Twilight Sparkle walked into a spare castle room, looking at all the strange human technology surrounding her as she stepped inside. Two humans in white lab coats were sitting at computers (which she knew a little about from her trip through the portal). One, a man with short brown hair and a circle of scruffy facial hair around his mouth, went by the name Gordon.
"Hey, Twilight!" he said in a warm greeting. "Glad to see you! We've been champing at the bit waiting to run these next tests. Uh, if you'll excuse the idiom."
Twilight giggled. "Of course! I always love helping to advance scientific understanding," she said with a comfortable smile.
The other scientist, a bulky individual with short dirty blonde hair named B.J., nodded seriously. "We appreciate the help, uh, Your Highness," he said somewhat awkwardly.
"You can just call me Twilight," she said with a reassuring smile.
She had told him this many times, but he didn't ever seem to take the suggestion to heart. Gordon had informed her, while heavily intoxicated, that B.J. was former military, and thus was "so tight-assed he could eat a copper ingot and turn it into ten feet of wire," as he had put it. She tried not to imagine that.
B.J. nodded, as he always did, then returned to his work.
"So!" Gordon said excitedly. "We have a new test we want to try. It's kind of a litmus test for all things programmable on Earth. And since we've been making huge strides in understanding unicorn magic, we have been dying to try this one on you. I can't even tell you how many nights I spent working on this project. Converting source code into unicorn spell instructions is not easy, and debugging it could be a nightmare at best, but our simulations so far think this might work. All you have to do is follow these instructions here and we'll see how it goes!"
He handed a booklet over to her, which she took in her telekinesis with burning curiosity. She glanced at the first page and her eyes opened wide.
"This is... an incredibly complicated spell," she said. Every component was one she understood, but there were so many that knowing the result just by looking at them was impossible.
"Yeah, we were afraid that might be the case, but you said you can cast a spell that loops itself. We broke this spell down into a lot of loops, so the idea is they'll draw from your power but once you get them going, you don't have to concentrate on them anymore," Gordon replied.
"That's... actually a sensible solution. So, I just cast these one at a time, then? In this order?"
Gordon nodded.
"Okay."
The first spell, she noticed, had to do with projecting a screen in front of her, but with a lot of variables that presently seemed useless. With a mental shrug, she focused inwardly and her horn glowed with its raspberry aura as she began putting individual components together. It was much easier than it had appeared at first, as the spell was actually written so as to slowly build on itself piece by piece, and she could follow the instructions at her leisure until she reached the looping component. After that was done, she freed the spell, channeling it through her horn, and a wide projected rectangle appeared a couple feet in front of her.
"Heeeey, it worked!" Gordon said excitedly. "You won't believe how many of my coworkers owe me a beer right now."
Twilight smiled and continued to the next spell. As before, it was fairly simple to build piece by piece, and then unleash, letting it loop continuously while drawing from her deep alicorn power reserves. This time, nothing visibly changed, but she still knew it had done something; she was quite familiar with the concept of framework spells.
For about thirty minutes, Twilight cast spells in this manner, while Gordon made sarcastic quips and cheered her on. Sometimes the spells would put numbers on the projection, sometimes images, and sometimes nothing would change. Many of them kept constant track of numbers and positions, some set imaginary boundaries and defined when and how something would be added to the projection. She always knew how to read and cast each spell, and was rather impressed at their ability to write good, clear spellbook shorthoof (or perhaps in their case, shorthand).
By the time she reached the final spell, the numerous looping spells were a drain on her power, but nothing she couldn't handle. She could also end the spell in a fraction of a second if she had to, and had been trained to do just that if a spell ever threatened to overwhelm her. She was not at all worried about how much power it was using, but, still not able to see just where this as all going, had begun wondering just what her power was being used for. She wasn't worried about the spell being harmful, though, either. Gordon and B.J. were nice humans, and she had spent the last few months meeting with them frequently, teaching them everything she could about unicorn magic.
Humans had come to Equestria less than a year prior, and initial contact had gone very well. Ponies and humans had much to learn from each other, and these two were specifically assigned to learn about magic. Twilight was only all too eager to help them, and their studies had even found a few new things even she didn't know. Needless to say, she was very eager to see where this was going, and the tension in the room as she pieced together the final spell felt palpable.
The projection in front of her was presently showing a still image of a human clad in green and wearing some kind of sealed helmet. He looked as though he was injured but fighting on with burning determination, in a place that looked very red, from its deep crimson terrain to its fiery sky above. Even the hostile-looking creatures in the background were red. Four large letters at the top literally spelled "DOOM" and were dark blue at the top, fading in the middle to a rusty yellow at the bottom. The lower right corner simply said "id software" in a square logo.
Twilight released the final spell. She could feel it tying together every other spell before it, loops syncing up and working together. The final component gave the projection life, making it able to change based on the numerous looping spells she had going, and it did so immediately. The still image melted downward and revealed a new sight.
She recognized a gloved hand clutching a gun in the bottom middle of the projection, just above a display that showed a human face and some words and numbers that didn't mean anything to her yet. On the right side was a bright window and a barrel of glowing green liquid sitting on a blue floor that extended to the left, away from the window. There was something red in the middle of it, some kind of mushy pile. Four thick, brown pillars came up from corners of the blue floor, lit from the right by the window and dark on the opposite sides. The left side of the projection was too dark to make anything out.
"Yessss!" Gordon shouted. "I knew it! They didn't believe me when I said I could do it! I can't wait to rub this in their faces. Oh, and I am going to, believe me."
Twilight smiled at the victory of science and listened to the rather catchy music coming from her projection.