A fatal error has occurred. The process has been terminated. (PERMISSION DENIED REF:0100156)
David held his head in one palm while clicking the ok button underneath the message with the other. He had seen messages like that many times before in the past few days, the first one causing him unhealthy amounts of panic. He couldn’t make heads or tails of what the computer meant and originally thought that it was talking about Twilight’s process. His relief found him when he could hear Twilight’s concerned tone over the audio wave. As far as he knew the error message with the scary-looking-but-artistically-stylized glossy red X as the icon for the window meant nothing. The text box displayed and life went on. The funny thing was that there was no title with the message. It popped up, but the top of the window had no text to indicate where it had come from, and it didn't take up a space on the taskbar. It was like a ghost text box. He sighed as the window closed.
“Red nose spell,” David commented, picking up the pen with his mouse hand and writing down more notes on a piece of paper that was on top of a growing pile. “Effects: Error message. Conclusion: Useless.”
“Darn, another error?” Twilight asked from her side. “I thought that would for sure have gotten us somewhere.”
David shook his head. “We can’t find a winner with every spell. In fact, I think we have a pretty good track record so far, all things considered. That dusting spell cleaned up my recycle bin pretty nicely and the, uh, soap-hooves spell certainly sped up my system for a little bit. I’m just waiting for the one cast that’ll blow up my computer.”
“You think there’s a spell that can do that?” Twilight asked worryingly.
“Heh, no, I’m just joking. Don’t worry about it, Twilight,” he reassured her.
“Although, come to think of it, it’s not outside the realm of possibility, seeing as she’s already given me electric shocks through the computer case, mouse and keyboard. Who knows when she’ll overload the system with power and makes it explode? Errgh, nope, can’t think about that too much. I can’t let that discourage me,” David thought to himself, shuddering.
Checking the clock, he wiped his eyes beneath his glasses, noting that the hour was going into the ninth. He organized his thoughts and realized that he had promised himself something earlier in the day. It was time, and he couldn’t dawdle. He took a deep breath in and gathered up his courage.
“Get ready for the next spell, David. This one’s called the Mystic Song spell, and it’s primarily used to stimulate objects around a designated zone to produce sound. Most of the time it'll create music, but if the spell is improperly cast the wavelengths of the waves generated will be skewed and useless. Interestingly, depending on the mass and volume of the object, it will play a different note, with heavier items getting lower tones. It’s a bit of a difficult spell to pull off, but I had to write a paper about it in eleventh grade, and I've done it a few times before myself, so I should be able to get it right with the first try." She paused. "Am I going to fast?"
“Actually Twilight,” David began. “I think we should call it a day.”
Twilight pondered that. “Oh. Ok.”
“I mean, we’ve been at it for three-and-a-half hours now, so…” David explained, scratching the back of his head.
“We have?” Twilight asked, incredulous. “Goodness, I would have never guessed! I guess you need a break?”
“Well you don’t really have a concept of time in there, do you?” David thought to himself. “You don’t get hungry, you don’t get thirsty, you don’t get tired and you can’t seem to find the clock in there. I guess it’s pretty easy for you to lose track of time in a vortex like that.” “It’s not that, exactly. There’s some university work I need to get going on.”
“Oh, I see,” Twilight stated cheerfully. “Ok.”
“And, well, I actually do need a break, now that I think about it,” David said, taking a moment to stretch, reaching for the air above his head, his chest puffed out as his back curved. “But really, the work from the U was on the forefront of my mind. Honest.” "It's actually been a miracle that I've been able to last this long without having to do anything with my computer."
Twilight let out a puff of air, and David pictured her behind the screen. Well, pictured the best smile a unicorn could give, anyway. “I see.”
“But the thing is, I need to type this on my computer, so…”
“So?” Twilight inquired.
He grimaced, steeling himself. “So that means that you may have to twiddle your, uh, hooves, for a while until I can get this finished,” he explained.
“Oh, really? What do you mean?” Twilight asked, continuing the onslaught of questions.
“Ehh,” David nervously started. “Well, the only reason I would actually resume the computer from sleep would be to do more research on getting you back, Twilight. I haven’t touched my computer for any other reason. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but a computer like mine has a lot more uses besides, uh, holding a pony inside of it.”
“Oh!” Twilight exclaimed. “I hadn’t even realized. I…”
Twilight took a moment. Unbeknownst to David, Twilight was observing her immediate surroundings once more, the realization of her current predicament sinking in once again. David patiently waited, one elbow leaning back on the arm rest of his chair with his right hand on the surface of his table. His eyes drifted from the brightness of the monitor to the left corner, and he turned his head slightly to view out the window, with cool, stormy weather rolling in from the sky above, the sunset muted by the dark clouds above. Trees outside rustled in the harsh wind, but David was glad that the heat had finally let up a bit.
