//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 
// Story: Just Dropping In 
// by Gunsmith 
//------------------------------//

							Just Dropping in
By Gunsmith

I have decided “waking up” means a restoration of one’s senses, one by one, and that each of the five senses is restored in a certain order that varies from person to person. The first thing my mind registers is an alarm, uttering the same note repeatedly until I score a hit upon the “snooze” button. As the digital clock continues to shout at me, other senses begin to kick in. I feel the warmth of multiple layers of blanket, my back in contact with my bed’s mattress, my limbs splayed in various positions beneath the covers, my head on my somewhat uncomfortable pillow. I begin to taste that morning taste, the one of staleness and emptiness. Smell registers next, though there is little to smell in the room, and my breathing begins to increase with the regaining of consciousness. Finally, sight is restored. I groggily open my eyes.

Everything is blurry. This is probably due to my poor vision; I’ve had to have visual aid since a young age. However, clarity can wait. I glance--no, glare over at the alarm clock, still screaming in monotone. My right arm shoots out and smacks the “snooze” button a few times, silencing the alarm.

Finally. Thank God.

I pull in my arm a few inches and nab my glasses, which sit on the bedside table the alarm clock does. Underneath my glasses is one of my favorite books, Rainbow Six, which I am re-reading for a third time. I rub my eyes and then slide them onto my face; as I do so, my vision goes to 20/20.

I glance around my room, as I do most morning, as if to clarify where I am. The walls of my room are a shade of beige, and have been fairly well-maintained. A single window is in the wall left of my bed, centered with the wall. It lets in a massive amount of sunlight, even through closed blinds. The window hurts to look at, and I glance away. The ceiling is painted white, and is also well-maintained, save for a small watermark in one corner of the room. A fan hangs from the ceiling, but is immobile because the room is already cold enough.

Two doors decorate the wall directly opposite me in my bed. One, on the left from my view, is a small closet, where I hang my fifteen or so nondescript T-shirts and zip-up hoodies. The other on the right is the door to the bathroom. A three-and-a-half foot tall bookcase sits between them, filled with various Tom Clancy novels and some Physics books.

The wall to my right holds a small kitchen apparatus, and the door leading into the hallway of the building I live in. There is a fridge, stocked with various single-person-sized foods (like a quarter-gallon of milk), an electric oven that heats up a bit more than what is desired, a sink that provides ever-delicious tap water (sarcasm is hard to display when writing), and cabinets above it all, filled with various cereals and devices designed to hold  food and drink. Some drawers, filled with silverware (made not from silver, but from stainless steel--real silver is not for the middle class, apparently), line the counters that separate all of the kitchen machines.

The door leads to a hallway, lined with a few other doors just like it. Each of the doors in the hall have a number and a letter that follows; mine is 2C, second floor, third room. My room is one of eight in a small apartment complex. This complex, a seemingly old building on the outside, yet nice and clean on the inside, is situated on a side street within the small city I reside in; temporarily. The city is an urban one, and is a lifeline for the county, but is tiny when compared to the much larger cities in the state of Ohio. Ohio is a nice enough state in the U.S. Birthplace of aviation and all, but it holds little more in terms of fame, weather, anything like that. It is my home state, and I can’t seem to resist coming back to it; though I only left it a few years ago. 

Ohio and its whimsical weather has decided this year to make the winter a true winter: one with snow and cold temperatures. I had experienced quite a few winters that had felt more like summer or spring in Ohio. But now, a light coating of snow covered the ground, and frost made the trees look eerie yet mesmerizing at the same time. The temperature outside was low enough to maintain the frozen precipitation, yet high enough to prevent very uncomfortable weather, black ice, and other hazards that come with temperatures too low.

The college I attend has been nice enough to give us all a month-long winter break. The college is not one of Ohio, but is more focused on my career field: mechanical engineering. That is my major, and physics is my fall-back. However, mechanical engineering is a large field, and always has been. The career I desire the most is to be a gunsmith, one who creates, repairs, designs, and generally deals with firearms, all day, every day. I don’t know when my love for firearms began, it just did. My thoughts return to the present.

