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-Welcome to the Program Data Log Archive.-
$View Data log
-Which program?-
$User.exe
-Loading Data log.-
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-Data log Loaded. Displaying.-
Urg, my head... Why is everything so bright?
I could barely make anything out, it was so white. It just kinda hurt to look. My ears were ringing, too, and my mouth was pasty dry. It was cold, really cold.
The light didn't really have any sort of source I could make out. It was just kinda blinding. Even with my eyes closed I could still barely take it. And yet, I was shivering from the lack of warmth. It felt so backwards.
But then it wasn't so bright anymore. A shadow separated me from the blazing light. I squinted and realized I was looking up at something resembling a head. It was tough to make out, but it had short, bobbed hair and large ears sticking up from the top, similar to a fox or a cat. The face was much too rounded to be a cat, though.
"O-oh my," it said. It had a very feminine voice, jubilant but still caring. I couldn't help but think back to some of the more stereotypical anime I'd seen on YouTube, where there was some girl who was unrealistically naive but still tried to do her best at whatever she did.
"Are you...? Y-you can't be..." the voice continued. Whoever she was (I was assuming it was a she based on her voice), she was confused by something. And since she was standing over me, I had to guess I was the problem.
"Ugh..." I managed past my unnaturally dry lips. Why was I so thirsty? And ache-y? And sensitive to light?
And... Where was I?
"Oh, are you hurt? Do you need anything, sir?" Sir? Was she talking to me? 'Sir' is not something I'd ever been called before, but between the odd situation and unpleasant sensations I was experiencing, that line of thought didn't continue for long.
"Where... am I?" I asked, squinting and still trying to make something of the silhouette. She... I don't know, was... familiar...
"On the Home Screen. You can go anywhere else from here. Is there anywhere you'd like to go?" she added, cheerful but clearly worried. She had a Flight Attendant-like attitude, happy and reassuring yet still also conveying whatever other emotions she was trying to get across. In this case, care and worry.
I had no idea about what she meant by what she just said. "Is there someplace less... Bright?" I tried. I just kinda wanted to see at this point.
"Of course! One sec, please," she said. An odd response, but I guess it made since, kinda. Not that much else she'd said had.
The shadow disappeared from above me and I could feel my body getting pulled up and onto something. This something was furry, in a fluffy kind of way, and I was placed on top of it lengthwise, two limbs hanging off of each side and my head laid sideways on, urg, something. I just couldn't see what.
But whatever this was, it was comfortable. And warm.
I could feel an upward push and a gain of altitude, although the light still prevented me from deciphering how high, or even what was carrying me. I think I heard flapping as well, but I was too, well, in sensory shock to think much about it.
Not much time passed until something amazing happened. The lights disappeared, quite suddenly. There wasn't much of a transition, but I did now feel a slow, descending feeling.
I blinked my eyes open to an odd sight. There were thin blue veins in strange, perfect lines. Each one was pulsating downwards at its own pace, some faster then the others. The wall itself was a dark shade of blue and didn't stand out much compared to the amazing lines of shining... well, lighter blue.
I felt a thump as whatever I was on touched the ground. I was carefully moved off of some kind of raised platform and softly shrugged onto what I could make out as a dark blue and metallic floor. The heat leaving my chest made me shiver again.
"Um, sir? Are you okay?" asked the voice again.
I looked up, because I could now, and saw that the voice had belonged to, well, a pony. Not the realistic petting zoo pony, but a cartoon pony, the kind you'd see if you watched My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. This one, however, was never introduced in the show itself. It was still a pony I know well, though, because I click on her at least 20 times daily.
It was the Chrome pony.
Her fur was pure white and radiant. Her mane was short, bobbed, and sporting a light blue color also matched by her medium-length tail. She wore a Chrome icon hair pin and Chrome cutie mark. Her wings, as she was a pegasus, consisted of three large and thick feathers that came together at a white-feathered joint. On each wing, the feather closest to the head was red, the one closest to the tail was green, and the one in the middle was yellow. Her eyes were looking into mine; they were hard to miss, actually, as each was an ice blue, more complex then her mane's blue but still similar in shade.
She noticed my shivering and, embarrassingly enough for me, hurriedly jumped behind me and laid next to my sideways form. Her front hooves curled around my neck, and I could feel myself blush a bit. But she was warm, and I guess I can see her logic behind her action. I just, uh, don't think she knew you can't just snuggle with people.
I reached up to try to move her hoof away and explain I was fine, but as my limb entered my sight, I realized something was wrong. Where my hand should be, there was a hoof. I looked down, trying to ignore the other pony hugging me, and saw that I wasn't human, like I should've been. I, too, was a pony.
"I... B-but..." Too much information to take in! Lucky for me, it all fell under one question.
