>The fangs were supposed to be solid
>He’s impressed so far
>Lie to him
“Heh, yeah. You know me, ‘Ms. Attention to Detail!’”
>Not so perfect
>You’re a horrible liar
>“…Of course you are.”
>He takes a sip of the juice while eying you over the rim of the cup


>He finishes the sip and lowers his cup again to speak
>“So, are we going to watch those movies now or later?”
“Not yet. I’ve got something I need to work on right now, but Jon said he’d write out some instructions for how to watch the movies if I could tell him which type they are.”
>“It’s broken again?”
“And they want Jon’s help this time. Fyteia Agrotis even put her name on the letter asking him to help.”
>“You mean the farmer-turned-scientist cow?”
“The one and only.”
>“Ouch.”
“And here I was hoping we might actually get to do something together. I swear, it’s been one thing after another ever since we got here. ”
>You start trotting towards the living room
>Spike is following you
>You just told him you’re not going to be watching the movies yet
>He’s probably going to his ‘video games’ again, but if he’s here, you can vent to him
>Plus you’re moving out of Jon’s earshot, so you can say what’s actually on your mind
>There is a lot on your mind


“I mean, first we’re stuck here, then I find out we’re surrounded by bloodthirsty savages, then I stop finding things to do with you, then I find out we could die at any second BUT NOBODY THOUGHT TO TELL US THAT! No sir! ‘It’s not important’ my hoof. Learning that these savages weren’t possible was and having to deal with my magic being reliable MOST of the time instead of ALL of the time was BEYOND the last straw! Eliza’s never around so I can get a good idea of what multiple ‘religions’ are, Jon’s got some carnivorous bloodlust for rabbits, and Jake is an inconsiderate jerk who doesn’t care about anything! On top of all that, the one showpiece we’ve got from the things we’ve learned here is a fizzling pile of-”
>“Twilight, stop.”
>You’ve arrived in the living room and you’re just in front of the couch
>It’s not like you’d overshoot; there’s nowhere to go from the living room except back past the master bedroom and into the hall
>He couldn’t mean it literally, so he’s interrupting your rant
>You WANTED to rant, darn it
“What?! What do you want?”


>“You sound like you could use a drink.”
>You turn around to see him holding the cup out to you
“Pardon?”
>“Take a sip. It’s not sugar-coated chocolate, but you sound like you could use a treat.”
>You recoil from the cup in disgust
“Eww, no! You put your mouth in that!”
>“And? We’ve been living together so long that I doubt my mouth-germs would make you start puking everywhere.”
“You’ve been eating meat with that mouth for months now! This is a matter of principle, not hygiene.”
>“I have it from a reliable source that the animals here aren’t thinking creatures.”
“I heard they’re not sentient, but not thinking? What do you mean?”
>He pulls the cup back
>“You remember your little animal watching thing you did to see how the ambient magic affects the squirrels and birds around here?”
“Yes, when I was observing wildlife through one of the basement windows. They looked normal through the ‘visible magical particles’ spell. Why?”


>“I saw a robin poking around in the bush that’s blocking the living room window yesterday. I paused my game thinking about how neither of us got to see any of those animals up close, stood on top of a box to get a good look at it, and it ignored me. I tried talking to it, and it acted like I wasn’t even there. I start waving around, figuring maybe I just didn’t get its attention. It stood absolutely still for a good five minutes after that. I got a good look in its eyes because it wasn’t moving… and you say the humans are ‘zombies.’ There wasn’t any mind behind those beady little eyes.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth. I never called them zombies.”
>“We both know that’s what you wanted to say.”
>CHANGE SUBJECT
“I observed hundreds of animals. How do you know that wasn’t an exception?”
>“You were observing, not looking. Do it again without the spell and wait until one of them comes close.”
“Even if they’re not thinking beings, per se, they were still alive.”
>He thrusts the cup towards you again
>“Twilight, drink the juice.”
>He’s looking impatient
>Right now, you look a lot like he does
>Neither of you speak for about fifteen seconds
>The silence is palpable
>He gives the cup a little waggle and raises a brow
“Fine, I’ll try it.”
>You telekinetically snatch the cup from his claw


