A Photographer's Nightmare: Nearly Destroying his Equipment
Chapter 1: A Photographer’s Nightmare: Nearly Destroying His Equipment
Max Casey hated Hong Kong sometimes.
The heat of the Arizonian desert, but with the humidity of a rainforest. Checking his phone revealed that through their government weather app, the temperature was thirty-three degrees, normal mid-summer temperature, and the humidity was 95%. Basically, enough to practically drink out of the air.
Hiking up this hill, with a hard backpack containing his photography equipment and Mavica. His back was covered in sweat.
Sliding the metallic phone into his pocket, he finished his trek. Up about a full hour of steep stairs and (surprisingly) dry crumbly dirt, he found himself at the peak of Dragon’s Back.
It was a sight to behold, that is for sure. The blast of cold, misty air as you reach the peak was exhilarating.
Max wasted no time in sliding out his tripod, fixing his camera to it and getting the perfect shot.
Snap. The photo was on the tiny memory card in an instant. He spent an hour up there taking photos of the scenery.
As he re-packed his bag, he went through his written list.
Osmo, check.
Canon 5D Mk III, check.
Nikon D750, check.
Mavic? Why did I bring this again? Check.
Three tripods, check.
Oh, what the heck did I bring a solar panel for? Check, I guess.
He zipped his bag and started the trek down the hill. Unfortunately for him it started raining. HARD. He knew his equipment was going to be fine in the waterproof case, but himself was another story.
Raindrops fell and made clatter as he rushed down the hill. Being the clumsy shit he is, he slipped. The steep decline that was imminent as he grabbed a tree to steady himself was scarily tall. He lost grip of the tree and started falling.
Equus proper
Celestia pulled out a book from the shelf, scanning it’s cover. She had wanted to try this spell for a good time now, and now was as good as ever.
The entire premise was that the spell was supposed to bring somepony or some other species from at least a few million years ago, into the current time that she lived. No, interdimensional spells have been tried already. When a biped in a black suit, cowling helmet and a really odd glowing red sword, the royal sisters decided not to touch it again. But the time one can’t be so bad, can it?
Earth
Max’s hands slipped from the tree trunk and he fell straight towards a bush. The already muddy dirt making the bush slip through the dirt, it only got steeper.
Until he hit a cliff.
Oh fuck! He closed his eyes and shot off it.
[CRACK.
Oh shit. He broke one of his backpacks before, but this one sounded bad. Good news, he wasn’t flying through the air anymore. Even bad news, his ass hurt like Satan himself brought the wooden spoon of Hell.
He felt himself glide along some surface on his hardshell case, and come to a standstill.
Holy shit, the rain stopped. He opened his eyes as he heard what sounded like a horse running on a marble floor. What confused him was that he was staring up at an ornate chandelier, with candles placed on each arm.
“It looks pretty beat up, huh. Wonder what this thing is?”
Max slid his arms through the backpack straps (probably ruined) and sat on his ass. OW. He keeled over, onto his arms and knees, looking at indeed, marble floor, and he stood up, much to the complaint of his entire body.
“Woah.” The voice made Max turn around, and what he saw made him nearly faint in shellshock.
His case was wrecked. Shit. There goes a good few thousand. He hoped something was salvageable from it.
Something else stuck out like a sore thumb. There stood some weird humanoid horse. It had white fur and a fucking mane that floated with zero wind influence. Her head was a rather toned down horse shape, she had hands not unsimilar to a human’s hands, and she had hooves instead of feet. There was a horn protruding from her forehead.
And holy shit. If this was a human, he’d be hard-pressed to believe it was naturally occurring. Basically, she looked fucking hot.
Max sighed, then fell over onto his ass and blacked the fuck out, hoping he’d wake up from the weird fantasy dream he was having.
Princess Celestia stared at the oddly-coloured thing. It had a black tuft of a mane on top of it’s head, and no fur. It wore clothing like Celestia was, but the unknown species’ shirt was ripped up and extremely muddy, and soaked through. There was a black box there as well, which had a giant crack in it’s side. Celestia decided not to touch it.
Celestia heard the doors open, and in walked her younger sister, Princess Luna. She was of navy-blue fur, lighter blue hair that also seemed to float mid-air, and she also had a horn on her forehead. They also both had wings.
“Did you do the transdimensional spell again?” The night princess asked.
Celestia shook her head. “No, but I used the time one. This thing must have come from the past.” Speak of the devil, it stirred and woke up. “Ow, my ass…” Groaned the masculine sounding thing. He sat up slowly, and this time saw two of the ponies. Instead of blacking out like an idiot, he stood up and slowly said, “What. The fuck. Are you.”
