Synch

by sunnypack

2 - Synch - for lack of a better title (rev3)

Author's Note:

I will update this story and heavily edit it. It's still not good enough and it requires more cohesion. I'll keep you all posted.

Chapter 1: Synch

The stone felt immeasurably icy as I touched the sturdy, polished granite floor of my cell. I grimaced while stretching seized muscles and aching joints. My body was fresh with aches and pains, all of which would be foreign to me mere months ago. I glared at the rust covered bars, the simple physical barrier to my freedom. I reached out, feeling the rough texture against my fingers. I studied my finger curiously as the sunset orange filmed my fine appendages.

I was overcome with the urge to laugh.

It came slow, like a deep infectious disease spawned in my intestinal tract. The mirth sprang forth as a trickling chuckle, then a flowing giggle and finishing with torrential laughter that echoed around the small chamber.

Because I remembered.

I felt a wetness trickle down the hollow of my throat. My hand shot to it, expecting a cut and the trickle of blood. Once again, I found myself studying my finger. It was watery and slightly viscous. I realised they were tears.

Were I not already seated I would have collapsed, not having the strength to stand.

How had I gotten here, in this strange, strange land?

I heard a scraping sound and I turned my head to see a contingent of guards heading stoically towards me. I sighed. Yes, it would be now they would want me to move. Just when I was comfortable with not moving.

I struggled to my feet as they eyed me warily.

I felt palatable relief exude from the guards when I didn’t immediately lunge for their necks. I almost laughed inappropriately then.

My shin still hurt immensely and I limped along with the soldiers, they had to force themselves at a slower pace.
I was grateful, I guess, that they were so accommodating.
As I was led from the dungeons, I took a better look at my surroundings. The castle held a little of the characteristics and designs from the old castle I had stayed in, with rich tapestries hung here and there and chandeliers that hung from the ceiling and ornaments that lay on miscellaneous furniture that decorated the halls in somebody’s upper class taste.

I was led through a series of side passages, which I figured was to avoid the main populace who lived here, towards a set of grand double doors that seemed to be made of oak, but I wasn’t sure. A dim glow wrapped around the doors as they slowly creaked open and I couldn’t help but feel awed by the casual display of magic. Technology could do the same for sure but the scientist in me was ever so curious about new and wondrous phenomena.
Beyond the door, two baffling and strange creatures stood before me and I immediately recognised them.

To the left was a white winged unicorn with a flowing rainbow mane and tail that sparkled and shimmered to some unseen wind. It reminded me of the movement of a solar flare, majestic and powerful but existing with casual destructive ease. She was one of the depicted mythological creatures that I had seen in the faded tapestries of the old castle I had stayed in.

To the right was a midnight blue winged unicorn with a flowing dark blue, almost black mane and tail, scintillating with a mirage of dark hued colours that reflected a subdued light, that vaguely reminded me of starlight and the night sky, for some reason. She was the other that was depicted in the ancient tapestries strewn throughout the castle.

If before I was nervous, now I was petrified. Something about their aura exuded a calm clear authority. As expected from a being that had been in power for a long time. When Twilight had mentioned the Princesses before in the diamond dog caverns she had mentioned them with almost religious reverence. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t awe-inspired.

The guard to my right, who had so far been silent, hissed at me from the corner of his mouth as I was led within ten metres of the two thrones, where the diarchs sat. It seems like they had regained their composure in light of being present in front of the imposing diarchs.

“Kneel.”

I knelt, not wishing to cause any trouble. I did not bow my head though, keeping it proud and high as I regarded the two princesses. The guard, who was about to correct my posture in indignation, was dismissed by some unspoken signal between the white princess and the guard.

Their size, while seated, I estimated to be around my chest for the larger white one, whilst the size of the latter darker one at about half a head shorter. I noted automatically that the two winged unicorns were regarding me with different expressions.

The larger white one was regarding me with an expression of calm open curiosity tempered with slight caution. The smaller darker one was the antithesis to her partner, gazing at me with caution tempered with a slight curiosity.

My mind flew back to mangled thoughts about Taoism that my mother had relayed to me in fragments so long ago.

The world is in balance with opposites, I mused with a slight smirk. Neither counterpart was complete or pure.

It was the white one that spoke first, as I had expected.

“You may rise”, she commanded simply. I obeyed, favouring my left leg that currently didn’t hurt so much.

She looked at me concerned. My initial trepidation faded away and my expression cleared.

Maybe this would not be such an ordeal.

“You are injured”, she stated, it was not a question but I chose to answer it anyway.

“It is nothing”, I answered stiffly, unable to meet those compassionate eyes.

“Your majesty”, the one on the right spoke up. I kept my guard up for that one.

Confused, I replied, “I’m sorry, what?”

“Your Majesty”, she repeated, irritated. “You should address us with the proper title and respect.”

“I apologise, your Majesty”, I offered, trying to inject as much sarcasm I could into those two words. I hated people who needed to reinforce their status and decorum. The dark one started from her seat but abruptly stopped as the white one swept out her wing out blocking the dark one’s advance. I inwardly whistled. That was one massive wingspan.

