Prologue
May 19, 2014
I need to keep a log of everything, otherwise I’ll think I’m losing my mind over this. Okay, so since my school work started to slacken, what with summer coming up and all, I realized I was getting too frustrated over things that didn’t matter. Before some things happened, I wasn’t known for getting angry. Now, I’ve nearly alienated my friends with my rage, and I’ve finally made the resolve to make things right. In an attempt to return to how I was, I decided that I needed to start watching more of a show that I’ve kept putting off for a while now.
I’m talking about My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I had started watching it back when it was still relatively new, before a third season was announced. I ended up shying away from it for a long while…I don’t want to go into that right now. Let’s just say, I put it behind me and I was able to continue the series at long last.
It was good at first. I was able to watch episodes and enjoy them, as I used to. The more I watched, the more excited I got for the next episode down the line. I began to feel like I was finally able to move on.
However, as my anger began to go away, I started to notice something. At first, I thought I was just seeing things—a lot had changed since my last time watching the show, and one facet of my life that had was my eyesight: I needed glasses and finally got them not too long ago. Even after I put them on, though, I began to see it. In some episodes of the series, hidden in the background, there was some kind of message.
They’d be written on clouds, scratched into tree bark, whatever, but they were there. But the fact there was hidden messages wasn’t the weirdest part—certainly not the fact that it was patchy either—only some episodes had them. It was the format the messages were written in…
I don’t care if you believe me or not…but…they were written in…of all things, Java…
I’m sorry, I guess I should start over. My name is Corey, and your name is Journal. I hope we get along. Can’t stand inanimate paper calling me insane, after all.
Anyway, I began seeing these things a couple of days ago when I really started being able to watch episodes again. I’m not sure why there’s code here, of all places, and why I’m the only one that can see it out of the four of us…
------------------
There was nothing like a good Skype call between friends. Corey knew this, but he was currently on mute, watching yet another episode of ponies. This time around, Rainbow Dash was having trouble coping with her loving of reading books. It was pretty good, as most episodes tended to be. He could only think of two episodes he’d watched so far that he flat-out despised, but he preferred not to dwell on those lest that anger come back.
He didn’t watch the cartoon in full screen. In one window, he had Skype open, but the program was on mute. The icons representing his friends flashed as noise came in from their ends. He couldn’t tell what they were saying, getting two ears full of pony instead. To most, he’d fit the classical image of a brony almost perfectly: overweight, messy-haired, hunched over at a computer desk. He even wore a pair of glasses.
“There it is again…” Corey mumbled aloud to himself, pausing the cartoon and pulling out a notebook, opening it to where he’d folded a corner of the pages. There was several lines of code there. Of course, no one but him could read it—his writing had never been good by most people’s standards. He hastily scrawled the lines he saw.
public void move(double x, double y, double z, Being b) {
}
The second curly bracket was more out of habit than anything else, and Corey knew he’d regret it later when he went back to assemble the haphazard lines of code. By now, he knew what programming language they were in. Java, of course. Of course, this still didn’t add up; why was it there was Java in the background exactly? Did Hasbro really let this through? Was it an Easter Egg for code monkeys like him?
His line of internal questions was stopped, however, when he saw the Skype icon on the taskbar flash orange, with an orange “1” in the lower right corner of the Skype logo. He quickly returned his attention to Skype for a moment, and saw this:
Ivan: Corey, you still pursuing your conspiracy theory?
Frustration boiled in Corey’s gut as he tried not to let it get to him. It just wasn’t worth it. But, seeing as how he’d paused the episode mid-shot with the code still clearly visible on…of all places, the wall of the hospital directly behind Rainbow, he decided to do what any sensible person would do.
