Mirroring Skies

Mirroring Skies

By Japko

Chapter two: Static

(written under the influence of Astral Projection, Henryk Górecki, LAKE R▲DIO)

Cider Drop, a Class-A earth pony, a proud and qualified citizen of Ponyville, and a member of the Apple Family, stared blankly at the monitor of her computer. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Was she dreaming? Was her best friend somehow pulling some kind of a joke on her? If it was real, it could mean she was in trouble. But also it would mean that she was right all along. That she wasn’t crazy. Unfortunately, the realization of being right didn’t make her happy. As a matter of fact, it was the final proof that her world was falling into pieces.

She felt a stream of cold sweat running down her neck as she repeated a calming mantra in her head to keep herself from panicking.

She was sure that the file she had saved the previous day was nothing more than pure code of the little helping program, which was supposed to keep her up to date. She could have sworn that she hadn’t put any code lines like this one.

And yet, the cursor merrily blinked at the end of a short note:

HELLO EQUESTRIA

“What have I done?” Cider whispered to a cup of hot, steaming coffee, sitting by the keyboard. “What the hay is happening?”

How did I even end up here?

* * *

Cider Drop was a member of the highest citizen class of the Ponyville’s hierarchy, and that meant she had basically everything that she could have asked for. Also, she was a member of the famous Apple Family, who always had the right to have more foals than any other citizens. That gave her a wonderful childhood among lots of brothers and sisters. The family had been overseeing the Ponyville’s apple orchards since forever, which meant she and her siblings had always had the biggest playground in the whole town. Of course it didn’t mean that the area was restricted for their use alone. Oh no, in Ponyville virtually everything belonged to everypony. So the groups of countless foals who visited Sweet Apple Acres to play were as much at home as Cider and the rest of the Apples, but still, none of the visitors could say that their families kept the apples flowing for the whole town.

Even since her youngest years, Cider Drop was aware that she was more intellectually developed than the rest of her siblings and most of her peers. She had learned to read soon after she had learned to speak. Her parents paid close attention to her interests and did what they could to help her expand the knowledge she felt like expanding herself. They knew that they were raising a potential Class-A citizen, and they really wanted to do a good job. She quickly found out that she was excellent at fast reading, math and logic, and, above all, computers.

As much as she loved to spend time with her brothers and sisters, she also quickly lost track of time whenever she was seated in front of a keyboard. She would put on a hoof adapter and immediately get lost in the world of bytes and code lines. Normal colts and fillies her age, when encountering a computer, preferred to use it for games and other entertainment purposes. Cider didn’t find playing games that interesting; she preferred to make them. For her, digital information was like clay – she could knead it, form into any desired shapes and make tools out of it. Tools and pieces of art, sometimes both.

Still, computers weren’t her only field of interest. She read tons of books from the Ponyville library. She was studying them so fast that she could safely claim that she knew more about the world than almost anypony from her family. Anypony, that is, except Applejack.

Applejack was the family’s matriarch, and Cider claimed that there was no pony wiser than her. A lot of what Cider she knew from books, Applejack knew first-hoof. She had been to so many places and had had so many adventures that it was hard to believe that all that was actually true. But Cider never, ever doubted Applejack.

“How old are you exactly?” she asked one day when, having found some obscure information about zebras, she went to see the matriarch to verify some details.

“Oh, sugarcube, ah’m old,” Applejack said in response.

“Yes, we all know you are,” the filly pressured, “but  h o w  old?”

“Like really, really old, mah dear…”

Applejack was definitely not a regular pony. Not only was she apparently older than anypony in town (was Cider the only one who found that strange?), not only did she speak with an extraordinary, unfamiliar accent, but she also had one very odd feature. On her flank she had an image of three red apples.

“What does that thing on your flank mean?”

“It’s a cutie mark, sugarcube. Y’all gonna get one someday too.”

“Get? But how? Is it painted or something?”

“Nah, ya’ll just get one, ya’ll see, everypony gets a cutie mark eventually…”

Sometimes it was really hard to understand Applejack and her obscure explanations, but Cider learned that it was sometimes better to let it go than run around in circles for hours. Still, she wanted to learn as much as possible from the old mare before it was her time to take part in the Test.

