He dashed over to his desk, knocking his office chair out of the way, the seat lifting off the ground for a second before it landed back on the floor, its plastic wheels clattering, the disturbance it caused slightly muted by the carpet. The palm of his hand blindly pressed down on a handful of keyboard keys all at once, pushing down for a second before desperately tapping the escape key, his other hand pressing the on button of the monitor.
"Come on, come on," David muttered to himself under clenched teeth. He slapped the side of the screen when it didn't turn on and soon after dropped down to one knee to check on the case of his computer. No lights were on. The disk didn’t have its iconic scraping sound and the fans in the back of the hardware ceased to spin. He pressed the power button, holding it until he finished counting to four under his breath and released it, the button clicking back into place. There was no response from the machine. He tried several times, but to no avail.
He crawled underneath his desk, carefully pulling his computer out from against the wall. Tracing the wall with his fingers, he found the power outlet and the computer’s cord with it, tugged at the base and pulled it completely free. As soon as it came loose he tried sticking it back in, stabbing at the wall several times in the dark until he scraped the prongs of the cord along the metal surface of the outlet and lined up the shot, shoving it back into place. Not bothering to push his computer back into position, he got out of the small space and tried turning it on again. No progress was made. He could feel sweat start to form on the back of his neck, goosebumps popping straight up.
"This can't be happening," he stated, standing back up. He peered on where he thought his lamp was on his desk and fiddled around the base of the object until he found the switch, flicking it on and off repeatedly. Nothing happened. He threw his hands up, and when they were brought down by gravity his palms slapped against his thighs. Thunder crackled off in the distance.
He swore under his breath. Grabbing his phone off the glass table, he backed away from his dead rig and threw himself on his bed, flopping face up. A heavy sigh came from his lips and he tried to rub his eyes, but found his fingernails scratching the lens of his glasses along with his fingertips smudging the view. The eyewear ended up sitting to the left of him after he threw it at his pillow and his hands were up massaging his eyelids and temples. He groaned, staring at the ceiling, his eyes finally adjusting to the dark around him. His brain was tired, muddled and in a state of scramble. Lying there, he chose to do nothing. He let the soothing sounds of the rain wash his worries away for the moment. He could feel a cool, light breeze come in through the window, as if nature was apologizing to him for the wrong it had done. His eyes closed.
Sleep started to grasp him after a few minutes. Refusing rest, he opened his eyes and flipped open his smart phone sideways, the device fitting perfectly into his hand widthwise, but more than outreached the tips of his fingers lengthwise. He could barely see its shining red finish in the lack of light in the room. It immediately responded, and the Samsung Andromedus displayed the time, date, and background between its twin touch screens. It read 11:30 at night. He sighed again.
He closed the device and got up, grabbing some red sport shorts off his clothing drawers near the door and putting them on. Brown slippers went under his feet and he walk to the door of his room, twisting the modern door handle and swinging the weightless wood open. Walking out to the second floor, he spotted someone leaning against the edge of the mahogany railings of the pathway that looked down to the level below, pressing and sliding her thumb on the screen of her iPhone X. Her head turned towards him.
"Everything’s dead in your room too, huh?" was the first question asked by David as he took two steps towards the staircase a foot away from his room. His left hand rested on the railing, the other gripping his phone tight.
"Yep," she answered before going back to her phone, the glow of the handheld illuminating her face with details of a sharp, pointed chin. Her Victorian nose pointed directly wherever her attention was at all times, and brown eyes dotted between her black, curved eyelashes. Her usually snide and moody lips were formed in a fine line, and she wasn't bothered by the light of the phone at all, choosing to embrace the glow instead of bothering to turn down the brightness instead. Long black hair scaled down the back of her head to the top of her back, acting as a curtain over her shoulders and cut into shorts bangs in the front. A grey t-shirt with a faded design on the front hung onto her modest form along with the baby blue shorts following her backside.
