Pony-Me™: Rebooted

by TheMajorTechie

2 ◈ There are new faces to meet,

Lisa watched the vehicles arrive one after another. There weren't all that many, but it was still enough to rival the numbers she'd seen in parking lots while in the human world. The ones around fast-food restaurants, that is.

The final vehicle in the motorcade looked quite a bit different from the rest. A little too compact for a van, but at the same time too big and bulky for the average streetcar.

...It was a minivan, wasn't it? Lisa rolled her eyes at the mental slip. Interestingly, the minivan drove past the other cars as they parked, slipping away between the buildings.

Car doors began to open and shut in front of her. More people. Weren’t there already enough technicians in town? It didn’t really seem like they needed any more help. Lisa shaded her eyes. Most, if not all of them, seemed to be wearing some sort of uniform.

"Excuse me!" She stepped closer to the growing crowd surrounding the motorcade. One of the people who'd left a car walked past. "Wait--please! Could somebody tell me what's going on?"

"Just here to help out. It's not often that something like this happens on such a massive scale."

"Wh--" Lisa looked over her shoulder. “Wait, but why do you need so many more people?”

The man was already out of earshot. Lisa rolled her eyes. Footsteps approached from behind.

"Please," she turned around again, "could you tell me what's happening? Why are so many others arriving out of nowhere?"

The woman shrugged. "I'm just doing this 'cause I get a bonus if I come. There's probably at least a few others that are the same way."

Oh.

"Well, you have a nice day now. I'm going to be on the team surveying the cable damage if you need anything from me for some reason."

So much for asking those two people. Lisa turned her attention back to the rest of the motorcade. Among the people carrying what she presumed were supplies was another woman--and unlike the rest, she wasn't wearing anything that even resembled a uniform.

...Not that Rarity would've necessarily liked it, had she seen it, but still.

Lisa walked up to the woman. "E-excuse me, could you--"

"Hm?" The woman looked up. She was far younger than what Lisa was expecting. "Oh! You-you're Lisa, aren't you? Lisa Garnet?"

"I... yeah, I guess?" Lisa made a face. "How do you know my name? Do I know you from somewhere?"

"Mmm, you'll remember in time, I guess..." The woman pointed another passing volunteer--employee?--to where they apparently were needed. "Name's Grace Daalmans. Man, has it been a while since I've last seen you. It's been what? Twelve? Thirteen years? Time really does seem to fly, doesn't it?"

"I don't understand."

Grace shrugged. "Didn't expect you to. Anyway, you were wondering why there are so many people arriving all of a sudden?"

Lisa nodded.

"My mom's one of the top dogs at the place that runs the central servers for the simulations. She sent me out here with a team of professionals to help out the on-site techs before things go south while she deals with the servers themselves. Though most of the folks arriving here are actually volunteers from surrounding communities. There are a couple more places built for people in the simulations around, but most are civilian towns. You can... uh, kinda tell based on some of their attitudes. I won't be here for too long though, I still gotta stop by some other towns that were also hit by the outage."

"Uh-huh..." Lisa furrowed her brows. "So, did you ever figure out what caused the outage? It'd be nice to get back to my normal life sooner rather than later."

"Cyberattack on the network. We also had reports that some of the buried cables were physically cut not too long after, too. Snowbush is one of the places that had a sliced network cable."

"Sno--"

"The town we're standing in." Grace stepped aside, staring down the street. "So, I... kinda have to get ready for the first meeting now. Don't forget to attend! We've got a couple of special guests that'll be speaking, too!"

She walked past without another word. Lisa sighed. At least she finally had some answers. Though, a--what did Grace call it?--cyberattack didn't exactly sound like a positive thing. Cut cables definitely seemed a little fishy, too.

Not that she really had any idea what all of that meant, anyway. Still, it reeked of sabotage. Hopefully, Grace's mother and whoever else was in charge would keep this from happening again. It'd be more than annoying to have to start dealing with this whole "disconnection" fiasco on a regular basis.

...

...

Lisa turned around and began to follow after Grace. There was a meeting to attend.

---

So this was the town hall; an unassuming, single-story slab of a building jutting out of the ground like a brick in a mud puddle. A small crowd was already beginning to form around the entrance. She caught sight of a door swinging shut. How Grace was able to squeeze through that jam was beyond her.

Lisa looked to the side. Parked nearby was that minivan from earlier. They were probably the 'special guests' Grace mentioned before.

Now came the question of actually getting inside the building in time.

Author's Note:

Check out the original fiction version of this chapter on Offprint!