//------------------------------// // Interlude - Good Vibrations // Story: Twi Fidelity // by WilliamLi //------------------------------// Twilight Sparkle woke up from a good night's sleep. It was as though...a lot of time had passed. There was a strange feeling, a hodgepodge mix of slight existentialism and mellow longing... She shrugged this feeling off. Rest is all well and good, yes, but she had experimenting to do! With an eager gallop, she hopped off her bed and headed down to her lab, trodding quite hard on the wooden staircase. Something amazing was waiting for her, musical signals from stars away, and she couldn't wait to learn more about them! In fact, she was so excited she didn't notice a perturbed Spike groaning at a sleep disturbed. He grabbed his blanket and pulled it over his head. Just because he helped Twilight correct her sleep schedule yesterday didn't mean she had to do the same. --- Twilight didn't really know why she was being so hasty. Maybe it was because she wanted to listen to the music as soon as possible, since she did want to record all of them. Not exactly feasible, but she would go down trying! ...but there was something else. Something she couldn't really put her hoof on. A melancholic counterpart to her need. Why in Celestia's flowing mane did it feel like it'd been ages? These feelings kept gnawing at her even when she got to the machine, crude but functional as ever. Starting it up, pushing and pulling the mechanisms to their correct places, she knew what to do. She placed one of the blank records she got from Vinyl on the recorder, and finally, she turned it on. The machine buzzed to life. --- Spike was unamused. Any chances of him returning to sleep were dashed once Twilight figuratively blew past him to her lab. He hung in his basket, too lazy to get up but too worked up to go back to dreamland. He just laid there, and let the seconds ticked by. The seconds turned to minutes, and the minutes turned into a swirling vortex of unknown values as Spike's mind wandered. This was nice, just lazing like this. Not having a care in the world... ...but it couldn't last. He knew that. He really couldn't just stay in bed all day. If Twilight didn't tell him to get up his conscious would have, and the last thing he needed was someone nagging him. After an indiscernable amount of time, he rolled out of his basket, briefly lying face first on the floor before giving out another groan of lazed tiredness. Doing some stretches, he made his way down to get something to eat. As he pondered on if he should go out and get a hayburger or just cook something, he noticed that the main room was empty. He rolled in eyes, looks like Twilight was still in her lab doing the alien stuff. Taking a quick detour, he headed down there, opening the door and expecting to see a crazed Twi once again melting down over whether or not she had the correct type of screw. --- "...Twilight?" Twilight looked up to the entrance door to see his young assistant with a concerned face, and he had much to be concerned about. Twilight had been crying, he could see that. Her eyes were wet with tears and he could hear the hitch in her voice, the telltale sign of somepony trying to surpress a sob. Her magic was lifting her notepad and a quill, but they seem relatively unharmed. The machine wasn't on. Spike made his way down quickly. "Twilight, what happened?" he asked, "Did something go wrong with the machine? Did it break?" Twilight didn't respond verbally, opting instead to bring him in for a hug, her warm feathers enveloping him. "...no Spike, it was working." she began, using a hoof to wipe a tear from her muzzle, "...if anything, it was working too well." "What do you mean?" "...I just...," she wasn't sure how to proceed, choosing her words as she went along, "...I think I was in a sad mood...and the music made the sad...go away?" "...but why are you crying then?" "...I think it's probably better if I just played it." Twilight gently turned on the machine once more, but instead of tuning it to the waves she made it pick up what the record had transcribed. The record started to spin, and the tell end of the announcer's voice came through the speakers. "...classic, the song as it was originally meant to be, Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys!" Before Spike could say anything about the name of the song or the artist, the song hit him. --- Notepad and quill in magical grip, she waited for the music to start. 'The Beach Boys...' she scribbled, 'So there are beaches in this world too. The similarities really are somet- Her writing stops as the music actually began to play. It started with a voice singing, but something about it just hooked her immediately. There was a slight echo to it, and a strange instrument acting as a counter-melody. A drum came afterwards, and what sounded like a tambourine, each seeming like they were doing their own thing but also helped the overall song. This was some very methodical music making, and the voices seemed to get louder? This was completely different to the last on— Her thoughts are intruded once more as the song seemed to hit its chorus. The vocals were...so nice to listen to, and there was a strange "wuuuuaaooowwww" noise too! What is thi— More voices! There were harmonies and counter-harmonies! She wasn't even sure if those were the correct terms but it felt like it! The song returned to what it originally was, which finally prompted Twilight to quickly jot down what she just experienced. She never felt music like this, heard music like this before! The chorus came again, and it felt like it went through her. She didn't want to dance to it or anything like that, but just feel it. A complete change in song structure jams her head back to the song. The instruments, the vocals...what was this? This was something ethereal, this was... Twilight's mind blanked out as the music did its job. It was as though there wasn't a point to think about it. A wave of vocals suddenly hit her, along with a strange...bass sound, but she didn't write it down. Her eyes stared into nothingness as she wholly felt the title of this...song. Good vibrations. It wasn't until the song faded out, that Twilight faded back in. That...that was... ...absolutely amazing! By Celestia she had never heard anything like it! It was so...so... And just like that, a tidal wave of emotions hit her at once. Her funk that made her tune in so early, her absolute joy at finding this sound, it was so confusing that Twilight's body could only execute one response: cry. It was a happy cry. She was happy that she got the song, obviously, but there was more. She was happy where she was, at this very instant. She was happy to be who she was, for the past and the future, and all other things. She felt so happy. --- The song ended once more, with Twilight shutting it off. A silence hung in the air as Spike didn't know what to say. "...uhh, that was nice." was all he could muster. Twilight didn't even mind if Spike didn't "get" it. She was glad that he was here, and that was that. "...so...you wanna go get breakfast?" Twilight gave a small sigh of content. "Sure thing, Spike." Spike gingerly rose from Twilight's embrace, heading up the steps. Twilight followed suit. Yeah, she was glad.