Until the Test, the filly spent much more time in her room with her books and computers than with her peers and family. Her parents didn’t oppose. “It’s a normal thing for a Class-A-to-be,” they would say. The Test was the most important two hours of a young pony’s life. The outcome of it attributed the participant to the suitable citizenship class. The higher ranked the class, the bigger the privileges, but also the harder and more demanding jobs. There was no way to train for the Test and no practice tests before it. It didn’t check the participant’s knowledge. It was all about intellect and ability to make appropriate decisions in different situations.

Cider aced the tests without any problems, even pointing out the examiner’s intentional mistake, which gave her an above-max score and provided her with the top society class. Her parents were so proud.

“Why do some ponies have those horns on their heads or wings on their sides? Is there some reason behind it? Is that some kind of atavism? What purpose do they serve?” she asked on her long sessions with Applejack from time to time.

In response, the matriarch always looked at her like it was the stupidest question she could think of. “Fer flyin’ and magic, of course! How doesn’t a smart gal like ya know that?”

“Applejack…” Cider Drop would always look calmly into the old pony’s eyes. “Ponies don’t fly. Those wings can’t hold such weight. And what in the world is magic?”

“Aw, stop wastin’ mah time, sugarcube…”

When Cider was younger, she always thought Applejack just had some mental problems caused by her old age, but she quickly realized there was a lot of very basic questions nopony seemed to have answers to, not only Applejack. For instance: why does the Sun rise and fall? Every pony she asked the question to, just shrugged and said, “Duh, it just does. Why are you obsessing over unimportant stuff?”

In the library, Cider found some books filled with strange tales about tall, godlike ponies who had both wings and horns, who were said to, by turns, bring out the Sun to start a day and the moon, to start the night. Never reasonable explanations, only fairy tales for little foals everywhere.

Why?

That was the question, which apparently nopony except her dared to ask. Even those few Class-A ponies she worked and talked with. Everypony seemed perfectly uninterested with the causality of the most basic and important things. More advanced issues? Of course, they were always ready to debate about, for example, the molecular changes in the newest attempts of making the ideal material to coat their chairs and beds. “If you add the appropriate amount of propyl chloride to the system and use the pressure of one atmosphere more during the polymerization process-“

“Sure,” Cider would cut in, “but tell me, where do we even perform those polymerization processes?”

“What do you mean where? In the factory about we talked about earlier. Don’t you remember?”

“And where is this factory?” She threw her hooves in the air.

“Fillydelphia, of course. Were you even paying attention?”

“More than you. Have you ever been to Fillydelphia?”

“No, not really.”

“Do you think anypony you know has ever been to Fillydelphia?”

“Are you feeling all right, Cider? You look pale, maybe you should skip the meeting today and have some rest.”

“I asked you a question!”

“And I’m pointing out the silliness of the question. Many ponies have been to Fillydelphia, even if not anyone from my closest surroundings. Many Traders come from there and there are a few companies that have their offices in Ponyville, but the majority of them are scattered around Equestria. How do you think all this would be possible if nopony was traveling between the cities?”

“I don’t know!” Cider hit the round table with her hoof and stormed out of the meeting hall.

The next day, nopony even remembered the argument. They didn’t care about it enough to remember it.

The frustration inside Cider grew stronger day after day, week after week, month after month. One day she called in sick and sneaked out of Sweet Apple Acres for something other ponies didn’t understand the point of – a walk. She grabbed a few apples to her saddlebags, and carefully, so nopony could see her, crossed the orchards to get to the main northern road. It ran close to the Everfree Forest, but never entered between its trees. The road had its start in the very center of Ponyville, where, in the middle of the big town square, rose a beautiful spiraling and metallic spire. It was used as the city hall and the nexus of everything important to the town. Cider worked in the spire, like almost every Class-A citizen. It was up to them to govern Ponyville. Cider often asked her co-workers what was up there in the upper levels, but no one knew the answer.

She felt a weak shiver down her spine when she first set her hoof on the road, leaving Ponyville behind her back. It was a strange feeling. She had never done anything like it before and it felt… unnatural. For some reason, a tiny voice inside her head was telling her that she was violating some kind of taboo. And static. She noticed a weak noise of static somewhere around the audibility threshold. She ignored it and took another step forward. Another step towards the nearest village called Bridleburg. It was famous for its salt mine and a beautiful elm in the middle. Cider’s ambition was to see the elm so many ponies talked about the very same day.

