/u/RAGErER
He used to have a name. It was something that rolled off the tongue and was care-free and in good taste. What was it? Skippy Sparks? Fair weather? Lemon lime? Its so hard to remember now. It is hard to remember anything before July 15th, 2004. That would be... yes... ten years ago to the day. Late after school.
He had done it again, went off to the janitor closet to hide from the ponies calling him "blank flank" where he could finally get some studying done. Not much room to practice flying, but it was amazing the things that can be done with wings, with some practice. He had with him an old unplugged keyboard, now with a defunct plug since everything was going to USB... Tippy typer? Clickity... (no, that was somepony else's name...)
...anyway, what happened again? That's right! He remembers a bit clearly thinking it out step by step. This visual therapy session is working quite well. Can't forget to save now and then. Ctrl-a, ctrl-c... that'll do well enough.
He forgot it was a half-day, back when he forgot things. All the rooms were dark, locked, and the exit too. But the computer lab was still unlocked.
One old monochrome computer that only ran Oats-are-gone trail was glowing in the darkly lit room. Flitter lit? ... Low glow? No, those are dumb names.. ugh... what was it?!?
There was a code... a strange code scrawling down in rows, not uniform at all and in strange character sets. Unicode shouldn't even exist on something that old, but it did. Then... everything went blank. A single message appeared.
"Do you want to know what the Maretrix is? (y/n)"
Maretrix? Was that a math thing? He meant to press "y" but his whole body was trembling down to his wing tips. "u"
SYNTAX ERROR
Suddenly it was July 1111 and his alarm clock was going off. He heard his mother calling for him. "Wake up dear, its time for school!" Was that whole day a dream? Wait... it WAS a half day today. But... where was he? Did he live here? Had he ever been here before? It was hard to tell.
Huff and guffing, his father flew in to the room, "I've called your name like 1010 times. Get up already!" 1010 times? That didn't sound right. Why did his father's voice change suddenly. It sounded like no sound at all, but something more like... just knowing what should have been said... sort of...
Was this really his father? He couldn't remember. He just stared blankly at this pegasus wearing a tie with thick black framed glasses. Everything was kind of blurry beyond his face.
"SYNTAX ERROR, are you okay?" What? That's not right. What... happened to... there was a name there. "SYNTAX ERROR! Look! Oh wow, you got your cutie mar... er... its numbers or something..."