April 15 - 161 days trapped in SAO - Equestria
Princess Twilight Sparkle was still trying to get the cables sorted out. On the Equestrian side, it had to be able to connect up to the device on the other side and show that it was connected. If they couldn't get a connection to cross through the mirror, nothing mattered.
She had lost track of time, and had tried several different things. The simplest of all of her contraptions made the lightbulb turn on. The second one was similar to what she had used to test pinkie sense. The final contraption was a set of switches. If it worked, they could flip them with the program on the other side. At least, that was the theory.
The door opened and her friends entered. Pinkie Pie was bouncing and Flash Sentry was hovering with Rainbow Dash. Bulk Biceps and Sandalwood seemed to be content in their pony and Zebra forms as well. Rarity was missing, but Spike had joined them.
"How is it going?" Flash Sentry asked. "It’s rather late."
"Well, if everything works right, I have three options to try," Twilight replied.
Starlight Glimmer and Micro Chips popped into the room via teleportation. "Well he has that down," Starlight Glimmer said. "His lessons are going significantly faster than Trixie, plus I don't have a room full of teacups. Mirco Chips is smart and intuitive. Last I checked, Sunburst and Starswirl were done arguing and writing. They are getting close to a spell, but that was...a while ago."
"Good," Twilight nodded. "I have some things to try, so it is back home for them."
"Awe," Dash whined. "Can I at least go with them?"
"No!" Twilight exclaimed. "Right now, if they get caught, well you are supposed to be in the hospital, not out and about. We don't need that complication."
"Fine," Dash grumbled.
"It's not that great over there," Pinkie Pie absentmindedly said.
"Wait, you have been?" Flash Sentry asked.
"Lots of times," Pinkie Pie replied with a shrug. "I would switch out with myself."
"How do we know which Pinkie Pie you are?" Flash Sentry asked.
"Oh, I am Pony Pinkie Pie. You can ask Maud. She could instantly tell human Pinkie Pie from Pony Pinkie Pie with just a glance. Nothing gets past Maud. Plus, I would know if I was human Pinkie Pie and Human Pinkie Pie was adamant about playing SAO first. I guess it is a good thing I wasn't over there. Then she couldn't switch back to her real life. Short swaps are fun, but living like the other person is a totally different thing."
Sunburst entered the room. "I hope I am not interrupting anything."
"Nothing important," Twilight said. "Is there something you needed?"
"Starlight," Sunburst said. "We need her for the creation. You too if you can manage. We could always use your abilities to pull this spell off."
"I can manage," Twilight said. "If it isn't a disruption, can the others watch? Some of them are new to this whole magic and pony thing."
"That shouldn’t be a problem," Sunburst shrugged. “I don’t mind and I don’t think Starswirl will either.”
They all headed down the hall to the room Sunburst and Starswirl had been working in. It was a mess, with books and scrolls scattered about and multiple chalk boards full of calculations around the room.
Starswirl wordlessly levitated a scroll to Twilight. She captured it in her own magical field and rolled it open. It was a complex spell, but it didn't take long for her to memorize.
Twilight shifted her focus to the table. On it was a metal briefcase like box. It was big enough that the NerveGear would fit inside.
The four magicians nodded to each other and then cast their part of the spell. The magic shot from their horns and to the box, making glow in a swirl of color. They kept it up as the others silently watched.
It took time, but the spell ended as abruptly as it started. The only difference was that the box had a yellow warning triangle on the face with the mirror inside it. It was a sign that the spell had successfully taken and its purpose.
Twilight levitated the box. And the others all followed her back to the mirror room.
"This box should be shielded from transfiguration the portal causes," Twilight explained. "First off, we need to ensure that it works, with a simpler piece of technology, like a phone. Then we can try the NerveGear. Getting one was hard enough since they recalled them and officially destroyed all of them not in use. I don't want to accidentally destroy it without a trial run.”
"Then I guess my time is up," Micro Chips said. "It was good meeting all of you. Thanks for the magic lessons. I won't forget it. You have broadened my mind in a good way."
He was the first to go through the portal. The other three reluctantly followed.
"I can't believe he turned into a Zebra," Starswirl stated once they were gone. "That was unexpected. I wonder what it would take to get a griffon or a hippogriff, or even a dragon."
"Let's not find out," Twilight said. She walked to the portal. "I'll be back shortly.”
The world turned as she went through the portal. She came out the other side and found it darker, but in the same shape as when she had left it. The moon was full and overhead, giving them plenty of good light to work by. Micro Chips was working on the device, checking things.
"I'll take my phone over, which converts to a notepad," Twilight said as she began to fish through her backpack. "If the spell works, then we can also check connectivity. If not, no harm done. Micro Chips, I'll connect the lightbulb one. If it works, it should either light up right away, or light up when you switch it on."
