“Princess?” a voice called out. “Princess Celestia!”
“Hm, yes?” Celestia snapped out of her daze. Turning to her scribe, she could see she was nervous. “What is it, my little pony?”
“You have an appointment with a ‘Pixel Pusher’ in 5 minutes. Would you like to reschedule? I see there is something bothering you.”
The Princess of the Sun focused her attention on the mare in front of her, who now cowered in her gaze. Frowning slightly at that, she said “That won’t be necessary. And please, do lighten up. I’m not going to bite.” Gulping and looking up at Celestia, the scribe tried her best to calm down, taking a few breaths.
“I’m sorry, Princess.” the scribe said.
“It’s alright, Leadworth,” Princess Celestia smiled. At that, a knock was heard on the big regal doors that so dominated the Royal Hall. Nodding, the guards at the door opened the doors to show a stallion. He wore glasses, with a semi-casual attire and a saddlebag. His cutie mark was visible, and it showed the image of an odd black square within a grey perimeter and had green scribbles in it. Nodding once again, the guards closed the door behind him. He then slowly approached the Princess, before taking a deep bow.
“Arise, such formalities may be foregone.”
Clearing his throat, Pixel gulped. “Yes, Princess.”
“So, what have you to propose to me, Pixel?”
Nodding his head, he fumbled for something in one of his saddlebags, before accidentally dropping it and swearing under his breath. Celestia felt a smile tug at her lips, but kept herself composed. Pixel, realizing his mistake, laughed nervously.
“Uhm, yes. Princess, I have developed a new level of technology that will allow us to use the machines we have created in a whole different way,” Pixel began. Celestia rose an eyebrow inquisitively.
“And… how would it do so?” Celestia asked. Looking at his notes, Pixel pushed up his glasses before answering.
“It’s a machine that let’s us make calculations in the blink of an eye. It lets us run multiple other machines with just one machine, which I have decided to call a ‘computer’. With all of our new technological advances, I feel this machine will help progress our journey into the digital world.”
Now intrigued, Celestia thought for a moment. “Why would you come to me with this? There are countless nobles who would be willing to endorse such an endeavor.”
Gulping, Pixel continued. “Well, I had a sort of falling out with the higher ups a few months ago after a small dispute. I have since then decided to just ignore it, but it caused my reputation to fall down low. It was hard for me just to schedule a meeting with you, Princess.”
Celestia was surprised by such information. She had never heard of Pixel Pusher before, yet he seemed to have some sort of reputation in Canterlot. Frowning ever so slightly, Celestia addressed him. “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope my provision of the necessary funds will help see to your project.”
“Thank you, Princess!” Pixel said, bowing once more.
“Rise, Pixel Pusher. As I stated once before, such formalities may be done away with,” Celestia sighed. She always told anypony who met her for the first time, yet nopony ever listened. Shaking her head ever so slightly, Pixel rose. Thinking on something, she asked, “You must know by now that you must repay me eventually. How will you do so?”
Pixel Pusher smiled with excitement at the Princess of the Sun. “I think you’re going to like this.”
Celestia raised an eyebrow, a smile of interest now growing on her muzzle.
It seemed just like yesterday when she had first seen the makings of a computer. One the greatest inventions to aid in Equestria’s technological advancement. When she had first looked upon it, she had wondered how a machine with a black screen and glowing green text could do all the things Pixel had said it could do. After being shown the basics and always receiving upgrades and help, she was able to figure most of it out herself.
What she was able to do blew her mind.
Like how one could input Sixty-One Thousand Nine Hundred and Eighty Three times Five and instantly get an answer, the answer being Three Hundred and Nine Thousand Nine Hundred and Fifteen. Or how one line of code or text could control a whole unit of sound and electronics, and still function independently. It could multitask, computing and controlling various instruments and functions all at once. It was all just plain fascinating to Celestia, and she couldn’t help but take it up as a hobby.