After a few more steps, the tiny voice and the strange noise went silent, and she finally let herself enjoy the scenery. It was a beautiful day. The sun shone strong, the birds and grasshoppers played a soothing symphony. The dirt road took a turn behind a hill which was a natural boundary of Sweet Apple Acres on the northern side. The land here wasn’t developed at all. Long and wide tracts of tall grass stretched towards the horizon.

Cider Drop found herself in a mood so good that she started to whistle as she walked. Leaving the town for a few hours just to spend some time with the nature felt really good. She could finally feel the tension she had built up for such a long time leave her mind and body.

The road she was walking on took many twists and turns. It went through some groves, encircled a few ponds, squeezed between small hills. But it had no ramifications anywhere. Cider found that rather strange; she had thought that there should be some stand-alone cottages on the way, but apparently there were none in sight.

Finally Cider stepped into a ravine, through which flowed a small stream. She happily sat by its side and ate one of her apples. She even used the stream to splash her face a bit with water. She closed her eyes, delighting in the refreshing, cold drops quickly drying on the heat.

When she opened them back, she felt her heart stop.

Down the road, beyond the ravine, rose a tall, twisted spire.

She threw the saddlebags on her back and galloped forward. The sudden panic squeezed her throat and the adrenaline hummed in her ears. Once she climbed the top, she fell on her haunches and shook her head in disbelief. Before her eyes, down the road, she could see the southern suburbs of Ponyville.

I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy… she repeated in her mind, circling around her room that evening with her computer turned on. She checked the maps in the library database, which she could browse via the information web that connected all the computers. As a Class-A, she had access to most databases in Ponyville. The only thing she couldn’t see were the Traders’ servers, probably because of some important data concerning their jobs.

The map showed that Bridleburg was straight north from Ponyville.

She couldn’t sleep at night. She decided she wouldn’t talk to anypony about this. They would think she was crazy anyway. But she wasn’t crazy. Something went wrong with the world while she wasn’t looking. After only a few hours of sleep, she woke up with a plan.

It was simple: once she got to the northern road again, she had to leave the route and to march north through the grass. First, she tried to stick to the edge of the Everfree Forest, but its line eventually bended towards the east, so she had to rely on her sense of direction. The farther she walked, the taller the grass became. Eventually it got even taller than her, but it didn’t worry her. She could always return by following her own tracks.

Having a limited range of sight, she almost walked into a wire fence. She wasn’t able to see it before, but now it was running in the direction perfectly perpendicular to her path. Cider frowned and turned east, parallel to the fence.

She walked a long way, checking her direction by the sun. At first she was walking east, but after some time she felt that her path turned south. The grass became progressively shorter again, and once she was able to stick her head out above its level, she saw exactly what she was afraid she would see.

The edge of the Everfree Forest.

During the night she went out once again, lying to her family that she had something to discuss personally with somepony from work. She sneaked into a shed and found a pair of wire-cutting pliers. Armed with the tool, she walked north again to find the fence. To her surprise she found out that the path she had trod earlier that day had already vanished. Dauntless, she stepped into the grass once again. The fence, to her slight relief (I’m not crazy!), was in its place. She brought the pliersout of her saddlebag and started to cut out a hole big enough for a pony to squeeze through. The other side wasn’t any different from the one she came from. The grass was exactly the same. However, Cider knew she was in a place where she wasn’t supposed to be.

She walked slowly and carefully, step after step.

“What are you doing?”

Cider covered her mouth to keep herself from screaming out loud. The adrenaline hit her momentarily, and she turned around, almost swinging the pliers but recognizing the voice in time. It was Candy Apple, her youngest sister.

“Candy, what the hay are you doing here?!” Cider hissed angrily, her heart still pounding like crazy.

“I could ask you the same thing,” the filly answered with a twinkle in her eye.

She was a smart kid. Not as smart as Cider was at her age, but she knew that the filly wouldn’t have any problems in becoming a strong Class-B citizen. Cider noted a long time ago that her little sister wasn’t exactly a regular pony. Candy Apple was an outsider and she was content with it. Not that she avoided contact with other ponies. She just preferred to stay a little bit outside, to watch and listen. She was an observer. Candy almost never took part in conversations, but she remembered every little detail of each. She also preferred to spend time with ponies older than herself. She seemed apathetic, and given that she rarely did anything if not asked, her actions were often shocking and unpredictable. One time she literally rode a fully mechanized apple harvester in order to see how exactly it worked. Another time, she tossed ten times too much yeast into the cider batch, spoiling at least ten barrels of it. No matter how serious trouble she put herself in, she was never embarrassed. She was proud of every action she could consider “research”. Candy Apple treated being caught red-hoofed a normal, everyday thing. Cider hoped that her little sister would turn out different than the rest of the mindless society.

