Equestria Route Zero

Act One, Scene Five – Sparkle Farmhouse

When I was off doing my own thing, & Granny Smith was looking after the store, both my sisters were in school. Actually, Applebloom still is in school, but she’s almost finished. She became quite an artist with her pal Sweetie Belle but since both her & her sister moved to Manehatten, Applebloom’s artistic side hasn’t bloomed since. It hurts to miss your friends in the beginning. She’ll get over it eventually; everyone does when their friends move onto new things.

For the second time tonight, I found myself staring at the hillside with the single farmhouse atop its head. The familiar hoot of an owl rang out across the scene, evoking the same feelings I felt earlier. With Shining Armor for support, we limped up the hillside to the possible location of Twilight Sparkle. At the top, the graveyard continues to disturb me. Shining Armor must have caught my eyeing up of the sight.

“There’s nobody buried here, you know. It’s decorative, I guess… or it’s art or something, I don’t know.”

“A decorative graveyard?” My scepticism couldn’t be more obvious.

“Twilight’s folks were like that. Not morbid, I mean, but strange. Careless with tragic ideas.” He grunted, either from helping me or because of my simple mindedness. “Oh, & look at the headstone: Sparkle. I used to think that was for my parents. Now I don’t know.”

Leaving the grave site, we entered the farmhouse, again through the back entrance, up the rickety stairs with its decaying white paint. Inside, the bulb surprisingly still burning strong, the place was perfectly untouched from my last visit. Maybe Twilight hadn’t returned from wherever it was she went. I left the supportive embrace of Shining Armor to lean against the wall to catch my breath. Surveying the room, my companion spoke up.

“So, this is where she was? Yeah, makes sense. This was where Twilight & her parents lived. They took out a bunch of loans, you know, & they had this place built.” He turned to me. “Do you have any debts?”

I nodded my head to the side slightly, gritting my teeth as I did so. “I owe some people some apologies.”

“Well, you’re lucky that’s all you owe.” He moved to a stack of books, inspecting them one by one. “My parents were like that. Until the company store found a way to get to them. For my dad, it was the tokens to run the fans & air purifiers, & for my mum, it was the canaries. Two solutions to the same problem, but they sure sounded different.”

He sighed, turning back to face me. “Twilight had debt, too – a lot of it. All tuition.”

“She said she was a mathematician or something?”

Shining Armor nodded his head, a slight grin on his face. “Yeah, she studied some esoteric stuff about… something about using math to translate between Spanish & English?” A small chuckle left his lips, almost in a defiant ‘I cannot believe this’ way. “I think Twilight eventually put those maths skills to work on all the red numbers in the family check book, & got a clear sense of just how helpless their situation was. So she left. I guess she just drove away in the middle of the night – they woke up in the morning & the car was gone. Never came back. Until tonight.”

“Someone else told me to come here & talk to her.” That old man at the beginning of this journey may have had something to do with this, he did send me her after all.

“Huh. OK. I guess we two aren’t the only ones she’s been talking to.” His surprise couldn’t be more genuine. “Oh. That’s not something you see everyday.”

Pointing across the room, the old TV that I had delivered here on request from the old man was still here. “That old TV right there, well, that is a damned antique for you. I had a model like that in the shop once, but I had to sell it off to make rent. Most painful decision I ever made.” He moved towards it, inspecting it with more gusto that he did earlier with the books.

“Say, do you mind if I open it up? Looks like the dials are all corroded, & the screen is leaking light a bit. Come on – I bet Applejack would never forgive you letting a specimen like that fall into disrepair.” He’s right, Applejack would have my head if I left it in its sorry state. Shining Armor turned the set to expose the wiring to the open room.

“Oh yeah, these tubes are all messed up. Look like they’ve been in a swamp, or a cave or something – there’s moss growing on this one!” Admittedly, that was my wiring from earlier. I thought it was standard procedure for the which wires go where. Clearly not with this set. “That’s OK; I have a few spares in my bag here. Just needs to be re-calibrated a bit… OK, that oughta… should be seeing something now; are you seeing anything?”

This was dragging us away from finding Twilight. I tried not to sound impatient, but I didn’t want him to know I wasn’t happy with what he was doing.

“Hey, that looks dangerous, what you’re doing there.”

“Damn, OK… Here, I think the contacts are dirty. Now don’t go telling my customers I clean off old vacuum tubes with spit. There, just gotta turn it north/south, & -“

I couldn’t believe it! He straight up ignored me! I was about to raise my voice but something caught my eye. Looking out of the window, towards the barn, something seemed off. At the centre of the barn door, a flicker of light appeared, disrupting the air in front of it. I peeked a closer look, my face practically up against the window pane at this moment. The flicker appeared again, bigger than before, & then the entire barn began to flicker, like a dead TV screen! It disappeared to static, changing colours as it did so, & all too soon, the light show had finished.

In its disappearance was left a entrance. A cave entrance. The dirt road that had led into the barn now led into this cave. With it’s huge maw open like that, I was surprised the horses grazing nearby had not been eaten by it, or had been disturbed by the sudden disturbance. Maybe they knew more than me. Next to it, a large blue sign made of metal stood by, its words lighting a fire in my heart that had yet, till this point, to be lighted.

I had found the Zero.

END OF ACT ONE