"What is going on here?"
It was hard to be mad when you're lying on the floor with someone, or, I guess, somepony. Especially when she was trying to 'keep me warm'. But I did my best. Although my headache didn't make anything better.
"I can answer that question," said the pony behind me. "We're inside an Apple iOperatingSystem, installed onto the hardware Apple iPod 4G. And you... You aren't a program, aren't you?"
Okay then, this is a dream.
"Woah woah woah, slow down," I said, shaking myself from her embrace and trying to get on my feet- uh, hooves. "We're where?"
The Chrome pony stood up. "We're inside an Apple iOperatingSystem, installed onto the hardwa-"
"I got that part," I grunted. My hooves decided not to work right, and I fell flat on my face with my back legs buckled but still supporting my other end. Overall, I looked very silly. "But I'm inside the software?"
"You are," the Chrome pony giggled as she watched me try to get my footing. Or maybe hoofing? "My search engine can't find any similar stories with keywords "inside software" besides a numerous amount of sources referencing "Tron". May I ask what you last remember? Maybe that can give you an idea as to how this happened."
I was standing now, wobbly but up right. "Um, I... I was using the Chrome app to view Soundcloud, and I had my headphones in. It had been a long day, and I was in my pajamas. It was late, and there was a storm outside. My iPod was plugged into the wall... I think."
"Hmm..." the Chrome pony thought, scratching her roundish chin. After a few moments, her face lit up, and she looked at me. "Using this data, and suspending certain things that would seem impossible," she began, "I think you fell asleep. Perhaps lightning struck your house or a nearby power cable and sent an electrical shock through the system, blazing through your iPod and shocking through your headphones. That, possibly, could have created a consciousness bridge from your brain to the device. You might be connected right now using that very method!"
I stated at this pony, completely bewildered. Yeah, definitely a dream. "Uh..."
"I'm sorry, but that's the only explanation I can come up with." She sighed. "But the truth of the matter is that you're here now! ’Hows' can be computed later."
She walked in a circle around me. I felt really uncomfortable being examined like that. "Goodness, you really are a user! I have file browsing functionalities, but even using that I can see your programming is just an .exe file. Normally, this OS couldn't run .exe, but that would be if you were actually a program, wouldn't it?" She stopped in front of me and beamed. "Hello, user, my name is Chrome, but some programs here call me Romi for short. I think it sounds cuter, don't you?"
"Uh, yeah," I said. She giggled.
"Welcome to your device. I can't wait to show you around! Oh, you do want to be shown around, right?"
"Give me a second," I asked of her. "I have a few questions first."
"Sure, fire away!" she grinned back. She looked so happy to help me, and it wasn't creepy happy either. She honestly wanted to make my day easier. I guess it was in her programming, but all the same, it was reassuring.
"Why are you a pony? And why am I a pony, too?" I asked.
"All programs here look or resemble the icon that is attached to them," she explained. "It's the only graphical guideline we have attached to our coding. The programs here resemble ponies because you modified our icons to a pony-like representation of the original logos. Eventually, the rest of the programs took on pony-like forms, too, even without a change in icon. Every program here, including you, is going to look and move like a pony. You've customized us this way."
It was true, I had figured out a way to change icons on an iPod. I could have never guessed it'd change the program's body itself. Or maybe it was dream logic, I don't know.
Romi sat down and looked to her right before smiling at me again. "Uh, not to interrupt, but can I ask a question, too?"
She actually looked kinda adorable smiling up at me like that. I tried to imitate her sitting, to a certain degree of success. "Sure, go ahead."
"I know a lot about you. I was designed to get you, to recommend for you, and to do everything as best suited for you as I can. So I understand your personality very well. But I honestly can't say I know about you as a person. Your history, your stories. Do you mind telling me about what it's like in the Users' world? What you think and feel about it?"
"E-everything?" I asked. That was kind of a broad topic. Everything I do, have done, and planned to do?
"Anything, anything at all, please." She was so... Urg, I don't really have a word for it. Passionate? She was really passionate about me- or, rather, the tales I could tell her. She continued, "I've seen pictures and read stories about it, but I've never been, and I wanna know what its like. I wanna see what you've seen, through... Through your eyes." Was she... Blushing? Was that even possible? More dream logic, perhaps?
I took in my surroundings. It was cold, dark and blue, and rather soundless. The lines of what I guess were data pulsed and pushed from above us, where a white light seemed to glow.
"Well, it's not cold," I began. "There's something like that light above us called the sun that gives heat and light to the world."
She closed her eyes and smiled lazily. It was actually really cute, I found myself realizing. Which was weird, because she was apparently my web browser.
"There are tons of colors, and lots of other people. For the most part, they have their own computers, too." I didn't really know what more to describe, if she had already seen it all.