This time it was no different. She just stood there with her brow raised and an ironic smile on her face.

“What I’m doing here,” Cider answered proudly, raising her head, “is none of your business. It’s a work-related thing. Only for Class-A citizens.”

“Yeah, sure. Class-A citizen’s work involves sneaking out in the middle of the night and cutting holes in fences,” Candy Apple mocked. “Seriously, what are you planning? I’m your sister. You can trust me.”

The yellow mare sighed. “Okay. But I’m not sure what to think of all this myself, so I don’t want you to jump into any conclusions either.”

The filly nodded energetically.

“Have you ever been outside of Ponyville?” the older pony asked rhetorically. She knew the answer was no. “Because yesterday I walked down the northern road to Bridleburg and after a while I found myself on the southern road, just outside of town. I did a circle while I was sure I was walking north all the time. Today I wanted to go straight north, but I found that every possible way out is blocked by this fence. And I wanted to see what’s outside. That’s why I cut the hole in it and I’m willing to go north and see what’s out there. You should go back home.”

Candy Apple’s eyes narrowed. “This doesn’t add up. We do get guests from outside of Ponyville every day. If the wire fence surrounds us everywhere, how do they get in and out? And why has nopony noticed it yet?”

Cider Drop bit her lip, listening to her sisters. Those were the exact same questions she had been asking herself over and over again. “I don’t know. But I will find out. I just need to- aah!”

As she spoke, she took a step forward. Unaware of any obstacles in her way, she hit something hard with her head. The blow knocked her off, and she fell on the ground. She looked up, massaging her forehead. There was nothing in sight. Only air and grass.

“What happened?” Candy Apple trotted towards her, worried.

“I don’t know, I just…” The mare reached out her hoof. It rested on something solid, but she couldn’t see anything. Like the air concentrated at some point. She moved her hoof around and realized that the surface was much bigger. Cider stood up, feeling the adrenaline once again filling her veins. She took a look back. As she predicted, the direction of the invisible barrier was running in a direction parallel to the fence. Trying to ignore the panic, she looked closer. It wasn’t made of anything. It looked like just more meadow like the terrain behind her, but it was rock solid.

The panic hit her eventually. She finally began to understand, and her thoughts dashed like crazy. Pieces started falling on their places, creating complete images of countless possible explanations.

But the conclusion was simple. They were trapped. There was no way out. Ponyville was a cage, and the ponies inside were nothing more but rats, not even aware that they were imprisoned all this time. All their lives in one town. Rats.

“Cider… what does it mean?” Candy Apple looked at her with her eyes filled with a mixture of confusion and fear. “What is going on?”

But Cider couldn’t hear her anymore. She turned around with static flooding her ears and ran away. Not even sure where, not even aware she was running. She jumped through the hole, cutting a long scar on her side with a protruding wire. She didn’t even feel the pain.

Cider came back to her senses just when she found herself back on the road. She realized that she had left her sister behind, but by the moving surface of the ocean of grass she could tell that the filly was almost keeping up.

“Cider, please expla- you’re bleeding!” Candy exclaimed, jumping out onto the dirt road.

“It’s just a small cut.” The mare shook her head. “Candy, listen to me. What we just saw was probably something we should have never seen. And I’m afraid that if somepony finds out that we know there’s an invisible wall around Ponyville, we will be in serious trouble. I mean, if there really is anypony who knows what is going on. That’s why”- she put hooves on her sister’s shoulders –“ you have to promise me that you will not tell anyone what you saw here tonight. Anypony. Not even your friends, not even our parents. Do you promise?”

The filly nodded.

“Promise!”

“Okay, I promise.” Candy took a step aside, freeing from Cider’s hooves. “But I don’t understand anything…”

“Neither do I.” The older sister hid face in her hooves. “But I will find out… somehow. As for now, we have to get back home before someone notices we’ve been away for too long.”

She couldn’t sleep that night either.

