Twilight Sparkle's Lectures: the Engine and the Internet

Twilight Sparkle ran frantically through her basement, adding the correct joystick, a second screen, and a decent modem to her encrypted computer. The whole massive setup sat on top of a wooden plank resting on top of a pile of cinder blocks.

Sitting down at the now fully set up workstation, Twilight turned the computer on, waited a half a second, then opened up tor and checked out who she knew in her hacker group that was close to Canterlot High. There was Snails, who was a student, but he had no credentials. There was Gilda, but she was part of a competing school and had anger management problems, and she didn't have any credentials either. And Everyone else on the channel was out of high school, well everyone except for Lyra. Lyra was actually pretty good at hacking, in fact she was probably the only decent high school hacker on the list, it was just... well, she was a bit strange sometimes. Lyra's fascination with conspiracy theories and unicorns probably wouldn't help make any of Twilight's research more credible.

Sighing, Twilight started a new tor session and clicked on Lyra's Skype number. An encrypted version of Skype popped up, and the phone rang... Twilight turned in her seat, thinking about getting some ice-cream while she waited, but it was only a few seconds before Lyra answered.

"Crazy Horse here!" Twilight turned back around to see Lyra salute her on the screen. "This is Word Mage?"

Twilight leaned forward, glaring in an attempt to look more professional. "Yes, this is Word Mage."

"What duties do you request of us, o' mighty Word Mage?" Lyra asked, glaring back at the screen, showing Twilight with her death stare that she would do anything, literally anything, to impress the master of hackers.

"Quit the fancy talk." Twilight Squinted. "This is serious business."

Lyra saluted once again.

Twilight paused before speaking, "I've detected anomalies in both seismic data and universal constants coming from your school." Twilight panned her camera to the conspiracy wall filled with strings, pictures, and seismograph sheets. "It used to be intermittent, but now some of the anomalies are constant."

"Whoa..." Lyra formed an 'o' with her mouth and sat back before grinning. "You mean, like, aliens?"

Twilight rested her face in her palm and shook her head. "No, Lyra, not aliens."

"Aww..." Lyra deflated.

For some reason, Twilight felt a pang in her heart for letting that crazy horse girl down. "Well," she said, "I actually don't know what it is, so I guess it could be aliens--"

Lyra held her arms to her chest and grinned madly.

"--but it could be some sort of weapon, or a bomb, or... I don't know what," Twilight continued.

"Aliens!" Lyra suggested, raising her fist into the air.

"Sure..." Twilight deadpanned. "Anyway--" She pressed a couple keys "--I'm gonna start recording now. I'll need a second opinion, so make sure you start recording too."

Lyra stuck her tongue out in concentration before pressing a single key. "Got it!"

"Okay." Twilight turned to her other monitor, opened another tor window with a new identity, and connected to the ip address she memorized. Immediately, a screen popped up showing the inside of a locker. Twilight dragged the feed to the skype call, showing Lyra. Twilight moved back to the feed and pressed enter, releasing a latch and allowing the 'broken' locker to swing open. Now, with nothing to stop it, the camera feed, which must have been attached to some sort of drone, rolled out of the locker and clambered onto the school floor.

"So let me get this straight," Lyra spoke up with one eyebrow raised and a smile that was larger on one side of her face. "You installed an illegal drone in one of the school's lockers so you could spy on a school undergoing 'physical anomalies'?" She made air-quotes with her fingers. "Twilight, your 'hacking' plans are crazier than mine!" She laughed.

Twilight frowned hard, turning a once beautiful face into something that would terrify a demon. How dare that unicorn girl insult Novella!

A righteous anger welled up inside Twilight’s heart, urging her to defend her baby. "You shut your horse mouth!" Twilight snapped. "Novella One has taken months of careful planning and engineering for a very important mission!" She cried. "He has three com nodes: Ink Spot One is a hidden wireless router connected to the school's router, installed inside the walls. Ink Spot Two is a phone, rooted to take advantage of the wireless hotspot hardware. Ink Spot three is a suite of sensors on a Raspberry Pi that can be hidden nearly anywhere. And Novella One is both practically a book on getting in and out of things--" Novella One ran into the locked doors of Canterlot High. But this did not stop it: It simply raised a conveyer belt with a bobby pin on the end and stuck the bobby pin in the keyhole. After a few seconds, the door was open. "--and all the hardware to implement that knowledge!" The bot rolled down to the courtyard, rolling directly towards a large statue of a horse.

