Chapters Author's Note
I hope I don't lose my train of thought for this story and let it go straight to hell. I probably can't say that.
Friday November 03 1995; Canterlot City, Delaware
Also, Friendship Games➡Twilight goes to CHS➡Midnight comes back as a mirror of Sci-Twi, not a monster➡Crap happens➡Midnight is essentially Twilight's adoptive sister. There.
With kDE, everything is spelled with a 'k' somewhere in it. Konqueror, kWrite, Kate, kOffice, etc.
Also, 90% of this box is just stuff that's virtually irrelevant to this story.
Also, Midnight Sparkle now looks like this .
"Good luck with that on-a-line thing," Applejack said to me, driving off in her truck, grinding the gears as she went.
I wiped my frameless, circular glasses on my shirt as my dad pulled up to the front of the school, sporting his new Lexus, "Ready, Twilight?"
"Coming!" I went and got in the car, "I have my things packed and-"
"Actually," he said, pulling onto the road, "Your mom and I figured we could handle this on our own, so we're leaving you and Midnight at home for the weekend."
"Oh," I said, remembering an incident that happened not-too-long-ago, then returning to my former demeanor, "You two have fun, then."
The ride back to our house was an easy thirty minutes, but with Dad, it felt closer to three.
When we pulled into our driveway, Mom was outside, ready to go to Manehattan. She had a suitcase and her purse
I wasn't a big fan of there anyway, especially after we moved here when I was five years old. I had even been back a few times, and didn't like it now , so I was glad to be home. Besides, Midnight would be asleep so I would be able to figure out some more on that newsboard page about the friendship games incident from a few months ago.
"We'll be back Sunday at 11:30 at night, honey."
"You two have fun," I said as the three of us hugged.
"Is this it, Velv?"
"It is."
"Twilight," Mom said, "If you need anything, you know our cellphone number, right?"
"302-333-8989."
"You two have fun," she said, her and dad leaving.
I went inside, expecting Midnight to be asleep on the couch, but instead...
"Why does she have to fill my face up with lipstick and not yours?"
"Gah!"
Midnight, even with having several kiss prints from Mom on her face, was still scaring me.
"Look, sis," she said, "We got the whole place to ourselves for the weekend, so you better not lock yourself up in the attic doing God-only-knows-what or sit at your computer and reading articles on 'thermodynamics'."
"Actually, I have 25 people on my buddy list that I wanted to chat with for a while."
"You've never even met these people."
"That's the beauty of it," I explained, "You type a message, press enter, it sends. They receive the message, read it, type a reply, press enter, and you get the reply. There's no need for social contact, thus eliminating the timing standards implied in conventional, face-to-face, and occasionally via telephone, exchanges."
Midnight slowly shook her head in disapproval and crossed her arms, "You poor, lonely bitch."
"I may be a few cyberdates away from an engagement."
"I made you a cappuccino. On the island. I'm gonna go wash this lipstick off."
"I just don't trust her. I don't know why."
"Gee, it couldn't be because that I'm ultimately the demonic spawn from you and magic that no-damn-body knows a thing about, could it?" she yelled from the bathroom.
"Sorry!"
"Don't mention it. It's the lipstick fumes."
"Don't use the phones for a while, though."
"Are you going on a 'cyberdate'?"
"No, but I'll let you know when I do. Right now, I'm logging onto a USENET newsboard about what happened at the Friendship Games. Someone from Czechoslovakia thinks that it's a black hole."
"Have fun with that, but I will pull the circuit breaker out if you stay up there."
That's a hollow threat. I'm fine.
"Okay."
I ran upstairs to my bedroom, threw my books down, on my bed, hit the power button on my computer and waited for it to boot into kOS.
"C'me on, baby," I said, noticing that the fans and motors were louder than usual at bootup.
100 Megahertz, 32 Megabytes of RAM, 1.5 gigabyte drive, American Megatrends, blah blah blah.
It was slower to come on. When it got to the splash screen (a light-gray rectangle reading k Operating System with the k in front of a rotating gear), it seemed to hang there, the only audible noises were me ~~drinking~~ finishing the coffee and the fans, blasting air into the system.