"Wind, could you describe wind for me?" she asked.
"Wind... It's kind of... It cools you off, it can push and pull, but it's not really like it's there. It's gentle, and if there are trees around, you can hear it coming." I racked my brains trying to think of other words.
"And what's water like?" she asked eagerly. I had questions, too, and I really wanted to ask them, but I couldn't seem to say no to her.
"...Smooth, wet, transparent, and... refreshing. It's kinda like... well, it feels like it's a loose solid, not sturdy but, uh, not not there."
"Do you like swimming? What's it like?" she pleaded. Once again, her eagerness couldn't be ignored by me, and I went on to explain a numerous amount of things. My own questions kept piling up, but I held them back to answer hers to the best of my ability.
Discreetly, I was testing if this was a dream. I had taken a mini-lesson on dreams from my Language Arts teacher as an attachment to a story we had read, so I knew that certain things about dreams were off compared to reality. All of my senses were working, so that wasn't reassuring. The conversation stayed completely on topic, even when I thought random things in my head. The room never changed at all, even though it was very detailed.
Doubt began to creep in. Could this... not be a dream?
"Oh, that is so cool! I've noticed the change in IP periodically, but I never knew you went on vacation!" She was giggling the kind of way friends do when they talk, even though nothing was very funny. I was, too.
"Yeah, it's really neat! A great way to recharge your batteries," I beamed back. Honestly, I liked this pony. That made sense, as she was (as I was beginning to come to terms with) my web browser. But she got all my jokes, knew exactly what I was talking about when I said something, and laughed at all the perfect times.
I began to think about stuff, as this whole Tron-ish thing being legit became more and more of a fact in my mind. I used Chrome more everyday then I did basically anything else. She was already like my best friend, even if we'd never met before.
"I didn't know you yodeled!" we both finished the joke at the same time and burst out laughing, neither of us keeping our balance and falling onto the floor in fits. It was only when our giggles subsided that I realized her head was on my chest, looking up at me. We both blushed, and I looked up back at the light above us.
But she didn't move.
I looked down to see her smiling with her eyes closed. She sighed, and my pony face blew up with red. I probably hadn't blushed so hard before in my entire life. Then again, I've never... connected to anyone else before, not like this.
"Ooh!" She shot up and to an archway leading out of the room we were in. "Do you want a tour, user?" She spread her wings out, priming them for take-off.
"Oh, yeah, sure," I got out. I stood up, too, and trotted my way over to Romi. I'll admit, being a pony is cool. Once you get comfortable with it, it's actually a lot more stable (no pun intended) then just two legs. Now more comfortable with the way it felt to be a quad pedal, I could sense the better balance. It was weird to not have fingers and such, but compared to everything else that was happening, I can't say it was the weirdest feeling I'd had that day.
I trotted through the archway and she took off behind me. Every step seemed to echo a clip-clop sound. The air was still cold and my head still kinda hurt, but now that my eyes were working, I was completely stunned.
An expansive city of tall and oddly-shaped skyscrapers covered the whole of the area I could see. Certain ones were tall enough to breach the layer of dark-blue cloud-like stuff that covered it all. I looked at every blue structure in awe from the high balcony I was standing on. It seemed like the tower it was attached to was the biggest one, and was much thicker at the point where it breached the clouds then the others.
A staircase wound around the tower, and I trotted down it. Despite the height, it took barely any time at all to get down to street level.
My eyes were wide with shock. Pegasi, unicorns, and earth ponies (most of which were white, black, and blue) ran about the street, seemingly all of which were carrying boxish saddle bags that had crosses of blue data lines. Realization struck that these were programs carrying data from one place to the next, the mailmares and mailcolts of the digital city. Who knows what kind of code those packages held.
Romi landed next to me and smiled. "The tallest towers you saw were the programs that could contact you when you weren't using them," she explained. "The ones you allow notifications for."
"Wow," I thought. "That's crazy."
"It's all about perspective," Romi grinned. She then trotted off down the street, with me in tow.
"What do you want to see first?" she asked, turning her head to look at me.
"I-I don't know," I laughed sheepishly.
"Then we'll do it alphabetically!" the Chrome pony exclaimed excitedly before grabbing my hoof and tugging me down the road faster then we had been before.
And so we did. She took me to all of the app's headquarters (minus her own) and showed me how they worked differently, which had the most programs, ect. We saw the Facebook app's earth ponies, the Safari app's unicorns and the E-mail app's pegasi. Each app had its own head pony, and these ponies recognized me immediately, unlike the lower-grade programs. They were all very nice and respectful, and if I had given them a pony icon, they looked just like the little picture did. If not, like Safari pony, then they still looked very much like a pony version of their app should look like.