He full-screened the episode for a few seconds, took a screenshot, and sent it to the chat, accompanied by the message:
Corey: Take a look at the screenshot, tell me if it’s really a theory…
Corey went back to watching the episode as his friends watched. Without bothering to pause, he quickly added:
Corey: Look behind Rainbow, you should see it there…
Leo: I’m so sure…
All three of his friends were downloading the screenshot. Corey continued to watch the episodes, taking down the code as he went. Towards the end, as he finished jotting down something for another method—or maybe it was that move method from earlier—Corey received a few other messages from Skype.
Ivan: I don’t see a thing in this pic, I mean, unless you want me to look at Rainbow’s ass…
Leo: Hey, that is my thing! But yeah, Cor, I’m not seeing it.
John: You’re just being paranoid…
John: Not that it’s a bad thing, better than your anger, at least…
Corey sighed. It really looked like the only way he could prove this was real was to take down all the lines of code he spotted in the episodes, and assemble them into their final form to prove them wrong. For now, though…
Corey: I know what I saw…
With that, Corey finished the episode, though not without yet another interruption.
John: Do you?
Corey let out yet another sigh, and didn’t bother responding to John anymore. He was just going to sit here and take the notes, and hope he got all the clues…
--------------------
May 27, 2014
I’ve mostly caught up with the show now, Season 4 nonwithstanding, and I think I’ve pieced together most of the code. For some reason, it only shows up a little bit after…those…episodes. They start at Season 2, Episode 4, in the background, and they seem to be awfully abundant in scenes where we’re sure we’re in Ponyville. Episodes that focus elsewhere don’t have them.
They seem to be put where someone should see them in full. Good thing I wear my glasses when watching things online, otherwise I might not have seen the code clearly without full-screening it. I still don’t know how people aren’t seeing it…I seem to be the only one who can…
Regardless, I’ve got to finish Season 3 now. I’ve cobbled together a lot of code…
But what is this all leading up to?
----------------------
It was a pretty quiet afternoon, so Corey had no real Skype obligations to tend to. Which meant only one thing: it was time for ponies. He’d pretty much blazed through most of it by now, only stopping whenever he caught another line hidden in the background. He seemed to have found the last remnants of the message…oddly, in the smoking crater that Twilight had left after being zapped with the other Elements.
“And then the brony community proceeded to have a cow…” Corey mumbled, taking in the sight of a Twilight with wings for the first time outside of screenshots and fanart. He inhaled, ready to continue, but stopped himself, “No, you’ve already gone too long about it, move on...”
He glanced to his notebook again. An impossibly large amount of lines of code had been compiled now. They detailed several methods, and some of the code was some things that Corey was sure consisted of subclasses to the program. Was he dealing with an entire ensemble of classes and objects?
I’ve compiled together so much code from the background…All that’s left is to assemble it. But, I think I’d better keep going, and see if any code is left…
“Yes! Everything’s going to be just fine!” The closing line in the episode snapped Corey out of his haze. Well, since there was credits coming up, Corey decided to keep going into Season Four. He hesitated, the mouse hovering over the episode.
C’mon Corey, you said you would…Besides, you need to see if there’s anything else you’ve missed anyway…
With that, the boy clicked on the first episode of the fourth season, and began…
-----------------------
May 28, 2014
It’s just passed midnight now. Finally finished gathering the code, or I should say Magical Mystery Cure had the last lines of code in it…
For some reason, after the last episode of the third season, the code seemed to simply stop appearing. I’ll go back and re-watch the episodes I’d already watched before I started watching again, to see if anything else is there. But still, why did it stop specifically after Season 3? Was that the end of the code? Did something happen to the message?
Whatever the case, I have to get ready to assemble the code now…
I stopped telling Ivan, Leo, and John about what I was seeing. No need to alienate them with so-called “paranoia” after I just got done alienating them with my anger. But, if they ask what I’m up to, I will answer truthfully.