"Maybe it's just taking its precious time," I said, looking at the pixelated-hourglass cursor that was becoming the bane of my existence and getting up to get a can of soda.
"Is it some kind of game?" Midnight asked me, flipping channels from the other side of the open-concept kitchen/TV room.
"Is what some kind of game," I said, getting a Pepsi.
"That thing you're doing."
"kOS hasn't even started yet. Did-"
"I didn't do anything. I like being alive, despite popular belief."
I saw that she had finally settled on something that I'd rather not be around for longer than I had to, "Well, I'm going back up, now."
"Good luck."
I went back upstairs and found that, while kOS was loaded up, kPPP was already open, so I clicked it.
Connected to 1-800-899-9697SciTwi1978@aol.com
That's strange. I'm already connected.
I looked at my desktop. My regular icons for AOL, my drives, printer, documents, and shortcuts were all there, but there was one: VRNet .
What?
I opened it.
"What the- DEAR GOD, SOMEONE HELP ME!!! "
I was in this room. Numbers were running down the walls, binaries.
"Where am I?"
I looked around and saw several signs: Twilight Sparkle's Email, America Online Weather, World Wide Web, My Channels, and several others.
"Is-"
I was pulled out and woke up, being slapped by Midnight.
"What the hell were you doing!?"
"I don't know! It was loud, and it took forever to start, and I went for a drink, and it was on AOL, and it sucked me in, and I don't know what to do!"
"I would say for you to call Sunset," Midnight said as I laid on my bed, "but she'd probably kill me with a friendship laser, she doesn't know anything about this, and our phones may have a spell on them."
It sounded the AOL noise, then just shut off.
"Unplug it," I said, not taking my gaze from the questionable box.
As Midnight drove home, I felt like I was in an inconsistent centrifuge. Thankfully, she had no regard for the speed limit, or the fact that there was a working speedometer in the car, so the experience was rather short-lived, thankfully.
Mental note to self: Midnight is never driving me again.
By the time we pulled into the driveway, I was wondering if I was alright to stand.
"Don't worry," Midnight said, "I gotcha if you fall."
Shakily, I got out of the car. Sunset didn't have any problems, though.
"I get the feeling that you're scared to go in," Sunset said.
"Very much."
"Don't worry. I'll get the others if we need them."
I simply nodded as we went in and to my computer.
"Why is it on the floor?" Sunset said to Midnight.
"I coudn't figure out how she wired everything, so I just pulled the tower out and it shut off."
"The scary part about that is that you used to be the same person, I think."
"Yeah," Midnight agreed, turning to me, "We need you to set this baby back up."
I went and set the thing back up, then turned it on. Everything was the right speed, just like it should have been earlier.
100 Megahertz, 32 Megabytes of RAM, 1.5 gigabyte drive, American Megatrends, blah blah blah.
It felt like it went to the desktop in record time.
Maybe it was all in my head.
The VRnet icon was gone, but in its place was a kWrite document titled |-34[) JVL3.txt .
"Open it," Sunset said.
'/0(_)|2 ///0|21[} ][5 90][~9 70 <#@~93, 7///][1][9#7 5|\ @|2|{13.*
;) <#@05
"What is it?" Sunset said, "It looks like garbage."
Author's Note
It's 1337.
Kudos if you know what it says.
By the time Midnight was finished reading what was evidently my chat logs from Kopete, she was metaphorically laughing her lungs out.
"Please stop."
"Twiley," Midnight said, putting the last page in the drawer and closing it, "I had no idea that you were that steamy with this guy."
"Well, he is really smart."
"Still, you're meeting him."
I looked around the room because I didn't know the social protocol, then noticed a door with an animated globe on the wall above it.
What?
There were rings being shot around it, but they were originating from places on the globe, but I noticed a strong one in particular; the beam shot from Eastern-Czekoslovakia to Canterlot, Delaware and back.
And it wasn't a small one, either. It was thick .
