Twilight Sparkle was a good pony. She had a decent processor, high-capacity memory matrix, and was equipped with a parallel port for horn connection, a Skill card slot, and a built-in wireless modem. She was living in a two-storey wooden cottage with lots of books with electricity supply line connected to Ponyville's local generator that was fueled by wood and maintained by Applejack, her friend. But today, she wasn't reading them, because she gave her horn to Rarity for one day, so she could sew a new protective case for Rainbow Dash. She was looking out from a window on the first floor, at the nature outside, maintained by something unknown and distant, and waiting for the next recharge time that was going to be this day. It was autumn time, and the forest in front of her was too quiet and just lacked any significant information to process, only the pattern of white clouds on blue sky behind pine canopy, pixelated by her digital vision. She didn't really want to be this alone, or immerse her mind in any unprocessed massives of data in her memory, either. Everyone else in Ponyville was busy, not that it was a big town, but she was sure she shouldn't go and disrupt other ponies' processing sequences. Or, for some ponies, remote processing sequences.
The problem was that only six ponies in here even had local minds. Most of them were constantly connected to the server located somewhere in a far capitol, and that caused them to be available for communication only in server's scheduled time, and also they couldn't go far away from the town, because they couldn't leave the area of local data retransmitting engine. Making sure there wouldn't be any accidents with the link, as well as engine maintenance, was Rainbow Dash's work. Equipped with digital pegasus wings, she was able to find the problematic pony, should its link be lost or an emergency signal come from them, and, if necessary, bring them to Fluttershy for repairs. Rainbow Dash lived in a hard plastic shed near the retransmitter.
Hardware integrity was Fluttershy's speciality. She was living in the middle of town, where its only street made two 90-degree turns, in a two-part building. A side part of it was wooden, and there was her bedroom and the lookout computer station behind a big automated plastic shutter, the computer was connected to many stationary and mobile cameras and sensors. The other part was a big plastic warehouse, which was carrying out a role of a hospital. She was also a skilled repairer of common devices and constructs. As one of the Maintainers, she was able to go far into the forest, and often walked there, leaving her associate to care for the patients.
Rarity was the colony's tailor and smith. She had all necessary equipment for her job, except the horn, that she couldn't afford to order from the capitol, not only because these devices were very expensive, but they were dangerous. Only a few trusted Maintainers could get a full-functional horn. Rarity had permissions to buy one of weaker limited models, and wanted to, but she thought it wouldn't be of use to spend most of her resources for that. Ordered things usually came to Ponyville by airship.
Another Maintainer, Applejack was living in a convenient, solid building with very low, faceted roof and pyramid-like vent covers. She worked most of her non-defrag time in her wood-growing complex. As wood, they used constantly growing vines that were grown in two hothouses of architecture similar to her house. She cared so much for resource conservation that she once asked Fluttershy to lower her processor frequency for that. Her position as energy supplier made her a big authority in the town.
Pinkie Pie was a town's agent for Equestrian Analytics and Improvement Department. She was taught a lot of complicated protocols in the central complex of Department, but on the contrary, it almost made her unable to do her jobs, and she invented her own methods. She didn't even ask the Department for news, gathering all information herself.
Night passed, Twilight awoke from defrag, and began assembling some electronics in the workshop room, while Pinkie was building constructs with empty equipment boxes in her room on the second floor, trying to obtain something that works as a better decoration, and other ponies were busy with their duties or goals, when events happened.
When the engine lost the signal and twelve local ponies, including Fluttershy's assistant and a pony in a hospital stopped moving and fell, Fluttershy noticed it immediately, and went to Dash to ask what's happening. Dash told her that the engine was working, she had a probe and it lost signal, too. She told Fluttershy to wait there while she was gathering other ponies. When she came to Pinkie, Pinkie already knew, and Dash wasn't too surprised. On the way back, she saw that Applejack came by herself, so she just told her to go pack some full batteries for the trip, and others to pack some things too. Protection cases, rain shields, clusters, first repair kits. The usual. Twilight took some checklist paper and a plastic suit, Rarity took an umbrella, an extended material bag, a beacon medallion, a black faceted coat with pockets. Applejack brought a heavy saddle with two batteries and a charger. Pinkie Pie. Fluttershy gathered some tools, some warm fabric sheets, some belts, and another things, but not before going through town to check for damaged pegasi, Twilight and Dash needed that time for planning, anyway.
Then they departed to the east, in a direction the airships were coming from.
For some hours, they walked through a sparse autumn forest. Yes, with birches. No mango trees, well, maybe occasionally some eucalypti. They were talking about the situation a bit, aloud to avoid data resonance and more fear, but mostly through wireless connections and about weather and its laws, sending lots of imagery from the past, that of local forests and their wonders. Of course, this brought on a thunderstorm.
That made them turn off their modems and feel some serious fear. They weren't waterproof! Considering the situation, there were big chances of bad consequences if something broke. Fluttershy made a seat from some fallen branches and used a wide cone-shaped hat, Rainbow brought Applejack up to a tree branch, after covering her with a sheet, Pinkie searched her saddlebags for a piece of waterproof cloth and a diver's mask, and Rarity gave her umbrella to Twilight, given that she had a coat with hood. After the rain, they had to empty one battery to get warm.
Then Rainbow had to carry everypony over a river, and use some energy from the second battery afterwards. Beyond the river, the forest was thicker, but the weather changed and there was more sunlight. In this forest, there were unusual, tall pines, ferns and other new plants. Fluttershy wanted to explore that new forest. With so few energy left though, they had to hurry, even if it threatened their joint motors.
Then, suddenly a wild mobile Server appeared on the clearing on their way. Twilight gestured to the others to fight how they were taught by Twilight earlier. They formed a circle, configured a wireless network between them, and Twilight used her horn to send heaps of packets into Server, stunning its movements for some time ahead. Dash then said that this Server is not important to their mission, so they left it behind, for it to recover later.
Soon they approached Canterberra. Fortunately, there was a lot of pony activity, suggesting that the city wasn't suffering any issues. Twilight was already in need of recharge, so she recharged the batteries they carried, at a local shop. That cost some clusters, though.
Then they came to the palace. Some negotiations with royal firewall service later, Domain Queen Celestia let them in. Twilight and Celestia then talked about something through encrypted line, and Celestia said that she'll have the transmission fixed once she dealt with a conspiracy, it was a transmission energy theft for some rebellion or something. She said that Twilight and her friends will be given free access to a cottage near the palace originally meant for Analytics agents, and given pass tickets to a scientific complex and a library.
And that is something that may be the ending of this story.