Chapter 0: Vi (ORIGINAL/RUBBISH VERSION)
Vinyl Scratch is a neon white unicorn pony. She is 21 years old, lives with her roommate, Octavia, and makes her living as a DJ at the local nightclub.
Octavia Melody is an ash gray earth pony. She is 23 years old, lives with her roommate, Vinyl, and makes her living as a cellist at posh gatherings.
Vinyl Scratch made her way home after a particularly successful gig. It was nearly eight, and Octavia would undoubtedly be sitting in her chair, having left Vinyl’s dinner in the fridge, wrapped up in a metallic food paper. Octavia did not particularly like eating dinner alone, but she understood how important Vinyl’s work was to her. It was only 4 nights a week, after all. None of this was on Vinyl’s mind at the moment.
It was a good show, and everypony loved it, everypony loved her, just like always. And that was a problem. It could have been much better. It should have been much better, but it wasn’t any different from the last two gigs. Vinyl pondered on this for a while, and decided she should look into getting new equipment. She’d had the same stuff for almost 4 years, after all. This would have to wait until tomorrow, as Octavia’s cooking was far more important than Vinyl’s music.
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Octavia Melody sat alone in her chair, on her side of the house, reading one of Vinyl’s books. Vinyl Scratch doesn’t have many books, and has never been caught reading. She did have a few, however, and every so often Octavia Melody would walk into Vinyl’s room, and catch her hastily shoving something under her computer desk, blushing, violently embarrassed. Octavia liked to think she had caught Vinyl reading, and was polite enough to not ask about it.
Octavia liked to read Vinyl’s books while she was out. It wasn’t that she felt lonely without Vinyl, it just took her mind off things a little. Without anything occupying her attention, Octavia would be pacing around the house, searching every room for any sign of change. These changes she checked for never came, of course, and this would stress the poor pony out. Vinyl scratch does not particularly enjoy Octavia’s being stressed out. Octavia decided she should put the book down, as it was almost eight, and Vinyl would be back any moment. The door opened, and a blindingly white pony walked into the house.
“Yo Octypus, guess who’s home? What’s cookin’, babe?” Vinyl Scratch grinned at that last word.
“Please stop calling me those things,” Octavia replied, reddening slightly, as she dug Vinyl’s metallic paper-wrapped food out of the fridge.
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Elsewhere in Ponyville, a slightly manic, and very purple princess was giggling with brilliance as she began scribbling headache-inducing diagrams on a large slab of non-metallic paper.
It was going to be a long night for Twilie, as she had just come home from the local nightclub. It was not normal for Twilie to visit nightclubs, but she felt like loosening up a little. Besides, maybe she’d have met a nice pony to bring home and read with. She didn’t, but she did find new inspiration. This sudden blast of inspiration came from a very white unicorn, and a very large amount of cider. Under normal circumstances, Twilie would have told herself that this thing she was planning was impossible, and obnoxious. Tonight, however, Twilie was “feeling particularly inspired”.
As the sun began to rise over the small town of Ponyville, Twilie’s newest creation was almost ready for its first test run. She fiddled with a few wires, tweaked some jargon in her note book, and booted up her device. She was feeling very tired, and very hungover, but that’s ok.
The device resembled a large black brick, with a few wires jutting out here and there. On one side, which could be called the front, two letters were spray-painted in an obnoxious shade of white. These two letters were “V” and “I”, making “VI” when you put them together. On another side, there was a small screen with a built in keyboard beneath it, some knobs, and a large, friendly ON/OFF switch. Opposite of this was a very thick cable that connected VI to one of the walls of Twilie’s laboratory.
Very tiredly, Twilie flipped the switch to “ON”, and waited a moment. Nothing happened. And then something did happen. Twilie jumped as everything in the house shut down, and everything went pitch black. A few moments later, the screen lit up, displaying two words.
“Greetings, User!” Vi’s electronic voice echoed semi-faintly from within the electronic brick. Twilie sleeplessly giggled to herself with very mundane excitement. She hadn’t decided if this excitement was for an earth shattering advancement in technology, or for her upcoming slumber.
Vi was a program Twilie had scribbled up. It was an artificial intelligence, designed to make a DJ’s job much, much easier. Vi would be capable of reading a crowd’s mood-atmosphere, and suggest songs to it’s user. In the event than no user were on board, Vi would function perfectly well on “her” own, as a replacement, auto-DJ. Vi had a very pony-like personality, and would be able to hold realistic and comfortable conversations with just about anypony.
None of this had been tested yet, of course, because the purple mare who built Vi flipped the switch to “OFF” and was startled when all the very bright lights came back on. Twilie felt like crying. Twilie did not appreciate the bright lights turning on all of a sudden. Twilie turned them off. She would waddle up to her bed, pass out for a few days, and wake up to find that this was all a drunken, sleep deprived dream. Artificial intelligences were preposterous. She would wake up to find a mess of electronics and metal scattered around her lab.
