Chapter 2
Chapter 2
It wasn’t until a few days later when Twilight Sparkle reemerged from her basement laboratory. Luckily for her, Spike had returned in the meantime and had made sure the unicorn ate, albeit irregularly. In her frantic laborious state of activity she had paid little attention to the needs of her body. The project had been more important.
Now she was standing on the clouds outside Rainbow’s home. She had taken the balloon up here and had cast the cloud-walking spell on herself. Twilight was still very unsure about confronting Rainbow, as she feared the pegasus might still be mad at her – which, Twilight thought, she had every right to be. But she had to make up with Rainbow. Even if it was scary.
She knocked.
Almost immediately, the door was open and Rainbow grinned at her. “Hey Twi! Haven’t seen you in forever! Whatcha doing up here?”
“I want to apologize for yesterday. Or the day before? You know, when we had this st – this argument about Daring Do. I’m really sorry for acting the way I did.” As she spoke, her head came hanging more and more, and her voice got lower and lower. She hardly dared look at the cyan pegasus.
“Oh, that”, Rainbow said dismissively. “It’s cool, Twi, forget about it. I went overboard there myself.” She gave Twilight a probing look. “But Twi, that was like four days ago, not yesterday. Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Four days? Wow, I wouldn’t have thought…”, she mumbled more to herself than to Rainbow. “No, but really, I’m sorry for what happened. I was a jerk.”
“Twilight!” Rainbow groaned with a half-smile. “I told you, it’s alright. Now stop worrying about it, kay?”
“So you’re not mad at me?” Twilight blinked at Rainbow.
“No, I’m really not mad at you”, the pegasus replied, still smirking. “But what did you do all this time anyway that you even forgot the days and all?”
“I was busy working on a project, and I may have lost track of the time. I could’ve sworn it hasn’t been more than two days though. Curious.” She furrowed her brow for a moment before she continued. “Anyway, Rainbow, I owe you more than just a simple apology. No, no, I insist”, she added as she saw Rainbow opening her mouth to object. “And that’s what I’ve been working on.”
“You’ve spent four days working on an apology?” Rainbow asked incredulously. “What is it?”
“I wanted to give you an opportunity to show me why you are so… invested in the whole Daring Do - Rosetta ordeal. So I took the machine I built to analyze Pinkie’s Pinkie Sense that one time and made some modifications, added a second brainwave outlet, a semantic unit, and some clairvoyance and logic sub-processors, and basically turned it into a logical lucidity generator”, she explained proudly.
“Yeah”, Rainbow replied, puzzled. “And what’s that in non-egghead speech?”
“It’s a machine that will allow us to enter a Daring Do story and see with our own eyes what happens between her and Rosetta.”
“Like a movie projector?” Rainbow asked.
“No, no, much more powerful. We’ll be literally inside the story, not just watching from the outside. We can move around and follow the characters along, see what they see, hear what they hear, smell – you get the idea.”
“Wow”, Rainbow said. “That’s pretty awesome, Twi!”
“All we need now is a story about Daring and Rosetta. You, erm, mentioned something about wanting to write one yourself? Maybe I can help you.” Twilight said, but Rainbow interrupted her with a lifted hoof.
She puffed her chest as she explained, “Way ahead of you.” Twilight stared at her uncomprehendingly. “See”, Rainbow continued, “after we had our argument, I was so pissed that they wouldn’t write it so that Daring and Rosetta ended up together that I just couldn’t get it out of my head. So I took two days off and sat down and just wrote and wrote. I finished last night.” With that, she stepped aside so that Twilight had a clear view through the door. On the table in the middle of the living room lay a stack of five notebooks, right next to some empty inkwells and some broken quills. “I didn’t get much sleep either”, she added with a half-embarrassed chuckle. “But it was totally worth it. That story is pretty awesome. Not that that’s a big surprise”, she added cockily.
