“So this thing ‘eres called an in-ter-et?”
Applebloom wasn’t sure what in the hay that Twilight had gotten, but she certainly wanted to know. If this thing could even go halfway to getting her, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo their cutie marks, then it was gold in her books.
“No, this is called a computer, you can do all sorts of things with it, play games, do work, study, read books, and even talk with other ponies.”
Scootaloo clearly didn’t understand what it was, and neither did Applebloom. Sweetie Belle might have understood, or she had simply found something really interesting in the general direction of Twilight’s face.
“Uh Twi, we can do all that stuff without one of these things.”
“Yes, but this makes things better.”
“How?”
“Like this.”
To demonstrate Twilight hit some part of it with her hoof, and the thing whirred to life, all flashy colors and sparkling decorations and stuff.
“I thought you said you could do stuff with this.”
Twilight seemed to be regarding her rather condescendingly. It wasn’t like any of the other CMC understood it either, as even after Twilight had gone to turn on the switch, Sweetie Belle kept on staring straight ahead of her at a wall. It certainly wasn’t her fault that she wasn’t getting it either, Twilight was probably just bad at explaining things.
“Of course it can, it just takes some time to boot up.”
The computer made some dinging noise and suddenly Twilights hooves became a blur on some weird thingy, with it occasionally moving to a smaller thingy which she would move or press.
“err…Twi, what’re ya doin?
“I’m going to show you a chat room.”
“How are you going to make that thing spit out a room?”
Twilight didn’t even bother answering her question, and instead continued to tap away at the thing. But as she tapped, words began to pop onto the screen, with other ponies’ names appearing on a little box next to even more words.
“What are you doing Twi?”
“I’m talking to my friends using a chat room, all you need to do is type what you want to say into the keyboard, then hit enter, and you’ve sent your message to them. Those messages popping up there are ones that my friends have sent to me.”
“Can I try?”
Twilight hesitated for a moment, before nodding and stepping away from the computer so that she could give it a shot.
Things didn’t work out so well for her first time.
She had no idea how it was possible for Twilight to hit those keys correctly at first, with her attempts being just a bunch of random mash that would occasionally get sent by accident. It took her some time, but she was finally able to type her messages slowly, enough so that they were at least sentences, and not just random letter vaguely resembling a word. By the time that she had figured it out, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle had noticed the sparkly screen and were drawn to the computer as well.
“This is awesome.”
“How are you doing that?”
Applebloom was surprised at how much awe they regarded her typing skills with. She was going incredibly slowly compared to Twilight, yet it was probably more than they were capable of.
She was about to ask Twilight about what else there was, but Scootaloo beat her to it.
“What else can this thing do?”
“Oh you can use the internet for tons of things, most of them with other ponies. If something exists, or even if it doesn’t, you can probably find it on the internet.”
As far as Applebloom had seen though, all the computer could do was let her talk to ponies.
“But how do I use this internet?”
“All you need to do is click on the URL and then type in the address of the page you want to visit, if you’re not sure where you want to go, you can use a search engine to find it.”
“You are L? Wasn’t that something from that bad Death Note thing-fic you wrote?”
“It was a masterpiece of writing; you just have to have seen the anime to understand it.”
“Ani…What?”
Twilight face-hoofed and let the topic drop, instead trying to give as base instructions as possible without letting the conversation derail itself again.
“All you need to do is use the mouse-” At this she indicated the mouse. “To select the bar up here-” As she went through the steps she demonstrated using her magic. “Then you type in the address of the place you want to go to.”
Twilight began to type in an address; a box appeared with a bunch of other addresses in them. Twilight only needed to type in the first three letters before the address she was looking for came up.
“Here we are, CELESTIAL, The number one search engine in all of Equestria.”
But as she went to magic the pointer towards the address, Sweetie Belle leaned a tad too far towards the computer and slipped, causing her hoof to land on the mouse.
The pointer suddenly shot across the screen before clicking on the address immediately below CELESTIAL. The only glimpse she got of the name was CELESTFE- Before a panicking Twilight blocked the CMC’s view of the screen, and started muttering to herself.
“Come on you stupid thing, go back, GO BACK!!!”
Twilight abruptly calmed down, and with a relaxed air, continued to mutter while pressing clicking furiously with the mouse.
“Delete history over past week and… done.”
Applebloom wasn’t going to just let this go.
“What was that all about Twi?”
“Umm…Nothing, just some err…work that I had to do for the Princess. And it was so err…top secret that I couldn’t let you see it.” Twilight’s voice took on a more lighthearted, yet slightly eerie tone “Otherwise I would have to kill you.”
The Cutie Mark Crusaders all looked to each other and then back at Twilight, an awkward silence holding. Twilight sighed.
“Why does nopony ever get my references?”
“So err…can we use this computer then.”
Twilight cast a worried shot back at the screen, before confirming something from it and addressing the three of them.
“I don’t see why not. Just make sure not to break it.”
A resounding chorus of “Cutie Mark Crusader interneterer’s” met Twilights ears, fading off as they realized they didn’t know what the term for an internet user was, before coming back in a “Yay!”.
As she turned to leave the three to their exploration of the computer, Twilight heard Scootaloo shout out from the three.
“I’m gonna do an Internet.”
Twilight couldn’t resist the urge to shout back. “Well I’m gonna do a book” before walking off chuckling to herself.