When Twilie finally woke up a few days later, she waddled down to her laboratory with a cup of coffee, to see what horrors her drunk self left for her to discover. What she found was astonishing in every way. A very large electronic brick named Vi waited for Twilie’s return. There was no way such an amazing piece of futuristic technology could be sitting here, in her lab. There was positively no way in Tartarus that such an amazing brick could have been crafted in a single night, but an absurdly drunken unicorn.. and yet, there it was. Accompanying it, a small purple dragon, giggling at the screen, as Vi told the dragon a couple of jokes.
“Oh, uh, hey Twilight! Have you met Vi? She’s a pretty cool brick, if you ask me,” the purple dragon said, startled by the purple pony’s sudden arrival.
“Spike, you know you aren’t supposed to be in here. Why are you messing with my stuff? That’s delicate machinery, Spike!” the mare replied.
It was difficult to be angry at the miniature dragon. Afterall, he had been testing out Vi, and they seemed to be getting along quite well, which was a good sign.
Twilie walked over to Spike, and looked upon the screen, smiling lightly. It was a nice day, maybe she’d go outside and say ‘hi’ to her friends. After that, who knows. Better yet, who cares?
“Spike, why don’t we go outside? It’s a pretty nice day out, maybe you can play the the Cutiemark Crusader,” Twilie suggested to the small dragon beside her.
“Hey, yea, I could tell them all about Vi! They’d love to meet her,” said Spike.
“Dude, that sounds hoopy, I’d love to meet them!” Vi said excitedly. Twilie smiled at the screen again, and told it to shut up.
“End of Line.” appeared on the screen in blue letters, and faded away to black. Spike climbed up on Twilie’s back, and they walked up the stairs to the main tree-castle-house, and out the door. It was very cold, very cloudy, and raining very heavily.
“Twilight, what did she mean by ‘hoopy’?” Spike asked, to which Twilie replied;
“I dunno, Spike. I haven’t worked out all the kinks in her system yet, so she’ll probably be a little cooky for some while.”
“Wait, so Vi isn’t a pony in a box? Huh.. that’s weird. Cool too, though, I guess,”
Twilie giggled as she carried spike across the cold, wet, and empty roads of Ponyville.
“No Spike, not that kind of kink! I meant little imperfections in the code,” said the purple pony princess to the purple dragon child.
“Huh?” he replied.
“Nothing, Spike,” Twilie said, giggling softly to herself.
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On the other side of Ponyville, in a mid-sized home, appearing to be stitched together halves of two houses built with completely different styles and colors, Vinyl Scratch was violently bashing her face into her computer desk, screaming very loudly in frustration.
Despite this being perfectly normal behavior for Vinyl Scratch, Octavia Melody found herself somewhat concerned.
Chapter 1: Vi (NEW/IMPROVED VERSION)
Vinyl Scratch looked upon the disc excitedly, as she held it in her hooves. Vinyl was to put this disc into her computer, once it booted up. While she waited, Vinyl reflected on the instructions Twilie gave her for installing the program.
Vinyl Scratch had collaborated with Princess Twilight Sparkle over the course of several weekends, to create the perfect DJ mixing software. This program called Vi was going to make Vinyl’s job much, much easier. Creating electronic music , or even simply blending a transition between songs was rather difficult, and required some rather expensive equipment. Vinyl was rather good at these things, and many more, but Vi was going to change all of this. Starting now, remixing music was going to be much easier, and much less time consuming. This program called Vi had finished installing.
Staring at the screen, Vinyl Scratch took a deep breath, taking in every moment as she launched the program. Vinyl’s mind was racing, as she was already crafting music in her head. After a moment, the screen lit up, as Vi was ready for work. Vinyl Scratch set to work immediately.
***
Octavia Melody came to the door of her home. Her neon white roommate Vinyl Scratch, would have gotten her new DJ thing today. Octavia would know this, as this program has been the only topic of Vinyl’s discussions for the past several weeks. Octavia opened the door, expecting to find Vinyl charging in circles around the house, acting like a young filly on Hearth’s Warming Eve.
The house was silent, save for the soft rummaging of Octavia’s returning. Octavia quietly wandered from room to room, checking to see if Vinyl had passed out somewhere again. I hope she hasn’t passed out in the vents again, like last Wednesday.. what a disaster that was.
“Vinyl?” Octavia had found an apparently dead Vinyl Scratch lying on the floor. The white unicorn was sprawled out on the floor with her face under the chair, buried in a wad of electric blue hairs. The white mess moaned at the gray pony.
“Vinyl?” Octavia asked the mess softly, “Vinyl, what’s wrong?”
Vinyl Scratched replied with “It doesn’t work.”
“Why? What’s wrong with it?”
“I dunno.. it’s corrupt.”
“Corrupt?”
“Yea.”
Octavia Melody had no idea what this meant. Conveniently, Vinyl Scratch was perfectly aware of her roommate’s unknowing.
“There’s something broken in the code, or something.”
Octavia now understood that corruption in computers is bad.
“Have you tried talking to Princess Twilight about it?” Octavia suggested, knowing this wasn’t particularly helpful. Vinyl moaned again, and Octavia asked why she hadn’t seen Twilight about the disc.
“Because I’m busy..”
“Doing what?”
“Rotting on the floor. I think I read somewhere, if you lay on the floor long enough, the sweat and stuff in your skin welds you to the ground, kinda”
“That’s wonderful, Vinyl.”