"If I don't see it on my screen, I'll try to manually switch it on in 2 minutes," Micro Chips said.
"Good," Twilight nodded as she put her phone in the briefcase. She locked it up and jumped back through the portal.
On the other side she immediately connected up the lightbulb device. It didn't turn on. She ignored it and opened the box. The others were anxiously waiting to see if it had worked.
Inside was her phone. She levitated it out of the box and nothing changed. It was easy to manipulate the controls with magic and check all her contacts and stored information. It was all there. The phone had no signal.
Twilight looked at the lightbulb, but it hadn't lit up. They had passed the two minute mark, indicating it was not something that would work with his device on the human side.
"I'll be right back," Twilight said. She left her phone but took the case and jumped through the portal.
"Well?" Micro Chips immediately asked.
"Nothing," Twilight said. "The bulb didn't light up. I have a device to measure the reactions of a test subject which get recorded as lines on a scrolling piece of paper. We can try that next.
"However the case worked. My phone didn't change and everything remained the same on the other side. All of the data was intact, but I was lacking a signal."
"Try this first," Micro Chips said as he dug through his bag. "I have a spare cable and a signal booster card. Flash can go back with you, and then bring the cable back with him."
"Alright," Twilight nodded.
They packed it in the case and went back to Equestria. The cable and device were unchanged. Flash took the cable back as Twilight plugged everything in. After a moment, a wireless signal popped up on her phone.
Twilight jumped over to the others, with the case, to explain the news.
"Good," Micro Chips said. "However important this is, we need to wait for the morning. It is almost midnight, and we should get some sleep to ensure we are thinking straight. It also will give me time to factor in magic to the equation. We will pack up for the night and meet back here at 8 am."
"That sounds logical," Twilight said. It will also give me the chance to see what other end of the cable will do when it goes to Equestria."
Micro Chips disconnected her cable and packed everything up. Twilight bid the. Goodnight and headed home. The cable stayed the same. Being disconnected, she didn't have any internet access to her phone.
Twilight explained the strategy and sent her friends home so they would be well rested for the morning.
good to see this side story update and that they are one step closer to help thier friends.
yay for updates!
But they already have electricity and early modernization in manehatten
10615815
Really? Because that could be produced by magic, not real electricity.
10615820
Well they have washing machines, working elevators, lightbulbs, ovens, toasters. They have alot of tech
Micro Chips a zebra? Didn’t see that one coming.
10615820
That’s true, and while I think the tech in Equestria is run on magic, bolts of lightning clearly do exist in the show, the most basic form of electricity. So there is no physical reason why human technology cannot cross between the two worlds, as it is nothing more than complex electrical logic gates. A problem I wanted to raise with you, but did not bug me enough to actually bother to voice it in the last chapter.
Mindrop: Posts a new chapter for Aincrad Asides
Readers: Finally, a new update
Also Readers:
pics.me.me/thumb_skeleton-computer-meme-template-51037033.png
All jokes aside though, this is a great update, hope for more posts in the foreseeable future.
Take care, and happy late new year,
SonicDJM
10615867
It's Sandalwood as a Zebra. Micro Chips is a Unicorn. I found the other races boring for Sandalwood. Lol
10616106
It doesn't mean that the gates are the same. Cables are not a finite design. There can be a lot of them, alone with hardware connections and operating systems, so even it does exist as exactly the same, that doesn't mean it is compatible.
The progress, wonder what exactly Twi is trying to accomplish by bringing working NerveGear into her world.
10616172
I am honestly a bit confused on what your trying to say, yes there are different types of logic gates, but all of them follow the same principle. Two inputs go in and, depending on the type, one of two outputs come out, 0 for off or 1 for on. That is what binary code represents, thousands of these results coming together to form more complex solutions. The logic gates are built using electrical engineering and almost are always built the same way, as they are standardized.
You listed an interesting point with cables, yes there are many different types of cables, but many of these cables are standardized. For instance, all cat (Ethernet) cabling follows the IEEE 802.3 standard, which specifies how computers communicate over the Ethernet cable. So while there are slight differences to each generation of cat cables, the basic premise stays the same.
About your argument of incompatibilities, Operating systems are just electrical instructions that tells the circuits how to act, cables like cat have built-in backward compatibility all the way to the first gen (reason why you can plug in an old cable into a modern computer). And while hardware is the most infamous for incompatibilities, there is either a driver all ready to go in Windows, Mac or Linux, or has a driver you need to manually install.
The only way that incompatibilities could happen is if Equestria’s nature of electricity was slightly different than humans. While magic seems to alter it significantly, the everfree forest shows that lightning works exactly the same without magic. So as long as a Unicorn is not thinking to hard near a computer, it should be fine as electricity would react the same way as it does in the human world.