David looked down the stairs down to the main floor. The last step fell onto warm orange tiles that split into two directions and went around to the back, as well as up the front door not two meters away. The left of the stairs followed quickly to a living area, the walls painted a laid back white with a gas fireplace build in to the structure. There was clay pots with curious swirls designed into the material, painted in green. They were tiny enough to fit onto the ledge of the fireplace, three sitting around a ship in a bottle. Above the fireplace was a large, beautiful painting of a white mare lying beside her foal in a green field during daylight, her motherly presence looking over the child as he pressed up lovingly against her warm body.
There were dark crimson sofas all around a coffee table underneath a white carpet that was built into the floor, vacuumed and clear of any fluffs. The table’s base and legs were made of a rich, syrup-brown maple, but the surface was actually fine glass, design painted onto the edges of the window onto the floor, held in place by the wooden frame around it, a blue flower vase sitting on top in the center. There were bookcases along the west side of the room beside the fireplace, filled to the brim with various meanderings on the works of law, business and the church, as will some bits and pieces about plant wildlife, all aging back by thirty to forty years. Behind one of the sofas near a giant curtain-covered window was a glass cabinet, showcasing clean teacups, plates with elegant etches sketched onto them and other various pieces of fine china. The front door itself was closed, with metal bars covering the front as an added security measure.
"I'm trying to figure out what exactly is going on here," she said, browsing the contents of her phone as David's attention was brought back to her.
"You do know that we just lost power a few minutes ago, right?" David pointed out. "I don't think the city's had enough time to respond to anything.”
"They can be fast if they want to," she simply stated, not looking away from her activity.
"So are you just going to stand there, refreshing the Hydro Twitter page until something comes up?"
"Yes," she replied, mashing what David could only guess was the spinning arrow on the phone's URL bar.
He rolled his eyes and started down the stairs, shuffling as he guided his hand down the railing. "Have fun, Raini."
"You too, David," she said, a tiny smirk on her face.
He reached the bottom step and dropped off, continuing to the right and around the bend. Down the following hallway on the left was a door that he directed himself to, turning the door handle and pulling it open. The insides were pitch black, but after flipping open his phone for a second and tapping the screen a few times, the phone's flashlight turned on through the back of the device and he pointed it at the enclosed space. Several coats were hanging on a rack, with boots and shoes sitting at the floor, all neatly placed in their proper pairs, one after another. He found his own blue rain jacket, pulled it out and began sliding his arms down the sleeves.
"No need to do that," an elderly, weathered voice called from down the corridor. David stopped putting the jacket on and turned to face his speaker, phone pointed down to keep anyone from getting blinded.
"Mr. Geary," David greeted, turning off his phone's light with the press of a button near his index finger and shoving it in his pocket. He started taking off the coat. "What's going on?"
Mr. Geary was in his stripped white-and-mint-green pajamas, adorning a full head of short grey hair with wrinkles below his eyes, on the corners of his lips, and on the front of his forehead. An old flip-phone was held in his right hand at his side, closed, with his other clutching a black flashlight with a red rim. The short man gave a warm smile that matched the creases in his slightly sagged cheeks.
"I've been calling around the neighborhood," Mr. Geary explained. "Everyone's power is out, but Tracy’s had the worst of it. Apparently a tree near her house got hit and fell onto the power lines right onto her yard. Thank goodness that it wasn’t her house that got hit."
David was in the middle of putting his rain jacket back. "Thank goodness is right. That’s where it hit, huh? I'm surprised lightning got this close."
"Indeed," Mr. Geary replied. "It seems a bit odd to me, but not unbelievable. Hopefully no one got hurt and it'll be fixed in the morning."
Mr. Geary started moving past David as he got out of the way. "Did the thunderclap wake you up?"
"Yes, it did, and Suzy too. She let me handle it though, or rather, I told her to try to get back to sleep while I looked into it," Mr. Geary said as he turned to meet David right at the base of the steps. David heard a door close upstairs, guessing it was Raini's.
"Yeah, Raini's been on top of the news on the internet, trying to see when a response team will come and fix the problem and how long it'll take." David recalled, pointing up to the floor above them. "Hopefully she'll tell us what she figures out as soon as information gets online."
"I'm glad she's keeping up with things," Mr. Geary stated.