"We're never going to get out if we don't look for a way out," I said.
"Are you crazy as frick?" Sunset said, "This- you don't know ANYTHING about this place!"
"Maybe, but it seems to be based off of my field of study," I said, going to the door.
"Well, you're not wrong..."
"Just follow me."
Everyone followed me into the room, but everything changed. We were on a much larger globe, and that door was a trapdoor with an arrow pointing to its upper-right corner from the inside. Upon further inspection, I found that it lined up precisely with Canterlot.
This is new. Physics don't seem to apply here.
I listened and heard what sounded like hundreds of modems, all dialing up the Internet. There were hundreds of beams, jumping from place-to-place, then disappearing as fast as they appeared, but a thick beam stood out because it didn't go away; it looked like the same one from the globe above the door.
"I think I've cracked this," I said, pressing the end of the arrow, causing the door to turn into a down-facing arrow over Canterlot that matched my height.
"What in tartarus was that for!?" Sunset said, scared and furious.
"If I'm right," I said, returning the arrow to its original position, "It should've just hid the door."
By sheer luck, I was right, so I stood it back up, condensing it again.
I went over to Geneva, Switzerland, where a box of websites (presumably from Geneva), appeared with what looked like a search function, so I typed out "HTTP://WWW.INFO.CERN.CH ". After a minute, one result was listed: The World Wide Web project - http://info.cern.ch .
We're IN the Internet.
"Oh my God," I said, very amazed, "How? How is this even possible?"
I was curled up in fetal position on the couch downstairs.
"Don't worry, Twilight," Midnight said, "Better than the games."
"U- uh-huh."
"Not by much, though."
I'm glad she's here and Spike isn't right now.
The phones rang, getting both of our attentions.
"How good are you at driving?"
"I can be Pinkie-Good," Midnight replied, getting the keys to our lavender Yugo and pulling me out to it.
"Sunset's place?" Midnight said, pulling out onto the highway.
"You know-"
"I know. If I die, I want it to be done with honor," she said, turning to me, "Now?"
"Sunset."
Midnight held true to herself and drove as fast as the car could go.
"Which ramp?" Midnight said after a few minutes.
"Twelveth Street upper, then straight for fifteen miles, but slow down some."
"You got it."
I could feel that she let off the gas some , but I wasn't convinced that we wouldn't flip over until we were back on a straight road.
"Almost there," she said.
"Good," I said, leaning on the door.
A few minutes later, she drove into the parking lot for the complex, then proceeded to drag me by the wrist to her front door and pound on it as I sat against the opposite wall.
"I'm coming !!"
A minute later Sunset opened the door and was FURIOUS .
"What did you do to her!? You should've died!!"
Sunset took a few steps back and then began to charge at Midnight, knocking her down.
"What the fuck did you do to her!?"
"OFF!" I said pulling Sunset off of Midnight and holding her back.
"What did she do to you and how can you hold me like this!?"
"Lot of things you don't know about me, but now isn't the time!"
"Fine," Sunset said as she stopped struggling, "But you're telling me about that when we're done."
"Agreed."
We all went into Sunset's apartment and sat down. Manners aside after what happened earlier, I opened her refrigerator and got a can of soda.
"You remember how I said that I was on this Czechoslovakian newsboard?"
"I remember 'newsboard'."
"Well, when I got home, I went to my computer, turned it on, and it sucked me into this weird matrix world. Midnight pulled me out, then we came here."
"You have no idea how much I wanted to take credit for what happened at home, earlier," Midnight added as I looked at my arms and noticed the small outline of a muscle.
"As for how I could hold you back, I rearrange everything in my room on a bimonthly basis, a lot of heavy stuff included."
"Based on what you've told me, I have no idea what it could be, other than a spell."
"I would've called before we came, but I was scared to use the phones afterward."
"That's understandable," Sunset said, getting her journal, "I'm going to write Princess Twilight and see if she can come. She's better at magic than I am. Besides," she added, "if this was just something up at your house, I know you'd have already figured it out."
"Thanks."
