Cold. Cold is what it was. Cold was what he felt; what Cameron felt. He felt cold. Though his heater was working, his 5th story apartment in Manehattan felt cold. Not that this was odd. He often felt cold. In fact, he always felt cold.

"This city...", he thought. "Why is it always cold?"

No pony else seemed to notice though. It was only September after all. And the magnetic-backed thermostat on his 20-something year old refrigerator read only 68°F...perfect room temperature.

Perfect. Perrrfect. Perfect! perfECT.

He tumbled the word around in his mind. It means something different to everyone. To some it meant family, and to others... what did it mean to others? Cameron didn't know, to his own dissatisfaction. He didn't like it when he didn't know what others were thinking. Of course, he never spent much time talking to other ponies at all. To Cameron, "perfect" meant alone. "Perfect" meant he was satisfied with his friends; with his life.

Cameron slinked across the cold musky apartment to his best friend, and pressed its button. The one that read: "Power". Its screen didn't do anything at first; accept change from black to a slightly brighter black. Then it came to life. It booted into a brief BIOS menu, asking him if he'd like to launch its startup repair or launch "ponOS" normally (he had left it on for a while and forgot to charge his friend). He was told that this screen only came in two colors: black and white. However he could never know this for certain. In fact, he could never know the color of anything for certain.

As a colt, Cameron's 'affectionate' nickname was "doggy"; obviously playing on the common myth dogs could only see in black and white. Cameron had long ago learned through his friend named "internet" that dogs could actually see a variety of colors. His friend was just knowledgeable like that. At learning this, he felt slightly dejected. He felt as if he was the only creature in Equestria with the misfortune of seeing only the bare bones of color. Cameron learned to live with it though. He accepted that it would never get any better than what it was now. He tried to view it as a sort of pleasant little defect of his eyes, but that never went far in his own mind.

"Let's face it," he said to himself as a colt of 10 years, "it's just a barrier baring my own success in life".

He found himself thinking his own mind conceded for believing this. It obviously wasn't a great barrier in life, if you could call it one at all. It just...was. It was however, another log on the greyish black fire that was Cameron’s depression.

That's what the doctor called in anyway. Dr. Broadhoof's diagnosis of Cameron's grey mind wasn't much of a surprise to the (at the time) adolescent colt. He knew what the word meant (thanks to ‘internet’). Cameron had always had a melancholy aura about him. He wasn't a happy colt. He wasn't a sad colt. He just was. The diagnosis of his son by the great and powerful Dr. Broadhoof only worried Cameron's father for a short time. He was, after all, always busy with work.

Cameron's father was a hardworking business pony. Ace Ink was a dusty brown unicorn with a black mane, and had a well-paying job with a cozy home in the suburbs just outside of Manehattan. They had a 2 story home all to themselves, as well as a nice carriage in the driveway that never had even half-a-tank of gas. Ace Ink and his son never wanted for anything. They had always had food in the table, and a working water heater. Not that it ever helped (at least in Cameron's always cold mind). Cameron’s mother was killed by a bus when he was three years old. By Cameron’s understanding, his mother was a light blueish-grey thestral, with a darker blue mane and wings.

Cameron sat on his couch staring at the face of his ‘friend’ briefly before standing and slinking down the hallway to his bedroom. He made his way across the space surrounded by 4 grey walls and the label in his mind that read: "bedroom", then opening the French doors to his closet. He then grabbed the only article of clothing in the large space. Hanging on a single wire hanger in the middle of the rack was a plain, black hoodie. This was one of the only aspects in his life that Cameron could say he thoroughly enjoyed. It was soft and comforting, yet sleek and appealing. He used his magic to pull the article off of the hanger and turned around, walking over to the bed while simultaneously closing the closet doors, and hopped up on the soft (but cold) memory foam bed.

This was another of the objects in Cameron’s possession that he thoroughly enjoyed. It was a king-size, grey sheeted bed with blackout drapes around the perimeter of the frame. The soft mattress was topped by only a heavy, darker grey comforter that shrouded the grey stallion in beautiful blackness as he slept.

Cameron levitated the black hoodie over his head and raised his hooves just beneath it. He lowered it until the inside shoulders of the hoodie met his own. Cameron reveled in the cool comfort of the soft fabric squirmed his body so as to stimulate more contact between the fabric and his fur. Using his magic to pull the hood over his shaggy black mane, he was careful not to dislodge the gages in the lobes of his tall ears. Well, tall for a regular pony’s ears anyway. Thestrals had taller ears than ponies did.

Satisfied, Cameron strode across the room, while only briefly glancing at the head-to-hoof mirror in the corner. He made his way back down the short hallway, back into his living room where his laptop glowed from the large ottoman that sat in the middle of his L-shaped couch. He pushed it so that it snugly fit into the corner of the couch and formed a sort of oversized lounge bed. He pulled himself up onto the couch and sat only a small way from the pinnacle of the corner.

He then levitated the TV remote over from the kitchen counter in the other room. Cameron had lived in this apartment so long, he could wander the space confidently in pitch black (and he had); let alone levitate a small object through the spacious doorways.

Cameron took note of this and thought, “No wonder my energy bill is so low…”

He used his magic to apply pressure to the power button on the remote turned on his other, more sizable ‘friend’ mounted on the wall. It was a sleek, black-rimmed flat-screen with the word “Pony” just under the center of the screen. The channel was on some national news station that Cameron didn’t even bother to learn the name of. He never actually watched the news. He knew it was all either lies or unimportant shit anyway. He instead used the noise of the droning news anchor as a sort of background static.

Cameron set the remote down on the ottoman, and then turned his attention over to the laptop sitting next to him. He levitated it in front of him and then, using his magic, opened a new tab in the browser.

“I’m so grateful for magically-enhanced computing”, he thought.

With this, Cameron turned off the part of his brain that cared about the real world, and dived into the only place where he felt at home…cyberspace.

Author's Note

So yeah this is my first attempt at writing a fanfic...ever. Constructive criticism is appreciated. I guess I can't really stop you from posting hate comments either...thanks for reading.