“Go ahead. I’m fine with it. I’ve been occupied enough lately. I can do a little waiting and take a break.” Twilight answered.
“Are you sure?” David asked. “I’m going to be doing a lot of typing, and my microphone might pick up the feedback. It will probably get annoying. I could unplug the microphone for a little bit, if you want.”
“No!” Twilight shouted suddenly. “Don’t, do that. I don’t think that’ll be necessary. I’ll be fine.”
David flinched. He wanted to slap himself. “Sorry, Twilight.”
“It’s alright. I know you meant well. And,” Twilight stated, searching for her next words.
“And?”
“Thank you, for everything you’ve done so far. And all the hours you've put in into getting me back home. I really appreciate it.” Twilight finished.
David smiled. “No problem. It’s my pleasure.”
No one said anything. David could vaguely hear thunder off in the background, his green-shaded desk lamp reflecting a soft light against the glass below it, giving off a measurable amount of heat where the bulb was at.
“So… How long do you think it’s going to take to finish your work?” Twilight asked tentatively.
“As long as it takes,” David said, figuring out that was his cue to get up and get to it.
Twilight sat on her haunches in near silence, the far ambience of David’s key strokes and her hoof taps the only other distinguishable noises. She thought back to moments when David turned on the computer but needed time to activate his microphone, leaving her in the soundless void, the lack of volume creating feedback on her own eardrums as they generated a fake, high-pitched white noise for her just to keep her from feeling true nothingness. She relished in her mind’s lies, and as she kept her position solely on one spot she couldn’t help but stare down the multitudes upon multitudes of text and data passing before her eyes, floating down two directions on a flat plane, their colours unidentifiable. One minute they were white, the next cerulean, then sometimes orange, and if Twilight tried to think about it too much she would get a slight headache, something that almost never happened to her ever.
Her front hooves tapped at the invisible floor, cooling her through her behind like it was some kind of stone tiling. It made no sense to her, the correlation between the solid ground not actually being there and feeling the lack of heat of it against her being. She decided that the looping path of logic was a waste of time and energy to think about, so she decided to look upon the numerous words before her. She listened to David’s intense concentration, noting how he had stopped interacting with her the moment he began his typing, as if she was put far off in to the back of his brain, placed at the least of his worries. A part of her in that past moment opened up her mouth to begin small talk, an essential skill of socializing that she quickly learned during the first week she stayed in Ponyville, but then thought back to how he already spent so much time with her and concluded that he needed some time to himself, a few minutes where he wasn’t to be disturbed from his work.
Her eyes traced the background again, this time reaching to the far upper reaches of the odd dimension after an out-of-place tingling sensation in her skull gave her the abrupt urge to look in that specific part of cyberspace. More meaningless words passed by her attention, and she gave a heavy sigh. She cursed her missing fatigue and her strange limitless energy. She wasn’t one to lose interest in anything at any one moment very often, having being surrounded by books at the Ponyville Library, friends, or her scientific equipment on a daily basis. Her tail swished on the see-through floor, her left ear twitching as she waited patiently, her focus bringing in more text.
She soon found herself reading line after line of letters, passing the time and trying to make waiting for David more bearable. For once in her life she truly understood Rainbow Dash and her lack of patience. She found the text to be extending in size, continuing downward like a map marking down an extended, almost endless path, characters added on in intervals that seemed to match the tempo of David and his typing. But, as Twilight read through the same lines twice, thrice, and over again, her eyes widened.
“…In the considered lack of care Arbuckle displayed against Mr. Roy, as shown in his actions of failing to give the nearby assistant the correct orders, it is safe to assume that Arbuckle cannot control himself against others who insult his presence of being. Arbuckle has a large ego, earlier established after he got his new car and casually but no so subtly introduced it to his friends and openly bragged about it, therefore when a person shows their worth and outsmart Arbuckle, such as Mr. Roy did as he won the rigged bet…”
“Outsmart should be outsmarts, David,” Twilight said, breaking the silence.
David squinted at the screen.
He had to retrace his steps after Twilight’s comment. He knew what she was talking about, but he had written that three minutes ago. Finding the passage, he reviewed the sentence, the contents of the paragraph and mulled it over.
