//------------------------------// // 17 Disconnect // Story: For science // by Znegil //------------------------------// "I feel sorry for Applejack.", Twilight told me as we walked towards the portal. "Me too, once she has cooled down we should try to talk to her. If Granny is right, she is angry at herself, not at me." I stopped walking and groaned. "What is it?", she asked. "I have forgotten to bring my backpack along, and we don't have time to go back to get it." "I think you forgot how awesome your marefriend is." There was a flash of light and my backpack laid on the ground before me. "Wow, you can do that this easy?", I asked. "Well, it's not easy... but uses less energy then to teleport my whole body twice to get it. Also, it works only on things I know where they are. Do you need your smartphone too?" "No, it has to charge anyway, the solar charger takes a lot of time to fill it up." I picked up my backpack and looked at my watch, twenty minutes until the portal would open, more than enough time to get there. ... We got to the little clearing where the portal would open soon. "Be careful my love, I will visit Fluttershy while you are away.", she kissed me goodbye. "Just press the button once you are back." "Of course, I will...", I noticed the portal had silently opened a few meters away at an angle to us. "I think I have to go, honey." I waved her goodbye while I walked over to the portal. I took a big step and my feet touched the white lab floor again. I watched the portal until it closed and another random point in space took its place. I turned toward the window to look inside my lab and stared right into the eyes of Dr. Caput. He looked at me surprised, but very quickly his expression changed into rage. He stormed into the portal room. "Miss Mulier, what have you done?! After you had behaved so strange on Friday, I decided to look into the data log for the portals today and found these strange one-minute openings in constant intervals. I came here to watch the next opening and see you come out of it! From something that looks like a forest!! You found another world and decided not to report this?!?!" His head looked like it could explode any minute. 'I'm in deep trouble here.' "I'm just wanted to gather additional data before I report it.", I answered, and it wasn't even a lie... in a way. "You are absolutely crazy then!!", he screamed at me. "It's not our purpose! You will give me all the data you have gathered, and then you go home until we have decided what to do about you. Is that clear?!" ******** "aaargh!" "She is harmless, let her go!" ******** Parts of my nightmare flashed before my eyes, I could not let this happen, I had to find a way out of this situation. "Did you understand me?!", he screamed again. ******** I always have time for my friends.", Fluttershy said. "And it makes me happy to see you. You are always welcome here." ******** "I... I'm sorry I overstepped my boundaries, I will give you all information right away.", I told him. "Please follow me to the lab, I stored it all in one of the binders." I led him inside the lab and took the heaviest binder I got, the one with the safety regulations inside. 'You have to do this.' "Come close, and you will see..." As he leaned forward, I surprised him by hitting him with the binder as hard as I could, right in his face. He stumbled back with a flabbergasted look and fell to the ground, still staring surprised at me. I didn't waste any time, I followed his fall and hit him two more times in the face. He fell unconscious, and his nose seemed to be broken. "You are an asshole, but I'm still sorry for this.", I whispered. I took off my backpack and used my rope to bind him. I used my second pair of socks to gag him after I was sure he could breathe through his broken nose. I had to work fast to erase all traces that could lead to Equestria. I rewrote the portal program with completely different values for the change between portals, so no one could just rerun it to get there again. Since there was no pattern to the locations the portal opened, old data would not be a problem. I copied the Equestria data into a single use program for a last three minute portal to my new home. It would erase itself after use and overwrite it's hard disk position several times with junk data. I used the same method to erase all data from last week for good. All this took me about an hour since much of it was rather complicated. I put on my backpack again and stood in front of my computer screen. 'Run onewayequestria.exe', I typed on the keyboard. I took a deep breath and pressed the enter key. After a few moments the portal opened, and a three-minute timer appeared on the screen. "Well, time to go home n..." Strong arms grabbed me from behind, and I got thrown into the next wall. The room started to spin around me. "You are crazy!", Dr. Caput screamed at me. "This is the most important discovery for humanity, all the resources we can use from this planet!" He slapped me. "I will not allow you to ruin this chance.", she said and slapped me again. I had a hard time staying conscious. ******** ... he used his knife again. "AAARGH!!... please help me..." "Twilight!" ******** I kicked his knee as hard as I could which brought him to the ground. I tried to orientate and stumbled towards the portal room. "Twilight...", I whispered. "I'm coming Twilight..." I made it close to the portal as he grabbed my hand. "Oh no, you're not going anywhere bitch!" He punched me in the face, but somehow I was able to stay conscious. "Twilight... Twilight... my love..." I had no idea how much time there was left until the portal would close forever, it could be any moment now. I punched him back with my free left arm and could pull him towards the portal since he didn't let go of my hand. I used all of my energy left to jump through the portal. I laid on Equestria ground while he still held on to my hand and tried to pull me back, since I had no energy left, he was slowly able to do just that. Then the portal closed. A A A R R R G H H ! ! A A A A R R G G H H H ! ! ! A A A A A R R R G G H H H ! ! ! ! ! A A A A R R G G H H H ! ! ! A A A R R R G H H ! ! I felt incredible pain. I looked down my right arm, between my elbow and my wrist... it just ended... there was nothing but a stream of blood dripping to the ground. I felt how my conscious slowly started to fade, I tried to reach for the button Twilight gave me, but it was in my right pocket and hard to reach now while I slowly sank to the ground. "Twilight..." I laid on the ground, I tried to keep my eyes open, tried not to slip into the darkness. I heard a sound... "Stella are you here? There was this terrible pain in my... STELLA! WHAT HAPPENED?! STELLA, STAY WITH ME, YOU HAVE..." ... .. .