You should have gone to bed.
A normal day, followed by a normal night. Nothing new in my life. With my daily routine consisting of sleeping until late afternoon, then slowly getting up, getting to my beloved PC -which appears to have become of vital importance throughout the past years- and checking out what’s new on the internet, then having breakfast, lunch and dinner at my desk while either gaming or surfing, the today’s night isn’t a real exception.
As I shove the empty cans of energy drink standing next to me aside, I give my watch a short look: almost 3.15am, still plenty of time to kill before finally calling it quits and hitting the pillow.
Out of boredom, I browse through my hard drive, looking for something that manages to entertain me until something new pops up on my Dashboard - experience has shown that there's always a chance for one or two gems to be brought to the light of day in the course of those exploratory missions into the depths of my PC''s memory.
As I plod through dozens of either uninteresting or simply useless folders and files, my cursor suddenly rests on the ‘Downloads’ folder. I frown: after my room itself, that folder is by far the untidiest place in my entire house.
My look goes over to my watch again. “Well, I could as well call it quits and got to bed. After all,” I let out a hearty yawn, “I’m pretty damn tired already.”
“Though…” with a right click, I open the ‘Settings’-menu of my hard drive. Again, I frown: more than 90 per cent of the storage is used; most of it for the ‘Downloads’-section. “Damn.”
With a deep sigh, I click myself back to the infamous folder and open it; my screen gets flooded with an avalanche of questionable setups, videos and filthy images.
“Well, here we go.” I mumble and place a finger on the ‘Delete’ button.
“How long is that shit still gonna take!?” I growl and take a sip from the coffee next to me, “I’ve been cleaning out that folder for 50 goddamn minutes now! Who the hell stores that ridiculous amount of bullshit on his hard drive!?”
Depositing the mug next to my keyboard, I look back at my screen - and see a silver lining: the folder is slowly emptying, the formerly disorganized data either deleted right away or stored in either the ‘PONY’, ‘SETUP’, or ‘MUSIC’ folder. With a satisfied smirk, I grab my cup again, take another sip and get to the few remaining files.
However, I interrupt my merciless purge as I spot a single executable file in between all the pictures and videos.
“pdp.exe?” I read out aloud, “Can’t remember when I downloaded this. … On the other hand,” my look falls on one of the many
pictures that can only be described with the word ‘disgusting’, “I can’t remember when I was into that kind of stuff either.”
Grabbing the icon with the cursor, I’m just about to dispose it into the trashbin as I hesitate. “I wonder what ‘pdp’ stands for though.”
Raising an eyebrow, I release the mouse button and the icon returns to its original position. Just as I am about to double click on the file, my curiosity gets outrun by my common sense. “Idiot! One does not simply execute a file he found somewhere in the depths of this PC! I can *guarantee** you that that’s a freaking virus!”*
Without making a move, I rest my right hand on my mouse, weighing my possibilities. “Well, if I execute it and it turns out to be a virus, the worst case would be that I crash my PC. … But if I just delete it, I’ll never know what 'pdp' stands for.”
After a few seconds of serious contemplation, I come to a conclusion. With a dry shrug, I slam my forefinger into my mouse; the cursor selects the mysterious file and executes it with a confirming 'click'.
For a second, nothing happens; not even the all too well-known blue lighting ring shows up.
However, as I finally spot some movement on my screen, I almost fall off my chair: a little, pink figure –maybe four times as big as my cursor- has appeared in the top right corner of my desktop.
Giving it a closer look, I can quickly identify it as Pinkie Pie, one of the six main characters from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
A pleased grin forms on my face. “So it’s just a screensaver. And that’s what all the fuss was about.”
The pink pony turns her head, thus looks at me; a friendly smile forms on her face, “Oh, hey there!” her voice sounds through my headphones, “How you doing?”
I can’t hold back an amused chuckle. “Heh, it even has a speech output. Cute.”
She waves her foreleg at me, looking like if she wanted to attract some attention. “Hello, can you hear me?” she shouts, obviously addressing me.
“Hey there. Pinkie Pie.” I respond silently, internally doubting my sanity for talking to a screensaver.
The pony’s face brightens visibly, “Finally! I thought you would never respond!” she says, “How do you come to know my name?”
"Really* funny. Designing a screensaver that records what you’re saying and responds to it.”* With an annoyed roll of my eyes, I take off my headset and grab the control switch for the microphone. To my surprise, it already is turned off.
My look goes back to my desktop, but I notice that the pink pony has disappeared. Raising an eyebrow, I put my headphones back on and grab my mouse.
"Hey, I asked you something!"
With an unreasonably high-pitched scream, I fall off my desk chair and land on the hard carpet of my bedroom.
“What the hell!?” I yell and look back at my desk: instead of appearing as a small icon on my desktop, Pinkie now seems to lean against my screen, having at least twenty times the size of her original appearance, and resting her hooves against the glass.
