//------------------------------//
// Ch 7: Technical Difficulties 
// Story: There Is Nothing New Under The Sun 
// by chasethebrony 
//------------------------------//

Technical Issues

Twilight Sparkle was frustrated.

She was the most powerful unicorn to walk Equestria since Starswirl the Bearded, the personal protégé of Princess Celestia, the Bearer of the Elements of Harmony, Three-time savior of the world, and she couldn’t figure out what in Luna's name was in front of her.

It looked like an absurdly thin book, with a black leather cover. It was only about a hoof wide and a hoof-and-a-half long. Opening it up revealed an even smaller grey tablet with what looked like a screen. The tablet was made of some sort of grey material unlike anything she had ever seen. It was somewhat strong, but was extremely lightweight. Inset on the front was a simple black design in a recessed area. There were unfamiliar buttons along the sides and bottom, but she couldn’t recognize the characters on them. The symbols were miniscule, and the look like they were printed onto the buttons.

Not that Twilight had ever seen anything that was capable of printing symbols that small. They were printed uniformly and with absolute precision. Even the best scribes in Canterlot couldn’t hope to match the impeccably marked symbols. 

There were an additional four buttons, two on each long side. They were simply marked with chevrons. Each side having one that pointed left and one that pointed right. 

The ‘human’ had said that there were thousands of books in this impossibly tiny device. He promised knowledge untold and endless possibilities. 

But she couldn’t make the darn thing work. 

Grunting in frustration, she set it aside for the next wonder. 

It was also made of the intriguing material found on the ‘e-reader’, except that this one was black on the outside. Opening it up revealed several series of blue and white inlays. The only other features on it was that there was some kind of slot in the side, and when it was exposed to light, a small green light appeared next to the slot. 

Twilight had absolutely no idea what it was supposed to do. She was afraid of using magic or taking it apart in fear that it may never work again. 

Looking at the pile of things that ‘Jake’ had had with him left Twilight mystified. Everything in there seemed so... alien. The fabrics were unlike anything Twilight had ever seen, or were using cloth in ways unknown to ponykind. The clothes were obviously cut for the human, who only walked on two legs like Spike, and used their forelegs for manipulating items. 

A lot of the items were made from the strange hard material found on the ‘e-reader’, but there were some familiar items in the pile as well. 

There was a large knife, though the design and handle material was alien, the basic concept was the same. 

There was his saddlebag, which looked like it was carried on its back and strapped across the shoulders and its belly. 

Looking over the pile of items, Twilight decided that the best way to see what some of these things was to let Jake use them. 

Hopefully his ‘e-reader’ wasn’t actually a weapon.


Dress for Success


After waiting another long while (damn their eyes for taking my watch!) Twilight returned to my prison levitating behind her several items.

“I have the items you asked for Jake.” She announced while she dropped the pile in front of me. 

Not wasting any time, I tossed my clothes on as only a cold naked man can. Also in the bundle was my E-reader. Looking it over, I could tell that it had been examined, though thankfully nothing was damaged beyond a few scratches and nicks in the plastic. 

Flipping the on switch I saw that the book was on the last page I had read. The light was barely enough to see by, but the pony had thankfully included a candle. Unfortunately, they did not include anything to light it with. 


Just as I was about to turn and ask for a light, I was Interrupted by the unicorn.

“So what exactly is your ‘e-reader’? You told me that it stores books, but how does it work?”

Hmm, I just supposed that they were familiar with electronics. Though, maybe in a world with magic, the development of electrical power distribution wasn’t as significant. So I figured I would start at the bases.

“Well, do y’all have electricity?”

“Well, yes. Though it’s mostly used for lighting homes and for public transportation at this point. Other than that, we haven’t really developed it too much. Magically enchanted items, when created properly last much longer than their electrical counterparts. Plus, electric appliances and products are much more expensive than machines powered by enchanted gemstones. Why do you ask?”