Twilight stared at the notebooks. Whatever Rainbow Dash had written, it was definitely not a short story. And it was even better that the story was already completed – after all, she wanted to give Rainbow an opportunity to convince her of the chemistry between Rosetta and Daring Do. She smiled at the pegasus. “Wow. I’m impressed! In this case, we can start right away!”
“So you just need the story? Like, the notebooks? And that’s all?”
“And two ponies willing to go where nopony has gone before”, Twilight added with deliberate melodrama.
Rainbow burst out laughing and dropped on her back. “That was the eggheadest thing you’ve said in like forever!” she laughed. Twilight smiled at her friend as she wiped some tears out of her eyes. It was good that everything between the two of them was alright again.
And she was quite excited herself to test out her contraption. Without waiting for Rainbow Dash’s consent, she grabbed the notebooks in her magic and dropped them in the balloon basket. “Let’s go then!” she exclaimed and took Rainbow’s hoof, pulling her along.
***
“Whoa”, was all Rainbow Dash could say when she and Twilight finally stood before the contraption – or rather complex – Twilight had concocted in her basement laboratory.
The central pieces were two helmet-like devices that were connected to an arrangement of glass and metal objects on a big lab table. The helmets were covered in a plethora of little light bulbs and protruding cables.
Behind the table stood a pony-sized wooden box that was connected to some of the thingamabobs on the table with a broad cable of at least four dozen strands. The box itself was humming, and from time to time a small steam cloud evaporated from a ventilation opening on one side. An inextricable chaos of smaller cables, some straight, some curled like Pinkie Pie’s mane, connected the table with an upright board behind it that was covered in a mesh of tiny metal conductors. A huge pink crystal was place in the center of that board and irradiated a soft glow.
Next to the upright board there was another, smaller table – or maybe it had once been a bookstand – with what looked like a big metal egg mounted above it. An opening in the egg pointed directly towards the surface of the bookstand.
And in a corner lay –
“Tell me you didn’t sleep on that, Twi”, Rainbow said, bubbling with hardly contained laughter and pointing at the pile of rolled up cables covered with a dusty blanket behind the metal egg bookstand.
Twilight blushed and shook her head. “No, Rainbow, I didn’t sleep on that. It would be more accurate to say I passed out on it, to be honest.”
Rainbow burst into laughter, but quickly recomposed herself. “That really doesn’t sound healthy”, she jokingly admonished.
“You’re one to talk”, Twilight gave back with a smile. “Writing that whole story within a few days? It’s surprising you can still stand on your hooves.”
“Yeah, yeah”, Rainbow said smirking. “You know, when the Rainbow Dash does something, she does it right. No half-assery.”
“’The Rainbow Dash’? Really?” Twilight asked with a raised brow.
Rainbow puffed out her chest. “The one and only. So how does this thing work, huh?”
“Let’s see, there must be a documentation somewhere”, Twilight mused and began scanning the outskirts of the laboratory.
“Wait, I thought you built that thing. Don’t you know how it works?” Rainbow asked in surprise.
“Well, my memory of building it is, well, sketchy, so no, I don’t know how it works”, Twilight replied a little defensively. “At least not every little detail. But I checked off ‘Write documentation’ on the master checklist, so it must be somewhere.”
“Wait, so you don’t even remember you wrote that documentation?” Rainbow asked, even more perplexed.
“No”, Twilight replied cheerfully. “But it must be here; else I wouldn’t have checked it off. Aha!” She picked up a notebook with her magic and flicked through it. “Yeah, that’s it. Looks pretty comprehensive. Oh! It even has a quick-start guide!” She clapped her hooves in excitement.
“Let’s see. Step one. ‘Insert the source material into the source narrative reading device.’ That’s the bookstand over there. Just put the notebooks on it. Make sure they are in the correct order though.” She chuckled. “Wouldn’t want to skip a few chapters because of that.”
