Bro, Your Autism is Showing
Shining bald heads, thousands of them, breaking free from the darkness and flowing upwards in a slew of grime and water. Many were rotten, damaged; some were accompanied by rocks or dead grass; most were clean.
My already massive Idahoan nostrils flared, vacuuming up the wholesome smell of mud, rot, body odor, and hot, welded metal.
"Ah, potatoes," I said with a pleasant smile. That smile immediately turned into a scowl as a potato-I-kid-you-not-was-about-a-foot-long-welcome-to-Idahoan-soil-volcanic-soil-that's-filled-with-Antrhax-witch-is-not-good-for-humans-but-actually-pretty-good-for-potatoes came and clocked me on the head from far above, likely dislodged by the foot of some carless illegal immigrant person of hipsanic origin from the catwalks above.
The force of the blow made me loose my balance and and, swearing, I toppled headfirst into a massive puddle, and suddenly I was completely submerged and surrounded by darkness.
Then, with a massive heave of the lungs and a drastic change of scenery, I was awake, sitting at my desk at two in the morning.
"Friggin' Wada Farms," I murmered, rubbing my eyes, "third day in a row they worked me for fifteen hours. Now I'm having damn nightmares about the place."
Tired and bored, I slouched back, and my eyes combed through the clutter of my desk, washing over the many empty Dr. Pepper and Mtn. Dew cans, the cartridges, the old pony plushies, and the books; books on topics ranging from HTML and Java to old Chinese texts and Medieval History to literally everything ever written by Neil Gaiman ever.
Then they turned up to my glaring monitors and I remembered what I was doing.
"Ah. That video's not gonna edit itself, is it?"
About an hour and a half later I gave up, because trying to make an interesting and informative anime analysis video while also trying to make it something of an artsy personal journal is sort of stupid and weird and decided to upload what I had and hope it didn't get too many dislikes. After I had fired up the exporter, I popped open some of that good 'ole Team Fortress 2, ready to Ninjaneer all the Blus into the depths of oblivion.
However, when I opened up the server tab, the game claimed that I was not, in fact, connected to the internet.
Alt-tabbing out I dscovered that Hitfilms was also telling me that the upload to YouTube had failed.
"Gaaaaah! Cocksucking Digis!"
It took me all of ten seconds to storm all the way downstairs to the modem and saw that, sure enough, the lights were telling me to go slide a cactus up my backside.
Anything's a dildo if you're brave enough, I guess.
I did the standard troubleshooting and unplugged the thing, waited ten seconds, and plugged it back in.
Only slightly more calmly, I went upstairs and waitied for my internet icon to give the all-clear sign.
It never did.
Full of autistic, internet-craving rage I snatched up my cheap, dumb "I-spent-all-my-money-on-caffeine-and-anime-merch" flip phone and dialed Digis' customer service, which I have memorized, because get Cable One.
After four rings, the universe again shat on me and I learned that Digis had evidently vanished into Satan's anus and that their number was no longer availible.
Still irate but also somewhat confused I rose to again check the modem. On the way down for the second time, listening for human activity, my ears caught something that they hadn't last time: the unmistakable hum of my backup generator.
"What the hell?"
Peering into the garage I saw that, indeed, it was running, having been switched on automatically by some power outage.
The logical part of my brain said that, because it was indeed winter, the power might have simply gone out. But the other, much much bigger part of my brain dully informed me that the Communist Pedophiles From the Dark Net had finally found me and had teamed up with the Goverment and were unwittingly giving me the chance to become the first martyr for the Second American Revolution, and as I sat back down in my worn office chair I put my rifle in my lap and removed the lock in my mag well, for absolutely no conceivable reason, whatsoever.
And so I sat in the darkness, my mind having a million different songs stuck in my head, that very same head playing a billion different demented scenes from the Lovecraftian abyss.
"Oh Nakashima-sama, if you hand't killed Nia, Gurren Lagann would be better than Kill la Kill."
A noise came from outside: a footstep in the snow.
"But you did. So it's not," I said absent-mindedly, racking a round into my chamber.
After my shoulders were draped with bandoliers, my gas mask was donned, and my mind completely gone, I kicked my front door open, humming the theme song from Sherlock Holmes, for extra craziness.
About a dozen eyes looked back at me in the moonlight, too low to the ground and very, very large.
Josef Stallion sat at his massive desk, empty vodka bottles strewn about, smoking his pipe and stroking his moustache. Because what the hell else did he ever do.
His walls panelled with fine wood and decorated with paintings, his carpet a purple velvet, and his ceiling vaulted, Stallion's two large doors swung open, his butler standing there, looking bored.
"Well?" Stallion eventually asked, "what is it?"
"Sir," replied the butler, "our stallions at the Siberian Line have reported a very strange light in the sky; almost like a comet, they say, but it landed without a sound."
"And these are the stallions to whom I already banned the vodka shipping due to reports exactly like this, yes?"
"Yes."
"Do you think they figured out how to make alcohol with their piss?"
"I don't know, sir."
Stallion sighed, his one hoof rubbing his temple.
"Tell them to investigate," he eventually commanded, sing-song like, "and if it comes to nothing, send ther families up there with them and leave them all to freeze."
Instruments clacked and ticked; machines buzzed; chemicals boiled, and great ancient books sat. And—Twilight Sparkle snuck a cigarette.
It's not like there were ever any rules against it; Princesses can essentially do whatever they want, naturally; however, Twilight couldn't help but feel that cigarettes and Princesses didn't quite go together—that if she were to be seen by any of her subjects, she would become less popular. Or something.
But, in the dark recesses of her basement laboratory, she could be a little more loose with her image.
Jotting data down with her quick, precise scribbles, Twilight examined the things her metal contraptions spat out.
Some read the Earth, other read the sky; some read the darkness, others—the light.
But the most precious of all were those that read the æther. The edge of oblivion. Those places that can't really be named, that, by simple observation, can be entirely changed. Twilight's magic could not help the laws of deep physics, but someone had to watch.
And watch she did.
Then things got a little crazy.
Before, everything was a buisy hubbub, but suddenly the machines began to spit out paper charted and graphed at an alarming rate.
Momentarily stunned, tail swishing absent-mindedly, cigarette hanging limply from her lip, Twilight eventually leapt into action, snatching up the rolls and attempting to organize them.
"Spike!" she cried, her guilty pleasure dropping onto the wooden ground, quickly stomped out by a single hoof.
The summoned appeared and expertly began to assist Twilight.
"Ghalee, Twi," he commented, using one claw to wave away some lingering strands of smoke, "I thought you'd stopped that."
"No," Twilight responded curtly, still flailing at the pages, "I've just learned to do it where no one was watching."
Spike shook his head, somewhat amused and bewildered, and finally the machines returned to normal.
After examining the paper, the two exchanged glances.
"Well something is most certainly going on up north of here. Something big."
"I guess," Spike said, not really understanding the majority of the data, and Twilight lit another cigarette.
