Adventures in Multidimensional Dating

Sometimes, you just don't want to get out of bed in the morning.

"ROLL CALL!"

This was one of those mornings.

As much as my head wanted to stay firmly planted on my pillow, our residential advisor demanded that we wake up at six in the morning every weekday, and I had stayed up way too late last night, what with that cute, as of yet unnamed pony virus and all the bullshit she brought with her. After a couple minutes of tossing and turning, I had finally been able to pass out. Now it was time to return to my normally scheduled drudgery: proving to a system that doesn't give a flying fuck about the people in its care that I have learned what it was trying to teach me.

In short, I was an Advanced Microsoft Certified Solutions student, and I was trying to earn certifications.

"ROLL CALL!"

I groaned and got to my feet as quickly as I could. My head swam and my vision darkened, but it eventually cleared. I didn't have time to deal with the sleepers in my eyes or that weird white stuff that forms in the corners of your mouth: I had to get my ass out of my room immediately, or ~~face summary execution~~ ~~bring shame and dishonor to my family for generations to come~~ get marked down as absent without leave and sent home. That wouldn't do, what with six thousand dollars in combined student loans and credit card debt to pay off, and my parents breathing down my neck from afar the whole while. It was imperative that I get up in the morning and have my name "called".

The inept fat fuck responsible for making sure we had survived the night started calling our names. As he went down the list, and he came closer to my name, I found myself impatiently tapping my foot. Eventually, he got to my room.

"CODY!"

"Here." The Muslim with the pink weeaboo sweater slunk back into our room. He was always one for sleeping and long-winded one-sided conversations about his various interests. He was nice to me, so I tolerated it.

"CONNOR!"

"Here." His long locks of luscious straw-colored hair bounced around him as he pushed our heavy door aside, going back to his smartphone to look at the memes his friends on Discord had sent him overnight. I didn't quite know how to feel about Connor. Sometimes he was an awesome dude who was fun to hang out with, exchange furry and pony porn with, or otherwise engage in snark combats. Other times he was an asshole who only wanted to believe in his own lies. I still liked him, though.

"VIKTOR!"

"Here." My black roommate slunk back into our room, gathering his towels and shampoo. He loved his showers. I loved watching him get out of them. I had never questioned my sexuality and my preferences before I met my toned, muscular, friendly roommate with a good sense of humor and an enjoyment of that old Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon. I was still pretty sure I liked women and futas, but holy shit. I watched him leave, barely able to contain my covetous glance towards his arms and chest. Now, it was my turn.

There was a long pause, then, "SEEDRICK!"

I sighed, "SER-ik, sir," and went into my room with the rest of my roommates. At six feet four inches, I was taller than most of the students in our dorm, but because of my shitty posture and general cowardly attitude towards human interaction, I looked smaller than I actually was. My face, arms, and chest were so riddled with acne that it looked like someone had dipped a paintbrush in various shades of white, yellow, and red and had attacked me with it. No matter how clean I got, no matter what creams I bought, they'd always be there, and I couldn't exactly afford a dermatologist on a fifty dollar a month stipend. I also have a mild form of Asperger's Syndrome, so I'm a little weird, and I couldn't see for shit without my glasses. At least those two parts didn't change throughout all my travels.

I fell onto my bed, which was (funnily enough) the bottom bunk to Viktor's top bunk. All of us had made various jokes about this to him, and he laughed them off. I looked down at my bedsheets, crumpled and disheveled as they were, and glowered at them. Job Corps had this... thing about making our beds in the morning, and always used that one speech from some guy in the Navy to illustrate why. Coming back to a bed that's made didn't fill me with nearly enough relief as that asshole had promised. And nor, for that matter did opening my laptop and booting it up to discover that the cute pony virus had been waiting for me. Good morning! Did you sleep well?

My response was intelligent and well thought out. "BWHAAA!" I flailed on the spot, hitting my head against the underside of Viktor's bed. The resulting cacophony of noises had everyone in the room turning to me. "I'm fine, I'm fine." I clutched my head, grumbling. Of course the virus was still there, and of course it was still being friendly to me. "Fuck my life! And my head. Fuck my head, too."

The pony tilted her head in concern. Are you sure you're okay? You don't look so good.

I waved her and my roommates off. Once my roommates had gone back to whatever it was they were doing (I neither knew nor cared), I faced the virus. "Sorry 'bout that. So, how can I help you?"

Her smile took up half of my screen. You already have messages from other users!

I did another double take, but carefully, so as not to hit my head again. "I have messages? From overnight?!"