Could you explain what you mean in more detail?
Thanks,
SonicDJM
IEEE 802.3 source: IEEE 802.3
10616911
As incompatable as our OS systems are, they are designed off one a few sets of logic, designed by a handful of people, and they have at least an understanding that users will use multiple systems. The way Equestria builds the logic of an operating system doesn't have to be the same as we have it. That is what I am banking on. That and, sure, electricity follows certain laws, but how they are connected doesn't mean they will match. We have very standardized cables, due to again, the relatively small number of people developing the technology. It has all been a very tight oligarchy and a very rich one. But those do not exist in Equestria. The standardized cables and connections, pin types, etc, don't have to exist there. For instance, we only have two types of processor chips. That has been set and barring some drastic reason to change, it will either be Intel or AMD set up. Equestria has neither company. The chance that they use the same processors as we do, is slim to none.
Binary code is just a human invention. 1s and 0s, but that doesn't make any more sense than As and Bs. Or 1s and 2s. Why use Arabic numerals at all even? In coding, you could create you own symbols. It is its own language.
Awww~😥 There goes my theory that the Pinkie Pie that's trapped in aincrad is actually the pony one, that could have been a really interesting plot twist to show up later
10617406
Ah, I see where the source of confusion is. I believe we have the same idea, but we are interpreting how the mirror changes objects differently. I believe that the mirror takes a hands off approach by only changing objects that can’t exist in the other world. Like a technicolor unicorn pony can not exist in the human world because of no magic and is simply not how their physics works. Likewise a book would have no problems with the mirror as both sides can clearly make books, so it remains unchanged.
I believe that you think that the mirror changes everything into an Equestrian counterpart, so a computer could not go through as it has not been invented yet or would be significantly different. That is a very interesting concept and, while an original idea for this story, I can’t help but disagree with you on a practical level. As long as someone brought a computer through the mirror and it is possible to make, the mirror would probably not care because it is possible that something identical could be created in Equestria as the physics are the exact same without magic.
Very interesting idea though,
SonicDJM
10618341
Ah, yes. Well, Equestria is rather interesting in some of its "electrical" developments. I seem to recall a lot of candles for lighting in Ponyville. I still think it is magic based electricity, hence it's limitations to mostly the big cities. Sure, we see some nice thunderstorm zaps, but they too could be magic based.
Twilight has no idea when she crossed over what a computer is. Even if the hardware and software were different, she would still understand the concept. She doesn't.
So yes, I'm using the mirror to change the objects into their other world counterpart. If twilight took a notebook through, it would stay a notebook. When she takes her saddlebags through, they change into a single backpack, even though saddlebags exist in the other world. If she took a laptop starting in the human world, it would be transformed into a notebook or book or encyclopedia, and then when sent back over it transformed back into the phone because it is known/marked by the mirror.
10618089
That would depend on where you are in the main story. It is confirmed in a chapter that is released and has been for a while.
...Why?!!!
Those should've been handed over to bomb disposal teams so they can figure out how to get the damn things off!
10631980
Trust me, they kept the ones they needed, but Canon, the government of Japan recalled the helmets immediately to them for proper disposal and destruction. Plus, they already had the patents, how they worked wasn't exactly a secret. But yes, they kept what they needed to, and disposed of the rest, because you could theoretically drive into SAO after it launched, trapping yourself inside. Plus, with that feature, even if the game didn't do it anymore, someone could update a game and trap people again.
Also, bomb disposal teams would not know what to do. They deal with explosives. The nerve gear doesn't explode.
10631980
they dont explode they microwave your brain. trying to remove them would kill the wearer so unless someone was able to make a think foil that could be manipulated to block all possible points of brain frying at once while being able to block that frying full stop and then use then prove it works the only thing anyone could do was wait.
10735674
Irrelevant. In order to dispose of an explosive without setting it off, you have to disable the triggering mechanism.
The part of the Nervgear that detects removal/tamper attempts is essentially the trigger mechanism and thus the part one needs to deal with to rescue the victims, and is the part bomb disposal teams would have to deal with. That the "explosive", the microwave emitters, aren't literally explosives have nothing to do with anything.
will we get much more on this one? with the end of aincrad already done(aside from waking up)
10738788
I have to write it, but I have another Aside planned.
10738818
look forward to it then.
10738824
Side note, you wouldn't happen to know where Kiefer, Lessa, and Joltron's real names were stated? I can't find them, and I know I stated them once.
10738830
not sure, may have been a later chapter with personal conversations.
What does a hospital have to do with their current situation?
making it glow*
Well, at least not a total loss.
"It will also give me*
Twilight bid them good night and headed home.*
11457246
Because RD & the girls are supposed to be trapped in SAO rn, Twi only got through by using glim glam's name and the fact she doesn't wear glasses and keeps her hair down