>It hovers up to your lips, bathed in your magic
>You tilt it back and… it actually tastes pretty good
>It tastes better than tense silence, that’s for sure
>Sweet, but tangy and citric as well
>The sweetness covers up the bitter aftertaste nicely
>You were going to take just a sip, but you find yourself taking mouthful after mouthful
>“I was hoping you’d like it.”
>You lower the now empty cup from your mouth
“What did I just drink, and why did it taste that good?”
>“Orange-peach-mango juice. Jon said he thought its initials stood for something, but I don’t know what he meant.”
>O. P. M.
>Opium?
>You got a little high once when you forgot to ventilate your lab properly during a mixing experiment, and you don’t feel anything like that
>Hopefully Jon meant that as a joke
>A joke that he should have known better than to try telling to Spike, but still a joke
>You’re going to have trouble finding whatever’s wrong with the Canterlot computer if you’re high
>“Get me another cup, would you? That stuff is addictive.”
“I’m getting one for myself, first.”
>Spike walks past you, satisfied that he’s improved your mood, and begins to set up his ‘video game’
>Oh right, you came in here to check the format of those movies, not rant and drink juice
>There are two small rectangular plastic boxes and two hardcover books stacked on top of the only unobstructed seat on the couch, as well as several sheets of paper
>You scan through the papers first


I don’t consider it complete yet, but here it is, starting with movies.

Before you get angry about the next sentence, what haven’t I already been able to get for you over the
internet? Most of this is going to be coming from the local library because that’s cheaper than doing
internet rentals.

Most of what’s on this list is here due to popularity. Not all of it’s good, but it’s all very recognizable to
most humans.

MOVIES
Key:
(A) Action
(B) Biography
(C) Comedy
(D) Drama

Pretty much anything by Disney should be safe for Spike, but feel free to ask. The Disney movies should be on the shelves beside the TV.

You can do this section in whatever order you please, though I do make a few recommendations.


Westerns:
Set in the American western frontier during the late 1800s. Themes of independence, conflict, loyalty,
honor. Lots of horses, as that was one of the main methods of transportation at the time. I gave this its
own section because you asked for horses.

(D)A Fistful of Dollars – Beginning of a trilogy that follows a lone wanderer who’s absurdly good at using
a gun. I don’t know the premise other than that because I haven’t seen these before.
(D)For a Few Dollars More
(D)The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly – Sequel to the previous two. The climax of this movie is supposed
to be one of the great moments in film history.
Others (not familiar with this genre)


Science fiction:
Fantasy meets technology. The actual science involved may only be slightly plausible. May be set in the
future, and may also include alien life. Space travel and robots are a common element.

(D)Frankenstein – A mad scientist tries to reanimate a dead body. The classic monster movie.
(D)Night of the Living Dead – ZOMBIES! No, actual zombies.
(D)King Kong – A giant gorilla is found and brought to New York to be shown to the world, but it escapes
into the city.
(A)Godzilla – A building-sized lizard emerges from the sea off of Japan and begins to wreak havoc.

(A)(D)Star Wars, Episodes 4 through 6 - Coming of age story about a boy named Luke, who joins a
rebellion against a totalitarian empire after receiving a mysterious message that wasn’t intended for
him. Episodes 1 through 3 aren’t as iconic, so they’re safe to skip. Sort of maybe appropriate for Spike.
(C)SpaceBalls – Parody of the above, optional viewing.
(D)2001: A Space Odyssey – A monolithic black object of unknown origin is discovered on the moon,
prompting an excursion to Jupiter. Set in what people during the 60s thought 2001 would be like, so it’s
far from accurate.
(D)Blade Runner – Haven’t seen this one, but I’ve heard it’s about a detective in the near future who
needs to track down sentient robots that think they’re people.
(A)(D) I, Robot – Based on the Asimov novel (see books list), a detective who is naturally distrustful of
robots attempts to discover the reason a robot murdered a businessman, despite the programming of
every robot prohibiting them from harming humans.
(A)The Matrix: A computer enthusiast starts hearing of something called the ‘Matrix’ on the internet
and is contacted by a group that says he can learn the truth about the Matrix only if he gives up his
normal life. Alludes heavily to “Alice in Wonderland” and religious scripture, so watch this only after you
finish with those.


Realistic fiction/nonfiction:
(N) denotes nonfiction

(A)(D)Gladiator – Don’t know much about this one, but it’s supposed to be a classic. Set in ancient Rome.
(D)Casablanca – In the early 1940s, French Morocco is occupied by the Nazis. Two resistance fighters try to escape to a safer country.
(B)(D)Forrest Gump - A dumb but good-hearted man recounts his entire life to passers-by as he sits on a
bench in a park, starting with his childhood in the late 1940s and ending with the reason he’s on the
bench. Not many of them stay to listen, even though he was involved in some very influential events of
the 20th century.
(D)Do the Right Thing – A restaurant in a predominantly black neighborhood is owned by a white man
and his sons. A young black employee of the restaurant struggles with racial tensions.
(D)West Side Story – A musical about two rival gangs in New York.
(D)Rear Window – A bedridden man spies on his neighbors out of boredom, and uncovers what he
suspects to be a murder.
(D)Horror movies, especially those by Stephen King - You seem squeamish about death in general, so
you can skip this if you really want to. There’s only one scene that’s absolutely mandatory, so you can
only view that if you don’t want to see more than you’re comfortable with.
(D)(N)Apollo 13 - After two successful moon landings, a follow-up mission for a third moon landing is
started. Things don’t go well. Safe enough for Spike, though I’m not sure he’d enjoy it as much as you.