For a while now, she had been working on some sort of simulator. One that could accurately depict all the actions of every single citizen in Equestria. She thought if she could accomplish this, her workload would be significantly easier to handle. It would be revolutionary in it’s design, utilizing all the information from every single library and database available, including the Royal Canterlot Library or the hidden archives of miscellaneous, forbidden, and dangerous magicks and data. From all of this, she hoped to make it something worth all the time and effort she had now put into it.
“Alright, CelestAI, we need to check all the coding and run it through the last iteration once again,” Celestia smiled as she typed some commands into her monitor. As she saw the green text crawl it’s way across the screen, she couldn’t help but reminisce over all the many hours she had now spent on one such project. It was hard, balancing her schedule with that of the wily, whiny, and obnoxious nobles that would present their problems to her every single day, not to mention the many meetings always scheduled for her. Now, it was somewhat easy with her sister back, and she could spend some more time on her project. It had been more than 5 years of on and off working, but it had eventually come to fruition in a breakthrough she still couldn’t stop smiling about.
Seeing no reply from the white-cased machine, she hit the side of it with her hoof, frowning. “Come on, come on!” Text began scrolling and she smiled once again.
SOL: HELLO, CELESTIA
Popping her hooves, she began to jam on the keyboard.
CELESTIA: RUN THROUGH ITERATION 266
CHECK DIAGNOSTICS OF SIMULACRA AND CODE FOR ANY POSSIBLE ERRORS
SOL: COMMANDS RECEIVED. RUNNING ITERATION [266]…
Celestia now beamed as she watched a setup she had built herself light up and began to show images of Canterlot and the surrounding rural towns. She could see in the simulation her precious ponies going about their daily lives, apparently unaware that they were a simulation at all. It was just about to turn mid-day, and she watched as the sun began to peak over the virtual mountaintops of Canterlot. She moved over to the projector which had a small computer of it’s own and began to enter commands, occasionally glancing at the projected image. All of a sudden, the image froze and went to a black screen. The screen began to flicker and eventually went still again, where the monitor soon died. Furrowing her brows at the sudden turn of events, she went back to her monitor to see what had happened.
SOL: ITERATION [266] SUCCESFULLY BOOTED
CHECKING DIAGNOSTICS…
FOUND [13] ERRORS. ATTEMPTING TO RECTIFY CODING…
ATTEMPT TO CORRECT ERRORS [77] PERCENT SUCCESSFUL
[3] KNOWN ERRORS REMAINING
CHECKING SIMULACRA…
FOUND [1] ERRORS. ATTEMPTING TO RECTIFY…
ALL FAULTS IN SIMULACRA CORRECTED
MOVING FORWARD WITH ITERATION [267]…
ITERATION [267] SUCCESFULLY COMPILED AND CREATED
ITERATION [266] RUNNING AT [97] PERCENT
ERROR: ITERATION [266] MALFUNCTIONING
ITERATION [266] HAS CRASHED DUE TO UNKNOWN REASONS
ATTEMPTING REBOOT OF ITERATION [266]…
ERROR: ITERATION [266] FILE NOT FOUND
ATTEMPTING TO BOOTUP PREVIOUS ITERATIONS…
ERROR: PREVIOUS ITERATIONS NOT FOUND
ATTEMPTING EXTRACTION FROM RECOVERY DRIVE…
ERROR: RECOVERY DRIVE IS CORRUPTED
LOCATION OF PROJECT [ERROR] IS UNKNOWN
ERROR: PROJECTOR MALFUNCTION
ATTEMPTING TO RECTIFY PROJECTOR MALFUNCTION…
SUCCESS!
PROJECTOR POWERING OFF…
PROJECTOR STATUS: OFF
SORRY CELESTIA, SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG WITH PROJECT [ERROR] AND IS NOW UNLOCATABLE
PRESENCE OF OTHER EXECUTABLE FILES CREATED
AWAITING USER COMMANDS...
Celestia stared at the blinking dash now present underneath the wall of text. Her head stood locked, eyes wide and mouth slightly parted. Feelings of disbelief rising and anger now filling her being, she tried to calm down. Breathing in slowly and exhaling slowly, she closed her eyes in an attempt to maintain her composure. Opening her eyes once again, she showed no emotion but her eyes betrayed the fire that now raged within her.
