One thing I remember as soon as I woke up in my hospital bed. My head hurt, and the place smelled like a hospital. Maybe that’s why I knew where I was. I was going to ask the nearest pony where the hay am I, but alas, the scent had given away where I was. Hospitals often had that smell of sterility and cleanliness. Plus, I think the medical equipment were a big giveaway.
The nurse saw me and her eyes widened. Did I look that horrible? She went away and then a minute later the nurse waltzed in with a doctor. They checked for my vitals and what not, asked me if I could understand them, and then said what happened to me. Surprisingly, I couldn’t remember why I was even in the hospital in the first place. They said something fell on my head and I was knocked out… For two days. I wanted to scream “what, two days”, but I felt so weak that I just nodded at their words most of the time. They then said I was doing well for someone who got hit in the head, and I only had a concussion. Also, they pointed out my belongings were in a saddlebag next to my bed. After that, they left me to myself.
It was an hour later when I heard stampeding outside my room, and then a scream.
“Summer!”
It was my dad’s hollering. He can be such a worry wart. He basically slammed the door open, stared at me for five seconds, teared up his eyes, then ran to me and squeezed me.
“Oh, Summer! I’m so happy you’re awake!”
“D-dad… Can’t… Breathe.”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” He released me from his iron grip, and I managed to breathe again. “How’s my little girl?”
“Just woke up, dad. A little weak, but I’m alright.”
Dad’s name is Candle Wick. He’s a nice guy. A little carefree and a lot hard-working, I think I only inherited the former and not just a little for me. I bet you can see why I got a concussion in the first place.
“That’s great to hear!” Dad then pulled out a basket of fruits. Why does it always have to be fruits with hospital visits? “I brought you these!”
“Fruity.” Me and my expansive vocabulary.
It wasn’t long before Dad went back to attend his shop. I had to convince him not to leave the store unlocked and unattended, and that felt forever. When he left, the nurse left a bookshelf on wheels next to me, telling me to read if I got bored. That was nice of her, but I already most of the ones on the shelf. Bah, I’m gonna read Daring Do again…
That was until I heard a tap on my window. I ignored it, but the tapping became inherently louder and louder that I had to raise my head and see the intruder to my sanctuary. On the other side of the window, I see a stupid grin on a flying blue pegasus. For Pete’s sake…
“Hey, guess who’s back~!”
Cloud Chaser. The Blue Bolt, as she called herself. Sometimes Storm Walker. I just call her—
“Hey, Zips.” I put down the book and watched her pry open the window. “What brings a pony like you here?”
“Heard you’re awake! So I dashed in.” She even flipped in midair.
“Aren’t you sweet.”
“Naw, I’m nothing like that!” She then went into my room. “You sure look great for a pony who got hit in the head!”
“Not quite the compliment I needed, but thanks.”
Zips dove into my bed and sat there. “We need to celebrate your recovery!”
“Sure. I take cash or credit.”
“I meant doing something, dummy!” She picked up a magazine lying on top of the shelf. “Be happy that you survived the grip of death and all that crap.” She then tossed the magazine.
“I can’t really move from this bed right now.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll just hang with you then!”
“Just gonna hang here?”
“Yep.”
After that exchange, she stayed. When we hang out, we don’t exactly do anything; we just stay in the same room and talk when there’s something to talk about. Most of the time we just end up trading jokes and laugh until our stomachs hurt like we got kicked hard. I don’t remember how we became friends, but it felt like we’ve been so since I was born.
So we just stayed in the room for what seemed like an hour. We chatted a bit, then we become silent, the usual stuff. It was then that I remembered. I looked at my bed and saw my saddlebag. In it, I took out the very object that knocked me out.
“This thing. It’s the one that got in here.”
Zips dropped her magazine and went to me. “What is it?”
I wanted to answer her question, but even I didn’t know. It was a black rectangle flat box. It said on the flat surface, ‘Ace One’.
“Ace One?” I read aloud.
“Maybe it’s magic,” Zips suggested.
I turned it upside down and saw more smaller writings on small stickers, but they already were faded and I can’t really read what it said there. I turned it upside down again and placed it on my bed.
“I guess it’s a...”
“Paperweight?” Zips interjected.
“Zips, this is too big for a paperweight. It looks like a small book. Doesn’t have any pages, though.”