(D)From Russia With Love – From the ‘James Bond’ spy fiction series. Notably different from others of
this series for a more realistic storyline that doesn’t rely on science fiction elements such as lasers and
space ships. ‘Casino Royale’ is also worth viewing, in that respect.
(A)(C)Austin Powers – Parody of the ‘James Bond’ series, optional viewing.
(D)(N)13 Days - A cinematic portrayal of the event that most historians agree is the closest the world ever
came to actually starting a nuclear war.
(D)(C)Dr. Strangelove – Satire of US/Soviet relations during the Cold War. Inept leaders try to get a
political advantage over each other even in the face of imminent nuclear annihilation.
(B)(D)Citizen Kane – The life story of a fictional newspaper company owner who dies sad and alone after
a prosperous and happy life.
(D) Pulp Fiction – Haven’t seen this one yet. Drugs, violence, and crime.
(D)The Green Mile – A prison inmate sentenced to death is actually a very nice person. I know very little
about this one, but it’s supposed to be a classic.
(D)(N)Zero Dark Thirty – Dramatized portrayal of the events leading to the death of Osama Bin Laden.


War (Sub-genre of realistic fiction):
What it says it is. Not safe for Spike in the least.

(A)(D)Saving Private Ryan – Set during the beginning of the Allies’ invasion of France in World War 2, a
squad of soldiers from the US Army try to track down another US soldier who is entitled to return home
because both of his siblings have died in the war.
(D)Downfall – Foreign language film, but subtitled. Supposed to be the most accurate retelling of the
events surrounding the end of the European front of World War 2, from a German’s perspective.
(D)Apocalypse Now –A rogue Colonel of the US military abandons the Vietnam War and runs off to an
adjacent country. A special unit is sent to retrieve him, but they end up meeting morally reprehensible
people and doing things they find troubling on the way.
(A)(D)Red Dawn – The Soviet Union launches a surprise attack on the United States, invading some of
the US’s territory. The story follows a group of American resistance fighters that name themselves after
their school’s sports team.
(A)Rambo 3 – John Rambo is a one man army fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Senseless
violence, little story. I’m sure you’ll love it. I recommend watching the ‘Rocky Balboa’ series after this and ‘Red
Dawn.’


Others:

(D)At least one detective noir film prior to watching ‘Blade Runner’
(C)Silent films by Charlie Chaplin
(D)The Ten Commandments – Since you walked out on Passover. Cheesy, but it’s the same story.
(D)The Wizard of Oz – Dorothy is a restless farm girl. Her life changes drastically after a tornado strikes.
Should be safe for Spike.
(?)A ‘Bollywood’ style musical


TV
You can probably get away with watching just a few episodes of each of these unless you find something
that really hooks you.

“Leave it to Beaver” 50s live action drama about a family with two young boys.
“Johnny Carson Show” 50s variety show with lots of guests.
“Looney Toons” cartoons by the Warner Brothers Company. Should be safe for Spike.
“Star Trek” 60s live action show about the crew of a large spaceship exploring the universe.
“Seinfeld” 90s live action situation comedy about city life.
“The Simpsons” cartoon situation comedy about a family that loves each other, even though they don’t
get along. I recommend the earlier seasons over the recent episodes.
“Azumanga Daioh” Japanese comedy/drama “anime” cartoon about school life. Anime is a pretty broad
medium, so let me know if you want more.
“Generation Kill” dramatic miniseries about a US platoon during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Single-
handedly created the ‘tactical babble’ trend in subsequent military-themed media. I recommend that
you finish the music section before viewing this.


MUSIC (I recommend you do this section in order. I have it arranged roughly chronologically.)


Classical:
This section is sort of bare, but a lot of it's really long symphonies and such. Some of the
movies use classical pieces for their soundtrack, so I left a little out to surprise you.