“Well, where I come from we don’t have ‘magic’” this elicited a gasp from Twilight. Before she could interrupt again, I shushed her and continued. “Instead, we developed electrical conveniences to improve our collective lives and make tasks easier.”

I reached over and grabbed my e-reader

“For example, this is nothing but a collection of silicon circuitry and plastics, but it can hold approximately 8 gigabytes of data which equates out to somewhere around...” did a little mental math “maybe eight thousand books, give or take maybe several hundred books or so.”

Twilight's eyes got bigger than some dinner platters I have seem.

“T... Twe... twenty THOUSAND books?!” she gasped after stuttering for a minute. She looked like she was about to have a total nerdgasm. 

“Well, that is assuming that the books are only an average size of 1000 kilobytes and that there are about 1.05 million kilobytes in one gigabyte. Just some rough estimates, but you get the Idea.”

She was just staring at the e-reader with the hungry passion that only a true learnaholic could. She then looked at me and asked me:

“So how do you turn it on? I looked it over and I couldn’t figure it out.”

Bringing it close so she could see I went to the bottom of the ‘reader and flicked the tiny switch that released the screensaver and brought back the text.

“All you have to do is lightly flick this switch.”

As she watched the screen change to text, she got a puzzled expression on her face.

“Wait, so this is your language? How does it project the words on there?”

I was beginning to think that she wouldn’t leave me alone for a while until she had figured out how everything worked.

“So first you use a separate computer to download the data onto the e-reader....”


Correspondence


Princess Celestia relaxed in her bed, reading the latest reports from Ponyville. 

At first, she was worried about the creature. It had attacked one of her guards, and captured one of her subjects. When she had first heard the news, she got angry. 

Normally the Princess of the Sun would get annoyed, or even snappy. But not in the past 246 years had she gotten truly angry.

Like the star she embodied, small flares of emotion were fairly common, but were controllable and directed. 

This time, she nearly exploded with the full power that only a deity linked with a burning sphere of fusion energy could focus. 

Needless to say, she was still surprised that she had managed to cause a volcano to erupt nearby. Thankfully, it was in an uninhabited portion of the Canterlot mountains, but it was still worrisome to the villagers. 

After she had reigned in her temper, she almost issued a kill-on-sight order to her troops, but wisely decided against it. They were civilized ponies, and so far it was only one of her little ponies that had been wounded. 

Then she received news that the creature had been captured. After the report of capture, Celestia had decided to change some things. 

First: She withdrew the Royal Army. They needed to get back to their normal lives, and now that they had the creature contained, they did not need the extra ponypower on hoof. 

Second: She transferred the interrogation and analysis of the prisoner to her student Twilight Sparkle. Celestia needed somepony who could be trusted to take an unbiased analysis of what they had found. 


Regardless of the past, Celestia had just received the latest report from Twilight and Shining Armor.

Reading Shining Armor’s first, it was just a standard brief on camp conditions, any discipline issues worth noting and a report on  troop morale and training.

Then she got to the report she was looking forward to the most. 

In all her years as diarch of Equestria (and the thousand years as monarch) Celestia had never found a pupil with as much potential as Twilight Sparkle. Starswirl the Bearded even lacked the raw power Twilight had available to use. Truthfully, Starswirl lacked the power most unicorns had. His special talent was in magical theory, and maximizing use of low-power spells to solve large scale problems. 

Snapping out of her memories, she returned to the document:


Orders and Regulations


Dear Princess Celestia,


After the capture of the creature found in the Everfree Forest three days ago, several events of note have happened.

To begin, the creature was captured by a flight of pegasi guard on patrol after its hiding place was discovered by several local fillies. Inside they found a bound and gagged Fluttershy, the creature, and many strange artifacts. 

Fluttershy will recover just fine; she just suffered a bit of dehydration, several contusions and a few minor lacerations. 

