Gilbert was scrutinising some code, hoping to find an annoying bug, when his smartphone unexpectedly trumpeted into the silent open space. Under the scowling look of his peers, he fumbled in one of his jean’s pockets, fiddled to press the ‘Accept’ button and muttered, as softly as he could, an annoyed “Hello?”, carrying on his perusal concurrently – after all, ‘multitasking’ was also applicable to humans.
“Hello. I’d like to speak to Gilbert Green, please!” said a neutral voice.
“Speaking.”
“This is Gigahome, your new Internet provider. We’re glad to inform you that the technician completed the installation and connection of your fiber outlet to our backbone network. Your access is now live. Enjoy!” declared the guy.
“Sweet! Thanks!” exulted Gilbert. He hung up. He had ordered this high-speed access—for an extra charge he could barely afford—a week ago, being fed up with the constant drops and slowdowns of the ADSL line he had been hitched to since he had relocated a year ago: impossible to watch a video for more than five minutes without the image freezing, at best; at worse, the modem would babble, drop the connexion and then start over its sync process—that would take a minute or so, during which he could only twiddle his thumbs. The whole shebang was getting increasingly on his nerves. But now, he glimpsed the joy of a regular and reliable link; his home computer was going to be sluiced under freshly crushed bytes, more than it could ever possibly chew.
Impatient to give free rein to the tamed flow of photons, he decided to leave his work earlier and rush back home, forgoing his weekly appointment with some old cronies of his at a local joint. He parked his car clumsily—encroaching shamelessly on the lot of his neighbor—dashed up the stairs, rummaged for his keys, found them, opened, trod in, slammed the door, doffed his jacket, tossed it on the nearby sofa, and finally pounced on the box, featuring a big red G—one end of which has been replaced by a laser beam warning logo—that the postman had delivered two days before in promise of a brighter future. Humming gaily, he pulled out a rectangular, dull appliance, a power supply and all the necessary wires to set up the digital nexus between his personal lair and the wild wide world. Three minutes later, he was up and running.
Let’s test if this is as reliable as publicized, he decided. Opening that good old Firefox browser, he googled one of his favorite My Little Pony, Friendship Is Magic episode. When he had found the link, he clicked over it and the video started right away, full screen, 1080p. Twenty minutes later, he was exhilarated: he had watched The best night ever! without a single hitch. That was his best Internet experience ever!
But a last test had to been done before he could give his formal approval: while he had gauged the download bandwidth, the upload bandwidth remained to be probed: he would have to emit some data for a short while. He wondered how he could do that, and suddenly had a epiphany. That would be fun. But he was lacking some of the necessary equipment, and it was too late now to shop in the local mall; it would have to wait until tomorrow night.
⁂
The next day, Gilbert bungled about everything at work. His excitement had kept him awake late in the wee hours, and he was feeling half drowsy, despite his heavy coffee consumption. He managed to delete three files full of critical code – hopefully restored from the daily backup; he toppled his coffee mug that missed his keyboard by a hair’s breadth; at lunch, his colleagues found him especially taciturn; he was, in fact, already thinking of his evening, and paid no heed to what the others were bantering about; his afternoon was just awful: the meeting he was obliged to attend seemed so tedious and endless he barely stifled two or three yawns. Eventually, at five o’clock, he was freed from his torture, seized his jacket in a hurry and hopped in his jalopy.
His first stop was the local joke shop. In the front window, lost amidst a hodgepodge of sundry items, he had spotted a pair of dark blue wings that one could slip around one’s arms and wear on one’s back; they were perfectly fit for what he had in mind. Besides, the shop also had a full gamut of make-up tubes; he chose a dark and light blue; he also bought a small bag of minute, silvery and star-shaped spangles. Five minutes and five bucks later, he was off to his second stop, the grocery store. There he grabbed, apart from the necessary food to sustain himself, a box of wafer cornets.
Back home, he had time to kill, so he grabbed a technical magazine and started to read some articles, but gave up quickly when he realized most of the contents was either outdated or irrelevant. Then he decided to take a hot bath while listening to his favourite music. But the water was really too hot: he barely managed to dunk into it, and after a couple of minutes he began to sweat buckets: big salty drops were dripping from his forehead and his scalp was becoming wet. The air, saturated with vapor, was increasingly clammy and hard to breathe. After ten excruciating minutes he finally gave up, dried, and slipped into boxers and an ultramarine T-Shirt adorned with a full moon design.
Almost melted by his scalding experience, he shuffled lazily into the kitchen, opened the half-empty fridge, wondered what he could eat and settled for fried eggs with bacon, accompanied by a handful of frozen french fries he put into the microwave oven. He chew up his food absentmindedly, squinting at the screen of his phone on which he tried to read the latest news. When he had eventually finished his dinner, he dropped his plate and flatware in the sink, fetched a bottle of ale from the fridge and started to get ready for his evening.