"Uh..." Lyra said. She wasn't grinning or laughing this time. Instead, she had wide eyes and a frown.

"What!?" Twilight screamed, banging her hands on her desl.

"I-- I wasn't insulting you. That was a compliment." Lyra blinked.

Twilight blinked. "Oh..." She grinned sheepishly. "Sorry."

"No..." Lyra sighed. "I can understand. Not being taken seriously despite all your evidence..."

"Yeah." Twilight nodded. “That's exactly what I don't want to happen." She pressed a button and the bot readied its sensor array as it approached the statue.

"Well, for what it's worth, I always--" The sensor array passed straight through the stone at the base of the statue, as if it were made of water.

"Wha?" Lyra gaped.

"N--" Twilight stammered, "Novella One?" She rubbed her eyes and stood up to get a better look at the screen. "Don't go playing, tricks on me, Novella. Hmm... did someone hack the feed?" She tapped one of the monitors. "No, that's not possible. Even with the best hardware, the video should take years to decrypt."

Lyra, on the other hand, was much less quiet. "NO WAY!" She stood up and held her head in her hands. "WHAT!? WHAHAHAT!?" She pointed at the screen. "THAT'S RIDICULOUS!" And then her hands went back to her head. "IS THIS REAL LIFE!?" She screamed. "IS THIS REAL LIFE!!!???" Her voice cracked. "I-- THIS IS ALIENS!"

Ignoring Lyra, Twilight decided to move the drone forward. On the other side of the mirage was a large rotunda, with the walls filled to the brim with books. By god, there were so many books. Turning around, she could see the ‘mirage’ from the other side. The only way she could describe it was... disappointing. It was as if Time Turner took all of his props and mashed them together, and then added some sparkly thing.

Lyra held her hands over her mouth and screamed. "EEEEEEEEEEEE! It's bigger on the inside!"

Twilight steered forward, ignoring Lyra, and scanned the shelves. There were things like 'Pony Anatomy', 'Chivalry for the Undead', and 'History of Equestria'. History looked useful, and it was the least likely to be fiction.

Twilight tried to maneuver the bot to the correct shelf, but the base of the machine was too large, so she bumped into the bookshelf before she could reach into it. There was a loud tink sound.

"Gah!" Twilight swore, "Stupid, overly large base!" She pulled back on her joystick, putting the machine in reverse, then pushed forward. There was a loud tink again. She tried a few more times, creating an unending series of  metal against crystal sounds, until finally she got her book out. Of course, the grippers couldn't hold on to the book! No, they had to drop it and leave it on the floor! Now she had to somehow maneuver the machine so it would pick up something off the floor...

Tink! Tink! Ti--

"Stop!" Lyra yelled. Her eyes were wide and she was crouching close to her desk. "Do you hear that?"

Twilight immediately stopped what she was doing and turned the robot around. She heard footsteps, but they were too quick in succession, and the pattern didn’t make sense. That meant Lyra was right: it was aliens! And now that she was listening closely, the steps were getting closer.

"ABANDON SHIP!" Lyra screamed. "ENEMY HAS DETECTED US! DRONE HAS BEEN SPOTTED! I REPEAT, ABANDON SHIP!"

"LYRA, SHUTUP!" Twilight screamed back, finally annoyed at her partner in crime. "We just gotta hide!" She expertly maneuvered the robot, only to crash into the wall again. "Dangit!"

"The portal!" Lyra screamed. Twilight hated to admit it, but that horse girl seemed to come up with some pretty good ideas unders stress.

Twilight drove the robot towards the portal, only to try and hide behind it.

