//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1: Awake 
// Story: Melancholy Days 
// by Zurock 
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	Each ray of the glowing sun drizzled over the leaves of the tree tops, cascading their warmth downwards like the slow flow of golden honey.  Every gentle breeze which passed through shook the branches, dancing the shadows they cast and rousing the trees to life with a contented sigh.  The cool air mixed well with the soft heat, leaving the buoyant rush of a refreshing, early summer.  It was a gorgeous day.  The kind of day where the tickle of the grass is just so inviting, and the slow drift of the clouds is just so hypnotic, and each tune of the songbirds is a lullaby... a day where tumbling down and taking a nap on the bare earth couldn't seem more perfect.  It was almost ethereal.
A yard of vibrant grass was dotted with a dozen thick oak trees, the branches of their crowns reaching into the sky.  Each treetop was full with leaves, lush and beautiful, spread out like canopies above a fairground.  A simple, open asphalt lane wound around the west and south side of the clearing, and the remaining sides were naturally fenced by a sparse, spacious forest.  There was an ever so slight slope to the lawn which suddenly picked up its descent towards the southeast edge.
Placed in the center of it all was a two story house.  A homey home if ever there was one, the windows were happy, shuttered eyes and there were rows of lively plant beds that ran around the foundation.  Its broad, wooden paneling was a courageous red and their hard, dry appearance was all that kept the texture from looking as full and ripe as a cherry.  Notes of habitation were sprinkled about the yard, hints of a carefree season: a full clothesline, an empty yet timidly swaying hammock hung between two trees, and a lawnmower abandoned amid half-cut grass.  Around the back of the house, nestled in close to the structure, was a plain wooden deck.  Each board was stained and sturdy, and they appeared well worn and slightly bent from standing the tests of time and strain.
Resting in a plastic deck chair placed next to a matching plastic table was James.  He wore medium length shorts for the summer warmth and a brightly colored green t-shirt.  Slouching at first, he now and again felt out of place or position and so would shuffle back up to a formal, rigid posture which seemed more recent and familiar, but it hardly lasted before he slid downwards again.  He also ran his hand through his hair repeatedly but would struggle with grasping at the air beyond its curious shortness; a muscle action mismatched with memory.
Before long the sliding screen door behind him rolled open with a comfortable rattle, a sound worn pleasant over many years.  James heard the taps of his guest stepping out onto the creaking wood, leg by leg.  One, two... three, four.  The screen door slid shut again and in a perky voice the visitor asked, "Care for some lemonade?"
"Oh, yes, please," James responded with a short lift and swing of his arm.  In the face of his contented lethargy and the prospect of a fresh glass of lemonade, he hadn't bothered to turn around and take a glance at who was joining him.
There was a pour, the gush of running lemonade into a cup capped off with two clinks from tumbling ice, and then his drink drifted through the air and softly came down on the table besides him.  Immediately following his drink was the lemonade pitcher, now less than full, and another cup, both of which plopped to rest on the table without noticeable outside intervention.  Then finally James' guest strolled into view.  She was coated in violet fur with a deeper, dazzling mane and tail.  A horn jutted from her forehead and a starburst design marked her flanks.  Instead of being joined by another person of the household, he was being joined by an odd-looking pony.  Or unicorn, rather.  Stepping up besides the table, she merely sat down where she stood; right on the boards of the deck without need for a chair.  Bearing a broad, closed smile, she just took in the pure summer bliss for a few quiet moments before using magic to pour herself some lemonade in the free cup and taking a sip.
"This weather is phenomenal," she suddenly said.  "Let's hope it lasts through the week."
"The next rain is scheduled...," but James' words slowed down and he shivered his head with the onset of a murky dissonance.  "... Scheduled...  You said it was scheduled for tomorrow..."  He rubbed the corners of his eyes as the inside of his head pounded for just a brief moment.  The table, the deck, and even the whole yard seemed to pound with it, like a heavy plate had crashed against the back of his mind.