I just hope it doesn’t come to that, not yet…
-----------------------
June 14, 2014
After a little over two weeks of hard work, I’m finally almost done. It took a lot of effort to figure out which lines of code go where, since the message was totally scrambled. As I thought, the lines of code translated to a few objects. The Being class in the move method, for some reason, had a lot of fields…but a blank constructor that seemed to resolve nothing. It used a void method called getInfo…but that didn’t make sense either. It didn’t seem to ask for anything, not even using System calls to look into cookies or registry files…in fact, the code just says voidEnter(), and doesn’t seem to intake anything else…It doesn’t make sense, but the code seems to run completely fine when I compile that class…
There were a few others, but the code was still incomplete. I had to fill in blanks where I needed to. I’m a bit afraid to run the core class, though. I don’t know what it’d do if I had the code even a hair off…So far, though, I’m getting a clean compile, which is better than nothing.
I’ve just got to make some finishing touches tomorrow, and that’ll be that…
I’ll report to you later on the success of my findings, journal.
-----------------------
It had been a couple of days since he’d written that journal entry. Now, Corey was staring at the open code, hovering the mouse cursor over the “Run” button. It would be incredibly easy to do so, but ever since completing the code and compiling it, Corey had felt hesitant to run the code. He’d compiled the program cleanly, there didn’t appear to be any glaring logic errors, and he didn’t see anything that looked overtly suspicious in the code, so why was it he was so afraid?
The all-too-familiar sound of an incoming Skype message came in. It was in the chat he shared with his three closest friends. However, only one of them was on.
John: I know it’s a bit early, but...
Call?
Call? Corey thought to himself for a moment. John never really asked for calls unless it was more than just him, so why was he asking now? Whatever the case, Corey decided that he could use some other voice besides his own, so he decided to, without even bothering to answer his question, hit the “Call Group” button on Skype.
It took a few moments for John to answer, but when he did, his voice had some feedback in the background to it, as usual.
“’Sup, Cor?” he asked. Corey bristled, but shrugged it off easily enough.
“Nothing much, really,” Corey said. “Just…putting some stuff together.”
“You hear that Battle of Gods is coming to theatres?”
“Yeah, but it’s probably not releasing anywhere around here,” Corey sighed, “Dragon Ball films that all people will like will never make it to theatres…”
“Please, Evolution wasn’t that bad…”
“Taken as itself, maybe, but taken as a derivative of the source material, not so much…” The boy knew this wasn’t quite normal, and thus said what was on his mind: “You know, John, I’m surprised, you usually don’t ask for a call unless someone else is on too. What’s on your mind? Takes more than a new movie release for you to have to request a call out of the blue when it’s just the two of us.”
“I was wondering, what exactly have you done with those so-called ‘hidden messages’?” John asked, his voice coming through from the other end loud and clear. Corey paused, unsure if John was asking him sincerely. Thankfully, John clarified with his next message, “Like, what kind of hidden message was it?”
“It was…written in Java…” Corey said.
“Java?” John asked.
“You know, like the co—“
“I guessed as much!” John cut in before Corey could finish, “…So the code was written in Java, you said?”
“That’s right…It was weird. Throughout all the scenes, especially the ones in Ponyville, I’d been seeing lines of code…and when I assembled them, they were an entire program! Objects, a central method…it had it all!”
“I’d…imagine…” John said.
“Well, I wouldn’t say all…I did have to fill in some code for myself…” Corey trailed off, “But…”
“But what?” John asked.
“I haven’t run the code,” Corey said, “I’ve clean compiled it a lot of times, but I’ve never run the final build…”
“Why not? Doesn’t it look like it’s gonna print out a message for you?”
“John…” Corey groaned, “The methods are…weird.”
“Well then, what does the code do?” John asked, “Of the four of us—hell, of all of us, you’re the one that has the best grip on it…”
“That’s true…” Corey sighed, “Well, I wish I could say for sure, but…from what I’m seeing, it shouldn’t do anything once it’s run.”
“Why is that?”
“Well…most of the methods call other methods, but they don’t exist anywhere else. Yet, the code compiles as though nothing is wrong. There are a lot of these methods here and there, and some of them reference the z-axis. Probably isn’t as uncommon as you think, but I’ve only handled programs in two dimensions…”
“So it has a third dimension…” John said, “That’s pretty much all I know, this coding stuff just kinda goes over my head.”
