David mulled over his next words. “Can you try and describe what you see in your room?”
It had been a few minutes since David and Twilight introduced each other. David had opened up the window after he determined his room was too stuffy and a cool night breeze glided through the opening, freshening up the air in the tight space. There was still sweat on his brow and he had wiped his head several times over with the short length of his shirt sleeves, his back getting soaked from the building perspiration. The headset wrapped over his skull felt uncomfortable with the sweat that his short black hair was matted with. He could feel dribbling salt rolling down from above his ears and soaking in to the cushions pressed against the sides of his cranium.
He sat in his chair, his glasses still pressed between his vulnerable eyes and the bright computer screen, which was currently showing his desktop: A flurry of several shortcuts to various games as well as the default Windows 12 background. His gaze was glued on to Task Manager, not leaving the process titled pony.exe as it sat at the top of the list organized by memory usage. He leaned forward in his seat, hunching his back and resting his chin on his intertwined knuckles from his hands that were standing up by his elbows on the desk.
“Well,” Twilight began. He had been running that name through his head over and over ever since she had mentioned it. It was so odd, so out of place that he couldn’t give any possible explanation as to why she choose that to introduce herself with. “Like I said, there’s darkness everywhere. I can’t see where the walls meet, or how high the ceiling is. I… I think I’m in some kind of room, or maybe an ancient underground cave, but... it’s hard to tell.”
David found himself questioning the last mentioned location. “Is there anything distinguishable in the room?”
He brought his hand to his mouse and guided the cursor over to the taskbar, over the network connection icon that sat two spots to the left from the current time, reading at 12:36 AM. Left clicking, he searched the list for his router, but only found his connection and connection type at the top. He dove deeper, right-clicking the same icon and opening up the control panel with the status of the network the PC was attached to. From the resulting screen, he couldn’t find a clear, visible way to disconnect from the router. He figured his only solution was to unplug the cord manually.
But he knew that also meant cutting the line between him and “Twilight”, and she seemed distressed enough that he wasn’t sure if leaving was morally sound. She was alone. She wanted him there, to at least talk to, and he figured that was the least he could do. A very odd part of him believed that it wouldn’t disconnect him, but it had to. He had to be talking to another person which so happened to give him a very odd name over the internet. He started to think it wasn’t a prank anymore, and began to take it a little bit more seriously. There was someone trapped somewhere that needed help and needed someone to talk to, someone to connect to. He considered calling the police after getting more information so they could help him sort out a potential missing person’s case.
…But what kind of a person calls themselves Twilight Sparkle?
“There’s… There’s numbers and letters floating all around me,” she answered after a second during during which he assumed was her looking around. “They’re traveling vertically and horizontally in linear lines, and they keep changing after every few seconds.”
David was without a doubt confused. “What?”
“I think they’re displaying some kind of information to me. I can see all kinds of number and words, variables and values, and they’re everywhere. They sink past the ground below me and,” There was a slight pause. “I-I think that the ground is made of glass, because I can see through it. Either that or I’m floating in mid-air, somehow.”
David gave a face. “’Twilight’, are you alright? Are you dizzy, thirsty? Do you feel really, really sleepy right now?”
“No,” she began. “Why do you ask?”
“What you just described to me sounds like some kind of hallucination,” he said, his head doing loops.
“No, I’m pretty sure they’re not hallucinations, they’re just… Agh, there’s something strange about this room.”
He put one hand to his cheek and started tapping his finger. “What is it?”
“It’s like there’s something missing, something important. It’s kind of hot in here, err… No, it feels hot but that’s not really it. I can’t put my hoof on it exactly. T-The numbers and words, they don’t have colour—o-or what I mean is that every time I look at a character, it’s a different colour, and w-when I recognize a colour it changes to something different.”
“Twilight,” he began. “Don’t try to do anything strenuous, and don’t move from that spot. I think you might be severely sick.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. “But I feel fine.”
“Feeling fine and being fine are two completely different things,” he pointed out. His head was developing a theory, one that he desperately didn’t want to believe. The floating numbers and letters, her location, her condition; they all were pointing to one answer. But it couldn’t be. It was impossible, and he didn’t believe it for one bit. “Now, I’m going to try something that may cut our connection for a dozen seconds or so. If it does, I’m going to try everything in my power to get back to you, ok?”
“O-Ok,” she stammered, nervousness in her tone. “What are you going to do?”
He pushed back his chair and got off, leaning forwards, getting on all fours and crawling underneath the foot space beneath his desk. He didn’t believe it was a joke any longer. Reaching around the back of his computer case, he fumbled around with the various wires in the dark, the only light available coming from the tiny system LEDs that were placed at the front of the machine but glowed through the case to the back. “I’m connected to you by my computer, but not by my own will. A virus has infected my system, and I think the only thing it’s doing is keeping you and I connected. But I have another theory…”
“A computer? A virus? David, what’s going on? What other theory?” Twilight said, thoroughly confused.
“Here goes nothing,” he finished, finding what he thought was the network cable and unplugging it.
The release of the cable let go with a snap and the wire fell, its firmness taut, forming a curve that leaned against the wall.
There was quiet. David held his breath.
“…David?” Twilight asked from the other side.
“Damn it,” David cursed under his breath.
“What happened?”
“It didn’t work. We’re still connected.”
“Did you want to disconnect?” Twilight asked, hurt edging into her tone a smidge.