"What!?" Lyra screeched and held her head in her hands. "No, through the portal, with this, you're just gonna--"

"--Gonna stay in the alien world?" Twilight interrupted. "Yeah, that's kinda what I want to--"

The base of the robot caught on some of the tubes on the back of the portal device, causing the robot to swing forward and slam into the ground.

Twilight gaped at the screen, which was now showing a very blue-tinted reflection of the robot. "No..." Twilight stared at the screen, her body and face going slack. She was sure her heart had frozen over. "No..." She stood up and grabbed the joystick. "No!" She yanked back on the joystick. The robot lunged backwards and upwards, only to hit another tube. "Nonono!" She tried left and right! "Nonononono!" Now she frantically tugged on the joystick in all directions, but only managed to tangle her beloved machine further. Finally, she gave up, laid on the floor, and cried out to the world "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

“I feel you, Word Mage.” Lyra clasped her hands to her chest and held her head down solemnly. “We barely got to start the story of poor Novella, before he was proven obsolete by a series of tubes.”

Twilight glared at her monitor from her floor, tears streaming from her eyes. “You-- you shudup. You don’t know what you’re-- talking--” She gagged on her own crushing sense of despair.

Suddenly, there was a voice coming from the screen. "Ugh, what is all this racket?" Twilight silenced herself. She couldn't see anything from the bot’s angle, and the hearing was kind of bad on the machine, but it sounded like her own voice. "What the!?" The voice continued.

Suddenly, the ground flew away from the screen. "No!" Twilight screamed, rushing up to her computer. "Novella One, what are you doing!? You're not supposed to fly!"

The screen zipped around, and now in the center of the frame was... a purple unicorn... with wings.

"Wat?" Twilight asked, tilting her head with an unreadable expression.

Lyra, on the other hand, was hyperventilating in a way that looked incredibly pleasurable. "HAAAAAaaaaaaaaaa..." She fainted from lack of oxygen.

"What are you?" The purple winged unicorn asked.

"What am I?" Twilight asked back, pointing at the screen. "What are you? You purple winged unicorn." It dawned on her that the unicorn wouldn’t understand anything because she didn’t have any form of telepresence on the machine, because that would be stupid. Come on, that would just be dumb, right? What would she even do with telepresence? Talk her way out of a--

The unicorn smiled and raised an eyebrow. "I'm an alicorn actually, not a winged-unicorn. And my name's Twilight Sparkle." She curtsied. " Now, who and what, are you?" She asked.

There was no response as Twilight gaped at the screen. Why, in all that was holy, did she install telepresence?

She thought back to the last time she showed off her bot, and remembered her brother teasing her, “Come on, Twily, what’s the fun in a robot if you can’t make it say things like: “Beep. Boop. Bring me to your leader”?” Of course, after that impervious argument, Twilight spend the next few months working solely on telepresence.

Twilight the unicorn furrowed her brow, "Okay, Mr. Rude Alien, don't answer!"

"But wait, I'm Twilight Sparkle." Twilight the human said, her mind catching up with the conversation.

Twilight the unicorn put the machine down, slowly. "Okaaaaaay?" She tilted her head. "But why am I-- I mean, why are you a... thing?"

"It's a robot!" Twilight answered, "A Novella One! And I am not it. I'm just controlling it!"

Twilight the unicorn gaped at the machine. "Whoa, telepresence? That's advanced."

"Eh," Twilight the human said bashfully, twirling her hair, "I just taped a telephone to a few conveyer belts."

"Hmm..." Twilight the unicorn nodded. "Well, you still broke into my house. I'm afraid I'm gonna have to throw you out." Twilight the unicorn stepped towards the portal.

"W-- wait!" Twilight the human cried.

Twilight the unicorn stopped.

"Don't you want to... you know, exchange information. Isn't that the first thing two species should do when they meet?" Twilight the human clasped her hands before her and kneeled towards the screen. Of course, she was on an office chair, so she slowly turned the wrong direction.

Twilight the unicorn turned the drone back around so it was facing her. There was a predatory look in her eyes. "You want to exchange information?"