I have been sitting up for about a minute, half-awake, half-asleep. Time to move, let’s go. 

I swing to the side of my bed and place my feet on the ground, then push off the bed, placing my weight onto my feet. I am a large person; not large as in wide, but large as in tall, coming in at over six-and-a-half feet tall. 

I groan as I stretch my limbs, and form the first spoken word of my day: 

“Damn...”

I reach over to the bedside table and grab my watch, sitting beside my book. Yes, I wear a watch, don’t judge me. As I fumble with the belt-like strap on it around my left wrist, I note the time and date:

11:02 A.M., 12-21.

My usual waking time on weekends and other days off, 11 o’ clock. I enjoy staying up late and sleeping in, and have no idea how other people can manage to be an “early-morning person”. Mornings, though a beautiful time of day, are absolute hell, always, even on days off. 

I think about the date. December 21, 2012. I laugh to myself. Time to see if the Mayans were right, shall we? No, moreover, it was time to start off the day.

I go about my daily routine, which has remained the same for a long time. Get up, use the bathroom, shower, eat, ???, begin day. The warm water is a nice wake up. My breakfast consists of some buttered toast and cereal shaped like small O’s. Waking up complete, I was ready to waste the day away.

I walk over to my bed and kneel down, reaching under it and grabbing a laptop computer and its respective charger. Lifting open the lid-screen-thing, I tap the power button and watch as my source of entertainment comes to life. A Windows operating system symbol flashes on the screen, accompanied by the four-note chime. My background appears along with the icons. I double-tap the Chrome icon, and it opens a second later. Clicking the address bar, I begin browsing the World Wide Web.

Firstly, I go to a website relating to a novel filled with faces. Status updates are mainly focused on the date, either being last testaments or rants about the ridiculousness of the hype over the day. I take the side of the rants, chuckling a bit as I read a few “last testaments”. Leaving, I check some web comic websites, earning me a smile and a slight laugh, and then head off to a site filled with some funny content and some content that was pure junk. I laugh some more as I troll along through the front page, seeing what others have found entertaining.

And finally, I arrive at my destination on the Internet; a video sharing site used by millions. My goal here is to watch an episode of the Internet’s favorite (or least favorite) television show:

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

Ah, yes. I am what is known as a “brony”. A “closet brony”, to be more specific. Very few know of my love for the show, only a few fellow brony friends and the dwellers of the Internet. I was introduced to the show about a year ago by one of said brony friends, and a few episodes had me hooked. At first, I responded to the show as most probably have. 

Me, a 20 year old, grown-ass man, watching a show about ponies? Multicolored, little-girl-oriented, animated ponies? Yeah, right.

And here I am now, a fan of the show for about a year. I don’t know what it is about My Little Pony that makes me want to watch it. Maybe the amount of humor and references I can appreciate. Maybe the associable characters, whose personalities matched my own or people I knew. Maybe the fact I could relate it to the cartoons I had watched and loved over the years, like Looney Toons or Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. I could not tell you for the life of me.  

The show had entered its third season only a few months ago. The internet had gone absolutely nuts over it, as had I. It was, is filled with many more adult references, brony references, internet references, excellent humor, background ponies being focused on some more, and so much more. It was more than I had been expecting, and I was loving it. A new episode would air tomorrow, and I couldn’t wait, but I had missed the previous episode due to being with my family that weekend. The season was about on its 18th episode, which I searched for and quickly found a video of. 

As I let the video buffer, I glance over with a smile to my bedside table. A final object stands there, the only sign that I am a brony: a small, plastic toy, created in the image of Rainbow Dash. The friend who introduced me to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic had got it for me as a gift some time ago, I guess as some kind of “welcome to the herd” gift; either way, I had appreciated it and still do. She is my favorite of the “Mane Six”. I took a liking to her soon after first watching the show. My best guess as to why I favor her is because of her personality. She represents the element of loyalty among friends. She is brash and bold on appearances, but in reality, is actually a kindhearted pony who would do anything to help a friend in need. Yeah, sappy, I know, but hey, it’s why I like her on the show. Plus, she’s about 20% cooler than all of the other ponies.