The Creature was unable to communicate for the first day or so, despite attempts to engage it in conversation. While we debated what to do with it, we simply provided it with water and gruel per Guard Prisoner Regulation 12.51-7. It consumed the meal while suffering no obvious ill effects. It seemed distressed at its bound state, though that is unsurprising as few creatures care to be bound. 

After much consideration, I brought Fluttershy back with me to see the captive under the hope that they had established contact when the situations were reversed. 

Upon seeing Fluttershy, the creature immediately looked both shamed and slightly in awe. It actually knew Fluttershy’s name and though it lacked any other knowledge of our language, it spoke in its own language long enough for me to be able to construct a translation enchantment.

After building the enchantment, I encountered what is probably considered to be absolutely impossible. 

When I laid the enchantment upon the creature, there was a sudden surge in magical power and the entire spell disappeared. 

It is like the enchantment was completely and utterly annihilated. 

When the room was analyzed immediately afterwards, there was no residual magic energy anywhere in the room that was beyond normal background levels. There was nothing to even suggest that the spell was even cast beyond my memory.

Then, in another turn of the impossible, the creature started talking in Equestrian. Much to both its and our surprise, we began to communicate. 

After our initial confusion, I began the questioning. 

The creature is named ‘Jake’ and calls itself a ‘Human’. I have never heard of these ‘humans’ before, but they are anatomically similar to nothing I have seen before. Initial observation supports that ‘humans’ are mammals, though anatomically extremely different than ponies.

They have four limbs; two are apparently for walking while the other two have claws? on the end and are used for manipulating object similarly to a griffon’s talons or a dragon’s claws. They are extremely dexterous, capable of manipulating objects far smaller than anything a pony could ever hope to grasp without magic. 

Their bodies also lack any significant fur beyond the top of their head, chest, and pubic area. As a result, they rely on clothing to provide protection from the environment. There is no evidence of any sort of tail, or hooves. 


Also of note are the artifacts found with the human.

At least one of the items is a weapon, though it is was not initially identifiable. Therefore we treated every unknown item as a weapon to prevent accidental injury. 

There are many recognizable items, though the construction is utterly alien and are obviously designed to be held by the creature's claws. I found several eating implements, and containers along with some sort of sealed packages. Opening one revealed it to be some sort of food, preserved by unknown means. There were several sets of clothing, almost all of which were alien in cut and made of some unknown material. My current hypothesis is that it is some sort of synthetic material, but other than that I am unable to ascertain its origins. The human’s saddlebag consists of two straps that go over its shoulders and runs along its back. 

However, there were a large number of unidentifiable items. Any real looking through them has left us stumped as to their purpose. We eventually found the weapon then comparing the small brass cylinders found at the scene of the dead glow scorpion. When picking the weapon up, something must have triggered it, as there was a large bag (think next to lightning strike loud) and something discharged into a nearby wall. We were able to recover it, and it looked like a severely deformed lump of lead and copper. Any further attempts to analyze the weapon will be put on hold until further safety precautions are in effect.

An item of interest was initially pointed out and described by ‘Jake’ during our initial conversation. He described some device he called an ‘e-reader’ which is some sort of electronic form of book. He claimed that it could store thousands of books in a tablet no larger than a writing tablet. After unsuccessfully trying to use the ‘e-reader’, I finally took it to Jake for demonstration. He showed me how to open it (his term: turn off the screensaver) and get to the books within. However, the books are all unsurprisingly in his native language called ‘English’. Eventually I will decipher the language for further analysis, but right now I had to take him at his word. 

The list of other unknown items can be found in the addendum to this report “Known and Unknown Artifacts Found on Human”
Otherwise we discussed Equestira, and he seemed very keen on our development of electricity and it’s prevalence throughout our nation. He described his home as having developed without magic and instead developing electricity to use as a power source. I will try to find out more about this in further interviews. 

That should wrap up any news on the ‘Human’ and any additional information we have about it. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Your Faithful Student,
Twilight Sparkle