He began by carefully placing his high-quality webcam astride the top of his computer monitor and adjusted it so that it would point at his chair. Satisfied, he picked up the bag containing the items bought at the joke shop, rifled into the drawers of the sideboard to locate a tube of white, non-toxic, cheap starch-based glue, and returned to the kitchen to snatch one of the wafer cornets he had found at the grocery. He then made his way to the bathroom again, now clear of fog. Opening the make-up tubes, he smeared the light blue one over both his eyelids; he painted the wafer cone with the dark blue cream, then applied a thin layer of glue on the rim and pressed it forcefully against his forehead for a while. When he cautiously removed his hand, the cone stuck. Okay, it was a bit wobbly, but the glue would certainly set over time. He looked at himself in the mirror; that was an acceptable horn. He had just to make sure he would not twitch or shake his head. He daubed the rest of the dark blue make-up all over this face, and slipped the pair of wings around his shoulders. Finally, he tore the plastic bag open, grabbed a handful of spangles that he spattered over his hair.
He was ready.
Going back to the living room, he sat on his chair, awakened his computer and made his way through the internet to the live cosplay site his friend had shown him. Fortunately, the evening was barely beginning and only a few people were connected; he logged in using the nickname ‘Luna’ that was still available this night, adjusted the webcam, activated the live video option and waited. Someone showed up almost right away, and soon he was engaged in conversation with another brony masquerading as Rainbow Dash.
⁂
It was now 1:30 am. Gilbert has spent all his evening chatting and cosplaying with various other guys and girls, and each one had complimented his costume. Not bad, considering it was the first time he actually got involved. This was real fun. Four empty beer bottles were now standing close to his keyboard, and he was feeling both pooped and tipsy. He had been gabbing with a pegasister hidden under the apparence of Princess Celestia, typing rather than speaking: his neighbours were a bit nervous about noise, especially at night.
While the first lines exchanged had been relatively mundane, the discussion had quickly assumed a more ‘intimate’ tone – as the slight intoxication had dissolved some inhibitions.
“What is Princess Luna interested in?” typed the pegasister.
Gilbert dithered. He then answered, somewhat provocatively: “In mooning, of course! Are you game?”
The pegasister smiled and coloured ever-so-slightly. But she seemed to be plucky, and not easily abashed. And so, she rose up and turned around, revealing her plump butt to the camera – she was only wearing a thong. To top the provocation, she slowly caressed her crack with a finger before sitting back with a sultry grin. “So,” she asked, “are they pleasing your highness?”
Gilbert was feeling uneasy, tottering between arousal, fogginess and exhaustion. Febrile, he responded: “Uh, I can’t remember having ever seen moons so full and attractive.” He wavered. Almost automatically, he carried on: “And what about the hidden side?” but cancelled out the message before pressing the Return key. Now he was frantically floundering to think what he could possibly say without being utterly raunchy, when some emergency way out suddenly dawned on him. He wrote: “Did you ever read clop stories?”
“Yes, from time to time,” responded the pegasister. “Not my favorites, but why do you ask?” She was now waiting for his answer with a sort of leering snigger.
“Uh, would you like to cosplay one of those stories with me?” Gilbert ventured and he smiled awkwardly at the camera.
“What kind exactly?”
“I mean, you know, those stories about ‘princest’ when Luna and Celestia suddenly discover they are attracted to each other despite being sisters and they clinch and at the end they sl–” At that very moment, from the opened window behind him came an unexpected swoosh and a sudden gust of air that sent the camera flying away, immediately followed a loud thump. Gilbert whirled around as a deep and resounding voice exclaimed “Hum, hum!”. His eyes widened…
⁂
The day after, John Blackhead was slouching nonchalantly against one of the stanchions of the platform, skimming through the morning edition of the newspaper while waiting for his train, when a squib grabbed his attention. It read:
DEADLY DISCOVERY IN DOWNTOWN BLAYFORD
The lifeless body of a young man, whose identity has not been disclosed, has been found in his apartment by the police, after the janitor failed to obtain a response despite being sure the victim was home.
At about 1:40 am, the neighbors were alerted by unusual noises in the apartment of the young man. They phoned the janitor, who quickly dressed up and knocked at the door, but got no response. After ten minutes of silence, she decided to call the police, which forced its way in and found the prone body. A doctor hurriedly summoned to the scene examined the corpse but found no evidence of violence nor any blatant sign of drug overdose; further forensic tests are under way to determine the exact cause of the death, besides a seeming heart attack.