"Alright," Sunset said, "The princess is gonna meet us in fifteen minutes at the school, so we need to hightail it there now ."
"I got da key," Midnight said, leading us out of the building.
"Actually," Midnight said, "It's leetspeak."
"What's it say?"
"I don't know."
"Oh Lord," I said.
"Why? What's it say?"
"It says, 'Your world is going to change, Twilight Sparkle. ;) Chaos'."
"That must be Princess Twilight," Sunset said, looking at a page in her book, "She's at CHS."
"I'll stay back with Twi," Midnight said, giving Sunset the keys, "You can drive a five-speed, right?"
"I'll be back," she said, running out.
As soon as the car left the driveway, the phone rang.
"Answer it," Midnight said, "And I know what you're going to say, but I want this thing to be over just as badly as you do."
"Are you sure?"
"I haven't let you down since I came back, have I?"
Sighing, I picked up the handset and held it between mine and Midnight's ears, "Hello?"
"You'll know so much more, and all you have to do is say yes."
Midnight snatched the phone, "Now listen here, bub! Whatever the hell this is, STOP IT !! It's pissing me off and sending my sister into panic attacks!" she held the phone down to her chest and put her free hand over the microphone, "Go get the cordless from downstairs," she whispered before going back to the person.
I went and got the cordless from the kitchen, went up to my bedroom, and turned it on and muted it.
"Let me speak with SciTwi1978."
"NO!"
"Let me speak with SciTwi1978."
"NO!"
I nodded to Midnight, so she muted her phone as I turned off mute on mine, "Yes?"
"Twilight Sparkle, I know what happened at the Friendship Games, and I know your thirst for knowledge. You just have to agree."
I motioned with my hand for Midnight to hang up, so she did, albeit somewhat confused.
"No. And get out of my life!" I said, pressing the off button.
There was a minute of silence.
"So?"
"So what?"
"How did it go?"
"I just said for him to get out of my life."
"I would say 'Go for it', but the last time that happened, I, you, we almost killed everyone in two dimensions by ripping apart the fabric of reality. That's the dealbreaker for me."
"I'm just skeptical of what I might know if I had said yes."
We both wondered what to do next.
"There's a crime show marathon on television," I suggested.
"Yeah, that's probably the best thing to do until they get back," Midnight agreed as we walked down to the living room and turned on the TV to channel 97.
Midnight was clearly bored, but I was beginning to feel easier until someone pounded on the door later.
"Shh," Midnight said, going to look through the door viewer, so I nodded in response.
I got worried when she opened the door, but was relieved when it turned out to be Sunset and the princess.
"I hope I did the right thing," Sunset said as Midnight locked the door and we all headed to my room.
"Me too."
Thankfully, my room was still the way I left it, even with the text file still onscreen.
"Mind filling me in?" the princess asked, confused.
"My world, according to this person, is going to change soon," Sunset, Midnight, and the Princess looked at me blankly, "I know hackertalk or leetspeak."
Sunset hid the window, only for us to find that the icon with goggles titled VRnet was there again, so she opened it.
As soon as she did, though, the AOL sound began, so she and Princess Twilight covered their ears, "Is this what you normally listen to?"
"It's only 1995. Home Internet actually involves-"
"Nevermind, not now," Sunset said as the noise subsided, then sucked us all into the same matrix-like room, "Where exactly are we?"
"I have-" but I was interrupted by Midnight.
"Your AOL account."
"My what ?"
"Email," Midnight counted on her fingers, "Pinned Newsboards, Weather, a literal DOOR to the Internet," she noticed what looked like a file cabinet labled BUDDY LIST , each drawer labeled with one of their names, "On second thought," she went over to it, "I'm not so sure."
It had to be my America Online, "NO!"
"Too late," she said, opening a drawer, pulling a page out, then laughing as she read it, "Really? THIS is your way of saying 'I love you, let's go to dinner'?"
Oh, Jesus Christ.
"When we get out of here, you're meeting this dude."
I wanted to shrink to the size of an amoeba, regardless if we all got out or not.