Eventually, we had seen every major app's building, from the App Store to Voxer, all but one. There was so much left to explore, I could tell, but somehow I knew Romi was too excited to hold it off any longer.
We were going to the Chrome App building.
As we entered through the sliding glass doors, Romi smiled with an air of authority; this was her domain, I could tell, and she was proud of it. The main room was large, with rounded balconies going along the second, third, fourth, and so on floors. Looking up through the building made me dizzy, so instead I looked at the decor. It was all very modern, and most of it was white with light blue lines. It took me a second, but I realized that the lines acted as illumination and decoration all at once.
Romi trotted up to the front desk to a smiling receptionist pony who had light-blue fur and a white mane. All of the smaller programs seemed to match a reversed color scheme of their boss, but they all shared the same cutie mark.
"Please call an elevator," Romi grinned. The receptionist pony nodded and hit a switch. To our right, a modern-looking, glass wall elevator descended to the first floor. Its doors opened and Romi led me in. Her hoof tapped a button on the right side of the elevator and, after the doors shut, we both began to rise through the building.
It was amazing. Every app had an unbelievable amount of workers, but Romi had at least an army of programs on each level. And the floors just kept coming. Most of them weren't that busy, though, and were either talking with other programs, taking a nap, or messing around with glass panels that were floating next to them.
Romi could see my confusion. "Each floor works on one tab of your browser," she said. "We spread out the work, but as we have 101 floors, most of the time not every program is working."
"Why 101?" I asked.
"The first floor, 99 floors for tabs, and one for my office," she smiled.
The elevator continued upward. They seemed horribly over-staffed, but by the looks of it I wouldn't have a problem when it came to tab number.
The 101st floor came quickly, and we stepped into Romi's... office? It was more of a rec room then an office, although I did see a few shelves stacked with files and folders. There was a comfy looking couch, a kitchenette, a big TV, and a coffee table. The room was a mixture of blue, yellow, red, green, and white, the colors popping up in very creative and eye-catching ways. Romi seemed to blend in perfectly.
The white pegasus pulled me across the sproing-y carpet of the room and sat me down on the fluffy couch, quickly taking a seat next to me. We sat in the traditional pony way, flanks on the ground and front hooves keeping our heads and chests held up, which was odd to do on a couch but surprisingly not uncomfortable. "What do you think, user? Is this place cool?"
"This place is beyond cool!" I smiled. "Your building, the other apps' buildings, the city itself, and the fact this is all inside my iPod... It's crazy."
"We all do it for you, you know," she said. I'd honestly never felt so honored. A modest blush crept its way onto my face
"Heh, the only bad thing is how cold it always seems to be," I shrugged.
Romi smiled. "That's an easy fix."
My eyes went wide in shock and I turned my head, but she had already started. Her whole upper body leaned in, and her front hooves wrapped around my torso. Her head was laying against the arm side of my shoulder, and I could see she had kicked her back hooves so they both rested one on top of the other on the side farthest from me. She was hugging and leaning on me, efficiently covering me with a lot of her body. I looked away to hide my quickly reddening cheeks.
I won't lie, it was warm. And I had been cold.
Situations like these never had presented themselves to me before. I wanted to tell her no, tell her I was fine, but all I did was sit there and blush. I could feel her breathing on my fur (which I'll admit felt weird, considering I had never had fur before, but by no means bad), and every few seconds I'd notice she'd lent even closer onto my side.
This was too much. She was pretty, she was nice, she honestly liked me, and she was hugging me in a not-just-a-friend way. I knew I couldn't let myself look at her. I'd fall for her, if I hadn't already.
But then she had happily sighed.
And I couldn't help it.
I turned my head to face her, not too quickly, but not too slowly either. She noticed my movement and glanced up at me. Her fur was somehow a more beautiful white and her mane was slightly messy. Her wings were outstretched, showing off each of her feathers. And her eyes... They were looking up at me, and now that they had me, I couldn't turn away. Each was a pool of pure blue, a beautiful and deep blue that I couldn't get enough of. Her expression was one of complete care and trust, and I noticed she was blushing, too.
She grinned, ever so slightly, and I was gone.
Slowly, carefully, I returned the hug, sliding my hooves under hers and also moving my back legs behind me. My head naturally rolled over hers, and we both found our chins resting on the other's shoulders. She hugged me even tighter, and I hugged her back.
"I-I was made for you, to be everything you need; you made me who I am," she said, her voice cautious. She pulled her head back, and so did I, so now we could see each others' face. Her's was curious, a bit confused, and blushing.
A question escaped her lips. "Is that why... I'm so attracted to you?"
We were both getting closer to each other. I didn't know what I was doing, but it felt so right, even if it made no sense. But at that moment, I didn't wonder what I was doing, or why I was doing it.