I noticed the gap in the middle of the Ace One and lifted the upper part with my magic, and lo and behold, it revealed more mystery.
“Whoa,” we both whispered.
What was revealed to us was a dark looking mirror in the upper half and a set of buttons on the bottom part. Oddly enough, the buttons represented the alphabets and some symbols like periods, commas, and the likes. There were also odd buttons such as enter, del, shift, and a long blank bar.
“I guess this thing’s a typewriter,” Zips said.
“What? How?”
“Well, we ponies have our own typewriters, but since clearly shows a lot of buttons, it’s probably a griffin use version. They do have their talons.”
I looked back at the contraption. Of course, this is a typewriter, but where does the paper go? I lifted the object with my magic and looked around the thing. Nope, no paper entry, just small holes. Maybe it’s magic?
“I don’t see any paper entry in here.”
“Magic typewriter?” Zips suggested, confused herself.
Out of sheer curiosity, I started to press the buttons on the typewriter with a pencil I lifted with magic. I expected a clacking sound with each press, but it only made small button noises, as if it wasn’t connected to anything.
“I think this is broken,” I claimed.
“You tried pressing everything?”
I pressed almost everything, but nothing seemed to make the contraption work. I guess this is junk then. Then, I pressed the upper left button that was separated from the rest of the buttons. The said button started glowing blue.
“Hey, I did something!“
The upper half glowed and showed an image that looked like a logo. The glass then went black again. After a few seconds, a glass showed blue imagery and writing that said ‘Welcome’.
“What?” I blurted out.
“Summer, this is freaky!” Zips exclaimed as she lightly punched my shoulder. Kinda hurt. “We’re looking into some magic buzz!”
The greeting on the screen disappeared and then we were shown a green fields and a blue sky. There was a bar at the bottom, a trash can at the upper right and right below it is a ball of red, green and yellow.
“Now what?” I blurted out.
“I don’t know, do something!”
I pressed some buttons but nothing happened. I tried every key and nothing came up on the glass. Then I noticed the small square beneath the buttons. It was different from the rest of the contraption, so I ran my hoof onto it.
“Oh, oh! Something’s moving!” Zips excitedly said.
I looked up and noticed the small arrow moving as I slid my hoof on the square.
“I don’t know what that is supposed to be...”
So the square detects my hoof…? I noticed there was a darker bar underneath it. I pushed it and a gray rectangle appeared on the glass.
“View, sort, refresh… What are these?” Zips wondered.
I tapped the left side of the bar, and the gray rectangle disappeared.
“This is confusing. Don’t you have a manual for this thing?”
“If I did, I would have read it by now.”
For half an hour, we just sort of played with the arrow on the glass, moving it wherever and whatever. We couldn’t make it do anything other than making the gray rectangle appear. It was then that I accidentally hit a button that a new rectangle appeared, this time from the lower bar that was always there. In there, we found pictures of lots of things, one obviously a notepad, then a green icon that had the name Torrentx, a picture of blue paper that was named Word, and the same red, green and yellow logo from the beginning; only this time it was called Chromy.
“What are these?” I asked.
“Maybe they’re spells! But like, compressed into a scroll or notebook.”
“Why would they need a spell for notepads?”
“... Maybe the owner’s an egghead?”
I found myself raising my eyebrows in agreement. Maybe this was a tool from an egghead.
We decided to label the parts of the contraption so we wouldn’t get confused. We called the glass, well, glass because that’s what it is. Go figure. The buttons huddled together were called typewriter buttons. The rectangle underneath the typewriter buttons is called tracker and the buttons beneath it is the popper, since it made the arrow pop out the gray rectangle. As we named the parts, we learned that the popper buttons can make the ‘spells’ on the lower bar’s rectangle activate. To be honest, I had a lot of headache explaining what I saw there. Describing it? A nightmare in itself.
Anyways, we activated the notepad, and it only showed a white rectangle with a blinking small line. Apparently, that was the indicator as to where you were when typing in the typewriter buttons. It really worked like a typewriter there, and pretty much we learn what enter, shift, del, and most of the typewriter buttons do. When we opened Word, we were disappointed that it was only similar to notepad, albeit it looked more like actual paper and made it actually look like a typewriter. If this was actually magic, then whatever we typed here should be printed onto a sheet of paper… Wow, the owner must be a real egghead.
