//------------------------------// // A Pink Abomination and Some Actual Exploration (6) // Story: The New StalLi-Ion // by Twilight_the_spy //------------------------------// IT'S ALIVE I pushed the door open. I could see that it was very dark in the house. Oh no, please don't let this mean that the thing got into the house... I thought I could see shadows flitting across the room, behind the furniture, and along the walls. My breathing and heartrate increased tenfold almost instantaneously. Chrysalis, sensing my mental distress, walked up beside me and placed her hoof on my shoulder. "Relax, Silver." She soothed, "There is nothing in there." At first I was reluctant to calm down, but after having it dawn on me that she could, in fact, sense the emotions of any being within (and that she said she sensed nothing); I managed to calm down. Taking a deep breath, I stepped through the doorway and into the house, with Chrysalis following directly behind. And then suddenly, nothing happened. I looked at the walls surrounding the door, wondering where the light switch was. I did not find anything but shortly came to the conclusion that the reason it was so dark was because the windows were still covered over. I'm an idiot. I scooted myself over to the first window I saw (it was to the right of the door by about a meter), and started sliding the bookcase that was covering it away from it. It didn't end well, though. With me being relatively new to this body, and trying to figure out how to push a bookcase while not in a panicked state, all I ended up doing was grunting and flopping against the bookcase. Chrysalis noticed my horrible attempts to move the bookcase and stood there for a moment. Probably laughing internally at me. Eventually though, she did come to my aid with her glowing green stuff (which tickles when you touch it, by the way). I did end up getting the hang of pushing things around while on four legs, though. Although it's really not so much of pushing as it is shouldering. I had expected it to go quite fast with Chrys' glowy levitation, but it still took around ten minutes to move everything back to where we thought would be a nice spot to put it. With the rooms now brightened by the sunlight cascading into the house, I felt surprisingly at home, but I believed there was something I was missing. How can I be at home if I don't even know what my home looks like fully? Without memorizing the interior of my home, I felt kind of detached from it, like it wasn't fully mine yet, even though I was it's new owner. And so after around thirty seconds of internal debate, my mind settled. I gots some esplorin' to do. oOo The most innovative chapter break in the world oOo After a slightly not so brief (It was feeling late in the day, even though the sun stayed in one spot all day) exploration of my new household, I found out that my new home is a bit larger than I had originally thought. You enter the house onto the main floor (obviously); which has a medium sized, wooden wardrobe directly to the right of the door (I'd assume for some sort of Ponycoats or something, but I'd doubt ponies wear clothes). To the left is the living room, which is just a couch and a rocking chair facing a fireplace that is built into the wall. To the right is the entrance to the kitchen, and beyond the kitchen is the rear door. There's a hallway in the center, which leads to the bathroom, bedroom, and two stairways (one up and one down). In the basement is my room, a storage room, and a bathroom. Upstairs, though, is the definition of, 'Why?' You enter into a hallway. There is a bedroom on one side, and another on the opposite side. Directly on the opposite side of the staircase is a bathroom. Now here is where things get weird. The one bedroom on the same side of the hallway as the bathroom is literally colored the brightest fucking pink ever. Even the carpeting of the room was not spared! The bedding, closet, drawers, nighttable, and everything! Pink! Why? Anyways, I ended up naming that room the 'Pink abomination,' while Chrysalis named it, 'Chrysalis' room.' Well, girly things for girly girls I guess? I think? Maybe? You would think that even the girliest of gals wouldn't be able to survive in that much pink. Anyways, once I was done exploring the house I decided to head back to my room to further explore the capabilities of the Build it, Cortana program. Once I was there I closed my door, hopped up onto the bed, and turned the laptop sitting on the nightstand towards me. After that, I opened the lid and turned it on, waiting for it to boot. I didn't have to wait very long, however, as this laptop seemed to be relatively quick. Once it was on and I had signed in, I decided to check the battery level, as doing so would give me a good estimation of how quickly the solar panel would be able to charge my new machine. I was expecting the battery to be maybe a little over a quarter full, as solar panels are rather inefficient for their size, but nevertheless; I was quite surprised to see that the battery was fully charged. It seemed like it was faster to charge on this than it was to charge it using a wall socket! Hmm, a wall socket. Something that I have not yet seen on this world, amongst many other things... With this thought my mood slowly begin to sour. The thought provoked many memories within the recesses of my brain. It was beginning to sink in just how much I will miss things from my planet, but most importantly; how much I would miss my family. I slowly closed the lid of the laptop and curled up on my bed atop the blankets and begin to softly whimper into my arms--forelegs. I would never be able to wake up to my mother and her golden highlights, nor would I ever even see my father, my brother, my aunt, cousin, uncle, or my grandparents again. Slowly my quiet whimpers became half sobs, tears starting to flow more freely from my eyes. I found myself relishing in my past memories of the family and I going out together for dinners or to theme parks, and even on times my brother would try to torture me (kid torture, of course. We would just fight about everything). But then my brain made it to the hardest pill to swallow. They all probably think I'm dead... I fully broke down at this point, freely weeping into my pillow. If only I could send a message to them... Let them know I'm okay... There was an abrupt knock at my door. "Silver?" It was Chrysalis, "The overall mood of the house has seemed to gotten really sad; are you alright?" I did not respond, as at that moment I was trying to recreate the sounds of my parents' voices in my head. Given no response, Chrysalis opened the door slowly, trying her best not to frighten me -- not that I would have noticed anyways in the state I was in. She crawled her way over to me and gave my shoulder a slight nudge. "Are you alright?" I finally broke out of my revery, only to be very confused about my surroundings. For one, Chrysalis had came in without me noticing; and two, she asked a question that was ringing around in my head. Are you alright... Are you alright... Are you alright... ... No. No