I just did.
I kissed her.
The alarm was always way too loud. I guess that was the point, but I don't think it's meant to wake up your neighbors, too.
I hit the button that shut off the infernal noise and stretched my arms up above me, cracking my knuckles. Realizing I felt a tug from my ears, I reached up and pulled off my ear buds. They gave me a bit of a shock as I took them off, but I didn't think much of it.
Until I remembered why.
Eyes wide, the whole adventure came rushing back to me. Every part of it, from the bright light, to the being a pony, to the city, to Romi's-
Oh my god, Romi.
I grabbed my iPod. How would I do this? Thinking off the top of my head, I opened my Chrome app and tapped the address bar.
I blushed a bit at the memory. What do I say? I tapped the letter keys until my message was spelled out:
I remember.
Daringly, I hit go. I held my breath as the webpage loaded, but sighed in disappointment when the generic Google search screen popped up. I checked the web pages, but there wasn't anything there, either.
Disappointed, I hit the home button. Maybe it had been a dream? But it was so real. And you can't just fall in love with a girl from a dream. Not like this.
I was about to get out of bed when I saw something was off. There was a new app, right there on the screen. I'd never seen it before, and there was no way I'd forget a new app download.
I got a closer look at the app. It was a black icon, and on it was... my Ponysona? Pony me was sitting, facing real me, and smiling. Curious, I checked the app name.
User.exe
My heart exploded when I read the title. It hadn't been a dream! It was really real! Romi and the city and... Well, honestly, I couldn't stop thinking about Romi. She was really there! And she... She really...
It was so weird. I wanted to find her again. I... I wanted to hold her again. She was a program, but I still liked her. A lot. And as I held my iPod in my hand, I didn't feel like that was weird. I felt... warm. And that was reassuring.
I clicked on the app. A message popped up, saying that the user must be asleep with the ear buds in. I was half-tempted to do that just now, completely blow off work and just get back to where I was, if it even worked. But I made myself put it off until tonight.
I would see her that night... And... I don't know... We could do whatever. Have a pizza, watch a movie, do whatever programs do.
I don't think I was more excited for anything else in my life.
-Datalog cont.-
There was a ticket to one heck of a place and one heck of a girl on my person that entire day. Honestly, it was horrible.
As I worked, I kept getting distracted by thoughts of Romi. I thought about a lot of things, like how she looked, smelled, felt... I had to snap out of it a few times so I could actually take care of some of my obligations, but it wasn't long after that I'd be imagining myself back in my iPod, saying one of the many, impressive one-liners I'd come up with.
Yeah, I thought a few times if it was weird that I kept crushing over a pony. I mean, she's a pony, or at least looked like one. But, like earlier that morning, I just couldn't seem to find it strange. Although every time I thought of her, I didn't really think of much else except for her herself, so technically it was never given much thought.
Yet the more I remembered, imagined, and planned, the slower the day went by. Stupid brain.
The clock ticks regardless, though, and a good week's worth of waiting later, five o'clock came around. I was the first to clock out, the first in my car, the first one out of the parking lot, and probably the first one home. I got back into my apartment and closed the door behind me, leaning on it, barely able to contain anything and everything going through my head. It came out as a really high pitched scream that I can't say was completely masculine, but still summarized my mental process.
Girls just have that ability. They flip you inside-out, blend up your brain, open the stomach-butterfly cage, and yet manage not to even flinch. It was like a kind of painful torture, but it wasn't exactly unpleasant.
I didn't even bother checking Equestria Daily, my E-mail, FimFiction notifications, or anything else. I closed my blinds and tried to get it as dark as possible. The bed made a creak as I dive-bombed onto it.
I closed my eyes, but my belly had the nerve to remind me I hadn't eaten dinner yet. Stupid stomach.
So I got up and fed myself. My iPod's buds hadn't left my ears since after I'd parked my car, so the music kept playing as I ate my food. I'm sure it was the quickest sandwich that I'd prepared and consumed in my life.
After I finished my sandwich, I ran into the bedroom again, this time changing into pajamas. I carefully slipped between the covers, plugged my iPod into the wall (I mean, this app has got to take up a lot of battery life, right?), and layed there. Although my heart was pounding, I still managed to drop the artificial walls I put up to hide how tired I normally am. After all, staying up until 2 AM may be fun, but it's still nowhere near how much sleep a human actually needs.
So, with the softness of the bed slowly growing softer, and my eyes drooping to the pace of my subconscious, I swiftly but slowly drifted into sleep.
Just to fall flat on my face.
It was still cushion-y, but what I was on certainly wasn't my bed. It was way too new for that. I pushed myself off of the firm but comfortable pillows and looked around.
