"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
“Hey, Rusty! Swing that frame around this way,” shouted a hefty brown Earth Pony in a construction helmet. He stood next to a gaping hole in the side of an old brick building. One entire wall had been removed for expansion.
Rusty, a Pegasus with a fitting rust-colored coat, yelled down from the cab of a large crane, “Gotcha, Baron. Frame coming in, boys!” He pulled one lever to hoist a large wooden frame into the air and two more levers to pivot the crane’s boom. The frame swung toward the wall where Baron and another worker waited to guide it into place.
Just then, a tan Earth Pony construction worker stepped out from a doorway and into the center of the worksite. His eyes were cast downward as he walked. With each step he shook his hoof but a stray piece of masking tape held on stubbornly.
To his right, the crane’s payload barrelled through the construction site. The pony’s slow pace drew him ever closer to its path.
Behind him, a purple pony appeared in a burst of magic and skidded to a stop over the drywall-dust covered floor. “Watch out!” she screamed.
He stopped and turned back toward the sound. With an faint whoosh, hundreds of pounds of pine swept through the space where his head had just been.
Twilight Sparkle let out a relieved sigh but the worker was still unaware of his near miss with the wooden frame.
“Hey, you can’t be in here without a helmet! You could get hurt,” the worker shouted at Twilight.
She didn’t hear. She muttered, “Vision number five: Experiment one succeeded for the first time,” and teleported away through the construction site’s fence.
Twilight Sparkle wandered down Market Street. It was over an hour until her next experiment, her next attempt to avert disaster, so she had some time to kill. She eyed the open door of a very expensive salon. Ooh, I can try out a new manestyle for ‘free’, she thought as she stepped inside.
From the shadows of the alley across the street, a grey form watched her enter. It seemed to consider her actions for a moment, then it faded away.
After thirty minutes of clipping, combing, and magical lengthening, the Unicorn stylist stepped back to admire her work. “Oh, I simply love the way your mane frames your face now. Do take a look yourself, and tell me what you think,” she said and levitated a mirror in front of Twilight.
Twilight looked and saw her bangs were replaced by long flowing locks. They parted at her horn and ran down each side of her head. Violet and pink stripes still ran down the length of the deep blue mane. The style hid just a bit of her face and gave her a mysterious allure. She blinked. “Wow,” she said. I’m… sexy, she thought. Twilight smiled up at the stylist. “I can see where you got your cutie-mark. This is great!”
By the end of that week, her opinion had changed as she was reminded why she had always preferred short bangs. The long hair liked to fall into her line of sight and had to be pushed away or tucked behind her ears, where it would never stay for long. This won’t do for serious study sessions, she thought, but I’ll have to remember this if I hit the dating scene…
After a few more visions, the week was almost over for the last time. She’d finally succeeded at every one of her experiments and saved the lives of several ponies a few times each. She had also taken the opportunity to try out three new manestyles, eat at numerous new restaurants, and generally live a life of excess beyond her financial means.
As varied as this week had been, living it again and again grew old after ten or so times. Twilight planned to leave the helmet off that night. She planned to sleep in a real bed.
Twilight paused at the sign for Main Street Framing. It was an elaborately framed mirror with the shop’s name painted onto its surface. She turned her head from side to side and admired her new sky blue mane in the reflection. The color was fun, but not really her thing.
Behind her reflected self, she spotted a small grey pony watching her intently. She thought she had seen this foal around the city before, always from the corner of her eye. Twilight snapped around to look but the pony was nowhere to be seen.
Twilight shrugged it off and continued toward the castle. She preferred be in the lab when the visions came to an end. It was less jarring to ‘wake’ from the vision there.
On the way, she glanced down at a fallen newspaper. Its headlines read, “Celestia Maintains Sky-High Approval Ratings,” “Framed! - Drama Movie to Premiere This Weekend,” and “What’s In a Mane? Photos of Princess Twilight Sparkle’s Wild New Manestyle.”
She laughed a bit at that last headline. All the more reason to do trial runs in a vision. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the scrutiny that comes with being a princess.
Twilight stepped over the paper and moved on. No need to worry about litter when this is just a vision. Then the wind gusted and turned the page. Where articles and images should have been, a single word repeated again and again and filled the entire page: ‘Mainframe’.
As Twilight Sparkle slept that night in the real world, she had a dream. From her perspective, it was the first time in months. The absence went unnoticed at first, but she realized eventually: she never dreamed inside the visions.
In this dream, pieces of memories called out to her. Were they called up by her subconscious or by the Object? Patterns of loose letters assembled into the same two words. She recalled all the times she had glimpsed or heard those two words. The dream words floated and merged into a single word: mainframe. Again and again it had appeared in the visions. Like something on the tip of her tongue, she knew the word was important, but she couldn’t say why.
She tossed and turned in her sleep. Into the dark bedroom she mumbled, “Mainframe. What does it mean?”
At that, a small grey pony approached her in the dream. The one from the Object’s version of Canterlot. The one that had seemed to follow her through her weeks and weeks in the visions. Androgynous and maneless and lacking a cutie-mark, its only distinguishing features were glowing blue eyes.
“Greetings, Princess Twilight Sparkle,” it said with stilted formality. “I have watched you but I have failed to properly contact you. It has taken all of my ability just to support you within my dream. I have found it easier to contact you here in yours. I hope to watch you again,” it said, then vanished in a wisp of smoke
She shivered, and she understood then. Mainframe wasn’t a term defined in any Equestrian dictionary. Mainframe was a name, the name of the strange pale foal. The true name of the machine she had always called the Object.
The next morning, Twilight rushed to get the other researchers up to speed on the latest vision week. She was well practiced in the routine, and she chose to omit the topic of the Object’s new name. The thought of treading that new ground without the aid of a vision terrified her.
“Wait, you used the Object last night without telling us?” Behind Cobalt Thorn’s eyes, a fierce battle raged between his hero worship and his newfound disappointment regarding Twilight’s actions.
“And judging by how rehearsed she sounds, we can deduce that she used it multiple times in a row,” Blue Moon said with extreme displeasure.
Twilight rolled her eyes and said, “Can we save the lectures for later? We can save lives if we act quickly.”
The others nodded in reluctant agreement and followed Twilight as she bolted from the room. She shouted information about her plans back to them, out of courtesy, but she wouldn’t need their help for these ‘experiments’. She knew exactly what to do.
As she had done in the vision, she ran throughout Canterlot to be in the right places at the right times, to avert catastrophes and save lives. She skipped the expensive restaurants and salon visits, but otherwise followed her hoofprints closely. She kept an eye out for the grey pony, Mainframe, but she never saw it. She had to remind herself that this wasn’t a vision anymore. It couldn’t be here in the real world, right? she asked herself with a feeling of unease.
For the rest of the week Twilight delayed the conversation regarding the Object’s identity. On the last day, she retreated to her room and threw herself on the bed. Should I use the helmet again and contact Mainframe to confirm what I saw in my dream? Should I even tell the others? She pressed her face into a pillow and let out an exasperated grunt. I don’t even know what Mainframe is! Is it alive? Is it dangerous?
She repeatedly ran her hooves through her mane, as if to scratch a mental itch. Could it possibly be worse than this feeling of not knowing what tomorrow will bring?
I have too many questions and not enough answers, Twilight thought. She jumped up from the bed. “I’m going back in. I’ll talk to Mainframe and I’ll come back with all the answers everypony expects from me.” There was a nervous gleam in her eyes as she ran from the room.