Corey looked to the code again. There were so many methods that resolved to seemingly nothing, not even a System call, like he knew. It seemed like there were so many hanging threads...
On top of that, this could very well be a virus, introduced by spiteful people who only host the cartoon to lure unsuspecting people into a trap…But then again, it’d take a hell of a lot of effort to make a virus this elaborate. This program doesn’t hack into the registry or the cookies, it seems like my personal stuff is safe…But why does it reference a “Being” class? Why is it that the program references three axes, and…a “Being” in a move method… It all sounds like a game…Maybe that’s what it is. Perhaps people hid source code for a game somewhere…
“Corey, you still there?” John asked, breaking Corey’s introspection.
“No, no, I’m here…” Corey responded, shaking his head. There was a few moments of silence, broken when he spoke up again, “You know what? Screw it.”
“Huh?”
“I’m going to run it right now, and see what happens!” Moving his cursor, clicking out of the Skype window before he changed his mind, Corey hovered the pointer over the “Run” button of the program he used and clicked.
The computer briefly loaded up the program, as though it were run. A window depicting a command prompt popped up for just a second, then…nothing. His computer still ran as normal. It was the biggest anti-climax Corey had ever had in his life.
“Nothing…” Corey said, slumping forward.
“Maybe it was just a hoax, then?” John asked.
“Yeah…hold that thought, I’m gonna run an anti-virus scan on—“
The Skype download sound suddenly went off.
“Did you just send me—“ John began.
“No, I didn’t send a thing!” Corey responded, looking down, wondering what the hell just happened.
“Dude, look at the file!” John yelled, alarmed.
Corey swallowed hard, and hesitantly clicked on the Skype icon on his taskbar. His eyes widened at the name of the file both were downloading—which was weird, since neither Leo nor Ivan were on to send them anything—but the file name was far more disturbing.
help_us.exe
“Help…?” Corey croaked, at an utter loss for words. A small thought erupted at the back of his head, one he would later recall as quite silly given the seriousness of the situation:
If my life just turned into a creepypasta…!
The Skype download sound finished playing, and Corey heard a deafening crack sound. He looked up, and was even more horrified to find a Windows command prompt window staring him down. Worse, the screen seemed to have been cracked. There was text being rapidly typed, but Corey blanked it all out, too numb from shock to know what he should be reading. As soon as it finished, the prompt window shattered, and Corey inexplicably found himself being sucked in. As soon as he realized what was happening, Corey grunted, turning to the nearest surface: his bed, and held on for dear life.
Pity his sheets could never seem to stay on when he wanted them to.
Here, Corey realized there was another use for the word “void” in Java, one he never suspected could be a use. But that was but a small thought in the back of his mind right now.
His sheets peeled back too far, and Corey let out a yell of terror as he fell into the void. A vortex of trippy colors and loud static assaulted his eyes and ears. He felt a surge of pain go through his body; especially his head. The next thing he knew, a blinding white light enveloped everything…
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The best fucken story ever good job
I love me some java.
This... this is the best intro, EVAR!
Nice bucking way to start a story!! This is my type.
This concept also looks really fun to rroleplay.
I enjoyed this intro very much--and that's coming from someone who normally doesn't enjoy Bronies in Equestria stories.
4995433
I like this fanfic it pleases me
NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE
Um... If that popped up on my screen... I probably would have punched it...
... So Java is a very versitile multi-platform highly portable programming language, and also a slang term for 'coffee'.
... ... Please please please tell me somepony makes that joke at some point. About how a mysterious overabundance of coffee resulted in a trip to Equestria? XD
*Runs it*
Well, that was anticlimactic.
*keyboard immediately enters moniter*
....
..... 
Sweet Intro! *clicks Next Button*
nice intro.
7528607
*mouse proceeds to fly into the computer case at Mach 1*