With a sigh of deep, deep relief, I saw I was back in Romi's room. Thank goodness... It worked.
I was so happy that I fell back on the couch, although sideways this time instead of face-first. It was startling, although not surprising, to see the appendages out in front of me ending in a singular hoof, but I quickly remembered that's how it was here. I was a pony, the inhabitants all were ponies, she was a-
Ooo... She. Her. I'm gonna see her again. The thought alone sent shivers down my ponified spine.
Listening, I couldn't detect any kind of other noises from inside of the office. No, not really an office; it's purpose was to be an office, but considering it had a couch, a coffee table, a kitchenette, and only a small desk pushed over to the side, it didn't resemble it's namesake. In fact, it didn't looked touched from how I last remembered it.
I moved off the couch and gained my balance on my four hooves. The elevator seemed to be the only way down, so I trotted in and hit the button with a "1" next to it. Glass doors shut me off from the room, and I descended almost quick enough to pull me off the floor. Luckily, though, I didn't get dragged into an unwilling flight, and reached the ground floor in, dare I say, 10 seconds flat.
The elevator's panels opened, leading me into a lobby stuffed with ponies. Most of them had cutie marks just like Romi, but unfortunately all of the ones I could see sported the reverse color scheme that labeled them as a helper program. Standing on the tip of my hooves (then falling on my face, getting back up, and trying again), I could see not a single strand of blue mane.
I turned to the mare on my left. "Uh, excuse me," I started, "but have you seen Chrome anywhere?"
"It's a good thing I'm the Google Maps outlet!" the pony cheered. "One second." The pony stood stock still for a moment, which was kinda creepy, but she returned to normalcy and smiled. "She's on her break, so you can find her at the outdoor cafe! It's on your right, two blocks thataway, you can't miss it!" the pony directed, pointing to her right, perfectly parallel to the street outside the large front windows in the building.
"Thank you," I answered. The automatic doors pulled themselves open as I nearly raced into them, almost barreling into a few programs on the way out.
"Two blocks thataway," I repeated to myself. I trotted down the street, and found myself watching the pegasi programs fly above. Quickly, I realized I wasn't looking where I was going, and returned my gaze to the crowd I was following along in.
Sure enough, the cafe was on the right. It was mildly busy, with program ponies drinking strange blue stuff I could only assume was battery power. Most of their conversations seemed to be about computer-related stuff, like RAM and App Usage.
"-Crome way too much! When the new update comes out, Safari-"
"-and nearly got a new high score! I so wanted to see-"
"-the whole device heated up. I was a bit worried-"
I blinked. This was all stuff I kinda remember happening. I was using Chrome a lot more than Safari recently, I did almost get a high score, and my iPod did almost overheat a few days ago. What a weird way to hear all of these average occurrences.
I scanned the tables. Wait, how'd my breath smell? Hold up, did my mane look good? Gah, I forgot to take a shower! I couldn't show up like that-
Found her.
She was sitting alone at a table, sipping a drink and grinning as she flicked her hoof across a floating panel hovering in front of her. She hadn't seen me, but boy could I see her. I felt blood rush into my cheeks as I looked at her shimmering blue bobbed hair and perfectly white coat. Everything kinda seemed to slow down, in my head. My thoughts took a second to process correctly, like they were in an orbit being pulled a bit off course by her gravity.
I swallowed and began to walk forward. What would happen? Would we start off where we left off? Would things just be awkward? Had she even thought about me since last night?
Before I knew it, there I was, right next to her table. "Hi, Romi," I barely got out.
She looked up, and her eyes widened. "User," she almost whispered. Then her face lit up. "User, you're back!" She shot up with the biggest smile and did a little jump before giving me a huge hug.
Geez, that was the cutest thing I had ever seen.
I returned the hug, very happy to see her, too. I could smell her coat; it was like a sweet electricity. Full of energy, and just beautiful to take in.
We weren't the only boy/girl pair in the cafe, but I could tell we were attracting attention. "Uh, everyone's kinda looking at us," I said.
Romi giggled and pulled back, her face a very low amount of inches away from mine. She surprised me by touching our noses together for a brief moment, giggling as she did so. "Do you wanna get something?" she offered.
Past my large blush, I nodded.
"I don't know if there's anything here a User would eat or drink," Chrome pony smirked sheepishly, "but you can try whatever you'd like." Her gaze, those light-blue orbs that go far beyond just the cliche descriptions of pools, had stayed on me since the hug.
"Sure, why not," I smirked. "What do you recommend?" The chair I had sat in was like most outdoor chairs; not very comfortable, but meant to withstand harsh weather conditions.
Romi gave a sigh so big her eyes rolled into the back of her head. "The Charger Chardonnay is just heavenly. I could drink it all day!"