“Um, alright”, Rainbow said and carefully put her notebooks on the bookstand underneath the mysterious metal orb. She poked the orb with her hoof, eliciting a strangely harmonic sound from the contraption.
“Okay”, Twilight continued. “Source material check. Next step: ‘Assume a comfortable position’.” She glanced at the pile of cables and blankets in embarrassment and shook her head. “That won’t do. It says here in the documentation that the estimated duration of the experience will be roughly an hour for every day of narrated time. How long does your story take?” she asked Rainbow.
The pegasus scratched her head. “Erm, I kinda went into writing frenzy at some points, so I’m not entirely sure about everything. Four days”, she concluded with absolute certainty.
“That’s still four hours”, Twilight mused. “We need something comfortable for that or our legs will kill us.”
“Clouds would be good”, Rainbow chimed in, but after a short look around she shook her head. “Nah. Won’t work. Clouds won’t last here long enough. Air’s too dry.”
“I was going to say”, Twilight went on, “we can just grab some of the couch cushions and some blankets from upstairs. Come on!”
They returned upstairs to the library’s main room and pillaged the pillows and blankets from Twilight’s favorite reading couch. Back in the basement, they arranged them in a big pile, threw the blankets over them, and settled down.
“Comfortable position check. ‘Put on brainwave outlet’.” She levitated the two helmets towards their bedding.
Rainbow Dash looked at them skeptically. “Are you sure this is safe?” she asked with a slightly squeaky voice. “These things look…weird.”
Twilight looked at her understandingly. “You’re right, they do. Let me check.” She floated the master checklist towards her and started reading the several meters long document. “Aha. Yes, they’re safe”, she finally announced with unswerving confidence.
The cyan pegasus looked at her dumbfounded. “Wait, how can you know that?”
“It says so here on the list. ‘Double-check safety standards’ is double-checked”, Twilight beamed. When she noticed Rainbow’s still completely puzzled look, she added, “I wouldn’t have double-checked it here if I hadn’t in fact double-checked the safety standards. These two checkmarks here mean it is completely safe.” To show the still somewhat unconvinced pegasus that everything was in fact fine, she hovered one of the helmets onto her head. “See? Perfectly safe.”
“Ok Twi, I trust your checkmarks”, Rainbow said after a few more seconds of staring. Twilight gently put the other helmet on her head and gave her another encouraging smile. In response, Rainbow puffed her chest and added, “Not that I’m scared. It’s just, you know, a little weird.”
Twilight chuckled softly. “It’s alright, Rainbow.” She let the notebook float towards her again and continued reading. “Brainwave outlet check. Next step: ‘Press start button’. Ready?” Without waiting for Rainbow’s answer, she punched her hoof onto a big green button on the edge of the central table.
Then everything went black.
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oooh
LE GASP!
Like it so far
I so wish that's what happened during that time span.
I like were this is going
I'm not so sure if that was a smart idea of you, Twi, to enter Dash's story without reading it first. Then again, the surprises will make up for it.^^
Noooooo, this isn't completely insane at all... Inventing a new branch of engineering just to apologize for an argument? Totally normal!
I expect it to be a world of bad grammar and spelling errors
>Then everything went black.
YOU KILLED RAINBOW DASH
Twilight is like, super adorable in this chapter. I love how she has virtually no memory of building the thing and just trusts her master checklist unerringly.
Twi and Dash entering Dash's story..If Twi is Rosetta and Dash is Daring...I like where this is going!
3257978 Perfect to use against the Big Brain.
Im hoping Dash is a good writer.
Their legs will be killing them after 4 hours? They've obviously never worked retail before.
Doctor Whooves voice: I spent four days building a machine to let us enter your book...,.Turns out there's a magic spell for it.
Great story, btw.
Heh. Speaking of my previous comment...
Something tells me the author is a computer programmer
9849027
So true. Never knowing the whole picture of the program, only programming separate operating segments with documented requirements listed. A weird yet efficient way to work Lol.