"Hm?" the pony chimed, somewhat oblivious to what he had said.  Without wave or worry she sipped away at her drink, fixated upon the clement weather and idle breezes.
James corrected his posture yet again, with more focus this time.  Stiffening his back and pressing it tight against the chair, he drew a large breath.  As the air rushed into him the environment around him began to crystallize into clarity, smoothing out the blurry edges of reality.  But still what he saw before him was saturated with surreality: this smiling, quaint creature whose presence was incongruous with the time and place he thought, or rather felt, he was in.
Again the pony spoke up, saying, "If it gets warmer, I think we could probably take a day to go to Waterblast Park.  It's not the largest water park, but you don't always want a big crowd for the wave pool, right?  Or the river rides.  Or any long lines at the water slides."  Lightly giggling, she swished the lemonade about in her cup before taking a tremendous swig that she then followed with a quenched sigh.  "Spending a little time soaked would just hit the spot!"
Still gazing about, James felt pressured by a hidden force, like there were a hundred obvious discrepancies he should see but were somehow masked by some unknown block of incomprehension in his head.  He hardly felt he was in control of himself when he answered automatically, "That park closed down... just a few years ago.  A few years after my parents sold this house and moved away..."
"Really?" the pony turned to him in surprise.  She looked out about the lawn and the forest, the land still exuding an irrepressible homeliness.  "Why did they move?"
"... Property taxes..."
He stood up and paced over to the edge of the deck.  With his hands on the rail, he peered out at nothing in particular.  The effervescent yet serene haze that had first filled his mind now seemed completely gone, replaced with a stark realness.  But a realness that was invaded by something uncomfortable and out of place.  Something that could be felt deep, both  inside and out.  Something that with all his being could be sensed drawing inevitably closer.
Turning back to the pony he briskly asked, "I'm sorry, but who are you?"
All at once cracks burst into his senses.  Everything seemed to be intact before him while simultaneously feeling as if it all was tearing apart at the seams.  Sudden, new memories rushed forward, spraying invisible light and screaming inaudible noise as they came.  His guest opened her mouth to speak but her words shot out like a rumbling echo, "I'm Twilight Sparkle.  It's nice to meet you!"
Hardened, cold reality thundered over every aching sense.  His sense of self rapidly caught up to him; his body was his own again, with longer hair and a physical build slightly larger than in his late youth.  He was sitting, but not in a chair and not in the light.  Instead he found that he actually sat upright upon a bed, draped in darkness.  The environment wasn't a place of homely familiarity but of becoming familiarity, learned but still new.  The moon outside gave little light through the windows raised high on the wall, far off from his bed, but his eyes swiftly focused enough to perceive his surroundings.  This was the Ponyville Library, with its grainy wooden floors and walls.  Its naturally hewn furniture and decorations.  Its tall bookshelves, occupied and numerous even in this back bedchamber.  The library was a lot of marvelous, new, and different things.  But it wasn't home.  Not even a memory of it.
Barely more than two weeks ago James had arrived in the land of Equestria.  Unpredictable circumstances, perhaps the indifferent machinations of fate, or the improbable arrangement and uncontrollable collapse of retrospectively bizarre events brought this soldier across the threshold of believable space to a land populated not with any people like himself, but ponies.  Wildly colored ponies that talked.  Sang.  Danced.  Farmed.  Built homes.  Ran shops.  Held PTA meetings where they discussed bake sales to pull in extra funds.  And ponies who employed magic to accomplish things that seemed at times impossible to him.  Into the thick of all this he was thrust, with the circumstances' increasing estrangement from normality only continuing.  Orders from the princess of all pony-kind herself had been given to him.  Orders to take up residence with one of her students in the library and learn about... well, it wasn't truly clear to him what exactly he was supposed to be doing.  Was the amorphous task to figure out how to be the first individual to ever successfully trans-dimensionally emigrate?