Toccata and Fugue in D minor
Mozart’s Requiem
Moonlight Sonata
For Elise (Suggested by my mother. Could you tell?)
Beethoven’s Seventh, movement two
1812 Overture


Slave spirituals/gospel music (MANDATORY):

Amazing Grace
Let My People Go
Down By the Riverside


Politically relevant music of the 20th century:

“God Save the King” and “Let Freedom Ring”
The Nazi German Anthem, “Deutschland Uber Alles [Germany Above All Others]”
Soviet National Anthem
The US anthem, “Star Spangled Banner”


Jazz/swing/Motown:

Listen to the Jazz Decades on Sunday night at 8pm for at least 30 minutes
God Bless the Child
Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald duets, including “Cheek to Cheek”
Ray Charles (Also a biography movie of him, let me know if you’re interested)
Frank Sinatra
I Heard it Through the Grapevine
R-E-S-P-E-C-T - Aretha Franklin
Shop Around


Rock (Early):

Blue Suede Shoes –Johnny Cash
Jailhouse Rock and other Elvis Presley songs
The Beatles


Early classic rock/war protest music:

The Times, They Are A-Changin’
Another Brick in the Wall
4 Dead in Ohio (Inspired by the Kent State protest)
War - Edwin Starr
Fortunate Son
Rolling Stones


Country:
I’m not very familiar with these next two genres, so please forgive the lack of content here.

When the Man Comes Around - Johnny Cash
Dolly Parton
Glen Campbell
Picture - Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow


Disco:

The Jackson 5
Earth, Wind, and Fire
Bee Gees


Early popular music:

In the Air Tonight - Phil Collins
Every Breath You Take - Police
Girls Just Want To Have Fun
Don’t You Want Me, Baby?
Thriller (music video), Beat It - Michael Jackson
Superstitious - Stevie Wonder
Take Me On (music video)
With or Without You
It Must Have Been Love (But it’s Over Now)
Under Pressure
Heaven is a Place on Earth
Space Oddity
Bohemian Rhapsody


Classic Rock (late/metal):

Don’t Stop Believing
The Summer of ’69
Paradise City
We’re Not Gonna Take It and I Wanna Rock
Back in Black, For Those About to Rock, Thunderstruck - AC/DC
Peace Sells, Hangar 18, and For Whom the Bell Tolls
Sad But True, Nothing Else Matters - Metallica
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
Do the Evolution - Pearl Jam (with the accompanying video!)


Hip hop:

Ain’t Nothin But a G Thang
The World is Yours
Wu-Tang Clan
Ice, Ice, Baby
Can’t Touch This
Gangsters’ Paradise
Changes - Tupac

Popular music (recent):

Everybody Dance Now
Macarena
Waiting For Tonight - Jennifer Lopez
I Will Always Love You - Celine Dion
Don’t Tell Me ‘Cause it Hurts
Do You Believe in Life After Love
One More Time - Britney Spears
Backstreet Boys/N*Sync (interchangeable)
I’m blue - Eiffel
Dust Yourself Off and Try Again
Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger
Who Let the Dogs Out
Hey Ya
Girlfriend - Avril Lavigne
Poker Face - Lady GaGa
Big Girls Don’t Cry
Single Ladies - Rihanna
Baby - Justin Bieber (please forgive me)
I Wanna be a Billionaire
Panamericano
Party Rock Anthem
Moves like Jagger
Gangnam Style
Not Gonna Write You A Love Song
Somebody That I Used to Know
Call Me Maybe


Rap and recent hip hop:

Hot in Here
Yeah - Usher
Crazy in Love
Where is the Love?
My Boo
In Da Club
Drop it Like It’s Hot
Candy Shop
Gold Digger
The Real Slim Shady
Empire State of Mind
Lonely - Akon
Irreplaceable - Beyoncé
Pon de Replay
Stronger - Kanye West
Lose Yourself - Eminem


What passes for rock now:
“Crawling in My Skin” or “Bring Me to Life”
Skater Boy
I Kissed a Girl
Viva la Vida
U2
Love Story - Katy Perry


>He put quite the list together
>The so called “comedy” about ‘nuclear war’ caught your eye, but you'll have to go through the list in detail later; Jon’s waiting
>Now for your original reason to come to the living room
>The top box is labeled ‘Toy Story’ and has some pictures of what look like human dolls and action figures on the outside
>The boxes seem to have a gap going across three of their thinner sides, and a book-like spine on the fourth
>You pry it open with your magic
>It hinges open like you’d expect it to, but with a soft pop that you didn’t expect
>Inside, there is a smaller black box with two external spindles and a transparent port showing whether the magnetic film inside is wound
>It’s not a ‘digital video disk,’ so it’s a ‘cassette’ by process of elimination
>With the format identified, you close the box and check through the rest of the stack by looking at their spines
>The second video’s box is labeled ‘The Lion King’ 
>The books are labeled ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’
>It’s going to seem rude if you keep Jon waiting much longer, so you levitate the boxes and books to bring them downstairs
>You spot a hoof-written note taped on the front of ‘The Lion King’ as you lift it


Twilight,

I know we don’t really see eye to eye, and not just because you’re two feet shorter than me. I owe it to
you for being patient this long. The last few weeks I really had nothing to do that was taking up too
much time to do this for you, but I blew it off because I figured you were still doing important things.
Laziness was also a factor. I’m going to be very busy over the next five days, so forgive me for making
you wait just a bit longer. Apologies are good, but the reason I’m writing this is to give you a heads-up
because this movie has a very dramatic and sad death sequence that I’m not sure you’d approve of
Spike seeing. The storyline is derived from a classic tragic play by the author William Shakespeare, so if
you want an unfiltered look at his style of storywriting in one of his other tragic plays you can look for
the transcript of ‘Macbeth’ in my room. It should be on top of the printer. I’ll try to get some of his
comedies if you’re interested in seeing more of his work.