I hit the “play” button on the video, and as I do, the black screen fades into one Twilight Sparkle, and her assistant, Spike, in a hot air balloon drifting downwards. The opening theme begins to play.

My little pony,
My little pony,
Ahhh, ahhh, ahhh, ahhh!

My smile fades a bit as I hear something. I pause the video, and listen for a second from my bed. Is that...shouting? I shrug it off, and continue the video.

My little pony,
I used to wonder what friendship could be...
Until you all shared its magic with me!

The volume of the shouting has increased. I pause the video, again. Damn it, what the hell? Right before Rainbow Dash’s part, too. I frown and stand up, leaving the warm laptop on the bed. The shouting continues. It seems to be coming from all around me, in both the other apartments and outside, but mainly outside. I walk over to the window and fumble with the strings, raising the blinds. I peer out the window.

The first thing I notice is pedestrians pointing and shouting, a few screaming. A few are running, a few are standing, mouths agape. I can see large breath clouds coming from those saying things I can not understand through the window. Snow is kicked up as people dash by, and once in a while someone slips.  I see a few cars fly by at rates of speed I knew were not street legal, judging by the audible roars of their engines and the blurs that followed them as my eyes tracked the cars. 

What in the hell...?

I fully raise the blinds. I look at one of the pointing pedestrians and follow their outstretched arm with my eyes, craning my neck to see where they are pointing. As I do, something catches my eye. It is golfball sized from my point of view, and is high in the sky. It glows a terrific red-orange color. As I track it with my eyes, I wonder what it is. A shooting star? Much too big, and it’s daytime, it would be nearly impossible to see. A meteor shower? Again, too big, and there’s just one. The ball of red-orange is now moon-sized, and growing steadily. My minds begins working a little faster, and with the increasing confusion, I feel some panic. 

An asteroid?

Or would it be a meteorite, since it would be able to make it through Earth’s atmosphere without sizzling up? Were asteroids that hit Earth still called asteroids? Damn it, you have bigger problems than what an Earth-colliding asteroid is called! That thing is getting big. Really big. And it isn’t burning up in the atmosphere. Just how big is it? Only enough to make a crater somewhere...or enough to make Earth a crater? I shove the thought out of my head. No, that’s not possible...is it? I am beginning to doubt my safety now.

The screams and shouts continue outside. Many, many cars are going very fast now. I wince as I hear the sound of hard braking and a fiber and aluminum body impacting another in the distance. The ball of...fire...is so close now. I saw something on the History channel once about how the moon probably looked millions of years ago, so close and enormous in the night sky, and this asteroid was just about matching that representation’s size right now.

I hear screaming, crying, yelling, cursing...panic. I have not heard panic often before. It is not a sound one wants to hear at any time. It brings feelings of sadness, anger, and panic itself. This isn't happening... My mind feels numb, dead to me, devoid of any thought save for an attempt at denial of the events currently happening.

Contrary to popular belief, my life does not flash before my eyes. I do think of my family, how I love them, how I know they feel the same, how I miss them and want to be with them. I also feel regret...for everything and anything I have ever done, I suppose. That I could have done more, done better. My thoughts are interrupted by a feeling of heat increasing, and the sight of the object heading towards Earth becoming like looking into the midday sun. The snow outside is replaced by small floods of precipitation. Screaming becomes the dominant noise I hear through the window, screams of pain and fear. People are clutching their bodies in agony.

I turn away from the window. My eyes scan the room, left and right, as if trying to find some hope of escape; they fail to do so. My mind registers no important thoughts, and I suppose it has given up, either in trying to survive or trying to comprehend what seems to be happening to it. I have “zoned out”, staring at one spot but not recognizing it. My view comes into focus as I see I am staring at a small, cyan blue object with rainbow-colored faux hair coming from it, sitting atop the bedside table in my room; the toy of Rainbow Dash.

I smile for a second, forgetting everything at the sight of Rainbow Dash, and my world falls into darkness.