//------------------------------// // Chapter 8 - Library part 2 // Story: Fred Walsh's Adventures in Equestria // by Baguettedood //------------------------------// Chapter 8 “Conversations on bodily organs are generally kind of gross. I resisted the urge to just end the conversation immediately and run like hell. “The library expedition certainly explained a bit, although I did get a bit carried away. This happens often, but generally I end up in Wikipedia freefall. After an hour or so of clicking through, you find yourself god-knows-where. “Other examples of information freefall include TVTropes. Once you click that link, you’re trapped; there’s no going back, not without help. “Knowledge is power, as they say… Then again, they also say curiosity killed the cat, but personally, I think it was ignorance; curiosity was framed. *knock knock* “hm?” ‘I didn’t think of it before, but the library gives me a decent excuse to use some knowledge without being suspicious,’ Fred Walsh began with his initial idea of finding the Equestrian Census to get an idea on recent crime rates, assuming it was public information as it is on Earth. The library was empty, strangely enough. He had at least expected a clerk or somepony watching over, but it seems this wasn’t the case. He began to search the bookcases systematically because he had absolutely no idea what the Census would be labelled under. Libraries on Earth use the Dewey decimal system and it doesn’t exactly have a specific author. It took a few minutes, but Fred found the Equestrian Census of the year 790 in a reference section separate from the rest of the books. ‘In retrospect, I should’ve checked here first. Now, let’s see…’ he flipped through the pages to find the country’s crime rates. “Here it is,” he decided to speak to himself – nobody was around to hear him anyway - as he found the appropriate page. “In 790, there were 10 crime incidents… Is that in the thousands? Huh, literally just ten.” He was truly surprised with Equestria’s crime rates in comparison to Earth’s thousands, possibly even hundreds of thousands. “It’s probably few enough to still be breaking news stories.” Fred continued reading the individual incidents. There was a case of assault in there, but extra information in the pages said that it stemmed from a heated argument the day before. Another interesting incident was grand larceny of somepony’s house. ‘How he managed that at all, I can’t say,’ he returned to his internal thoughts. The other cases were minor and not worth looking into, so Fred closed the cover of the Equestrian Census and placed it back on its position on the bookshelf. ‘Since I’m here, might as well learn some other things,’ he began his information freefall. Fred spent a few hours in the library before finally returning to his guest room. During the walk back, he contemplated the things he learned. After the census, he decided to delve into some history books, one of which included the story of Nightmare Moon’s banishment that he knew from the show and the strange earth pony prophet he conversed with a few hours ago. After hitting the history books, Fred moved onto educating himself on a few aspects of magic. Even after all the years pony society had behind them, little had actually been discovered on the inner working of magic, apart from observation on what happens in certain situations. Magic was a form of energy in Equestria that he fathomed Earth sadly lacked in contrast. Even before Equestria’s founding, many spells had been invented; most of them by the late Starswirl the Bearded. Fred didn’t bother looking into the spells, considering he didn’t have magic anyway. He did, however, read into the more theoretical aspects of magic. It seemed to flow around the world and was absorbed by the ponies for their racial abilities – Earth ponies’ attachment to their namesake, pegasi’s wings and their ability to fly – Their wings are too small to actually generate sufficient lift - the magic lowers their mass and improves their wings’ force, and lastly unicorns’ magical abilities – allowing them to cast spells ranging from basic telekinesis to more powerful spells such as conjuration. An interesting thing included in the books was that newborn foals retain some magical reserves from the mother. It can lay dormant for a while before all being released in a short period. Fred had departed his universe at new years’, so he was unaware of the significance. Fred Walsh entered his room for the third time this morning, before checking the time: 11:04 AM. ‘Damn, I’ve been up for a while, but at the same time not very long.’ He sat on the bed for a few minutes before standing back on the floor. He decided to see if he could figure out how to use that piece of Trevor’s broken neuroheadset he attached last week. Trevor was one of Fred’s friends. Trevor was very interested in gaming peripherals – a big fan of Razer’s gear. About a month earlier, he discovered neuroheadets and set his mind on getting one. A neuroheadset is basically a headset with a bunch of small attachments to ‘read’ the mind of the user. Though expensive, they were becoming popular for their abilities of hands-free control in video games. The flipside to Trevor’s enthusiasm in gaming and peripherals is that he has anger management issues. After a rather unfortunate series of losses in Counter-Strike, he accidentally smashed the device in rage. The kind of damage he inflicted on the headset wasn’t covered by warranty, so he put the remains away and Fred eventually managed to attach one of the receptors to his Scavenger Watch. So far, he had no luck interfacing with the piece. ‘This would be easier if there were drivers for operating systems other than Windows,’ he thought as he began his latest attempt to utilise the receptor. This time, he would power the device and attempt to read raw input from it. It took a lot of fiddling, but Fred eventually managed to find the correct signal for the receptor to begin reading input. He wrote this into a custom driver that his watch – running Android – could understand. He eventually stopped his efforts as he’d made the most progress so far and it was time to take a break. He also had to catch up on his vlog. *knock knock* “Hm?” Fred got up off the bed to answer who was at the door. He closed the video recorder he was using to record his adventure. *knock knock* The door knocked again and he opened the door; outside stood a short white stallion with black hair. The pony spoke: “The Princess has invited you to lunch, if you would like to attend.” Fred checked his watch; 12:21 PM. He realised that he hadn’t eaten since 8PM back when he was on earth, during the LAN party. ‘Holy crap, I haven’t eaten in over 16 hours!’ “Yep, I’m definitely taking up on that offer.”