//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2: The Gibson 
// Story: Compiler 
// by Smoking Gun 
//------------------------------//


Compiler
Episode 2: The Gibson

By Smoking Gun





It was almost late enough to see the stars in the sky as Twilight looked through the window. Pulling her gaze away, she found herself in one of the campus's learning buildings. The one in question had a multi-color, modern art, hipster vibe to it. Several wall decals and posters littered the wall.

Spike walked by her side as they trotted down one of the halls, stopping at one door marked C32.22. Checking her class schedule paper, she nodded to Spike, and entered. The room had a white color scheme with an ugly grey carpet, and had a projector hanging from the ceiling, pointing directly at the whiteboard at the head of the room. Against the other walls, there were tables that had computers set up on them, as well as three or four stations in the middle of the room; most of which where full. Several students, all around Twilight's age, were all fiddling on their computers, talking to each other, or on their phones.

Spotting two spare computers, Twilight and Spike took their seats, looking at the other students, seeing if any would make eye contact. They did not.

The computers were already on, with a 'log on' screen facing Twilight. She stared at the screen for a few moments before turning to Spike, looking rather anxious.

"I'm in trouble."

Twilight looked to the young stallion to her right, sitting a few seats from her. He had a still-growing mustache, long hair, and was wearing glasses and a pair of blue headphones.

"Excuse me," Twilight spoke, "I'm not sure what my log in is... hello?"

The stallion didn't respond. 

Twilight looked to Spike, who simply shrugged in response.Twilight climbed off her chair, and approached the other pony, placing a hoof on his shoulder.

"Excuse me," Twilight said as she shook the stallion a little bit.

"Oh, sorry!" the stallion pulled off his headphones and smiled at Twilight."Sorry, had the volume up. What's up?"

Twilight smiled back, "I'm new here and... well, I don't know what my log on is."

"Do you have your class sheet?" he asked.

"My friend, Spike, has it," Twilight said as she gestured towards Spike.

The stallion pushed himself over to Spike, still sitting on his desk chair, blowing past Twilight. He picked up the class schedule for Twilight, which was was sitting next to Spike, waved Twilight over to him.

"You see this?" asked the stallion.

"See what?" asked Twilight as she took her seat back. "Oh..."

On the back of the paper Twilight noticed two pieces of information; her username and starter password. Her username was written as 'Twilight2583'.

Twilight took the paper from the stallion, blushing from her brief moment of stupidity. "Thank you. I didn't catch your name."

"It's Reboot," he said with a nod, pushing himself back into place.

Twilight extended her hoof. "I'm Twilight Sparkle."

Reboot shook her hoof. "Everypony here knows who you are. What they don't know is why you're here. Shouldn't you be saving the world?"

"Oh... well... broadening my horizon's I suppose."

Reboot nodded. "Good a reason as any, I guess," he shrugged as he put his headphones back on, returning to his video.

After putting her details in and pressing enter, Twilight looked over at Reboot's screen, examining the video.	The video seemed fairly simple; a stallion in a fedora was sitting on a green futon, holding an old comic book in his hoof. He looked somewhat irritated.

"That looks... interesting," Twilight said to a distracted Reboot. "What's he talking about?"

Twilight leaned back to the center of her chair when she realized nothing she was saying was being heard over Reboot's headphones.

"It's a webshow."

Twilight looked to the doorway, seeing Eclipse walk in. "He reviews comic books... usually whilst irritated."

Twilight felt a sudden sense of relief a Eclipses appearance, it was a face she knew (kind of) and somepony she could talk to (kind of).

"Hi, Eclipse," Twilight said, smiling. "Are you in this class too?"

"No," he said, glancing around the room. "I came to help improve the audience."

The two ponies and Spike chuckled as Eclipse took his seat opposite Twilight at one of the desks in the middle of the room.

"You ready for your first lesson?" Eclipse asked.

Twilight nodded surprisingly quickly."Oh yes! I've been doing reading in preparation."