Her thoughts were galloping, and she couldn’t stop them. Circling roads, fences, walls, cages, rats, rats, rats…

There had to be an explanation for all that. The primary assumption was that she wasn’t crazy. She couldn’t be crazy. But the world was mad for sure. When did it go mad? And how? And, most importantly, why?

She kept fighting with her thoughts almost till dawn. Finally, she fell asleep.

She met Candy Apple by the barn, playing fetch with their dog.

“Hey, sis!” the filly shouted, throwing the stick away as hard as she could. “Did you sleep well?”

“Listen, Candy.” Cider leaned close to her sister. “About last night. I hope you didn’t say a word to anypony.”

“Last night?” Candy grabbed the stick the dog brought back to her and took another swing. “What about last night? Did I miss something?”

“Come on,” the mare laughed nervously, looking around, “I know you promised you’d keep it a secret, but there’s nopony here except you and me.”

The filly furrowed her brow as she turned to her. “Are you feeling alright? I spent the whole night in bed. In fact, I went to sleep earlier than I normally do.”

“You… what?” Cider Drop took a step back. “You don’t remember last night?”

“I remember it pretty we-” the filly stopped. “Actually, I’m not sure what I was doing before going to sleep, huh. But I know I was in bed virtually right after supper.”

Cider fell on her haunches.

I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy, I’m not crazy…

“By the way,” the filly said, throwing the stick again, “what is that thing on your side? Did you cut yourself? It looks painful.”

The scar! It wasn’t a dream or a hallucination. She had proof, physical proof that the actions of the night really took place. But why didn’t Candy remember anything? She was there as well. Maybe it wasn’t her after all? Maybe it was somepony who pretended to be her? Or maybe it was her, but some ponies came and erased her memory? What if…

No! she shouted inside her head. I’m not crazy, and I won’t let paranoia defile my reasoning. Something was evidently wrong, but there were neither any pony doppelgangers nor mysterious ponies who changed other ponies’ memory.

But what Candy had said made her realize one thing for certain: she was alone. Nopony except her even realized anything was wrong. She knew, and that meant there was something wrong with her. Just like in her programs, a bug in the system, which opened some new doors of possibilities. She hadn’t even realized when she became the rat who gained self-awareness. She was the bug.

Once Cider came back into her room, she tried to think of some sort of strategy that could lead her anywhere from that point. She had no idea where to start. She didn’t know what to look for. She didn’t know how to look for even the shadows of truth behind the thick veil of lies she had grown up with. Cider felt like a little foal thrown into the ocean. And she couldn’t swim.

Where the supposed truth would be anyway? For a Class-A citizen almost nothing was hidden. She had access to anything she could ask for…

Except for the Traders.

Nopony knew anything about the Traders.

“Have you ever talked to a Trader?” she asked Paint Brush, one of her co-workers the same day during a break when they were making some coffee.

“No. Why would I?” He grabbed his cup and threw two sugar cubes into the coffee. “I have no business with them. I don’t run any stores around town.”

“I don’t know.” Cider shrugged. “It’s just that they feel a bit… mysterious, don’t you think?”

“Why?”

“Oh well… They never stay here for a longer while. Just arrive and leave the same day. They barely talk to anypony, except for those who they’re trading with.” She observed her Paint Brush’s face very carefully as she spoke. “I wish I could talk to one of them someday.”

“What’s the problem then? You can talk to one when they arrive next time.”

Of course she could. But she wasn’t stupid. Observation was way more important than taking any actions. And apparently she was the only sane person in a town full of blind ponies. She didn’t want to draw any attention and blow her cover in front of the only ponies who supposedly knew anything more. There had to be someone or something behind all this, and Cider was pretty sure the Traders were the key.

She didn’t want to be a lab rat. She wanted to be a hunter, and the truth was her prey. She knew she couldn’t just run towards her prey, screaming. She had to be clever.

“Applejack, when was the last time you left Ponyville?” she asked in the evening.

“Ah can’t really remember, sugarcube,” the matriarch mused. “Why do ya ask?”

“Try to recall some memories. I just want to know things, like always.”

“Like always,” Applejack chuckled. “Ah do remember lotsa travels very clearly, ya know. It’s not like ah forgot them. Mah friends and I traveled all over Equestria long time ago…”

“And who are those friends? Or were? Where are they now?” Cider bit her lip. Her heart pounded in her chest.