Celestia was rather taken aback. Such profanity wasn’t really used against the solar diarch, and she was unused to having them spoken to her in a derogatory way. She stepped up to him, being a head or two taller than him, and looked down at him. “That’s not a very polite way to say hello,” she chuckled, “but I’ll humor you. We,” she motioned at her and Luna, “are ponies.”
“No shit,” said the black-maned bipedal. “You totally walk on four legs and say ‘neigh’ when you’re pissed.”
Ponies never walked on four legs, Celestia thought. A giggle crossed her mind as she imagined herself as a quadruped. She shook her head to dispel the image and said, “And what are you, I may ask?”
It shook his head. “You’ve never seen a human before?”
Celestia had heard the word somewhere before, but she couldn’t place it. She held out her hand in hopes that the ‘human’ would shake it. Surprisingly he did.
“I guess you want to trade names at this point,” said the cautious human. Celestia nodded. “Wait one sec,” he said, then turned around and screamed, “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING OOOON?”
He turned back around. “I’m Max. What’s your name?”
“I’m Princess Celestia, and that over there is Princess Luna.” The blue spectator crossed her arms.
Bipedal ponies. As Max traded names with the white pony he felt like a part of him died. He knew he may not see his family again. Not like they would remember me, he thought, as he remembered his family that resides in America.
Max turned to his case, and opened it to check damage. He sighed as he saw the inside was undamaged. The case was a different story.
Unzipping his cargo pocket, he pulled out his iPhone. He turned it on to find that there was a five bar 4G signal. That’s weird. He pulled out his other cell, a similar backup but his older previous phone, had a full signal, even though it had a different card altogether in it. What the fuck!
He unlocked his main phone and typed a text to his backup’s number. ‘Hello’ was sent over some weird connection, and it pinged his other phone.
“Oh my god.” He typed in his parent’s line. The monotone beep told him that he couldn’t contact his family.
“What are you doing?” The white princess asked. The human stood and answered, “I am texting myself in a place where the cell signal shouldn’t exist. I cannot contact my parents, therefore I am probably not on the same world as them. Yet, these two phones remain a solid bond of communication. I call bullshit on that.”
He tried one more thing. Opening his internet browser, he typed in google.com. By the Lord’s grace almighty, the page loaded! He typed ‘date today’.
May 16th, 3001546, read the page. His eyes widened. He wasn’t in a different dimension. He was in the future.
“Alrighty then. Princess Celestia, I need to get out of here and find out how the fuck to live in this place. Nice meeting you,” said Max as he walked to the door.
It automatically closed on him, the handles holding an odd aura of a golden color. He spun around to find Celestia’s horn lit up with the same hue.
Holy shitsticks, they’re magical unicorns.
That night, he sat on the edge of a bed. The white anthropomorphic pony had convinced him to stay in a castle guestroom, and quoting Celestia: “We do not want massive panic within our subjects.”
Groaning as he scrolled through social media, he was constructing more of a detailed description of what happened. Pretty much all the humans died off about ten thousand years after he had disappeared. He sighed as he switched off his phone and tried to get some rest.
In the middle of the night, he woke up, unable to sleep. He stood up and opened the door to his room. Aimlessly walking in the halls he found himself inside a garden. It was a nice small garden and it had a nice view, so he stared at what looked like a city… built into a mountain.
Max heard the sounds of two hooves landing on the paved path. He turned around, and noticed the dark blue younger sister of Celestia, Princess Luna. Oh, and the had large wings, outstretched in a wingspan of an impressive size.
“Hello, human,” said the lunar princess, folding her wings into her back. “I did not expect you to be up at this time.”
“Well, me neither,” Max retorted, “but I cannot sleep. You’re the sister of that Celestia pony, right?”
Luna nodded, “Indeed you are correct. Max the human, I presume then?” Max nodded cautiously. He was leaned against a glass barrier with the only major support being a metal cylinder bar.
“Yeah. The one and cynical Max…” He muttered the second sentence. “Actually, why are you up at this time either?” He asked.
“I’m mainly nocturnal, as my job lies in the court of the night and in defeating nightmares,” Luna explained, “But when you disappeared out of nowhere you made quite the racket.” She chuckled lightly.
“I need to go do my job, now. Be safe tonight, Max.” She extended her wings and lifted herself into the air, leaving Max to gaze upon the city and the landscape beyond. He pondered his first encounter with the night princess, and shrugged it off as quickly as it came to his train of thought.
