Luna, Discord and Caballeron watched intently. Fizzy Glitch examined the laptop and the Anthytoykara as A.K. Yearling explained everything that had happened. Fizzy considered the beam that linked the two devices and tried to interrupt it by putting random objects in its path. No luck.
Caballeron suggested, “Maybe something more dense, like lead. Or Discord.”
“Hey!” Discord objected.
“Did you try turning it off and turning it back on again?” Fizzy asked.
Yearling said, “Luna went to get you as soon as this started. We didn’t dare touch anything.”
Fizzy tried to shut down the laptop and received a screen notification:
Fizzy smirked. “TantaByte? Cute name.”
“Please don’t bond with it,” Yearling grumbled.
Fizzy clicked the button marked “shut down anyway.” Nothing happened. She then checked the list of active processes to forcefully close TantaByteGPT. It wasn’t on the list. The virus scanner also found nothing. She looked for any new files on the hard drive that had been created since the Tantabus showed up. None. She also found nothing strange in the system registry. You name it, she tried it. TantaByte was a ghost. If it weren’t for the data she was trying to recover, she’d be at a point where she’d normally just reinstall the operating system. But since they were dealing with a sentient being, Fizzy decided to try looking at it from a different angle. “Why out of all the places it could have gone, did it choose your laptop?”
Luna said, “An astute question.”
“At least I can do something right,” Fizzy huffed.
Luna asked Yearling, “What were you thinking about before the Tantabus showed up?”
“Artificial Intelligence.”
“That explains why it changed the manuscript,” Fizzy said. “Even calling itself GPT.”
Luna said, “Miss Yearling, the Tantabus is feeding on your fears.”
Discord asked, “Well, if we can’t block the beam, what if we move the laptop?” Discord snapped his fingers and the laptop was now on a bookshelf, with the laser still locked onto it. Discord tried again, and again.
“Discord,” Luna said. Both Discord and the laptop then disappeared in a flash. The beam was now going into the ceiling.
“Umm,” Fizzy said.
Moments later, they returned, covered in slime. “Ugh, Discord, what did you do?” Yearling asked.
“Oh, you mean the ooze? It will evaporate in a moment.”
“Where did you go?” Caballeron asked.
“A planet in galaxy GN-z11, some 32-billion light-years from here… give or take a few miles. Forgot it was the middle of pollen season.” Discord sneezed. “Oh, but the beam was still there.”
“Faster-than-light travel,” Fizzy gasped. “Like the cube and the laptop are quantum-entangled!”
“Watch this.” Discord manifested a dozen clones of himself that all began snapping their fingers. The laptop shot around the room to different locations faster than any creature could see, causing the beam to flicker in a thousand directions all at once. “Laser-light show!” All the Discords made buzzing and humming noises trying to approximate electronica music.
“Discord!” Luna yelled.
Discord responded immediately by singing his favorite Eurobeat Brony song.
“Enough!” Luna screamed in her Royal Canterlot voice, magic surging into her horn.
The ‘main’ Discord stopped singing and lowered his head. “Oh, fine.” He snapped his fingers and the clones disappeared.
Luna took a deep breath. “I think we’ve established that moving the laptop doesn’t work.”
Fizzy said, “I’m going to remove the battery.”
“Can’t that erase the data?” Yearling asked.
“There’s a slight risk, but at least it’ll actually shut off.” Fizzy turned the laptop around to look for the battery cover. “Then I can remove the harddrive and copy–” The laptop immediately began making alarm sounds. “What in–” Fizzy turned it around again. The screen was flashing red.
Luna yelled, “Everycreature out of here no–”
“No, wait! Don’t panic,” Fizzy said. “There’s no such thing; it’s just trying to mess with our heads. It knows what I’m doing and it doesn’t like it.” The klaxon sounds and light pulses stopped.
Fizzy sighed. “Of course the 5G connection was enabled.”
"I can’t count how many connections to G5 I’ve seen this weekend,” Discord replied.
“5G, not G5! It uploaded itself!”
“To the internet?” Discord asked.
“That’s…not something I was afraid of,” Yearling said.
Luna asked, “Is there anything else you said before the Tantabus showed up?”
Yearling then looked very concerned. “Existential nightmare– oh. I said A.I. could destroy everything.”
There was a unified gasp.
Discord asked, “Alright, as much as I’d like to see just how good it is at impersonating ‘Wreck-it-Ralph,’ how do we stop it?”
Fizzy asked, “What exactly does the Anthytoykara do, anyway?”