“I think you’re right,” David stated, adding an 's' at the end of the highlighted word. He took a breath in and out. Suddenly, his eyebrows shot upward. “Wait. How did you–”
“And you misspelt grandeur. It’s D-E-U-R. And you can’t use ‘wrought’ in that context. And–”
“I get it, Twilight,” David finally said, holding his hands up in defeat, rolling his eyes.
“Uhh, I hate to ask David, but are you really an Equestrian Language major? Or were you just joking around again?"
David balled his hands into fists, slunk his shoulders and faintly muttered “It’s only my first draft,” through a clenched jaw.
There was a notable pause on Twilight’s end. Then, she gave a large gasp. “David, I think I just–”
“–Read off of my document?” David finished for her.
“Yes! I think I found your document! I can read everything you’ve written here!” Twilight told him.
“You’ve found it in that mess of code?”
“Yes! And, I think… Are you writing on something called ‘winword dot E-X-E?” Twilight asked.
“Yeah,” David answered, pleasantly surprised. A wide smile grew on his face.
“I’ve figured it out!” Twilight announced, as happy as can be. “I’ve made progress inch by inch, but I think I can make out a little bit of your computer now!”
“Really? How?” David had to wonder.
“Well, everything’s organized in a specific manner. It’s like an essay, where the intro is at the beginning and the end of the data is at the bottom. There’s a whole bunch of strings, variable and booleans in-between, but when you’re writing a stream of information like this, I can make out the difference between the lines made by the computer and the lines made by you because the computer holds the two in completely different ways!”
“That definitely sounds like everything I’ve heard of about a program,” David said. “But how did you figure that out all by yourself? I thought computers were simplistic in Equestria. I didn't know you knew terms like that, Twilight.”
"...I didn't."
David was stunned.
“And now that I think about it… I don’t really know how I got to that entire conclusion, like, all of it, not just what I've explained to you so far. There's a lot I haven't told you, it's just been a rush of information, I... It’s like there was something telling me about the format of the data, or that I was being hinted on by something. I don’t know. There was nothing that was telling me how the program was being compiled a few minutes ago. I was reading the document several times over before it hit me.”
“But maybe you just didn’t realize it at first,” David tried to assure her. “And maybe it finally did hit you because you actually started to read what I was typing. That’s why it took you so long.”
“But something dragged my eyes to that specific corner of the space,” she said in a more careful tone. “It didn't look particularly interesting at first, I just had an odd feeling that I should have. A-And I didn’t really know about the difference between the computer code and the user code. Sure, I was putting pieces together, but I didn’t really have anything figured out until I–”
Twilight stopped in the middle of her sentence. A few seconds past before David swore he heard her fall over, her body hitting the ground in a slump.
“Twilight?” he asked. “Are you ok? Twilight!”
Suddenly, his monitor flashed white, blinding him through his glasses as a heavy, intense glow penetrated the protection of the orange lens. David cried out, throwing his arms in front of his face and pushing his chair back away from the desk, turning away from the assault on his eyes. He peeked through the gaps between his arms, trying to make out what was happening on his computer monitor. The bright screen flashed an array of colours, quickly swapping through many shades and mixed hues of different types of static took over the monitor. The light curved all around the room, even going as far as pressing light on the leaves on the trees through his room’s window.
David’s headset got unplugged from the force of his retreat. He sat staring at the edge of his seat, wide-eyed at the surge of energy from his system. His mind was reeling, trying to figure out what was going on. A blaze of lightning flashed through the window and not two seconds later crashing thunder followed. David yelped and jumped out of his chair.
Then, the monitor stopped flashing colours. David’s heart was beating a mile a minute, his eyes locked on to what was still a potentially dangerous object in his opinion. He let a few seconds pass. The screen of his computer was black; completely blank. He was afraid that it had broke, and was almost certain that he could see smoke rising out of the top vents of the equipment. With his arms still up along with his guard, he took steady steps towards the machine. His attention darted down to the case for a second to spot the power light was on and running, along with the spinning disk icon. He kept his eyes on target, and once he had realized it, he reeled in the cord of his headset away from the computer and shoved the end into his pocket.
After, he heard it, albeit faintly at first. His computer was installed with built-in speakers, a consumer’s choice that he found himself questioning after he had bought the piece for his custom PC in the first place. However, he wanted to have a back-up just in case his headphones blew so he wouldn’t have to game for a day without complete silence from the hardware. Now, he was relieved to have made what he believed to be the absolute correct choice.
Twilight was coughing from the other side.
“Ack, David?” she wheezed, her voice tinny through the low-quality speakers inside his rig. “David, are you still there?”