Quickly actually growing tired, he blundered off to his room, plopping in his bed and falling asleep.
Two days later
Max sighed and leaned against the rail of the royal gardens, looking out upon the night sky. He set his hard plastic box and opened it, pulling out the tripod and one of his cameras. Setting it up, he flipped the camera over to time-lapse and let it sit.
“What are you doing?” A familiar voice asked. Max turned around to find the night denizen.
“Taking a timelapse.” Luna adopted a look of puzzlement, her muzzle wrinkling slightly. “What’s that? And actually, what is that?” She pointed at the camera affixed on the three legged stand.
Max pulled out his other camera. “These are cameras.” Luna peered at them and said, “They don’t look like them.” Her horn lit up and a… holy shit an accordion camera appeared.
“Oh. Those went out of date long ago. These cameras are very powerful. They can take photos instantly, record video and can even be used remotely.
Luna’s eyebrow raised. “So, this camera is superior to mine, then?” She picked up the one Max was holding in her magic. Max freaked out. “Stop! That’s super goddamn expensive!”
“Huh.” Luna returned it. “Can you show me how it works?”
Max nodded. “Sure, I guess.” He flipped on the camera and fiddled with the rings on the lens before raising his eye to the viewfinder. “Say cheese.”
“Why should I say che-”
A bright flash came from the camera as it made a snap sound. Luna hissed quietly and covered her eyes, blinking out the spots that appeared.
Max chuckled and said, “Come check it out.” Luna gasped in surprise as Max showed him some sort of glowing photo frame with her face illuminated by most likely the light that came from the camera. “That’s incredible!” She peered into the black case. “What else do you have there?”
Max knelt by the box and looked into it. “I have solar panels, a Mavic, a gyroscope camera, and some other tidbits.” He rummaged through the bag to find the shiny metal corner. “Fuck me sideways if that isn’t my laptop.” He pulled it open. His shiny computer sat at the bottom… Weird, he didn’t remember packing it.
“Such vulgar language seems to be rather common within you, from first impressions,” Luna commented. Max scoffed. He pulled out his small folded drone. “Check this out.” Pulling out his controller, he affixed his large phone to a stand on the controller.
Luna looked over his shoulder, rather easily considering she was taller than the human.
“Luna, hold this.” He passed her the controller. “Don’t touch any of the buttons please, just hold it.”
Max unfolded the legs of the drone and attached the props. “So, you know how you guys can fly with pegasus wings, right?” He slid in the battery and held a button, the drone beeping to life. “Well, this flies without any of that ridiculous magic.”
“How does something fly without magic?” Luna queried. Max took the controller back (much to the chagrin of Luna) and switched it on. The lights on the drone turned on and it revved to life, making Luna flinch.
“It sounds like a swarm of bees,” Luna said. It got louder as it rose into the air, Max deftly making tiny movements to correct his takeoff.
“Go follow it Luna, and maybe I can record you flying, would that be cool?” Luna spread her wings and took off. “Make sure not to touch it!” Max called.
Luna hovered in front of the drone that buzzed rather loudly to fly in the air. The drone moved up and Luna followed, twirling around as she was recorded.
The ‘follow me’ feature on the drone seemed to follow the princess like an eye as she did twirls and flips in the air.
Coming down for a land, Luna said to Max, “Your thing is rather good at tracking me.” She watched as Max landed the drone. He switched it off and folded it up.
He held the phone up to Luna. “Check this out.”
Luna watched herself twirl in the air on the glowing screen, eyes fixed to the display. “Who knew you could capture yourself moving like that?”
Max shrugged and put the phone away. “Actually, humans have had video recording technology for nearly fifty years or so.”
“FIFTY WHOLE YEARS? Us ponies only managed to get those ridiculously expensive film cameras invented!” Luna crossed her arms and huffed. “I can’t really complain, I guess.”
Max looked over to the timelapse camera. It had been there for nearly four hours, which was decent content. “Wanna see the timelapse?”
Luna shrugged.
Max pressed a button to stop it, then switched the camera off. He opened a side compartment and took a small card out. Luna asked, “Is that a part?”
“No, it’s where the photos are stored on.”
“That’s ridiculous. Don’t you have to go get photos developed?”
Max face palmed. “Never mind. I’ll piece together the timelapse and you can maybe see it tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow night,” Luna corrected. Max laughed. “Sure, sure.” He packed the items into his box. “Goodnight, Luna.”
“May your dreams be well.” Luna spread her wings and took off again, seeming familiar to their first encounter two nights ago.
Max sighed and walked off the gardens, and back into the palace.