Jake


>Wow, that’s actually borderline courteous of him
>…Maybe one more
>Just one
>This could be the (potentially drugged) juice speaking, but you’re going to consider giving humans one more chance to prove they can be civilized, even though they’re different
>And they’re also restricting how you use your magic, which is just… just NO, okay?
>That would be a deal breaker for you even if they were behaving in a way that Celestia would approve of
>If they want a shot at redemption, they’re not getting it easily
>They blew it on their first chance, and they threw away their second chance as well
>They’re going to have to work for it if they want to earn a third chance


Steam Chat
[BerberB X][NagromSreip X][redleader27 X]
BerberB
Online
In-Game
Combat Mission (that old WWII RTS that I modded so the Soviets represent c…
---------------------
BerberB: So there’s a Heavy Armored Organism-22 on a ridge and all of my AT guys died in the last turn… thoughts?
PainedUlnar: Can it wait a minute? I’m in the middle of some calibrations.
PainedUlnar: By calibrations I mean trying to polish this script to actually work the way I want it to and by a minute I mean that it’s due at midnight without any late submissions being accepted
PainedUlnar: And I have no context or other information about your situation, so I can’t help
BerberB: Blitzkrieg waits for no man.
BerberB: btw, I understood that reference.
PainedUlnar: I thought you said that you hadn’t played that series.
BerberB: No
BerberB: But I did watch a let’s play of it.
PainedUlnar: YOU FOOL
PainedUlnar: YOU GOT ALL OF THE SPOILERS WITH NONE OF THE EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT
BerberB: U mad?
PainedUlnar: No
PainedUlnar: But I am disappoint and I need to get back to this script.
PainedUlnar: holy shit why does this text box only accept input once I didn’t tell it to do that
PainedUlnar: At least I think I didn’t.
PainedUlnar: brb flowcharts
---------------------
|
---------------------
Last message received: Thursday, May 9, 2013 at 10:01 PM



Part 10

>Monday, May 13th, 8:55pm
>Year 22 and ‘HOLYFUCK DEADLIIIIINES’ on Earth
>And day ‘The US government is kind of shady, but we already knew that’
>Tapping the Associated Press’ phones is SO something they’d do
>Guess what?
>Today’s big news story is that they were doing just that
>The bit about the IRS being biased towards liberal organizations wasn’t as expected, but just about everything in the 2012 election had something dirty about it
>Also day ‘Equestria Girls trailer got released’ on Earth
>You saw the trailer a few hours ago and it looks like it might be decent
>Maybe-sorta who the hell is the guy with the blue hair, and why is Spike a dog?
>You’re not going to see it in theaters, though, lest the predictions of socially oblivious un-bathed hordes ruining young girls’ childhoods come true
>You are Jake Addams
>For the record, you did shower last night


>Today, you’re banging out a seven page essay about how China seems to have a historical bias towards strong central leadership instead of something more representative and accountable
>This is in addition to figuring out how to generate a non-repeating five digit combination using an ‘if’ statement instead of arrays to comply with your syllabus on Thursday, getting a checkup and a refresher on how to use Constant Contact for the church newsletter on Friday, donating blood on Saturday, filming a gospel group that visited your church/multi-religious study and worship community’s Mother’s Day service on Sunday morning, writing a paper contrasting the beliefs of John Arthur and James Shikwati with those of Peter Singer on Sunday afternoon, and spending today chasing down professor Jeandreau to hand in your ethics portfolio and the paper you finished last night
>You thought he said he’d be in his classroom until 1pm
>Apparently he meant he’d be there AT 1pm
>At least you didn’t have to compile the newsletter this week
>It doesn’t start until the week after this one, but you didn’t realize that until just now because you suck at scheduling and forgot to check whether it actually would conflict with your finals