I am not. "No, no I am not." I repeated what my thoughts told me, "I miss my family." Chrysalis attempted to soothe me, "Everyone misses something, Silver. I too miss my family of old, but it has been so long that the feeling has dulled." I rolled over, lifted my head, and latched my front legs around her in a tight hug. "I just wish I could go back..." I whined. "Then why don't you?" She asked, beginning to rub my back like a mother calming her child, "What is stopping you?" "Lots." Was all I managed to choke out. "Like what?" She pushed, still rubbing my back. "I have... Sacrificed a lot to get here, and the things I lost I cannot get back..." Like my Humanity. Chrysalis pushed me down onto the bed, clearly realizing that I would not leave this matter alone. She then crawled in beside me and allowed me to curl into her, again, much like a mother would with her child; and I slowly drifted off to sleep as she continuously rubbed my back. oOo The most innovative chapter break in the world oOo I awoke with a jolt. There were no dreams, just a slowly increasing darkness, then light again. It was like dozing off in class and being called upon by your teacher. The sudden feeling that you should not be doing what you were currently doing. I quickly sat up - or tried to, anyways. I soon realized that I was once again -- still -- a pony, and could not do certain things my human body could once do. I scanned around my room, noticing a vacant feeling to my side. Chrysalis was no longer here. Where she went, only she may know. I thought about how I would get out of bed this morning... Or evening... I could not tell what time it was because of the solar panel that was sitting in the window was blocking out most of the space for any light to come through. Soon, I decided that rolling over would be the simplest way. All four of my new hooves would already be facing downwards if I were to just roll off. ...Or of course I could land on my back if I misjudged it, but I have four legs now, and cats always land on their legs, so I assume it must apply to me that I will always land leg-down. When I rolled off my bed, I did manage to stay upright. I wasn't sure if it was just luck, or if I was just getting more used to my new body, but it sure felt good to not be tipsy when I first stood up. I scooted myself over to the window, and pulled back the solar panel away from it. I was assaulted with darkness. Really though, it wasn't that bad. It was dark, and that's about it. This of course meant that it was night time now, and night time meant that I should hide inside and probably sleep. Now that I was awake, however, I knew I would be unable to go back to sleep, so I set the solar panel back up in the window and turned to my laptop. Lifting the lid of my laptop, I watched as the screen slowly came back to life. It delighted me that I hadn't fully shut it down last night during my little temper tantrum, and it was quick to restore from sleep mode. After quickly logging back in using my odd new hooves, I checked what I could do. I was quite bored, as usual when I wake up earlier than intended, and so I slowly began scrolling through the list of programs. One program in particular piqued my interest. Build it, Cortana. The program that was able to build anything, with little input from myself. The program that built me a blanket when I knew I would freeze... Which I now realize I left behind when I left the cave. ...Oh well, I now have a heated house with a bed that has an actual cottony feeling blanket. While it would have been nice to keep my first blanket as a keepsake, it was not very important, or required. I began scanning through the list of items I could make after opening the program. There were many 'main' topics to choose from, and from looking through it before I knew those branched off into many other sub-topics. I decided to look for something that would be useful to me as soon as possible. Not simple comfort items like 'ooh better beds,' or 'microwave;' but something more along the lines of actually creating my life here. And why not start by making it so my computer could build better things, faster? I began looking for something I could use to 'factorize' my computer. After skimming through about four of the ten main folders, I began to slowly realize that the system was set up much like a game. There was a base item, but then you could get upgrades to it. Unlike most games you did not have to progress from tier one and up, but rather you could just skip a tier if you had the resources. So basically if I wanted to make a silk blanket I didn't have to make the grass blanket, then the pelt blanket, then the cotton blanket, and so on; I could just skip directly to it. After searching through the main directories some more, I found that I had limited my search down to three options for now. One: I could start by building some electrical generators. Two: I could start by building an excavator robot (really it looked like a rover though). Or three: I could start by building machinery capable of refining things I found. Upon weighing the pros and cons of each in my current situation, I realized that building an electrical generator would be my best bet for now. This conclusion came to me after I realized that the rover excavator would need power to run, and so would the machinery -- which would also require ores from the excavator to run. I also realized that if I had a stable source of power then the computer could manufacture items at a much quicker rate, because if the first test with the blanket was anything to go by then I would only be able to make one item per day before the battery would deplete. For now, I decided I would stick with a simple handcrank-like device that would push out a moderate amount of power. Nicely enough, the 'moderate' amount of power was still a much larger amount of energy than the solar panel could output. (As noted by the quite helpful portion in the item's description that states, "Can produce up to 600% more energy per hour than the starting solar panel Death gave you." Even then though, six hundred percent more than what the solar panel can make really isn't that much. If I were to only use the crank, I would be able to output six items during the day, rather than my current one. You could also include nighttime now, since my solar panel does not run at night, but the crank can. So you can add another six to that for a total of twelve items every twenty four hours. However, this would mean I would have to constantly crank for twenty four hours straight. So really, the crank is more meant for when I have a couple hours spare time and want to get another item finished earlier. I was about to click 'build' when my brain decided to clue me into the fact that, Hello~ you kinda need resources for that. And indeed, my brain was correct. I needed a moderate amount of copper, a larger amount of iron, and a minimal amount of gold. Well, fuck. I guess I will have to start with a pickaxe then... ... Ah, who am I kidding, this isn't Minecraft, I can just buy the shit I need and get a lazy person job!