“I’m here!” David called. He was quick to remember that his headset was no longer plugged in and fumbled around with the end of it after yanking the cord out of his pocket, trying to pinch the nob with his finger and thumb. The plip-plop of raindrops started to play outside, beginning at a slow pace with heavy droplets that dove into every single surface outside. The crashing boom of electricity in the clouds accompanied the newly descending water. “I’m here, Twilight, hang on!”
David got to his knees in front of the desk, holding the plug of his audio device in his right hand only to switch it to his left once he realized he was too close to the desk to reach all the way over and bend down under to plug in the set into the correct port, the desk surface blocking his arm. The headset was plugged in, David adjusted the microphone to make sure it was in the proper position and he hit the side of his monitor in a flash of irritation.
“David?” Twilight asked, her voice wavering.
“I’m here, Twilight!” David called out. “Can you hear me?”
“Oh, thank Celestia!” Twilight said. “I can hear you definitely! I thought something happened to you!”
“Are you kidding me? I’m fine! Are you ok?” David queried.
Twilight groaned. “Ugh, I got dizzy all of the sudden and it was hard to stay upright. I’m better now, but the rooms still spinning a bit. What was I talking about again?”
“Are you sure you’re fine? Do you remember if you accidentally cast a spell?”
“Huh? What? Why?”
“Twilight, my computer just went crazy,” David divulged, his hands hovering above the desk as he looked sternly at the broken monitor like it was a face. “The screen flashed a whole bunch of colours and now I think it’s busted. What happened? Do you know?”
“No, David, I have no clue. I think I–”
Twilight stopped. David’s heart raced.
“Twilight, don’t do this to me again, talk to me. What’s going on in there?”
“David,” she began. “There’s something in front of me right now, something strange.”
David couldn’t think it was possibly any good. “What is it? What do you see?”
“It’s a single line of text b-but it’s highlighted. It’s different then all the other words I see here. Normally the text is constantly moving, changing and passing by in different directions, but this one… this one is sitting still. It’s not moving, and it's right in front of me, a-and it given a colour. No characters here really have a colour, I normally can’t detect them.”
“What colour do you see? What does the text read?” David asked.
“It says ‘P-O-S-S capture dot E-X-E’ and it’s the colour orange,” Twilight informed him.
“Twilight?” David said. He looked over his shoulder to spot his chair sitting a few feet away from him. He got to one knee before standing up and reaching behind to grab the base of the seat, trying to claw at it while not turning around, bending over his back to make sure that the connection between his voice and Twilight’s ears was not severed again. “Whatever you do, don’t move, don’t blink, do not look away, and do not cast any sort of spell or use your magic right now.”
“David–” Twilight tried to say.
“We don’t know what it is, and I pray to god that it’s not another virus that’s been hiding on my computer this entire time,” he continued, interrupting her.
“David, I think I need to do something with it. I’m getting this very strong feeling that–”
“No no no, Twilight, stay back. We don’t know what it is! It could be dangerous!” he pleaded.
“But I’m certain, David! This thing wants something out of me! I need to do something with it, and I… I think I’m the only one who can! That’s why it’s highlighted compared to everything else around here. I can interact with it somehow!”
David scowled. The sound and pitch of her voice was becoming abnormal. “Twilight…”
“David, I’m going to touch it,” Twilight announced.
“No-are you kidding me? Have you been listening to a single word I’m saying?”
The rain began to pour.
“This is it, David. I think this may be a step forward towards getting me to Equestria,” Twilight tried to reason.
“Twilight, wait! Stop before you do something stupid!” he begged.
Thunder burst through the window. Rain was getting all over the inside of the windowpane.
The monitor suddenly turned on, brighter than ever. David cried out, shielding his eyes one more and stumbling back.
“Twilight?” he yelled into the microphone. All he got for feedback was some static. “Twilight? Are you there? What did you do?”
The monitor wasn’t smoking anymore, but all it could output was a white screen. David thought it to be going crazy, especially since he couldn’t look at it through his gaming glasses anymore. He kept a low base, his knees bend, one foot forward and the other pointing sideways with his left arm helping his vision and the other hanging at his side. He waited a few seconds, listening to the white noise from the speakers around his ears.
“…Twilight?”
The monitor turned off. The rage of the storm outside crackled, and a deep part of David’s consciousness told him to close the damn window already so he didn't get his room soaked.
Then, the monitor booted back to its normal state, showing Microsoft Word with his document in all its minimalistic glory.
But David noticed an immediate difference. A box was suddenly added to one quarter of the screen. It took him a moment to process what he was seeing.
His jaw dropped. He could not believe his eyes.