Yearling explained, “We don’t know for sure. It’s rumored to be the first ever analog computer, accurately reflecting the state of the universe in the past, as well as calculating the future. Most think it was about tracking the heavens, but I worry it’s much more complicated than that.”
Caballeron added, “She means the legends. Ancient tribes tell of it reordering the flow of time, breaking through dimensions, all sorts of things. That it was able to interface with a modern computer has tremendous implications. It could mean that the Ypoli tribe had computers all the way back before the Age of Grogar!”
“No matter what it means, it somehow connected to the laptop,” Yearling said.
“But how did it put a Tantabus in there? That’s something no device has ever done before.” Fizzy went over to the Anthytoykara and noticed a silver disc protruding from the top of the cube. Traced on it was a glowing red magic circle. “What does this do?” Fizzy asked.
Yearling inched closer. “That wasn’t there before.”
Fizzy pondered for a moment. She grabbed an orange from a nearby fruit bowl and carefully placed it on the disc. The fruit was immediately ensnared by a three-dimensional grid of red light, then it vanished from sight. As with the Tantabus, a tiny speck of light traveled along the beam and into the laptop. “Complete digital conversion!” Fizzy said excitedly.
“A.K., this may be the greatest discovery ever,” Caballeron said.
“I wish we had time to revel in it, but how do we stop the Tantabus?”
Fizzy pointed at the AnthyToykara. “We can go in after it.”
“You’re kidding,” Yearling said.
“Hunting a nightmare monster wasn’t high on my list of things to do today, but it sounds like a worthwhile adventure to me,” Caballeron said.
Discord said, “So we toss a couple of Poké Balls and bring it home? Princess Luna, ever fight a nightmare in virtual reality?”
“I would go, but alas, I only have power over Tantabi in dreams. The internet is beyond my borders.”
Discord shot Luna a look of confusion. He was about to question her but quickly thought better of it. “Aw, that’s too bad.”
Luna said, “Fizzy Glitch would be far more suited for this mission than I.”
Fizzy looked surprisedly at Luna. “You want me to go?”
“Absolutely. You are as well-versed with electronics as I am with dreams.” Luna addressed the room. “And I implore the rest of you: accompany her.”
“But how will we get back out?” Yearling asked.
Caballeron said, “I think I know how.” He pointed at the Anthytoykara. “Inscribed here in Saddleskrit.”
A realm where logic and emotion twine,
journey into a world, divine.
When you seek to find reprieve,
speak "escape," and be set free.
Discord said, “I just love how when translated, it still miraculously rhymes! Well, shall we go? We don’t want to keep the Tantabus waiting, do we?” Excitedly, Discord placed his claw on the disc. Just like with the orange, the red grid surrounded his body, and then he was gone. Discord stuck his head out of the Anthytoykara long enough to say, “Come on in, the water’s fine!”
“Well, let’s go into the laptop! Gee, that’s a sentence I never thought I’d get to say.” Fizzy put her hoof on the disc and disappeared, followed shortly thereafter by Yearling and Caballeron.
Luna observed the beam as three tiny lights traveled into the laptop. Where was the fourth? Discord then popped half-way out, the red web of energy still struggling to wrangle him down. “Princess Luna, I have to ask: that gobbledygook about the internet being ‘beyond your borders.’ I’m aware of no such universal law, and I would know, since I’ve broken them all! Why are you fibbing?”
“A half-fib. Even if I could banish it, I would be hesitant to in this case. I’ve seen Fizzy’s dreams, and”–Luna paused, resisting the urge to shed a tear–“she needs this. Fizzy Glitch is feeling like a lesser light; lost in the shadows of those perceived to shine far brighter than she.” Luna’s chin wobbled. “I’ve been there. And I know all too well what kind of damage it can do.” She took a deep breath. “I wasn’t lying about anything else. That realm is her kingdom, not mine. There is no creature here who would be better at hunting a Tantabus across the internet. So don’t mess this up for her, please.”
Discord smiled. “Shenanigans and deception for the greater good? I’m proud of you. You’re starting to think like me. Alright. This one time, chaos yields to order. But, a little quid-pro-quo: you have to let me turn the moon into green cheese.” Luna’s whole body recoiled, but Discord assured her, “Just for one day. And you can’t tell Twilight that you know what’s going on, otherwise there’s no fun in it.” Discord winked.
Luna tried to stifle a laugh. “Consider our pact sealed. And thank you,” she said.
“If we’re not back in a few seconds– oh, hmm– let’s just pretend I didn’t say that, and we’ll hope that doesn’t happen.”
“Good luck.” Luna said.
Discord tipped his animal control ballcap to her, and then he was gone. The fourth passenger glided along the light ray to his destination.