Only none of that weighed on him in the immediate moment.  The burden shackling him now was simple restlessness.  He stroked the back of his neck for awhile and churned through some deep breaths but neither action really brought forth true relaxation.  Never in the past had it been too difficult for him to adjust to unfamiliar sleeping surroundings but for several nights now the ready, unbroken comfort needed to drift into an easy sleep was always marred and imperfect in an intangible way.
There were no obvious sources of irritation.  The darkened soundscape of the room was flooded by a calm silence.  No noises from others in neighboring spaces still up and about their business.  No sounds heavier than a cricket came from outside.  Not an echo of distant conflict, or a peep of activity, or even the low drone of street traffic.  The only noticeable accompaniment to the chorus of quietness was the perfect ticking of a wall clock, the occasional ruffling of feathers (probably from the owl that could be seen around the library from time to time), and the dozing of the others in the room.  From his bed's position James could hear the snoozing and snores of his hostess pony and her assistant dragon emanating from the upper level, at the peak of the stairs that curved up the wall.  The very same pony, in fact, who had just poured him lemonade in his dream.
After some sedentary minutes, most of the uneasiness left behind by his dream ebbed away.  He laid back down with a sigh, shifted a bit in the bed as he corrected his covers, and closed his eyes once more.





With one final slam of Applejack's hooves, the last tree in the southern orchard gave up it payload of apples.  Delighted at her haul, full enough to press heartily on the sides of the basket, she paused to savor the sensation that came from a morning's work well spent.  Like any morning, the crew of Sweet Apple Acres had risen with the sun to get an early start and labored hard to make timely progress.  And their progress today was timely indeed, as the morning wasn't even half spent yet.  Mounting the apple basket on her back, Applejack trotted airily back towards the barn.
Her uplifted mood quickly sank away as she caught sight of her brother, Big McIntosh, and his progress, or lack thereof.  The mountainous stallion stood before an even more mammoth hay baler, but what most caught Applejack's eye was the lack of any bales of hay in the vicinity.  Big Mac had gone off earlier to get his start on that particular task so the absence of any headway after all this time was troubling.  He stood by the idle contraption soundlessly, as if he could perhaps stare it into submission.  There was nary a movement out of him except for the occasional slow tilt of his head or the gentle swish of the wheat sprig in his mouth as he rolled it from one side to the other.  An extraordinarily frustrated pony to be sure, Applejack thought.
"Has that gul-dern lazy waste of scrap gotten on the fritz AGAIN?" she moaned as she laid her apple harvest aside.
"Eeeeyup," was her brother's straight reply.
Approaching the machine herself while sighing, Applejack passed her eyes across it.  Not that she had expected to notice anything amiss.  There was never anything obviously wrong this massive metal headache, and she wouldn't know what to look for to begin with.  "Have ya tried givin' it some tender, loving encouragement?" she asked at last.
"Eeeeyup."
"Well, I'll give it a shot anyway," she expressed curtly.  In one smooth motion she whirled about and bucked the machine hard, sending it tilting up backwards with a rattling crash.  The baler hovered on its edge for just a second before it fell back onto the ground.  It whined and rang with the leftover force of the blow, but it didn't start.  The Apple siblings exchanged knowing glances briefly, unsurprised at the result, but both well aware that the aggressive physical maintenance was less about getting the machine to work and more about relieving frustration anyway.
"Ah, figgers...," Applejack griped.  "I thought we were gonna make good time today, too.  You been working with this the whole time, Big Mac?  You didn't get nothing else done?"
The reserved stallion only lowered his head with a steady shake and let out a long, disappointed, "Nnnope."
Applejack turned to inspect the distant horizon, agitated and worried.  Far off, the blitzing about of a certain rainbow pegasus could be seen in the sky gathering frightful stormclouds together.  Stamping a hoof on the ground, Applejack looked back at the busted baler and snorted, "Great.  Won't be long 'til the rain now and we can't have this thing out in that kinda weather, broken or no.  Help me drag it into the barn."  Grabbing a heavy chain with her teeth, the farm pony tugged at the device while Big Mac threw his weight into it from behind, lifting it up on its wheels and getting traction.  With just a few minutes of team effort, they had it sealed away safely behind the barn doors.