However, speaking anonymously, a police officer admitted some strangeness in this case. First of all, the victim was found half-naked and wearing a strange garb, especially a pair of fake wings on his back and a blue painted wafer cornet glued in the middle of his forehead; all his face was also painted in dark blue. The investigators wonder if that peculiar disguise is not linked in some way to dark or satanic sects. Besides, on one of the walls of the apartment, a mysterious message was left in a rather clumsy writing using a light blue creamy substance the victim had probably bought earlier, reading: ‘I hate phonies’, followed by the letters N and M and a symbol in form of a lunar crescent. A scientific detachment is expected to gather more evidence, especially since one of the windows was found open, which could point to a possible assault. The computer of the victim has been seized and will also be analyzed in hope it would fuel a lead.
Just under this squib, another one read:
UFO COMMUNITY SEETHING
The UFO community is once again seething since one of his member posted a shot that, he claims, definitely proves the existence of extra-terrestrial non-human intelligence.
J. K. was on his way back home yesterday’s night when his attention was caught by a moving shape blotting out the stars. He quickly drew out his smartphone and took a shot at what he describes as a ‘large and lithe shape, vaguely akin to a winged-horse, gliding above the buildings before vanishing abruptly in a flash of light’. The picture he posted on his Twitter account is of a very low quality, owning to the poor lightning, and it is difficult to make out any detail.
Contacted by the redaction, both the civil and the military air administrations dismissed this rumor as a new hoax. ‘Nothing particular showed up on our radar screens,’ declared colonel Grey, responsible of the air defense system in the area. ‘Maybe it was a swarm of bats?’
However, the UFO buffs actively seek other potential witnesses to vindicate J. K. testimony.
This world’s really going crazy, thought John Blackhead, folding his newspaper as his train slowly entered the station.
⁂
Elsewhere, or maybe in another plane of existence, back in the royal castle of Canterlot, two shapes materialized in the private bedroom of Princess Luna: one was the Princess of the night herself, and the other was a young, comely human female, with blond hair and large, expressive amethyst eyes. Her face was plastered in white; she was wearing a baggy white T-shirt—on which the famous Sun-like cutie mark had been printed—that was barely hiding her firm and well-formed breasts, and a ridiculously slim thong. She looked silently at the princess, who requited her gaze. Then she gracefully took off both her T-Shirt and her thong. Now she was standing there, motionless and naked.
All of a sudden the girl’s body began to alter, as if it was slowly fusing. Feet and hands retracted and disappeared, replaced by a thick, keratinous extremity. The face lengthened, the eyes widened and parted, the nose extended itself, the ears became pointed and in the middle of the forehead a horn popped and grew, while the tangle of hair started to shift lazily and change into a meddle of pale blue, green and pink. While the breasts dwindled and vanished, wings developed out of the hips; a wide tail appeared. All over the body dense milky bristles erupted, and a design identical to the T-Shirt’s one formed on the flanks.
When the metamorphosis was over, standing before Luna was the familiar shape of Princess Celestia.
“Thanks once again,” said Luna.
“Do I really have to do this?” wondered Celestia, her face ashen.
“You know it’s the price to pay to keep Nightmare moon at bay. At least in this world,” replied Luna.
“I know,” sighed Celestia. “But it’s the second one in the month. Remember when it was only one every year? Besides, that one was quite cute…”
“I am sorry,” apologized Luna. “I don’t know why it is so urging these days. Hormonal unbalance maybe? But I can’t understand how you can find one of those… humans handsome anyway. They are just ugly. Deformed. And stupid at that. Ergo, expendable. Did you read what he was suggesting between you and me? Gross! How can you even think about forgiving that? It was so wicked. He deserved his comeuppance.”
“They are sentient beings like you and me,” said Celestia. “You’ve no right to treat them like… like maggots!”
“Oh come on now!” protested Luna. “Stop the slush! Think how easy they are to lure, especially their males. Show them your rumps and they go bonkers. Just randy fools. Look at their world: war, violence, misery, exploitation, egoism, corruption. Do you call them an intelligent species? They are barely half-savage. The perfect quarries for Nightmare moon.” She headed for the door and opened it. “Let’s go,” she half ordered, “we’ve got work to do.”
“They’re not that evil, maybe they’ve just… lost their way?” Celestia put forward, pacing slowly toward the exit. “And consider all they’ve invented. Their internet, their computers, their lasers, all that technology totally alien to us…”
“And bombs and rifles and what else? Handy tools. But just tools. Without doubt they are wonderful technicians and scientists, especially considering they know nothing about magic. But morally, they are despicable.” Both alicorns trod into the corridor, and Luna softly closed the door behind them. “Never mind. I’ve to pay a visit to the royal observatory. See you at lunch big sis’!” She beamed, waved Celestia goodbye, trotted off, rounded a corner and disappeared.
Celestia, engrossed in thought, watched her recede. When her sister was out of sight, she sighed again and slowly made her way to the royal hall.
