Oh don’t look at me like that. I didn’t really jump off. Some of you are too serious.
Twilight broke into a dead run as soon as saw me disappear, she skittered to a stop near the balcony. She expected to see the broken mangled corpse of my body on the hard flagstones below. Even if I had chosen to end my life, I wouldn’t chuck myself off a balcony. Too cliché. I’d want to be ejected from a shuttle right into the sun. I’d literally become a star. The next morning, people would see my rise to flame- I mean fame.
Where was I? Oh yeah, Twilight. Balcony. Panicked expressions.
So when I mentioned that the Synch could actually help with muscle reflexes, I wasn’t kidding. Since it interfaced with the brain and hence the neuromuscular cortex it could ‘suggest’ ways for me to better acclimatise to certain physical situations.
One advantage I had was that it would help with my reflexes and reduce the time it took for muscle memory to take effect. I had to be wearing the Synch and the ‘help’ would disappear as soon as I took it off. Also, it wasn’t perfect so there was some training required. It wasn’t as if I could do crazy flips and acrobatics… that would just be insane.
Instead I could get a good hold and handgrip on the crenulations protruding underneath the balcony. Before I lost my grip entirely, I heaved myself up.
“Boo!” I haunted with a deepest voice I could muster. Twilight’s reaction was hilarious. She sat on her backside with a disbelieving ‘plonk’.
Before she could say anything, I simply tapped my Synch.
Her expression turned hurt.
“Don’t do that!” she pleaded, eyes watering.
I winced.
Had the prank gone too far?
Twilight looked on the verge of tears. I blew out a regretful breath, crouching next to her.
“Hey”, I said, putting a hand on her neck, she shrugged me off and walked away to stare at the wall. I shook my head.
“Hey Twilight”, I repeated, walking over to her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you, I was trying to make a joke.”
Twilight gave me such a look of distrust that stabbed right through my heart.
“If you had really jumped off, there would have been nothing I could do!” she yelled at me, pounding a hoof to the floor. She rounded on me, her glare intensifying.
“You would have fallen and fallen and fallen, nothing could stop you, nothing could help you!”
I put a hand to my neck and rubbed it self-consciously.
“You’re right, you’re right”, I sighed, giving her a remorseful look. “That was in poor taste.”
Twilight sniffled a little before shoving me to the side.
“Don’t ever do that again!” she growled, pinning me down with an angry glare.
I guess that was a bit overboard. I slap my forehead, cursing my lack of foresight.
“Alright, I’ll make it up to you”, I say, patting her on the back.
Twilight gives me a look that says ‘just how are you going to do that?’
I smirk and tapped my Synch. Hey, it’s my answer to most things in my world, why not Equestria.
“Do you have any books that haven’t been translated or any language you wanted to learn? Have you ever wanted to see things how others do? Do you know what is like to be a bat?”
I flourish, taking off my circlet and placing it on Twilight’s head. I’m surprised it sort of fits, even though it has a habit of tilting a bit.
I instruct her, navigating her through the thought gestures to reach a particular knot.
“The Universal Decoder, or the Big U.D. ‘buddy’ my friends calls it. The best friend you can have when foreigners come over or you’re planning a Eurotrip”, I explained, when Twilight finally located the particular knot.
“What’s a-?” began Twilight but I cut her off with a dismissive wave.
“Don’t worry you wouldn’t get it”, I replied.
“Okay now to run the knot you just have to think the name or the logo image for a length of time and it’ll activate. Since you don’t understand the written language on my Synch, you’ll just have to stare at the knot’s image really hard”, I guide her, keeping a close eye on her, in case she concentrates too hard and forgets to maintain a double vision. Not that anything here could harm her, but it was good practice to do that with the Synch. Grooble didn’t want people walking around across roads, concentrating on Synchs, smartphones were bad enough.
Twilight gives me a hum, which I interpret, is some sort of affirmation that she got the knot running.
“Alrighty Twilight, let’s test this. See if you can read this”, I quickly rummage around the room until I find a quill, ink and some parchment squirrelled away in a drawer-desk at the back of the room. It takes some getting used to but I remember my writing skills. It’s been so long since I’ve actually written anything down on solid paper, typing really got you everywhere nowadays.
I write the classic ‘a quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’ and hand it to Twilight.
She frowns at my ink splotches and crude quill penmanship, I roll my eyes, give me a ballpoint any day. That’s beside the point.
Twilight mumbles to herself until the program starts translating actively, detecting her incomprehension and interfacing with the language portion of her brain. Synch detects the English characters from information from the visual cortex and then hard translates it to general concepts and images associated with the words. It’s kind of like looking at a picture book.
Twilight gaps in amazement as the circlet decodes the words and she sees a visual depiction of a brown fox jumping over a lazy dog.
“The fast tan fox leaps over the sleeping dog”, she exclaims, turning to me.
I laugh.
“Close. It’s actually, ‘the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’”, I reveal but I keep a demure smile on my face. “The decoder isn’t perfect but it certainly makes it a lot easier.”
Twilight nods in excitement. She pauses.
“So this writing, it’s part of your world’s language?”
I blink at her.
“No, we don’t have a world language, we have probably over a hundred or even thousands of languages both dead and alive. Isn’t that the same in Equestria?” I ask, perplexed.
Twilight shakes her head.
“Everyone speaks the same language in Equestria, even you”, she replies, as if it was a given fact.
I thought about that. For some reason it disturbed me.
“Yeah, I never got over the fact that I could speak your language, this being a new world and all. You definitely can’t say magic, because magic can’t touch me”, I remark, scratching my chin.
Twilight doesn’t really know how to answer that so she sits there for a while trying to think of an explanation. Meanwhile I ask for my Synch back, which she reluctantly hands over. She’s probably thinking of dissecting it in her laboratory, if she has one, I wouldn’t be surprised. No one was going to touch my Synch though, that is way off limits.
Eventually Twilight tells me she’ll get back to me on that. I nod, but I don’t expect to get an answer at all. Meh. Not my field of study. I’m curious but not desperate to know.
I yawn, it’s getting late and I’m getting sleepy. Twilight grins and bids me a good night. I bid her a fair night’s sleep as well.
Stretching out on the bed I feel as if I’ve come alive again.
I may not have found a way home but home found me.
Meanwhile, it escapes my notice, but my Synch manages to connect to extranet, all the while my slumber casts me into a deep dreamless sleep.