Synch

by sunnypack

63 - Towards the Terrible Tome of Traitorous Temerity

The ponies around me looked on curiously as I gingerly placed the Synch on my head. With a few command taps and a forceful restart, the Synch kicked into operation and immediately set itself for recalibration. Surprised, I simply went with it, recalibrating my senses to its supposed owner. I must have looked silly, waving my arms and legs around and blinking and staring off into space. They might have been worried if it hadn’t been for my obvious familiarity with the Synch circlet.

After a few minutes I thought navigated to the home screen, at this point I was shedding tears of joy. A piece of home somehow had found its way to me and I was never letting it go.

The first thing I noticed was the hard drive space. There was barely any left. This was insane! There was enough storage space equivalent to several exabytes (700,000,000 terabytes), practically unlimited storage space. I rooted around the directory until I found a thought-locked folder named simply ‘Angel’. How had Angel gotten to my Synch device? Was it left behind when I travelled? If so, how is it now here? What happened to Angel?

I had so many unanswered questions but I roughly shoved them to the side.

The next thing that completely counfounded me was the date shown in the upper right hand corner.

12:02:24 PM CNT 5/7/36

Nearly one year before I even touched Synch.

I hastily thought into the calendar knot.

12:02:53 PM CNT 05/07/9436

Huh? Must be a malfunction, there’s no way that could be right. I ran diagnostics on the system.

“Uhm, excuse me?” I heard Twilight say, off to the side.

I snapped myself out of Synch’s interface.

“Oh, uhh phew!” I mumbled giddily, I was still happy I had a Synch!

Celestia and Luna regarded me thoughtfully.

Twilight continued, eyeing me cautiously.

“So you believe this artefact is a ‘Synch’ device from your world?” she asked, incredulously.

I nodded enthusiastically.

“Not only that, it’s my personal Synch, the very same one I was using before getting here!” I responded, and then frowned. How did I know that? What was I doing before I got here?

Celestia addressed me gently.

“Would you mind telling us what the purpose of your device is?” she regarded me warily, as if I now held some sort of weapon. Oh, I guess I wasn’t very clear on the extent of what Synch could do.

“Oh mainly entertainment for some, it can be a visual aid, help refine your motor skills, overcome anxieties, record videos, play back music, contains a fair chunk of human information, etc. etc. There’s so much it’s hard to describe”, I explained, pulling off my circlet. The diagnostics had come back clean but were not reporting a stable connection with the extranet, which was expected. I couldn’t synchronise my Synch’s internal clock without an external source.

As soon as I had said ‘human information’, Twilight’s eyes had lit up. I chuckled as I beckoned her over. Nervously she approached me and put her trust within my hands.

I didn’t know if this would work well with equine anatomy, I wasn’t even sure our brain chemistry would work similarly. Oh well the worst that could happen would be a light seizure so I made sure Twilight was aware of this.

“Be careful”, I warned, placing the Synch on her head. “This device wasn’t built for equines in mind, so you may only receive random sensory flashes, sights, sounds or the like.”

Twilight nodded as I fixed the Synch into place and tapped it out of standby mode.

She gasped. I guessed she was seeing the impressive Grooble start-up splash screen. I grinned toothily.

“This is what I call the pinnacle of human technology”, I commented, waving a hand in front of her face. Her eyes remained unfocused.

“Twilight, you have to learn to double focus”, I told her as I waved my hand again in front of her. She snapped out of viewing the main screen.

“Good. Now you’ll see several options on the main screen, I’m not sure you can read them because even though the Synch indexes thousands of languages, I don’t think yours has been one of them… although now that I think about it I can run the language cryptography software and just get real-time translation to my Synch device. Part of the reason why my magic research was so slow was because I needed Twilight to do all the reading for me. I tried learning the native language but the going was too slow.

I lifted the circlet off of Twilight’s head.

“That. Was. AMAZING!” Twilight shouted excitedly, dancing on the spot. I found it amusing how she looked like she was trotting on the spot but didn’t move anywhere, kind of like running on the spot. It was adorable.

“So your whole civilisation had technology like this?” she gasped, turning with wide eyes towards me.

“I- uh yes, mostly. The last thing I remember were all three hundred million units of these being called back”, I said, tapping my chin thoughtfully.

“Three hundred million?!” Celestia and Luna shouted together.

I gazed quizzically at them.

“Yes well, ahem. Not all of us could afford a Synch device, so only the select few could get one, especially only six months after the release”, I explained, shrugging.

Celestia and Luna continued to gape at me disconcertingly.

“How many people live on your world?” Twilight asked nervously.

Their reactions were starting to make sense. It dawned on me that the population in Equestria was significantly smaller.

“Ahaha, you might not like the answer…” I muttered, turning my head away.

Celestia and Luna gazed at me with a hard expression, Twilight’s turned hungry.

Okay, withholding information from royalty and a scholarly unicorn that happened to know spells on how to cut through solid metal bars, not a good idea.

Wait, I’m a null being. What do I have to fear?

I glanced at the guards.

Okay maybe they have some muscle. I’ll give them that.

“I’d say… close to about eight, maybe nine billion people?”

“Eight…” Celestia mumbled.

“Nine…” Luna continued.

“Billion…” Twilight extenuated.

“People!” Pinkie finished, throwing up confetti. The other ponies just looked at her.

“What? Think of all the parties we could have!” Pinkie responded, bouncing up and down in excitement.

There would certainly be parties. Even statistically speaking there should be several going on right now at this very moment, I bet Pinkie would enjoy that.

“So…” I continued, trying to get out of the awkward situation I dug myself into.

“Putting aside the differences in scale and the ground breaking news that my Synch somehow found me… who wants a bite to eat?”

Author's Note:

Nom nom nom.

I like eating, who doesn't?

NB: I'm better, no more of that ugly sickness... much. I'm still a bit out of it but hey I'll be better in a while.

Next Chapter: Twilight tries her hand at building a house, with all the experience she has with book forts, there's no way this could go possibly wrong! We find out that Derpy actually likes cupcakes more than muffins. GASP! Heresy! Pinkie grows up to be a banker and she also sells insurance.

As always, my inductive readers, thanks for reading!

Comments

[Chicago Ted]

Ha ha! The alliteration has been doubled!

Glad to see you're recuperating.

[sunnypack]

4896881 Alliteration is so much fun!
4895843 Hmm, I wonder... the plot thickens!

[Dinoguy1000]

several exabytes (700 terabytes)

What are you trying to say here? One exabyte is equivalent to 1000 petabytes, each of which is 1000 terabytes (so one exabyte is a million terabytes).

[sunnypack]

5435770 Oops that's embarrassing. Fixed.