“Ah don’ really know. They must have left some day, is all…”

“You don’t care what your best friends are doing? How do you know they’re even alive? Applejack, look at me!” Cider stood up and stepped forward. The matriarch looked her in the eyes. These were the same eyes that she remembered since her youngest years. She believed they were filled with wisdom and memories, with knowledge only she knew… But just then she realized how empty and dead they were. Applejack stared at her without any spark in her eyes. Like a lifeless doll. An animal.

A rat.

“I’m not crazy! I’m not crazy!” Cider Drop circled around her room. The so-called top tier brains, the Class-A citizens were blind morons. Her mentor was a soulless puppet. She caught her own reflection in the mirror. Her green mane was messy, and her eyes had dark rings around them.

Cider felt a sudden strike of anger. She raised her hoof, ready to smash the mirror to pieces. “Everything here is fake. How do I even tell if I’m real in this whole mess?”

She put down her hoof. The mirror was the only thing in which she still saw some hope. As long as she could see sanity in her own eyes, she knew she had to keep going. “If I go insane, everything will be lost,” she whispered to herself.

She had a plan. She knew where to start.

The answer lay inside her best friends. The friends who had never failed her, and who were always sane and logical. The friends who always listened and who she trusted with her whole heart.

Cider Drop turned on the computer.

She had access to everything except the secure data of the Traders? It was the high time to change that.

It wasn’t an easy task. The algorithms they used to secure the connections were good, and she didn’t have any experience in dealing with those. She could only rely on her own intelligence. Cider had created a few data locks herself, but she had never tried breaking any. It was a real challenge.

And Cider loved challenges.

She spent almost the whole night trying different approaches. Taking only a few hours of sleep again, she started her assault as soon as she woke up, with a big portion of an apple pie and a huge cup of black coffee. It was Saturday, so she had two days for herself. Hours passed quickly, but the system always managed to outsmart her.

It was a tough battle. Reflecting on the screen, she could see her mane becoming messier and messier with each passing minute. Her brain begged her for a break, and her eyes were bone-dry. But she refused to give up. Cider knew she would be able to break through.

And finally, as Sunday evening waned, she did it. Almost falling on her face, sleep deprived and starved. She barely kept herself from letting out an excited shout.

Before her eyes, on the computer screen, she could see countless charts of incomprehensible data. Encoded, or maybe abbreviated lines and numbers went to infinity. Cider found it hard to believe that so much information could even be stored somewhere. She didn’t understand a single thing, so she decided to leave it all for later. There were other things to see there.

Cider didn’t really care for the trading data. She knew what Ponyville exported and imported. What she wanted to see the most were the connection logs. If there was any data on the servers, it meant it had to be sent from somewhere. Cider hoped she could unveil some of the addresses potentially from outside Ponyville.

Getting the logging data wasn’t as much work from that point. She quickly found the list, which, as it turned out, didn’t have any extra protection.

The list was bigger than she had expected. Instead of two, maybe three external addreses, there were over a dozen of them. Almost all the addresses had the same initial numbers, which meant they belonged to the same source. They all had to belong to the Traders. But there was another address, that didn’t match the rest. And it wasn’t a Ponyville address either.

Somepony else must have broken into the system as well. Somepony else decided to infiltrate the database of the Traders. It led to a very simple conclusion: there was something out there. There had to be. Excited with her new discovery, but too tired to investigate it further she quickly created a simple file, which she hid between the countless trading logs. Its purpose was to track the connections and give her information about any new data that appeared in the database.

Making sure that the file was invisible, she turned off her machine and finally went to sleep.

The next day was Monday, so she had to wake up early. She got up before her normal time and, after making a cup of coffee, turned on the computer to see what had happened during the night. She knew that all the trading data had to flow regardless of the time of day and night, so she expected her little spy to be flooded with a lot of unintelligible data and paths to the sources. When she opened the output file and saw that it was empty, she furrowed her brow. “Nothing? Really?” she muttered. She immediately broke into the database again and saw that indeed a lot of fresh charts had appeared during the night. Her program wasn’t working, even though she had checked it before going to bed. Frowning at her own obvious mistake, she opened the code.

And all the blood in her veins froze instantly and the static hit her ears.

Between the lines, messing up the code continuum, she found two capitalized words.

HELLO EQUESTRIA.