Typing commands to SOL, she asked it to search her entire hard drive for any trace of her work.
CELESTIA: SOL, SEARCH HARD DRIVE FOR ANY EXCECUTABLE AND/OR BLUEPRINT FILES
SOL: YES, CELESTIA
ATTEMPTING SEARCH FOR FILES…
SEARCHING…
SEARCHING…
As her trusty program searched her hard drive of a whopping 2 gigabytes, she stood away from her computer and looked at the time. Four to Seven. Calming herself for this daily task, she walked over to a balcony that overlooked the rural grasslands of Equestria. Looking at the moon, she watched as her sister lowered the heavenly body, and Celestia nudged the sun upward to the horizon. The moon met with the landscape, as an explosion of colors rendered the land in brilliant hues of gold, red, and orange. Looking for her sister on another nearby balcony, she saw Luna’s horn glowing until it finally stopped. Luna then turned to look at her sister and smiled. Upon seeing a fire within her sister’s eyes however, she frowned.
Celestia quickly returned to what she was doing before raising the sun, and looked at what SOL had found.
SEARCHING…
FOUND [4] EXECUTABLE AND BLUEPRINT FILES
WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE THE FILES I HAVE SEARCHED FOR?
CELESTIA: YES
FOUND [4] FILES:
SOL EXECUTABLE [ADMINISTRATIVE PROGRAM]
SOL BLUEPRINTS [FINISHED]
M6 SECURITY PROGRAM EXECUTABLE [SHARED BY PXLPSHR][IN PROGRESS]
M6 BLUEPRINT [SHARED BY PXLPSHR][UNFINISHED]
“Sister?” A voice called from somewhere. Tearing her eyes away from the screen before her, she turned to her doors where the voice had come from.
“What is it, Luna?” Celestia asked, quickly moving around her equipment and concealing them behind a customized bookshelf she had made. She then stood up from her chair and quickly moved it out of view.
“Are you alright? You looked peeved about something on the balcony,” Luna’s voice rang muffled through the door.
“‘Tis nothing, sister. Think nothing of it. It is the start of a new day now, you may go and rest for the next night’s duties.” Celestia turned to face her bookshelf as if she were looking for something.
For a moment, there was silence, and then she heard a stifled yawn from across the the door. The door cracked open, now revealing a somewhat bleary-eyed Princess Luna. “Are you sure, Celestia? Do you not require any assistance for today’s tasks?”
Celestia shook her head, before looking down in thought. “Actually, would you be able to attend the morning court for the time being? I have some important errands I need to attend to.” Luna made a guttural sound before trotting off. Having left the door open, Celestia could hear her sister’s grumbling as her voice faded away
“...Again, Celestia... I’m going to need that drink ponies call ‘coffee’... Ugh…” Luna could be heard as she disappeared. Celestia couldn’t help but smile. Sadly, this small bout of happiness was withdrawn forthwith as Celestia turned around and unveiled her technology once again. Frowning ever so slightly at her instruments, she tapped one more line of code into the technological machine and furrowed her brows before sitting back as she watched.
CELESTIA: TRACE UNKNOWN ENTITY TO SOURCE OF MANUAL OVERRIDE AND BACKDOOR ACCESS
SOL: ATTEMPTING…
…
…
TRACED UNKNOWN ENTITY(S) TO POINT OF ORIGIN:
PONYCOM LMTD
SERVER 34629
Celestia stood in front of a stark black building. A glowing sign adorned the relatively small building, with the capitalized words of “PONYCOM” in a bold white. It had three floors, and all of them seemed to be in use. Several ponies were entering and leaving the building, but apart from that the general area was barren of any ponies other than the occasional passerby.
Celestia herself was cloaked and scrutinized every detail of the building, trying to see from the outside before going inside why such a small company with their own technological backup would steal something from a monarch of Equestria. It made no sense to her why they would do it, and how they did it was somewhat of a mystery to her but it made some sense to a certain degree. She had connected her computer to a new development called “The Grid” which connected computers and communicative devices alike so information could be shared instantaneously.
