Twilight awoke with a content yawn. It was the beginning of her usual weekend book re-organizing, and surely nopony else could handle such excitement.
"Spike?" she yawned again, rubbing an eye with her hoof, "You up yet?"
"Yup!" Spike cheerily replied, "Also, breakfast is on the taaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaa...aaaaa--"
Twilight rose a curious brow at Spike, who was currently frozen mid-step, still stuck saying the word "table".
"--aa.......a.......aaaaa........b--bb........lllll---"
An ear-meltingly loud sound suddenly echoed throughout the room, speaking in a strangely monotone voice.
"CONNECTION LOST. PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER."
Twilight wanted to move, but quickly found that she was now frozen in place, just as her assistant currently was. She tried to speak. Nothing. She tried casting a teleportation spell. Nothing.
And just like that, the world went black.
Lisa Garnet jerked awake with a heavy gasp, her vision blotted by an unwieldy object resting on her face. Frantically swatting at it, she continually yelled the same word, over, and over again.
"Help!"
Eventually, the girl finally managed to tear the object from her face with a resounding grunt of pain. Now, she sat silent on the cot, staring down at the strange device that had formerly been strapped to her. She looked up, taking in the barren room around her, then down, back to the device. Then, to her surprise-- her hands, complete with a small name tag around her wrist.
Given her previous experience with hands in the human world, the surprise hardly lasted more than a minute. Quickly, her mind set into high-gear as she began to really take in her surroundings. Though mostly barren as she had observed before, she now noticed the light, albeit somewhat dingy, furniture that lined the walls surrounding the cot. Turning around revealed a large machine with wiring feeding into the device that was mounted on her face before.
As for the aforementioned device, a closer examination revealed worn, but readable text imprinted along the sides.
Pony-MeTM virtual reality device. Pat. Pending. Manufactured 12/03. Prototype model 5M-23.
With a frown, Lisa placed the headset back over her face. Immediately, she was plunged back into the darkness, and she could no longer feel the majority of her limbs. She took them off. Once again, the world was suddenly nothing but a sparsely decorated room, with gentle sunlight filtering through a single window.
On again. Darkness. Off. Room. On. Dark. Off. Light. On. Black. Off. White.
She turned once again to face the machine, the headset still in her hands. As she slowly rose to closer inspect the contraption, she felt a painful yank on her side. Gazing down worryingly, she soon saw the mess of tubes and cables running from her body, over the cot, and back into the machine. Groaning slightly, the girl climbed over the cot, and stepped towards the machine, the wiring and tubes held tightly in her side.
Up close, the machine appeared to be nothing like anything that she had seen before. Rather than a dashboard of dials, buttons, and meters, the machine instead had a single panel, dimly lit as lines of text scrolled down at a brisk pace.
Though she was unable to read most of the text as it passed her eyes, she did, however, catch a few key lines.
User_ID: Twilight Sparkle
Simulation_Name: Equestria_04
Fatal error: No network connection.
Lisa Garnet-- Twilight Sparkle, took a step back, her eyes wide in shock.
"Sp-Spike?" She stuttered, looking towards the heavy door opposite of the window, "Anypony?"
WHERE IS CTRL, ALT DELETE IN REAL LIFE!!! or ALT F4 or the fucking Power Button or anything!!!
I want to write a story like this were a human gets put back into the pony world after the pony realized it was virtual reality but most of Ponykind is dead or missing... or probably zombified or robotified? The pony goes on a long quest to do something or save someone and a giant adventure... kinda like SOMA... minus the really weird plot and enviroment... actually keep the enviroment (maybe)
This reminds me a bit like the matrix in a way.
8609196
I've been told that several times now by my friends. Funnily enough, I've never even watched The Matrix myself.
Now there's a nice big rock thru the stained-glass window of your paradigm!
8609210
The exact same thing here.
Open reminds me of Batman Beyond- that one episode where teens would pay to be put in a SIM that was near perfect, they came from broken homes and rather escape reality than to live in it. Soon becoming addicted junkies to the SIM.
9011589
Don't watch very many TV shows or movies myself, but ok.
Aye, Equestria-04, because FiM is gen 4.
9040496
Not quite the reference that I meant to portray, but it works, I guess.
The real reference is that in Chinese culture, the number 4 rhymes with the character for death, and so as a result 4 is a very unlucky number to have by itself. This plays into the foreshadowing that there's much more behind the scenes than Lisa currently knows.
In the case of Sci-Twi, Equestria Girls is largely non-canon in this story.
9040517
I noticed that her name, Lisa Garnet, is suspiciously close to the name Lisa Garland, who was a nurse character in a certain video game. Was this perhaps a reference?
9040517
Interesting. In Japanese, one of the words for '4' sounds exactly the same as the word for death. Shi.
9355790
Japanese is a derivative language of Chinese, as it borrows many of the characters. Same goes for Korean as well.
A lot of stories start off weak and get progressively better as time goes on.
You'll be glad to know this one starts out VERY strong. Here's to hoping you can keep it up.
-GM, master of SWEETIE SCOUTING: BEGIN.
9465602
Thanks. I hope it comes across as strengthening to you! The story initially began as a writing project to test a new writing style, but as of late, the chapter lengths and underlying lore have ballooned to the point of which I've slowed updates to a crawl!
Huzzah!!! Ah like this!!