“I thought you might not have heard me, so I came a little closer!” she justifies herself cheerfully. While her voice still sounds quite happy, the pink pony becomes serious in the blink of an eye: giving me a skeptical look, she now asks, “Now how do you get to know my name?”
“What the actual…?” I slowly get back to my feet and sit down again, decidedly smashing my left index finger onto the ‘Escape’-Button.
Nothing happens.
Trying it again and again, I mumble, “What … why the hell doesn’t that stupid thing go away?”
“How did you just call me!?” the indignant voice of Pinkie Pie comes to my ears once again.
“Ain’t got time for that!” I say and take off my headset, opening the task-manager.
As expected, my screen quickly assumes a bright cyan and the well-known menu appears.
However, before I can act, the surface of the menu gets a little hole punched into it by a pink hoof that purposefully reaches downward and hits the ‘Cancel’ button.
And again, I find myself on my desktop; the animated pony has gotten a little smaller again, now taking up about an eighth of my desktop.
“You didn’t just call me ‘stupid thing’, did you?” she asks me with a petrifying look.
I turn a little pale as I notice that my headphones are still lying right in front of me; the voice appears to come from my screen itself.
“What gives you the right to call me stupid?” Pinkie Pie asks me reproachfully, “You don’t even know me! Actually, I’m a really fun pony!”
“This shit isn’t funny anymore!” I say out aloud and give my room a quick glance, checking for hidden cameras or something comparable that would indicate a trick played to me by one of my friends.
“Will you stop insulting me for a second? Please?”
Again, I open the task manager, yet again, before I can do something, the menu gets a crack right in the middle and, with a clearly audible clank, falls into thousand pieces, flooding the lower end of my screen with cyan shards.
Pinkie, purposefully holding out her right hoof, adds, “And will you stop opening that stupid menu? I’m trying to talk to you here! How would you feel if you would get ignored all the time!?”
“Okay, that’s enough. Definitely some kind of virus. Gotta get rid of that little fucker tomorrow.” I say and reach down to my PC, hitting the ‘POWER’ button.
“HOW DID YOU JUST CALL ME!?”
Again, nothing happens.
Abusing the button with my right hand, I mumble, “Come on now, shut the hell down already.”
Still, my PC remains in the same state: my ‘Downloads’ folder opened, the pink pony staring at me, flames flickering in her eyes.
“Oh for fuck’s sake, some of those little beasts are really tough.” I say and search for the power plug behind my desk. “Why the hell does someone program a freaking virus in the form of Pinkie Pie anyway? Something that annoying in the body of such a nice pony. It’s a shame.”
Finally, I manage to find the power button of my plugbar and punch my fist on it; the orange light dies with a weak hiss; the whirr of my PC's fan silences abruptly.
Letting out a sigh of relief, I return from under my desk and sit down on my chair again.
My screen is still enlightened; the screensaver-thingy is still there, yet slightly altered: her pink fur appears to be one shade darker; her usually fluffy mane has deflated, making her look like the infamous main character from a certain fan fiction.
She stares at me - breathing heavily, her eyes wide open, showing tiny, blue irises. “Okay … I’ve tried the friendly way to approach you…” she pants, “I’ve tried the kind way. I’ve tried the amicable way!” her breathing quickens, “And still … you behave like a total shithead!” she closes her eyes, just to open them again; something I can’t quite put my finger on sparkles in her eyes, “I think somepony needs a lesson in good manners.” A wide smile spreads over her face, “And I know just the right pony to teach you!”
I can’t hide my collywobbles as the pink figure starts to giggle manically and takes a step forward – towards me.
“O-okay. Whoever arranged that shit. You really got me! G-good one!” I say, unable to keep my voice from quavering.
“No, silly!” the pink pony says with a disturbing calmness, steadily coming closer to the screen’s pane, staring at me with a mostly deadpan look, “It’s not the time for jokes. It’s time for a lesson!” she says with a devilish smile on her face.
I smash my fist onto the power button of my screen; needless to say that nothing happens.
“That’s not funny!” I squeal into the darkness of my room, “Whoever is doing this, stop it! Now!”
Being just about to reach the front end of my monitor, the pony chuckles slightly amused and says, “It isn’t supposed to be funny at all, silly! Trust me,” she licks her lips in pleasant anticipation, “the real fun is still to come!”
Seemingly out of nowhere, she pulls out a large butcher knife and grabs it with her mouth. Basically standing in front of my screen, she now gets on her hind legs and places her front hooves on the glass.
“Now, we just gotta break through that stupid thing here and I’ll be right with you!” she announces pleasantly.
I back off, rolling my desk chair a couple of feet backward and watching the screen with pounding heart.
To my very horror, I hear a creaking, then a grating, and finally a cracking; several thick flaws form around Pinkie’s hooves.
“How the bloody hell is that even possible!?” I yell and jump up from my chair.
Finally, the thin layer of acrylic glass yields; my desktop gets cluttered with transparent plastic shards, and two pink hooves land on the massive wood with a loud clop.
“Let the fun begin!”