Yup! From other users!

My face contorted into an expression of mingled excitement and suspicion. It felt really weird. "And I can read them, and then respond to them? For free?"

"What are you doing?" Connor had sidled over to see what I was excited about. I was about to answer, but the virus, and all that came with her, had abruptly vanished. I hadn't even typed any simple DOS commands to get rid of her, either.

"Well, I was reading more clopfiction, and there had been some exciting story developments. Who knew that people who write porn also write a genuinely good story to go along with it? So go walk into a freezer and, like, chill, bro."

"Alright." He didn't sound entirely convinced, but he let me be

I turned back to my laptop, which showed the dating site again. Didn't I already explain all of this to you? The pony's smile had gone from excited to tolerant.

"Well, I was up pretty late last night," I answered, more quietly this time, "so forgive me for not really remembering much of what you said to me."

If that's what you're worried about, I have the logs of our conversation.

"Of course you do. You're a virus. You're supposed to monitor and steal my information."

She actually lost the smile and frowned at me. How many times do I have to tell you that I'm not a virus?

"As many as you like! Just know that I'll never believe you." Did I really have to drip with condescending sarcasm just then? No. Did I do so anyway? Yes.

I know how I can prove you wrong, but you'll have to wait until all your friends are gone. I take up a lot of space. She had gone back to smirking now.

"Aha! You said you take up a lot of space! You are a virus! Let me double check just to be sure." I navigated through my file directory and went into the amount of storage I had left on my C drive. What I expected to see was one hundred forty-eight gigs of storage left, and another three hundred fifteen gigs left on my boot drive. Instead, I had six hundred gigs of storage left, and my computer ran smoother than it had in a long while. Everything was organized. My porn was filed by fetish and sub-fetish, and my memes by subreddit and 4chan board origin. I looked up at the damned fucking pony on my screen, who had the good sense to look sheepish. "What. Did. You. Do."

I just fixed a couple things. You were using too much space for a boot drive, and you had a bunch of bad stuff clogging up your computer. So I, uh, made some room. All your games, pictures, documents, and videos are still there. They just take up a lot less space now.

I visibly relaxed. This thing really was being good to me. "Sorry. It's just, this computer is more important to me than I am."

Did she just try to snort derisively? I can certainly tell.

"So," I began, trying to get the conversation back on track, "you said I had messag-"

"BATHROOM CLOSES IN FIFTEEN MINUTES. GET YOUR DETAILS DONE!"

"That's my queue. I'll be back in a couple minutes."

Bye! She waved her hoof at me as I closed my laptop and let it go into sleep mode.

Twenty exhausting minutes of scrubbing hairs and bacteria out of the shower stalls later, I was running late to breakfast. "Shit shit shit shit shit!" I slid on my dilapidated trench coat and straightened my sheets as best as I could, and then hurried out of the dorm, laptop and power cord firmly in my grasp. At least I wouldn't be overheard if I were in the lunchroom with everyone else, eating my shitty subsidized breakfast. Sure enough, it was loud as fuck in there. People were blasting rap music, conversing, or watching YouTube videos. I picked an empty corner where I knew I wouldn't be disturbed and parked my ass there. Nobody sat with me, not even my friends, so I knew I wouldn't be bothered.

The lid to my laptop came open, and my password was entered. "We won't be overheard now. How do I check my messages?"

The mare pointed a hoof at the top left corner. 'MESSAGES' was highlighted in red, and a number seven was circled. Even as I pondered opening the tab, the seven became an eight, and then a nine. "I can't actually be that popular."

It's probably because you're human. Your profile also comes across as funny, intelligent, and caring: all things that a mare looks for in a stallion. One of the things that I had the most skill in was presenting myself in a positive manner. My mask hadn't slipped, and neither had the smile plastered on it. Of course, I am biased. After all, I live on your computer now. Even if the website goes away, I'll still be here. Unless my plan works, but that won't be for a while.

"Might as well start with the oldest first" A couple clicks away was destiny, if that was even her name. And I was determined to meet her, and show her just how fucked up in the head she was for putting me in this situation.

'Read DDj's message? Y/N.' Did I want to read it right away, or did I want to read this DDj's profile information first?

... yeah, I was gonna read the profile first. No sense talking to someone you don't know yet if you don't know absolutely anything about them, either. It'd give me the upper hand in conversations and flirting. Or at least, I hoped that this would be the case.

As soon as the page loaded, I began to read.

What I saw, shocked me.