Eclipse looked confused. "You've... been coding already?"

"Oh no," Twilight said, shaking her head. "I've been reading about computers, software and their history too. Turns out unicorn magic really pushed technology far."

"So..." continued Eclipse. "No code yet?"

"Not yet, but that's what tonight is for,right?"

Eclipse chuckled. "Well... sort of."

Twilight's eyes started to dart around the room. "Did I miss a lesson?" she asked as she levitated her schedule up to her face. "Did I misread my schedule?! Oh, this can't be happening!"

Eclipse pushed himself over to Twilight, putting his hoof on her shoulder. "It's OK, Twilight. It's just... usually, ponies who do this degree usually know how to program before the course starts."

"W-why would that be the case?" Twilight asked.

"Because the ones that don't usually drop out." Without another word, Eclipse pushed himself back over to his deck.

Trickles of sweat started to drop from Twilight's brow as her breathing became quicker"Wu... What am I supposed to do? I'm not prepared."

"You'll be fine."

Twilight and Eclipse looked over to Reboot, who had finished his video.

Reboot continued. "It's all the basic stuff for the beginning. Anypony can pick it up."

"Then why would you need to know what's going on?" Spike added, breaking his bored silence.

"There's... kind of a learning curb later," Reboot answered.

Twilight smiled, emanating confidence. "I've dealt with dragons and monsters on a weekly basis. I think I can handle a few assignments... Speaking of assignments, where's the teacher?"

Spike looked around the room, realizing that the classroom was close to empty. The only ponies in the room were Twilight, Eclipse, Reboot and other pony on the other side of the desk that Eclipse was sitting at, his face was buried in the screen.

"I figured the teacher would have been the first here," Twilight added.

"Were you planning on bringing him an apple?" Eclipse smirked. "This isn't kindergarten. We're all adults now, so any excuse the teachers can come up with to be lazy, they'll take it."

Twilight arched her eyebrow. "How lazy?"

Without warning, the projector on the roof of the screen turned on, and began projecting onto the whiteboard. A photo of a middle-aged stallion appeared on the screen.

"Good evening, everypony," a voice coming out of the speakers said. "I'm Render Farm, and I'll be your lecturer for 'Introduction To Programming."

Eclipse leaned over to Twilight as he whispered, "that lazy."

"This course will be your introduction to the .NET framework, and will teach you the basics of programming. Sorry I was late. I couldn't connect properly until I finished downloading last season of Doctor Whooves," Render explained as he chuckled.

Twilight, looking confounded, rolled her eyes towards Eclipse, seeing him shake his head.

"We paid bits for this."

"Now," the teacher continued. "Please open up Code Kitchen and write 'hello world' for me. I'll be back in forty minutes, I've got to run out and grab dinner."

The speakers emanated sounds of a chair being pushed back and a door being loudly shut.

Twilight's eyes shifted from left to right. "That was... laid back."

"Get used to it," Eclipse remarked.

"If you were ever wondering why nopony gives a fuck," a third voice spoke. "Now you know."

Twilight, Eclipse and Reboot looked over to the third stallion in the room. Eclipse poked his head around the monitor, seeing a stallion with a long black mane, bushy beard, and a t-shirt that read 'I'm not slacking, my code's compiling'.

"Driver?!" Eclipse shouted with a smile. "How come you didn't tell us you were here?"

Driver looked to Eclipse, and shrugged his shoulders. "Doing stuff?"

"Excuse me, guy. I'm not sure what to do."

Eclipse and Driver looked back to Twilight, who had her hoof raised in the air.

Twilight continued. "I think I did it wrong."

Eclipse walked over to Twilight, who had Code Kitchen opened up. In the body, where the text went, all he found where the words 'Hello World' and nothing else.

"It just says 'compiler error'" Twilight explained. "Clearly I'm not doing this right."

Eclipse chuckled. "Don't worry, it's not complicated. You won't be learning how to hack the Gibson tonight."