>Once your portfolio was handed in, you settled into the student lounge and started copying down the details of the PRC’s governmental structure from ‘Comparative Politics in Transition’ and researching Taiwan’s current structure from their state website so you could have a point of contrast for your essay
>The lounge wasn’t the best choice of location
>There were still students there doing everything except work
>You’ve been “working” all day, hence the viewing of the ‘Equestria Girls’ trailer
>The guy who’s playing with that ‘Magic: The Gathering’ group using ‘Friendship is Magic: The Gathering’ custom cards struck up a bit of conversation with you
>Best pone, favorite episode, headcanons
>The usual stuff that totally doesn’t draw attention to the fact that you’re watching a cartoon for little girls and then discussing it in-depth in a public place
>It’s kind of hard to feel shame for that sort of thing when a third person who’s already familiar with the subject comes in and joins the conversation
>The little pills the doctors told you to take with breakfast help too
>That’s neither here nor there


>Apparently brony #2 had never heard of the Lyra plushie
>You didn’t ask which rock he was hiding under to have missed it, but you did try to find it on Derpibooru for him
>You discovered that it’s actually harder to find the original image of the item than it is to find edited images and art illustrating the possible alternative uses for what’s obviously intended to be a sex toy
>Anyway, you got maybe a third of the paper done in the lounge over the course of six hours
>Things picked up once you moved to the library to pick through reference materials
>Just a bit more, and you’re done
>You’re using Wikipedia just a teeny-tiny bit for this paper
>It’s not your fault that finding books you can reference about the structure and politics of early Republican China is so hard
>It is your fault that you’re typing this paper now and scrambling to find books with good reference material instead of getting it done over the weekend
>It’s due at midnight tonight
>It’ll be done by midnight tonight
>You’ve got six and a half pages already, so no problems there
>Conclusion paragraph, aaaaaand…
>Done
>Flip through the index of a few Taiwan tourism guides and Chinese history books to find references, add some in-line citations, make a reference page, and you’re golden
>If there’s one thing you learned from this, it’s that the Chinese People’s Congress is the world’s largest group of yes-men and they’re a stellar example of what happens when representation is stifled


>Jeandreau would love you if he knew you were thinking like that
>You could’ve sworn he was trying to indoctrinate you into libertarianism
>It’s a sensible philosophy, but you’d prefer to choose your own opinions
>References finished
>Now all you’ve got to do is email it to Professor Spadaccini from your school email account

Dear Professor Spadaccini,

Attached to this message is my final paper for your course. I apologize for the lack of citation, especially
in the first body paragraph, but I had difficulty finding references for the structure of Republican China’s
government prior to the rise of Chiang Kai-Shek.

Have a good summer!
Jake Addams


>Okay then, attach the file, hit send
>…Hmm
>Spadaccini said that he values honesty a lot
>He’s probably going to wonder where you got the information you used for the section about early Republican China if you didn’t cite any of it
>On the other hand, your entire grade for his relatively unstructured course is riding on this one paper, perfect attendance and coursework be damned
>Meh, he’s a cool enough guy
>He’ll understand

Dear Professor Spadaccini,

Attached to this message is my final paper for your course. I apologize for the lack of citation, especially
in the first body paragraph. I got the specifics from Wikipedia, but I had difficulty finding books about
the structure of Republican China’s government prior to the rise of Chiang Kai-Shek.

Have a good summer!
Jake Addams


>You’ve got your reservations about telling him, sure
>And you’ve only got yourself to blame for not trying to find any reference material or starting the paper until today
>But those are two details you’re pretty sure are best left implicit
>He had an entire semester and two other papers to learn that your style of work is ‘11th hour blitz’
>You’re pretty sure you actually told him about that in those exact words when he was chatting with the class about just random stuff that actually wasn’t political
>Whatever
>Send
>Sent
>Done
>Fuck yes, school’s out for summer!
>You pack away your laptop and turn in the books you were using at the desk, then swing by a vending machine to get a little something for Spike
>He’s probably going to have to wait until tomorrow to get it, but a bet is a bet
>You said “every day I go to school” and you went to school today
>Never making a bet with that thigh-high bastard again
>You haven’t been on the quad at night before
>It’s pretty much the same, just darker
>The weather’s gotten warmer and warmer over the last couple of weeks
>It’s pleasant, but there’s always a ton of tree pollen on your car
>Also caterpillar shit
>Fuck you too, nature
>The last thing you need is more shit to take care of today


>You go through the bookstore to turn in ‘Comparative Politics in Transition’ and ‘Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life’
>You were considering paying the extra money to buy ‘Vice and Virtue’ for Twilight, but thought better of it
>Knowing her, she’d read Plato’s ‘Rings of Gyges’ debate and fall in love with the conclusion that any human given the ability to live without repercussions of bad deeds would become evil no matter how noble they used to be
>Once she gets a computer, you could just look up the table of contents and tell her to Google it herself if she’s interested
>The local library might have it as well
>Your business is complete here
>All there is to do now is go home, rest, and finally get Twilight off of your case about building the computer for her
>You’ll go to the dump and MicroCenter for parts tomorrow
>For now, fuck work
>You’re eager to get home and get it all done with
>You walk through the sparsely-occupied parking lot to your car, unlock it with the remote, and climb inside
>The drive home is a bit darker than you’re used to, but you know the route well
>Turn past the hospital, down the main road, onto the highway, fifth off-ramp east, turn right at the traffic light, through the neighborhood, into the driveway, through the door 
>And there’s Eliza working at the kitchen table
>She got home before you did
>This is a rare occurrence, but not unexpected; you stayed at college for eight hours more than you usually do