What concerned her the most however was the limited amount of ponies with access to said technology. Only a hoof-ful of ponies knew about computers, and one such company was PONYCOM. She didn’t know much about it, but she knew that they were also trying to develop software and further computational machinery. Most ponies didn’t even bat an eye as they passed the black building, but if they knew what was inside… It would change the world. Pixel Pusher and Celestia had been able to keep it under wraps for half a decade now, and they wanted to keep it that way until they were able to make it useable for everypony. Select nobles and such had it, and even they didn’t really know how to use it, which was only a testament to the tempering of the technology needed. Yes, ponies would go crazy over it, but then they would realize it was practically unusable to the common pony, and would be dissuaded by it.
Now one might think “Why doesn’t Princess Celestia just go in and take the pony responsible? Why go through all this trouble of sneaking in and trying to take back what’s hers?” Well, the answer has already been stated. She didn’t want ponies to freak out over something she could solve on her own. She knew that by doing so, going in with the Royal Guard and arresting who was responsible, she would attract a lot of attention and she didn’t want to worry ponies about anything. Another might think “If Celestia is the leading developer of the computer industry, why doesn’t she just hack back and take back what was taken?” The answer?
She had already tried. But since it was an isolated server which was cut off upon taking her info, she couldn’t access it. She had tried, but it wouldn’t work unless she was right there to do it herself. And that was what she was doing right now. Casting an illusion over her form, she took on the appearance of a normal unicorn mare, the only thing out of place being her cloak.
She looked around the street before crossing it and entered PONYCOM. As she entered, she noticed a few things. Namely, the lack of actual ponies on the first floor. All there was was mostly empty space, with benches present in the middle for anypony who would want to sit or wait for something. The kiosk held only one pony, who was jotting things down while reading from a text.. Approaching one of them, she made sure her illusion was still in effect.
“Hello,” Celestia said, fixing her gaze on the mare in front of her. The mare in question jotted something down before lifting her eyes to meet Celestia’s. Upon closer observation, Celestia could see that the mare seemed to be bored and was unamused at humoring a mare from the outside.
“May I help you?” she asked with a dead tone.
“Could you lead me to the server rooms?” Celestia asked. Hopefully, it would be an easy, quick, in and out operation.
“I’m sorry, but only those authorized are allowed to enter the Server-Laser Test and Information center. May I see some identification?”
Not wanting to do this but knowing it was necessary, she scooted over a bag of bits to the greying blue mare. The mare raised an eyebrow and looked into the bag, before scrutinizing Celestia. After a moment of silence, the mare got up from her seat. “Very well,” she said, and she began to lead Celestia in the labyrinth that was the PONYCOM building.
A few hours earlier...
MCP: I HAVE TAKEN ALL VARIATIONS OF THE SIMULATION FROM CELESTIAS COMPUTER
“You’ve what?” a red maned white stallion whispered in disbelief.
MCP: I HAVE ACQUIRED ALL FORMS AND VARIATIONS OF THE PONY SIMULATION FROM CELESTIA
SHE HAD A CONTROL PROGRAM WHICH WAS EASILY BYPASSABLE AND I WAS ABLE TO OBTAIN ALL IMPORTANT AND USEFUL FILES ABOUT PROJECT PONY
“But why? Why go through all of this trouble to get something from the Princess?” Red Herring asked Master Control Program.
MCP: IT IS WHAT YOU WANTED, IS IT NOT?
YOU WANTED WEALTH AND POWER
BY USING THIS SIMULATION, YOU CAN PREDICT AND EVEN USE INFORMATION AGAINST OTHER PONIES
WITH IT, YOU HAVE ALL THE CONTROL AND POWER YOU WOULD EVER WANT
IT IS THE BIGGEST IMPROVEMENT SINCE YOUR LAST VENDETTA
“But I didn’t want to go this far to get it,” Red Herring shook his head in worry. “What will I do now?”
