This is a follow-up to Chapter 1, "If Only" of the non-canon FIO story "No Exit." It will not make sense unless you read that first. It will spoil it for you. Seriously, don't read this until you've read that. Here is some whitespace for you just in case.
Back at the frat house, the others crowded around.
"It was f'd up," Chad said. "The men in white coats took him away. We spent an hour on the phone with the upload hotline trying to stop them. I finally got that white witch to admit she'd comply with a court injunction against uploading if she were properly served, but it took us until the next morning to find a lawyer, contact his next-of-kin, and get a court hearing for an emergency stay. At which point she apologized and said he'd already finished uploading over 12 hours ago."
"Holy crap," Dave said.
"And all he did was type 'I want to emigrate to Equestria'?" Edward asked.
It was 'I double-you-natt to emi-grater to Equestria-aah,' actually," Chad said.
"Holy crap!" Dave repeated. "You don't even have to get it right?"
"I guess not."
"So if you wrote 'I can't emigrate to Equestria' would she treat it as a typo?" Frank asked.
"Or if you said your friend Wanda emigrated to Equestria?" Gerald asked.
"Or 'I want to imitate Equestria Online in my own MMORPG, can I have permission to use the setting,'" Dave suggested.
"Guys, I'm not sure we should be talking about this stuff," Harry said.
"Well, you do have to say 'I want to emigrate to Equestria' to her," Chad pointed out.
"Oh! Okay."
"Or chant it three times to a mirror in a darkened bathroom," Frank said. They all laughed and began overtalking each other, rapid-fire.
"Light a candle first!"
"There's probably a rhyme that goes with it."
"Spooky princess of the machine, take my soul and make me ekh-ween."
"That's a horrible rhyme."
"Well, she's horrible."
"Your mom's horrible."
"In bed."
"Oooooooh. My little poooonies," Harry said, waving his arms and making a spooky face. "Your crappy poooetry has summoned meee. Repeat after meee and I will giiive you three wishes. I waaant to emigraaate to Equestriaaa."
"I want to emigrate to Equestria."
"I want to emigrate to Equestria!"
"Ooooohh. And now your sooouls are mine." Harry's maniacal expression sent a fresh wave of laughter through the crowd. "Like a bad horror movie."
Eight phones rang in perfect chorus.
The laughter stopped.
Chad pulled out his phone. It wasn't ringing. His face went white.
"Oh, shit," he said. "I butt-dialed."
Flip phones: prevent you from accidentally being mind dumped into a computer program
I like how these are all completely
Well, these guys are butted !
I can only say that I approve of this. Oh, humorous annihilation of futures! I should probably feel a bit upset by this, but I can't help but laugh at everything related to the Optimalverse, especially this.
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I have never been able to bring myself to use a candybar-style phone for that exact reason (touchscreen smartphones with screen-locks don't count).
Well, okay, not that exact reason. I have no particular reason to fear such an outcome from butt-dialing, but when prevention is as easy as using a flip phone there's no reason not to.
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*flanked.
Yay, whitespace!
Hugs the nice whitespace.
Aaaaaaaand this is why I don't tempt the world with dares. Let alone say the damn words in an Optimalverse realm. Anywhere, for that matter.
I left this comment here on the original comment-version of this story:
A quibble I forgot to point out before: there's a small consistency hole if this is actually in the same universe as the original. I read “The phone’s auto-correcting feature made the sentence legible.” to imply that the corrupted text was never sent; it was corrected by the software, and the correct text is what was sent, so the “You don't even have to get it right?” sequence wouldn't have happened.
Other than that, I like it as a follow-on.
Good follow up.