“Hi, mom.”
>“Hi, Jake. How do you think you did?”
“I’m feeling confident about my grades. I already got an A- back for my Comp Sci project.”
>“Do you want dinner? I bought some lasagna for you on the way home.”
“No, thanks. It’s sort of late, anyway.”
>“But the doctor said you lost weight. Did you get enough to eat today?”
“I did. I’m fine.”
>“Are you sure?”
“Yes, mom.”
>“Okay, I just want to make sure you’re getting enough.”
“I’ll try not to tempt you into going off of your diet.”
>You’re about to leave the kitchen when she starts speaking to you again
>“You need to spend more time with Twilight Sparkle.”
“What?”
>“I talked this over with Jon earlier. He agreed. She’s been very withdrawn the whole time she’s been here, even when she was in a good mood, or pretending to be in a good mood. She needs companionship.”
“Why me? Why not Jon or Spike?”
>“She’s been pushing Jon away a bit, recently. Jon said it seems like she might be-”
>Jon peeks out of his office
>“Did someone say my name?”


“We’re talking about how to improve Twilight’s mood.”
>“Oh. I talked about this with Eliza earlier. Our guest of equine nature”
>He gestures dramatically and enunciates those last two words
>“was less friendly towards me over the last few weeks. She never tells me why when I ask her. She’s getting friendlier again, but she’s not coming upstairs just to debate science like she used to.”
“But why not Spike?”
>“I talked with him last week when he was washing dishes. He’s been trying to get Twilight to open up, but he’s not making any headway.”
“So I’m supposed to spend time with her and do what, exactly?”
>“We all know she’s hiding something that’s making her stressed. You and Spike are going to try to find out what it is.”
“I think it might be a better idea if we wait for her to tell us.”
>“This was Spike’s idea. I think he knows what he’s talking about. He knows her better than you do, after all.”
>Well, that would explain why this is such a terrible idea
>You’re sort of reluctant, but…
“Alright, I’ll go along with it.”
>“One more thing. ¿Va a construir la computadora la semana próxima?
>He’s speaking Spanish again
>This can only mean that he’s going to bring the topic towards Celestia
“Si. ¿Por qué me preguntar?”


>“Es un riesgo enorme para que le permita usar la computadora. Necesitamos tener comunicación directa con las reinas.”
>It’s a big risk to let her use the computer, so we need more direct communications with the…queens?
“They’re not-”
>“¡Lo sé! Yo no quiero decir alguna palabra que pudiera reconocer.”
>Oh
>The alternative was to say something that sounded too much like “princess,” which you almost said in plain English like a fucking idiot
>Eliza has no clue what either of you are saying and goes back to grading schoolwork or whatever she was doing when you got here
“¿Y que debemos hacer?”
>“Voy a tratar de conseguir una excusa para escribir cartas directamente a ella. Puedo manejar esta parte de mí mismo. Cuando tenemos una excusa, se puede empezar a contar con más frecuencia si tú piensas que ella está acercando a aprender el secreto.”
>So once he’s got an excuse to start writing letters to the princesses, he’ll dump it on you so you can start sending updates straight to the princesses instead of stowing suspicious ‘LOL SHOW TO NOBODY EXCEPT CELLY AND LULU’ letters with Twilight’s
“Got it.”
>“Good. Now go get some rest. You look like you need it.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.”
>With that, you walk out of the kitchen
>After several nights of getting to sleep sometime around 1 am, you'd like nothing more than sleep right now
>You set down your backpack and flop into bed like you have never flopped before


>And then you realize that you haven’t taken care of something important
>You pull your laptop out of your bag and hinge it open
>“Jake?”
>Twilight is here to bother you again
>Your impatient response doesn’t surprise her at all
“What is it? I’ve had a really long day and I know I promised to make that computer for you this week.”
>“It’s not that. I just had a couple of questions.”
“Please make them quick.”
>“I finally got a chance to watch ‘Toy Story’ with Spike today, and I didn’t understand some of it. Spike recommended that I have some sort of ‘guide’ for when I watch movies that reference other parts of human culture.”
“You just got around to it now?”
>“I’ve been busy with a few things, mostly working with Jon, studying history, and magic. We finally gave up on trying to determine if the programming of the Canterlot Computer could cause physical harm to the circuitry. I decided to take a break before we choose what to investigate next.”
“I’m guessing Spike recommended me.”
>“Did the conversation you had in the kitchen tip you off?”
>She’s right, but how would she have heard it?
“How did you know what that was about? Spike told me he thinks you’re going deaf.”
>“I- I’m not going deaf!”
>Spike also told you that she gets really freaked out if someone says they think she’s going deaf