"Hmmmmm," Big McIntosh slowly groaned as he gazed over at the stormclouds and thought about the unfinished farmwork ahead.
"I know what you mean, Big Mac," Applejack said.  "This is going to set us behind aways.  Gotta call the repairpony and have her take a gander.  If we hadn't wasted our time with this mechanical malarkey we coulda had all this hay baled our own dang selves before the rain rolled in.  Now even if it gets fixed we won't be able to do any baling 'til all the hay dries."
There was one more collective minute of unspoken, still exasperation before Applejack began to dash off.  She called back at her brother, "Alright, alright, no more lazing about.  Let's get a message to the repairpony quick-like and then back to work.  Get what more done that we can before the storm."





Scattered about the library floor was an organized mess of boxes, wires, plugs, metallic bits, bolts of all sizes, papers with diagrams, and baubles of an indiscernible nature.  Select items, sometimes whole groups at a time, were lifted up into the air and moved about the room carefully or laid down according to a filing system that existed only in Twilight's head.  As the rain spattered against the outside of the library walls, so did a magical storm of pieces and parts blow about inside her room.  The unicorn's eyes moved considerately back and forth between pages of directions that hovered in front of her and the cyclone of things whirling through the air.  Some parts slide into each other, or screwed tightly to each other, or plugged in together, or snipped or snapped or clicked or clacked together, and then there was the soft folding of paper as a page turned.  And then more assembly, and a page turned again.  And again, and again.
When at last the tempest came to rest and the remainder of the unused bits were cast aside in a leftover mess, Twilight reviewed what she had constructed.  Or nearly constructed maybe, as what had started as a few seemingly obvious steps to take without consulting the written directions eventually turned into entirely skipped steps and missed instructions, and by the end of her labors she had somehow gotten just slightly lost.  Still, it was basically complete and she expected there would be time to double-check things fully later.  The core of what she had built looked similar to a sturdy telescope mounted on more than one robust tripod.  The main tube was exceptionally thick, perhaps capable of hiding a whole pony inside, and along its length sprung wires of different gauges and colors which wound their way back to a central control panel that sat at the base of the device.  All over the machine were tightened bolts, sealed hatches, divots, and remarkably tiny antennae and dishes.  For now, Twilight was satisfied with what she saw since it resembled both the picture on the box and her memory of when she had it last assembled.  She admired it as a complicated but well designed (and expertly put together, of course) piece of equipment, though an untrained eye might see it as some sort of fanciful device, wrought from imagination to simply look overly complicated but otherwise serve no useful function.
Enthusiastic and brimming with anticipation, she made her way out of the room and to the central chamber of the library.  Her assistant Spike busied himself with some of the late morning chores, mainly sorting yesterday's books that had to be put away and pulling out books that would be used today.  He couldn't much afford to take notice of her as he heaved about stacks of books which were larger than he was.  No notice, at least, until she spoke to him.
"Spike, have you seen James?" Twilight asked, visually searching the room.  She was somewhat surprised not to find her charge anywhere there.  For the past few days he had usually been hanging about that room, reading or taking some time to sit by himself.
A few books began to slip out of formation in the tower of tomes Spike was transporting, the first signs of an imminent collapse.  He slowed down and struggled to keep everything aligned as he responded, "I... uh... I think he's outside."  One particularly treacherous book near the top of his pile started to lose its grip, releasing an audible scrapping noise as it ground covers with its neighbors.
"Outside?"  Twilight glanced over at a nearby window.  Rain poured against it, smearing a blur on the glass beyond which could only be seen the dark and overcast sky.  "Are you sure?" she questioned her dragon.
"I think.  He said he...," Spike tried to answer.  There was some hopping on one foot and shuffling of his arms.  Desperate attempts by a desperate dragon to stall the teetering disaster.  "He said he was going outside, anyway."