David took a step forward, and lightning briefly flashed over his face. "I guess Ron's not back yet?"
"I'm afraid not," his host responded, straightening himself. "He's out late again. He'll be quite surprised once he comes back, though. Won’t have all his usual gadgets to toy around with without power."
"I wouldn’t be surprised if once he got back he just flopped down onto his bed and instantly falls asleep. I'll go send him a text, regardless," David decided.
"That's a good idea," Mr. Geary commented. David continued forward before he was stopped by a hand. When David looked up, Mr. Geary’s practiced green eyes were studying his face. "You look woefully tired, David. Might be best if you get some rest soon, huh?"
"Yeah," David agreed, subconsciously rubbing his eyes. "I just lost some important work on my computer when the power went out, is all."
Mr. Geary's expression softened. "I'm sorry to hear that, David. Hopefully you'll be able to recover some of your work tomorrow."
David started back up the stairs, Mr. Geary trailing behind him. "Yeah, I hope so too."
Twilight was opening her eyes. Her first thoughts were all over the place as she came out of slumber. She let out a wide yawn and wiped the sleep out of her eyes, looking around. Once again she had to remind herself where she was, staring at the lines of code floating about the space. She idly traced the edge of her hoof against the translucent ground, watching as a trail of finely buffered white ripples follow her touch. Smacking her lips, it took her brain a few moments to realize that she had fallen asleep sitting on her haunches. It escaped her how she possibly could have fallen asleep in such a position without her lower legs going numb. But then an odd thought occurred to her, and she scratched the back of her head.
What had she been doing?
"Twilight?" she heard. Her ears flicked for a second and she searched around the environment. It sounded familiar, but she couldn't put her hoof on the voice.
"Twilight? Are you there?" it had asked with the tiniest amount of apprehension. She narrowed her vision, eyebrows furrowed. Who was that pony talking to her?
"Spike?" she asked aloud.
"No," the voice replied after a moment of hesitation. "It's me, David. Remember? You're stuck in my computer."
Suddenly it all came back to her. Her eyes widened, and her attention was grabbed as she leaned forward, back straight. "Oh! Yeah, I remember!"
"Oh thank goodness," David said on the other side with the creaking of what Twilight understood was David’s office chair, as he described it to her previously, breathing out a sigh of relief.
Twilight frowned. "I can't believe I forgot. How could I? I—I—I—” She had to shake her head to clear her mind and stop stuttering. An odd, tingling sensation went over her, from the tip of her ears to the base of her tail. Her mind was stuck solely on one word for some odd reason before the moment passed. “I'm sorry David, I just—"
"Don't worry about it," David immediately cut in. She heard him hit something in his workspace, muttering under his breath about a device or tool “not crapping out” on him now. “But tell me, how are you doing?”
"I’m fine, thank you," Twilight replied, the gears in her head turning. "Although maybe a bit zonked out. Waking up inside cyberspace doesn’t give me headaches anymore, and usually Spike has to help me get up in the morning otherwise I sleep in past lunch time. Did you just get home?"
"Yep, got back by ten.” David divulged. Twilight looked behind her shoulder and up, spotting the number up in the vast black sky without thinking about why she exactly peered there.
"Ten at night, you're right," she confirmed as a little bit of heat filled her cheeks. “I guess I’ll be waking up past lunch whether or not I like it.”
"Well, I could leave the computer on for you," David answered. It sounded like he was typing something on his keyboard. “You would be alone all day though.”
Twilight shook her head, even though she knew David wouldn’t be able to see it. "No thanks. That wouldn’t be very pleasant. What were we doing last night? I remember seeing this orange text and wanting to touch it, but nothing after that. I think I might be still half asleep."
There was a moment of silence on David's end. Then, he chuckled. "Is that how it is, huh?”
David was about to go into some kind of explanation when Twilight turned her head to her right and spotted something very odd.
"Huh?" she sounded out, standing up and moving forward a bit. "What's this camera doing here?"
She heard David give out a sigh, followed by a harsh laugh. "Oh boy. Ok, let me explain a couple of things to you first, Twilight..."