“Yes, well, no,” he started, trying to find words to accurately explain what his goal was. He backed out of the niche and sat onto his chair, getting into a slump, his eyes too heavy for what his mind was demanding him to do. He lifted his glasses and rubbed his eyelids, sighing, thinking of what everything meant, what the virus meant and most importantly, what Twilight’s existence meant. “I was trying to see exactly how we are connected to each other. It was clear that we’re in both different locations, so there was only one possible way that we could speak to each other.”
“And what was that?” she inquired.
“Through my computer over a private connection,” he answered.
David imagined the frown on her face after her following statement. “David, it can't be. That isn’t technologically possible.”
He squint his eyes. “What?”
“I’ve heard of scientists in Manehatten making leaps in bounds in technology by testing short-ranged communication through machines, but it was very short-ranged. They were only a room apart, and besides that they only could communicate through text via punch cards! There’s no way that we’re speaking and hearing each other through a computer. There must be some kind of spell that’s set in place allowing us to do this.”
“A spell?” he scoffed. He was beginning to think that either she was insane, or he was slowly going insane. After all the progress he made so far, he was almost willing to believe anything at that point. “Like what, some kind of magic or something?”
“Yeah,” she answered back. “A long distance voice communication spell. It would probably take a lot of energy to keep it going, though. I wonder where’s the power source?”
David’s brain stopped. He could not computer her words. Manehatten? Hooves? Spells?
What kind of a virus did he have?
“Hang on,” Twilight said. “I think I might be able to find the power source if I search the ambient magicks in the area. It might take a moment, for some odd reason the magic in the air's very thin here. Just give a second and—”
There was a second or two of Twilight focusing in the background. David couldn’t comprehend what was happening. All the fact, all the hints, was pointing to one answer, one answer he didn’t want to believe. He suddenly felt very scared, not just scared for his computer with the virus but somehow explicitly scared for his life, as well as the lives of mankind. The name of the executable, the horse puns, the language used, it could only mean one thing, and that one thing left him not knowing what to think.
Suddenly Twilight cried out in alarm. David's headset began to give static in its feedback, screeching and howling in his ear drums. He yelped and shot up in his seat, flicking his headset back so the speakers leaned behind the folds of his ears. The red disk light on his case was lit up, the mechanical part itself spinning and writing like no tomorrow. David watched in horror as several dozen windows of a painting program, various files and Notepad copies opened up in an instant, clogging up his screen.
“Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa!” David called out, his hands shooting to the keyboard and using the alt-f4 combination rapidly, trying to close everything that had popped up. “Twilight, whatever you’re doing, you need to stop right now!”
His system lagged behind. He struggled to keep programs clogging his PC as more and more windows appeared, demanding resources from his normally powerful rig. Task Manager kept up in front over all the chaos, and with wide eyes David watched pony.exe try and eat up more of his CPU, reaching from the low 40s to high 60s and slowly going beyond. He swore he heard Twilight collapse on the ground and let out a groan. As he hit keys rapidly, static crackled underneath the desk and bounced between the glass roof of the desk and the wall. David felt a sudden pain shoot up his leg.
“What the hell?” he shouted, jumping in his seat and swiftly moving back, bringing his legs in as his headset threatened to unplug from the distance he made, tugging his head forward. He stared in disbelief as he saw the case of his machine crackle and spark with magenta-coloured electricity, the energy jumping up and down all over the plastic by some unknown ability, breaking David’s belief in physics. He put his hand on the damaged spot on his leg, hissing as flesh touched flesh. He looked down for a moment and saw the spot bright red, burnt, his leg hair singed. Twilight shouted in pain for one last time through the symphony of radio interference as his computer kept outputting programs.
And then the static stopped.
David tried to keep his breath steady as programs stopped popping up onto his screen. He looked on with wild curiosity and fright. Twilight gave out a groan and blew air between her teeth. pony.exe’s load on the system reduced substantially, going back down to its standard ten percent.
“Ow, my head,” Twilight complained.
“Twilight?” David asked.
“Ouch. Ow. Yeah?” she managed to make out.
“What are you?”
She took her sweet time to answer, nursing her wounds. “I’m… I’m a unicorn pony. Why do you ask? What are you, David?”
David said nothing. He stared at his hands, his mouth ajar, hunched over on his back.
“David, something weird just happened in my room. I-I don't know if you could tell, but I can't exactly tell what,” Twilight said on her accord. “My magic shouldn’t have acted like that. I-it’s like it had its own rules here. I guess that’s why it felt so odd; the magic’s different. Where exactly am I?”
David slowly reached up with both hands and grabbed his headset by the ears, sliding it forward off his head and letting it fall to the ground with a clatter. An unnatural, insane grin spread across his lips as he stared at the ground. He began laughing, singular chuckles escaping his throat as his lungs struggled to inhale properly. His eyes felt watery, and he kept still, unblinking as his hands moved in front of his vision, fingers curled like a dead spider’s legs. He could vaguely hear Twilight’s voice from the fallen communicator, concern in her tone. He couldn’t make out her words again.
The virus, the lack of internet, her mannerisms, her intelligence, her use of language, and her interaction with his computer all lead to the one thing that he didn’t want to be true.
After a brief moment, he picked up his headset again, placing in on his crown and adjusting the microphone after it was bent out of position from the fall.
“…David? David are you ok? I heard something fall down.”
“Twilight,” he started. “I think I know where you are now.”
“What?” she blurted. “That’s great! Where?”
“I think you’re in my computer.”