Twilight hummed with uncertainty before moving over to the window and bringing her face up to the glass.  Sure enough, she saw James standing out in the rain, a few paces away from the library.  He had been out there long enough to be drenched but he had chosen to spare the outfit Rarity had fashioned him.  Instead he was wearing the white, repurposed table cloth that Princess Celestia has made for him on his first day in Equestria.
"Thanks, Spike," Twilight called out as she made for the front door while she summoned an umbrella hat out of a side closet.
The dragon murmured something back in reply, indistinct and panicked.
Affixing her headgear, Twilight opened the front door and cautiously stepped outside.  The rain wasn't pouring down particularly heavily nor was the wind blowing in any terribly nasty way, but it was enough to drown out the sound of a rumbling crash behind her as she shut the door.
By hugging the side of the library, she was able to take advantage of the protection offered by the branches of her dendroid home and stay mostly dry.  She slowly crept around the library's enormous trunk and drew as close to James as she could without abandoning her perimeter of dry safety.  The man was turned away from her and solemnly observing the sky, so she caught him by surprise when she called out to him.  
"James!  What are you doing out here?" Twilight inquired.  Her voice reverberated with a mix of concern and intrigue.
He half-turned towards her while he wiped some of the water off his face before he guardingly answered, "I don't know.  Just wanted to see it, I guess.  It's the first rain since I got here."
"I don't imagine it's much different than rain anywhere else," she responded with slight confusion.
"Well... it is," James said.  He pointed up towards the sky briefly.  "I mean, this was scheduled...?  A manufactured storm..."  Idle wonder reflected off his eyes.  For each raindrop he watched, he pondered about their artificiality.  What hoofdiwork went into making every magical tear just right?  This storm rained with intent but was a mirror of any storm born by God or nature.  It was weird for something to feel so different and so the same.
"Rainfall is set on a semi-regular schedule to hit target quantities-" Twilight reflexively began to explain.
"I know, I know," James interrupted, having in her few words already recognized and remembered the same textbook details she had eagerly expressed to him before.  His speech stuttered as he gestured aimlessly at the sky some more.  "I mean... it's not natural.  Or... it IS, with the way you ponies do it, but it's not... it didn't occur on its own."
"Oh!" Twilight gasped, nodding with sudden understanding.  For two weeks she had been conversing with him as regularly as her time would allow but, despite that, she still found it difficult to let go of assumptions that were second nature to her.  She wondered for a moment if she would be as curious as he was if she had an opportunity to observe a spontaneously generated storm.
A silence developed between them.  James just went back to looking into the sky, and like before he didn't even bother to shield his eyes from the rain.  Twilight observed him for a minute or two, though she suspected he couldn't really get a spectacularly precise look at anything with his flooded eyes.  She finally asked, "So... is that all?  Is everything alright?"
He cleaned his face with his hands again, paused quickly to collect himself, and then gave a light smile back to her.  "Sure.  I'm fine," he stated.  After a moment he added, "Just enjoying it.  I like the rain."
Without hesitating, James faced skywards yet again.  Because he still didn't lift a finger to protect himself from the storm, every drop that hit ran down his soaked clothes.  There were long pauses between his breaths, and each one took in the essence of the rain while expelling some sore part of himself.  To Twilight, he seemed in a way to blend him into the storm.  A man content to only stand there, just another tree or post in the rain.
"I know everybody usually gets all pessimistic about it," James suddenly said, "and I get that.  The sun is gone, and it gets cold, and the brighter, happier colors seem to fade from the world.  Birds go quiet and everybody hides away inside leaving the rest of the world... emptier.  But... I don't know... I find it kind of refreshing."
Twilight nodded.  "Regular rain is part of a healthy ecosystem," she told him.  "It's necessary for plants to get the nutrients they need to grow.  It replenishes natural sources of water that are needed by animals.  It washes and cleans, wiping away some of the old things left behind so that new things can begin.  It renews.  In a lot of ways it's life itself that falls from the sky.  In the end, rain brings life, and a more lively world.  It doesn't take it away."