Twilight looked around the room, seeing Driver and Reboot where laughing loudly.

"What's so funny?" Twilight asked.

Eclipse shook his head. "Forget it; inside joke." Eclipse pulled his seat over, and put himself right next to Twilight. "OK, type what I tell you to. Trust me, it's not scary."

Twilight smirked. "I never said I was scared."

"Now," continued Eclipse. "Type 'namespace Helloworld.' After that, type curly brackets and put a few lines between them."

Twilight obeyed. "Now what comes next?"

"OK, inside, type console, dot, writeline, and in brackets, put 'Hello World I'm Twilight Sparkle' in quotation marks."

Twilight obeyed again. "Now what?"

"Press compile."

Twilight shot Eclipse a confused look. "Wait... that's it?"

"Mhmmm," Eclipse nodded. "The 'console.writeline' means it's going to print out whatever you write. Give it a try."

Twilight moved the mouse up to the big green arrow shaped button towards the top. Pressing it, she looked down at the console at the bottom of the application, it had something written in it now.

'Hello World, I'm Twilight Sparkle.'

"Yay!" Twilight clapped her hooves together, grinning ear to ear.

Eclipse almost looked a little freaked out. "You seem to be having fun."

"Yeah, actually," Twilight said as she started to calm down. "As simple as that was... that was fun. You could do... anything with code."

Eclipse Shrugged. "Well, that's what we're here to do. Did you save?"

Twilight clicked the save icon at the top of the page. "Is that it?"

Eclipse reach over to Twilight's CPU, and hit the power button. "That's it." Eclipse then moved to his computer and did the same. Driver and Reboot were quick to follow suit.

"Wait!" Twilight called out as the stallions started to leave. "That's it? The schedule has this lesson penned for 2 hours long."

"That's there for anypony that needs help later on," explained Reboot. "These first few weeks; you show up for a couple minutes, see what needs to be done and leave. They never give you anything hard at the beginning."

Twilight rubbed the back of her head. "I... suppose that makes sense."

As Reboot and Driver walked out, Eclipse waved to Twilight and Spike. "Come on, we'll get some drinks. My treat."




Twilight looked around the uni bar, which was all but empty. There were lots of small tables around the ballroom, broken up by a few pool and ping pong tables. There was also a stage with some microphones at the head of the room. Around the walls were strategically placed T.V. screens - none of which were on. The only ponies in the room were Twilight, her friends, and a single bartender.

"You guys grab a seat, I'll order," said Eclipse.

"Fuck yeah, you will," Driver chuckled as he walked away.

Twilight, Spike, Reboot and Driver took their seats at a long table outside the bar. Twilight was a little shocked that the sun had set, leaving the stars to lighten up the sky. She was even more shocked at what she saw Driver doing.

"You're on your laptop?!" she called to him.

Driver didn't even look up at her. "You're just a fountain of information, aren't you?"

"B- but you were just on a computer."

"And now I'm on another one. I need to so I can work on my shit."

"You'll have to excuse Driver's language," Eclipse said as he placed five glasses of cider down on the table. "He hasn't realized he's in the presence of a mare, just yet."

Driver shrugged. "Give me three or four years."

"It's alright. You should see my friend, Rainbow Dash, when cider season starts. "She got so drunk at a gala one year that she tried to hit on Princess Luna. She immediately threw up and passed out."

"And on that note," Eclipse began as he raised his mug. "I think this is the start of a great year." Eclipse raised his glass high. "To C.U.T"

The others raised their mugs. "To C.U.T!"

Reboot raised his mug. "To vidja games!"

Everypony raised their mugs again, with Twilight looking a little confused. "To vidja games!"

Going with the crowd, Driver raised his mug. "To the Gibson!"

As with the other two, everypony raised their cider. "To the Gibson!"

Twilight looked over to Spike, who was looking up at her with an arched brow. In response, she smiled and shrugged.

"Inside joke."




Next: ClassNotFound Exception!