Falling Into the Unknown

I was floating in my dreams. Pictures of past events, my entire life, were moving past me. I saw all of the ups and downs, the turns I had taken, and briefly wondered why I was, just now, remembering all of this. Up ahead, through the mist that obscured the outer edges of my dream, I spotted a distinctly equine shape.

The pony that I saw was a dark blue, with glowing blue hair. I suddenly remembered this one from mu roommate’s rambling, and that it was called Luna. Why the hell it was in MY dream, I don’t know.

Suddenly, ground materialized beneath him. Unusually for my dreams, I found that I had full control over himself, instead of just watching it like an actor. Having nothing else to do, I walked over to the waiting pony.

It was looking at me with undisguised curiosity. It murmured what I assume was a greeting or a question of sorts, but I just shook my head.

“I can’t understand a word that you’re saying.” I said in a firm tone of voice. It – I should stop calling the pony ‘it’, and settle on Luna – moved back a bit, before saying something else and vanishing. I saw a bright light suddenly consume my dreams as I quickly woke up. I rapidly checked around for any threats, but saw only the empty forest. My fears were renewed moments later, however, by a thundering roar, followed by screaming.

I practically jumped out of my sleeping bag, and quickly grabbed my Sa-58, groping for the bag of attachments. I dug out a PSO-1 sight, specifically modified to fit on my rifle. I fitted it on the rail, and checked the optics. Finding no flaws, I ran out of my cover and tracked through the forest towards the scream. It was probably the dumbest idea in the world, but that was definitely a scream, and I don’t ignore warnings like that. Whatever was attacking whoever would most likely come after me next, so it was going down.

I quickly found out that there was a clearing up ahead by the thinning trees. Before too long, I burst into the clearing, rifle leveled. Up ahead, I saw some sort of scorpion/lion thing. It was advancing towards something out of my field of view. Moving to the left, I immediately noticed a purple pony surrounded by a bunch of smaller ponies, which I guessed were children.

“No, you don’t,” I growled, switching the selector to single fire.

I quickly shot off two rounds to distract that thing. It turned towards me, issuing a loud roar and charging straight at me. Moving the selector to auto, I shot off rounds at the charging creature.

BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG

Eight shots later, it fell to the ground scant feet from me. Not wanting to spend any more time around the now gaping ponies than necessary, I quickly ran off into the woods, headed in a zigzag pattern back to my hiding place. Damn it! I had wanted to maintain a low visibility, but I guess that wasn’t an option now. I needed to move, and fast. The other side of the town should be fine.

Quickly packing up my stuff, I started a hike through the woods. Imagine the town – and the clearing around it – as a circle. The woods surround about 270 degrees of that circle, with only the edge facing that gigantic mountain thing clear and level. That’s also apparently where the farms are, as I heard my roommate talk about some sort of apple orchard right next to town. With it like that, I could easily walk about 180 degrees around this imaginary circle to the other side of town without leaving the woods.

I cursed as I stumbled over a fallen log. Looking up, I noticed that it was about midday. Honestly, how could the day get any worse? Within the span of 24 hours I had been teleported into a nonexistent world, chased by a gigantic mutant that would have looked good in Fallout, and had to run in order to not be found by a bunch of damn miniature horses.

Studying my situation, I knew that, eventually, I would suffer a breakdown. Normally, I react calmly to… Intense and unexpected situations. However, it always hit me like a tidal wave later on, causing me to lock up and shut everything out, and I did NOT want to be out in the open when that happened.

After fifteen more minutes of curses and walking, I found myself on the other side of town. After a few minutes of searching, I found a similar set of trees to the ones I had found in my original spot. Slinging my pack down, I figured now was the best time to eat my ham sandwich. I was hungry as hell, and I knew that the only way I would be spotted is if they looked directly down on me. Opening up my pack, I quickly grabbed the sandwich and wolfed half of it down, saving the other half for later. I took a large swig from one of my water bottles, and replaced all the items inside of my backpack. I took out my sleeping bag and laid it in the small alcove, along with the backpack.

I grabbed my Sa-58 and slung it across my back, figuring now was as good of a time as ever to do some scouting. I also grabbed my binoculars, and moved for the edge of the forest. Looking above me, I noticed several fast-moving specks looping in a search pattern above the forest, apparently looking for me. I chuckled, knowing they would never find me with my camouflage coat. Plus, my jeans would also blend well with the ground at high altitude.

I ran through the forest, quickly reaching the edge of the woods, slowing to a walk, I lay down on the ground and crawled to the very edge, right behind a bush. Grabbing my binoculars, I brought them up and zoomed in to the maximum level.

Ponyville zoomed up close in front of me. I could easily make out every detail of the ponies there. About 8 degrees to the left was a very light green one with a harp on its back, and at 24 degrees to the right a bright pink pony that seemed to be jittering a lot was walking out of… A gingerbread house? Yeah, this world in strange in more ways than one. Moving the binoculars to the left, I spotted what looked like a gigantic tree with a house built inside of it. Apparently, Equestria – damn you, brony roommate – was a melting pot of every fantasy tale ever.

Peeking out from the bush, I noticed the sun start to rapidly lower. How? Every law of physics I knew of said that the sun didn’t move very slowly all day, and then speed up right before nightfall. Then again, I suppose seeing a land of flying horses and unicorns is enough to make me toss out my version of the laws of physics anyway.

Rubbing my eyes, I decided that it was time to turn in for the day. Tomorrow, I would have to get a more sustainable food source than one ham sandwich and two water bottles, one of them 1/4th empty. I quickly made my way back to my hiding spot, and decided to open my small laptop.

Even though it was about the side of a short stack of paper, it was very powerful, the result of a long series of modifications I had done. The battery was a pain to charge, but could last me up to 60 hours. It had about 8 gigs of RAM, and a pretty powerful processer. It wasn’t cheap, but even I needed a portable gaming computer in the university. After all, I couldn’t get through the day without my daily fix of ArmA 2.

I quickly checked to see if there were any wireless connections available, even though the possibility was virtually nil. Surprisingly, there were some, but they seemed to be cycling at random, as if multiple wireless networks were being detected and then undetected. One of them was stable: What I recognized as the university’s wireless network. The portal must still be there, but dormant and inactive, still capable, however, of sending a powerful wireless signal through. I didn’t know for sure, though. Whatever the cause, I quickly entered the network. Connection was spotty, but I was on.

I accessed the web and quickly clicked my way to my dropbox folder. Due to my intense paranoia of everything, including the possibility of a government takeover, I had accumulated a large, 1.5 gigabyte file full of text documents, with detailed instructions on how to make everything from gunpowder to steel, and picture designs of various weapons and types of makeshift weapons. If I had that folder, full of information, I would be able to actually survive here.

The download was slow, occasionally interrupted by the wireless connection going down, but after a half hour it finally finished. Five seconds after the file downloaded, the wireless network shut down completely, all of the other ones slowing to a trickle and then finally stopping.

Damn, that had been close. Looking at the battery, I still had 56 hours of battery remaining. Shutting the laptop down, I put it back in its bag, and decided to call it a night. Tomorrow would be a new day, with new opportunities. Although it would be a pain to find a way to recharge the battery for the laptop, I knew I would find a way, as I have always done.

Leaning my head back, I fell into a long, deep sleep, uninterrupted by any distractions.