>She has been hearing less stuff that’s been happening upstairs recently, but from what you’ve seen her hearing seems to be normal when she’s upstairs
>Now she’s got super hearing?
>As if being a fucking alicorn wizard princess wasn’t enough for her
“Raising your voice like that doesn’t make me believe you more.”
>“I was just expecting them to talk about that! That’s all.”
“Whatever.”
>“So you’re okay with watching a few of these movies with me?”
“I have nothing better to do than cater to your every frivolous whim, milady Purplesmart.”
>She has a look of concern about her, not just because your last remark was dripping with sarcasm
>“Why did you call me that?”
>Because 4chan
“Because you’re purple and smart. It fits. Spike and I started using nicknames, so you get one too.”
>“I think you called me that about a month ago as well…”
“I seriously don’t remember when that happened. I’m sure you were just as smart and purple then as you are now.”
>“Ugh. Forget I asked. Back to my real question, were those real models of toys in that movie?”
“They were computer models. I thought you would kn-”
>Now her patience is starting to wear through
>“You just said I’m smart. Don’t act like I’m stupid. I meant that outside of the movie, could a human go to a store and buy toys like any of the ones in the movie?”


“Just about. A few were made up just for the movie, but the fire truck one is one that I remember having when I was really young.”
>“What about the green figurines that had plastic bases on their feet?”
“The army men?”
>“Yes.”
“Those have been around since long before the movie.”
>“What are they for?”
“Kids play with them. They’re toys.”
>“I figured that. How are they supposed to be used?”
“You’re supposed to set them up to make dioramas of battles and things.”
>“What’s the general age range for that sort of toy?”
“Old enough to know not to put them in your mouth.”
>“Are they a popular toy?”
“Somewhat. They’re well known, at least.”
>“Let me just see if I understand this…”
>She lifts a fore-hoof up and holds it a bit in front of her
>“These are popular toys…”
“Yes.”
>She moves her hoof aside, staring at the space it occupied
>“They’re intended for children too young to understand politics…”
“I guess.”
>She looks back to you while moving her hoof back and forth, as if she’s trying to arrange her thoughts in the air in front of her
>“And they’re about war?”
“Pretty much.”
>She raises her hoof into a one-sided shrug, her brow furrowing in disgust
>“So they’re for teaching children to enjoy war? For Celestia’s sake, hasn’t anyhuman seen that there’s something systemically and morally WRONG about that?”
“Probably.”
>“Do you see anything wrong with that?”
>Give her the answer she wants
“A bit. Are you done? I’m really not in the mood for this.”


>The hoof drops back into place
>Her expression changes from something accusatory to something contemplative
>“Well… it’s good to know there might be a reasonable human somewhere.”
>She begins to back out of the doorway
>“Thank you for the note on ‘The Lion King,’ by the way. You might not be totally reasonable, but at least you’re thoughtful.”
>She gets to bother you, so now it's your turn
“Hold up. I have a question for you.”
>She stops
“Has anyone ever told you that you ask loaded questions at inappropriate times?”
>“Has anyone ever told you that your society brings up a lot of loaded questions about inappropriate things?”
>Should have seen that retort coming
“Yeah, well… this is Earth. It sucks here, but at least it’s not completely horrible.”
>“Put that phrase on the front of a tourism pamphlet and see whether anyone wants to visit.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you’re asking at really bad times.”
>She starts to back out of the room again
>“I prefer to get things when I want them.”
>And she’s finally gone
>Back to business, then to bed


Steam Chat
[BerberB X][NagromSreip X][redleader27 X]
NagromSreip
Offline
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PainedUlnar: Hey, do you know any programs I could use to cause a web browser to run into false 502 errors when it finds certain phrases or content on a web page?
PainedUlnar: I also would like a discreet program that could be used to watch one computer’s screen from another computer and move the mouse around and shit
PainedUlnar: Preferably free ones or ones that can be pirated without much risk of bots and viruses.
PainedUlnar: I think the latter one might actually be part of Windows. If you know how to use it, let me know.
PainedUlnar: I need to do some script kiddie work.
PainedUlnar: Because of reasons.
PainedUlnar: I’m going to close this chat window and go to bed now, also because of reasons. IM, phone, or text me soon. This is sort of urgent.
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Last message received: Sunday, May 12, 2013 at 7:22 PM



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