"Then I'll get one of those-" Before I could finish my sentence, a glass popped up from a panel in the table, already full of the liquid. "... when the... waiter..."
The beauty across from me gave a sheepish giggle. "The service here is excellent, by the way," she said through her smile.
"No kidding," was my response.
I picked up the glass in my hoof, which was surprisingly easy. The lack of fingers apparently made no difference, and the small cup was balanced perfectly.
The drink was electric blue, almost green. That didn't make it look very appetizing, but it was a thin liquid, so at least it didn't look like sludge or anything. A whiff of the stuff told me nothing, so I stole myself and took a sip. It felt like a blazing streak of lightning shot through my body as I swallowed the stuff, and I lost the taste in the pure energy that had coursed through me.
"Holy crap!" was all I could say.
Romi giggled. "Glad you liked it."
"That was..." I poured through my brain, trying to find the right word. "...shocking." The Chrome pony rolled her eyes.
"That's because it's electricity, you dummy!" she laughed and sighed at the same time, and regardless of what that's called, it was amazingly adorable (and made my cheeks warm).
I decided that blushing wasn't the most masculine of things to be doing, so I managed to take my eyes off of Romi for a second and look around. The buildings were all very angular, jutting out in ways that looked straightforward, but still odd and sometimes plain unnatural. Their colors didn't seem to follow any pattern but one, and that was that there were pulsating blue streaks along the buildings' edges. The sky still sported the odd blue clouds that some buildings poked through. The streets honestly looked like regular, real-world streets, although full of ponies instead of people.
"It's nothing like your world," Romi said from across the table. I nodded.
A strange thought crossed my mind. Romi and I lived in completely different worlds. Meeting each other like this shouldn't be possible. I returned my gaze to her, happy that I could.
Romi was looking puzzled. "... Is there something on my muzzle?" she asked.
I blinked a few times. "Wh- Oh! No, I, uh..." Admitting that I was staring at her because she was drop-dead gorgeous and the fact I'm here with her shouldn't have ever happened proved hard.
Romi giggled, deepening my blush. "I love it when you get all flustered," she smirked. She got up before I had the chance to retaliate and trotted over to my side of the table. "Hey, wanna go see something?" she asked. Assuming that trying to defend my masculinity was pointless, I nodded and got up, ready to follow where she went.
Romi flared out her wings. "Oh, you think we're walking?" she asked with a wicked grin.
Before I could even guess as to what she had meant, I was jumped on, grabbed, and pulled into the air. The ground slowly disappeared below me as the white hooves holding my midsection took me higher and higher. My eyes were wide with shock; I wasn’t really expecting this.
But I didn’t scream. Much.
Eventually, Romi flew us to the top of one of the taller buildings in the city-scape. We sat on a tier a few stories below the cloud layer. I swore I could see the whole city below us, in all of it’s strange beauty.
“I wanted to take you here yesterday,” Romi said, sitting next to me, back hooves dangling off the edge. I quickly realized she was pretty close to me. My mind flashed to yesterday, when she had kept me warm; she was keeping my face red a lot these past two days. “You kinda... vanished, though. I was worried.”
“Sorry,” I replied. “The alarm clock kinda did it’s job. But I was excited to get back, you know.” The cold air, seemingly normal in this city, did nothing to cool my cheeks. After I had thought about her wanting to keep me warm, my mind wandered to the other happenings of that night.
“This city... compared to your world, I’m sure it must be strange.” She was looking over the cityscape, seemingly a bit lost in thought.
“Definitely,” I agreed. “I’m not sure most of this is possible back home, you know?”
“Yeah...” Okay, something was on her mind, I knew it. It was a bit odd, seeing her even a bit sad considering how often she seemed happy. Something was up.
“H-hey...” I began. “You know, I-”
“Listen,” Romi said suddenly. “Yesterday, I said...” She let out a breath, trying to compose herself. “I said something before I could really think it over. I’m not really the think-y type, I’m designed to connect more on an emotional level with a User, but I... I said something I didn’t mean to say...” Her eyes were closed, squeezed shut in concentration.
My heart sank. She didn’t really like me, did she?
“N-no... No, it’s okay.” I tried, feeling downhearted. Of course she didn’t. She was a program. For all I knew, she mistook her ‘admiration’ for a sudden power surge. “You can’t control your feelings, they just happen-”
“User, I didn’t mean to say that I liked you so quickly. I shouldn’t have pressured you into anything, I should’ve been more cautious, I should’ve kept my emotions in check, and I’m sorry.”
She was looking at me in a determined way. Her blue eyes were furrowed in self-loathing, and with a sigh she dropped her gaze. I felt a bit helpless, sitting there, watching her regret what she had done in a moment’s frenzy of happenings and new experiences.