I didn’t want to be overly antagonistic, so I tried to relax.

“I mean, my apologies your Majesties. I’ve been somewhat stressed lately”, I sighed, suddenly feeling very weary.

The cold blue one called out frostily to me across the short distance.

“Does that have to do with the innocent guard you injured unduly?” her icy voice cut through to me. I tightened my fists but forced them open, slowly as I thought about how to respond without making a fool of myself in the process. I guess my temper flares when I’m under undue pressure.

Reason, I said to myself. Reason and logic guide my way.

I calmed down enough to give a reply, “Is that what your guard reported?”

The white winged unicorn gave me a hard stare.

“I trust my guards”, she responded confidently and a touch arrogantly.

“You may trust your guards to protect your life, but I wonder what they would protect more. Their pride… or the well-being of myself?”

They both drew shocked breaths but they considered my statement before responding.

“What would you have us believe?” the dark one asked with barely concealed menace. “Somepony we know or something we don’t.”

I sighed, rubbing a hand across my face.

“I don’t have time for this”, I muttered below my breath.

“What could you possibly need time for?” the white one asked me.

I winced, seems like their hearing is much better than a human’s.

I paused to gather my thoughts. I had a small internal debate on whether I should tell them. I sagged. What harm could there be for telling the truth?

“It all began when the world was taken by storm… by a device named Synch and a knot named Synchrony.”

——

My parents were really into the wisdom philosophy and were not averse to tough love when it came to moulding the spoilt out of their children. By the age of five, when I was old enough to understand what birthday presents were, I was given a choice. One small present a year, or a gigantic present on my eighteenth birthday.

-----

"Your birthday?" a melodious tone asked. I glanced across the short distance to the winged unicorn sitting on the throne.

"My birthday", I repeated, tightening then relaxing my hands. I took a calming breath.

"It's a long story, you'll have to bear with me", I offered. I was happy to see her nod her head in acceptance.

-----

So you know, being a kid, I chose 'big giant present' when I couldn't really comprehend what thirteen years would be like waiting and being jealous of other children and their birthday presents.

"Hey! Happy Birthday", I heard one of my friends yell.

I smiled thinly at him.

"Hey there, thanks", I replied automatically. His smile faltered but it soon came back when he shoved a small gift-wrapped box into my arms.

"Here you go, Happy Birthday again", he repeated, giving me a friendly nudge on the shoulder.

I opened it up, expecting to feel... something. The present was a bone carving from the indigenous Maori all the way from New Zealand or at least that was what the tag said.

"Thanks", I responded, giving him a weak appreciative smile. It felt as fake as it looked.

He looked at me sadly.

"Oh, well I hope you like it", he said lamely before drifting back into the crowd of my 'other friends'.

They soon stopped, it felt too cheap, too hollow and they knew as well as I did that I was just making up for my own selfish reasons.

I became a drifter after that.

Honestly, I had a lot of dirty thoughts about my parents being too cheap to buy me a present but I wouldn't think that way for too long. They were strict but showed me love in other ways. Perhaps one day they would ask me if I needed new clothes. They would ask me whether or not I was hungry way more often than I was actually hungry. They gave genuine enquiries on how my life was or queried about my friends or school. Before, I felt a little annoyed when I thought they were digging into my life but I knew later that that was how they showed they cared.

It all came to crescendo on Saturday the 21st of June, 2038, when Grooble, a global technology company, announced they would release a new product called ‘Synch’. Synch was a device designed to unify all electronics interfaces. In short, it was a small metal headband that interfaced directly with the brain through magnetic pulses in order to relay information to the brain. It could overlay information similar to a heads-up display (HUD) that gamers were familiar with, it could interpret your need to buy pizza by ordering directly to the nearest pizza delivery store, every identification checkpoint was securely and safely passed via identification of your brain-print, a unique identifier similar to DNA but harder to fake.

-----

I could tell the two were confused.

"Okay, I really don't know how to explain it any better", I told them, sitting down cross legged, getting tired from kneeling. I shot the guards a glare as they started forward, but they were stopped by an outstretched wing. Surprisingly, it had come from the winged unicorn on the right. What was her name? Moona? Luna?

I shook my head to clear jumbled thoughts. Onwards.

-----

I was moderately excited. People didn't really interest me, but technology did. I dreamt of all the ways I could utilise Synch to my everyday life. I thought of all the possibilities that could be made real with this wondrous device. I felt a longing to get my hands on it that gave me motivation than anything else had ever given me before in my entire life. I was addicted, I fell in love but it was forever out of my reach with a ridiculous price tag that no teenager would be able to afford.

But my parents surprised me.

I remember walking through the door after a particularly hard day at school. I knew it was my birthday but I never really cared. I had forgotten that it was my eighteenth and I thought I was in for a small cake and a small song. The usual.

Trudging through the door I threw my school bag into my room and met my parents. They seemed happier than normal. My father was still a serious man but even he had a small curl of his mouth, as if for once in his life he was smiling.

"My son", he greeted me, pulling me into a stiff hug. I was surprised, he wasn't a touchy feely kind of person.

"Today, you become a man", he said, gesturing to my mother. My mother went to the next room, to fetch something.