"Right, exactly," James acknowledged, his words ambling.  Her elucidation and thoughts were comforting to him, sparing him from some of the struggle to describe his own feelings.  But regardless he felt compelled to share more, saying, "Maybe there are times when people- er... when somebody doesn't want to deal with the rain RIGHT NOW because they only feel those things they lose.  But I think, if they recognized that they should be in it for the long game, then that rain, and everything it gives, is... something bigger.  Something more important than them.  No reason to be so bothered by it."
He rested in the storm for awhile longer before he felt a tingle of awkwardness.  "I'm sorry," he said apologetically, turning at last to face Twilight directly.  "Did you need something?  What did you come out here for?"
Now remembering her original purpose, the pony shined as she replied, "Oh, well, we've talked about a lot of different things now, and I remembered just the other day you mentioned how you were interested in technology, and things like that."
"It's what I would have gotten into if I didn't shift gears and go off to training," James clarified.
"Yes.  Right.  So, though I'm very magically adept I've still had use for some sophisticated equipment from time to time.  I pulled one particular device out of storage this morning and it put together."  She offered a hoof out to him and invitingly said, "I thought maybe I'd show it to you.  Something you might have an easier time interacting with than magic."
"Oh," he let out with intrigue.  There was no impulse to vigorously contemplate the proposal, as he was eager to abandon his more oppressive and ruminative thoughts for a time.  Instantly he responded, "Sure, I'd like that."  He strode over to join Twilight by the dry space under the branches, and once clear of the rainfall he grasped his hair and rung a bowl's worth of water out of it.  "I should probably dry up and get changed first," he admitted.
"Plenty of time!  Come on!" the unicorn exclaimed.
Together they went back around towards the library door.  As they went James was shaking off excess water like a soaked dog but he kept his eyes up towards the sky, absorbing the last bits of refreshment that he could.  Twilight caught him staring and, turning her thoughts back some, she mused out loud, "I find it hard to imagine dealing with rain that wouldn't run on a preplanned schedule.  I mean, how do you prepare?  What happens if you don't get enough?  Or too much?"
James shrugged and answered, "You do the best you can with what you get, whether it's what you need or not."
They went back inside.  The man hurried off to grab a towel and his well-tailored outfit before heading to the bathroom to dry himself off and change.  Meanwhile Twilight lent her assistance to Spike so as to pass the time, greatly reducing the dragon's morning workload and making up for the time that was lost resorting the wreckage of the last failed transport.  After a few minutes James returned, looking fresh as a spring breeze in the beige and green clothes Rarity had designed for him.  He had also recklessly tied some of his still moist hair back with a rubber band to keep it from clinging so much to his face.
Leaving the little lizard to his duties, the others went to the site of Twilight's earlier constructive frenzy.  James' eyes popped when they first entered the room and he saw all the leftover materials from what appeared to him to have been a tinkerer's paradise.  He stood no less agape when he beheld the final product of all his friend's work.  The long metal tube, the criss-crossed maze of wires, the control panel with its switches and readouts... the first thought to pass through his mind was, Well it... it sure is a thing.
Gesturing out at her puzzling-looking device, Twilight proclaimed, "Here it is.  The MagiMax Perceptulator Detectatron."  Her hoof swiveled about in the air as she hastily explained, "I mean, that's mostly branding.  It's basically a simple, directed magic receptor/analyzer with range limiters, input throttle, and a self-zeroing spell plate.  Pretty straightforward really."  She flashed a reserved smile, recognizing that perhaps she hadn't quite thought through her presentation before getting on with it.
At length James stood there, nodding his head and rubbing his chin, before he said to Twilight, "Ok... it's a... what?"