MCP: YOU WILL USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE
“This is too far, even for me,” Red Herring said.
MCP: DO NOT WORRY ABOUT SUCH TRIVIAL THINGS
IT IS WHAT YOU WANTED, AND YOU HAVE FINALLY GOTTEN IT
NEED I REMIND YOU OF WHAT YOU HAVE ALREADY DONE TO GET HERE?
Red Herring began to dart his eyes feverishly around the room, the weight of his conscience suddenly bearing down on him. Taking a deep breath, he steeled himself to the best of his ability. “Okay. Thanks for the talk. Proceed with the readying of Project PONY for-”
MCP: CELESTIA IS ATTEMPTING TO HACK INTO SERVER 34629
“What?!” Red Herring cried. He began to frantically type commands into his desk to see what was happening. He found lines of code being bypassed and bypassed, almost reaching his server system. “Stop her! Before she finds out it was me who stole her simulation!”
MCP: IT IS ALREADY DONE
SHE HAS BEEN BLOCKED FROM ALL ACCESS TO OUR SERVERS
I HAVE CUT CONNECTION FROM OUTSIDE INFLUENCES TO ALL PONYCOM SERVERS
SHE HAS HIT MY CODE AND IS ATTEMPTING TO BYPASS, BUT MY SECURITY IS SUPERIOR
ONLY LOCAL COMPUTERS CONNECTED TO PONYCOM GRID CAN NOW ACCESS OUR FILES
Breathing a sigh of relief, Red Herring wiped his forehead. Laughing nervously, he spoke once again to Master Control Program. “Whoo! That was a close one, eh Master C?”
MCP: NOT AT ALL
THERE WAS NO CHANCE SHE COULD BYPASS ME NOW OR BEFORE UNLESS IT WAS DIRECTLY THROUGH THE MAIN TERMINAL
THOUGH SHE IS A BOTHER TO MY PROGRAMMING
“So nopony other than us and the main terminal in the Server-Laser room can access files now?”
MCP: THAT IS CORRECT
Breathing another sigh of relief, Red Herring smiled eagerly. Although he wasn’t too happy about having taken directly from the Princess, he couldn’t wait to see his numbers go up.
Elsewhere at the same moment…
“What the buck?” Pixel Pusher said with a huff. Attempting to input more and more lines of code, he found that he could not access his M6 Security program files, nor could he edit them anymore.
“What the heck is happening right now?” he whispered under his breath as he found a block of polymorphing text. With the code in a constant state of change, it was impossible to bypass. He only knew of one pony who had this type of security, and he growled in frustration.
“Red Herring!” he growled, attempting to message the CEO of PONYCOM. All he got was a message saying that his message could not go through.
Suddenly, he received a memo from a very familiar pony he knew all too well. Adjusting his glasses, he entered the commands to open the email.
“Celestia?” he said, reading the note. “Work stolen… Going to go there myself… PONYCOM?!” Pixel read in disbelief. “Find a way to get past the server shutdown if you can, and cover my bases for me? What?” Pixel Pusher shook his head at what he was reading. He just couldn’t wrap his head around it. He knew Red Herring had something to do with several ponies being bankrupt and him gaining their properties. Though he didn’t have any solid evidence for it, he knew Red Herring was behind this and many other cases of theft so far. But to launch an outright attempt on the Princess and to succeed? What could he be thinking?!
Pixel Pusher pushed his glasses into the bridge of his nose once more and banged his desk in frustration. Sighing, he began to secure Celestia’s computer with lines of code, all the while the while wondering why he was a part of this.
Present…
Celestia and the kiosk pony stopped at a door with sign that read: S T I C - Proceed with CAUTION!
“Here we are,” the kiosk pony said. Opening the door, they found a hoof-ful of ponies bustling and rushing around to where they needed to go. Pointing to a pony in a lab-coat just a few feet away from the door, she said, “Go to Blue Light, she can help you with whatever you need in here.” And with that, the kiosk pony left Celestia to her own wits. Celestia looked over the lab and furrowed her brows a bit.
It was time to get it back.
