Author's Note

This story is now organized into three sections.

April 24

April 24

In the Canterlot castle, Luna sat next to Celestia’s throne, and for a long span of five days, she has been bickering about the boredom she experienced in the castle.

“Come on, sis! I want something to interact with in order to keep me entertained,” Luna stated to complain, and Celestia, attending to her needs, spoke out a suggestion.

“Why not descend down to Ponyville and socialize?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I am socially inept. I don’t feel like doing so.” Luna crossed her arms and looked away.

“Hmm…” Celestia began thinking, “Upon a little reflection, I think I do have something for you…”

“What is it? Tell me!” Luna got excited and all jittery.

“Well first, you have to calm down, and I will get it eventually.” Celestia stood, and after a brief pause, she slowly walked out of the throne room.

“Wait, where are you going?” Luna questioned as Celestia turned to the halls.

“You will see!” She echoed from the halls. Luna, bored, jumped onto the throne, and foolishly declared herself the leader of Equestria instead of being an auxiliary; while Luna sits on the throne, Celestia descended downstairs and into the storage room in which she used her horn to unlock.

The door swung open, and the first thing that was visible to Celestia was a laptop, and to be exact, it is branded as an IBM ThinkPad. She picked it up using her magic and contemplated.

“Maybe this might do the trick, although I partially know how to use this…” Celestia spoke to herself as she moved the computer around. She remembered the computer being in the storage for around three days, but where it came from was valid to her, since she knows the human universe teems with technology and this laptop was no exception.

She carried the laptop out and closed the storage doors behind her. She stepped upstairs, introducing the computer to Luna.

“What is that?” Luna questioned Celestia as she lay the computer down on the ground in front of Luna.

“You will see. I think I have mentioned these before when I told you the stories of the “other dimension,”” Celestia said to Luna as she opens the laptop, revealing the keyboard and screen.

“Oh! I see. This is one of the pieces of technologies they had…” Luna realized, and as a response, Celestia nodded.

Luna observed the computer by looking at all the ports and keys, and she instantly became confused by their purposes.

“How do you work this?” Luna turned to Celestia and asked for help.

Celestia had a partial knowledge of operating these things. She took her front hoof and raised it above the computer keyboard; she then scanned around until she found the power button that is above the keyboard and pressed it.

The screen then displayed an IBM logo, and it disappeared as the BIOS completely loaded. The windows 98 screen popped up as it loaded the operating system and it disappeared when it was complete and went straight to the desktop, and since the computer is sort of lagged, the startup sound was played with delay, and Luna backed away from the computer as a result.

On the desktop, a couple of folders were present such as “RULES.doc”, “IMPORTANT FILES”, and a “Readme.txt.” Along with those folders are the typical icons on the desktop such as the Recycle Bin, Network Neighborhood... etc.

Celestia then gradually taught Luna the basic functionality of the laptop. She taught her how to use the mouse that is controlled by the small red nib squished between the F and G keys; she also taught her how to open, close, and right click files so Luna would have an easier time navigating.

“So, have fun with your new toy!” Celestia said to Luna with a jovial tone, and Luna smiled at her in return. She lifted the computer to her room using her magic, and placed it near her bed.

Right before she laid her hoof on it, a window popped up.

This program has performed an Illegal operation and will be shut down.

If the problem persists, contact the program vendor.

There were two buttons: “Details” and “Close.”

“Celestia!!” Luna shouted for her sister, and Celestia immediately reported to Luna’s room and saw what was going on. Celestia took control of the red nib, and clicked on “close.” The main explorer.exe interface was gone for a moment, and by that time, Luna started to freak out since she thought it was broken, but the process restarted successfully.

“Just press “Close” when these things pop up,” Celestia reminded Luna before she quietly left for their throne room.

Luna used her magic and moved the nib. She was surprised and got excited when the mouse moved in the direction where she was tilting the red nib; she had the feeling of power as she was piloting this device all by herself.

“This should be fun,” Luna said to herself as the folder opened up.

In the contents, there were several programs, including “Minesweeper.exe”, “Solitaire”, “FreeCell”, “Hearts” and any other typical OEM games that are installed on a computer.

Luna double clicked on minesweeper, and a grid of 81 squares arranged in a dimension of 9 across and 9 down. She was not sure what to do next, so she consulted the help button in the top menu.

MINESWEEPER
In this game, the objective is to clear the board while leaving all the mines untouched.

- To begin, click on any square. If you are somehow unlucky and click on a mine on the first click, don’t be hesitant to click on the yellow frowning face and get a new board.

- Most of the time, it will reveal a gray space with various colored numbers.

- The numbers signify the NUMBER of mines AROUND the number.

- For example, if there is a 2, and it is completely surrounded by 8 squares, the probability of hitting a mine would be 25%.

- If you are certain if a mine is behind the square, right click to flag it.

- The instructions are simple since this game mostly requires logic, and sometimes guesswork and probabilistic reasoning.After reading it over quite a couple of times, Luna seemed to grasp a rudimentary level of understanding about the gameplay.

She navigated the mouse over to the corner square and clicked it; a mine was revealed, and a loud explosion played, and it scared Luna as she jumped and scurried away from the computer screen.

“That was too frightening for me to handle…” Luna muttered to herself as she slowly slid back to the computer.

Luna then navigated the mouse to the yellow frowning face with X’s being the eyes, and she clicked it; as a result, the board cleared.

Luna then moved the mouse pointer to the middle square; in fear, she closed her eyes and looked away as her hoof closes in on the left mouse key.

Her hoof slightly nudged it, and it opened an expansive space with ones and twos. She opened her eyes and slowly turned her head back towards the screen.

From the instructions she read, she now knows that the corner pieces are indeed mines since she knew that the 1’s are only touching one square; by following that rule, she was able to slowly double click through the nearby numbers, and successfully flag the mines that remained.

She finished her first game of Minesweeper in 3:07, and she was quite blissful about being able to play such exotic games that she have never encountered.

She exited the game by pressing the X on the top right corner, and she minimized the game window so she could view the entire desktop. She opened the folder “IMPORTANT FILES” and it displayed several unknown programs.

The prominent one was the “READ THIS FIRST.txt,” and she opened the file.

Notepad popped up, and it showed a couple of precautions.

“PLEASE DO NOT OPEN ANY FILES IN THIS FOLDER UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING.
OPENING ANY FILE EXCEPT THIS ONE WILL CAUSE IRREVERSIBLE DAMAMGE TO THE FILE SYSTEM.

FOR THE STUDENTS:

OPEN ONE PIECE OF MALWARE ONLY. OPENING MULTIPLE MALWARE MAY CAUSE UNWANTED RESULTS.”

Since it was all caps, she imagined herself yelling this out in her Royal Canterlot Voice.

She closed out of the notepad, and had an overview of the files.

The files were:

“CIH.exe”, “Melissa.exe”, “ILOVEYOU.vbs”, “Blaster.exe”, “Netsky.exe”, “CodeRed.exe”, “Happy99.exe”, “Gruel.exe”, “Sasser.exe”, and “MyDoom.exe.”

Upon reading the text document, she closed out of the window to prevent her computer from being destroyed.

She went on and opened Minesweeper again, and played until her Night Duty comes around; on the second game, she was considerably faster to clear the board, and as she played on, her time kept getting faster, and eventually leveled out to 0:13 for beginner level.

She seemed to have found a new level of excitement while playing that simple game.

The room gradually dimmed as the sun began to lower, and it was time for Luna to start her night duty. She was reluctant, but she shut down the computer by long-pressing the power button, and shut the lid before taking her post for night duty.