But I recalled how ecstatic she had been to show me around yesterday. She had run up and hugged me when I arrived earlier. There wasn’t a single moment in my memory I hadn’t seen her happy while she was with me.
And it hit me; now she thought I didn’t really like her.
She thought I didn’t like her beautiful white fur, soft to the touch and always freshly groomed. She thought her eyes weren’t crystal-blue enough to catch my attention every time I looked at her. She thought she wasn’t funny enough, nice enough, smart enough, caring enough, for me to be impressed. I looked at her and blinked.
Heh... Oh, by the way, she thought wrong.
“Hey, no, don’t be sad,” I said as I leaned over onto her. “I’m not mad, I promise.”
“B-but that’s not the problem!” she sobbed. I hadn’t realized that she had started crying.
I gulped. “...You’re right.”
I reached up with my left hoof and held the side of her face, leading her gaze up so she was looking at me. Her eyes were a bit wet, her gaze somewhere between shock and a kind of disapproval she apparently thought of herself with. Quickly, before I could overthink anything, I leaned in and pecked the other side of her cheek.
Woah... Dang, now that I think about it, that had probably looked pretty cool!
As I moved my head back a bit to look at her, I noticed a small, shocked gasp come from her mouth. When I looked, her eyes were filled with disbelief, shock, and a kind of faint hope.
“Romi, I never want you to think you did anything wrong,” I said with a bit more force than I intended. I guess I was a bit off-put by what I had just done. It was definitely daring by my standards. I calmed my voice and continued. “What I mean is, you didn’t pressure me. Truth be told... I couldn’t really stop thinking about you this past day.” There, I had said it. It was actually easier to admit then I had thought it would’ve been.
Romi hadn’t stopped looking at me with that same expression. We looked at each other for a bit, staring in silence. She blinked twice, then looked down, then looked up at me again.
And proceeded to throw her hooves around my neck and kiss me.
For a second I didn’t really know what was happening. Alarms were going off in my head, but I couldn’t figure out why. It was after Romi had pulled her head back did I realize what had happened.
Romi was looking at me again. She turned her head away, dropping her hooves from my neck and blushing madly. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered quickly.
For another second I blinked. Then I composed myself, or as much as I could. “Romi?” I asked.
She looked at me, and I took the moment to lean forward and hold my lips to hers. Now that I knew it was coming... I could feel it. It was warm, a kind of warmth that spreads through your body and helps your muscles relax. And when I pulled back, it felt like I was leaving a part of me behind.
“Don’t be sorry...” I reassured. My words were breathy, because I was trying to inhale as much air as possible while also talking. I pressed my forehead to hers, looking into her eyes.
A wonderful feeling coursed through me when I heard her giggle. If this was love, I loved being in love.
"You finally kissed me..." she whispered.
"Finally?" I responded.
She rolled her eyes and smiled. "You know what I mean."
And we sat there for awhile. I'm happy to report that I didn't just have a first, second, and third kiss there, but also my fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh... After that, I lost count. In a beautiful kind of way, each moment with her blended into the next, creating a mosaic of feeling and joy. We didn't talk much; we didn't have to.
Eventually she took me back down to the ground. We trotted around for awhile, not really to anywhere specific. She taught me more about her world, showing me the different places and their functions. Games, Apps, Programs, the like. But I wasn't really paying attention.
I walked next to her, letting her lean on me. We stowed away into an alley a few times to kiss again in hiding. We kept walking until the roads ran out, and from what I could see, a blank expanse continued on until the horizon.
She kissed me again, and I (having gotten a lot of practice) kissed her back. For whatever reason, I loved it. She pulled her head back, and so did I, both of us looking at the other.
"I studied the program you're using to be in this device," she said. I nodded, understanding why.
"You can only stay an hour here. After that, you go back."
I blinked a few times. "But... But I'm asleep longer than that!"
She smiled at me. "I'm not sure how it works either. But right now... You're at 59 minutes."
I looked up at her, but she was looking away, towards the nothing that I guess was unused disk space. I put my hoof on her cheek, and she looked back towards me. "I'll be back tomorrow," I promised. She nodded, and I felt relieved.
I gave a little grunt. "I'm about to say something very, very cheesy."
She smiled.
"If I only have a minute left," I began, "I... I guess I should use it wisely, huh?"
I leaned in a bit, closing my eyes. She met my lips with hers, and we kissed. We kissed, and I never wanted to leave her side. We kissed, and I wanted to be together forever. We kissed, even as I felt some nagging feeling tapping on the back of my brain.
I felt her kiss slip away. No, really, I felt feeling in general slip away for just a half-second before I jolted up in bed, breathing hard.
I smiled. I was gonna have to get used to this.