I realised then that the day was my eighteenth birthday.

"A present?" I whispered softly, so that only I could hear. To be honest, I was nervous, intimidated even. My parents had meticulously waited eighteen years to give me my birthday gift, what was so important?

My mother brought into the room, the device I had been craving for almost two weeks I felt a shiver of anticipation. Were they really going to give me what I thought they were going to give me?

Smiling, both my parents had passed me the Synch gear headset. I felt a small recessed engraving on the inside of the headband, turning it over I saw in Chinese characters, my ancestors passed to my parents, now passed to my own, family name.

Tears flowing down my cheeks as I pressed the gift between my arms briefly before setting it down on the table and flinging my arms around my parents.

I had to admit for an early eighteenth birthday gift, it made me one of the happiest people alive.

I had received a Synch gear Premium kit with top of the line features that were reserved for the highest tier customers that were there investing since development, right on the launch date! Needless to say I was flabbergasted. My parents had saved a small fortune getting me Synch and I felt guilty for all the times I held a petty grudge and misjudged them.

Not long after I had gotten my Synch I felt the drive to pay my parents back, sort of a debt that was upheld by the Confucian philosophy instilled within me. I decided that I would put my all into become a Quantum engineer, inspired by the wonders of the state of the art technology that now adorned my head. My studies were always decent but I now threw myself into the work with a fervour that consumed my soul. Articles from scientific journals, mathematics and modelling, physics and the sciences and any information on the Synch gear were all topics that were devoured in my pursuit of knowledge.

In my spare time I trawled the extranet, a unified more ordered version of the ‘internet’ that had plagued the last turn of the century. The extranet was powered by a central international database and contained what poets in these days called the repository of human knowledge. So many redundancies and precautions were in place to ensure the survival of the extranet that the central node of the extranet existed two hundred metres underground in a massive facility powered by geothermal heat. If you would believe it, a backup was made on the moon and updates every two weeks in concentrated laser bursts.

-----

A cough interrupted my narrative. I refocused on the blue winged unicorn. Blue was a little simple to describe that deep midnight navy that she sported but for simplicity I went with blue. I'm positive her name was Luna, sort of fits anyway.

My questioning gaze brought forth an uncomfortable expression from Luna.

"Your kind has been to the moon?" she asked, for voice seemingly strained for some reason.

I nodded my lips peeling back into an instinctual grin.

"To reach out and touch the stars has always been humanity's greatest wish. True peace may have been impossible for us, but unification towards a dreamy goal, was possible. And it was possible, we proved it."

Luna regarded me more curiously and with a lot less hostility than before. She pawed the ground with her hoof.

"Why go there? Why visit the stars?"

I gaped at her. Was she serious?

"Are you kidding? If I had any other ambitions other than my Synch, I would jump at the first chance to go to space! Would it not be wondrous to walk among the vastness of space? Could you not feel the novelty of viewing the breathtaking cosmic dance that was the universe in action? To be awed and humbled at the same time?"

I could help myself, I just rambled on.

"To float there in space and see the beautiful sapphire blue of the oceans, to see the emerald of the forests, the tan stretches of desert and the snow-white of the arctic and antarctic all at once?"

Luna nodded eagerly.

I sighed.

"Sights I'll probably never see at all..."

Anastasia? Selly? I can't remember her name, the white winged unicorn thing, gave me a sympathetic look before gesturing me to continue with my tale.

"Please", she called out to me. "Do go on."

I gathered my thoughts and launched back into the tale.

-----

The extranet contained all the information of the latest updates and developments for the Synch programs including firmware updates and new and exciting applications for the Synch gear and peripherals. The open source movement sped the development along with many programmers jumping on board to show what exactly what they've got. I was one of the programmers in my spare time.

Everyday, I would download new ‘knots’ to ‘tie’ to the central board of my Synch, knots being small self-contained programs that could be run on Synch. I became one of those fanboys that I so detested before. I kept up to date with all the news, even the bizarre ones where people would talk about their personal experiences with Synch.

I shudder as I recalled some of those loonies. Sometimes people go nuts over the weirdest things.

Since Synch directly interfaced with the brain, a lot of security and protection was built into Synch to prevent malicious attacks from interfering. Some people were scared, irrationally I might add, that the Synch could 'control your mind'. I had a good laugh at that. All knots had to be approved by Grooble and regulations were in place to prevent lethal or debilitating signals from being emitted from Synch. The technical details were released in a patent and scores of scientists and doctors had tested and retested the Synch.

I knew it was one of the safest devices on the planet!

So of course it came as a surprise that just six months after the launch of Synch, a mysterious knot appeared tied to everyone’s central board and rocked our world.

Comments

[Seirs]

Actually just a little FYI, 18 is also the age of adulthood in the States.

[TessiFlameheart]

Funnily enough, Google and Space X are already starting on a project to create a full back up of the internet to be stored on lunar satellites and updated via laser transmission of data.

[biospark120]

So in other words it's SAO without the masses apon masses of death and loss.

[I accept headpats]

Internet, outer space.
Think about it.

[wlam]

Grooble

I hate you so much right now.