She scrambled for a reduced answer.  "It's a... kind of... magic... radar, I guess?  It picks up the flow of magic energy for a few hundred meters out in the direction you point it, and-"
"And the panel here lists details on everything you've picked up.  Okay," he finished for her.  James leaned over the control panel in order to study it closely.  There were a dozen analog gauges whose labels he couldn't make heads or tails of, and the same could be said for several of the knobs and switches present.  Most of the words couldn't be made out because they were some specialized magic jargon or used symbols for unknown units, and what he could read seemed to be stripped of reasonable context.  'Min' and 'Max' were impressed next to some knobs without clarification, 'Warning' sat alone and ominous below a red switch, and so on.  He kept his hands clear of the controls, having been taught better than to arbitrarily monkey with complicated equipment that he didn't know how to properly operate.  For all he knew the device might unleash a death ray, or turn a princess into a frog, or something, if it was toyed with carelessly.
Seizing upon his interest, Twilight tried to explain the control panel as best she could.  Not sharing any common ground with him in magidynamics or spell theory hampered her explanations more than she initially thought it would, but she was able to express some concepts without much difficulty.  "This is how you control the scan range," and, "use these to dial in on a signal," and, "you can try and filter out noise with these."  It was a crash course which wouldn't let him operate it with any efficiency or towards any specific goal, but if he were to accidentally do something right with it then at least she could reasonably claim credit.
"Why don't I turn it on?  It'll be a bit easier to demonstrate how it works then," Twilight offered.  James took a step back to give her space as she toggled the on switch with a flick of her hoof.
For all the wires, one might have expected arcs of electricity.  For all the tiny light bulbs, one might have expected some colorful flashes.  From the sheer size of the contraption, one might have expected a deep hum or whining drone as it ran.  But once turned on the machine merely sat still, noiseless and dead.
"There doesn't seem to be any magic in the air today," James commented.
"This isn't right...," Twilight insisted.  Rapidly she flipped the on switch back and forth, hoping that the failure to start was just a one-off fluke.  When that had no effect on rousing the slumbering apparatus she lit up her horn and began pulling and rearranging wires with abandon, still fluttering the on switch with her hoof.  At the same time, the instruction pages came zipping across the room and stopped before her.  She complained loudly in-between bursts of instructional recitation, but no action she took corrected whatever was wrong with the machine.
The derailing of the presentation left James in an embarrassing position.  Initially he could only stand to the side in sympathetic silence as Twilight desperately tried to resuscitate the dead device.  However, as she fiddled with it he came to notice a single change that had occurred since they started.  On the right side of the control panel box, down low near the floor, a tiny amber light had come on.  It would shine for a second before blinking three times in succession, and then the pattern repeated.  Squatting down to scrutinize it, James caught sight of the light's austere label: an exclamation point encased in a triangle, wrapped in a circle, boxed in a square.
Pointing to his find, he told Twilight, "I know I don't have any familiarity with this thing, but this looks like a warning light to me."
"Oh no!" the worried unicorn moaned.  She brought the instructions closer to her face and cycled the pages with speed before she came to a stop and read to herself in whispers.  Her heart sank and she relayed to James, "Three blinks is an internal hardware failure!  It says we should contact a certified repairpony."  The instructions were let go and they drifted to the floor with a papery flop.  Twilight's whole face fell low with disappointment, certain now that she didn't have the know-how to repair the machine on her own.  With it broken, so too was her planned lesson.
James took a seat off to the side where he could get a good look out a nearby window.  He shared in the pony's sadness; he didn't have the knowledge to really figure out what practical use the machine could actually serve but he had been excited to see it in operation regardless.  Staring through the glass at the falling rain, he said softly, "Well, what now?  I didn't have any plans... not that I've been blocking out schedules for my days anyway."
A new vigor came into Twilight suddenly and she pushed out her despondency in one single breath.  Perking up, she told him, "Maybe it's not a bad fault.  Maybe it's just some silly thing out of place that I wouldn't be able to identify and fix myself.  Since we're not going anywhere in this weather, I'll try to get a hold of a repairpony like the instructions suggest.  With any luck we can get it fixed quickly and be back to the demonstration before you know it!"
Her upbeat outlook spread quickly across the room and James cheerily agreed to her suggestion.