Lunch came in knocking (not literally, because that would be terrifying), and was laid onto my bed. Lunch in bed was something I never had before. Maybe because I don’t have a loving stallion to bring the food to me in bed. I looked at the metal tray, and I wasn’t that excited about my lunch. Fresh greens, a small pudding, and a little juice box. Truly a meal fitting for a princess.
Surprisingly, Zips brought her own lunch, which was odd since I didn’t see her bring anything other than herself. After a few nibbles of tasteless filler, I took out the typewriter again and turned it on.
“You’re still gonna study that thing?” Zips said as she sniffed the table flower. “Aren’t you taking a break?”
“What, it’s not like I got anything else to do.”
“You’ll look like an egghead!”
But I am. I knew that I was an egghead, but Zips thought that I was too cool to be one, so she still hangs around me. I think the truth of the matter was that she was always bored and I’m the only one entertaining her. Not that I don’t like her. Her energy makes me feel better most of the time. She started reading books when one time we really ran out of things to talk about. Usually, she goes to me to talk about herself or something that happened that day, but one time, she didn’t so she just hung in my room. Then she saw a novel in my room and thought the cover was cute. Zips started reading then eventually borrowed the book. Then the sequel. Then the next. Little did she know was that she was already an egghead.
“Right...”
I took a bite of green, then moved the arrow to the bottom left of the screen. I took another bite, then noticed a small text hovered on top of the arrow: It said ‘Start’. So the small blue logo there is called start? I just hope there’s a manual for this thing… I pushed it and decided to randomly open something from the start menu. I pressed on the text that said Music. A new rectangle opened, and it showed a list of texts. It showed a bunch of titles and details.
“Seen anything interesting?” Zips asked with a mouthful of sandwich.
“There’s music in a typewriter?”
“Don’t be crazy! Those are probably lyrics or something. Though I never heard of a typewriter than can keep stuff…”
“Magic, duh.”
“You can’t just say magic when you don’t understand something,” Zips replied as she tried to steal my bland pudding, in which I stopped with a hit from my spoon. “Ow.”
“Zips, I’m a unicorn. I get to say that,” I smirked at her.
She just gave me an incredulous look. I looked back to the typewriter and tapped on one of the names in the list. The name became highlighted, so I tapped it again and the typewriter started playing a song.
For a moment, we didn’t do anything and just listened to the song bleeping from the device. It certainly was catchy, but I couldn’t get the meaning of the lyrics in the beginning.
Hey now, you’re an all star~
Zips just started bobbing her head on the new music. I had to admit that it really was catchy. Not catchy that it makes you dance, but not catchy that you connect to it. It just was catchy. Did that make sense? I don’t know, probably didn’t. I closed my eyes and just bobbed my head too.
Only shooting stars break the mold~
“Yeah!” Zips exclaimed as we listened. “This thing is amazing!”
For about three minutes we just rocked to the new music. When I opened my eyes, I had forgotten that the source of the music was the thing before me. I stared at the glass for the moment. I simply marveled at the thought of an object able to do such. Or maybe I’m just being ignorant on what magic can do.
“Play another one!”
Out of reflex, I played another music from the list and the typewriter started playing from a very low instrument to a lovely soft violin and piano medley. Slowly it became more orchestral and then low again. Then it just burst into a strong orchestral, with a mare singing just la la la. Not even vinyl records can sound this fantastic. If this isn’t a miracle, then I don’t know what it is.
It was so lovely that I felt like crying to it. In fact, I think I did cry. The music ended with a piano medley, and it was very beautiful. Majestic. Euphoric. Goodness, simply listening to it made me remember positive words I don’t even use.
I looked at Zips and she looked like a pony who ascended to princesshood; her eyes were closed and she was smiling like she was blessed by the Elements of Harmony.
“Zips?” I called out.
“Summer.”
“Are you...”
“Alive? Yes. This is what being alive is like.”
I raised an eyebrow at her, but I doubt she saw it. Zips then opened her eyes and then faced me.
“Summer, I feel cleansed.”
“You do know you’re overreacting.”
“Yes, but it’s so good.”
Before I could tell her anything else, I noticed a bunch of other patients and even staff were at the room’s gaping open door. They all looked happy and relaxed. This thing’s pretty loud to even reach outside…
